Product Placement
sheepfilms
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
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Cosimo Galluzzi
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titsay
todays bird
oozey mess
Not today Justin
Keni
Sweet Seals For You, Always
Misplaced Lens Cap
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
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noise dept.
art blog(derogatory)
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
ellievsbear
blake kathryn
seen from Canada
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@certifiedliunatic
♱ 𝐁𝐋𝐘𝐒𝐒 . 𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐋 [ 𝒔𝒉𝒆 / 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 ]
𝗇𝗈𝗇𝖻𝗂𝗇𝖺𝗋𝗒 𝗅𝖾𝗌𝖻𝗂𝖺𝗇 . 𝗂𝗇𝗍𝗉 . 𝗐𝗋𝗂𝗍𝖾𝗋 (reqs open!)
𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐌𝐄.. ⌇ 𝗁𝖾𝗅𝗅𝗈 !! 𝗆𝗒 𝗇𝖺𝗆𝖾'𝗌 𝖻𝗅𝗒𝗌𝗌 𝗈𝗋 𝖺𝗇𝗀𝖾𝗅. 𝗂𝗆 𝗇𝗈𝗇𝖻𝗂𝗇𝖺𝗋𝗒 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗅𝖾𝗌𝖻𝗂𝖺𝗇. 𝗂 𝗅𝗈𝗏𝖾 𝗐𝗋𝗂𝗍𝗂𝗇𝗀, 𝖽𝗋𝖺𝗐𝗂𝗇𝗀, 𝗉𝗁𝗈𝗍𝗈𝗀𝗋𝖺𝗉𝗁𝗒 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗆𝗎𝗌𝗂𝖼, 𝗂 𝗋𝖾𝖺𝗅𝗅𝗒 𝖾𝗇𝗃𝗈𝗒 𝖼𝗋𝖾𝖺𝗍𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗂𝗇 𝗆𝗒 𝖿𝗋𝖾𝖾 𝗍𝗂𝗆𝖾! 𝗂 𝖺𝗆 𝖺 𝗁𝗎𝗀𝖾 𝗇𝖾𝗋𝖽 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗅𝗈𝗏𝖾 𝗉𝗅𝖺𝗇𝖾𝗌, 𝖺𝗇𝗂𝗆𝖺𝗅𝗌 (𝖾𝗌𝗉𝖾𝖼𝗂𝖺𝗅𝗅𝗒 𝗐𝗈𝗅𝗏𝖾𝗌), 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗇𝖺𝗍𝗎𝗋𝖾 🤍
𝗆𝗒 𝗆𝖺𝗂𝗇 𝖻𝗅𝗈𝗀 𝗂𝗌 @werewolfden 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗂 𝖿𝗈𝗅𝗅𝗈𝗐 𝗉𝖾𝗈𝗉𝗅𝖾 𝗈𝗇 𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗋𝖾!
tags, 𝗆𝖺𝗌𝗍𝖾𝗋𝗅𝗂st and req rules 𝖻𝖾𝗅𝗈𝗐!
layout inspired by @phaelusion
pls 😭 do 😭 not 😭 separate 😭
Where the Flowers Grow Quietly - Alysa Liu x Autistic Female Reader ❤️💙
Note- kinda oc I think but I'm just giving you a heads up because I have autism so I think I maybe inserted a little bit of me in here and autism affects people differently so not everyone could relate to this
When Alysa Liu fell in love with you, she didn't fall in love carefully.
She fell all at once.
Fast smiles.
Long conversations at two in the morning.
The way you noticed tiny details nobody else ever saw.
The way your face softened around flowers and animals and quiet music.
The way you trusted her enough to unmask around her.
Alysa loved all of it.
But loving someone and fully understanding them weren't always the same thing.
And Alysa knew that.
Which was why from the beginning, she tried.
God, she tried.
She researched autism late at night after practice.
Read articles.
Watched videos made by autistic creators.
Asked questions carefully whenever you felt comfortable answering.
She learned what sensory overload looked like for you.
Learned why certain fabrics bothered you.
Why crowded places exhausted you.
Why you needed background noise constantly because silence made your thoughts too loud.
And most importantly-
She learned you noticed everything.
this is really random and probably just very lesbian of me but something i find endearing about amber is how physically she reacts to things. i can’t explain it. like baby you can relax
chromed out
Cat Moms on Ice - Isabeau Levito x Female Reader 💙
The original plan was to "just look."
That was what you and Isabeau Levito agreed on while driving to the adoption center.
"No impulsive decisions," you warned seriously from the passenger seat.
Isabeau nodded with equal seriousness.
"Absolutely."
Thirty minutes later, both of you walked out carrying two kittens.
"You folded immediately," you accused while holding the tiny orange kitten against your chest.
"You started crying first," Isabeau defended.
"That gray kitten climbed onto your shoulder and you called him your son."
"Because he IS my son now."
And honestly?
The second Isabeau sat on the floor surrounded by kittens, your fate had already been sealed.
Now your apartment had officially become chaos.
Tiny chaos.
Snowflakes & First Kisses - Isabeau Levito x Female Reader
By the third date, you had learned three very important things about.
One: she got excited over tiny things very easily.
Two: she laughed with her entire body.
And three-
She was secretly competitive about absolutely everything.
Which was how you somehow ended up in the middle of a snowball fight at nearly midnight.
"This is your fault," you informed her while trying not to laugh.
Isabeau gasped dramatically from several feet away.
"My fault?"
"Yes."
"You threw the first snowball!"
"You started it emotionally."
"That doesn't even make sense!"
Say Something - Alysa Liu x Female Reader ❤️💙
For someone who hated drama, Alysa Liu somehow ended up at the center of it constantly.
Maybe that came with being famous young.
Olympic medalist.
World champion.
