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#was thinking about typing up this same tweet again to post here but i like this format more
paper-mario-wiki · 1 month
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tocomplainfriend · 4 months
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I am mad
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Yup!
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Bro shut up, she is white - being Latina is not a race, is an not the same as color skin. And she is a second generation immigrant too. So like... this isn't like a Salvadorian person doing a cartoon, is a daughter of Salvadorians... That grew in the USA. Being Latino doesn't mean you aren't white, you can be any race and Latino. Still wouldn't make up for the lack of representation or the existing racism. In the piece of media that's "diverse".
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Salvadorian is not a race, LMAO. That's crazy- you think someone from Argentina who is white, is not white cause of their nationality??? Being Latino and having that culture does not equal a race. It's in itself a racist thing. This Latino = Race is terrible, It also comes from the idea of the "You are not Latino because you are not brown", assuming all people from Latino America are brown by default. You know how much has that happen to me? -AND MANY OTHER PEOPLE.
(I'm Latino btw)
I already have an older post about it, but - you can really see the lack of diversity in the show a lot. (Will talk about it even more other day).
Again the main thing you get is MEN, hypersexual skinny queer men (cis). You won't get to see female characters being well written, thought all the season 1 and all the episodes we got rn of season 2. All characters are skinny and similar body types and repetitive design choices. Funny enough, shows that lack of human characters still have better race-coding that helluva. (and well in hazbin you'll get POC characters that are gray, lack all ethic features... even when they are humanoid. So that is great.)
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Bro you could, you imagine a character being black and having different textured hair, and you go to hell... AND EVEN THO YOU ARE HUMANOID- your hair became straight and spiky, and you are now a light gray? If you build a world like that... it just seems like the perfect racist excuse to delete ethic features out a POC character because you don't want to draw them. "Not going to a single hint of their race/culture unless it revolves on their death"... If the character became a fucking coin with dot eyes, maybe (not really, shows with no human/humanoid characters still are capable to race-code their characters). But all of these characters are humanoid- why do none of them have their different characteristics? Also, this is about a real person in the real world choosing how to design a character.
This tweet also implies that a black character when they were a life they had ethic features, but lose them when they go to hell. Which is even more fucking stupid.
If a white person with straight hair goes to hell, and their hair remains straight (assuming it has nothing to do with their death), why wouldn't there be black people with textured hair? This is dumb. This goes back to the fucking thing of "No black people in fantasy media", In the same way, it's stupid for fantasy stories to revolve around white people characteristics in fictional species and people in that world- not including all the rest of diverse human characteristics POC people have it's crazy. The biggest problem here is why the fuck all Viv's sinners characters (main characters designed by her) that are supposed to black (or mixed like Alastor) have 0 characteristic. THEY ARE HUMANOID, THEY AREN'T EVEN ABSTRACT OR AN ANIMAL OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT. She didn't want to draw that nor change designs, and wanted to justify the whole concept of Alastor even using Voodou.
HOW ARE ALL THE ANGELS THAT VIV WANTS TO BE BLACK (black voice actors specified, or are race specified) HAVE NOTHING??? LIKE HELLO THE 'I'm such a nice angel character girl' HAS SPIKY STRAIGHT HAIR??? SHE IS AN ANGEL AND BLACK, WHY DIDN'T YOU DID HER HAIR TO BE CLOUDS- It's THE EASIEST SHIT YOU COULD’VE DONE.
BOOM! A FUCKING TROLL FROM A KIDS MOVIE WITH DIFFERENT HAIR. BOOM! THE FUNK TROLLS ARE SO EXPLICITLY BLACK CODED.
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Bro, you know this whole thing of people with textured hair have to forcefully straighten their hair or wear wogs to a job... because people consider it ""Unprofessional"" cause racism? The erasure and discrimination of POC people and their features is a problem. That's why it is important to people represent all of those things:
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(Marvel's Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur)
The only reason of why Alas tor is even mixed is purely cause Viv used the Voodou symbols because she thought they were creepy and edgy. It's sucks that all the angels and sinners that are supposed to be black have nothing.
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imagine-that-100 · 5 months
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Chicken Shop Date | Part 9 |
By @imagine-that-100​​ and @alovesreading​​
Description: Matty Healy x Reader (Female) | You and your best friend Amelia came up with a very simple idea of taking celebrities on awkward chicken shop dates, and somehow, it’s managed to become both of your jobs. In the past, you’ve found sitting across from some of the biggest stars on the planet and eating chicken nuggets easy. But then Amelia manages to score you a date with the man who you’ve been obsessed with since you were nineteen; Matty Healy.
Word Count: 38.8k
A/N: SURPRISEEEE!!!! We are so very sorry it's been so long but this is a long chapter so we hope you forgive us! You would have gotten this yesterday but turns out there is a limit on tumblr and we went over it and I wasn't going to post it elsewhere and leave us tumblr lot behind. So sorry for the delay but we're here! This is going to be so so so much fun, we really hope you enjoy it. We adore this chapter and we hope you like it as much as we do. Please let us know what you think, we won't keep you any longer, go enjoy! Thanks so much for reading x
| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 |
| N’s Masterlist | A’s Masterlist |
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After the Belfast show, you felt like you were on cloud nine. Matty and you could finally let yourselves be seen together without any worries, and despite not being huge on PDA, it felt so good knowing that you can just be hand in hand with your boyfriend without worrying about being seen by people outside your inner circle. 
The only downside to it all was the fact that the tour was over and you had to go home, only to leave it an hour later. You were not going home with your boyfriend this time, Matty was going back to Manchester with the lads for their Gorilla gig which you were unfortunately missing since your Copenhagen trip was stealing you away for the first three days of the month.
Knowing that you were an hour ahead of him, you made sure to be back from dinner early so that you were in bed and ready to indulge in the madness and properly let yourself react. There was no way you weren’t crying watching the videos people would post. And if you managed to find a livestream like you had for a handful of shows in the US, you knew you’d be an utter mess. 
Seeing the mess of tweets on your timeline had you getting nervous, and instead of letting it all out in the form of multiple distressed tweets, you decided to let it out in the form of a desperate message to your boyfriend: I think you should cancel Gorilla since I won’t be able to attend x
Unfortunately, he didn’t give you the answer you wanted because your phone vibrates less than half a minute later and you can almost hear him giggling as you read his message saying, I’m five minutes away from going on stage baby little bit late for that xx
You can’t stop yourself from scoffing and you know he definitely can picture your reaction when all you reply with is, Don’t care xxx
Matty knows how to get you though, because you bite your tongue when his text comes through and it says, Oh but you do and it’s very cute of you to pretend xxx
The only way you can think of getting him to pity you for missing this is by being entirely honest, so you quickly send, I would have cancelled this trip if I knew when you posted that insta story that it was gonna be a self titled show 😭 xxx
Reading him saying, Don’t worry I’ll play them again for you xxx makes you pout because you want to be in that crowd experiencing it for the first time like everyone else.
It’s not the same but thank you x is your first answer, in instinct, but then you give it a quick thought and your fingers quickly type, But since you so kindly offered I expect to be serenaded, I want candles, I want eye contact, I want my own acoustic set of self titled x
You laugh at yourself like a fool at just the image of that actually happening and so you finish your string of texts by adding, No pressure or anything though xxx
His answer is just, I’ll make a note x and you know exactly the way his face is contorted at his phone, with that smirk that’s almost mocking and his wide eyes framed by lifted brows. 
Thank you xxx you reply, biting your bottom lip, you miss him pathetically so and you wish even harder you were there, not only to experience what’s about to happen but to have him next to you again. After being joined at the hip for a month, it came as a heavy weight on your chest to be away from each other.
That weight gets heavier when you read he’s sent, About to go out baby, hope you’re having a great time with Dimz. Miss you lots, you’re here in spirit xx
Before he goes, you quickly reply, Miss you too!! I suppose I hope it goes amazing 🥺 Don’t fuck the lyrics up you grandad xx
Of course, his response to that is a, I make no promises xx that has you rolling your eyes and chuckling. He follows that with a sweet, I’ll text you after xxx 
Melting further into the bed, you send back a wholehearted, Stop texting me and play the album that made me love your music xx before you go back to Twitter to become part of the collective meltdown.
That last text made it almost impossible for Matty to stop smiling for the whole of the gig. It was an hour and a half of pure joy for him to be playing his first album again in Manchester of all places and he knew that he could come straight back off stage and you would be there for him to talk to about just how much he loved it. 
But the lovely surprise that he got was that his phone had been bombarded with texts already and seeing that they were all from you made him grin like a fool. Even when he opened your messages and he saw the first you send after you bid him goodbye made him laugh out loud. 
I’ve just found a link to a livestream and I can wholeheartedly say: I hate you.
You didn’t tell me you were putting a fucking box out from the self titled era. I hate you.
No. No. No. 
Something inside him aches when he reads another of your first spamming of messages. 
It’s like I’ve travelled back in time to your 2014 show but I’m not there to see it in person like I was back then, what the fuck Matty?!?!?!!!? 
It makes him wish that he found you back then. That you could have been together for so much longer than you currently have been. All he wants is more time with you and he already can’t wait to see you again. Even though you might be a little upset with him after how you’ve described his show. 
This is a cruel form of torture. 
Matty finds himself snorting when he reads one that came in just moments after the last, Why wouldn’t you professionally stream this you twat.
It’s a good idea from you to be fair. It makes him think that he should have actually done it to raise more money for War Child, especially since the whole show was being professionally recorded for the band's sake anyway. 
Before he can scold himself too much he reads your next text which again has the curly haired singer laughing out loud when he sees: I’m crying to fucking MONEY. The hold you have over me is insane. 
He can picture you crying to that song, probably as you try to sing along as well, and the scene he’s got in his head just makes it harder for him to stop laughing. In between giggles and half lidded eyes, he continues reading the following texts.
Did you really just get the lyrics wrong to talk you fucking muppet. It’s the easiest song you have. WHY DO YOU TALK SO LOUD!!! 
He knows for a fact he will hear shit from you on that front because he knows that tonight he was bad with the lyrics. But he will argue that he can’t be expected to remember them all when he’s getting older and he has more banging tunes in his repertoire to remember these days. And he hasn’t listened to self titled properly in full since the album listening party on twitter back in 2020 weeks before Notes came out. 
There must have been a small gap where you actually watched the stream you found, as you don’t send anything about Sex or Chocolate despite them being absolute bangers (if he does say so himself). He has no doubt you were either grinning like a fool as you sang along or probably crying and singing along if your earlier messages were anything to go by. 
Heart Out is still a fuckin bop, it’s awful it’s not on the setlist permanently.
That one has him smiling, but he’s grinning like a fucking moron in response to the next song on the setlist. He can practically hear you saying the following messages he received like you are in the room with him. 
Settle fucking Down. Holy shit Matthew! 
Still remember being so confused when the video to this first came out, I had no fucking clue what was going on but christ it’s such a good song I don’t care. 
Matty can’t help but find that one funny because there was definitely a vision for it that not everyone got but it made sense to him so he just ran with it. But it’s your next few messages that have him shaking his head trying not to grin at his phone like a fool.
You better do that high note!!
Do that fucking high note you slut!!!!
YASSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m crying again. Over a fucking high note. I need mental help. 
If you don’t wanna be with me after this I understand but you needed to know at some point how deep this obsession for your music ran. 
No I can’t handle Robbers right now you dick why would you do this to me?!!!???!
As endearing as he finds the warning of your obsession and his get out of jail free card, it wasn’t as if he didn’t already know what he was in for. You have a tattoo already showcasing that love for his music and he’d seen the way you lit up even during his soundchecks when it was practically just you in the audience and even then you looked like you were having the time of your life listening to his music. 
And it wasn't as if you don’t tell each other you’re obsessed with each other anyway. Matty knows what he’s in for and he’s certain nothing could scare him off at this point. 
Not when all his chest can do is ache with longing to speak to you when he reads your next chunk of messages.
I’m at she way out and I’m still crying 
Play this song more often!
Menswear goddddd!!! 
Did you know I’ve had an amaretto at every wedding I’ve attended in the last ten years because of this song? 
You’ve cost me so much money. And that’s not including your tickets and your merch. 
Matty chuckles at those but even more so when he realises the album must have finished and in response to that you decided to inform him.
I’m depressed now. What are you going to do about it??? 
But clearly you’re cured by the time he starts playing the next song because you’re even virtually singing along and he can practically feel the way you screamed it at your phone as you pressed send. 
SELLING PETROLLLLLLLLL
But then you clearly have a giggle with yourself as immediately after you were scolding him.
Your fave essential oil lmfao 
You’re an idiot for not knowing what an essential oil is.
The singer vaguely remembers the interview you're referencing. The miscommunication with an American somehow got him in the shit with fans at the time and clearly now with you which is almost unfair when the woman interviewing him didn’t even know what petrol was… So much for being a fan of his band when petrol is a literal lyric.
Your next few messages make him smile and his heart skip a beat. He really should have asked you to film yourself reacting to the whole gig because imagining your face when reading each message wasn’t enough.
Happiness slaps every damn time, you put something in that song I swear. 
And he can’t help but smirk at the compliment, and his smirk only gets bigger when he reads the next text. 
Definitely like you better when you take off your clothes 😜 
The heat that rushes through him is exchanged for amusement when his gaze falls on your next text and the laugh that escapes his lips is uncontrollable. 
BE MY MISTAKE AFTER ALL OF THIS ARE YOU FUCKING JOKING!!!!!!!!!
Prepare for a slap the next time I see you. I’m crying again. 
He imagines the slap will be even harder when he reads what you’ve spammed him with barely 15 minutes ago.
NOT ABOUT YOU 
MATTHEW TIMOTHY HEALY 
WHAT THE FUCKKKKK
Well the tears are streaming now well done. Hope you're happy.
You can’t leave it there. 
Are you kidding?????? 
Ending on about you?!??!?!?!!! After self-titled in full??!?!?! You’ve murdered a nation.
Hate you x
Matty snorts at that one. He knows you don’t mean it though because your next message is too kind and he can’t stop smiling at his phone.
Christ I hope you left your phone backstage lollll sorryyyyy xxxx 
Message me when you can xx Really proud of you xxx
Reading that makes his heart swell an embarrassing amount. It’s certain he goes all gooey inside, the buzz from getting off stage sweetened by the rush of joy that hearing from you causes him. 
Of course he thanks you and he apologises for upsetting you, and when you tell him not to he just apologises again to get a rise out of you, loving that you’re so easy to wind up. You tell him how much you loved it but you’re more keen to know if he enjoyed it.
He tells you that he did, but it doesn’t put a patch on the banquet records gig where he spotted you in the crowd and he told you that he missed having you there. 
Matty texts you on and off for the next hour, starting off with you telling him that you’d enjoyed the set but obviously he wanted to leave you to your fun with Amelia, so he tried not to bother you too much. And knowing that you were an hour ahead of him in Copenhagen meant that he knew you needed to get some sleep soon. 
That being said he couldn’t deny himself a bit longer talking to you whilst you were still coherent. He wishes he could ring you and hear your voice but people weren’t even leaving him alone to text you. He asked you how your night had been knowing you had your first brand event to be at this evening. 
You tell him how fun it was, and admit that you felt imposter syndrome takeover again but somehow managed to not let that become too unmanageable so it didn’t ruin your night. He could practically picture everything as you explained about how they had everyone congregate for a sit down meal, all of you wearing some of the brands new line of clothes so you could help them promote it, and how it was a lot of fun having free cocktails and food with your best friend and your stylist before coming back a bit early so you could catch the livestream. 
As Matty was chatting to you, he got another text from a number that was yet to be saved to his phone. It was curiosity alone by the image he could see that was attached to it that led him to click on it. And thank Christ he did. 
It turns out Amelia had acquired his phone number, probably from you at some point. But this was the first he was hearing from her and he’s glad he did because she was giving him such glorious content. Opening the text, Matty chuckles when he reads, 
I think I deserve compensation for you and your silly box band for having my best friend like this for the 7474526273743rd time!!!!!!!!!!
And yes she’s drunk
The picture of you that she’s sent makes him giggle. You’re sitting cross-legged on the bed with your laptop just in front of you, in one hand you’re holding an almost empty glass of red wine and the other is wiping away your evident tears from your cheeks. 
Matty giggles seeing that, but his heart goes out to you simultaneously because he of course doesn’t ever want to make you upset. However, Amelia is clearly the one that needs the next text.
I can arrange compensation for you 
Her reply doesn’t even take 10 seconds to come through.
Does that compensation have a first and last name??? Thinking beginning with R and M?????
The singer genuinely has to pause for a second there. That’s again another time someone has started pining for Ross and the maths isn’t quite mathsing in his head. People really like Ross this much?
Regardless, Matty quickly types back, Okay stop thirsting, your best friend is drunk
Her reply is again fast, but this time instead of confusing him it makes him grin like a lunatic, 🙄 Yeah I’m well aware, she can’t stop yapping about you
He feels all fuzzy inside at the mere thought of making you happy when you talk to each other. And the fact you tell your best friend about him just makes him think that he’s doing everything right. He feels like he definitely is, because he’s certain he would have heard from Amelia before now if he hadn’t.
Matty ends up responding cockily, Thought you’d be used to that by now?, before he adds your best friend as a contact and names her Dimz. 
It somehow has gotten worse, Matty reads her reply come through as he’s searching for the chicken emoji to put next to her name.
He can’t help but snort, Who would’ve thought????
After going back to chat to you for a little longer, Matty realises the car that's dropping him off is close to home now, not even two minutes away and when he tells you this, you decide that it’s time to bid each other goodnight. You tell him to send his family your love and you both promise to phone each other when you get up the following morning to properly catch up. 
It’s difficult not to carry on texting you when he makes it inside his childhood home. He’s so used to chatting to you before you go to sleep after the last month of being on tour together that it's a little strange for him. 
He stays awake chatting to his Mum and Lincoln for a little while before he heads upstairs knackered now after a long day of socialising and entertaining. He briefly sends some memes off to the group chat as he gets himself ready for bed before he sees in his notifications centre that he’s missed another text.
It’s from Amelia again and she only sent it 15 minutes ago, so the singer quickly taps on it as he gets himself into bed. 
Had to take her out to console her with her favourite coffee… 
Seeing the photo that she’s sent, Matty genuinely thinks his heart may burst out of his chest. He sends off a gooey response of love heart emojis back but after that he’s transfixed at the sight of you. 
In the picture you're laughing holding your coffee but you’ve managed to somehow get the whipped cream on your nose. The sight is adorable, you’re so cute and you easily have Matty’s heart longing for you, his pulse racing at the thought of being close to you again and making you laugh like that in person. 
It’s probably not good for his heart, getting into a relationship again when he’s due out on such a big world tour. Missing you is going to hurt him more than he could probably cope, but the moments with you are so worth the brief pain of not being with you for a bit. 
Looking at this picture of you, he can’t help but let his imagination run wild. Making you laugh and giggle like this in person on all the dates he’ll take you on in the future. He can picture you holding your drink with a diamond adorning your left ring finger too as you hold up your cup, and he’d take pride in knowing one day soon he’d get to marry the girl he loves.
He loves you.
God, he loves you so damn much. 
And it only dawns on him just how much as he stares at this picture of you giggling with whipped cream smeared on your nose. Obsessed truly isn’t the word anymore, he’s well and truly head over heels for you. 
Matty saves the picture in a heartbeat and quickly makes the picture his lockscreen so he can be reminded just how in love he is everytime he looks at his phone. And Matty falls asleep grinning like an absolute fool at the picture of his girlfriend knowing he’s deeply and madly in love with her. 
~*~*~*~
Your phone rings alive and startles you out of the conversation you were having with Amelia as you waited right by your gate. When you check the screen to see who’s calling, you smile and feel your insides be coated with the familiar warmth that your boyfriend brings to you whenever he’s mentioned, or when something reminds you of him, or he calls or texts you.
“Hey Matty.” You answer quickly, a big grin on your face that he can picture just from the pitch of your voice. 
He matches it, and his smile reaches his eyes as he greets you softly, “Heya baby, how are you doing? Hope you’ve had a nice last morning.” Amelia rolls her eyes and fakes a muted gag before going to her phone when she hears it’s your boyfriend calling you, it makes you snort.
“I’m okay, thank you. And yesss, it’s been good.” Remembering the lovely time you’ve had in Copenhagen makes your smile the tiniest bit bigger but then you remember the time difference and you’re frowning, “But why are you awake so early?” 
It’s merely an hour behind that he’s at but you know he appreciates sleeping in in the morning, just as you do, so you thought he’d still be asleep hence why you’d sent him a quick text that read, At our gate waiting to board! See you soon baby xx which he had yet to reply. 
Your frown dissipates and you’re left smiling like a fool again when his words, laced with sweetness, come to the admission of, “I get to see you in a few hours. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Stop it.” You let out automatically, your cheeks starting to heat up and hurt from how big you’re smiling. 
Matty doesn’t help your case trying to seem cool when he chats back with a smooth, “It’s the truth.” He’d seen your message come through and suddenly the day was perfect already.
You can see him shrugging and offering you one of his nonchalant smiles, and your heart squeezes in your chest picturing him with his face puffy from sleep and his curls messy, tired eyes trying to stay open and that loopy smile he gives you whenever you wake up beside him. 
“I hope you went to sleep early then.” You bargain for that, trying to feel less bad about him being up this early to check on you, or worse woken up by your text.
He hums softly in confirmation, “Accidentally did actually, weed knocked me out.” 
“Well I’m glad you got some sleep at least, but don’t wake up on my account.” He’s your boyfriend and all but you were still going to text him when you were boarding and when you landed so that he wouldn’t worry, he really didn’t need to cut his sleep short for you.
“Hush now,” He waves you off lightheartedly, “What’s your flight number and what time are you due back?”
“Due in at Heathrow at 11:25am,” You reply easily but a thought sparks in your mind and you giggle to yourself before you correct your actions, “One sec, let me actually send you a pic of the board because I know you’ll forget.”
“Okay, thank you baby.” He finds himself stupidly swooning over how easy it has been for you to pick up on his habits, the good and the bad. “I’ll pick you and Dimz up - and if it’s okay with you after we’ve dropped Dimz off we can head back to yours?”
His suggestion warms your heart but you really don’t want to be a burden so you easily reply, “You don’t have to get us, Matty, it’s okay. We can get a taxi.”
“No, I want to and I want to see you.” It’s not like he was asking if he should pick you up, he already was going to do that. He was just trying to suggest you two go back to your flat considering how much comfort that would bring compared to going back to his house after a month away from home. “Dimz too, obviously, but I wanna see you and I bet you are dying to sleep in your own bed again after a month away.”
“God, I really am.” Just picturing falling back into your own bed sounds so heavenly, your words come out in a softened moan that amuses him, and it’s when you add, “Might be more excited for that than to see you.” that he actually giggles.
“Oh, I see how it is.” 
“I’m joking, I’m joking.” You quickly say to take it back but Matty knows you actually meant it and he finds it so endearing. 
“You’re not and that’s fine.” He corrects you and the giggle that accompanies it soothes you that he can read you so easily.
With a sigh, you let out, “You know me scarily well.”
And it has him proudly adding, “Well you are my girlfriend. I intend to find every last detail about you, and you loving your sleep seems like a big part of your day.”
“Yep, now you know why your date was at two o’clock.” It’s probably the time of the day that has you admitting that, even though you know it might’ve been embarrassing to admit that before, it feels right to just share your train of thought back then. 
He hums softly, taking a few seconds to do a bit of maths in his head about how your day must’ve been leading up to the date, “Still must have got up pretty early if you got up and did your make up and trekked it all the way from Brixton to over my way and to set up and everything by two.” His brows raised when he reached his conclusion, knowing the effort it must’ve taken for you to wake up that early for it all, “You must’ve got up at like ten, maybe nine and that’s early for you.”
“I actually couldn’t sleep properly the night before our date so I think I got up around six.” It's almost like in a whisper that you admit that, and you giggle at the soft gasp he lets out.
“Six o’clock?! Wow baby you really must’ve been tired that day.” 
He hears you hesitate when you think back to that day, only being able to remember how it all started and your heart grows in size in your chest, “Nothing you didn’t wake me up from when you asked for that fucking kiss.”
“Hey, if I hadn't asked for that kiss then we wouldn’t be talking right now.” He quips back in a heartbeat, and he takes a moment to think back to that day with pride and so much appreciation for everything you’ve shared of yourself with him since then.
“Never said I didn’t appreciate the kiss.” It’s the first thing you say, just to clear up because there’s not one kiss of his that you’d never appreciate. And then you continue, “I just preferred the one outside where there weren’t any cameras or anyone else watching me kiss the guy who was my lockscreen for almost five years.”
Matty smirks when he hears that, but he plays on the past tense of your statement to tease you, “I best be your lockscreen again.” 
“My lockscreen is actually a picture of Ross from the gorilla gig.” You quickly reply, lying with ease to taunt him back.
And you have to bite your bottom lip to swallow a laugh when his voice drops to an unimpressed tone when he says, “You better be joking.”
You don’t relent in your effort to give him a taste of his own medicine and, nonchalantly, continue adding to your bluff, “Nope, he looked so good.” 
The only answer your boyfriend can give you is an ultimatum that makes you laugh, “You have until you get home to change it.”
But you play into his petition by asking him, “What would you prefer it to be?”
“I don’t know, a picture of us maybe or just one of me.” You shake your head and roll your eyes to yourself when he says that, knowing that if he was beside you and he’d seen Ross as your lockscreen, he would’ve taken multiple selfies in that very moment and chosen his favourite to replace his best friend.
You hum as if you’re deliberating whether or not that being a good call, eventually you come back to him with, “Ames will call me a simp.”
To which he wastes no time to answer, firm conviction when he says, “And you are one. You’re obsessed with me, remember?” 
“Mmm yeah, I guess I am.” You give into him, this game that you always get in with him giving you an endless rumble of butterflies in your belly that makes you wanna giggle. “Guess I’ll change it.” You end up giving in, a tone in your voice that tells him you’re being kind making that decision.
He overlooks the sassiness in your voice to comment, “Good because you’ve been my home and lockscreen for a while.” knowing that it would bring you out of your jokey state. 
Though, you still are in it because you chuckle and reply to that with a mocking, “Lucky you getting to see my ugly mug every time you’re on your phone.”
“Shut up.” He calls you out almost hissing under his breath, “You’re gorgeous. You’re everything.” There’s something laced around the last word he lets out and Amelia finally lifts her head up when she sees you dramatically letting your head fall back on the seat and you clearly flustered at whatever your boyfriend has just said. She squints when she sees the glimmering of your eyes being a product of the tears starting to pool in your eyes. 
Matty hears you sigh heavily and he’s the one to melt completely when you say, “Don’t make me cry this early in the morning, Matty.” A call for him to have mercy on your heart. You can’t believe he has you acting like this in the morning in the middle of the airport.
Amelia takes the chance to chip into the conversation, even though she can’t hear Matty, and she leans into your side so she can loudly say into the speakers of your phone, “Please don’t. You know what she’s like when she’s overtired.”
You roll your eyes at your best friend but she flips you off as she sits back straight, not managing to listen to Matty replying with a, “I do, indeed.” followed by him talking to you directly afterwards, “You best sleep on the plane, baby.” 
“I’ll try.” You halfheartedly promise. It’s only a 2 hour flight back so you don’t know if you’ll be able to catch sleep that quickly after boarding, and if you do, you’re afraid you’ll wake up all grumpy from only getting a fleeting rest.
“Okay, I’ll let you go now then.” Matty offers you softly, and knowing then that you’re so soon due back beside him makes his heart squeeze in his chest, “Can’t wait to see you soon baby, I’ve missed you.”
This time, you just can’t hold in your stupid little giggles and they slip through as you reciprocate, “Me too. See you soon, baby.”
Every minute that passed after the call ended felt infinite to Matty. It was like the seconds elongated cruelly and he couldn’t stop fidgeting around his house whilst he waited for the clock to strike a time that was logical for him to set off to get you and Amelia. 
It got even worse when he got there and he waited outside with a cigarette between his lips, hoping that every drag would soothe him while he eagerly waited for you to walk out. Hoodie up to hide his curls and sunglasses on the bridge of his nose to not garner any attention. Thank god it worked because everyone seemed to pass by completely ignoring him and he could peacefully settle where he was standing for a bit. The relief Matty felt when he watched your plane land on the tracker though was like nothing else, it would only be a short while before he got to be with you again. 
The feeling that washes over you when you walk out of the arrivals doors and Matty sees you is indescribable. The smirk he offers you makes the feeling increase tenfold inside you and fills you with warmth when he walks closer to you and Amelia and you hear him greet you with a cheeky, “Hello you.” over the noise of your cases rolling on the pavement beside you.
“Hiya baby.” You greet back with a loopy smile on your face, you feel your face heat up and the tips of your fingers tingle with the need to trap him in a tight hug.
“Dimz.” Matty says to your best friend who’s smiling beside you, a tilt of his chin in acknowledgement.
“Hello Matthew.” Amelia replies and she comically and dramatically runs to hug your boyfriend before you can.
You watch her case roll away slightly as she lets go of it and you hear the soft ‘oof’ Matty lets out when Amelia crashes on his chest but he still wraps his arms around her shoulders and sweetly clutches her to him. He keeps his eyes open and his smirk is still stuck on his face as he embraces your best friend so you slowly finish walking up to them and say, “Alright then, I see how it is.”
A giggle escapes you when he reaches one of his arms out and grabs your wrist to pull you in and includes you in the hug with a breathy “Get in here.” that he says in between a chuckle. You find yourself letting go of your case too and wrapping your arms around the two people in front of you.
Being so close to him, you can smell his scent again and you’ve never been more relieved to be drowning in the smell of cigarettes mixed with a hint of weed and his aftershave. It lights up your face, your grin only getting bigger when you’re met with his face merely inches away from yours, “Hi.” 
“Hi.” Matty says back and he leans over Amelia’s shoulder to close the distance and trap your lips in a quick kiss. 
You only get to relish in the feeling of his lips on yours again for a split second because when you lean back and your lips separate with a soft smack, Amelia is pushing herself away from you both and dramatically gagging. 
She scowls jokingly at you two, and acts like she’s fed up with the PDA, “You’re sickly cute, it’s annoying.” You know she’s joking and it makes you snort in laughter, Matty only smirks harder beside you as he snakes his arm around your waist and pulls you in close to his side.
Welcoming the feeling of his body melting against yours, you let your head fall on his shoulder and pucker your lips to drop a chaste kiss on his jaw just before he says, “Lucky I’m dropping you off at home Dimz, because it’s only gonna get worse.”
Amelia sighs but she sees on your face how hard you’re trying not to actually throw yourself on your boyfriend, so she calls Matty out to taunt you, “Hug your girlfriend properly, she’s missed you.”
Matty coos and, pressing his lips to your forehead, his lips brush against your skin when he asks, “You missed me baby?”
You feel your face heat up thanks to Amelia so easily exposing you but you know you can’t play it cool and try to hide it from your boyfriend so you pathetically mumble, “Always.” in response.
Just hearing the subtle despair seeping through your voice makes him quickly turn on his heels to properly crush you in a hug that you two so desperately had been needing. Your arms wrap around his neck and his go around your waist, fingers digging into your flesh as if he was preventing anyone coming and snatching you away from him. 
It’s clear what it is and you feel it just the same, your fingers coming up the back of his neck and you feel the goosebumps rising on his skin before your fingers get lost in his curls and you hum in bliss when having that feeling back. Barely a few days had gone by since you last saw him but god did you miss him. Your nose brushes the stubble growing on his face, and you feel his lips brushing the skin of your neck almost teasingly before he leaves a trail of pecks up your neck until he reaches your ear. You inhale deeply at the tingles that rush down your spine, thinking about how you don’t want to be anywhere else but here. In his arms. For as long as you can.
“Did you sleep on the plane?” He whispers in your ear and you have no idea if you want to laugh or cry at the fact that he knows just what to ask.
Sheepishly, you shake your head and mumble, “Nope…” 
And with that answer, Matty slowly pulls back to look at you and, as if it is the only important thing in the world, he brushes a strand of hair behind your ear and says, “God, let’s get you home to bed.”
~*~*~*~
Dropping your best friend off was quick and easy, and it left you and Matty to enjoy the rest of the trip back to yours. He left your heart warm even in the quiet moments when he did nothing but hum along to the tunes the radio was playing and rest his warm hand on your thigh. It’s silly how such small details could make you so happy but by god you really are.
The second your flat's door is unlocked, you come in followed by Matty and you all but run to your room. Dropping your stuff by the threshold of your room, you go straight to the bathroom and take a much needed shower. It feels so nice being back home and feeling the warm water rain down on you in the comfort of your own space is so soothing.  
When you come out, you find your boyfriend already waiting for you to get in bed so you quickly change into an oversized top (which is definitely Matty’s) and a pair of joggers (which you also stole from him), and blow dry your hair in a hurry to finally throw yourself in bed with him five minutes later. 
The moan of pleasure you let out at the comfort of your own mattress and being wrapped in your boyfriend's arms makes Matty chuckle. 
“This is heavenly.” You mumble against his chest, which is bare since he shed himself of it as well as his hoodie, and he clutches you even tighter to him.
“I know.” Matty agrees, letting his head rest atop of yours and he leaves a kiss there before whispering, “Finally.”
The breath of relief he lets out matches yours, and you let your eyes flutter close as a smile breaks out on your face. It just feels so right and you feel the way you just melt into the bed and his hold. The heat he exudes so familiar and just what you’d been craving all along. 
You’ve got no grasp on time or reality when you peel your eyes open again. The only thing you know is that you had squirmed in your place and subconsciously wanted to nuzzle into your boyfriend’s neck only to find your cheek squished against your pillow and the other half of the bed empty. 
Blinking your eyes repeatedly, it takes you about half a minute to come to your senses and sit up to look around your room. It’s when you’re squinting to see if his hoodie is still on the floor where he dropped it earlier that you hear a sound coming from your kitchen and you spring up quickly to head over there. Of course, not before snatching his hoodie from the floor and putting it on you, letting the fabric swallow you comfortably. 
Your bare feet softly and quietly pad through the hallway until you get to the kitchen and there you find him, with his shirt back on (unfortunately) and his back to you as he stirs something in a pot. The smell of cooked chicken fills the room and when you walk up to him and snake your arms around his waist from behind, you can see he’s made chicken alfredo. 
He tenses up for a second before he relaxes again and it makes you giggle before you compliment, “Oooo… Looks delicious, baby.” It also smells delicious and you’re bathed in this warm feeling that makes you wanna kiss him all over, so you leave a trail of kisses from his shoulder going up his neck until you go on your tiptoes to smack the last one on his cheek. “Thank you.”
Matty hums in response, that smile of his tugging at the corners of his mouth and it makes you smile just as big. He lets his head tilt to the side so it knocks into yours and he can’t help but feel all gooey inside when you hug him that bit tighter.
He turns off the hob and allows himself to glance at you as you walk over to the fridge. When you open it, you let out a soft gasp seeing it far different from how you left it back at the start of the year when he convinced you to join him on tour. It’s full, you giggle like an idiot when you see the cans of Tango lined up on one of the shelves and in the freezer you can see he’s gotten you a few tubs of your favourite ice cream.
“Thought I’d go to the shops for you whilst you rested.” Matty comments sweetly and a bit shyly. 
In an instant, you’re almost leaping towards him and crushing him in a hug. A hug that lasts a mere few seconds because you pull back and cup his face with your hands to trap him in a dizzying kiss that he welcomes gracefully. His hands coming to cup your arse and squeezing it makes you laugh so you break the kiss, and he takes advantage of the way you throw your head back in laughter to drop a bunch of kisses up your exposed throat. 
One last peck is left on your lips before your boyfriend pats your arse and instructs, “Take a seat for me, baby. Food is ready.”
The grin on your face grows even more and the apples of your cheeks start to hurt when you occupy one of the chairs in your kitchen. You watch attentively as he walks around the place so smoothly. He gets a pair of plates and then walks over to the fridge to get you a can of Tango, cracking it open before setting it in front of you and he doesn’t pass the opportunity of getting another kiss from you after you thank him for the drink.
His tongue sticks out slightly as he plates his creation and you bite your bottom lip as to not giggle when you see him puff his chest out at the sight of what he’s made for you. Matty gets cutlery for the both of you and brings the two plates over to the table. 
“Thank you baby.” You say sweetly when he places the plate in front of you, carefully getting the fork and knife from him and you wait until he settles on his own seat before digging in. 
Your eyes roll back and you let out a moan at the taste of the first forkful of pasta you get, and the pride in his face makes him look absolutely stunning. With a hand over your mouth, you swallow and let him know just how delicious it is, “This is so fucking good.”
Matty hums proudly and he digs in himself. He feels your gaze on him, waiting for him to agree on how good he’s done and when he swallows the bite he’s taken, he matches your smile, “I did pretty fucking good, didn’t I?”
The laugh that elicits from you is music to your boyfriend’s ears and he’s beaming at you as you say, “You really did.”
After that, you fall into conversation and, despite being at yours and the setting being so mundane, you find yourself thinking about how much this feels like a date and you fucking love it. 
You love being like this with him and finding the different aspects of him, and getting a taste of the sweet things he does for you makes your heart swell in your chest. Especially when he tells you just what he got you from the shops and you want to throw yourself at him and kiss every inch of his face when he tells you that you’d yet to see he’d gotten your favourite snacks. 
Time continues to pass as you talk about everything and nothing, gossiping and laughing and just enjoying each other’s company. The more the clock ticks, the more you find yourself thinking about how you could get used to having this forever. And it’s not as terrifying as it might’ve been before, now it’s exciting and it’s almost like you’re impatient for the rest that’s to come. 
It's warm and tender talking to him, and the both of you seem to not be able to stray too far from physical contact either because your legs are hooked around each other underneath the table and you're holding each other's hand across the table. At one point you can’t not take a picture of his hand beside his drink that he was clearly finished with because he put his fag dimp in it. You can’t really believe that the man with dad tattooed on his wrist is actually your boyfriend now, it still shocks you when you think about how long you’ve admired this man from afar and now he’s all yours. 
When you’re done eating, Matty suggests going out for a walk, thinking you might want some fresh air and maybe let out some of the energy you might now have after the rest you got. But it’s cold outside and, despite him mentioning that he has a spliff to share, you don’t wanna leave this bubble that you’re in with him. So you shrug it off and instead mention how you don’t mind smoking weed inside and it becomes a plan then, going back to your room and getting high together in bed. 
Considering he’s cooked for you and done your shopping, you offer to take care of the dishes and he reluctantly lets you while he cleans the table and gets you two the snacks you want to take with you. Once you do your bit and put everything in the dishwasher, you and Matty head back into your room. You’re both just feeling overly affectionate and cuddly with each other so it’s no surprise when you end up in each other's arms again. This time though, you don’t end up falling asleep, no instead you end up chatting each other's ears off. 
At some point, you’re not really sure how long passed before you got up and took the both of you a drink. But when you come back, instead of lying down beside him again, you lie across your bed and rest your head at the bottom of his stomach. 
“Tell me something I don’t know about you yet?” His words are just as delicate as his touch, his right hand, with which he’d just lit the spliff alive a minute ago, threaded through your hair and softly brushed it back and over his stomach. 
You let the drag you’d taken relax you even further by letting your eyes flutter close but you still enthusiastically try to get more of what he’s saying, “Oooo… like what?”
His sharp inhale reaches your ears and you smell the smoke lingering in the air as he throws a bunch of questions out, “Anything? What was your first pet called? Your first job? What crazy stuff did you and Amelia get up to in high school?” 
Pinning each question inside your mind, you open your eyes and reach up your hand for the joint, bringing it to your lips leisurely and taking a slow drag. You let it swirl inside your mouth and down the back of your throat for a few seconds before exhaling the smoke upwards, a blanket of bliss brought by the weed enveloping you nicely and it makes you smile as you answer, “First pets were goldfish I proudly won at a fair when I was little and I called them both Tom and Jerry.”
A short, but amused, “Nice.” is what you get from Matty and it makes you giggle, you pass him the spliff back and let your hands clasp together over your stomach.
You still show your pride at the chosen names for your (now very dead) goldfish, being smug when adding, “I know right. I loved that programme as a kid.” 
Matty hums in agreement, “It was a gooden.”
And then you remember the rest of the questions so you continue answering with ease, “My first job was in a cafe. Worked way too young.” He feels you shake your head on his stomach, your hair tickling his skin that’s showing as his shirt ridden up. “I worked cash in hand at fifteen so not even allowed to legally work. I stayed there for a while until I was eighteen then I went and worked in a bar but I hated it and I quit after three weeks by handing my boss a post it note that read ‘I quit’ with a little smiley face on it.”
A soft gasp comes from your boyfriend and it makes your smirk bigger, “No you didn’t…”
“I did.” You assure, proudly. You’d never been prouder of yourself than back then, and it had been so relieving to gain the courage and finally make that decision because that job made you absolutely miserable.
Matty chortles at the joy on your face when recounting the story but he’s still curious, “You’re so funny, what did your boss say? What did they do?” 
You shrug nonchalantly, much different to how you felt back then, and answered his questions, “They knew I hated it but they were very kind to me and took it and let me leave without giving notice.”
“That’s nice of them.” He points out, elated for your past self having had an easy time with that situation.
With a nod, you agree, “Yeah they were really nice.” You watch as he takes another drag of the joint, and after flicking the ashes on the ashtray he had placed on your bedside table, he hands it to you just as you’re trying to think of the answer to his last question.
“As far as crazy shit me and Ames got up to, it wasn’t interesting.” There’s no insanely crazy and out of hand story that comes to your mind, and you have to remain in silence and think about it really hard to remember something slightly crazy in your boyfriend’s standards. Inhaling a bit of smoke clears your memories up and you smile thinking about a memory that was now incredibly funny to you, “There was a house party once that ended up with flashing blue lights and everyone had to run home before we got caught underaged drinking.”
Curiosity shines on his face, he perks up atop of your pillows and rushes you to continue with an eager, “Do tell.”
You chuckle at his impatience and get right into your story, “We were at our friends house, I’d say we were fifteen, maybe sixteen, and it was a really good party, I think it was just for the girl’s birthday or whatever but that doesn’t really matter. It ended in disaster though when one of the girls who clearly couldn’t handle her alcohol tripped and went head first through the glass sliding doors.”
His loud gasp and the quick, “No.” that he let out in response makes you laugh even harder, squirming on his stomach and making him smile at the way your hair tickles his sides.
With a nod and taunting wide eyes, you continue after taking another drag before handing the spliff back to him, “Yes, and it was all Amelia's fault. Because this lightweight had spotted Ames having her first kiss outside and she ran to tell us and as she was running back to the back door she tripped and went straight through it. Turns out Amelia and this lad obviously closed the door so they could have some privacy but that turned into a scene from Casualty and I had to deal with a fuming best friend because she had her first kiss ruined and we all had to run home.”
“How selfish of the girl to purposely ruinthat for her.” Matty chuckles sarcastically, your head rising and falling a little as he laughs picturing your best friend being selfishly fuming.
You play along, holding your giggle but Matty can see and hear just how big your smile is, “I know right.”
“What were you doing as she was kissing her man?” Your boyfriend asks curiously, spliff held right by his parted lips but not closing around the filter just yet because his inquiries were more important to let out than taking a puff, “Who were you kissing?”
“Oh no I was inside talking to our friend’s Mum eating pizza.” You snort out in laughter faintly remembering that happening, but despite the weed making everything feel light and feathery, your amusement is still brief and the corners of your lips fall to turn your smile into a flat line, “I didn’t have my first kiss until I was nineteen.”
“Nineteen?” Matty’s eyes go a little wide in surprise, “Really?” He’s just a little confused because you’re so beautiful, and Amelia has shown him pictures of you when you were younger and you were just as pretty back then. How no one would have snapped you up he really doesn’t understand. Anyone would be lucky to be with you. 
“Yep,” You sigh, thinking back to it, “Perks of spending most of my teens struggling to figure out if I really liked boys and girls, and worrying that if I was ever caught kissing a girl someone would tell on me and I’d have to come out before I even truly figured it out myself.”
He has to take a few seconds to process what you’ve just said and his heart squeezes in his chest when thinking about you feeling trapped in such a dilemma when being your true self should’ve been always the obvious choice. He gets it though, it’s all easier said than done so he nods with a soft smile on his face as he looks down at you, “Completely fair enough baby.”
It wasn’t your intention to make things serious all of the sudden, though you know it is a piece of information that your boyfriend should know to know you even better, but you find yourself coming back around to what had come up before your bisexual trauma piece and you smirk as you carefully pick your words to get his curiosity rising once more, “Funny story, my first kiss was your fault.”
He frowns a little, “My fault?”
“Yep, it happened at your show.” You explain and chuckle seeing Matty looks absolutely dumbfounded. He makes you chuckle as you continue, “Yeah so there was a cute guy as I was in the pit for your show and we were chatting and flirting a little as we were waiting for you to come on.”
You make sure to turn your head to the side to look him straight in the eye when you get to the interesting part, wanting to perfectly see his reaction to the story, “Then you came out and everything was fine, I was loving it. And I think it was before you performed Sex you said ‘if you wanna get off with someone whilst you're here, this is your moment’ and once you’d started we sorta looked at each other all coyly before he kissed me. Was amazing, so yeah thank you for that.”
There’s a long few beats of silence that go by and you're left holding your breath and pressing your lips together not to burst out laughing. The only noise you hear is the burning of the spliff as he takes a long drag, his cheeks hollowing and a frown on his face when he holds the smoke in the back of his throat for a few seconds before exhaling. He then breaks the silence by letting out a mumbled, “I have no words.” that let his disbelief shine through pretty obviously.
“Shut up.” You say in between giggles, you shake from the laughter over him and your cheek is left pressed over his We Are Kings tattoo, which is peeking from the bottom of his shirt, the hair that adorns his lower stomach tickling your skin.
It’s almost like your boyfriend can’t stop himself when he quickly follows up with an important question, “Did you get with him?”
To his relief, you shake your head and shrug nonchalantly, clearly showing how little you actually cared about it other than the experience having been fun and very on brand for you. “Nope, never saw him again after that night. Never even caught his name.”
Almost like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders, Matty sighs, but he still frowns as he admits the burning feeling scorching his insides and leaving a slight bitter taste in his mouth, “I feel like I shouldn’t be jealous, but I am?”
You can’t take him seriously though, so you cackle loudly, letting your head turn back so you lie there facing up to the ceiling. Only once you managed to control your laughter, you poke him on his side and call out a mocking, “Oh shut up.” before plucking the joint from his fingers and bringing it to your lips. 
The next few minutes are spent leisurely smoking after having fallen in a comfortable silence. The smoke lingering in the air over you like a warm fog that only had you two sinking further into the mattress, the warmth that your skin touching exudes is heightened under the influence of the weed, and the feeling of his fingers carefully brushing through your hair makes you hum in utter bliss. 
Like a film reel, you watch the day back and when you come back around to the stories you’ve just shared with him, your eyes go wide as your curiosity shocks you back to life like a bolt of electricity.
“What about you? What was your craziest house party? Did Denise ever tell you off for any?” The words come from your mouth in a hurry, stumbling behind the other and he flinches at the way you quickly shift in your place, startling him as he had his eyes closed and was relishing in the quiet that had drowned the room.
Matty blinks a few times before managing to realise what you’ve just asked, and he clears his throat before he can mindlessly say, “She was okay when it came to parties to be honest-” He cut himself off when a memory came rushing to the forefront of his mind and his eyes go wide when remembering what had happened, “Oh my god…” He mutters first and then he’s carefully recounting, “There was a time I got caught when she went on holiday.”
You’re definitely intrigued by his reaction, but you expect a wild story if it comes from Matty. You knew how much of a little shit he had been in his teenage years from interviews and stories you’d heard so far but getting to hear a new story excited you almost childishly, “Oh yeah?”
What you weren’t expecting was for him to follow up with, “Yeah, but I got caught two years after it happened.”
Matty sees your mouth open agape at the detail, your brain a mush trying to sort out the chances of that happening but you can’t so you quickly ask, “What? How?”
“It’s the stupidest story. Doesn’t even sound real but I swear it is.” He says as a preface and you become more intrigued by the second.
A loopy smile shows on his face, his eyes crinkling at the edges and his voice sounds amused like he’s holding back a laugh as he narrates, “I threw a party when I was seventeen when my Mum and Dad had gone away on holiday and they had this jeep they would never let me drive because I didn’t have a licence. So this party I decided, you know what imma drive this fucker while they can’t stop me.”
You can’t help but cackle at the way he talks about his defiance, it’s contagious as he chuckles along with you before he continues, “There were a few of us at this party right, they were all cheering me on except for Hann.” 
You almost want to coo at the mention of Adam being the only one to properly use his brain, “Of course, because he’s sensible.”
But your boyfriend scoffs loudly and refutes your point, “He was a fucking bore and a cock block.”
Another loud cackle slips past your lips, a smile appearing on his face despite his efforts to appear serious about the matter. He has to press his lips together not to giggle at the mischievous smirk that shows on your face before you say, “Matty, you shagged his cousin. He can't be that good at cockblocking.” 
Matty snorts at that, knowing Adam’s blessing meant nothing to him at one point in time when he was horrendously head over heels for his cousin. Matty just laughs, “Flo just couldn’t resist in the end, okay?” 
“Yeah,” You roll your eyes, knowing exactly what happened between him and Flo and that was certainly not the case. Sarcasm and disbelief is thick in your voice when you add, “I’m sure.” 
“Hey!” Matty frowns down at you, offended that you don’t think he’s irresistible. 
“I’m kidding,” You chuckle, taking the blunt off him and taking a puff before you prompt him to, “Carry on.”
“Right so, Adam was the only one to be like ‘no, don’t do it’ but of course I went and did it anyway.” Matty explains twirling a strand of your hair around his fingers, “Me, George, Ross and our mate Pete in the Jeep. Hann stayed at the house because he was a boring prick.”
You scoff at that, shaking your head as you declare under your breath, “So nasty.” 
Electing to ignore that comment, your boyfriend continues, “And we drove to the field just across from mine, opened the gate and started leathering it around this field doing skids and stuff. Then we got to the gate for the next field across and George got out and opened it for us and we went about in there too. But then we realised our mistake.”
For some reason you find yourself smiling in anticipation at that comment since you know it means that’s when the trouble started, and you look at him as you take another drag as he carries on to tell you the full story.
“There were horses in that field, so after we realised we headed back to the first field but George didn’t get back out and shut the gate and we spooked them too, so after we’d done more skids and turned back to close the gate, the horses had come into that field.”
As you laugh, the smoke comes out of your mouth too, making Matty watch you as you declare, “You idiots.” 
“No, what made us idiots was thinking we could on our feet herd up the horses getting them back into the other field.” The beginning of an embarrassed smile makes its way onto his lips now. He almost doesn't want to tell you, but he knows it’ll be worth it when he hears you laugh again if he does. 
Matty takes your offer of having the blunt back and he explains before he has another puff, “We did that for about half an hour and it was raining at that point and we were getting muddy. We went back to the car defeated but then because of the skids and the rain the Jeep got stuck in the mud and we were stuck.”
You can’t help the gasp that leaves you, “Nooo, what did you do?”
“We had to walk back over to the house and had to get Hann to help us.” Matty sighs remembering just how much shit Adam gave him that day, how he told him multiple times it would be a bad idea and he wouldn’t let him forget he was right.  
“Long story short, Hann made me call the farmer the next day and he towed it out. Then Hann, being the only one old enough to drive, had to take it to the car wash for us and we had it deep cleaned and he drove it back to its spot on the drive. And thankfully when Mum and Dad came back they never noticed.”
You laugh practically being able to hear in your head the way Adam had told him off for his silly activities. After being on tour with them and getting such a better insight to their whole dynamic you just know Adam wouldn’t have let Matty get away with random shit he pulled as a teenager, and that’s hilarious to you, the thought of Matty being scared of cute little Adam Hann. 
Matty can’t help but smile at the way you're giggling. God he actually loves you so much he thinks his heart just beats for you, his heart racing getting faster at the sight of you all happy and hearing your loud laugh. 
Your giggles die down but you can’t keep the smile from your face. You’re too happy right now, everything about this evening has been the best and you’ve loved this story so much. Hearing even the tiniest thing about his past makes you so happy, like you’ve got to know him even better and on a deeper level. It warms your heart massively. 
“Wait,” You pause for a second, remembering how the conversation started out, “You said she caught you two years after it happened? How? Did the farmer tell your Mum and Dad?” 
“No, it's worse.” Matty signs, not believing he’s about to admit, “A fucking areal photographer knocked on our door two years later and showed Mum the pictures he took years ago and the fucking Jeep was in the middle of the field with horses around it. I got bollocked. Me and Flo were upstairs in my room and we just heard a booming ‘Matthew!’ from downstairs.”
You let out a little giggle, unable to help yourself, and it warms Matty’s heart as he plays with your hair. You have to ask him, “Did you shit yourself?”
“Big time.” Matty smiles, “No clue what it was about until I saw the pictures and then I just had to accept my fate.”
“I bet Flo was pissing herself.” You look at him as you say that and you already know the answer from the look on his face. 
“She was. She bullied me relentlessly after it happened, especially since we never told her about that one.” He tells you as he stubs out the last of the blunt and waits for the drug to take full effect. 
You hum, “She wasn’t at the party?”
“No, she only came over from Sheffield in the summer and it was maybe like March when we did that.” Matty tells you, “She wouldn’t have condoned it anyway she’d have stopped us like her cousin tried to do.”
You accidentally cackle once more, entirely amused at the fact that he got caught the way he did. It’s so fucking funny to you, your uncontrollable laughter starts again, “I can’t believe you got caught two years later.”
Matty can’t help but join your giggles, “Me neither.”
A sigh comes from you when you manage to calm back down, and then you’re calling him out further, “And you all thinking you were cowboys and could get the horses back.”
He scoffs, offended, before he’s correcting you, “Hey, I look good in cowboy gear.” 
You make a hesitant noise, letting the seconds drag and making a show of acting like you’re really weighing his words. His mouth hangs open as he watches you and you have to bite your tongue not to laugh again before you conclude, “Now, maybe.”
Both of you end up quietly giggling, but then Matty tries to tickle you and you plead for him to stop, absolutely hating being tickled. Before you’ve let it slide but this time you fight back, managing to get enough distance between you so you can try and pin him down but as you know you’re going to fail you end up just leaning down to gently bite his bicep. 
With that, Matty stops in a little bit of shock. You look up at him, trying not to smile but failing miserably. Your boyfriend is struggling to keep his smile away as he asks, “Did you just bite me?” 
You completely fail not to grin, it being too funny to not, and you just shrug, “Maybe.” before letting him go and falling to the mattress just beside him. 
You turn on your side so you’re facing him and your boyfriend mirrors you, both of your heads sharing a pillow and you’re hopelessly grinning at each other. 
“Hey.” You start by saying, stupidly really, just as much as the grin on your face while you take in every little detail on his pretty face.
“Hi.” Matty says back, flashing you that crooked smile you adore so much.
Your heart swells in your chest as you grow nervous at what you’re about to ask, “I have a question for you.”
He nods and then prompts you to, “Go on.”
It’s stupid how you have to take a deep breath before you can ask him, “Will you be my date to our Valentine’s party?” 
Matty is your boyfriend and you don't need to be worried about him turning you down but you still grow even more nervous when he frowns in confusion and says, “Valentine's party?”
“Yeah we’ve done one for the last few years but this year it’s all about Amelia because I’m not single anymore.” You explain easily, wanting to hide your face behind your hands by the end though, because his smile turned into a smirk that made your cheeks heat up.
His hand reaches out for yours, intertwining your fingers and bringing your joint hands up to his mouth. He drops a peck on the back of your hand and his lips brush against your skin when he replies, “I would love to come, when is it?”
“The evening of the ninth?” Your answer sounds more like a question since you know he’s due to go to New York tomorrow, unsure of when exactly he’s coming back.
But to your relief, he clears it up for you, “I get home early on the ninth so yes, I’d love to come. I could come straight here so I could get ready with you?”
“Sounds perfect.” You state with a loopy smile coming back to your face now that you’ve got that sorted out. 
Matty can see you getting lost in your thoughts and he would let you so he can admire every bit of you as you do, but he has an inquiry of his own so he drops a few kisses on the back of your hand to catch your attention and when he sees your eyes widening slightly and focus back on him, he starts, “I have a question for you now.”
“Go on.” You say with a cheeky smile, copying his same words.
“Will you come to the Brits with me?” Your boyfriend asks, breathy words like he’s doing it just as a joke. 
He was so sure you’d say yes so it’s a complete and utter shock when you mutter a quick, “No.”
His brows shoot up and his eyes widen, he actually retracts and there’s a distance between you to accentuate his shock at your reply. His words come out filled with despair and confusion, “No? Why not?”
You want to laugh but manage to hold it back as you explain, “Because I’m already attending and interviewing.” 
Once you clear that up, relief washes over him and you feel him go from tense to letting his shoulders relax and melt back down on the mattress. It’s like a flip has been switched, his eyes grow a little dark and mischief is written all over his face, “Are you now?”
“Don’t get excited, you will be getting ignored.” Is your warning to him since you can almost see inside his mind and know that he’s planning to pull a number on you on that red carpet.
His answer is a simple, “No.” that you have to fight against yourself not to giggle about. 
You clear your throat, willing your amusement away before getting serious again and chatting back, “Yes. You’ll be treated like any other regular attendee.”
His exaggerated offended face is back on, jaw dropped and a frown to accentuate the way he says, “You could never. I’m your boyfriend.”
It’s your time to play with him, so you smirk and challenge with a cheeky, “Watch me.”
At this point, Matty knows you don’t play about when it comes to your job so he sighs, dropping his facade to actually find a way to work out how to have you with him that award night. “Well can you at the very least sit with me? Be my date at the table?”
You want to agree to at least that, but you have to ask, “What about Ames?” because you’re not leaving your best friend to fend for herself. 
“Dimz is more than welcome to join.” Matty smiles, not thinking for a second that Amelia wouldn’t be joining you, “There'll be plenty of room.”
Your smile is huge knowing you’re going to accept his offer, but you hum for a few seconds as if you’re weighing your options. But of course you end up accepting, “Okay then.”
Matty chuckles at your fake deliberation, and he leans in to quickly kiss you sweetly. After he does, he stays close and mumbles against your lips, his grin still huge, “Can’t wait for you to interview me again and for your facade to fail.”
“I will not break.” You pull back just enough so he can tell you’re serious when you demand, “You’re not allowed to flirt with me. I’m only allowed to awkwardly flirt with you.”
It’s Matty’s turn now to hum as if he’s thinking about it, but then leaving you with a rather threatening, “We shall see.”
“Matthew.” You raise your eyebrows, warning him.
But he just comes back with a playful, “Y/N.” that matches your demanding tone.
Leaving you no time to argue, Matty leans the short distance forward and attaches his lips to your own again. 
It’s slow and delicate, soft inhales coming from the both of you as your lips move in sync like you’ve got all the time in the world. The weed has lulled your senses and you find yourselves giggling in between kisses, lips smacking and smiling against each other’s mouth before going back in. 
His hand, which had been resting on your waist, easily trails a steady path up your body as his mouth continues moving against yours. The warm touch leaves goosebumps in its wake until he cups your jaw, wanting to keep you in place whilst he props himself up on his elbow and starts lifting himself up to hover over you. 
Once he’s on top of you, the curls you adore so much brush against your forehead once and your hands quickly move to the back of his neck and up into the locks so you can dig your fingers in and pull them however you please. 
Your fingers buzz with this energy like just brushing his skin erupts a sizzling electricity in between you two that has you feeling elated. He moans when you pull harder on his hair and your mouth parts wider to let out a whimper that he swallows. He tastes like the smoke you just shared, and it’s so inherently him it just makes you even dizzier. 
You love it so much, you start mumbling your sweet thoughts against his mouth. It’s a struggle to understand but it’s an even bigger struggle to stop kissing, the desperate urge to say what you’re thinking makes you pull harder so you can break the kiss. He groans at the sting of it but his heart soars in his chest when you let out a breathy, “Obsessed with you.” 
Matty barely manages to reciprocate with a rushed, “Me too.” before he dives back onto your mouth. It’s desperate when your lips crash together again but he melts into the same deliberate pace he’d set before when your tongues meet. 
At this very moment, you’re entirely his. Every single one of your senses are completely captivated by Matty, your sight, smell, hearing and taste bleeds into one and it’s all him. The man you adore so much, who makes you feel like you’re the most important person in the world and feel like you’re being worshipped. 
Everything about him consumes you, and you’re almost too busy realising how lucky you are to notice that his knee has come to rest between your legs until you roll your hips and the sudden friction against your clit makes you gasp. Pleasure overtakes you and your hips start grinding against him without you really thinking about it, the feeling so good that you’re whimpering and moaning into the kiss. Matty groans, feeling himself getting hard just from the sweet sounds you’re making and the way your pace picks up as you try to get off on his thigh.
“Fuck.” He curses under his breath, looking down and catching the erratic movements of your hips. His mouth dips down to your neck, starting to kiss and suck on your sensitive skin, only making your mouth hang open even wider and your throat drying as you continuously gasp.
Your hands fall down his neck and onto his shoulders, wanting to pull him closer to you, but when you dig your nails onto them and you feel the fabric of his shirt covering it, you’re whining out your instructions, “Take your clothes off.”
He chuckles, playfully digging his teeth on the side of your neck before lifting his head up to chat back, “You’ve got too many clothes on.” You’re the one wearing a hoodie over your shirt after all, so you win him over by a piece of clothing.
“Take them off me then.” You challenge him and the look on your face is enough to have him smirking. 
Your pupils are blown out in lust, chest heaving as you try to regain composure but he still takes the chance to taunt you by simply calling you, “Lazy.”