The girl who retired unexpectedly, disappeared from skating for a while, then shocked everyone by returning and somehow skating even better than before.
People always wanted something from her.
A headline.
A story.
A rumor.
Unfortunately for you, this time the rumor involved another figure skater.
It started harmlessly enough.
One blurry backstage photo during Stars on Ice.
Then another clip of Alysa laughing with the skater during rehearsal.
Then suddenly social media decided they were "obviously dating."
You tried not to care.
Really.
Because you trusted Alysa completely.
You knew she'd never cheat on you.
That wasn't the problem.
𝒥𝓊𝓈𝓉 𝒶 𝒻𝓇𝒾𝑒𝓃𝒹, 𝒜𝓁𝓎𝓈𝒶 ✵٭⊹
↪ 𝓢ynopsis : Alysa invited you to a party, but she didn't know that this party would make her jealous.
↪ 𝓦arnings: Nothinnnnnnnng A/n: still traumatised with the spiderman fic... Sorry if the story is a bit rushed, I hurried to rewrite the Spiderman fic
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The café where Alysa suggested meeting is the kind of place that exists primarily so people can say they've been there. The walls are covered in plants that someone waters with suspicious devotion, the chairs are uncomfortable in a way that wants to read as deliberately aesthetic, and the menu costs twice what it should for drinks whose names take up three lines. You'd laughed when Alysa sent you the location, because the place is called Somewhere Nice and that's exactly the kind of café she'd choose without noticing.
You arrived early. Not by much — maybe ten minutes — enough to pick a good table and wallow a little in the waiting.
That's where the problem lies, actually. Not in the café, not in the chairs, not even in the absurd price of the latte. The problem is that you don't know exactly how to hold yourself when you're with Alysa in public. How you're supposed to behave. What distance to leave between you, what to do with your hands, how to handle the fact that your chest tightens in a mildly catastrophic way every time she smiles directly at you.
Alysa Liu is a figure skater. You knew that before you knew her, in the vague and distant way you know someone you've seen mentioned online, in article headlines you haven't always read all the way through. But knowing her from afar and knowing her for real — that's a difference you hadn't anticipated. The real Alysa is less remote than her public image, funnier, less perfect in a way that makes her even harder to look at without feeling something.
You met through a chain of mutual acquaintances convoluted enough that you struggle to explain it simply. A friend of a friend, someone who knew someone, a party you'd both been invited to where you ended up in the same conversation with someone talking about skating with a technical precision you couldn't follow. You'd looked at the girl who was talking. She was small, she laughed with her whole face, and at one point she'd looked back at you with the expression of someone checking to see if you were still following.
You were following.
It's not that you immediately knew what that meant. You'd simply kept watching her talk for too long, and then you'd exchanged numbers in a way that felt obvious in the moment, and since that night the question of what you feel, exactly, for Alysa Liu has come up with an exhausting regularity.
What you know: she texts you often. She sends you videos of things that make her laugh, photos of the ice at sunrise during her morning training sessions, messages that begin with wait I have to tell you and end thirty minutes later because Alysa tells stories with a lot of detail and digressions that don't quite finish. She called you once at eleven in the evening to ask your opinion on something entirely stupid — a question about whether pineapple really deserved all the hatred people directed at it — and you talked for two hours.
What you don't know: whether any of it means something on her end, or whether this is simply the way Alysa is with people she likes.
That's the part that escapes you. The uncomfortable part.
Because Alysa is warm in a generous way, with everyone, in a way that makes it hard to read the exact temperature of what she feels for you in particular. She's invited you to events, to parties at friends' places you didn't yet know, to impromptu group dinners. She holds your arm when you walk. She leans toward you to murmur comments during group conversations. She says your name in a way that's nothing special on paper but that makes you look up every time.
And today, she texted to say she wanted to introduce you to her friends. That she'd talked about you and they wanted to meet you.
My friends want to get to know you, she'd written. Are you free this weekend? We could meet somewhere?
You'd stared at the message for a full minute before replying yes.
Alysa arrives seven minutes late, which — from what you've learned about her — represents remarkable punctuality. She pushes through the café door with the slight urgency of someone who knows she's late but refuses to entirely show it, and she spots you immediately, which gives you that tiny fraction of a second to watch her before she's had time to adjust her expression for you to see.
She looks happy. Happy for real — not the public version. The other one.
"You got here before me," she says, settling in across from you, unbuttoning her coat with quick movements. "That's good. That's a good sign."
"A good sign of what?"
"That you're serious." She puts her phone on the table face-down, which she does when she wants the conversation to be real. You noticed that early on. "People who arrive late to important first impressions are people you can't fully trust."
You look at her. "You're seven minutes late."
She raises a finger, deeply sincere. "I'm the one making the introductions. Different rules apply to me."
You laugh despite yourself, and she smiles in that way of hers — a way that takes over her whole face at once, eyes creasing, head tilting slightly. That smile is the problem. Not the smile from her official photos. The other one. The real one.
"When are they getting here?" you ask.
"About twenty minutes. But I said twenty minutes because Camille is always half an hour late, so in reality they should be here in—" she thinks, "—thirty-five minutes, if everything goes smoothly."
"You got me here early so we'd have time alone."
It's not an accusation, more of an observation. Alysa shrugs with that slightly faux air she puts on when she doesn't want to admit something while admitting it.
"I just wanted to brief you a little on who's who," she says. "It's logistics."
"You could have done that over text."
"Texts are impersonal." She leans slightly over the table, elbows on it, hands folded. "So. There's Camille, who I mentioned — we've known each other since secondary school, she can be a little intense sometimes but in a good way, she's funny. There's Marcus, her current boyfriend, he's nice, talks a lot about music, if you get him going on that you'll get along. There's Sophie — we grew up in the same skating world, we've been close for a few years. And there's Théo who—" she pauses for just a fraction, short enough that you could have imagined it, "—who's been Marcus's best friend for a long time. He's cool."