“I’m sleepy.” Is what you counter with, partially true since the spliff has made you sleepy but it’s mostly his presence and touch which has you dizzy and loopy out of your mind. Matty has you dazed and you’ve got no problem giving yourself up to his mercy at the moment, you just want him in any way he’d allow.
But of course, when Matty hears this he has to stop, his expression softening when your words reach his ears, his lips falling in a sweet pout of understanding, “Are you? Should we just go to sleep then, baby?”
A stern, “No.” quickly leaves your lips, and you add a shake of your head just in case. 
He’s still wary, his hand coming up to softly brush the skin of your cheek, “You sure?”
There is no doubt in your mind and you nod gently, a dopey smile on your lips as you tell him, “I want you.”
The smirk that pulls at the corners of his mouth makes you wanna roll your eyes and groan in pleasure, he looks so fucking good above you with unruly curls falling around his face like a halo, his eyes darkened by need and his lips pink, swollen and wet from all the kisses you’ve shared.
Mischievously, he dips down until your noses brush and his lips move tauntingly against yours in a ghostly but deadly touch when he asks, “Do you now?”
It’s easy to say, “I always do.” in admission when you’re wet and throbbing for him already. 
“Simp.” He quips, pushing himself up the bed so he can kneel on the mattress as he takes his top off. He comes back down with a smirk growing on his face, and when he’s merely an inch away from your face, he lets out a chuckle that hits your parted mouth.
Raising a brow, you take the chance to tease him back, playfully correcting his word choice, “Horny, more like.” Emphasising it by letting your eyes shamelessly go down his naked chest and taking in every inch of his skin, the sight just makes your mouth water and your brain fill with the most sinful thoughts so you catch your bottom lip between your teeth to muffle a moan.
With a shake of his head, your boyfriend resumes his attack on your lips, both of you giggling as he does. Soon the giggles die though when his fingers become more intent with their hold on your jaw, making you moan in response but when you go to continue relishing on that delicious friction you’ve created by rolling your hips on his thigh, you find he’s purposely moved his leg away. 
You whimper at the loss, almost like the start of a tantrum and he knows exactly why that is. The smirk that breaks on his face makes it impossible to continue kissing, yet you’re still desperately leaving wet kisses on his lips, before guiding them down his jaw and neck.
Your focus has been entirely taken by wanting to mark him up, to hear those addictive moans of his, to feel him shudder when you get to that sweet spot at the bottom of his throat; but you’re completely distracted from your task when his hand snakes down your body, into your joggers and he feels how wet he’s already made you. 
Mewling against his lips as he starts drawing circles on your clit through your soaked underwear, your small begs are thankfully heard. Your boyfriend moves the material that's separating him from you to the side and teases your clit again. 
You choke on your breath, the pleasure feeling more intense with your muscles relaxed and mind numbed from the weed combined with you not having been with him in a week. It’s all a little much, yet you need more.  
And you’re glad you’ve reached the point where you don’t even have to ask for what you want, he already knows. It’s sweet relief when after a minute Matty drops his hand and sinks two fingers inside you, euphoria taking over, the stretch so sweet you roll your hips trying to get more.
A loud moan gets stuck in your throat, your head thrown back and your mouth agape, your eyes rolling back into your head and your back arching when he curls his fingers inside you, hitting that spot perfectly, “F-fuckkk, Matty.”
“Right there baby?” He asks breathlessly, his own mouth opening agape just watching as you begin to crumble beneath him.
You hum, your eyes shutting tight and biting your lip as he starts picking up the pace. Your voice all pleasure stricken and raspy, “Oh fuck- Yes. Feels so good, baby.” 
Your arm wraps around his neck, nails digging in the flesh of his shoulder to keep him right there, not that he was going to move when he had you becoming a mess for him like that.
Matty leaves a trail of open mouthed kisses down the side of your neck, wishing he had taken off your hoodie to bite and suck and lick your tits, he could see your chest heaving and sweat coating your forehead, hair sticking to it as you gasp in pleasure.
“So fucking pretty, sound so sweet for me baby.” He mumbles in your ear, his hot breath making you shiver and clench around his skilled fingers. His voice still low as he praises,  “You like that? My sweet, gorgeous girl.”
There’s no shame in you that could have you denying that, you nod and it’s almost missable if it wasn’t for your soft hum of confirmation. Matty smiles, kissing you sweetly again as he presses the heel of his palm against your clit, sparking the pleasure that runs up your spine.
You’re drenching his hand already, the coil in your lower stomach tightening with each stroke of his calloused fingers. It’s not long that you've been together, but he already knows you so well, easily having you falling apart for him in just a few minutes. 
Stretching you out further, he adds a third finger and this time, your loud cries of pleasure come out of you with ease. It makes kissing him impossible, when so overcome with the euphoria running through your body, making you buzz with ecstasy, all you can do is whine for him.
Matty’s hot breath mixes with yours, your parted mouths right next to each other, your half lidded eyes trying to stay open so you can hold his gaze as you grow closer to your orgasm. A buildup that only gets more intense when he starts rubbing circles on your clit with his thumb as he continues pumping his fingers in and out of your cunt. 
“Baby you’re so wet for me. Makes me wanna taste you.” He whines, sharing his lustful thoughts with you, his lips pressing kisses at the edge of your parted mouth. You whimper in response, almost drooling in pleasure at the thought of that tongue of his dipping into your cunt and flicking your clit until you cum all over his face. “Gonna make you cum on my fingers first though. You’re so fucking good to me, you deserve to cum on them, no?”
“Yes.” You pant out desperately, licking your lips and nodding your head to agree with him. Tugging on his curls harder, you quietly plead, “Please baby. Feels so good.”
He hums and smiles to himself, his hips grinding softly against your thigh in an attempt to relieve himself as you’ve made him so hard. He finds his search for relief through you though, needing to make you feel every ounce of pleasure before he gets any. He kisses down your jaw, and hums into your ear, “I know, baby. You’re gonna cum, yeah? Gonna be a good girl and cum for me?”
Your walls clench around him as he continues with his filthy words, nodding to say that you will, silently promising to do nothing but be good for him. He can feel you so close to the edge and he will not stop until he has you convulsing beneath him, he whispers, “Drench my hand baby.”
You mewl as you start rocking your hips more intently, meeting him in the middle, fucking yourself on his fingers and your legs begin shaking as you near your climax. The filthy whispers coming from your boyfriend only pushing you closer and closer to your inevitable release. 
It’s not long before you’re letting yourself fall over the edge and fall apart beneath him entirely. Your brows furrow and your lips part to let out the prettiest moans he swears he’s ever heard, your back arching and making your chest press flush with his so he can feel your pebbled nipples through the fabric of your hoodie. Your legs shake and close to trap his hand there, but he uses his legs to keep you spread apart so he can ride your orgasm out. 
Blood rushes down to Matty’s cock, as if getting harder was even possible, but he moans back at the feeling and the sight and the way you entirely come to take over his senses. A warmth coats his insides and he can so easily pinpoint the feeling as it contrasts yet compliments the hunger and the need for you that burns within him.
When you fall limp on the mattress after properly coming down from your high, your boyfriend brings his slick coated fingers up to his mouth and lets out a low, pornographic moan when he tastes you. He does his best to clean his fingers up with his tongue, not wanting to waste a drop of your arousal and all he can think about is how he wants more. He needs more.
But first, he takes on the task of ridding you of your clothes. You’re sweating and there’s a hint of discomfort in your face that he attributes to feeling too hot so he takes your hoodie off first, throwing it somewhere behind him and then he moves back to peel your joggers from you.
The sight of your ruined underwear makes his mouth water, wanting nothing more than to taste you properly again. He dips down and starts kissing up your thighs, drinking in the way your legs continue to shake with his ghostly touch. Every exhale that hits your skin makes you shiver and the tingles that run up your spine from his proximity now that you’re so sensitive makes him want to push yourself over the edge again. 
So much so that when Matty gets closer to your cunt, he asks, “Can I have a taste, baby?” 
He’s almost hurt when you shake your head no and pull his hair to bring him back up to your face. Moving back up, you see he’s frowning like he’s despaired over the denied opportunity to eat you out and have more of your taste on his tongue. 
It makes you giggle, in return breaking his pout, and you cup his face carefully and you pull him in for a kiss that just screams thank you before you demand, “I need you to fuck me.”
The tone in which you say it makes it sound like a plea and Matty groans longingly hearing your wishes. There’s nothing he’d ever deny you, ever. And if you’re to ask for anything, he’d give you only the best. 
And so he’s intent with the way he kisses you. His tongue meets yours instantly and makes you loudly mewl when you taste yourself on it. His fingers digging in the flesh of your waist whilst his other hand comes to wrap around your neck, keeping you in place and eliciting more moans out of your when he presses on the sides so he’s deliciously choking you. 
You’re so sensitive though, you don’t think you can take any more without him being buried deep inside you so the moment he breaks the kiss and pulls back for oxygen, you beg, “Baby please, I need you.” Your hands cup his face with desperation that seeps through your pores, you whine, “Need you please, baby please.”
The guttural groan that rumbles from his chest and up his throat makes you clench around nothing. His lips come back on yours with force, it just screams passion and need, desperation to translate every feeling rushing through him in a way that you can understand without having to say those words he so badly wants to utter.
“My baby’s so fucking good, she says please.” He praises, his hand falling from your neck to join the other one on your waist and lifting your top up and off you so he can have you on show for him. “My baby’s so fucking beautiful and she’s all mine.”
His hot mouth instantly catches one of your nipples, your back arches in pleasure. One of your hands cradles the back of his head to keep him there as he sucks and flicks on your nipple, biting it before moving onto the next one, leaving you a moaning mess beneath him. Your other hand has a white knuckle grip on the sheets beside you, as you writhe under him becoming wetter than you already were after your orgasm and sending you into a frenzy as you feel your oversensitive self start going in the direction of another orgasm. 
It isn’t only his mouth and his touch that’s ruining you, it’s those words of his leaving you dizzy. You had no idea it could get better than before but right now it’s proving that wrong and you don’t know how to gather your bearings when it comes to it. So you let yourself go, of your fears and any inhibitions. 
“Baby, I need you.” You beg in between pants, “Please. You.” You don’t think you’d ever need anybody else. It’s him, and it’ll always be. You’re sure of it.
In a haste to prove that your wish is his command, Matty lets go of the skin he was attacking with a pop, licking it as if to soothe the abuse that is probably going to end up in a bruise. He starts a wake of kisses up your chest and neck until he finds your lips again and he kisses you with a sense of devotion that could make you shed tears. It’s reciprocated and he knows, in the way you hold him and how your body responds to him, the way you take your time and indulge in the feeling, the way your eyes flutter close and you sigh in utter bliss when he holds you. 
When Matty breaks the kiss so he can shed himself of his last piece of clothing, he watches as your eyes shine with adoration and he swears his heart explodes in his chest. His heartbeat is erratic and a mess, entirely out of control under your spell, just like he is as you’ve bewitched him, body and soul. All he can see, hear, breathe or feel is you and he finds that being entirely drunk on you is nothing but a dream. A dream he wishes to never wake up from. He loves you so so much. 
“Gonna make you feel so good, baby.” He promises as he hovers over you again, his joggers now discarded somewhere in the room. He’s propped himself up with his forearm pressed on the mattress and his other hand comes to wrap around his length, bringing it to meet your core and rubbing the tip of his cock up and down your folds. “My baby deserves it, yeah? Always so good to me.”
He watches as the precum on the tip of his cock mixes with your arousal and the sight is so lewd he could bust right then and there. But you snap him out of his trance, feeling like he’s doing this to taunt you, “Matty- Baby, please.”
There’s no actual worded answer, since he just captures you in another kiss but it is brief for when he lines himself up and starts sinking into you, your mouths go slack and you can’t do much more than moan into each other’s mouths. Matty goes slowly until he bottoms out and when you’re filled to the brim of him, you let out a shaky breath. 
Brushing the curls that are sticking to his sweaty forehead with a loopy smile, “Move baby, please. Need you.”
You’re still so sensitive and he can see it from the way your legs tremble around his hips, and he can feel it from the way you’re clenching around him. He doesn’t know if he’s gonna last if you keep talking like that, definitely not if you’re squeezing him like that and if you start drowning the room with those pretty sounds of yours. But god does he want to give it to you nice and slow, so you can feel every bit of each other, so you can savour every second and engrave it in your minds to never leave your memories. 
“Perfect for me.” Matty mumbles as he draws his hips back slowly, until it’s only the tip that’s inside you, just to fill you to the hilt steadily again. “Like you were fucking made for me baby.” He sets the pace, slow but delicious and your moans mix in the most gorgeously pornographic harmony. 
You can feel every vein and ridge, how he stretches you out and drags in and out is heavenly. He groans and moans with every thrust and when you start meeting him in the middle with the roll of your own hips, you both melt into absolute messes. 
“Fuck, Matty.” A mewl leaves you, eyes rolling back in pleasure when he picks up the pace just slightly and hits that spot over and over, “Don’t stop baby. Just like that.”
“Right there?” He asks thrusting deliberately again and when you loudly moan in response, he sighs in bliss, “My girl. All mine. My perfect girl.”
The room is charged with this sense of worship that speaks for the both of you, bringing you closer without a need to use words. In the air, a hint of smoke still lingers but it’s lost and faint in between the aroma of sex, the sounds you’re making and the creak of the springs of your bed. 
Your bodies stick together thanks to the sweat that coats them, the warmth that exudes out of your pores enveloping you together in the most staggering way, almost on the brink of being entirely overwhelming but not being suffocating, more like captivating in the way you’d only dreamed of finding. 
You feel complete, as if you two were meant to fit together and there’s nothing that has ever felt more right. The way his hips snap against yours, the sound of the faint slap of your skin when they meet, your fingers tangled in his curls, him hiding in the crook of your neck, being so close to each other you feel the beating of your hearts and knowing it’s just right when they sync. 
“Baby, I-.” You try to warn in between moans, your ankles wrapping around his lower back to keep him right there where he is.
Your boyfriend has no intention of moving though, being so close to the edge himself, “Me too baby. Fuck.” 
“Need you.” You beg. It’s all you want, all you need. You have to feel him all over you, within you in every sense, just like he already is.
He shudders at your petition, not knowing how much longer he can last with that image in his head. His brows scrunch up as he tries to hold out for longer. His slow but hard pace doesn’t falter for a second, to give you what you want, to make your wishes come true and to have you cum with him because he can’t hold out any longer. 
He groans, sweet nothings being drowned by the sound of your hips meeting, “Gonna give you all you ask for. Always.”
Matty’s hand moves under your thigh, moving it higher, opening you up more to him so his pelvis hits your clit and you jolt at the friction, and it only adds to make your approaching orgasm come faster and harder. Your back arches and you loudly moan in his ear as you cum, all you see is white and you can hear his moans far away like your soul has just exited your body. 
“Oh fuck, baby!” His hips stutter as he cums, but he makes himself continue as he spills inside you, needing to give you all he can so you can ride out your orgasms. He wants to give you his all, his absolute best. 
It hits him again all at once when he opens his eyes and sees you blissed out below him. He loves you so much, his heart beats entirely for you. Selfishly he wishes that all your smiles belong to him like this one does when you open your eyes and see him grinning at you. 
He can’t stop himself from leaning down to kiss you sweetly, hoping that you can somehow understand the I love you he’s trying to say without actually telling you. He’s half sure you somehow understand and he’s happy with that for now so after another peck he lets himself fall limp over you, hiding himself into you when you start blinking your eyes open again.
Nothing is said afterwards, everything being spoken through with actions. His lips leaving sweet kisses on your chest and his fingers drawing faint circles on the sides of your waist. Your fingers brushing his hair back and off his forehead, nails scratching softly at his scalp and making him sigh in content.
It feels like every piece has fallen into place then and you know in your heart what that means. Your brain is fuzzy and you feel the best you’ve ever have, so the smile on your face is inevitable. You wish you could just bottle up the feeling in this very moment and cherish it forever, take a sip of it whenever you’re away from Matty because you know you’ll need it in the future. 
However, you push those thoughts away, focusing on how perfect it feels to be held and cherished by him right now. Enjoying every second of this feeling that you know so well which you’ve finally uncovered with him.
A few minutes of silence go by, the only thing you hear is your settling heartbeat in your ears and you know Matty can hear it too, but you don’t mind. You hope he hears what he’s made of you, a fool for him and only him and you know you’d proudly admit it if anyone were to ask.
The feeling becomes even more prominent when he picks his head up and looks up at you with a loopy smile, one that you mirror before you even get a chance to hear him ask, “How does a shower and facemasks sound?”
“Sounds perfect.” You giggle, god this man knows the way to your heart, “Deal.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
There’s a chill in the air when you wake up, one that makes you want to sink back into your bed and never re-emerge. Half asleep, you turn over and pull your blanket and duvet further up so it covers your shoulders hoping to find refuge in the warmth you’ve created, but as you move, you’re pleasantly reminded you’re not the only one occupying your bed. 
Even in his sleep Matty adjusts himself to have you next to him, needing you as close as possible. And it’s when you feel his arm wrap around your waist and pull you that bit closer that you blink your eyes open just to see if he’s woken up yet, not wanting to miss a second with him remembering he was going away today. 
But he’s right there, next to you in bed with no intention of leaving anytime soon. His fingers digging into your waist as he holds you closer even in his sleep; not even deep in his slumber does he risk you getting away from his hold. 
Seeing him so peaceful, lying beside you with his mouth parted as he softly exhales and his curls spilled over the cotton of the pillow case, you feel your heart squeeze in your chest. In the silence of the room, you find yourself holding your breath like your shaky exhales could disrupt the notion that just became crystal clear: you love him. 
You deeply do, and it’s a love so easy that it just adds to the things that complete you. The way you love an iced coffee regardless of the weather, even if you scold yourself when your fingers go numb as you walk back home or to the office but your heart feels full at the taste of the cold bitterness running down your throat. The way you love listening to rain hit your windows when you’re hiding under your blankets in the warmth of your home. 
He’s become home. Possibly the most important part of it. Somebody you can be entirely yourself with, who seems to cherish you the way you dreamed of someone doing as a kid. Matty’s the one who’s made you believe that love is possible again, something you don’t have to be so scared of anymore. 
It’s strange, recognising the feeling you’d previously lost all hope of experiencing again after making peace with the fact that love was never destined for you. But now it’s resurfaced, and this time it's more intense, so much more overwhelmingly strong than it ever was years ago.  
It’s so relieving knowing that you can have it back and with him but it also terrifies you when the feeling is a bitter reminder of how it had escaped your grasp so long ago, entirely against your will, by someone else’s hand. It’s not like you’re expecting Matty to be reckless with your heart, but experience has led you to be wary and despite wanting so badly to freefall into it all blindly and just driven by the fact that you know you love him, you owe it to yourself to tread these waters carefully. 
You promise yourself that you’ll keep it to yourself for a while, make sure that this isn’t just a honeymoon phase with someone you really like and that you’re not just getting ahead of yourself. It’s difficult since after last night you know it all meant something more, maybe you just want that confirmation from Matty first. 
So you’ll let yourself feel it, protecting your heart a little by keeping silent, but you hope you can tell him in every way other than verbally. You love him so much. You haven’t been this happy in a long time. 
You know it’s a little selfish of you, but after realising you don’t want to waste another second of your time with him or not. You want to see his gorgeous brown eyes again, see that goofy smile you love so much and have him hold you like he never wants to let you go. 
So you don’t give it a second thought when you lean in to him and peck his lips a few times. And because that’s nowhere near enough, you start pecking his whole face in an attempt to wake him up and it takes no time at all. 
Not even a minute goes by until he’s tiredly blinking his eyes open, but even then you don’t stop your small attack. Not until that adorable grin takes over his face and he starts lowly chuckling, gently stroking the skin he’s found available to him on your waist. 
He looks as happy as you feel, your heart so full that seeing him like this makes you think you could melt. Something that you practically do when Matty puckers his lips and you give into the desire to have your lips against his again. 
It's slow and drawn out, but you would have him no other way. Kissing the man you love in bed fairly early on a Sunday morning, it’s everything you could ever want. If you’d have told your past self last year that this would be your future you’d have called yourself crazy, but you’re so beyond glad it’s real. 
You’re in love. And the man who owns your heart pulls you closer into his body where you bury yourself into his neck and wrap your arms around him. Both of you lie there quietly for a while longer pretending there’s no rush at all and you have all the time in the world to stay cosied up to the person you love more than anything. 
~*~*~*~
When you eventually get up, you both decide it’s a cereal in bed sort of morning, both of you opting for coco pops and a long cuddle after you finish. It feels bittersweet for both of you knowing he’s going which is quite sad of you both considering he’s only spending three full days away. 
As you’re both dressing for the day, you offer to drive him to the airport but despite wanting you with him until the last possible second, he planned on leaving his car there until his early arrival to get him back home faster on Thursday, and eventually back to you in time to get ready for your party. This gives you some time to think about something, which ends up with you pathetically overthinking about a little thing that you really shouldn’t be worried about. 
Yes it was too soon to tell him that you loved him, but giving him keys to your flat you thought was a small gesture to let him know that you trusted him enough that you want him to come and go as he pleases. Of course you would want that, you just didn’t know how to bring it up, so you put it off until the last possible second. 
“Matty, before you go…” You stop him before he has a chance to collect his bag. 
“Yeah?” He smiles, definitely glad that you’ve stopped him from leaving. He’ll take anything to stay around you for a little while longer. 
“Last night you said that you were due in early on the ninth?” You double check, your anxiety peaking making you not quite believe your memory. 
“Yeah,” He nods, “I think at like 3am.”
“I- I just wanted to,” You stumble on your words, before you take a deep breath and bite the bullet, “Well I wanted you to have these.” At that you dig into your pocket and pull out your spare set of keys and hold between the both of you. You can’t quite decipher the look on Matty’s face so you drop your gaze and play with the keys as you ramble.
“So you can let yourself in and, you know, come and go as you please. If you want them anyway.” Overthinking, you panic a little thinking he may believe you’re being selfish, “And I’m not giving you them so I don’t have to wake up to come and let you in- I just-” Pausing, you close your eyes for a second and after a deep breath you relax enough to say your simple truth, “Yeah, I just wanted you to have them.”
That was just about the cutest thing Matty has ever seen. Still avoiding his eye contact you don’t see how he’s started grinning like a fool. God he loves you so damn much, he wishes he could tell you already. 
Your boyfriend steps forward and gently grabs both sides of your face tilting your head up so he can see your pretty eyes again. When he does, his thumbs caress your cheeks as he grins, “You’re so damn cute, baby.” 
“I’m not,” You press your palm against your forehead, close your eyes and whisper, “That was so awkward, I’m sorry.”
“You're not awkward.” He giggles, wrapping his arms around your waist, trapping you in a hug, “You're adorable being all nervous.”
“Don’t embarrass me before you leave.” You mumble as you hide yourself into his neck, your arms wrapping around his waist and holding him tightly. 
“I’m not,” He grins, kissing the side of your head, “I just love it.” I love you. It’s all he wants to tell you. 
That statement has you chuckling, knowing just how much he likes to make you feel all flustered. But you can’t help but whine a little, “I feel like we've done things so backwards.”
Matty’s eyebrows pinch together a little, pulling back from the hug just enough to look at you curiously, “How'd you mean?”
“We’ve lived together for almost a month and now I'm nervous to give you a key to my flat,” Not to mention I’m in love with you is on the tip of your tongue, “It's weird.”
“We’re weird.” Matty grins, pulling you against him a little more and kissing you sweetly after he says, “Doesn’t mean I don’t love what we have any less.”
Your heart thuds twice as fast hearing him say that. It makes you want to tell him that your heart is well and truly in the palm of his hands. That you’re his, that he’s it for you. That you love him. 
But it's far too soon. Far too risky.
Matty graciously accepts the keys you once again offer him, and he quickly adds them to his own keyring as he teases, “Thank you for giving me them, baby. I promise I won’t sell them on the black market and leak your address.”
That has you giggling but you play along and nod sincerely, “Thank you. Appreciate that.”
Matty chuckles again, pocketing the keys again and wrapping you in another big hug. He squeezes you tight as he declares, “I’m going to miss you.”
“I’ll miss you more.” You mumble into his shoulder, holding him even tighter not wanting him to go.
It's pathetic of you considering these goodbyes will probably be the easiest you face. Him only being gone for a few days instead of a few months at a time which you’re aware you’ll one day have to face. Today just feels that little bit more challenging because you’ve realised just how much he means to you and you’re scared to let him go. All you want is to wrap yourself up in bed with him again. 
“Doubt it.” Matty hums, knowing there’s certainly no way that’s possible. 
“We’re so soppy.” You giggle a little before scorning yourself, “Who have I become?” 
“A simp.” Matty declares, looking at you with a cheeky knowing grin, “But you've always been one of those for me, haven’t you?” 
Gasping, you grab his hands to try and pry him off your waist as you scorn him, “You know too much, get outttt!”
“But I don’t want to.” Matty whines, tightening his grip so you can’t get away and he’s pleased when you relent and let him keep ahold of you. He buries his head into your neck as he says, “I’ll cancel on Jack and stay right here.”
As much as you would absolutely love for him to stay here and kiss your neck until he’s bruised your skin, you don’t let him cancel his plans. Your fingers wind up in his curls and you tug a little on them so he shows his face as you try and make him feel better about his trip, “You’ll be back before you know it, and I’m only ever on the other end of the phone.”
“Promise you’ll answer?” Matty puts his best puppy dog eyes on for that question. 
You grin, “Always.” As if you’d ever ignore him. 
“Unless you’re asleep.” Matty adds, knowing you far too well.
But even so, you’d give up sleep to talk to the man you love. But of course you need to keep his ego under control so you don’t let him know that just yet. 
“Unless I’m asleep.” You grin, happily playing with the curls at the nape of his neck as you grin, “I’ve trained you so well. Such a good boy.”
Matty squeezes you tighter hearing that, a physical and verbal warning, “Don’t say that or we'll be going right back into your room.”
And as much as you would absolutely love to have him begging for you to praise him back in your bedroom, you’re all too aware he has to be on a plane in the next few hours. 
“Let’s not think about that before you're racing to catch your flight.” You chuckle, trying your best now to get him excited, “Come on, you've not seen Jack in ages, you'll love it once you're out there.”
“I suppose.” Matty sighs, but he has to stop himself from carrying on to sincerely say but not as much as I love being with you.
You hum and smile knowing you’re right and you adore the way Matty doesn’t seem to be able to stop himself from stealing a kiss and then planting so many more all over your face until you’re giggling like a schoolgirl. Hearing your laugh is one of his favourite sounds on the planet, and he’s glad he’s got to experience it one more time before he goes. 
Once the attack of kisses ceased, you go on your tiptoes to trap him in a proper one. A kiss to express what you can’t quite let yourself say yet but you hope he feels regardless. It’s sweet, certainly loving, and you adore the way you both melt into each other and drag it out not really wanting it to ever be over with. 
Unfortunately, it does end with Matty saying a bittersweet, “I’ll see you soon.” 
“Have a safe flight.” You smile, reluctantly slipping out of his grasp to get one of his bags for him, “Please text me when you’re boarding and when you get there.” 
“As soon as I’m downstairs I’ll be texting you, baby.” Matty smiles, “Don’t have to worry about that.”
For a minute you say that you’ll come down to see him off but he makes you stay put, not wanting you to get cold. That and he’s sure it’ll be easier to drive away from you if you’re not actually waving him off. 
After collecting his bags, and both stand at your open door, you whisper, “See you soon.” not wanting to actually say goodbye at all. Thankfully, you manage to steal one last kiss which your boyfriend is more than pleased about, despite it being that little bit harder to go. 
“See you soon baby.” He just about whispers against your lips before he pulls away and he heads out of your flat towards the stairs. 
Of course, you play the lovesick housewife for a second, watching as he leaves at your door. It’s simpy of you, yes, but you’re in love and you don’t even feel a little shy about it when he catches you. Matty glances back just before he’s out of your line of sight, and he blows a kiss at you which you catch and blow one right back to him with a little wave. 
The I love you’s stuck in each of your throats, neither daring to utter the words as you disappear from the other’s view.
~*~*~*~ 9th February 2023 ~*~*~*~
In the short time you were away from each other, rarely did you feel out of contact considering there was an ocean and a five hour time difference between you. Truthfully, you felt closer to Matty than ever. 
With nothing to do at home other than prep for the Brits, which at this point you’ve met most of the attendees at various events now, making your research light work, you’ve spent most of your time messaging or Facetiming your boyfriend. 
Daily pictures were sent of you both in your various get ups, Matty demanding ones from you even if it was the same joggers as the day before just because he wanted to see you. And when he sent you the multiple options he had to wear, asking you to please help him choose, you were more helpful about taking the piss about him packing so many clothes for a three day trip to New York. 
Matty would surprise you with pictures of random places around New York, ones he stumbled upon on his walks around the city, which were always accompanied by some text along the lines of Doesn’t this place look sick?! Saving it so we can come here next time we’re in New York xxxx
He was making it so hard for you not to call him just to yell I love you!!! 
Before you knew it, the days had passed by and he was at the airport waiting for his plane home. Something which you pretended not to be too excited about despite knowing you were about to get the man you love back. 
Sleep didn’t come easily to you that night, like it did most other nights. No, instead you were restless, tossing and turning all night, probably a little too excited that you were getting your man back. You thought sleep would help pass the time faster but instead it dragged it out, made the wait so much more antagonising. 
You think it might have been around 2am when you eventually got to sleep, which is painfully close to the time he was due to land which in the morning you would scold yourself for not managing to stay up for. But it would not matter soon, when he’d open your door with that key you gave him before leaving and he’d come to be the best interruption to your sleep.
Matty didn’t hesitate for a second to drive to your flat from the airport, wanting nothing more than to curl up next to you in bed and stay there for as long as possible. The drive felt longer with how tired he was, despite sleeping on the plane, but thankfully the 50 minute drive he managed to do in 35 thanks to the lack of traffic and breaking a few speed limits. 
A massive smile made its way onto his face as he pulled his keys from the ignition and saw the ones that would allow him into your home. He felt so lucky, it made him want to get you a key cut to his at the earliest opportunity. He’s a little disappointed in himself that he didn’t think of exchanging keys before you did. 
Despite practically running up the stairs to your floor when he opens the building with the fob, he’s extremely quiet when he opens your front door. He’s not surprised when everything is dark and silent in your living room, he expects nothing less than you being fast asleep in bed which when he finds is true, his heart soars.
Matty finds you all cosy in bed, entirely passed out, your heated blanket that he got you for Christmas wrapped up around you and he can’t help but grin at the sight of you. He’s so happy to be back but he can’t help but quickly and gently brush the few strands of hair that are over your forehead away so he can place a kiss there. 
He’s thankful when he doesn’t wake you up, knowing too well what you’re like without proper sleep. Not wasting more time, Matty strips himself down to his boxers and gently pulls the covers back and slowly eases himself down onto the bed in hopes of not waking you. 