You file all of that away. "And what did you tell them about me?"
"That you were my friend." She says that easily, without hesitation, with a naturalness that gives you no reason to resent the word but that still creates that small dip in your chest that you recognize now and carefully tuck away in its usual spot. "And that you were someone good. And Camille said she was looking forward to meeting you because apparently I never introduce my friends to the others, so if I'm doing it you must be special."
That last word lands in a way Alysa probably doesn't see — or maybe she sees something, because she looks at you for a second before straightening up and looking at the menu.
"Shall we order before they get here?"
Camille arrives first, thirty-two minutes late and with an energy that fills the café in a way disproportionate to her body. She's tall, short hair, a jacket that looks vintage and probably is. She spots Alysa immediately, raises a hand, and then her eyes shift to you with a frank curiosity that isn't unpleasant.
"Is this her?" she says, to Alysa, but looking at you.
"That's her," Alysa confirms.
Camille sits down next to you without ceremony and says your name as though she already knows you. "Alysa's talked about you so much I feel like we're already friends."
You look at Alysa. She looks at her coffee.
"Same," you say to Camille, who smiles.
Marcus arrives two minutes later, with Théo, and the table fills up suddenly. Marcus is indeed someone who talks a lot about music — you learn that in the first five minutes of conversation — but in a way that's contagious rather than exhausting. He asks questions, he listens to the answers, he builds on them. Théo is quieter, with a dry humor that takes a few minutes to surface and is worth waiting for. Sophie is the last to arrive, slightly breathless, a scarf unwound around her neck, apologizing to everyone in general before settling into the remaining chair.
The dynamic establishes itself quickly, more quickly than you'd have predicted. You'd had a slight apprehension on the way over — that ordinary anxiety of arriving in a group of people who've known each other for years and feeling like you don't quite have a place in the jokes that assume a shared history of decades. But that's not what happens. Camille actively folds you in, asks you questions, steers topics in your direction. Marcus had asked what you were listening to lately and you'd told him and for ten minutes you'd had a conversation that left the others slightly behind — not unkindly, just because you'd found something.
Théo, at one point, said something quietly funny and you'd laughed and he'd looked satisfied in a neutral way, like someone who appreciates a well-aimed shot without making a big deal of it.
Sophie talks about skating with Alysa in moments — names and competitions you don't all know — and during those moments you listen rather than participate, but that's fine too, it's pleasant to hear Alysa in her natural environment, talking about something that belongs entirely to her.
What happens, in short, is that you get along well with her friends. Well, really — not just politely. And that should be a good thing. It is a good thing. You tell yourself that several times during the evening, in a way that proves you need the reminder.
At one point, Alysa goes to the bathroom. It's the kind of unremarkable moment that shouldn't change anything but changes something, because suddenly you're just yourself in this group, without her as a common reference, and the conversation continues naturally.
Camille talks to you about her job, Marcus and Théo debate something you only half follow, and then Sophie turns to you and asks with total simplicity: "How long have you two known each other — you and Alysa?"
"A few months," you say. "About five."
Sophie nods. "She talks about you a lot."
There's something in the way she says it — not maliciously, just as a statement of fact — that makes you search for something in her expression. But there's nothing to read there, only neutral observation.
"Hopefully good things," you say, because that's the default response.
Sophie smiles slightly. "Always."
Alysa comes back before you have time to decide what to do with that. She resettles next to you — not across from you, next to you — and that too is something you note without knowing exactly why, and the conversation resumes.
The evening ends late, later than you'd have imagined when you arrived. The café had started to empty around them, the lighting shifted temperature slightly, and no one looked at the time out loud, but they finally made the slow, collective movement of people accepting that it's over.
On the pavement outside, there are the goodbyes that stretch on the way goodbyes between friends always do. Camille takes your number directly — not through Alysa — which makes Alysa laugh in a way that looks like surprise. "I'll send you an invitation to something soon," says Camille as though this is just information you should file away. Marcus and Théo leave together with a vague collective handshake. Sophie hugs Alysa, gives you a kiss on the cheek, and heads off.
And then it's just the two of you, on the pavement.
"So?" says Alysa.
"So what?"
She has that slightly impatient air of someone waiting for an answer they already know but want to hear anyway. "Did it go well?"
"It went very well," you say, honestly.
She smiles. Really, fully. "I told you." She starts walking in the direction of her car and you walk with her, both heading the same way without it needing to be decided. "Camille adores you. I can tell when she takes someone's number on her own initiative."
"Théo is funny."
"He's funny when he trusts you. He usually needs time."
"Marcus really does know everything about music."
"Marcus knows everything about music and nothing about anything else," says Alysa, affectionately. "That's his thing."
You walk. The streets are quiet — not empty, but quiet in that clean way of a weeknight evening. Alysa has her hands in her coat pockets and she looks ahead but regularly toward you, quick checks.
"Sophie is nice," you say.
"Sophie is a good person," Alysa confirms. "We've known each other a long time. It's the kind of friendship that has survived a lot of things."
There's something in her voice there — not exactly melancholy, just texture. You don't push.
You reach her car. She stops, turns toward you, and there's that moment that sometimes exists at the end of an evening that went well — that suspended beat where you don't yet know whether you're simply saying goodbye or staying one more minute.
"Thank you," says Alysa. "For coming."
You look at her. "You invited me."
"Yeah, but." She shrugs in a way that looks like something she doesn't finish. "It was important to me. That it went well." Another shrug, smaller this time. "That's all."