However, the cold air hitting your skin must have made you stir because before Matty even has the chance to pull the covers up over him or turn towards you, he hears a tired but heartfelt, “You came.”
He could cry hearing how surprised you sounded, as if he wouldn’t come when he’d already promised. Matty grins as he shuffles closer to you, raising his arm as he sees you moving to him so he can cuddle you properly, saying, “Of course I did baby, you asked me to.”
Of course you come and steal a kiss, finding his lips surprisingly easily considering your eyes are closed and you’re still half asleep, and Matty would chuckle if he didn’t find you so damn adorable. Even more so when you practically lie on top of him, hiding yourself into his neck and declaring a mumbled, “Missed you.”
“Missed you so much more.” He whispers, pulling the covers up for you more so you don’t get cold, “Go back to sleep.”
He feels you hum against his neck, entirely satisfied with that instruction, and he’s sure there’s a faint smile on your lips as you mumble, “I’m so glad you’re back.”
Matty’s sure his heart leaps from his chest hearing that. It certainly beats faster and he can’t help but hug you closer and kiss the top of your head, “Me too baby, so much.”
It’s about 20 minutes before your boyfriend’s eyes start closing, but by then you’re long gone, back into the deep sleep he disturbed you from. So Matty thinks it’s safe enough for him to whisper, “I love you.” to the girl of his dreams. 
~*~*~*~
“You’re so pretty.” It falls from Matty’s lips for at least the third time in the past hour as he sits on the toilet seat lid and watches as you do your make up. 
His words never fail to make you smile like a fool, so you stop doing your eyebrows to grin at him through the mirror, “You’re too cute.” 
“No, I’m being serious, you're so stunning.” He insists, his curls bounce softly as he shakes his head in disbelief of your beauty.
Rolling your eyes, you sigh. It’s unfair how much of an effect he has on you, your stomach flips and your chest tightens at the amount of love you feel for him. “Stop making me flustered.” Is what you mumble before going back to stare at yourself to continue your makeup.
Matty is ready to go after he had taken a shower and put on a suit that had you biting your bottom lip when he walked back into the bathroom as you did your hair. So he’s patiently waiting for you to finish getting ready, just staring at you in awe and completely in love. 
At first, he had been on his phone as you loosely curled the ends of your hair but when you started doing your makeup, he quickly forgot about the device to gawk at you. After audibly voicing just how gorgeous you were and you jokingly asked for him to stop making you flush, he kept quiet and stuck to just drinking in every little thing you did. Like the way you softly and precisely apply your eyeshadow, how you hold your breath and lean in closer to the mirror as you apply eyeliner to your waterline, how you cock your head to the side to make sure you’ve done a good job with your highlighter. 
But soon a soft frown appears on your face and before he can ask about it, you’re the one to say, “Can you help me please?”
“With what baby?” Matty replies softly, quickly rising from his place to walk towards you.
Your boyfriend walks up until his chest is pressed against your back and he drops a little kiss on your shoulder, attentively listening as you explain, “You used to do really good smudged smokey eyeliner and I want a bit of that but I can’t do it.”
Another peck is pressed on the skin of your shoulder and then you feel the vibration of his understanding hum. He straightens up to look at you through the mirror and asks, “Do you have any vaseline?”
You break eye contact to drop your gaze on the mess you’ve made by the sink, “I think so… here.” 
Handing him the small container, he takes a short step back and wraps his hand around your waist to turn you around to face him. He’s so smooth with his actions and he knows it, a smirk plastered on his face when you come face to face with him, one that you kiss away with a short peck before hurrying him to work his magic. You’ve already put the eyeliner on but trying to smudge it out with your brush like you thought was the way to do it hadn’t worked so you’re just waiting for your boyfriend to do what he used to do for his own eyeliner back in the day.
Matty opens the lid and dips his finger slowly to gather enough for both of your eyes. Your eyes flutter close when his finger comes up to coat your eyelids with a bit of vaseline to rub on your eyeliner. He smiles feeling your hands clutching softly onto his waist, your fingers tapping his clothed skin in a rhythm that he can’t recognise. 
It takes about a minute or two for him to be satisfied with his work, and you smile when hearing him mumble to himself as he rubs delicately but precisely, trying his best to make both eyes look as similar as possible. 
At the loss of his touch on your eyelids and the silence that envelops you, you open your eyes slowly and meet with your boyfriend flashing you the sweetest of smiles. 
“Bit too much, here,” Matty uses the excess on his finger to run it along your lips, smoothing them for you and he smiles when they have a pretty shine to them and his job is done. 
It takes everything in you not to smile as he does it. But he can see the smile in your eyes as he watches you press your lips together to make sure they’re evenly coated. Your boyfriend grins, “Gorgeous.” before quickly dipping down and pecking your lips. 
“Thank you, baby.” You say before turning around to see yourself again, and to say you’re amazed with how well he did was an understatement.
Your mouth falls open in awe of how good it looks, and the giddiness inside you translates into a loud gasp as you smooth a few strands of hair off your face, “It looks so good!” 
Matty smiles bright and proud behind you, his hands on your waist squeeze there a little before he reiterates, “Look stunning baby.”
With the heat that rushes up to your cheeks, you’re not sure you’d need to apply any blush but you still do, and after applying mascara on, you’re ready to put on your party clothes.
Amelia and you had planned your outfits to be entirely Valentine’s day related, so while she was wearing a dress with hearts that looked like little balloons, you had decided to go for a little red number which consisted of a red corset and mini skirt. You had little white wings to go with it and knee high stockings that would be clipped to some garter belt suspenders to make your cupid look sexy.
Looking at your reflection in the full body length mirror in the corner of your room, you know you look hot but your boyfriend is staring at you like you’ve handed him the moon and the stars. Matty is shamelessly letting his gaze run up and down your figure, biting his bottom lip as if containing every sinful thought he’s having about you. 
You’re fully expecting some lewd comment to come from him with the way he’s looking at you, eyes dark with lust and hunger that make your insides melt in a familiar heat that has you excited to come back home already. Yet, what he says is a generous, “Want me to clip these for you?” pointing at the suspenders still unclipped over your thighs.
“Please.” Your nod is eager, matching the desperation underlying his words.
You have to suppress a laugh at the speed in which he leans forward as he’s sitting on the edge of your bed and starts clipping the suspenders to the top of your stockings. 
He does the leg closest to him first, keeping his touch slow and ghostly, making goosebumps erupt in your skin and tingles to run up your inner thighs and almost causing you to shiver. But to clip the ones on your other leg, he gets up from his seat only to kneel in front of you, making a show of looking up at you through his lashes as he blindly clips the one on the back of your thigh. 
Raising your brows at him, your tongue pokes out to lick at your lips and when the first clasp is done, he moves his hands slowly towards the front of your thighs earning a smirk from you. This time he has to look down to clip it, but when he’s done, his fingers dig harshly into your skin for a quick second before he groans, “God, you’re so hot.”
Before you can even register his words, which almost sounded like a moan, he dips his head into your leg and bites the flesh of your thigh. His teeth sink into your skin with a force that makes pleasure rush up your spine and you choke out a gasp. Matty hears you and you feel him chuckle against your skin, your words have completely died on your tongue so he drops a kiss over the bite mark he left and slowly lifts himself up to stand up in front of you. 
The corners of his mouth are lifted into a devilish grin that you know is only promising of trouble. The way he raises his brows expectantly is enough to snap you out of your trance and that’s when you scorn him, “What did I say about not making me flustered?”
If you had known what he’s about to say, you wouldn’t have asked. “I’ll stop as long as you’re fully aware I’m fucking you in these when we get home.”
Your jaw clenches in an attempt to stop it from dropping at his words, “You’re no help.”
Your boyfriend doesn’t say a thing, his hands go from your waist to the bottom of your skirt to adjust it merely an inch, but when he says “Turn around.” you still obediently listen.
Matty does the same when your back is to him, pulling your skirt in perfect place before dropping a trail of kisses from your shoulder up your neck until he reaches your ear and whispers, “All done.”
“Thank you.” You shiver against his chest, actually thinking about fully missing the party just to indulge in his touch and his kisses and that promise (more like a statement) he made just a few seconds ago.
“Anytime baby.” Matty grins at you, and just as you’re about to move to look into the mirror again, a hard slap to your arse stops you in your tracks. You gasp and look back at your boyfriend who’s grin has only got bigger.  
Before you can even get any words out, he defends himself, “You can scold me all you want, but you enjoyed it.” 
His teasing words have you speechless, and after not having a single comeback to throw his way you bite your tongue and carry on getting ready. Your stylist, Chloe, Facetime’s you at one point when you tell her that you’re ready once you have your ‘solemate’ Lamoda heels on which you adore because the base of them is a red love heart.
Thankfully Chloe approves of how both you and Matty look together and she even applauds Matty’s handy work with your smudged eyeliner. So much you know he’s going to give her a hug later to thank her, and now you’re just waiting for the chicken nuggets you put in the oven (yes, you’re self aware that that’s predictable and cheesy of you - Matty has already laughed at you for it) to be cooked before you book yourselves a taxi so you get there earlier than everyone else. 
As you wait, you make some final touches to yourselves before you ask Matty to take some pictures of you. He happily does and makes you giggle as he turns it into a full photoshoot. 
He makes you lie down on your bed, standing on your stool to get a good angle and he has an absolute ball directing you into positions he wants. At one point you get a little too into it trying to tease him and he tells you to stop before he ruins your makeup, which with his skills you have no doubt he would do. 
After that threat you end up taking cute couple pictures, a few with your Polaroid and film camera before you get as many as you like on your phones. Your selfies are adorable, you’re being unable to stop yourself from changing your lock screen immediately to the picture of you both smiling at your phone but Matty’s chin is resting on your shoulder, his grin is all gooey, and his mop of curls is messy and unruly just the way you love it. 
You adore the picture just as much as you love the man in it. Even a quick glance at it reminds you of the way he squeezed you so tightly from behind as you took the picture. He melts your heart entirely. 
As you’re thinking about which picture to post on your story, your boyfriend is being vain for a moment and taking his own mirror selfies to send to the boys. But once he sends it off and gets bullied for being a simp for you he pockets his phone and focuses on himself in the mirror. 
You don’t mind your view at all, you watch as your boyfriend moves his curls a few times trying to get it into the place he deems fit. He sighs, settling for what he thinks is mediocre, and he glances at you as he tells you, “I know your thoughts already but I really wanna gel my hair back right now.”
“No,” Your face falls entirely, not wanting to see that mop of curls scraped back, “Definitely not.”
“But why?” He whines, coming back up to you, pulling you into him in hopes proximity will persuade you, “Don’t you think I look good?”
“Matthew,” You sigh, fixing his tie so it’s a little more in line with his top button, “In that suit you’d look like Patrick Bateman if you gelled your hair.”
You were hoping that your statement would deter him from that cursed hair gel, but you watch as his eyes light up, and immediately you know you’ve said the wrong thing. The smile that grows on Matty’s lips is almost like he’s been told he’s won the Euro Millions, and although you adore it when he smiles, you hate that Patrick Bateman of all people has brought that to his face.
At the same time you say, “No.” Matty excitedly nods, “Yes.”
“Matty, no.” You say louder, as he practically vibrates in your arms. 
He excitedly grins, “I would look so fucking good as Patrick Bateman.”
“Yeah you would,” You admit, raising your eyebrows as you say, “But not at my fucking Valentine’s party.” 
Matty chuckles, pulling you firmly against him by his hand on the small of your back, and he smirks as he says in a low tone, “Halloween this year is sorted.”
You tut at that, narrowing your eyes slightly, sarcasm thick in your voice, “Oh, such a great couples costume.”
Your boyfriend grins now, cooing, “Awhhhh, you wanna do a couples costume.”
And it’s not just because you want to dress up together as a couple that makes him feel all gooey inside, it's the fact that Halloween is months from now and you still picture yourself with him. It makes him feel all tingly inside, and he’s so happy that by the time the both of you get to October 31st he will definitely be allowing himself to declare that he loves you openly and proudly. 
“Yeah well,” You sigh, grinning though as you say, “Guess I’ll have to ask Ross to do a couples costume now.”
Matty’s jaw falls at that, eyes narrowing in an instant as he tells you, “No.”
“Well then,” You chuckle, “No Bateman for you.”
“We shall see.” Your boyfriend smiles, looking into your gorgeous eyes that stand out even more now he’s done your eyeliner. 
He can’t help but lean in to kiss you, loving nothing more than you being in his arms and his lips against your own. He hopes he can feel how much he loves you, how content he is with you having his heart in the palm of your hands. 
And seeing your goofy smile when you both pull away from the kiss hits him like he’s just realised his feelings all over again. God, he loves you so fucking much.
Matty watches as you press your lips together for a second before you inevitably ask, “Can I please put some eyeliner on you?”
“So it’s a no to Bateman but a yes to emo me at your party?” Matty can’t help but teasingly ask.
It’s somewhere between embarrassment and shame that you find yourself hating to admit, “You looked fit as fuck with it on back in the day.”
It takes everything in him not to laugh, knowing that you still can’t quite stop getting too in your head about it when he reminds you of your obsession with him. He goes easy on you, just grinning at you before he kisses you once more. 
“Yeah come on then baby,” Matty chuckles, pulling you back into the bathroom so you can do his makeup in better lighting, “Lets make your dreams come true.”
You follow obediently, but not before half heartedly saying under your breath, “Arsehole.”
~*~*~*~
The moment you step foot in the venue, you’re blown away seeing your and Amelia’s vision come to life perfectly. Heart balloons take over every inch of the ceiling by the main entrance to the cafe, the strings attached to them come draping down like a curtain that you have to walk through to get to the main event. A few mirrorballs hiding in between the balloons, glistening in the lights and bathing the place with shimmer.
To your left you see the big red letterbox that you hoped your guests would actually interact with like Amelia and you had envisioned when you came up with the idea of having it at the party.
The bar is filled with spirits and mixers and you can see the coasters you’d made for the party all waiting to be used right by the endless amounts of Ciroc vodka bottles that you’d been sent after the brand had wanted to be part of your little soiree, all of them decorated with red, white and pink hearts and the name of your event on the side. 
There is a big square table with a blue velvet cloth where the big ice sculpture resides: it’s a giant heart with an arrow going through it, with ‘Amelia’s Valentines Affair’ written on it. That was the name of the event as you had thought, since you were no longer single, it would be only appropriate to make this party along with the holiday all about Amelia and play onto the fact that she was still looking for the one as she did when she went on your chicken shop dates. 
Naturally, your best friend had loved the idea of being the main focus of it all so even the photobooth that you had at the back of the cafe, hidden away in a corner, had been branded as ‘Amelia’s Valentines Affair’. 
It had been so much fun coming up with the names of the drinks for the party, and choosing the catering menu, as well as cake tasting for the triple tier cake that was hidden away in the kitchen of the cafe but for which you were so excited to bring out and share with everyone who would attend.
When Amelia comes out of the kitchen and sees you two, she runs to envelope the both of you in a hug. Instantly, you and your best friend start screeching like schoolgirls just because of how excited you are for the evening, and thankfully you don’t have to wait long because it’s merely fifteen minutes later that the first bunch of guests walk through the doors of the cafe. 
With the DJ playing good tunes that had everyone dancing as they sipped on their themed cocktails, sneaking away to the photobooth, taking shots of vodka out of the ice sculpture and taking loads of pictures and videos on your phone, the night slipped away. 
Before you know it, the gorgeous cake is being brought out by your best friend and she gets a microphone that she taps three times before she speaks into it. 
“Hello everyone! Thank you so much for coming and celebrating Valentine’s day with us!” Claps and cheers erupt in the room, wolf whistles that Amelia entertained by flipping her hair and fanning herself like the attention was making her flustered, “Thank you, thank you. I hope you’ve had a lovely time! I was hoping to find the one for me here, but it seems I’m still stuck third wheeling for this hot Cupid that was rudely stolen from me.” Your best friend rolls her eyes playfully while pointing at you and Matty. A chorus of laughter comes from the crowd, your own giggles getting lost in the sea of chuckles. 
Your boyfriend’s hand comes to squeeze your waist and you get all flustered at the attention you’ve got on you two after your best friend’s words. So many people had come up to you and Matty tonight, completely surprised to see you kissing and dancing, admitting that they thought it was a joke for the sake of the date you’d put out with him or something like Aitch and Amelia’s situation.
It would be an understatement to say it hadn’t filled you with a sense of pride to admit that you were in fact together and not for show, your heart bursting at its seams when Matty would smirk and look at you for a second before looking back at whoever was in front of you and saying, “Got incredibly lucky, didn’t I? Can’t believe she’s mine.”
Amelia’s hand waving in the air, as if dismissing your poor job as Cupid, and continuing her speech is what brings you out of your trance. “It’s okay, this just means I can keep taking hot dates to the chicken shops and it’s good that’s my favourite thing! Erm, yeah, that’s all. Thank you all for coming and, what did Marie Antoinette say? Let them eat cake!” 
The music resumes right after that, but a crowd gathers around the table as you and Amelia do the honours of cutting the cake. You two feed each other the first piece and end up laughing uncontrollably when you smudge a bit of frosting on each other’s faces. Soon after, you start handing out pieces for everyone to enjoy the delicious dessert and end the night in the best way. 
When you finally get home and take your heels off, your shoulders hang in relief. Matty scoops you up in his arms the second his own shoes are off, and he all but runs into your room, dropping you on top of your bed softly only to pounce on your lips with a delicious desperation that you welcome eagerly and match with ease.
The second the kiss breaks for you to take a breath, you quickly mumble, “Wait.” making him get off you and going back out your room to get your bag. 
Ever since you’d gone into the photobooth for the first time tonight, you’d wanted to go back home and put up the strips of pictures you took beside the pictures you already have littered around your room. 
Matty watches from your bed as you put the photobooth pictures up, and a huge smile breaks on his face when he sees you take a step back after you’re pleased with the set up and sigh in content at the moments captured in the printed strips. He pushes himself off your bed, taking two short steps towards you until he’s pressed flush against your back, dipping his head to attack your neck with kisses that you encourage as you tilt your head to the opposite side to allow him more space to burn with those lips of his.
A day celebrating love with you couldn’t be complete without properly worshipping you, hoping the kisses he leaves all over you skin as he sinks down to his knees in front of you are enough for you to know he loves you, he adores you, he would do anything for you. 
His mouth is tantalising as it roams your body, as well as his touch and the force in which his fingers dig into your waist when he guides you back on the bed where he makes you lie on your back for him. 
It doesn’t take long for your legs to be thrown over his shoulders, for his lips to leave a fiery trail of kisses up your inner thighs and make you a mess of desire, throbbing and aching just for him. 
Those three words itch on his tongue, begging to be left out, to let you hear them loud and proud but he swallows them the same way he swallows your moans when he traps you in yet another hungry kiss after he’s run up your body with his lips.
And you surely almost let the words slip when he brings you the most delicious pleasure and release over and over again, so intent and attentive to every one of your needs. Every sound you make only pushes him to get more out of you until tears run down your cheeks from overstimulation, ones that he kisses away so delicately your mind is spinning from the combination of it all.
There’s passion and hunger, desperation and lust; but there’s softness and intention, an attentiveness that could make you cry just by thinking about it all over again, and love, so much of it that has you drunker than any alcohol could ever have you.  
The smiles on your faces don’t leave you when you fall asleep in each other’s arms, your holds so tight as if there was any way of being snatched away from each other, your legs tangled too just in case. 
And you dream of each other because there’s not enough time in the day to spend together, your subconscious incapable of more, replete with each other. And you wouldn’t dare ask to have it another way ever again, not in this lifetime or the ones to come next.
~*~*~*~ 11th February 2023 ~*~*~*~
“Hi.” Charli says once she’s in front of you both with a microphone in hand.
You and Amelia wear the biggest smiles seeing the singer, she looks absolutely stunning and you know you’ll gush about it once the interview is over. The white sheer dress she wears hides nothing and you can only be in absolute awe of her confidence because you would never. A true legend and icon is Miss Charli XCX. 
“How are you?” Amelia beats you to ask.
“I’m good. I’m so excited because I'm here to win an EGOT tonight.” Charli smiles brightly and you have to bite your tongue not to giggle. She continues with her EGOT talk saying,  “I’ve won none…” 
It takes everything in you and your best friend to not burst out laughing when she says that.
“Yet.” The three of you say at the same time and smile at each other. 
You’re quick to put in your two cents about it, “But that’s- because there's a conspiracy against you!”
And you’re glad Charli agrees with ease, “I’m- There is! That’s actually true.”
But you wave her off like she has nothing to worry about, “And it's fine because I've brought my sledgehammer because I know you love… blood.”
Amelia can’t help the cackle she lets out after the second of silence passes after your words, laughter in which Charli joins with the same enthusiasm and you end up giggling like an idiot too. You love the popstar possibly too much, and after spending downtime with her on the boy’s UK tour you’ve never felt so close to her, it is truly no hardship at all to have this interview, after all it's more of a fun conversation.
Once you’ve gained back your composure, Amelia, looking lovely in her Union Jack dress, is the one to get things back on track, “Do you think an award show is a good place to fall in love?”
“Yes!” Charli doesn’t waste a second to answer and there’s a hint of a smirk on her face when she looks at your best friend and states, “And actually I think there is a real chance with you and Andrew Garfield.”
You hum and nod, completely on Charli’s side about it and so the singer adds, “It’s real, like I'm just like shipping it.” 
Before you can audibly agree and tease your best friend for the camera, Amelia looks at it and clarifies with that awkward look on her face she plays off so well, “I just wanna say that Andrew Garfield is not nominated for a Brit Award.” You see members of your crew laughing at that, and it takes everything in you to maintain your little persona. 
“Well, you should’ve brought him as your date.” Charli raises her brows as if scolding Amelia for that.
Amelia scrambles for an answer, mouth opening and closing as she struggles to find her words and the only excuse she can eventually find is, “I don’t have his number.”
The popstar gasps at the information but you’re quick to put your best friend on full blast, “We do have his manager’s number…”
That earns a scoff from Charli, she rolls her eyes and shakes her head, “Girl, you need to lock. That. Down. Immediately.”
“I agree.” You nod with a ‘told you so’ expression on your face that your best friend sighs about.
There isn’t another chance to continue teasing your best friend for she resumes the interview, introducing one of the things you’d planned for when it was Charli’s turn to show up on the red carpet with you two, “We actually got you a present.”
“Really?” The singer asks, puzzled by what of all the things you’ve got behind you on the shelves could it be.
“Yeah.” You nod as Amelia goes to retrieve the canned cocktail you’d picked out for her, a passion fruit martini sounded very Charli to you two.
“This is very me.” Charli says as she cracks the can open, holding it out, away from her gorgeous dress, you and Amelia grin at each other before flashing your smiles at the singer.
“Oooo, it’s fizzy that, isn’t it?” Charli says at the same time Amelia deadpans, “Oh my god.”
Taking a sip, both of you watch her intently to get her reaction and as Amelia hands her the mic back so that Charli can tell you, “Well, it's very warm.”
You press your lips together not to laugh, and Amelia stays silent for a split second before just offering her a meek, “Sorry.”
Charli still takes another sip of the drink, because it tastes really good despite it very much not being the ideal temperature. But then her eyes fall behind you to the trinkets you have lined up which somehow make sense to bring to the Brits’ red carpet, and that’s when she sees them.
Pointing behind you, Charli grins, “I love this! ‘I hate Matty Healy’ but I love him, but it’s like quite-”
Amelia reaches behind you to grab one for the pop icon, and she holds it out for her to reveal the full top. “That’s something I made.” Amelia announces, awkwardly smiling between Charli and the camera. 
“Did you?” The singer asks with a smirk, she stares at you as soon as Amelia nods and confirms with a quick and proud, “Yeah.”
“You seen him yet?” Charli is so amused by the way you’re avoiding eye contact by staring at the display of ‘I Hate Matty Healy’ tops.
To your left you hear your best friend reply, “No, he’s avoiding me.” and the soft, “Ahhh.” that Charli lets out, like she understands the situation.
But of course the singer wasn’t going to let the opportunity to tease you pass too easily, “I’m sure with your best mate around he’s bound to find a way to get over here.” A big smirk tugs at the corners of her lips, “Didn’t leave her alone for two seconds on tour.”
That’s enough to have you turning your head back to face her, a scoff escaping your lips before you quip back, “You act like you weren’t attached to George’s hip.”
“Oh yes, I was.” She says back as she flips her long hair behind her shoulder, “I’m a proud groupie, I will admit that.” 
Fortunately, she gets distracted by taking the top from Amelia and admiring the printed hate message on the front of the white top. She chuckles, “I might have to put this on if my nipples aren’t allowed on the cameras.”
You still shouldn’t have let your guard down that easily, because when she cheekily adds, “Do you sleep in one of these Y/N/N?” you’re fully taken by surprise.
Your jaw falls and Amelia snorts in laughter, which turns into a cackle when all you manage to answer is an out of character, “Get fucked.”
You know you should’ve been more careful when choosing your words when Charli turns them against you by quipping back with, “You keep one on when you’re doing that too?”
The loud gasp that comes from you is enough to send the two girls beside you into a fit of loud laughter. They’re so amused by it all that they completely ignore you as you scold the singer, “Charlotte!” 
Even your crew is laughing at you, so you have no backup from anyone. Jokes on them though, this will be getting taken out of the final edit. 
“Oh you’re going to fucking die when he comes over, he’s not going to play along.” The singer warns you when she stops laughing, patting under her eyes softly to make sure the tears that lined her eyes from laughter haven’t messed anything up.
You roll your eyes, “He’s getting no interaction.” And you really have to hold back from crossing your arms and stomping your feet like a child so she knows you’re serious when you say, “Can we get back to our interview please, bitch?”
She’s insufferable though, your tone only amusing her further so she plays on it by calling you out, “Oh, she's getting feisty.” 
With another sigh, you put on a bright smile again, ignoring the way Amelia and Charli snigger as you go up to the display behind you and grab something. “And to leave, I’ve just got some poppers.” You show it to Charli and the camera, an awkward but oddly proud smile on your face at the pun you know the singer and her fans will get when they watch the interview.
“Oh, oh fun. Fun.” Charli says with faux excitement, seeing the party popper in your hand. 
It gets even more awkward when you announce, “Which I will pop.” as you stare right into the camera, Amelia grabs the party popper you’re handing her and she does the same as you with her own awkward smile stuck on her face.
Charli nods and mirrors you and Amelia, “Okay.”
Your last frame with Charli is of the three of you smiling at camera as you and Amelia pop the party poppers, while Charli holds up her new top. It’s so underwhelming and the silence around you makes it so much funnier, you really try hard not to break character and ruin the shot. 
When the tiny confetti hits the floor, you and Amelia break the scene, turning to Charli and hugging her while thanking her for coming over. The two of you shower her in compliments which she gives back to you, she even makes you and Amelia twirl in your places to show her every bit of your dresses and you blush when she says she’ll be stealing you from Matty later. 
Sadly, her team tells her she needs to go, and after a promise of seeing the two of you inside when you eventually get to the table you’re all sharing, she sing-songs, “I love youuuu!”
You wave at her as she starts walking away, matching the tone she used to reciprocate the farewell, “Mmm love you too!”
A soft frown appears on her face as she points a warning finger, “Don’t flirt too hard with my boyfriend, I’ll cut you both!”
And as payback for all the teasing she put you through earlier, you sing-song back with the fakest smile, “No promises!”   
Charli flips you off behind her back and the last she hears before disappearing to the next media section of the carpet is your loud laughter. And your night continues on. 
This red carpet is particularly tricky, your little set being in the corner after the actual carpet where the celebs were getting photographed and where Roman Kemp and the other presenters were doing their bit for the livestream, but before the attendees made their way into the O2. So by the time people were passing you, it felt like they were mostly in a rush to get inside.
You got lucky with Charli, she knew you were going to be there because Matty had told her as she was getting ready with the boys. And you’re glad she came over because you truly felt at ease in your job for the night now. 
Before the queen of pop, you had the lovely band Flo and the girls were troopers, playing up to yours and Amelia's antics with shitty karaoke microphones you brought along. Kim Petras came over and showed you both some of her dance moves that she’ll be doing in her performance later on that you and your best friend embarrassingly mimicked.
In a weird and unexpected turn, Declan Rice made an appearance which was confusing at the music awards ceremony to have a footballer there. But you made the most of it and kindly offered the West Ham player a Manchester United mug which he unsurprisingly turned down but you got the best kick out of it. You might even offer it to Matty later to get him scowling at you. 
And after you interviewed the lovely Greg James, that was when Charli wondered over and you got bullied. Alas, the rest of the night must go on and now you are feeling fabulous. 
Aitch came next and you really don't know how you and Amelia kept it together when she offered him his fake box of belongings back. But despite the jokes that fired between the three of you there was a genuine sincerity there when you wished him luck this evening, and you had a little giggle with him after he handed the microphone back to your crew. 
Some guests tonight weren’t doing press, which was a little upsetting, but you both took it on the chin when you were denied interviews. However, a moment tonight that melted both yours and Amelia’s heart was when Ed Sheeran caught your line of sight and you waved at him. Despite his team telling you that he was strictly not doing press, he came over anyway, not for a recorded interview but for a friendly chat where he hugged you upon greeting you and chatted with you for at least five minutes. 
It was really nice, it made the both of you feel like you belong here a little more, and that you’re not fish out of water. You deserve to be here just as much as the journalists on the other carpet. 
Afterwards, comes people like Stormzy, Shania Twain, Jessie J, David Guetta, and you just interviewed Wet Leg when you spot a few familiar faces, but because you’d class one of them as your friend now you shout her name as she walks past. “Flo!” You shout across to her.
You smile when you see her head whip to the side in search of who shouted her name, and a second later when you move from yours and Amelia's little spot over to the edge of your area and wave does she spot you. And when she does she gasps and waves, which melts your heart entirely. The artist makes her way over to you, looking just as stunning as she always does. As soon as she’s close enough, she has a bright grin on her face as she says an excited, “Hey!” 
“Oh my,” She gasps as she stops in front of you and Amelia joins you at your side, “You two look gorgeous!”
You blush because a compliment from her means the world to you, but seeing her dress you can’t help but coo, “No, oh my god! You look amazing!” And she really does. Tonight, Flo is wearing a gorgeous lavender dress that flows gorgeously down to the ground and pools at her feet.
It’s a beautifully made dress, such a stunning shade of lavender that compliments her skin tone well, made from either chiffon or organza with ruching on the bust and thick ruched straps that hold the dress on her shoulders. The detailing just below her breasts makes the rest of the fabric drape down her body in the way you’d expect a disney princess’ too, and you also note that it cleverly hides her growing baby bump.
As she smiles, thanking you for your compliment, before you asks quietly, “How’s baby Turner doing?”
“They’re doing fineee…” Flo grins, running a hand over her stomach so the flowy material will reveal her bump outline to you and you can’t help but pull her in for a hug when you see how big she's getting.
“Don’t suppose,” You start once you let her go, grinning as you cheekily push your luck, “We can pull you for an interview…?”
“No,” She laughs, shaking her head slightly, “You don’t want me, but I’ll make the Monkeys come on for you.”
“They’re actually coming?” Your eyes go a little wide, Amelia’s too because you both knew they were invited but you never for a second thought they would actually show themselves, “I thought you were coming to sit with The 1975 boys.”
“No, believe me,” She laughs, shaking her head, “I wouldn’t have come to another of these if I wasn’t married to someone up for an award. Not after the last time.”
You’re smirking, about to respond with something witty about that night you remember so fondly watching at home on TV back in 2017. However, your friend's name rings out across the room. 
“Flo!” You all hear a male voice shout from not too far away.
Turning the three of you see none other than Harry Styles walking his way over. And you’re half sure your heart falls into your stomach, Amelia’s probably too, but thankfully his eyes are mostly focused on Flo.  
“Hey Florence,” You and Amelia watch as Harry reaches for the artist, “How are you?”
“Harry, hey!” Flo grins up at him, with a hint of something in her eyes that you can’t quite pinpoint. But you’re too focused on the conversation to dwell on that at the moment. The artist grins and hugs him, “I’m good, thank you. How are you?” 
“Great, thank you.” Harry grins, the black suit doing the man such justice, he almost looks like a god despite the huge flower adorning his chest. He pulls her into a massive hug as if they’re been friends for years, “It’s so good to see you.”  
Am I missing something? You can’t help but ask yourself. You’re more than certain though that Matty has never mentioned Flo being aquaintances or better yet friends with Harry fucking Styles. You’ll be having words with him for that later.  
“God, how long has it been?” Harry thinks out loud, still looking as charming as ever, his eyes never leaving hers. It really makes you feel like you’re intruding on something you shouldn’t be. He wonders, “Five years?”
“Six, wasn’t it?” Flo corrects him, still asking despite her clearly knowing, “2016?”
“Right.” You spot the singer almost smirking down at the artist, “The last I saw you was Jamaica, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, Jamaica.” She nods confirming and you’re almost sure you see a little embarrassed blush creep onto her cheeks. Flo continues, “Lots has happened since then. Congratulations on your albums, they’ve been amazing. I’m excited for the new one.”
As are you and Amelia. Never in your life have you screamed as hard as when you got your tickets to Love On Tour for one of the nights at Wembley. Except when you got your At Their Very Best tickets… of course. 
“Thank you, but I believe you deserve the congratulations, you’re married to Alex now, right?” The singer asks and the artist happily nods, her love for her husband shining through her eyes as she confirms Harry's thoughts. When she does, his smile is huge, “That’s amazing! I'm so happy for you both.”
“Thank you, got a little more to celebrate now too.” Flo holds her hand subtly against her stomach to tell him without actually having to explain aloud. “If you know what I mean.”
And of course he does. The genuine joy for her that seeps onto his face makes you want to melt when he pulls her into another hug. You and your best friend hear him say, “Congratulations. I’m so happy for you both.”
“Thank you Harry.” Flo grins, as she pulls away from the hug, but she then turns to you and your best friend, introducing you with ease, “Have you met Y/N and Amelia before? They’re trying to get me to a chicken shop but I think you’d be more who they’re trying to recruit.”
“Hey,” You chuckle, raising your eyebrows at her, “You promised me that date!”
“You’ll get it, my love. I’m going to send Alex and the lads over to you and I’ll see you in there.” She promises, quickly hugging the both of you before she embraces the popstar once again, “It was lovely to see you again Harry.”
“The pleasure’s been all mine, Flo.” He kisses her cheek, lucky bitch. “See you soon.” He waves her off as she wanders back over to where you now see the Monkeys' other wives are standing waiting for her before they head inside. 
But who really cares about them when you have Harry fucking Styles standing in front of you, looking you dead in the eye. You’re sure you could pass out at a moment's notice. You’d already been told that he wasn’t doing press, that pretty much no one would get any interaction from him as he would be surrounded by security when he wasn’t on the carpet for pictures. And he was, until he spotted Flo as a familiar face, and now he’s here talking to you and your best friend. And your inner 16 year old self might just pass out. 
“Nice to meet the both of you.” Harry smiles at Amelia and then yourself before he leans forward to kiss each of your cheeks. Immediately, the subtle hints of vanilla, ginger, and woody scent fills your senses, Christ he smells so nice. You’re also never washing your cheek again. And you’re sure your eyes go wide when he says, “I'm a huge fan of the show.”
“You’ve seen the show?” Amelia beats you to ask. And it’s funny, you glance at her and her eyes are just as wide as yours were. Pull yourself together Y/N/N. You weren’t this bad meeting the man you're in love with.
“Of course. I love what you do so much.” Harry makes both of your days when he says, “I think you’re both the best people doing interviews right now.” 
Amelia’s a little lost for words so she’s happy when you manage to get out, “Thank you so much.”
“It’s so impressive and you’re both so funny.” His smile is just as charming as he is, “I love watching your dates.”
Harry Styles loves watching your dates AHHHHHHHHHH!
“Funny you should say that,” Amelia gets her barings back and charismatically chips back in, “Because we love your music and think you should come on a Chicken Shop Date with us.”
Harry smiles at that, expecting nothing less from you gorgeous, talented women, “When the time is right, I’m all yours.”
You smile, appreciating that a lot, but you promise him, “We’ll hold you to that.”
This time he grins at you, “I don’t doubt you will.”
“We’re seeing you at Wembley in June.” Amelia tells him, letting her excitement shine through a little, which you don’t entirely blame her for. His music means a lot to the both of you. 
“Oh,” He smiles brightly, “It’ll be lovely to have you there.” 
You tell him truthfully, “We’re really excited.” But you won’t forgive yourself if you don’t casually plead, “Please play Only Angel again.” needing to hear that song live.
“I’ll see what I can do.” Harry grins before he gets ushered on by his security. 
Instead of following their orders blindly though, he turns back to the both of you with an apologetic look before grasping both yours and your best friend's hand and giving it a tight squeeze as he sincerely says, “Thank you both so much. Sorry I can’t chat for longer, but I’ll see you in there.”
And he takes your breath away when he kisses the top of both of your hands like prince charming, “It was lovely to meet you both.”
You and your best friend just about get your good lucks and goodbyes out as Harry starts being lead through into the main arena, and as soon as he’s out of sight you turn to each other, wide eyed and say, “What the fuck just happened?!” and, “Oh my fucking god!!” at the same time. 
Even when you turn back to your crew, they’re shocked by the encounter too, all not quite believing their eyes. It takes you all a good 5 minutes to recover before you get back into the swing of things. 
A few more celebs make their way over to you, but nothing sparked joy like catching the eyes of Alex Turner, who despite being on a red carpet, smiled at you and looked like he was (dare you say) excited for an interview. 
“Hello, hello, hello.” You greet the band as they walk up to you, all of them slowly walking into your little corner. Matt and Alex are the ones who have a microphone in hand while Nick and Jamie have their arms behind their backs but kind smiles on their faces.
Amelia beams at them all and greets the drummer, who she’d interviewed when you both were at Reading Fest, “Matt, lovely to see you again.”
“And you Amelia, Y/N.” Matt acknowledges the both of you with a smile and a nod of his head.
“How’ve you been boys?” You ask first to get them all talking, making them feel comfortable with you and Amelia before actually heavily putting on your characters for the interview.
It’s no surprise that you end up bringing up their new album The Car and you’re lucky you and Amelia are good at improvising because you hadn’t planned for these men to be here at all. Thankfully it paid off quite well and you both start rounding off their interview after a few minutes of you both making them laugh.
“Careful when you go inside, Charli XCX is in there.” Amelia begins and after a brief second adds, “She’s got a thing for cars.”
There’s a dazed look from the Monkeys so you deliver another punchline, “Yeah, if she gets her hands on your car she’ll crash it.”
Alex snorts at that, clearly understanding the reference to her album, no doubt thanks to Flo’s influence. The others laugh along, you hope understanding but you remember you have one more trick up your sleeve that will make the band, and you’re sure anyone who knows the history, giggle too. 
“Oh Al,” You turn to grab one of the t-shirts from the display behind you and hand it over to Alex with a subtle smirk, “Think this top is right up your street.”
He takes it and unrolls it, a chuckle making him shake when he reads, ‘I Hate Matty Healy’ printed on the front and he holds it up over his chest, looks at you two, hand on his hip as if modelling it. 
Amelia nods, “Suits you actually.” as you try to keep a straight face.
“Very fitting.” The singer nods as he mumbles into the microphone, before perking up when seeing there’s more of them displayed behind you. “Can I take one for Flo too? I think she’ll like it.” 
“Course.” You smile brightly, turning back around to get another. 
But when you hand Alex the top, Matt brings the mic up to his lips to ask, “You got any more?” 
Amelia raises her brows and asks rather amused, “You all want one?” and when the rest of the band nods, you can’t help but chuckle to yourself.
“Makes sense because they’re up for the same award as you.” You quip back, giving them a perfect idea for when to wear them, “If they win we will put the tops on for you. Rep the brand.”
Alex hums into the mic softly and nods before mumbling, “Shall hold you up to that.” 
You take that as a sign to end your segment with the band there and you bid them farewell with smiles and keeping up your awkward facades, asking them for a date when they leave your sight and making it an underwhelming moment for the sake of the interview. Amelia giggles as she lets her mic fall away from her lips and you giggle with her, a rush of joy running through your veins as you know the carpet is drawing to a close and the awards ceremony is nearing meaning that you’re so close to have accomplished yet another insane goal in your careers once this is over. You quickly reset your set with new ‘I Hate Matty Healy’ tops knowing it can’t be long now until your boys are due over.
You get a few more guests before the band you’ve dedicated so many years of your life to and who hold your heart (now even more so) in their hands appears in your peripherals, and you try not to look startled as you watch the four men walking your way. 
“Oh god…” You hold your breath knowing this is where things are going to get tricky for you. 
Amelia smirks, “This is gonna be good.” knowing that your boyfriend will have nothing good in mind once he gets to see you.
And he already has.
“Fucking hell.” Matty curses under his breath when you come into his view.
During your FaceTime earlier as you were both getting ready in your respective hotel rooms, you didn’t show him your dress, he only saw you getting your makeup done and he told you that you looked beautiful but then you told him he could wait to see your dress. And fucking hell, he wishes that someone would have forewarned him, his dick is already twitching just looking at you. 
You’re wearing a black dress that starts as a tight corset which dramatically emphasises your boobs. But the long skirt that runs down and reaches your heels only covers one of your legs, leaving the other on show, letting everyone see the stockings and suspenders you’re wearing.
Matty’s chest flares with want and need as he can’t take his eyes from you as your team hand him and George the microphones before all of them make their way in shot. And their order ends up being Ross, George, Adam, and then Matty, which you’re thankful for because your boyfriend is furthest away from you with his wandering eyes. 
As the other boys take in your set, Amelia can’t get the grin off her face as she notices Matty can’t take his eyes off you. She grabs the rest of their attention as she knowingly smiles, “Well, hello.” 
“Fancy seeing you here.” You chip in, looking at the stunning men in front of you.
Ross, Adam, and Matty all wear black suits with white shirts, bowties adorning their necks, while George with his freshly bleached hair looks amazing with his black silk shirt open, showing more of his chest and a stunning chain around his neck. Even yellow tinted glasses make him look like the star of the band, something that you’ll make sure you tell him in front of your boyfriend later.
In fact, what's stopping you right now? 
“If I didn’t know better,” You grin, “I’d think you’re the frontman, George. You’re looking very dapper.”
“Really?” The drummer smirks as he asks, catching the look on Matty’s face when he quickly glances around to the rest of them.
“Thinking I should’ve asked you on a date back then.” You clearly flirt but your awkward persona comes into play like the guys had been expecting since they walked over to you and Amelia.
Matty scoffs, “You’re all chat, you said the same thing about Ross.”
With a roll of your eyes, you continue playing into your joke, “Well, maybe I want them both.”
“No double date?” Amelia asks, trying to hide her smirk behind a puzzled look like the possibility of her joining you on a date with Ross and George was more important than wanting to laugh over the clear taunting aimed at your boyfriend.
When Amelia sees you shrugging, she scoffs and turns to the camera to call you out in the meekest tone, “She’s so selfish.”
“Three nominations boys, how are you feeling?” You ask, completely changing the topic of conversation in hopes that if you continue flirting here and there as the interview continues, you’d get some good reactions for the video from your boyfriend. You already can’t wait to edit all of this together.
“Very grateful.” Adam says humbly after George puts the mic close to his mouth as he sees him nod and mumble beside him.
Amelia is the one to turn to them and let them know of the plan you’d played about with the band that had just been in their places a few minutes before, “Just gotta warn you that if you win, we’ve started a new movement with Arctic Monkeys.”
“With the Monkeys?” Ross asks with a half grin on his face, like he’s suspicious of what you’ve been plotting with the band.
Almost immediately after, Matty asks, “And what would that be?”
But he gets no sign of an answer when you shrug nonchalantly, keeping your face blank and making them even more curious with a tantalising, “If I tell, the surprise would be ruined, no?” 
Matty goes to ask but you tut, “You’ll just have to win and see what happens.”
“Are you feeling lucky? I brought my lucky egg, you can rub it so you can find out.” Amelia says, always comically eager to have people rubbing on the lucky egg she brings to red carpets. She turns to grab it from the shelf just behind the bassist, and you really have to stop yourself from giggling at the way she proudly holds the egg up. It’s genuinely like watching someone care for a baby the way your best friend coos over this egg.
“How many people have rubbed this egg?” Ross asks, an eyebrow raised and his dimples showing faintly beneath his beard due to the smirk that breaks on his face. God, you wish Ross would look at you the way he’s looking at Amelia right now.
And you wish you could be as cool about it as she is, keeping her smirk soft and her shrug indifferent as she replies factually, “Most of Hollywood’s walk of fame.”
“So we’re the best?” Matty asks rhetorically, grinning, “I see.”
“If you do say so yourself.” You say with the hint of a smile on your lips, looking your boyfriend in the eye properly for the first time tonight. 
He looks so fucking good, and the lust in his eyes is so easy for you to spot. It makes you want to clench your thighs together, so you look away from him, back to Adam to maintain your on screen persona. You can do this Y/N. You can do this.
As difficult as it is ignoring the man you love, you push on for the sake of the bit. Amelia puts her egg down as you take the lead on your next question.
“You've been coming to the Brits since 2016 and you’ve won at least one award every year you’ve been.” You state the fact, giving way to the beginning of a bit that you hope gives you the reactions you were anticipating when you wrote it down with your best friend.
“Yes.” George and Adam confirm proudly.
Ross teases with a playful, “You’ve done your homework.”
To that Matty smirks, finding the perfect opportunity to pick on you, “With how obsessed she is with us, I doubt she even had to google that.”
You have to bite your tongue to backchat, sticking to finishing your joke as originally planned, putting on a pout as you fake pity for them when you say, “Be a bit embarrassing if you don't win something tonight, wouldn't it?”
A loud scoff comes from your boyfriend, whilst Adam and Ross giggle and George clicks his tongue softly before scolding you, “We won’t win with that attitude.”
“Ah, true forgot you were up against Harry Styles, sorry.” You wince sarcastically and deem it, “No chance there now.” before you give them whiplash again by randomly asking, “So who was your favourite member of One Direction?” 
They chuckle at the sudden ridiculous question, and you have to press your lips together not to cackle at the sound of George’s laughter mixing with the giggles coming from the rest of the boys. Amelia is the one who continues on the topic by warning them, “You better say Harry or I’ll tell on you when we go inside.”
Comically, they play on the joke and all of them start nodding feigning honesty when they start saying, “Oh yes, definitely Harry.” at different times, repeating their words as they look into the camera so it sounds and looks chaotic. 
“That’s right.” Amelia hums in approval, looking at the camera for a split second before turning back to the band with a new question, “Do you guys have any award show rituals? That you do to bring you luck?”
“Other than rubbing your egg?” Ross asks with an incredulous look on his face, it’s almost as if he’s holding back from laughing.
You sigh like the lack of answers is annoying you and roll your eyes to say, “Yes, other than rubbing Amelia's egg.”
To your dismay they shake their heads and all you do is give the camera a look of exasperation, Amelia is the one who makes you look back at them for she looks straight into Ross’ eyes and firmly replies, “Then I think you really should rub my egg.” She grabs it again and without hesitation offers it up to Ross with hopeful eyes. Something which you all end up laughing at.
Matty sees the way Amelia is looking at Ross and he makes a mental note to keep an eye out about it inside the venue. He knows you’re flirting with the bassist for the bit, and though he’s not the biggest fan of that, it’s keeping him the slightest bit amused; but Amelia is fully gawking at him and it almost seems like she keeps scooting closer to him as you all laugh. 
So instead of keeping the teasing for later, Matty starts taunting your best friend right then, “Sounding a little desperate there, Amelia.”
Your best friend surprises him when she goes from eye fucking Ross to glaring at him in a split second, spouting a stern, “Not more than you look.” towards him because she’s seen just how badly your boyfriend can’t keep his eyes away from your figure and how everything he wants to do to you is written all over his face.
Matty’s jaw drops at her words as the other three boys loudly snort at her publicly outing him, but before they can start bickering, you tut and call them out, “Okay pipe down, no cat fights on the red carpet please.” 
George and Ross can’t help their chuckles, Adam’s head hangs as he shakes his head trying to hide the amused grin on his face but his shoulders shake in silent laughter. Matty’s eyes flick from the fake little stare down with Amelia to you where he loses his breath all over again and he can’t help but look you up and down again. You’re so fucking hot.
Before you can break character, you bring up another question you had prepared, “Any collabs you’re looking to secure tonight?”
A chorus of thinking hum sounds come from your left and as Amelia abandons her lucky egg again, George is the first to break the silence as he honestly replies, “Not that we’ve thought of…”
Ross turns to you and Amelia to genuinely try to answer your question by asking first, “Who’s here tonight?”
But before anyone can give a genuine answer, your boyfriend is back to taunting Amelia by saying, “Maybe Aitch, you know. Just to get the group back together.”
You have to give your best friend props for she easily avoids Matty’s comment and acts entirely unaffected. She puts on a pout and there’s fake pity in her voice when she counters with, “Oh no, I’ve literally just given him his stuff back, that’d be awkward.” 
Turning to look at your best friend, you give her a look that you hope she reads because this could be fucking hilarious. You tap your chin with your finger and hum loudly for a few seconds, an exaggeration of thinking of something, before you start talking again, “You need someone that fits your vibes, you know. Someone that compliments you perfectly.”
“Oh, I know,” Amelia grins, offering, “Yungblud.”
It takes everything in you not to burst out laughing when you see your boyfriend’s face drop into an unimpressed look before he rubs his temple like he’s getting a headache from the mere mention of the name and curses under his breath, “Fucks sakes.”
Your blood rushes with excitement when you know exactly what to add to make this even funnier, “If my opinion counts for anything… I reckon it’d be the morally obvious thing to do.”
Knowing exactly what you’re referring to, George and Ross burst out laughing and they turn to see a smirking Matty that’s holding back his own laughter at what he admits was a good joke. You and Amelia, just like Adam, are trying not to laugh but the amused smirks on your faces give you away. It’s so hard not to laugh when George keeps giggling. 
Amelia manages to compose herself before you, but she completely makes your breath hitch when she turns to your boyfriend and asks, “Planning on kissing any fans at the after party?”
“Just the one.” Matty cheekily replies, a smirk on his face when his gaze falls on you with a hungry look on his face that threatens you to lose your composure. He shrugs nonchalantly as he adds, “Might take her to a chicken shop on the way home…”
You purse your lips as you hum, taking in what he’s saying but acting a fool, pretending not to get the hint and stating, “Lucky one.” with your brows raised in challenge. But Matty notes the hint of jealousy in your voice.
Of course, he wasn’t gonna give it to you easily, not when you’ve been teasing him and flirting with his best mates when you look like that tonight. “Wish I was taking you?” He asks, a challenging look of his own on his face. It only encourages you to play dirtier. 
“Wish Ross was taking me.” You quip back, biting your bottom lip when you see him clenching his jaw at the ease of your answer.
And thank god for Ross knowing exactly what you’re trying to do because he adds more fuel to the fire, asking with a raised eyebrow and a sultry tone, “In more ways than one?”
Even knowing that it’s just a joke, the bassist’s voice manages to get you flustered and Matty seethes seeing the effect Ross has on you even though it’s not that noticeable as you confidently reply, “Many more.”
For the sake of the bit (definitely not driven by the need to stop this and have Ross’ attention back on her), your best friend adds her two cents into the conversation, “But you gotta go on a chicken shop date first.”
“Is that a requirement?” Ross questions her with a brow raised.
“Yes.” Amelia says at the same time as you say, “No.”
Ross presses his lips together when the two of you frown at each other, trying not to laugh as he asks again, “So yes or no?”
“Yes.” Amelia says again and you gasp at her response, almost whining when you go against her words again, “No, she’s trying to sabotage me.”
“She’s dramatic.” Amelia sighs and rolls her eyes at the camera, another gasp coming from you when Matty mumbles a, “Yes.” into the mic.
Narrowing your eyes at your boyfriend for a few seconds, you turn to Amelia and say, “You wanna know drama? There’s drama?” You point an accusing finger Matty’s way and he of course feigns innocence. 
“Me?” He asks in a gasp, “Not me.” But Adam, George and Ross easily agree with you, nodding and concurring that your boyfriend is indeed a drama queen. 
“Without me your lives would be so boring.” The curly headed singer at the edge of the group says, an offended frown on his face that makes you want to laugh.
Ross rolls his eyes and scoffs, “Sure, what would we do without you?” Matty’s mouth falls open at his sarcastic words and Ross puffs his chest out like he’s not taking back what he’s just said. It’s so funny seeing them bicker like children. 
But before you entirely lose grasp on the dynamics of the interviews you usually conduct with Amelia here, you’re the one to ask yet another question. One that was completely improvised but that you hope you can steer into a funny bit. 
“Ross, will you be letting your hair down tonight?” You ask, silently hoping and praying the answer is yes. 
“Depends if we win,” Ross smiles and shrugs, “Could be on the cards.”
“You should, it looks very lucious.” Amelia proudly flirts, “Best hair in the band award would definitely go to you.”
You don’t miss the way the bassists cheeks turn to a hint of pink, and you’re half jealous that Amelia's gotten that reaction out of him. You can’t help but watch them like a TV show as you hear Matty scoff under his breath, “I don't think.” and God you hope the microphone picked it up.
“Speaking of,” To add fuel to the fire, you continue to ask the rest of the band with a smirk on your lips, “Quickfire questions for you… Matty’s worst hairstyle, go!”
The way Matty’s face falls is comical. He looks so offended you’ve even asked that, he’s never even heard you talk about his hair in a negative way except for your clear distaste for when he gels it back, hence why he’d left his curls alone tonight, all he’s done is style them a bit. 
“Easy.” George comes in straight off the bat, “When he looked like a mushroom.”
It takes everything in you not to burst out laughing at the comment and the way you see your boyfriend's head snap towards his best friend. The look of betrayal just gets more intense as your bit continues. 
“Ha, yes mushroom and microphone head over here.” Amelia agrees with George in a split second and you nod too, a wicked smirk on your face when you catch the look on your boyfriend’s face as you wish for this to continue.
“No come on, it was when he looked like a pot noodle for a few months. That was dire.” Ross groans at the memory of his blond long curls, shaking his head in disapproval as he makes eye contact with a very offended Matty.
Matty frowns looking at you and Amelia like you’ve just killed his dog as he complains, “This just turned into a slag Matty off fest or…?”
Holding back your smile, you’re thankful that it doesn’t deter the rest of the band from carrying on bullying their friend. In fact, Adam, the absolute legend, goes straight for Matty’s throat. 
“If we’re being real, that mohawk made him look like a brush,” The guitarist tells you, pulling no punches when he adds, “Was ready to sweep the floor with his head.”
The laugh that bubbles through you then is something you can’t hold back, and everyone but Matty joins in with loud cackles that make the scene feel so familiar, you almost forget that you’re at the Brits red carpet and not on the tour bus on the way to some city in the UK.
“Careful he’ll lock you back up in his basement Adam.” Amelia jokes and it makes the guitarist snort at the mention of a joke he’s seen around twitter so often.
Everyone’s attention is back on you when you tut loudly as you shake your head, “These are all very good answers but I'm afraid you’re all wrong. The right answer is clearly that rat tail back in 2020.” You fake a shiver that definitely would’ve ran down your spine if you were to see a picture of that hairstyle again.
Groans break out around the group, everyone nodding and siding with you but what you’re not expecting is for your boyfriend to narrow his eyes at you and threaten, “Carry on and it’ll come back.”
You don’t leave room for that to even become a possibility as you sternly state, “No it won't.”
Matty challenges you with a smirk on his face,“Wanna bet?” 
One that you match when you challenge him back, folding your arms, “Wanna lose a girlfriend?”
“You wouldn’t.” He says breathily, shocked at the way you just threw that out there.
Eyes narrowing again, you nonchalantly shrug and let him know he’s on, “Thin ice tonight.” and he feels the blood rushing through his veins heating up at the way you’re looking him up and down as if sizing him up.
“Why?” He frowns, questioning your words.
You shrug and your tone makes it sound like it’s obvious, “Your hair is styled.”
He scoffs entirely amused and his cheeks heat as he’s fully aware of everyone’s gazes going from him to you like a tennis match, “You expect me to win an award with my hair looking like I’ve just rolled out of bed?”
This is the only time you struggle to find your words, and your answer is so weak that it makes everyone hold back their laughter, “The fans would appreciate it more.”
It’s so transparent, Matty is the one to tease you for everyone with the most sarcastic tone he could muster, “Yeahhhh, the fans.” 
He knows damn well all that’s going through your head is how badly you want to pull on his hair, and he wants that too; for you to pull on his hair as he disappears beneath your skirt and you make a mess of his pretty face as you cum on it.
“Domesticsss.” Amelia sing-songs in the middle of it all, looking into the camera with an expression that will definitely make you burst out laughing when you’re editing this video.
As a joke of wanting to protect her from the bickering between you and your boyfriend, Ross hooks his arm with Amelia’s and pulls her away as they start shuffling towards the side of your interview area so they can escape, “Dimz, come with us.”
Your staring battle with Matty is cut short when you see them walking her past you, you wrap your fingers around her wrist and pull her back towards you, “She’s staying with me.”
Amelia giggles in the middle of the predicament she’s in, but of course Ross lets her go with an exaggerated sigh for the camera and mumbles something into the mic that you don’t catch before he lets Amelia free from his grasp and she happily scoots back closer to you. 
“Okay, that’s it I guess.” Amelia says with an awkward smile on her face, “Off you go.” 
She shoos them away and you wave at them with the same blank expression which makes them all laugh as they start walking in front of you towards your crew.And there’s a bit of relief that floods you when you know their interview is over. 
As you say a very flat, “Byeeeeee…” all you can think of is how glad you are that you didn’t break character and that it wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be to ignore your boyfriend as much as you tried to.
It’s a relief it ended up being quite funny too and you’re so happy you got all that on camera despite definitely knowing that not everything was going to be in the final cut of the video. You can’t wait to edit all this tomorrow, it’s going to be so much fun. 
“What's all that then?” Ross asks as they’re walking away, finally getting to see the display of tops which slander his best mate that has been hiding behind you the whole time.
You turn slightly and showcase it by extending your hand beside it, “Our display, do you like it?”
Ross laughs and nods his head as he starts being ushered away, “Brilliant,” Is what you hear him say before he walks further behind the cameras. George hands someone beside your camera man his microphone and follows the bassist, not before giggling about the display and Adam does the same before following George’s path.
But of course, once he sees it, Matty can’t leave it looking like that. 
“Here, thank you.” He hurriedly says as he hands the mic back, before turning to you and Amelia and come back in shot to correct your set. He doesn’t hesitate to go behind you to your display while stating confidently, “I’ll fix this for you.”
With a speed that makes you want to laugh, he plucks the top that’s folded to show the ‘Hate’ so that it shows ‘Healy’ instead and places it under the one that says ‘Matty’, leaving your display to just say ‘I (blank) Matty Healy’. 
You and Amelia watch expectantly as he reaches for another place on the shelves, grabbing something you don’t really notice before going back behind you and it’s when he places it in the empty spot that you realise what he’s done. 
Matty has put a pair of heart shaped sunglasses in between the ‘I’ and ‘Matty’, leaving your display to say ‘I heart Matty Healy’ in an improvised attempt.
He gives himself a second to look at his creation proudly, turning to the camera and giving it a thumbs up before dashing away from the place you and Amelia take on the red carpet. 
“Of course.” You scoff into the microphone, both you and your best friend shaking your head as if disapproving the whole thing.  
Amelia makes her joke audible by saying, “He can keep lying to himself.” right after. 
But you can’t go along with the joke at your boyfriend’s expense because he comes back in a hurry.
“Now what?” You quickly ask, sighing like you’re exasperated by his return.
But you’re not expecting what he’s about to do when he snatches the microphone from your hands and breathily says, “Forgot this.” into it before handing it blindly to Amelia. 
In a split second he’s wrapping an arm around your waist and cupping your face with his other hand, catching your lips in a hungry kiss and he dips forward so your arms fly around his neck, he swallows the small shriek that falls from your lips.
Everything escapes you when his lips are on yours. Suddenly, the only thing that you know is that your boyfriend has you clutched tight against him and his mouth is moving eagerly with yours, his tongue teasing your bottom lip and you part your mouth to welcome him without even thinking that this is all happening in front of the cameras which are still rolling.
You don’t even hear the surprised, “Oh!” that Amelia lets out as your kiss grows hotter in a matter of seconds, but before it can all come back to you, Matty lifts and twists you to stand back up straight and pulls back. The smack of your mouths separating pierces the silence that has fallen around you, and he drops one last peck on your lips before he runs away once again, leaving you no time to even question what’s happened. 
Amelia pushes the mic into your hands, seeing that you’re too busy being dumbstruck after that steamy kiss to continue your job for the night. The feel of the mic between your fingers brings you back halfway, your gaze moving slowly from your smirking best friend to the camera where your cameraman behind it can’t help but laugh when you’re just blinking at the lenses like a fool for a good minute.
“Ermm… I think we can say tonight has left us speechless.” Amelia quips to the camera before elbowing you to snap out of your trance. 
Jesus Christ, your boyfriend is gonna be the death of you.
~*~*~*~
“Hey baby.” Matty greets you with a smirk, he can’t help but gawk at you all over again and his teeth sink on his bottom lip when he sees those stockings and garters you have under your stunning dress. He can’t wait to go home, after party be damned. 
“How’d it go?” He asks wholeheartedly when you take a seat beside him, his hand instantly coming over your exposed thigh to rub circles on your skin.
You scoff when he acts as if he hadn’t ruined your facade when he pulled that little stunt on you earlier, “Went great other than you embarrassing me.” 