You don't know exactly what to do with that. So you say good night and drive home, and spend the twenty minutes in your car thinking about almost nothing else.
Two weeks pass.
Two weeks during which Camille does in fact send you an invitation — a party at her place one Friday — and you go, and Alysa is there too, and there are a dozen other people you don't know yet. Marcus plays music from his phone and argues with two different people about every choice. Théo is in a corner talking to someone, gives you a nod when you arrive — the kind of nod that means we know each other now, you passed.
And you and Alysa spend the evening together but not only together. She drifts toward other people, you drift toward other people, and then you find each other again in moments — in the kitchen, on the balcony, in the middle of commenting on something you've both just seen. It's comfortable in a way you wouldn't have predicted. It's the way two people exist in a room when they know the other is there without needing to keep checking.
You notice things, because you always notice things about Alysa. You notice that she laughs louder with Camille than in any other context. You notice that Sophie touches her arm when she talks and that Alysa doesn't register it. You notice that when you're at the other end of the room, Alysa knows where you are — because two or three times you look up and she's already watching you.
Maybe it's nothing. You've told yourself that often enough that it's lost its power to convince you.
At the end of the party, in Camille's hallway while people collect their coats, Théo ends up beside you and says, in a way that has nothing to do with what you were thinking: "Are you in the city for long?"
"I think so, yes," you say. "Why?"
He shrugs. "Just — Camille wanted to organize something next week. She was wondering if people would be available."
"I think I'm free."
Théo nods. "Cool."
It's an entirely unremarkable conversation. There's nothing in it. And yet, standing two meters away, Alysa is looking in your direction with something in her expression you don't quite recognize, and when you meet her eyes she turns back toward Sophie.
The following week, Marcus organizes something at a bar. Not an official party, just people getting together to watch something on a screen and drink cheap things. You go because Camille texted you directly, and because you want to go — not just because Alysa will be there.
That's what you tell yourself.
Alysa is there when you arrive, already settled with Sophie in a corner of the room, and she waves the second she sees you. Her wave is enthusiastic in a mildly disproportionate way — both arms — the kind of gesture that's bigger than necessary and has something involuntary about it. You sit next to her because that's where there's space.
The evening resembles the one before, in the good way. The group has expanded slightly, there are two or three people you don't know yet, but you've learned by now that Camille and Marcus's friends tend to be the kind of people you can talk to without a formal introduction.
Théo arrives late, which is new — from what you've gathered, it's usually Camille who's the systematic latecomer. He settles in next to Marcus and at one point looks in your direction and says something to Marcus that you can't hear, and Marcus nods.
You don't think much of it in the moment.
What you do think about in the moment is Alysa. As usual. Tonight she's in a particular state — quieter than normal, not in a worrying way, but noticeably. She participates in the conversation, she laughs at the right moments, she's present, but there's a slight distance in her eyes sometimes, something looking further than the room.
You don't ask her what's wrong, because maybe nothing is wrong and you're projecting. That's something you try not to do.
At one point you go to get drinks and Théo ends up following you to the bar, not in an organized way — you were both just standing at the same time. He orders something, you order something, and while waiting he says: "Did you grow up here?"
"No," you say. "You?"
"Yes." He thinks about it. "Well, forty minutes from here. That counts."
You talk about that for a few minutes — the city, the neighborhoods, those vague and harmless things you say when you're not yet sure how to talk to someone. It's pleasant. Théo is easy company once he's decided you exist, you've learned.
When you come back to the table, Alysa looks at both your glasses in a fairly neutral way, but for a fraction of a second you could have sworn you saw something else. You sit back down. Alysa says something to Sophie. The evening continues.
What happens next, you learn after the fact.
It's Camille who tells you — not intentionally, or at least not entirely intentionally. You're together for coffee the following Thursday, just the two of you, because Camille had texted and suggested it and you'd said yes because Camille is someone you want to spend time with, independently of everything else.
You're in another café, less aesthetically ambitious than the first, and Camille is talking about her job in a way that is simultaneously a complaint and an adventure story, and you listen and chime in at the right moments and it's nice.
And then she changes subject with the fluency she brings to everything.
"You know Alysa is completely gone on you, right?" she says.
You look at your coffee. "Sorry?"
Camille looks at you with the patience of someone who knows she's just said something that landed precisely. "That's an observation, not a question." She takes a sip. "I just wanted to make sure you were aware."
"We're friends," you say, using the word Alysa herself used.
Camille makes a sound that's not quite a laugh. "She introduced you as her friend."
"That's what we are."
"Sure." She puts her cup down. "Look, I'm just telling you what I see. And what I see is someone who's been making doe eyes at you since she introduced you to the group." She tilts her head slightly. "You haven't noticed?"
You've noticed. You've noticed a quantity of things, carefully filed in a category labeled probably nothing that you revisit regularly. "I don't know if—"
"It's fine," says Camille. "You don't have to decide anything right now. I'm just giving you the information. That's all." She picks up her coffee again. "The decision is yours."
The conversation moves on to other things, because Camille is someone capable of dropping a revelation like that and immediately moving to something else, and you're vaguely grateful for it because it gives you time to file away what she's just said somewhere accessible without having to know what to do with it yet.
You think about it the whole drive home. In your car, both hands on the wheel, you replay Alysa's words. My friend. The natural, unhesitating way she'd said it that first evening.
And then you remember the way she'd looked at you on the pavement afterward. It was important to me. The shrug that didn't finish its sentence.
You still don't know what to do with it. But the information is there now, harder to ignore than before.
There's a party at Marcus's the following Saturday.
Alysa sends you a message Friday evening to say it's at his place, that you should come, that she can pick you up if you want. That last part is new. You hadn't done that yet — been in the same car, just the two of you, going somewhere together.
You tell her yes.