“You loved it.” Your boyfriend rolls his eyes and refutes you with ease, smirking as he states, “The romantic in you wanted to be swept off your feet tonight.” He leans in closer to you and starts kissing from your cheek down your jaw until he reaches your neck and there he nuzzles his face into it, his curls tickling you and making you inevitably erupt in giggles. 
Proud of his effect on you, he leans back slightly and steals a kiss that you just can’t deny because you’ve been thinking of that mouth since he shocked you with that kiss as he was leaving the red carpet.
He’s got you dizzy even before you take a sip of alcohol, and your skin lights up in flames from his fingers tightly clutching your neck. You can’t help but be the one to deepen the kiss, to let him know you feel just the same need as him and even considering skipping the after party entirely just to have him the way you want all night and at the earliest convenience.
But when you pull back and he catches your bottom lip between his teeth, you know that he’s got no issues trying to have you even earlier. Right now. His hand slowly falls from your neck, down your shoulder and arm until he can intertwine your fingers together.
You clench your thighs taking in the lust that has blown his pupils, the way his tongue licks at his lips like he’s indulging in the taste of your mouth even after your lips have separated. He’s eating you up with his eyes and you know him so well, you can almost hear him saying all that he wants to do with you, especially in this dress.  
“Don’t even think about it Healy, I gotta give this dress back when the event is over.” You rest your finger over his lips and warn him with a smirk that you can’t hold back. 
“But-” He fights immediately, his hand squeezing yours like it can help convince you otherwise.
You tut, “No. This is archive Vivienne Westwood and so is Amelia’s. Imagine how much I’d have to pay if I even spill a drink on it.” You tell him as you move your hand away from his lips.
“I don’t care, I can pay.” Matty says easily, rolling his eyes and smirking like he finds your concern over its cost funny or even endearing.
“Sure you can.” You sarcastically reply, a chuckle falling from your lips.
Your amusement dies when he leans back in and his lips brush yours when he starts saying, “There’s no amount of money I wouldn’t be willing to spend on you, baby.” He only leans back a few inches to look you up and down, his eyes almost rolling back in pleasure and a groan rumbling through his chest when he has an eyeful of your cleavage. “Especially not if it means I get to taste you under the skirt of this pretty dress when you look like this.”
Before your boyfriend has a chance to laugh at the way you choke on your breath when he says that, his attention is taken by a familiar face. And you must admit, you're thankful for the distraction, because you think you’d be willing to let him take you somewhere in this huge venue and have his way with you after that comment. 
Alex Turner says hello to the table and eventually stops beside Matty where they hug again and just like you, Matty was surprised to see him here. He asks about where they’re seated and of course about Flo, and when he points out the table, not too far from your own at all, your previous interaction with the artist comes back to the forefront of your mind.
Matty waves over at Flo when Alex points out their table which is diagonal and just a table further in front of yours. You smile brightly back over to her, but then you remember who she introduced you to and you immediately go serious again when you turn to your curly haired brunette.
“You didn’t tell me that Flo knew Harry Styles.” You halfheartedly punch your boyfriend's arm.
“She doesn’t really…” Matty trails off, rubbing his arm and looks at Alex for confirmation of that and he nods, which confuses you even more.
You have to ask, “She met him here with you, right?”
You remember those Brits very well. It’s hard to forget the ‘that rock n’ roll ey’ speech and the shock of seeing who you thought was Matty's girlfriend kiss Alex Turner on TV.
“Yeah, 2014 Brits and I think that’s it.” Alex nods, entirely sure of himself as he has never recalled his wife mentioning that she’d met the popstar after then. 
But you’re not having it. 
Just as George comes up and says hello to Alex too, you think back to the encounter that you witnessed not long ago and tell them what happened. That’s not something you’d blush because of one previous interaction. 
“No, she blushed when he spoke to her. They definitely know each other.” Your eyes are wide and your tone entirely confident when you tell them. Perplexed and confused is the only way you’re able to describe their faces. You continue to tell the three men, “They talked to each other like they actually knew each other. Said that they last saw each other in 2016. In Jamaica.”
At that you watch both lead singers' faces fall entirely, and for a split second you're left wondering what you said wrong as they both gormlessly look at you.
The drummer tunes into the conversation, his eyes wide and shocked, “Did you just say Jamaica?”
You nod, confirming what you heard of the earlier conversation and the three men all look between each other and a few scoffs manage to escape from their lips. What the fuck is going on? You can’t help but think. George, Matty, and Alex all look at each other with their mouths wide and Matty says a quiet, “Surely not.” before Alex’s gaze falls back on you to double check, “Are you sure she said Jamaica?”
“He said Jamaica and she agreed.” You promise them, entirely confident in your response. 
 Alex looks at Matty and almost scoffs,“I can’t fucking believe it.”
Your boyfriend is entirely just lost for words, while George is the one who laughs in disbelief, “I can’t believe we finally know who Jamaica was.” 
“Woah, what?” Your voice raises a little now, a look in your eye that Matty knows means you need to know what's happening. 
Your curly haired brunette finds his voice again, and he’s the one who tells you, “Way back when, Wheels told us all that she signed an NDA on her holiday to Jamaica because she had fun with a celebrity she couldn’t name. And she’s never once told us who it was and now you’ve spilled the beans.”
No. Fucking. Way.
“You mean that Flo and Harry Styles have…?” You trail off, keeping your voice low, not quite believing what you’re actually alluding to. 
Surely not. Surely there’s not a woman alive who can be that fucking lucky. But all three men nod, still looking dazed. Your jaw falls and all you can think is, that woman is living her best fucking life. 
“You’re kidding.” You say, hoping you’re misunderstanding because you’re about to lose your shit.
“We’re not.” Alex tells you and it’s only then that you fully believe and process what you’re hearing. You hand flies over your mouth, “Fuck off.”
And you don’t even hesitate to start walking over to her, and you do so like you’re on a mission. Which you guess you are, a recon mission most definitely. 
“Florence. Turner.” You say in what you can only describe as a teacher's voice, and you sit beside her in Alex’s seat as you scorn her as quietly as you can, “You lucky little bitch, I want to be you. You lucky cow!”
She looks appropriately confused considering you’ve given her no context for your outburst. She chuckles, “What’s all this?”
“Alex Turner. Matty Healy. Harry fucking Styles!” You hold up a finger for each of the men she’s had sex with.“Florence, how do you get these men?!”
“Shhhhh!” Her eyes go wide, and panic is clear to see in her eyes as she whisper shouts at you, “How do you know about that?!”
“I asked the guys how you knew Harry so well and they were confused saying you didn’t. But you were blushing so hard back there so I-”
“I didn’t blush.” She interrupts, entirely adamant that she didn’t but you know better. 
And you don’t blame her for blushing. If you’d fucked Harry Styles years ago and the first time you were seeing him since was at an awards show, married, and pregnant, you’d be blushing too.
“Hun,” You give her a look of disbelief, telling her honestly, “You went as red as a tomato when Jamaica was mentioned.”
“Oh god,” Her hands fly to her temples, eyes wide and then she looks at you dead in the eye. She glances over at the 1975 table where her husband also is, but she turns back to look at you before she even gets to see them. Flo has to ask, “They all know?”
You press your lips together, feeling bad you accidentally split her secret to some of her closest friends, her ex, and her husband/baby daddy. “I’m sorry,” You apologise, but she waves you off, not offended that you’ve let it slip, she’s just mortified that something else related to who she's slept with has come to light at yet another Brit Awards. 
Flo can’t help but think, At least I’ll have the baby as my excuse never to come to another.
Interrupting her thought process though, you can’t help but ask, “On a serious note, is Watermelon Sugar about you?”
“Y/N/N,” Her eyes soften and she sounds as if she's trying not to laugh when she grabs a hold of your hand and starts, “I love you but-”
“No buts!” You stop her, this is serious and there’s no way you’ll be able to function for the rest of the night without getting some clarity. “It’s about you, isn’t it?”
“I’m fairly certain I’m not the only person he’s gone down on in the last six years.” She explains slowly like she was trying to make a child understand how time works.
But you’re far too gone in shock and you can’t help but chat back, “The song came out in 2019. That's enough time to have a song written about you.” A few beats of silence pass since she doesn’t answer and you’re left trying to get a grasp of what you’ve just discovered, “Can’t believe Harry fucking Styles has gone down on you.” 
Flo blushes again, but instead of turning into a stuttering mess, she owns it and coyly smirks at you, “He did more than that.”
Your jaw falls again, “I’m so jealous!”
She can’t help but laugh at that, but she shakes her head and rests her hand on your thigh, “Love, you don’t have to be jealous, Matty's tongue is just as good.”
“Yeah, but-”
“Ah, no buts.” Flo interrupts, not letting you go down that route when she knows just how lucky you are. But she can understand the shock and the need to know, so she promises you, “I’ll tell you all about Jamaica when we’re not about to be on TV, okay?”
You hold out your little finger, wanting her to pinky swear, and it may be childish of you but you think your blossoming friendship can handle it. The gesture seems to light up the artist's eyes because she doesn’t hesitate to hook her pinky around yours, a silent promise confirmed between you. Your little moment ends up being interrupted by a husband with a knowing look in his eye. Alex shakes his head at his wife in fake disappointment, “I can’t believe you.” He looks down and takes his wife’s free hand, “All this time and it was that obvious.”
Clearly past the point of being embarrassed, Flo just shrugs and smirks at her husband, “Sorry Shakespeare.” 
“Is that the reason why you wanted to come back this year, Angel?” You watch as Alex teases her when she stands up and wraps her arms around his neck as his wrap around her waist. His smirk is huge as he presses on, “Being that your fling is up for four awards.”
“You’re up for two.” She reminds him, her fingers deftly brushing his hair from his face. 
“Two that we won't win.” Alex hums, and you can’t help but see just how enamoured he is by her. 
He looks at her as if she’s the only person in the room. As if her smile lights up the entire universe and they’re the only two that matter. She’s his entire world, and it’s so clear to see. 
“Love you all the same.” Flo grins, her fingers routing into her husband's hair. 
His whole face lights up as if it’s the first time he’s hearing her tell him. And he doesn’t hesitate for a second to tell her, “Love you more Angel.” And he leans in to kiss his stunning wife. 
They are somehow cuter than Adam and Carly, and George and Charli. They are the epitome of couple goals and it’s making you long for your boyfriend. 
So before they have a chance to fully immerse themselves into their kiss, you quickly stand and ruin their moment. 
“You’re both disgustingly cute,” You tell them and they don’t for a second look like they mind the halfhearted insult. All Flo does is hug her husband closer and melt into his arms when he kisses her temple as she looks to you. 
You bid the couple farewell when you say, “I’ll see you at the afterparty,” but you look at the artist as you remind her of her promise, “Where we will be having a conversation.”
You turn to start heading back until you hear Flo tease you, “If Matty doesn’t take you straight home to get you out of that dress.”
“He’s already been told no.” You chuckle but you’re getting flustered all over again when remembering his words from just before this whole Jamaica thing had been brought to light.
Flo notices the way you take a deep breath and how it hitches in your throat, and she can’t help but find it funny. She can see it wouldn’t take much to persuade you, so she teases you further, “It’s never stopped him beforeeee.”
Knowing she’s talking from past experience has you losing your mind. Clearly, you’re going to be in for a night to remember when you get back home. But before you give her the chance to catch you flushing over your boyfriend and his horniness, you note that Alex is frowning at his wife after that comment which you can’t help but find funny considering the long history. 
You point at her and playfully sing-song, “I think you’re on thin ice.” as you nod to her husband. You hear her laughing as you turn back and retreat back to your table, where your boyfriend is waiting for you eagerly with a huge grin and his arm over the back of your chair. 
The night grows more and more entertaining as time goes on. The performances are amazing and the speeches make you giggle, as well as the interviews around the place that are fucking hilarious thanks to the Brits feeding alcohol to celebrities all night without being frugal with it. The absolute chaos the Brits bring is just so refreshing compared to American awards. 
All of which Charli has been capturing on her digital camera, the one you have been handed multiple times tonight to capture pictures of everyone around the table. Charli has taken so many of you and Matty, you and Amelia and many selfies that have had the boys creasing all night. You cannot wait to post them on your Instagram when Charli sends them to you next week. 
It was sad seeing both the 1975 and the Monkeys not taking the trophies home but you definitely gasped and yelled when Wet Leg won and they recited Alex’s infamous rock and roll speech from 2014. You started cackling more at it when you saw Flo cry laughing at it and cheering them on all while taking the piss out of her husband even more.
By the time Selin Hizli and Daisy May Cooper made it up on the stage and presented the nominees for Best Rock / Alternative Act, you’re messing about with everyone on the table. You, of course, cheer loudly when the nominees are shown and the two bands you’re rooting for flash on the screen but you’re not expecting either of them to win solely from how the night has gone so far. 
So when the envelope is opened and the winner is announced and you hear a loud, “The 1975!” you rise from your seat like the whole table does and throw yourself into your boyfriend’s arms. It’s a quick embrace as the room erupts in cheers, but you can’t help but cup Matty’s face softly and pull him in for a short sweet kiss followed by, “Congratulations, baby.” before you hug George and Adam. 
Ross is the furthest away so you manage to just blow him a kiss, but your boyfriend steals one more from you before he and the boys head to the stage to accept their award.
You can’t help but grin watching Flo stand up to hug the boys as they walk past. But you let out a loud cackle when Matty pulls back from the hug and cups her face and pretends to go in for a proper kiss, making Flo squeal and slap your boyfriend’s arm playfully. 
Adding to taunting Flo’s Brit experiences makes everyone laugh and when Matty waves the joke off and kisses her cheek instead she accepts it and moves him on so she can hug Ross. Despite that though you see Matty lean down and whisper into Alex’s ear, and when the singer laughs at whatever your boyfriend says it makes their table burst out laughing when Matty kisses Alex’s cheek with as much emphasis as he did Flo’s. 
As you turn to hold Charli while you watch the boys hug the actresses on stage, you glance back at Flo and Alex and cackle when Florence unfolds the top and puts it over her chest and sticks her tongue out at you. ‘I hate Matty Healy’ proudly being waved for all to see. 
Charli turns to see it too and laughs with you, catching Amelia and Carly’s attention who also join in the giggles. You, Charli, and Amelia grab yours from where you put them near the centre of the table and hold yours up to your chests too so you stand in alliance with the Monkeys like you promised. 
People around you laugh, and Carly takes a picture of the three of you like that, reminding you that you have to get a picture of the three of you and Florence in your tops before you leave. Looking back at the Monkeys table, you blow Flo a kiss that she reciprocates and Alex laughs as he shakes his head at his wife. 
Your attention goes back to the stage when you hear your boyfriend start talking and you put the top back on the table as tears well up in your eyes at the sight. You’re so fucking proud of him and the boys, all of them incredibly talented gifting everyone their art wholeheartedly every time without fail, their passion for what they do seeping through every song they make and that’s what you’ve always adored about them.
Your chest swells with pride and your eyes are teary, you manage to grab your phone and start recording as they get off stage and come back to the table. 
Matty hadn’t been able to tear his gaze off you when he was up there and he still isn’t able to stop looking at you, beaming at him with those eyes of yours gleaming under the lights. 
Oxygen escapes him all over again when all of you come back into view, and he’s so glad you’re still recording because he knows you’ll have captured the way you turn him entirely stupid at the mere sight of you. That gorgeous face of yours that he wants to kiss until you push him away, that neck that he’s dying to mark up, that body that makes him lose control of any logic, those arms and hands that hold him the way he’s been craving his whole life. 
He loves you so fucking much, his chest tightens at the thought of telling you right now. 
But before he can even open his mouth, you’re throwing yourself on his arms again and pouncing on his lips without a second to doubt your actions.
Your arms wrap around his neck and his wrap around your waist, the kiss tastes salty from the stray tears that have finally managed to run down your cheek and sweet like all the wine you’ve drank tonight. 
Despite the very large crowd you’ve got around you, you haven’t got it in you to hide away from the PDA this time. You kiss each other slowly and tenderly, like you have all the time in the world. 
And well, you do because Matty can’t think of anywhere else he’d rather than with you. Holding you like this, kissing you like this, sharing his proudest moments with you just like he has shared his struggles with you. 
He fucking loves you, adores you with all he has and nothing’s ever felt so right.
“I adore you.” He mumbles into your lips when he breaks the kiss, your chests rising and falling in rhythm as you take deep breaths.
“Adore you too.” You say back with a massive smile before catching his lips again.  Matty’s heart feels like it’s about to burst at its seams, and it’s nothing to do with the award that he won only two minutes ago. He’s got you and he knows that having you by his side will forever be more than enough. Nothing and no one can compare and he’s certain not a single thing could make him happier. He loves you so so much, all he can do is hope that when he says it, you will make his dreams come true by saying those three words back.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
A/N: We really hope you enjoyed this one! So sorry it took so long, we promise that it won't take that long for the next one. Can't believe we're coming to the end of this fic, we'll be getting emotional over it soon ahaha. Thank you so much for baring with us and for reading. Please let us know what you thought and we hope you loved it xx
P.S: NRIACC girlies, hope you enjoyed this one too xoxoxoxox 
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torialefay · 4 months
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☀️ Everyday Idol 🌙 (Chapter 3)
✨ head on over to my masterlist if you haven’t read chapters 1 & 2!
✨possible bangchan x reader (f), possible jungkook x reader (f)
✨wc: 4.3k
✨ friends to lovers? possible love triangle? future angst and smut??? definitely fluff.
✨ summary: JYP Entertainment launches a new show and y/n somehow gets recruited. Even though she doesn’t particularly care about the outcome of the show, she does particularly care about one of the artists she met: Chris from Stray Kids. Does Chris feel the same or will a potential relationship with one of his friends overcome what y/n feels for him?
✨ author’s notes: pls pls pls let me know if you’d prefer shorter, more frequent chapters like this one, OR longer chapters posted about once per week. i’m heavily debating lol
✨ warnings: cursing from time to time.
Previous Chapter Recap:
Dang, another instagram notification. Maybe Jungkook WAS really into you. You tapped to open the chat again.
gnabnahc: Hey! I know this is random, but if you have any time tomorrow, could you meet me in my studio? I’ll be around in the morning and at lunch after hair & makeup. If you have time of course, I understand if not. I just wanted to talk to you about something.
‘Good fucking God,’ your heart dropped. “Anna… I need you. NOW!” you screamed.
——————————————————————————————————
Y/n’s POV:
Anna quickly bolted into the bathroom, thinking you’d accidentally cut yourself shaving or something. She was determined not to let you bleed out. Med student to the rescue!
When she arrived, she was surprised to see you totally fine, but also totally naked, sitting on the lid of the toilet.
“Okay… WHY?” She looked down at you, eyebrows raised.
“Just come here,” you motioned for her with your arm. You extended your phone out for her to grab it.
“This is some Hollywood movie shit,” she laughed, handing the phone back to you.
“This isn’t funny!” you exclaimed. “What in the hell am I supposed to do?”
“Well do you want to see him?”
“Duh.”
“Then you’re going to find a way to see him. Just tell him you can’t in the morning and that you can late into lunch.”
“Yeah, only one problem. I’m supposed to be meeting Jungkook for lunch,” you rolled your eyes, now wondering if she had paid attention at all to your prior conversation.
“Okay, so tell Jungkook beforehand that you don’t have much time because of your schedule, and then go meet Chan. Who says you can’t have it all?” she grinned, raising one eyebrow.
‘Okay, good plan. Solid plan,’ you thought. ‘Unless…’
“Okay but I don’t know how close Chan & JK are. What if JK is telling him that we’re getting lunch together? Then I just look like a two-timing bitch.”
“Alright, and how do you know that JK hasn’t already told him and Chan is going behind his back?” ‘Ain’t no way he’d do that,’ you thought. “I’m just saying, in all of your time with Chan, he never once mentioned JK. In all of our time with Changbin and Felix, they never brought him up either. I honestly don’t think they’re that close. Both of their fandoms would have figured it out by now if they are.”
‘Alright, let’s look,’ you thought, pulling your phone in front of your face again. You went to “X” (you still couldn’t get used to calling it that instead of Twitter) and typed in “jungkook bangchan”. Surely the detectives on here would know a thing or two. You scrolled and scrolled. A few tweets about the same thing- the 97 liners grabbing dinner together, but it was more than just the two of them. Not a single picture of them together otherwise. Not a story about seeing them together either. Maybe Anna had a point.
“Fuck it, I’m gonna do it,” you said, not knowing where your newfound confidence came from. Anna started giggling and took a quick seat beside you on the edge of the hotel’s bathtub.
Your fingers began to type quickly, not allowing yourself time to think. Or rather, overthink.
Hey Chris! I could stop by late after lunch? I’m not sure of a specific time yet, but I can text you later when I find out?
Send.
“Okay, it’s done,” you breathed out… You sat there for a moment, absorbing all of the feelings and trying to get the nerves out.
“Pinch me,” you said to Anna with a huff coming out from your bottom lip.
She reached over, laughing, nipping you in the arm. “I’m so happy for you I could cry,” she continued, keeping that same big smile on her face. “Butttt,” she leaned in closer and began to whisper, “whoever you don’t take, just remember I’m single.” She winked and you started to laugh, pushing her away.
“Whatever,” you said jokingly. “BUT I have to shower. Now I have two guys to impress.”
——————————————
Chan’s POV:
‘It’s alright Chris, don’t be nervous,’ he thought to himself, still planted in his studio chair. ‘The worst she can say is no. Well I guess she could laugh at it and tell all of her friends that you’re whipped. In which case, you’re fucked. But she wouldn’t do that, right?’
Chan’s mind got the best of him and he decided to start pacing. He needed to get his mind on something else… but what? His new song! Yes, his new song. He had been working on a hook and just couldn’t figure out where he wanted to go with it. ‘I need Jisung,’ he thought. He sent a quick text his way to see if he was busy. He couldn’t help but to re-read the message he had sent you. He clicked on your profile to view all of the pictures. Your dogs, your friends, your birthday party. He pictured what he would look like included in each photo. He let his mind wonder, looking at one photo in particular. You had been at the beach. He didn’t stick to that photo because of anything you were wearing. You were fully clothed. There was just something about it. The way your smile was lit up like you had not a worry in the world. The way the sun cast a golden color all over your beautiful face. The fact that the beach was Chan’s favorite. He thought about what it would be like to be there with you. Walking along the shore, getting to know you better. What was your family like? How did you like your eggs cooked? Where was your favorite place in the world? He let himself get lost in the scenario.
*BUZZ*
Your instagram username flashed across the top of his screen. He clicked as soon as he possibly could.
Y/n’s Instagram username:
Hey Chris! I could stop by late after lunch? I’m not sure of a specific time yet, but I can text you later when I find out?
‘Yes Chris, Yes! See, it was just a rumor. A dumb rumor. I mean JK would have told you since you were the reason they had met. He couldn’t possibly be that into her after meeting her for 2 minutes. You worried for no reason.’ He was elated. Ecstatic even. He looked down to his phone, stupid grin on his face.
‘Felix, you’re fucking dead for giving me a heart attack like that,’ he thought.
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The little shit quit responding. ‘He’s got about 4 hours to text back before I get home and jump him.’ Chan thought. He sunk down into his chair. All of his excitement was now replaced with confusion. This was gonna be a longggg night in the studio.
——————————————————————
Felix’s POV:
“SUCK ON THAT!” Felix screamed sarcastically. He had spent the last 2 hours plopped on the couch next to Changbin. They made it a point to get together once a week, no matter how busy, to play a few video games together. Today’s choice: League. Felix lowkey kinda sucked, and he knew that. But he didn’t care because Binnie sucked even more.
“No, you suck on this,” Changbin yelled back, putting Felix in a headlock and giving him a noogie.
“Ah! Ah! Ahhhhh!” Felix screamed for help, trying not to die laughing. “Someone help me!” he yelled, while grabbing at Changbin’s arms to rip him off. It was no use. No matter how much Felix flailed his body and thrashed left and right, Changbin’s hold was even tighter. Eventually, he ran out of energy and decided to just lie there. Changbin released him right after.
“So you admit defeat,” Changbin raised his eyebrow. Felix had a dazed look on his face, hair fluffed up from Bin’s relentless hand movements. He was just grappling for his breath back at this point.
“I’ll take that as a yes! Yay, next round!” Changbin said enthusiastically, turning back around to the tv.
‘Brain need oxygen. Can’t form word,’ Felix thought to himself. ‘Lol I can’t believe I just thought that. Felix you so silly.’ He smiled and focused his attention on the tv now too. Well, for a split second. Until Chan came barging in.
“Felix!” he called, like he was a tornado coming through the front door. He walked a few paces before setting foot into the living room. Felix just looked up with a puzzled expression on his face.
“Mate! Why did you do that?!” He walked over and snatched Felix’s controller from his hand.
“Damn, if you wanted to play, you just had to ask!” Felix said back seriously. You could see the annoyance growing louder on Chan’s face.
“Oh my gosh Felix. Your text, cunt!”
“My… OHHH my text,” he smirked while (horribly) trying to look inconspicuous.
“You better tell me what you know right now,” Chan threw his fist down. He was trying to “act” mad, but honestly he was really bad at acting. He actually was mad.
“I don’t know anything,” Felix smirked again. “I swearrrr. Don’t you trust me?” He smiled, squinting his eyes up at Chan with a suggestive look on his face.
“No I don’t, you little shit! Now tell me what you know!”
“Never!” Felix pouted.
“Tell me!”
“NO!”
“Tell me!”
“NOOO!”
“I will break this controller, don’t try me!”
“No you won’t.”
“Yes I will.”
“No you won’ttttt.”
“Yes I will.”
“Bet, do it then.”
Chan lifted the controller in the air and huffed out... “You’re right, I won’t.” He reached it back down to Felix.
Felix, now satisfied, took the controller and happily bobbed his head from side to side. “Thanks Channie-hyung!” he teased.
“Fuck off,” Chan retorted. ‘I hate being a father,’ Chan thought as he turned around to storm out. Once he was out the door, Changbin turned his body around to Felix.
“What don’t you know anything about?” Chanbin laughed.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Felix said with a flirty smile. “All I’m saying is it involved your mentee. That’s all, can’t talk about it anymore! New game, let’s go!” Felix avoided Changbin’s stares at all cost, fixating on the tv. Eventually Bin turned around to face it too, continuing on like nothing ever happened.
‘Fuck, that was close. Felix baby, you’ve gotta stop being so messy… Lmao who am I kidding, I love this shit.’
———————————————————————————————
Y/n’s POV: The next day
You arrived to the JYP building 10 minutes early to your professionalism training. You knew you would be able to see the finalized schedule first thing when you got there. All you knew so far was professionalism training at 9, hair and makeup, lunch, and begin shooting intros for the show. You had no clue how long each would take though.
You ran up in front of the big bulletin board posted outside of the conference room. You saw the agenda:
• 9:00 AM- Professionalism Training; Level 5 conference room
• 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM- Hair and Makeup; Level 7 shooting room; See list below for names and scheduled times
• 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM- Lunch break
• 2:00 PM- Shooting program material with mentors; Level 10 shooting rooms #1-5
• 8:00 PM- Dinner and drinks at Nine Mile Restaurant (see email for location and directions)
You quickly scrolled through the list of names below to see when you’d be scheduled for hair & makeup:
• Y/l/n, y/f/n: 11:00 AM
‘Fuck yeah,’ you thought. ‘Getting hair and makeup done first. It shouldn’t take over an hour, right? Surely not. They have new people scheduled for 12 and 1, so yeah, you’re good. No more than an hour.’ You quickly took your phone out to send a message to the 2 boys waiting to hear back from you.
To: abcdefghi__lmnopqrstuvwxyz
Hey, I should be good to go around noon today. Do you still want to meet me outside the JYP building?
SEND.
To: gnabnahc
I could meet you around 1-1:30 today? Does that work for you?
You let out a hot breath and headed into the conference room. There, you found Anna who had already walked in while you told her you’d check for both your names on the bulletin board. You saw a couple of other girls you had met as well through the night with Stray Kids. They were Seungmin and Han’s mentees. You had all instantly connected that night and you were excited to spend more time with them.
Once you were settled in, you gave into the gossip that everyone was discussing.
“Yeah, I heard her dad works for JYPE high up in marketing and that’s how she got in,” Sunnie whispered to the group.
“OMG I heard that too!” Anna bounced up and down. “I’m not even sure where I heard it from.”
“Literally same. I also heard that one of the new cast members was,” Kara leaned down low, “hooking up with Jungkook,” she giggled. You had to physically stop yourself from your jaw dropping on the floor. You were not SLEEPING with Jungkook. You hadn’t even had fucking lunch with him yet!
“OMG who?!” Sunnie questioned.
“I don’t know, it’s just what I heard some of the other girls saying. I don’t think anyone knows,” Kara added. “Which meanssss, we’re gonna have to keep an eye out for Jeon Jungkook ladies. See who the culprit is,” she laughed.
You and Anna looked at each other, trying to fake a laugh right along with them. You were sure she could see the panic in your eyes.
Suddenly, you heard a voice come over the speakers and the lights began to dim. ‘Let’s get this training over with.’
———— 3 hours later ————
Abcdefghi__lmnopqrstuvwxyz: Out front waiting on you :) I’ve got on a black mask and baseball cap in case you don’t recognize me. That’s kind of the point haha
y/n: On my way down!
Your nerves were starting to get to you, but you tied them down. This was just two people getting lunch after all. That’s literally it. Plus, why would you be nervous anyway? You were the one that made a great first impression anyway. He was the one who had something to prove.
Plus, not to brag, but you looked damn good. The hair and and makeup department definitely knows what they’re doing.
*DING*
You arrived at the ground floor and quickly made your way out of the main exit. You scanned your head first to the right, looking for a black cap, then to the left. The problem was… There were like 10 of them.
‘Fucking hell, why does everyone have to dress the same?’ you thought. You wondered off to the left, seeing if you could get a better look. Suddenly, a black figure appeared next to you. You turned to see a bright-eyed Jungkook, mask covering the lower half of his face, stood straight and proud with the most beautiful bouquet you’d ever seen. Pinks, purples, blues, greens. All of your favorite colors incorporated into one. Was this a sign?
“Y/n! Hi! I brought these for you,” you couldn’t see his mouth, but by how scrunched up his eyes got, you assumed he was smiling.
“Oh my goodness, they’re beautiful! You didn’t have to do that!” You smiled up at him and went in for a side hug. Surprisingly, it wasn’t even awkward. Jungkook just gave off such a charming, confident vibe.
“I wanted to. I saw them and automatically thought of you.” You blushed down into the bouquet you were now holding.
“You’re too sweet,” you flashed the biggest grin. ‘Okay, so maybe he’s better than I thought.’ “Where do you want to go?”
“How do you feel about bibimbap?”
“I love it!” You’d only had it once, but you assumed you’d still love it. “But just so you know, I really don’t have that much time today. I need to try to be back in an hour or so.”
“I completely understand. I’m just happy you could pencil some time in for me,” his hand grazed the side of yours, sending a shock up your arm. “I was gonna say that my favorite bibimbap place is right around the corner and I’d love to take you there.”
“Sounds good to me! Let’s go!”
He had a smile painted across his face looking down at you with the pretty flowers in your hand. You were just as beautiful as he remembered. “Follow me. And hold on to me if you need to. Wouldn’t want you getting lost in this crowd,” he chuckled, giving you a wink.
Your heart fluttered. Why was it fluttering?
Jungkook turned to lead you around the street. It was pretty packed, but what else would you expect in the middle of Seoul at lunch time. You could tell that JK was looking down slightly, making sure he didn’t get recognized. You ended up actually reaching to hold onto the back of his coat to make sure you didn’t get separated. You weren’t about to fight your way through the crowd to get a view of every Korean man currently wearing a black coat, hat, and mask. It would take all day.
You both made your way down the busy street, finally able to squeeze next to each other and talk about how your day was going so far. You know, all the basic boring stuff that you had to get out of the way. You soon reached a set of narrow, tall stairs almost hidden away.
“This way,” Jungkook said, taking the first step up. You looked down to see how tall the stairs were and mannnn you thought you were going to have to catapult yourself up.
Jungkook saw the hesitancy in your eyes and quickly leaned the upper half of his body down, holding one hand out for you to grab onto. You graciously took it, as he slowly ascended, making sure you followed him every step of the way. Once you reached the top, you finally jumped up onto the platform of the restaurant, now pressed right up to JK. He still had your hand in his.
“Nice job for a first timer,” he joked, squeezing your hand before he gently put it down and let it go. It was one of the most tender things you’d ever felt. He was handling you with such care.
You followed him as he walked a few steps to the door. He opened it for you and let you step inside first. Your eyes took a moment to focus as you acclimated to the new atmosphere. ‘It’s dark…’ you thought to yourself, eyes now tuning in. ‘And damn, it’s NICE.’ You looked around the the swanky bar to the left, wall topped off with liquors you kne you’d never afford in your lifetime- even on a doctor’s salary. Black tablecloths covered each table, with booths being tucked away into walls. Candles were the main source of the lighting and made for a seductive atmosphere.
“Hello, I had a reservation for Jeon Jungkook,” JK told the host at the stand on the right. She was beautiful, in formal all black attire and long, black hair.
“Of course. Right this way,” she stepped out from behind her podium and led you both to a booth at the far back of the restaurant. It was tucked out of the way, no other tables reaching beyond it. No one would have a reason to walk this way unless delivering food to the table directly.
“Will this do?” she looked to Jungkook.
“It’s perfect, thank you,” he smiled as she left.
“Here, let me help you,” he reached out to you, gently taking your flowers and setting them on the far side of one of the booth’s benches. He walked behind you to grab onto one arm of your coat, allowing you to slip out easily. He held onto the coat and placed it next to the flowers.
“Watch out, it’s a step up,” he said, reaching for your hand. What is up with all these steps?
You looked into his eyes, silently thanking him for the thoughtfulness, while taking his hand. He led you over the two steps to the table and held tightly as you took the step up and over. Once you were settled in, he looked satisfied and took his place on the opposite side.
The rest of the meal was a whirlwind. You learned so many things about him. First, that he is an absolute devourer of bibimbap. Second, that he was actually really funny and down to earth… Charming too, but were you really going to admit that? Third, he actually had a super cute, bunny-like smile that popped up every time he caught you staring at him for too long.
You actually got along very well. ‘What a pleasant surprise,’ you thought. Conversation was just so easy with him. Maybe you didn’t get into the deep stuff with him like you did with Chan, but so what? This was only lunch. What did you expect him to do, give you his entire life story? He oozed confidence and playfulness, something you were envious of. Maybe, after more time with him, you thought you could learn to have those qualities as well.
You were both laughing over a story of how you accidentally cursed at someone in Korean on your second day here when all of a sudden, your phone lit up. 1:02 PM. Dang, it went by that fast?
“I think I’m running out of time,” you looked down with puppy dog eyes, motioning him to look at your phone.
“Awww, it’s alright. We better get you back on time though. The last thing I need is someone from JYP on my ass,” he laughed.
A small laugh left your mouth too as you both moved to exit the booth. He helped you put your coat back on and placed the flowers back into your hands. He grabbed 3 bills of 50,000 won out of his wallet, and placed it on top of the bill on the table. ‘Damn, this man’s a good tipper.’
“Here,” you scrambled to grab your own wallet out of your coat pocket. “At least let me pay half,” you started to take some money out.
“No, no y/n,” he grasped onto your forearm for a short moment. “Put your money up. Please. It’s on me.”
“Are you sure? I promise I don’t mind one bit to pay. Let me just-“ you stopped talking as you watched his eyebrows lift and his eyes get wide, small grin on his face as if saying “watch yourself now.” He was still holding tightly to your arm, not letting you lift it.
“Okay, okay,” you smiled, putting your wallet away. “But I owe you!”
He smiled at that. “Come on, let’s get you back.”
——————————————————
Chan’s POV:
He had been a nervous wreck thinking about seeing you. Thinking about what he should say in order for you to be interested in him. He knew through your messages to him that you’d be there closer to 1:15, so he made sure he’d get back in time.
He tried to calm his nerves by going out to grab an iced tea really quickly at a local shop. He couldn’t stomach any food- not right now. Once he finally got the chilly beverage in his hands, he walked his way back out into the cold. Only a couple minute walk from the company building.
‘Alright Chris, pull yourself together. Whatever you say, she’s gonna understand. She’s great, so of course she’s gonna understand. She may even be just as nervous as you, you never know.’ He let his mind wonder. He started to picture a scenario. One of you seated next to him in his studio. He had finally worked up the courage to ask you on a date- a proper date. Maybe he jumbled up the words a little bit, but you found it endearing. You nodded your head excitedly, saying how you’d love to go on a date with him. He would take you somewhere nice, somewhere you would get dressed up for him. You’d drink red wine and talk about anything and everything- what you loved and what your passions were. Your eyes would have a certain sparkle that only happened when you looked at him. By the end of the date, you’d be asking when you could see him again. He’d hold your hand, your warm little hand, as you left to say your goodbyes.
As wonderful as the daydream was, Chan suddenly snapped out of it. He froze, standing rigid, then almost tumbling back. There’s no way.
There you stood in front of him. With all the beauty that you were. But you were with someone. A man. Chan squinted to see what he could make out. Jungkook? Fuck, that was definitely Jungkook.
You were smiling up at him and clung onto him for a long hug. He gave in, leaning his head down to plant a small kiss on the top of your forehead. You giggled, waved goodbye, then ran inside the company building.
With that, Chan felt his heart shatter for the very first time.
Through the building’s glass walls, he watched as you made your way a little further, then stopped to bring your phone out. 10 seconds later, he felt a buzz from his phone
From: y/n’s instagram
Hey, I’m here :) Should I head on up to you?
He wanted to cry.
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✨ Continue to ➡️ Chapter 4
✨if you enjoyed, please consider liking, commenting, or re-blogging <3
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I really REALLY hate those kinds of stupid “hot take” posts. I think they’re just garbage to purposely farm more discourse to cause infighting, but I’ve been holding this in for so long and I need to get it out of my system so here it goes.
Alastor fans are allowed to dislike Valentino. Valentino was made to be a dislikable Villain while Alastor BY VIV’S OWN WORDS is a chaotic neutral antihero based off of Dexter with a moral code. Of course people are gonna like Alastor more than Valentino. The antihero/vigilante is a very popular beloved trope. I mean just look at Magneto and Venom.
You guys claim to want more nuanced characters but when we try and tell you that Alastor is more nuanced BASED OFF OF EVIDENCE FROM THE CREATOR and little possible context clues in the show we get accused of “babying/woobifying him”(as if Val fans haven’t done that to Val). This isn’t a hit piece against all Val fans/simps btw. I may hate that moth, but you guys should be allowed like him without receiving hate and or death threats.
It’s not “hypocrisy” to dislike Valentino or the Vees and like Alastor for the reasons I said above and the four of them aren’t comparable. Yeah they share some traits but overall the only thing Alastor and the Vees have in common are the mistreatment of the souls they own. Like I said, Val fans shouldn’t be attacked for liking him but the thing is…if you’re gonna preach those words then do the same for Alastor fans/simps because we get attacked too.
(Again it’s not all Val stans but it sure it a lot of them. I’ve all so seen Val haters do it too.) Yall claim not to harass people over fictional characters yet will go under Alastor posts and or discussion threads and be like “Uhm actually him and Valentino are the same🤓☝️”.
“He’s worse than Val” “Why can’t we just have a good villain” “Just accept that Alastor is a villain stop babying him” when we’re just minding our own business. Not to mention people going under fanart of Angel! Alastor and being like “erm actually he’d never go to heaven🤪”.
Along with yall bullying the hell out of Alastor selfshippers/simps and using tumblr sexyman as an insult(which reaks of internalized misogyny btw because majority of Alastor simps are women + women are always the first to be made fun of when it comes to characters that Classify as tumblr sexymen being found attractive by them or any character you personally wouldn’t find attractive.)
And yall going around and keep calling Alastor ugly under posts about people gushing about him and i don’t mean lighthearted jokes either because i make fun of the back of his head sometimes too. And full blown harassment. When an Alastor fan provided evidence of Alastor being a more nuanced character which were clips from Viv’s streams, people in the comments and qrts were being extremely rude and dismissive. It got so bad that op deleted the og tweet.
Don’t go around and claim to be against cringe culture but then make fun of people for finding Alastor attractive. And for goodness sake STOP FUCKING CALLING HIM A SLAVE OWNER. And yes he owns souls but that doesn’t matter.
Alastor is canonically half black and its overall disgusting to slap the label “slave owner” onto him knowing damn well that he grew up in the Jim Crow era of America in the Deep South of Louisiana. His existence as a mixed black person back then was basically considered an abomination. With how terrible it was for black people back then, Alastor probably bore witness to a lot of messed up shit growing up and if that’s the case then it’s no wonder he’s so messed up in the head.
This type of behavior has been going on since the days where we only had the pilot and it’s only gotten worse since the show came out. As soon as I saw that scene with husk and Alastor in hell’s greatest dad I automatically knew what was coming. I’m not saying that Alastor Is a good person nor am I saying that what he did to husk was ok. But to go after/make fun of Alastor fans,purposely denying evidence of his character while in the same breath preach against bullying people over liking certain characters makes YOU the hypocrites. So much for anti-harassment. I’m tired. Bye.
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whitehotharlots · 7 months
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On one of the staggeringly large number of white lady academics who pretended to be not-white
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In a sad attempt to keep up engagement, I've decided to post some things I wrote in personal correspondence over the last few years but never bothered to translate into full-fledge posts. Going through these emails, I was astounded at how much I've lost the ability to process the timeline of political events since COVID. Things that I would have sworn happened a couple of months ago actually happened 5 years ago; stuff that seems like ancient history was actually just from this past summer, etc. I think there's some value in recapitulating some of these events, give ourselves a chance to reflect on how much and how little things have evolved.
This piece was originally written in early 2021:
I'm not in STEM and I only pay as much attention to MeToo bullshit as I need to, so the MeTooSTEM movement and its drama passed me by. Basically, it was started or popularized by a lady neuroscientist named BethAnn McLaughlin. By early last year she began facing the type of predictable criticisms that inevitably wreck all leftist movements, regardless of legitimacy. Basically people agreed with her movement but were upset that she had too much of a leadership role, didn't center the correct voices, sometimes criticized people from more disadvantaged groups, etc. Here's a neat example, from the piece linked above:
Last month, McLaughlin tweeted angrily at Hontas Farmer, a transgender woman of color who teaches physics at the City Colleges of Chicago. In a thread about student–faculty relationships, Farmer noted that it would be “unenforceable to forbid relationships.” “Get off my time line with your pro-preying on students garbage,” McLaughlin responded. “Grown ups are talking. #STEMTrollAlert.”
While this lady seems like a vicious shithead, it's important to note that this type of behavior is common in woke discourses. It's the natural result of a morally certain culture is which all dissent is considered proof of evil. In this case, I happen to agree with the trans woman: while student-teacher relationships are gross, blanket bans are unenforceable and will most likely wind up harming the least empowered teachers. But this teacher's concerns were only allowed to stand because of her status as a trans woman--Laura Kipnis made the exact same argument several years ago, before the MeToo furor had really kicked off, and it nearly destroyed her career.
The point here is that no one is actually arguing for or against the merit or logic of certain positions; it's all jockeying over who is even allowed to have a position in the first place, and then demanding that everyone else defer to this person's position, which is automatically validated by their identity statuses.
Nothing in the Buzzfeed profile seems very damning or specific. I'm not a fan of MeToo, but we see here the same general hatred of strong leadership that seems to plague all left spaces. Arguments in regards to how funding should be spent and what actions should be prioritized--things that happen in literally any organization of more than a few people and can only be resolved by designating leadership--are presented in terms of bodies and spaces and centering voices and yada yada yada. Once again, it's not about the morality or efficacy of the actions taken by this organization. It's about whose identity imbues them with moral authority.
Buzzfeed seemed to have a particular hard on for this lady so they posted another piece in February of this year, documenting even more dysfunction in her movement. Again, she seems like a shithead and her movement's goals are usually not good, but the accusations against her were still vague, woke bullshit that amounted to people framing an organizational power struggle as a civil rights issue. And this is where things get interesting...
What does a white lady shithead do when she finds herself automatically unable to criticize people who fall above her on the hierarchy of oppression? Why, she pretends to be an indigenous lady shithead! She fabricated the existence of an ASU professor of Hopi descent who posted under the name of sciencing_bi. Sciencing_bi just so happened to agree with everything the white lady posted, and was fiercely protective of the white lady when she found herself getting attacked by non-white people.
But then, sadly, the made up Hopi professor succumbed to Lady Corona last week. Woke STEM twitter mourned her passing by angrily blaming ASU for their failure to protect employees of color. This caused ASU to release a statement saying that, uhh, no one has died and they have absolutely no idea what any of these lunatics are talking about.
Just--dear god. At what point does hubris give way and become delusion? How insulated must someone feel to believe that they can not only create but kill off a fictional persona whose primary utilitity is to brown-wash your own opinions?
These are the people who have become the morality police of the twenty twenties. These people are the ones who decide what you can or cannot say or believe. They are insane and and they are stupid, and they control our world.
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gacha-incels · 24 days
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thoughts on stellar blade and the model?
imo right now it’s occupying a similar space as something like that game with the “sexy” faceless robots, atomic heart. hailed by misogynists and racists as an “antidote” to any sort of diversity in videogames, gameplay very rarely discussed if at all, eventually after release it ends up back in obscurity. it was never going to be “just a game” regardless (and I do find a certain naïveté in discussing it as such) since the developer Shift-Up (most known for gacha NIKKE) has engaged in feminist ideological verification. There’s a reason so many posts about it say shit like “5 minutes in already GOTY”. I do have some overarching thoughts on the entire scenario.. because stellar blade is created by an east asian company there is an added layer of fetishization regarding the female character designs among western men who view japanese and korean women as the remaining women who are “truly feminine”. In their eyes this is a petite, young, thin, subservient dollfaced woman who, by these “feminine” traits, reaffirms the man’s “masculinity” and therefore his place at the top of the patriarchal hierarchy enforced by societal gender roles. When women push back against these dehumanizing and racist stereotypes the men will condescendingly say they have been “ruined” by western feminists - showing again they believe east asian women cannot think for themselves. I don’t think it’s just a coincidence you can find similar misogynistic arguments made by western “sex tourist” or “mail order bride” (their terms) purchasing men throughout the years. This is of course only lightly touching on the dynamics and intersection of misogyny/racism/colonialism/class, not to mention women’s movements themselves in east asian countries etc. for the sake of brevity at this moment we’ll just look at some aspects of the western man, I believe a lot of us have seen reactions from this group regarding stellar blade and the previous “gamer gate”.
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What I find illuminating here is twofold- the fact that as the (in this case, typically white, esp. for the earlier dates) western woman gained and fought for more rights, the (same note) western man felt emasculated as women became even slightly closer to them in society (“he criticizes the desire of women for autonomy, independence, and equality”) and secondly, his strong “masculinity” needs constant personal and societal affirmation which can only be sated by having the lesser “feminine” gender roles subjected upon women. in many cases he enacts this “domination” via the “purchase” of poor, trafficked foreign women which we can also see as a colonial and racist action made upon her body.
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This type of attitude can be seen reflected in the type of language reactionary men use when discussing “east asian” games as opposition to “western” games. the (in this example, stellar blade) korean game is said to show “beautiful, feminine, unpolitical” female character designs while the western games are characterized as having “ugly” female characters, designed to be that way on purpose, who have “masculine” bodies and attitudes, who exist solely because of “politics”. the pushback and valorization is done by these male gamers because they want, and need, to reinforce starkly polarized gender roles that put them in control. they think there’s a “war” on their enjoyment of “beautiful women”. when they read criticism of the hypersexualized female character designs in games they (in self-absorption) understand it as women telling them men are evil for being straight and/or male. the belief is men must be obviously “masculine” and women must be hyper “feminine”, only this way can the first group be recognized and dominate the second. they believe it’s “nature” as you can see in the above tweet. this is why I touched upon male vs female character design in the post about gacha designs- the sexes are typically starkly different from one another. the strong, sturdy and clothed males stand in polar opposition to the lithe female characters whose designs put heavy emphasis on tits and ass. when a male character is designed in a way to unequivocally be male and yet have clothing that follows the typical sexualized female attire, there are these types of men that erupt in anger as we saw with Genshin’s Lyney and Limbus Company’s summer Sinclair. when a female character doesn’t have a sexy enough outfit (LC Ishmael summer, GI Shenhe CNY costume that incels believed to have “removed” tit jiggle, Samsung Hu Tao outfit that doesn’t “show bellybutton”) the artist gets accused of being a feminist.
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A female character like in Stellar Blade wears a body suit essentially showing her naked figure - she has no imperfections, she’s thin with no muscle mass, she’s petite, her tits jiggle with every movement, her ass is front and center to the game’s player. this objectification flatters the male player- this is a woman who you control, an object created solely for your desire, who will never challenge your sense of superiority, who will always be “for you” first in a game made by men for an audience of men. the fact that this type of game is created , marketed and sold is, in and of itself, a testament to male domination of entertainment. There can never be comparison, hypothetical or not, to sexualization of men in entertainment for women- entire societies would have to be changed in order to even begin considering this. gendered socialization literally starts in the womb. we live in a patriarchal society completely saturated with representation of women and girls’ bodies plastered everywhere- hypersexualized, objectified, brutalized, used for advertising, sold as products, raped for entertainment, dominated by men. there’s no way you can entertain even the hypothetical of “what if the roles were reversed?” while living in a society like this, let alone compare some baldur’s gate 3 guy taking his shirt off to the stellar blade woman running around in a hypersexualized skintight bodysuit. this “shirtless guy” argument is DOA.
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I see people ask “do these men even enjoy games or art?” I think at least psychologically what a lot of them they enjoy the most is the feeling of domination and power that presents itself within an entertainment industry that is so catered to their fantasies. This is why they see it as such an “attack” when games are made without as much pandering to them. they need to dominate all parts of culture which is why they create such violent backlash to anything they perceive as challenging this, it’s why Anita Sarkeesian had such unbelievable abuse directed at her for making video essays of pretty basic feminist critiques of videogames. what this type of male wants is incompatible with the growth of any artistic medium, whether you find videogames to be art or simply entertainment, it’s stagnation to keep making the same thing constantly. we can see a lot of these guys who gas up stellar blade saying things like they want the “old” games back “where men were men and women were women” type of statements. nostalgia is exceptionally potent during times of confusing, hightened social and financial strain. imo this is also why it’s easy for some women (so far I’ve seen tradcath posting the most with white women demographic) to get caught up in the “tradwife” propaganda. in regards to this type of woman (in North America) I found Dworkin’s book “right wing women” to be informative. But there’s definitely a reason these “RETVRN”/ “this is what they took from you” guys usually praise ancient Roman sculptures and deride contemporary conceptual art. I don’t think they are particularly attached to this art but rather the power it represents. but this is another wish for artistic stagnation. sorry for the highlighting makes anything difficult to read in the passages I posted, it’s from my own pdf copies.
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Let’s be clear then backlash and bullying/harassment are not the same thing and I’m hoping the tumblr community doesn’t stoop to her level of hateful. And as i stated it takes us nothing to block her instead of doing this unfortunately i think you and I both know exactly how toxic this fanbase can be. And I’m not making excuses for her but i do not condone the behaviors that this will be/is already starting to lead to because guess what that’s literally just as bad. The same we we want to shield kids from her what are we expecting when those kids read the hate filled comments that people are posting as well? I’m just hoping they don’t start going into the other type of hate comments that usually get posted when this stuff comes out. Two wrongs don’t make it right. And if we really want to get into it i remember when Tobin was liking Tweets and things that were homophobic and as time went on i stopped seeing her post about it and I noticed those statements were deleted (mind you that was before 2015 and I had done a deep dive, yes i am that kind of a bitch where I do deep dives). Now look she’s happy with Christen. I’m not excusing anything but people can grow up and we see it time and time again with players. We can hold individuals accountable without as you said stooping to her level and showing kids that when we disagree with someone’s views it’s okay to be just as hateful to them if not more hateful. Also why not use our resources to show kids that if something or someone is offensive to you there are ways to filter and block those people so they don’t pop-up on their feed, making sure kids know there are resources and safe spaces available for them when they need it, and most importantly showing them that you can disagree with people without being hateful or harassing someone. So I truly hope the toxic side of this fanbase doesn’t stoop to her level of toxicity.
Firstly, I don’t really enjoy the energy you bring to this conversation. Secondly it is a lot of just block her, ignore it, that does nothing but show she can post what she wants and no one will say anything. Someone posting and liking things nearly a decade ago when the conversation around these topics and the views of many were very different are no where near the same as if you are liking and sharing it in current day. I personally don’t go onto twitter so I don’t know what people say on there but everything I’ve seen on here has been a critic of what she has shared and said. No one has been bullying her.
I’ll be blunt it does sound a lot like you want people to just ignore what she said. Let her be toxic. Let her be harmful but just block her even tho that does nothing when it comes to people screenshooting and resharing, it does nothing when it comes to her seeing consequences of her actions. I don’t agree with bullying her for things like her appearance or her playing ability, but letting her know that the majority of the fan base she directly benefits from disagrees and dislikes her is different.
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pluckysidekick · 10 months
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PART 2 of my breakdown of Kennedy’s excellent tweet describing Episode 5, “The Oracle of the Whispering Remains.” See PART 1 for Kennedy’s hints on teeth, tension, and B&E.
4. Picking up at the Daddy issues. I said in my original Ep. 5 post in early June, when the two line episode description was first published, that I suspected the person from George’s past was her deadbeat dad of a dentist. I still think that’s likely, as they may need a consult on teeth or even dental records of one of the bodies. But it could have a double meaning and refer to Nancy’s continuing disagreement with Carson about breaking the curse - or a conflict with Ryan over Tristan. We also have Avery the bully’s dad (Aaron) coming for Bess, and don’t forget Addy’s snooty parents. Ace also has dad issues, so really - it could be practically anyone.
5. On to speed dating! Kennedy assured us that Nace weren’t involved - at least I think she did (she can be crafty with her words). Presumably Bess is still with Addy, and Nick is maybe dating Jade? We’re getting “hot and uncomfortable speed dating,” so, I think there could be George and Nick dating/jealousy for sure.
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We had this BTS photo with Bess wearing a name tag, so perhaps she’s running the event to benefit the Historical Society - although it appears to be at the Claw. I do think it’s possible Bess is also in the speed dating mix as there could be trouble with Addy’s parents.
I’m also not convinced that Nancy, Ace, Tristan, and even Ace’s new love interest might not be involved in some way, even if it’s tangential. We know Jessica Meraz as “Red” is debuting in this episode - is she a LI for Ace? OR - could she be Ryan’s speed date? I’ve long suspected that she’s a LI for Ryan based on her location in the baby shower scene Riley posted on the final day of filming. I’d love to see Ryan get to have some romantic fun!
6. Now to the very important artifact:
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I suggested in my early June post on Ep. 5 that this seemed to be an important artifact that they discover perhaps in the Claw (the unexpected place), and that it has a connection to the mystery. Does it open the Black Door?
We see it again in the trailer in the night woods scene:
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From wardrobe - Ace and George are dressed the same as they are in the daytime shots, and that looks like Nick’s same coat as above. Bess has the same hair, but she is also wearing this coat:
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Which I at the time thought was episode 6 based on timing (and hoped involved curse breaking). I do think this woods scene is probably in 5, but not impossible for it to be 6. During the same filming time frame we also got Kennedy in this gorgeous look:
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The neckline (and hair) look similar to her fit in the nighttime woods scene. If she is wearing this dress in the woods, and it’s episode 5 - where was she going dressed like this? Speed dating? Date with Tristan (No, please God, no)? Or perhaps it’s episode 6 and we get her at whatever prom Tristan is dressed up in a powder blue tux for. OR, there’s some other thing Nancy has to attend perhaps to investigate Hilltoppers or other rich folk types that might be tied to The Black Door. I just know I want Ace to see her in that dress and regret his (valid) choice to remain friends just a 🤏.
Now back to those woods - there certainly seems to be a lot going on there - in addition to the trailer shot where Nancy is holding up a tooth, there’s tons of BTS of the cast goofing around between takes in the daytime, and we also got this shot in the trailer where the Drew Crew are walking toward an area cordoned off by yellow police tape. There is presumably a new incident with bodies appearing (since the cops have been here and Connor is involved). Is it the same 8 bodies or new ones? Does Nancy pick up a clue (the tooth) the cops missed?
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We also had a late breaking BTS shot from Lisa Bao, lead writer on this episode.
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The picture doesn’t reveal anything new, but the emojis - twin hearts, a zebra, and a giraffe?
Assuming the writers aren’t completely messing with us - is there a discussion between Nancy and Ace about the failed curse breaking ritual? And do they visit…the zoo? Does the new artifact allow them to see a vision from the past, or hear the voices of the dead (the whispering remains of the episode title), and there is some tie in to an old zoo, or to big game hunting (ew)? Just remember that Bess hates zebras lol.
Speaking of remembering, remember this cutie?
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I cannot wait to see this scene! I suspected at the time Kennedy posted it that it might be the Clifton University set/location. Who or what are they running from - or to?
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Much love to the props person that wrote out that chalkboard. As a Raiders of the Lost Ark fan it makes me very happy.
Alright! UPDATE: No screeners were sent out, so not expecting spoilers today from the usual suspects (which I prefer honestly, I like guessing!). BUT, we have EMOJIS!
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tokyokookmin · 1 year
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2023 Updates - guidelines and necessary information
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Hey all, tokyokookmin here. First, thank you, everyone, for the immense support from the previous posts. I adore all of you tokyokookminies. I'm so grateful for this growing fam.
The main intention I made this post is to update all my 'followers' about the blog's current state and my plans.
As you guys have seen (if y'all did, lol), I changed up a little of my layout.
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How is it? Do you guys like it? It's much nicer 😂.
I'm getting closer to replacing the old masterlist with my main "#JIKOOK moments/compilations series" (coming out soon) as I feel that series brings out the best of me in terms of my jikookery brain (lol). Another reason why is because all of the posts from that series are hit posts (it is for me, lol.)
2. Blog Guidelines
No longer answering asks from taekookers
I have been on a hiatus for the past year. I'm slowly reconnecting with this blog once again after focusing on myself. But even before that, I had completely quit answering asks from tkkrs. I simply no longer want to be a part of this childish war and be a part of another drama. It is draining and I don't want to be entangled in any of this anymore. Yes, If I find a particular ask totally exorbitant, you will see my posting that but other than that. Absolutely no. All of them are going into the trash box and I'm definitely blocking them.
I will only answer Jikook-related asks / Requests for my Jikook posts series / Anything minkook.
I hope I have made this clear enough for everyone. Don't come to me rant or to diss and humiliate other Jikook blogs on my page. I will not attend to that. Of course, you can ask me jikook kinds of stuff like sharing -- jikook tweets, asking me to describe/explain a certain moment or whatever jikook content you want to share on my page. I'll also allow you to promote your jikook tweets or whatever content you have out there as long as it's appropriate. Also, before this info leaves my clogged brain, I will not answer any asks from insecure jikookers. For the love of god if you call yourself a jikooker, have faith and confidence in them. This is something I have learn't myself too. And I'm not going to post any information regarding jikooks address or anything personal. I noticed that Koreans jikookers love to send me their personal information but I will only read them and will not post them as it is a breach of their privacy.
Apart from that, as you all know... I'm rather famous for my #JIKOOK moments posts, so if you would like to give me a few suggestions or requests for a particular type of content, go ahead and send them in!
No Solo's
No one likes these kind of people. So do I. If you think of wasting your time ranting on either JK/JM about how great they are as individuals and setting a negative narrative about them. Get out of here. I'll either delete your ask OR I'll respond to it if it really annoyed me.
3) About the DM's
About that, all of you minkookies are welcome to my DM'S to chat and share Jikook posts or even ask me for links whatsoever. But you need to be following me for at least a week before you are able to DM me and that same thing applies to my comments in the posts.
4) Posts plans
My brain 🧠 is full of ideas and me being a blogger, I got lots of content lined up. But don't forget that I'm also human and I have work. Posts will be released once I have approved it since I'm a very fussy lady. I need and want all of my contents to be great before I posts them. You can expect posts coming every few weeks. I'm not a daily basis blogger by the way. Lol.
Currently working on - the series masterlist, jikook genuine connection part 2, jikook vocals PT 2 since y'all liked it soo much and even requested for them. I couldn't never possibly deny y'all 😭.
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I think that's about all what I wanted to say . I'm leaving this post here for y'all to be updated. Please do take note and share it ya. Have a great day jikookies . 💜💜
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thetaekookcloset · 1 year
Note
Hello! So I'm a little nervous about sending this in because I don't generally like using the anon option as I stand behind my opinions, but I also recongize that means I'm opening this up to all your followers, as a jikooker who runs a jikook focused blog myself. So I'm sending this in with respect and just as a "opinions from the other side" type of deal. And I hope that even though everyone who follows you won't agree with me, the respect and courtesy will be returned. Kindness costs nothing!
A few days ago you posted this ask and reposnse about GCF in Toyko. Both the anon sender and yourself mentioned not seeing GCFT as romantic or non plantonic or understanding necessarily why jikookers say what they say about it. You both did so fairly respectfully, which I fully appreciate. I'm not trying to change minds at all. I'm all good on disagreeing about viewpoints here. None of us know anything for sure and everyone bases their own opinions off their own life experiences and biases. We are all only guessing here. Lol just figured I'd try to answer the question over what "we" see in it. So apologies for all the explanations over why I am here, and for the essay in your ask box. I write long ass posts all the time on my own blog and it's just how I work now 😂 You don't have to feel obligated to post or respond to this either if you don't want to.