She arrives on time, which — from what you've learned — is a conscious effort on her part. She's in a fairly high-energy state tonight, the kind that shows in her quicker movements, in the way she speaks in sentences that slightly overlap. She asks you about your week and listens to the answers and asks follow-up questions, and you're still on the way when you realize twenty minutes have passed since you got in the car.
"You seem happy tonight," you say.
"I am happy tonight," she confirms. "The week was long." A small silence. "It's good to get out."
You arrive at Marcus's. The apartment is larger than you'd have imagined for him — maybe because Marcus gives the impression of being someone who prefers small rooms — but he actually has a spacious living room with a hi-fi setup that takes up an entire wall, and that's clearly the room that matters.
The usual people are there, plus a few new ones you don't recognize. Alysa and you enter together and Camille spots you first, and you see Camille look back and forth between Alysa and you with a smile she's visibly working to keep at a reasonable level.
The evening gets going. You know enough people in this group now that you don't have to navigate carefully — you can just be there and let conversations find you, and it's pleasant. Marcus asks if you've listened to the album you were discussing last time, you tell him yes and it starts up again for fifteen minutes on that subject, and during those fifteen minutes you're not particularly attentive to what's happening around you.
It's when you turn around to find Alysa in the room that you spot her mid-conversation with someone you don't recognize — someone new tonight — and at the same time Théo approaches you with two drinks in his hands and holds one out to you.
"Marcus sent me to do service," he says.
"It's a thankless job."
"He says I'm more efficient than him because I don't stop to talk to everyone on the way."
You laugh. Théo has that slightly satisfied smile he brings out every time he's landed something precise.
You talk. It's easy — it has been for the last few evenings — and you don't analyze it too much because he's just someone you know now and get along with. He asks about your work with genuine curiosity and you answer and ask him questions in return.
At one point you look in Alysa's direction without quite deciding to. She's still talking with the same person, but now she's looking at you — at you — from across the room. When your eyes meet, she doesn't look away immediately this time; she holds the contact for a second before returning to her conversation.
Something in your chest does something you deliberately ignore.
The evening moves on. At some point you lose Théo in the collective drift of people circulating, and you end up in the kitchen with Sophie, who tells you about something that happened at training this week that made her half furious and half hysterical. You listen and laugh at the right moments, and Sophie is someone you like easily, without complications.
Then Camille appears in the kitchen doorway, looks around, and when she sees you she walks in with purpose.
"Sophie," she says, "Marcus is looking for you for something."
Sophie frowns. "For what?"
"I don't know, something about music, you know what he's like."
Sophie shrugs and leaves, and Camille watches her go then turns to you with an expression that clearly indicates there was probably no message from Marcus.
"What," you say.
"Nothing." She leans against the counter. "I just wanted to tell you something before the evening ends." She looks at you directly, the way she always does when she's saying something that matters. "Théo talked to me tonight."
You wait.
"He thinks you're cute." She says it flatly, like a logistical update. "He asked me if you were seeing anyone."
The silence in the kitchen is suddenly quite present.
"He asked you?" you say, finally.
"He didn't know who else to ask." She crosses her arms. "I told him I'd look into it." She looks at you. "So. Are you seeing someone?"
"No," you say.
"Yeah." She nods, expressionless. "That's what I thought."
You wait again. Camille says nothing more, and you wonder if that's all, if this conversation is just a transmission of information — and then you realize, from Camille's expression, that it isn't.
"There's a second part to what you want to say," you say.
Camille takes a moment. "I haven't answered him yet." She looks at you. "I'm waiting to see if you have something to tell me first."
You look at her.
She looks at you.
"Camille."
"I'm just saying." She pushes off the counter. "Théo is good. He's nice, he's grounded, he's interesting. He'd probably be good for you." A pause. "But you know what I think."
"You think Alysa—"
"I think what I already said." She shrugs, slightly, almost generous. "It's your life. Your choice. But I wanted you to have the full information before you decide anything."
She leaves the kitchen and you stay there for a minute, both hands on the counter, looking at the wall opposite without really seeing it.
You go back to the living room. The evening continues. You talk to people, you drink something, you exist in the room in a way that looks like normalcy, and the whole time part of your attention is on Alysa in a way you now recognize as the way she's always been on you in these settings.
Alysa, tonight, is different from last week. She's there but with that slight distance again — something you sense beneath her usual energy. She laughs, she talks, she's present, but there's something you don't yet know how to name.
At one point you find yourselves in the same space between two conversations, and she says: "You okay?"
"I'm okay," you say. "You?"
"Yeah." She looks at something behind you for a second, then back to you. "You're doing well tonight. Everyone loves you."
There's something in the way she says it. Not jealousy, not clearly, but something less readable, less easily filed away.
"Your group is great," you say.
"Our group," she corrects, easily.
Our group. You file that away too.
Théo passes close to both of you at that moment and says something to you both — something banal, a joke about Marcus and his musical choices. You both laugh. And then he moves on, and you look at Alysa, and the expression on her face is something you hadn't expected to see.
Not anger. Not really. Something softer and more uncomfortable than that.
You leave together because Alysa drove you there and drives you back, and in the car there's a silence that wasn't there on the way over. Not exactly unpleasant, but present in a different way. Alysa drives with both hands on the wheel, which she doesn't usually do, and she looks at the road with a focus that's slightly too concentrated for the situation.
"Good evening," you say, because it was.
"Yeah," she says. "Good evening."
Silence.
"You seem off," you say.
"I'm not off." She says it too quickly, and she knows it, because she adds, more slowly: "I'm just tired."
You look at her profile. "You weren't working this week."
"Tiredness isn't just physical."
You'd wait for her to elaborate, but something in her tone says she's not going to elaborate tonight, so you let the silence return and you drive.
She stops in front of your place. You undo your seatbelt but don't get out right away, and she stays there looking at the street, hands still on the wheel, engine still running.
"Théo is nice," she says, without you having led her there.
You pause. "Yeah."
"You get along well." It's not a question.
"We talk easily, yeah."
A moment. She nods in a way that says she wanted to confirm something and it's confirmed now — but that something isn't something simple.
"Sleep well," she says.
You look at her for one more second. There's something there you want to touch but that's behind glass, something she's not giving you access to tonight.
"You too," you say, and you get out.
You're not sure what happens during the ten days that follow.
Alysa texts you as usual — not less often, nothing changes on that front. But there's something slightly off in the tone, hard to identify precisely. The messages are there, affectionate, true to themselves, and at the same time she doesn't suggest plans. Normally it's her who suggests things — she texts to say there's something on Friday, or do you want to go somewhere this week? These ten days, she doesn't suggest anything.
You could have suggested something yourself. You think about it. But there's something in the waiting that holds you back — something you don't analyze too directly, because if you do you'll have to decide what to do with it.
Camille, for her part, texts you about a party at a place you don't know, on Friday. She adds that everyone will be there. You reply yes without asking Alysa if she's going, because Camille said everyone and you take that to be true.
Friday arrives. The place is a quieter bar than usual, more intimate — banquettes rather than standing tables. You arrive on time, see Marcus and Théo already there, sit with them. Sophie arrives a few minutes later. Camille five minutes after Sophie, with two people you don't know.
Alysa arrives last.
She comes in and her gaze sweeps the room quickly, and it lands on you almost immediately, and something in her expression shifts slightly in that moment — softens or sharpens, you can't quite tell which.
She sits down across from you this time, not beside you.
The evening begins like the others. Conversation circulates, people come and go at the adjacent tables, glasses fill and empty. Alysa is animated tonight, more than last week, and she talks with the energy of someone who has decided that tonight she'll be present. She jokes with Marcus, teases Sophie about something whose context you don't know, watches Camille do an impression of someone everyone knows but you, and laughs loud enough that the table next to you turns around.
And then there's a moment, in a lull in conversation, where Alysa looks at you and asks: "How was the rest of the week?"
"Fine," you say. "Long. You?"
"Same." She turns her glass in her hands. "What did you do?"
You tell her about your week. She listens the way she always listens — with that total attention that's always made talking to Alysa feel like what you're saying matters. And while you talk you see that something in her is less contracted than in these past days, that the slight distance you'd been perceiving in her messages isn't there tonight in the same way.
That's good. It relieves you in a way you hadn't admitted you needed.
The moment that changes something happens later in the evening.
Camille has disappeared somewhere with the two people she brought, Sophie is talking with someone at the adjacent table, Marcus is at the bar. Left are Alysa, Théo, and you.
Théo says something funny. You laugh. He has that satisfied smile, and then he says, with the casualness of someone who's decided to try: "What are you up to this weekend? There's something on Sunday if you feel like—"
And he doesn't finish his sentence because Alysa says, too quickly, visibly: "She's busy Sunday."
Silence.
Théo looks at her. You look at her. She looks at her glass as though she's just realized what she's done.
A moment that lasts three seconds too long settles over the table.
Théo takes a calm sip. He looks amused more than anything — or maybe he's feigning amusement because it's the least complicated reaction available. "Alright," he says, lightly.
And then he gets up to join Marcus at the bar, leaving the two of you alone.
Alysa doesn't look up for several seconds. When she does, you're still watching her, and she knows it, and her expression is something you've never seen on her before. Embarrassment, maybe, but beneath the embarrassment there's something else — something more exposed.
"Sorry," she says, quietly enough that it doesn't carry beyond the two of you. "I don't know why I said that."
You wait.
"That was weird," she adds.
"You said I was busy Sunday," you say.
"Yeah." She runs a hand through her hair — quick, involuntary. "I know you're not necessarily busy Sunday."
"Why did you say it then?"
She doesn't answer right away. She looks at the table, she looks at her glass, and you see something happening on her face that looks like someone weighing a decision.
"I don't know," she says finally — and it's clearly a lie, but a gentle lie, not a defensive one. The kind of lie you tell when you're not yet ready to tell the truth.
You could have left it there. That's what you'd normally do — take the gentle lie, file it alongside all the other things you file away, talk about something else. But tonight, for some reason, you don't want to.
"Alysa."
She looks up.
"What's been going on for the past few weeks?"
She looks at you, and there's something in her expression that resembles relief mixed with fear — like someone being finally asked the question they were dreading and hoping for at the same time.
"I don't know what you mean," she says, but it's different from the lie before. This one is more fragile.
"Yes you do."
She looks away. The room around you is noisy in a way that creates its own intimacy — all these people talking, this low music, this dim lighting. No one is looking at you.
"It's complicated," she says finally.
"What's complicated?"
And she says nothing for long enough that you start to think she's not going to say anything at all — and then she says, very quietly, still looking elsewhere: "I don't like the way I feel when you talk to Théo."
The bar keeps existing around you. Marcus laughs with someone at the counter. Music plays. And you're sitting there with that sentence landing with a precision you'd stopped expecting.
"How do you feel?" you ask.
She turns her head toward you and her eyes have that quality — that way of being directly on you, without detour. "Like I don't want you to talk to him." Pause. "Like I want you to talk to me instead." She says it in a voice that's not entirely steady but doesn't tremble either — someone saying a difficult thing with precision because that's the only way she knows how to do difficult things. "Which is stupid because you talk to me all the time, that's not the problem, the problem is—" she stops.
"What's the problem?" you ask.
She looks at you.
"I don't want him to interest you," she says. "I don't want anyone else to interest you."