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GCF in Toyko is not the make it or break it "piece of evidence" for jikookers in thinking that Jimin and Jungkook could be in a romantic relationship. It's just one in the many things that build on top of each other that is their bond that jkkrs see as likely being romantic in nature. Its one of the things that had many jkkrs, including myself, looking back on previous interactions and on future ones with perhaps a more questioning eye. It's also something that I've seen non armys and non jkkrs raise eyebrows over. I introduced my friend to BTS before and they watched Jungkook's GCFs with me (in order, all of them) before she even knew all their names (we were introducing her to the members one by one and JK caught her eye first so we watched his videos and music before the others) and she asked while watching "is the blonde in the video his boyfriend?" And I explained that it was actually Jimin, who was in the same band and as far as the fandom and we all know, no they are just best friends. And she said "well that's some friend then!" And we moved on to the next GCF in Osaka. Or how often i see clips of Jimin from GCFT in armys "pov: you are on a date with jimin" tweets. Lol But it does show that's its not always just the jkkr bias that makes us think the video has some romantic inclinations.
I have... a lot of posts on my own blog that talk about their Toyko Trip and GCFT as well too, but I'm not going to link them or anything because they are definitely written with the assumption that my views and guesses over their relationship is correct and they are boyfriends, which is not what I'm wanting to do here necessarily. But for a lot of jkkrs, the importance placed on the trip comes from the importance placed on it by Jimin and JK themselves. They talked about that trip constantly since it happened, even in interviews in 2020, as well as expressed interest in doing it again. It was how they went through that trip wearing matching fits on their personal time, went sightseeing and went to Disney and had a good time. How JK filmed a video about Toyko, but Jimin ended up being basically the only focus. The intentional choice of the song because he had to pay copyrights for it and the way he matched movements of the video to lyrics on the song, including during the lyrics "love is a road that goes both ways" with a cut scene of them driving down the road and you get flashes of both a rainbow lights ferris wheel and a regular one. Which felt fairly intentionally queer coded, in a video that starred Jimin that Jungkook made.
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Jimin also had no idea that the video would even be made at all. So it gave the idea that the Jimin we were seeing, was the Jimin that Jungkook sees all the time. Goofy, happy, having fun, treated well, etc. All that, paired with the music, paired with how they talk about it, paired with how it was edited, paired with the trip itself, paired with JK surprising Jimin over it all, paired with JK telling us he used inspiration videos from a video editor YouTuber called "making a video for your boyfriend or girlfriend," gives off romance vibes (to me).
Your post also mentioned JK being camera shy during the trip, but I disagree. Being camera shy and preferring to be behind the camera don't have to be one in the same. JK made it into a few shots of the whole video, included starting it off with a shot of his feet on the airplane too. I think it just shows that for Jungkook, the point of the trip and the point of the video wasn't about him, or even about them, but about Jimin. Which also feels romantic to me.
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You guys (you and anon) also mentioned how you can see two friends making the exact same type of video about a trip they took and were excited about. I disagree, but this could just be life experiences bias coming into play for all 3 of us. I think a good example that could show the difference in what I think would be a normal vlog video between a friend trip and a "could be something more" trip would be Jimin's toyko vlog that he shared. I did a post about the differences there too on my blog, but rather than get into ALL of that. I'll just highlight my points about how JMs video showed JK ALOT, so he wasn't camera shy, he just wasn't in his own video. Jimins video highlighted more of their activies done, them being goofy together, paired with fun music and cute transition slides. For me, this doesnt disprove a possible romantic relationship between them either, it just is what you would expect from a video about two best friends who went on a vacation together. JKs video was a totally different vibe all together. In my opinion. So the completely different vibe as well as everything else about the trip all put together made the video seem more than just plantonic.
https://youtu.be/5TbIyRhvIBQ
^ Jimins Toyko Vlog, with English Subtitles included for anyone who wants to see it if they perhaps haven't. And if you weren't in the fandom long, or aren't a Jimin bias, it doesn't get mentioned a lot. Lol plently of jkkrs also don't even know about it for a while! He posted it originally to Twitter in 2 parts, this army just combined them for us for convenience 💜
https://youtu.be/XrTNLkqGrlc
^ GCFT if I'm here linking things, JK always deserves more streams.
Lastly, his following GCFs were mentioned in your post as well and while all the members do feature in them, Jimin always appears to be highlighted in them. In Osaka, JK cuts the song out completely to highlight Jimins laughter 3 times. In Saipan, Jimin has not only the most screen time, but he also he paired Jimin with the same specific lyrics time and time again which were the more romantically inclined lines. In Helsinki, the colors changed from black to white when Jimin came on screen. Jimin is also the only member to appear in every single GCF video from his first to the last one we have so far. Jimin joking about being the model doesn't just come from no where. Lol but no jkkrs should be claiming (at least I'm not) that app GCFs are indicative of a romantic relationship between jikook or JK and any member. And one or more can be considered romantic while others aren't, or however anyone sees them. Not all GCFs are trying to give the exact same message. At least I personally didn't see them that way.
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But again, I'm not here to try and argue really. Or change anyone's mind. I fully recongize how my biases can be influencing my opinions and vice versa for yall and every "shipper" as well. I dont mind if people disagree. I just saw the post and saw the confusion over how/why jkkrs see GCFT specifically in the way that they (we) do and figured I'd offer my perspective as a jkkr who is active in a blogger space. And I think I said all (probably more) that I can say over this topic in one ask. Lol so if you read all of this, thanks for taking the time to read an opinion that differs. Hope you all have a good week!
~ Storm
Hey Storm!
This is really interesting! I'm going to present it mostly without comment and treat it as basically a guest post from a differing perspective.
One thing I just want to clarify about my own feelings on GCFT specifically is that even though I don't really get romantic vibes from it myself, I do get why people see it that way. I get why it might be a big "maybe" moment for Jikookers, and I know that it has definitely piqued the curiosity of non-shippers too, and I understand why. I just don't see it as inherently romantic, or like something that can only be interpreted in a romantic way, and that's why there are plenty of people who come away from it without getting that impression too.  That being said though, I definitely see the argument.
I re-watched all of the GCFs after reading this and I definitely noticed some new-to-me things. It's so fascinating how we can watch the same material and take different interpretations and details away from it. If anyone hasn't watched the GCFs, or hasn't seen them recently but read through this whole post, I'd definitely recommend revisiting them.
Also, I'm sure it goes without saying, but please everyone be respectful. I'm glad that we can talk about differing opinions in this space, that's something that's valuable to me.
Thank you for taking the time to share your perspective, Storm! You put a lot of work into this, and I really appreciate the clarity and attention to detail.  I hope you're doing well!
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marengogo · 9 months
Note
hi!!
i have some questions regarding the cake issue, i'd ask chikooritajjk, but i'm honestly terrified of them 😞
did the other members get a cake for a pre release track?
ik jin got one for 'astronaut' and jk got one for both 'dreamers' + 'seven', but those are both singles...
so imo it's a little weird that the company would get tae a cake for a 'love me again' and 'rainy days' and not just wait for his album
also i saw them talking about wasting cake, but isn't there a thing where they can have the bakery frost styrofoam so it'll look like a cake? plus the members are given cakes on their birthday and sometimes they don't eat them...
don't want to cause issues btw! if jimin really didn't want a cake, i'm fine with it bc that's his choice, i'm just confused about some things
if you don't feel like answering, you don't have to!
ik you (and other bloggers) are not chikooritajjk's mail box and if i was able to come off anon without causing myself a anxiety attack 🙃, i would definitely just ask them directly! but i also like your thoughts and opinions as well on bts and jikook related things 😊
sorry for bothering you 💜
so i see my ask was taken the wrong way 😞 just want to clear up a few things i don't hate chikooritajjk, i honestly think they're lovely and are very helpful with explaining things (streaming, bts, jikook, queer topics ect), so it does make me sad that it came across that way i'm scared of them bc i have social anxiety and really want to talk to them about things they discuss (i know, it's a me problem, got that 🫡) and trust me, it took a lot to even send that ask bc ik people don't always like answering asks concerning other bloggers wasn't trying to sabotage your friendship with them either, i follow both your blogs and love BOTH OF YOUR POSTS i sent the cake ask bc i'm genuinely confused and had some questions, and like i said ik it was more so an ask for chikooritajjk, but you have been interacting their posts and agreeing with them and i also wanted to hear YOUR OWN thoughts on it i don't mind being corrected or told i'm wrong btw, as long as someone isn't rude or disrespectful (which neither you or chikooritajjk have been btw!!) i do fear that this interaction has only reinforced my issues with interacting off anon with jkkrs though, after this i'll leave you both alone (won't send anymore asks), as that is probably you want so sorry for bothering you both, i truly did not mean to cause any discomfort or issues with my ask and probably this one.... hope you both are doing well and can't wait for more of your insightful posts! — a lost anon
Hello 🎂-Anon,
Hope you don’t mind me calling you like this, if you do please let me know.
I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out the best way to tackle your Ask as I think I’ve kinda already addressed your second ask in my post this morning. See, the thing is, whoever “baked” this particular conspiracy was so successful that many are now really so convinced that the absence of said eggs, flour & milk are actually a substantial part of a lot of the evil surrounding JM. 
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But let me start with the easy part of the Ask. “did the other members get a cake for a pre release track?” Namjoon didn’t get a single slice of cake from Hybe, be it pre-release or release don't worry about what the tweet says, just want you to check out the type of cakes Joonie received, if you are interested!:
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Two of the cakes were given to him by separate groups of his own friends and one was sent to him by the production team of “The Dictionary of Useless Human Knowledge”.
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Now, to get back to the “source of evil” topic, it is very much an issue with the way that Chapter 2 is unfolding. It’s not about eggs, flour & milk, but about the people who found a way to make you believe that eggs, flour & milk are part of the problem. It’s about not being aware of what kind of space your SM environment might have turned into, such as not knowing that Namjoon also didn’t receive a cake, because the same people who are guiding your perception are also, shaping your environment and trying to create narratives that heavily aid in hindering the gravity of real issues that the boys might be facing.
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So please, if you can, forget about the cake 🎂-Anon! It’s not about wastage or the performative act, or whatever. Did JM want cake from HYBE specifically? Unless he tells us, we can’t know, I mean if you ask me, he seems to have planned his FACE WEVERSE live to a T, I really don’t think he wanted any. Anyways, what we do now know though, thanks to Tae, is that there is a high possibility he might have not wanted it. Same as Joon.
The mishandling of Chapter 2 is so Ugh! Quite literally it is as if Pandora’s Box was opened and all sorts of shit just came rushing out 😩😩😩. BUT I will address all of these in the post I mentioned that I am working on, so for now, If I could please ask you to take a second and think about the boys real quick. MEGA-Celebrities who have been in the game for 10 years (without counting pre-debut) and not only that, they are part of the biggest group on this planet, they are BIG-big, with big money, and big problems … do you see them losing sleep over eggs, flour & milk? 
Should we be? 
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Hope this answers your question and I really do hope you’ll be looking forward to my post, cause, ONCE AGAIN, I REALLY CAN'T STRESS THIS ENOUGH: There is soooooo much in Chapter 2 that needs to be address for-real-real 🤡. 
Always respectfully yours 💜🫰🏾,
Marengo.
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denimbex1986 · 10 months
Text
'It's July, which means it is also the month of Barbieheimer!
Light off some fireworks and don some pink because, in a little over a week, both Barbie and Oppenheimer will hit theaters. On July 21, these highly anticipated films will debut on the same day — and the world may never be the same. It's the movies, as God, Mattel, and Robert Oppenheimer intended.
But here's a little rundown in case this portmanteau has you scratching your head.
What is Barbieheimer?
If you are not, as the kids say, very online, you may be asking yourself, "What the hell is Barbieheimer?" Well, my friend, let me tell you — it is the cinematic event of the century. Not since Darth Vader told Luke that he was his father have we had a movie moment quite like this.
Barbieheimer is the mash-up of two films, Greta Gerwig's Barbie and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer. Some might say that a neon-pink Mattel toy and "death, destroyer of worlds" are counter-programming at its finest, but au contraire, cinephiles are here to tell you that the only thing that makes sense in this meaningless life is to see them both (preferably on the same day). While there are those that would paint this as a fierce rivalry, perhaps even a battle for cinema's soul, we prefer to think of it as an opposites attract rom-com.
As soon as people realized that these two highly anticipated movies (that are seemingly divergently opposed) were premiering on the same day, a new word was born — Barbieheimer. We believe it's listed in the dictionary as a synonym for perfection because Barbieheimer is the realization of the peak of human potential. It is, to borrow from another classic movie, the stuff that dreams are made of.
Is it "Barbieheimer" or "Barbenheimer"?
It's both, it's neither. Just like Barbie and Robert Oppenheimer, you can be whatever you want — a doctor, a prom queen, an astronaut, or even the inventor of the atomic bomb.
The thing about the internet is that no one agrees on anything and everyone wants to take credit for everything. Thus, the meme of this portmanteau has trended two ways — as both Barbieheimer and Barbenheimer. We suppose your preference is for whether you want to give more of the title to Barbie or Oppenheimer, but why choose when you can have both? (Though we draw the line at Oppenbarbie).
In the spirit of equity, Barbieheimer affords both films the same syllable count in the word.
What have the stars of Barbie and Oppenheimer said about Barbieheimer?
Just a reminder for when you're posting those thirst tweets that movie stars and directors read the internet too. Many members of the teams involved with Barbie and Oppenheimer have weighed in on the discourse about Barbieheimer. Imagine Christopher Nolan commenting on the Barbieheimer phenom — which he did! The filmmaker told IGN that he finds the obsession "terrific."
In a very "preserve the theatrical experience" type of way, he said, "Summer, in a healthy marketplace, is always crowded, and we've been doing this a long time. I think for those of us who care about movies, we've been really waiting to have a crowded marketplace again, and now it's here and that's terrific."
For her part, Barbie director Greta Gerwig is tickled pink by it all. "It's all love — double up, double up twice," she told The Hollywood Reporter. "I think you've got to see what the experience is, Barbie then Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer then Barbie. I think you've got to take all of the journeys."
Back in May, Matt Damon, who plays director of the Manhattan project, Leslie Groves, in Oppenheimer, was one of the first cast members to wade into the discourse. After Vanity Fair introduced him to the concept of Barbieheimer, Damon only had good will for both projects. "People are allowed to go see two movies in a weekend," he proclaimed. "Oppenheimer is one of them!"
Cillian Murphy, who plays the titular physicist in Oppenheimer, is similarly pro the double feature idea. "I can't wait to see Barbie," he told Spanish publication La Vanguardia. "I love Margot Robbie, I love Ryan Gosling, I want to see them now! I don't know what the debate is about, although it's not that I have an overwhelming opinion about it either. My advice would be for people to go see both, on the same day. If they are good films, that is what the cinema wins."
Even stars who aren't in either movie are getting in on the trend. Tom Cruise and his Mission: Impossible director Christopher McQuarrie encouraged fans to return to movie theaters this summer by posting photos of themselves with tickets for a Barbieheimer double feature.
However, Issa Rae, who features in Barbie, has some very specific thoughts about the order audiences should see the films. "[It's] hilarious," she told THR of the meme. "I love that there's solidarity though where people tried to pit us against one another, but now it's turned into like a double-feature situation. Obviously you should see Oppenheimer first and then cleanse your palate with Barbie. Oppenheimer is about an atomic bomb, people are gonna die. I want to end my weekend, I want to have mimosas and drinks and cocktails after Barbie, I don't want to like sulk."
What's the right way to watch Barbieheimer?
This brings us to the greatest question of our age — what order should you watch Barbieheimer? Is it better to start or end the day with Barbie? The internet is full of arguments for both preferences, but we're going to officially advocate for Oppenheimer first, Barbie second.
Look, we're journalists. We basically invented the concept of an all-nighter. We are not morning people. If we have to face our own mortality when we get up in the morning, we might as well do it while confronting the specter of nuclear holocaust too. Someone on Twitter suggested pouring yourself a cup of steaming black coffee and smoking a cigarette before you see Oppenheimer — and we endorse at least half of that (which half depends on whether our Health and Wellness officer is reading this). But let's be real, Oppenheimer is the hair of the dog — sobering and bracing in the utmost. It's a literal wake-up call.
Then, once you've plumbed the depths of man's capacity for evil, you can work through your existential crisis and your Oppenheimer-induced brush with nihilism with the aid of happy hour and some cosmopolitans ('cause they're pink, duh). Prepare your body to bathe in the magenta haze of Barbie. Ryan Gosling is just Ken, and you know what Ken? You're doing great, sweetie. Being just Ken is more than enough. Er, what's that? Barbie thinks about death too? Okay, maybe also book a reservation for post-Barbie drinks too.
Where can you find the best off-brand Barbieheimer merch?
Inside you there are two wolves and you need to let both of them out to play…
Just because Warner Bros. and Universal haven't teamed up on any movie swag doesn't mean there's not plenty of wardrobe options for Barbieheimer day. Designers on sites like RedBubble, TeePublic, and Etsy have created more designs than there are Barbie accessories.
We're big fans of this one, which features Barbie watching the pink mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb. It almost has Asteroid City vibes if you want to throw in another summer movie. Here's a similar take on the mash-up, this one with tons of t-shirt colors.
TeePublic also has plenty of Barbieheimer swag, including this t-shirt that conjoins Barbie and Oppenheimer's faces. If you want to get into the Frankenstein-assembled-parts nature of this odd mash-up, how about a Barbie t-shirt and an Oppenheimer t-shirt literally sewn together?
If you want something a bit more subtle, how about a baseball cap featuring Oppenheimer's famous cribbed quote, "Now I am Death, the Destroyer of Worlds" in the jaunty pink Barbie font? Might as well look cute while expressing your existential dread.
How are people embracing Barbieheimer?
Lest you think this is some internet trend with no application in the real world, think again.
Besides the aforementioned merch and buy-in from the stars of the movies, Barbieheimer is reaching the box office too. Variety reported that AMC Theaters has already sold over 20,000 same-day tickets for Barbie and Oppenheimer, suggesting that a not insignificant number of people are preparing to do the ultimate double feature. All that could add up to an awful lot of Barbie dream houses in ticket sales.
Whether you're the kind of person to think pink or one who walks around with a (mushroom) cloud hanging over their head, you can't deny the power and influence of Barbieheimer.'
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bcacstuff · 2 years
Note
Thank you so much for your lengthy response giving your opinion on his posts. Follow up, do you think his behaviour in any way is being done to hide, or share his relationship(if that’s what you can call it) with KE or honestly any woman? From hearing about his past and reading here it seems alot of people feel he does what he does in some way to bring light to his relationships or hide them. Do you feel he sees or knows what people (mostly here as far as I can tell - meaning Tumblr not just your blog) say about him, find out about him and then his posting is in response to that. Hope that makes sense. Thanks again.
The theory that he hides or shares these let's call it dates, comes mostly from narratives that either see him married to C or he needs to hide he's gay. They think he leads us deliberately to these women, to distract the fandom from his marriage to C, or to give him an image of womanizer to pretend he's into women, as a gay actor would be discriminated. That's roughly what it comes down to.
I surely don't believe in the theory that he needs to hide a marriage with his co-star. Besides that it doesn't make much sense to me to do so even if they were in a relationship, we've clearly seen over the years that they're both living their own lives, very different ones and during hiatus seldom are at the same locations.
About his sexuality and the theory he needs to hide it to get better chances at roles. I just say, I haven't seen any factual evidence, only very circumstantial and out of context taken tweets, he's denied it himself a number of times, and last but not least, there are several actors that are gay and get fine roles. The discrimination isn't gone but isn't the way it was anymore as it is not a shame to be gay. (proof, f.i. Jonathan Bailey and there are many more) Further more is somebodies sexuality nobodies business, it is only important for people that would like to have a (sexual) relationship with each other. As an extra note here I do have to mention, that in the beginning when S was casted, there was an immediate discussion on the forum of DG about his sexuality. It seemed that some book fans would have a problem with a gay actor playing their Jamie. It's sad but it is true that it happened. Another note on this theory is that he often uses awkward terms or not gender specific terms, like partner or company or he turns a question about women into something related with his mom. It doesn't contribute to the clarity and feeds the gay theory somewhat.
But let's entertain the option he's hiding something and therefor leaves breadcrumbs for us to follow and find out about his so called dates. It all starts with following these women, either by him and/or by people associated with him. It's obvious he follows a 'certain type' of women, and some might be only fitness related, but you can't help to notice. And I mean not only by us here on Tumblr, the average fan that follows him on IG must see a fair amount of the ladies he follows too as IG gives you suggestions to follow accounts related to the people you follow. Now what kind of image is that giving him? I fail to see how that can be better PR than a 'supposedly' relationship with his co-star or being 'supposedly' gay. If you add to that his fetish for tattoos last summer and some of the girls he started to follow 🙈. If that's what his PR team has been advising him, then he should immediately fire them and find a new team.
Does his PR team also advice him to 'slide into DMs' to make it all more convincing? You can deny he slides into DMs, but there's actual proof. Monika A told us about it in her podcasts and her tiktok video's showed part of the convo's (okey she's questioned a lot, but it's out there). Another one that said so was Mary Fitzgerald from Selling Sunset and recently in the podcast of Deuxmoi with Paige Woolen telling how she matched with him on Raya and DM-d with him. See (listen to) my post of May 21. So he clearly does slide into Dms and tries to date them. Were the street videos of him with AM and later on with KK deliberately staged for PR? The papped pics with MC did look suspicious, but by who was the photographer tipped? And did he knowingly posted that pic with KE's dog in it? (not to mention that the whole discussion about the pic being staged and/or photoshopped only began after the dog was discovered by my Anon. We all failed to see it before!) And this was all set up by his PR team, to hide something, to give him a better image.... how credible does that sound to you Anon? I personally think the 'playbook' that is mentioned so often, has been written for 80% by the fandom itself.
I think he has a sense of what has been written about him over here (not just my blog). At least he knows about the shippers. Are his posts a direct response on it. Don't really think so, maybe sometimes after he finds out but mainly via other ways, not perse by reading this (or other) blogs on Tumblr. (I had angry Anons telling me they've sent all screenshots to him and his team and I don't know who else, but if he looks at that? 🤷‍♀️)
Anyway, you've done it again, making me write a loooooong reply 😂😉
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firespirited · 1 year
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i woke up prepared to apologize for getting angry over doll stuff but the more i think about it the more it’s obvious exactly where I stand.
Whether it’s “You shouldn’t reblog from vapider they’re a paedo” which led me down a rabbit hole that took hours and led to him being friends with someone who supports writing properly tagged dark fic.
“You should have researched BarbiesGBF he made caricatures without consent” which led to hours of searching to find one use of the r word (and since when do you need consent to make cartoons or post about popular public figures in a fandom?)
“I need to know for my safety your position on [extremely complex syscourse/vast spectrum of religious discrimination]”
I refuse to play broken telephone with a rumour mill. If you want “accountability” in your community you can keep dated screencaps somewhere public and decide as a community what the boundaries and acceptable responses are.
It’s stupid fandom stuff but it’s hitting deep because I’ve been in religious communities run on gossip and charisma and seen the same for activism. It was toxic, it destroyed multiple good people’s lives and if this kind of thing, the whole guilt by association, those awful doll confessions and vague accusations come to dollblr, I will make a new place with actual rules where we start over from scratch because I believe in rehabilitative justice and transparency.
So here’s the deal, we can make a baddollydeals type thread on The Pony Arena (or a google doc) for active bigots, theft and scams.
Anything else is vibes based judgement based on gossip and WILL be ignored. If you want accountability you either put up or shut up: you might think you’re just being a good person but you are being played in a systemic game I have seen play out before many times before. Your blocklist is your own business, the rumour mill is community business.
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So as part of the “research” I went to twitter and there was a screencap of me so I went and deleted that comment because I can totally see how it could be construed as thoughtless and sexualizing - I’m mortified (for the record, I think highly of Brooke and thought her caricature was a guy at first because her public image is as a mermaid or a Disney princess, a while back we had an interesting email convo about doll repair)... That person didn’t message me on instagram or even reply, they just screengrabbed and shared as part of the public “scandal”. I’m a creep to the 56 people who liked that and who knows how many more. No questions no context and I find out by accident and can’t apologize and explain as I don’t have twitter.
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Said it before, i’ll state it again, if anyone has a problem with me: talk to me, @ me with your complaints, ask people if I have the ability to react to new information, grow and learn.
And more importantly, do the same for everyone: if you have an issue, leave a comment. otherwise we end up with broken telephone of 4 tweets saying variations on “barbiegbf is a sex offender” because someone once used a stolen picture of him to *say* hateful things on a live and it was clearly not him.
How many whispers until you are tainted for having interacted with me? it’s no way to do things.
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continuations · 6 months
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AI Safety Between Scylla and Charybdis and an Unpopular Way Forward
I am unabashedly a technology optimist. For me, however, that means making choices for how we will get the best out of technology for the good of humanity, while limiting its negative effects. With technology becoming ever more powerful there is a huge premium on getting this right as the downsides now include existential risk.
Let me state upfront that I am super excited about progress in AI and what it can eventually do for humanity if we get this right. We could be building the capacity to turn Earth into a kind of garden of Eden, where we get out of the current low energy trap and live in a World After Capital.
At the same time there are serious ways of getting this wrong, which led me to write a few posts about AI risks earlier this year. Since then the AI safety debate has become more heated with a fair bit of low-rung tribalism thrown into the mix. To get a glimpse of this one merely needs to look at the wide range of reactions to the White House Executive Order on Safe, Secure and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. This post is my attempt to point out what I consider to be serious flaws in the thinking of two major camps on AI safety and to mention an unpopular way forward.
First, let’s talk about the “AI safety is for wimps” camp, which comes in two forms. One is the happy-go-lucky view represented by Marc Andreessen’s “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” and also his preceding Tweet thread. This view dismisses critics who dare to ask social or safety questions as luddites and shills.
So what’s the problem with this view? Dismissing AI risks doesn’t actually make them go away. And it is extremely clear that at this moment in time we are not really set up to deal with the problems. On the structural risk side we are already at super extended income and wealth inequality. And the recent AI advances have already been shown to further accelerate this discrepancy.
On the existential risk side, there is recent work by Kevin Esvelt et al. showing how LLMs can broaden access to pandemic agents. Jeffrey Ladish et. al. demonstrating how cheap it is to remove safety training from an open source model with published weights. This type of research clearly points out that as open source models become rapidly more powerful they can be leveraged for very bad things and that it continues to be super easy to strip away the safeguards that people claim can be built into open source models.
This is a real problem. And people like myself, who have strongly favored permissionless innovation, would do well to acknowledge it and figure out how to deal with it. I have a proposal for how to do that below.
But there is one intellectually consistent way to continue full steam ahead that is worth mentioning. Marc Andreessen cites Nick Land as an inspiration for his views. Land in Meltdown wrote the memorable line “Nothing human makes it out of the near-future”. Embracing AI as a path to a post-human future is the view embraced by the e/acc movement. Here AI risks aren’t so much dismissed as simply accepted as the cost of progress. My misgiving with this view is that I love humanity and believe we should do our utmost to preserve it (my next book which I have started to work on will have a lot more to say about this).
Second, let’s consider the “We need AI safety regulation now” camp, which again has two subtypes. One is “let regulated companies carry on” and the other is “stop everything now.” Again both of these have deep problems.
The idea that we can simply let companies carry on with some relatively mild regulation suffers from three major deficiencies. First, this has the risk of leading us down the path toward highly concentrated market power and we have seen the problems of this in tech again and again (it has been a long standing topic on my blog). For AI market power will be particularly pernicious because this technology will eventually power everything around us and so handing control to a few corporations is a bad idea. Second, the incentives of for-profit companies aren’t easily aligned with safety (and yes, I include OpenAI here even though it has in theory capped investor returns but also keeps raising money at ever higher valuations, so what’s the point?).
But there is an even deeper third deficiency of this approach and it is best illustrated by the second subtype which essentially wants to stop all progress. At its most extreme this is a Ted Kaczynsci anti technology vision. The problem with this of course is that it requires equipping governments with extraordinary power to prevent open source / broadly accessible technology from being developed. And this is an incredible unacknowledged implication of much of the current pro-regulation camp.
Let me just give a couple of examples. It has long been argued that code is speech and hence protected by first amendment rights. We can of course go back and revisit what protections should be applicable to “code as speech,” but the proponents of the “let regulated companies go ahead with closed source AI” don’t seem to acknowledge that they are effectively asking governments to suppress what can be published as open source (otherwise, why bother at all?). Over time government would have to regulate technology development ever harder to sustain this type of regulated approach. Faster chips? Government says who can buy them. New algorithms? Government says who can access them. And so on. Sure, we have done this in some areas before, such as nuclear bomb research, but these were narrow fields, whereas AI is a general purpose technology that affects all of computation.
So this is the conundrum. Dismissing AI safety (Scylla) only makes sense if you go full on post humanist because the risks are real. Calling for AI safety through oversight (Charybdis) doesn’t acknowledge that way too much government power is required to sustain this approach.
Is there an alternative option? Yes but it is highly unpopular and also hard to get to from here. In fact I believe we can only get there if we make lots of other changes, which together could take us from the Industrial Age to what I call the Knowledge Age. For more on that you can read my book The World After Capital.
For several years now I have argued that technological progress and privacy are incompatible. The reason for this is entropy, which means that our ability to destroy will always grow faster than our ability to (re)build. I gave a talk about it at the Stacks conference in Berlin in 2018 (funny side note: I spoke right after Edward Snowden gave a full throated argument for privacy) and you can read a fuller version of the argument in my book.
The only solution other than draconian government is to embrace a post privacy world. A world in which it can easily be discovered that you are building a super dangerous bio weapon in your basement before you have succeeded in releasing it. In this kind of world we can have technological progress but also safeguard humanity – in part by using aligned super intelligences to detect what is happening. And yes, I believe it is possible to create versions of AGI that have deep inner alignment with humanity that cannot easily be removed. Extremely hard yes, but possible (more on this in upcoming posts on an initiative in this direction).
Now you might argue that a post privacy world also requires extraordinary state power but that's not really the case. I grew up in a small community where if you didn't come out of your house for a day, the neighbors would check in to make sure you were OK. Observability does not require state power per se. Much of this can happen simply if more information is default public. And so regulation ought to aim at increased disclosure.
We are of course a long way away from a world where most information about us could be default public. It will require massive changes from where we are today to better protect people from the consequences of disclosure. And those changes would eventually have to happen everywhere that people can freely have access to powerful technology (with other places opting for draconian government control instead). 
Given that the transition which I propose is hard and will take time, what do I believe we should do in the short run? I believe that a great starting point would be disclosure requirements covering training inputs, cost of training runs, and powered by (i.e. if you launch say a therapy service that uses AI you need to disclose which models). That along with mandatory API access could start to put some checks on market power. As for open source models I believe a temporary voluntary moratorium on massively larger more capable models is vastly preferable to any government ban. This has a chance of success because there are relatively few organizations in the world that have the resources to train the next generation of potentially open source models. 
Most of all though we need to have a more intellectually honest conversation about risks and how to mitigate them without introducing even bigger problems. We cannot keep suggesting that these are simple questions and that people must pick a side and get on with it.
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