You say nothing. You let that exist in the air between you.
And then — because this is Alysa, and Alysa does things fully once she's decided to do them: "I introduced you as my friend because that was the word that came out. Because I didn't know what other word to use without putting you in a position where you'd have to respond to something I'd never told you." She looks down for a second, then back up. "But I think if I'd had another word, I would have wanted to use it."
The silence is different now. Not uncomfortable, not tense — just full of something.
"You never told me," you start.
"No."
"Why?"
She thinks. Really thinks — you can see her thinking. "Because I was afraid it would change things. And the way things are now is already something I want to hold onto." She looks at you. "Even if it's not enough, it's still something."
You think about these five months. About all the conversations. About the fact that she always knows where you are in a room. About her way of saying your name. About that evening on the pavement outside the café — it was important to me, the shrug that didn't finish itself.
"It's enough," you say. "What you said. It's enough for me to tell you something too."
She looks at you with total attention, both hands motionless around her glass.
"I've been filing things in a category called probably nothing since we've known each other," you say. "Things you did, things you said. The way you always know where I am in a room. The way you text. The fact that you introduced me to your friends because it was important to you." You pause. "I kept telling myself it was probably nothing because it was simpler than telling myself what it maybe was."
"What was it maybe?"
You look at her. "Something."
The word lands between you — simple, insufficient, and whole at the same time.
Alysa stays still for a second and then her expression does something — that movement that belongs to her, that way she has of smiling when something touches her for real, before she's even decided to smile. It starts in her eyes and travels down to her mouth and it's the smile from when she's happy for real. Not the public one. The other one.
"Something," she repeats.
"Something."
She laughs softly — not loud, something low and relieved. "That's the vaguest word I've ever heard."
"It was the most precise one I had."
"I'm in the same place, I suppose." She looks at you. "Something."
You stay like that for a moment, and it's strange and tender and it resembles what it is — two people who have just put something on the table for the first time, who are looking at what it is and don't yet have all the words for it but who know the words will come.
Around you the evening slowly reclaims its rights. Marcus comes back from the bar with drinks, Théo with him, and they resettle without it being clear whether they understood that something happened during their absence or not. Théo looks at you for a second — not long — with that dry humor of his that doesn't comment on anything directly.
Camille reappears shortly after, and she looks at both of you in turn and then at the table with the expression of someone reading something and filing the information without comment — which, for Camille, represents a considerable effort.
Sophie is talking about something. The conversation picks back up.
But now you're sitting across from Alysa and something has changed in the texture of it, in the way you two exist in relation to each other at this table. She looks at you differently, or you look at her differently, or both — hard to say. When something funny is said in the conversation, you both look at each other in the same half-second, and it's unremarkable except that tonight it isn't.
Later, in a lull, she puts down her glass and says, quietly enough that it's just between you: "Sunday. Are you really busy?"
"No," you say.
"So then."
"So then what?"
She looks at you with a smile that's slightly nervous below the surface and slightly luminous above. "So then we could do something. You and me. Not a group evening."
"Just the two of us."
"Just the two of us." She waits. "If you want."
"I want," you say.
She nods, and in that nod there's something that resembles a relief you recognize because you feel it too — that finally, at last, here we are.
Sunday, it rains.
Not a catastrophic rain, just that low and steady rain that changes the color of everything and makes the streets gleam and the air different. You'd left your place late because you'd spent too long deciding what to wear, which was slightly ridiculous and which you'd admitted out loud to your empty apartment while putting back the third option you'd tried on.
Alysa had told you to come to hers. That you'd decide from there what to do.
You know her apartment a little already — you've been by two or three times — but never alone together, always with other people around. Today is different. She opens the door before you've had time to knock twice, and she looks like she's decided the day will be relaxed: comfortable clothes, hair down in a way that's rarely her public position.
"It's raining," she says, as though this is something you hadn't noticed.
"It's raining," you confirm.
"We'll stay in then. Unless you want to go out anyway."
"I don't want to go out."
She steps back from the door and you come in.
Her apartment is what it's always looked like — someone actually lives there, doesn't just sleep there. Things are everywhere in the positive sense: books stacked in a system that's neither quite alphabetical nor quite chronological, photos magnetized to the fridge, a jacket she forgot to hang draped over the back of a chair, a plant that seems to be thriving on the windowsill.
"Are you hungry?" she calls from the kitchen.
"A little."
She looks in her fridge with the energy of someone hoping something interesting has appeared since she last checked. "I have ingredients for crêpes or ingredients for scrambled eggs, and after that I think we order in."
"Crêpes."
"Good answer."
She starts making crêpes with the authority of someone who's done it often, mixing things without really measuring, and you sit on the counter because that's where there's space and it's closer.
You talk while she cooks. About nothing in particular at first — the past week, a show she's been watching that you should watch too, something Marcus said on Friday that was funny in retrospect. The rain continues outside. The kitchen is warm.
At one point she pours batter into the pan and you watch her do it and she glances at you from the corner of her eye in a way that means she has something to say.
"I've been thinking about Friday evening," she says.
"Me too."
She flips the crêpe with a gesture that is either experience or luck. "I should have said things sooner."
"Maybe," you say. "Or maybe the moment wasn't there before."
She thinks about that. "I'd been looking for the right moment for a while." She nudges the crêpe in the pan, eyes on the cooking. "And every time I found a reason why it wasn't quite the right moment yet."
"What reason?"
"That I wasn't sure how you saw things. That I didn't want to put something heavy between us when it was good the way it was. That if I was wrong, it would change what we had." She turns toward you, leaning against the opposite counter, pan still in hand. "And then you came into the group and everyone liked you and it was good — really good — and then Théo—" she stops.
"Théo wasn't the person in this story," you say.
"No," she agrees. "But he helped me understand what I felt. Or at least stop ignoring it." She sets the pan down. "Seeing someone else be interested in you and realizing I didn't like it at all — it's not the most elegant way to arrive at your conclusions."
"It's human."
"It's jealous."
"It's human," you repeat.
Elle vous regarde un instant, et il y a dans son expression cette vulnérabilité tranquille — celle qu'on n'offre pas à tout le monde, celle qui a un prix.
"I just wanted it to be me," she says. "Someone you wanted in your life in a way that was different from the others."
You step down from the counter. You're standing now, at a reasonable distance from her, and she doesn't move but something in her posture shifts — opens slightly.
"You've been different from the others since the beginning," you say. "That's why I needed an entire category to file the things you did."
She laughs — low, slightly breathless. "The probably nothing category."
"The probably nothing category."
"What was in it?"
You think. "The way you always know where I am in a room."
She says nothing.
"The way you say my name. The way you text. The fact of staying on that pavement after that first evening and saying it mattered to you that it went well." You look at her. "All the ways you made me feel like I had a place in something that mattered to you."
Alysa looks at you with an expression you no longer try to decode, because you can read it now — easily, unambiguously.
"You have a place," she says.
And then — because this is Alysa, and Alysa does difficult things directly once she's decided to do them: "Can I—" she starts, and she doesn't finish the sentence but she makes a tiny movement forward.
"Yes," you say, before she's had time to find the words.
She kisses you.
It's soft and precise and it has something recognized about it, like something you'd been waiting for long enough that it feels like a return rather than a beginning. Her hand finds your cheek and settles there gently, and you kiss her back with something that resembles relief and something else — something larger.
When you pull apart, it's by centimeters. Her hand stays where it is. Your foreheads almost touch.
"The crêpe is burning," you say.
She laughs — a real laugh — and turns back to the stove.
You eat the crêpes on the sofa because it's more comfortable than the table, with the rain still going outside and something on the television that neither of you is really watching. Alysa is sitting with her legs folded under her and you're beside her, your shoulders touching, and there's in it a quality of ordinariness that is precisely what you wanted without having known how to name it.
"Camille is going to be insufferable," says Alysa at one point, eyes on the screen.
"She was already insufferable. She knew before you did, apparently."
Alysa turns to you. "She said something to you?"
"She told me what she saw."
"What did she see?"
"She said you were making doe eyes at me."
Alysa sets her plate on the coffee table with a movement slightly more abrupt than necessary. "Doe eyes."
"Her words."
"My doe eyes." She looks caught between outrage and laughter. "I hope she's pleased with herself."
"I think she is."
You laugh and she laughs too and your shoulders touch again differently now, and something in the apartment changes texture permanently — in the good way, in the way that means the things you've said can't be unsaid and now you both know what you are to each other.
Not everything, maybe. The clear and precise words aren't all there yet. But the foundation is there. The thing is there.
And that's enough for today.
That's more than enough, actually.
What comes after that you couldn't recount in distinct moments, because it doesn't work like that. It works like something settling in, taking up space progressively, becoming the way things are.
Alysa still sends you videos of things that make her laugh. Except now she also sends photos of the ice in the morning with captions that say things like I was thinking about you and I wish you'd been here. You reply and you talk for hours and sometimes you wake up to messages she sent at a reasonable hour on her end but that you missed because you were sleeping, and you reply in the morning and the conversation picks back up.
Her friends see you differently. Camille has the good grace not to say it out loud too often — which, for Camille, is a restraint worth acknowledging. Marcus folds you into music conversations in a way that means he's decided you're part of the group for good now. Sophie is the same with you as she's always been, warm and direct. Théo says hello with the ease of someone who has no reason to do otherwise, and you're grateful to him for it without you ever discussing it.
The evenings continue, but now Alysa arrives with you or you arrive with her or one of you waits for the other, and it's simple logistics — but it means something.
There's an evening, a few weeks later, at Camille's again — because Camille organizes things most often. You're in a corner with Sophie and someone else you know now, and Alysa is telling a story with that energy she brings to things that amuse her: arms moving, rhythm rising. You watch her do it and you remember that first evening, when you only knew her as someone you'd seen online, and the distance between that moment and this one is something you'd have trouble measuring.
She senses you watching, or she's looking for it, because she turns her head for a second in your direction in the middle of her story. Her gaze finds you immediately and she has a half-second smile — just for you — before returning to what she was saying.
And you think about all the looks like that you'd filed in the wrong category. All the times you'd decided it was probably nothing and set it aside. About the patience it cost both of you to get here, and about the obviousness of the fact that you would have gotten here anyway, one way or another — because certain things have a way of finding their path.
It's not a dramatic thought. It's just something you notice, quietly, at a party at Camille's on a Friday evening, with Marcus's music in the background and Alysa finishing her story and turning toward you to see if you'd been following.
You'd been following.
That’s sweet. She’s awesome.
Unraveling
Once again…. mentions of extreme dieting for the sake of competing, use of stimulants, mental abuse/manipulation. Basically just rlly toxic skating culture and reader’s coaches are ASSHOLESSSS
pt 3 to kiss it better then one more and im done yay!
Elena and Martin did not let Opening Ceremony go unpunished. Alysa understood that almost immediately, not because either of them said anything outright to her, but because she knew the grammar of people like that by now.
she looks so baby here 🥹 i’m sobbing
Alysaaaaaa!
check on your local lesbians today…we are not okay
i’m actually so obsessed with her
NOBODY MOVE ALYSA POSTED HER AMAS OUTFIT LIKE 6 MINUTES AGO
NO ONE MOVE EVERYONE FREEZE AND LOOK, LOOK AT HERRRRR
