#Crane Load Testing

[shinguansg]

Overhead Cranes, Hoists, and Expert Services: A Guide to Material Handling

Shin Guan's indelible imprint on material handling crystallizes through its holistic modus operandi. From the conception of overhead cranes' blueprints to the craftsmanship imbued within hoists and the symphony of maintenance services, Shin Guan's prowess encapsulates the essence of industrial harmony. The ebb and flow of heavy loads cease to be mere operational tasks; they metamorphose into a tapestry of efficiency and security. As industries navigate complex currents and strive for zeniths of performance, Shin Guan emerges as a luminary, illuminating the path with innovative solutions that empower businesses to ascend the pinnacles of material handling prowess.

#Wire rope hoist #Overhead crane #Overhead travelling crane #Hoist Crane #Single girder overhead crane #Crane Servicing #Crane Maintenance #Repair Crane #Crane Load Testing #Chain Hoist #Monorail Crane #Crane Relocation #Dismantle Crane

[matchausafety]

Crane Load Test Dynamometer

The Crane Load Test Dynamometer by MATCHAU is a high-precision device used to measure and validate the load capacity of cranes and lifting equipment. It ensures safe and efficient lifting operations by providing accurate weight readings, contributing to enhanced safety and compliance in industrial settings.

Crane Load Test Dynamometer Types

Wireless Dynamometer

Also known as a wireless dyna-link, the wireless dynamometer is a set that includes one load cell, two shackles, and one wireless handheld indicator. You have the flexibility to choose the components you need, and it’s not an issue if you don’t require all of them.

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Load Cell Shackle

MATCHAU’s load shackles, also known as wireless crane scales, are a perfect addition to our standard dynamometer version. They are particularly useful in scenarios where traditional dynamometers may restrict distance or movement, or when safety considerations necessitate a larger gap between the operator and the load shackles.

Why Is Crane Load Test Dynamometer Important?

Safety Assurance: Crane Load Test Dynamometer is essential for verifying that cranes and lifting equipment operate within their safe working load limits, preventing overloading and ensuring the safety of personnel and assets during lifting operations.

Compliance Verification: The dynamometer helps ensure compliance with safety regulations and industry standards, allowing businesses to meet legal requirements and maintain a safe working environment.

Equipment Reliability: Regular load testing with the dynamometer helps identify potential issues and weaknesses in the crane or lifting equipment, enabling timely maintenance and enhancing overall equipment reliability, reducing downtime, and extending the equipment's lifespan.

FAQ of Crane Load Test Dynamometer

What is a Crane Load Test Dynamometer?

A Crane Load Test Dynamometer is a precision instrument used to measure the load capacity of cranes and lifting equipment accurately.

How Does a Crane Load Test Dynamometer Work?

The dynamometer is attached to the crane or lifting equipment, and it measures the force exerted during lifting operations, providing real-time weight readings.

Are Crane Load Test Dynamometers Portable?

Yes, many dynamometers are designed to be portable, making them convenient to use in different locations for load testing.

#crane #load #test #dynamometer

[wimaccrane]

the Power of Overhead Cranes: A Comprehensive Look into WIMAC CRANE’s Manufacturing Excellence and Industry Applications

manufacturing project, encompassing an eclectic range of single girder overhead and double girder overhead cranes.

single girder overhead crane / eot / 5 t/ 10 t/ 20t/ Introduction Welcome to our latest insightful blog! Today, we delve into an exciting and ambitious manufacturing project, encompassing an eclectic range of single girder overhead and double girder overhead cranes. This dynamic lineup is designed to haul loads of varying amounts, capable of managing 5 tons, all the way to a whopping 20 tons.…

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#10-ton cranes #20-ton cranes #5-ton cranes #construction industry #container loading #crane assembly #crane design #crane reliability #crane testing #double girder cranes #electrical systems #fabricating cranes #heavy lifting #heavy-duty industry #hoists #industry standards #load capacity #load management #logistics #manufacturing plants #manufacturing process #material handling #overhead cranes #port operations #power plants #safety #shipping industry #single girder cranes #supply chain #transportation

[vnshipservices]

Compliance and Accuracy: Specialized Load Test Services for Ships and Cranes

At VNS - Vietnam Ship Services Company, we specialize in delivering comprehensive load test services tailored for the maritime industry.

>>> Load test provision crane in Vietnam <<<

With a skilled team and cutting-edge equipment, we conduct meticulous load tests, including water bag testing, to evaluate the performance, stability, and structural integrity of marine equipment.

Our experts employ advanced load measurement techniques and closely monitor the load increments to ensure accurate data collection.

We provide detailed reports with comprehensive findings and recommendations, enabling clients to make informed decisions and prioritize safety and efficiency.

With a strong commitment to quality and adherence to regulations, VNS - Vietnam Ship Services Company is your trusted partner for reliable and precise load testing in the maritime sector.

You can also refer to our outstanding services here: Ship repair in Vietnam.

#marine suppliers #marine service #ship services #marine #ship repair #ship repairs #load test crane

[writingsfromhome]

If you Love Something II

A/N: okayy I’m finally going to stop overthinking and just post this one. Please note the tw in part 1. Thank you all SO much for the comments and love on the original…hope this one meets ur expectations. It’s definitely more focused on the lost daughter relationship rather than you and Harry so p dense but...here it is 🫣

——————————————

Age 36:

“Dinner’s almost ready,” Harry informs me over the phone. “I went with chicken noodle soup.”

“Mmm,” I close my eyes. “I could use something hot and hearty right now. I’m freezing my ass off.”

“I didn’t need to make dinner for that.”

“So come here, warm me up,” I crane my neck to the left again. “Stupid delays.”

“I can come get you."

I’d mapped it out before calling Harry, it would take him too long to get here. “That’s alright. Doesn’t make a difference.”

The screen on the platform showed 6 minutes…for the past 15 minutes.

“I’ve either been living in the longest minute of my fucking life,” I mutter. “Or this line is taking the piss out of all of us.”

Two dozen of us had gotten off the last train when it announced it was out of service. Now the number on the platform had tripled waiting for the next one.

“Patience,” Harry says. “Is a virtue.”

“Easy for you to say in the warm flat with the chicken noodle soup.”

“It’ll be yours soon.”

Soon. I sigh and try to release the anxious energy with it. “Thank you for taking care of dinner.”

“Of course.” He replies. Like it was that simple. But being with Harry was like that nowadays.

Despite all the catching up we had to do with the 17 years we had lived separate lives, emotionally it’s like we picked up where we last left off.

I’d be lying if I said it was smooth sailing the whole year we’d been together. There had been a hard few first months where both of us felt unnerved by the peacefulness of the relationship. We weren’t used to such an easy quiet.

I’d tried to self-sabotage first by going awol and working longer hours than I needed to. I think I was scared Harry would wake up one day and realize too much time had passed and he didn’t like who I’d become so I minimized our time together. Until Harry called me out for it.

But then he went off the rails, and for a few weeks I’d been an even bigger ball of anxiety. Ultimately I had to give him the hard truth even though the last thing I ever wanted was to convince someone to stay with an ultimatum. But I’d told him, he had to at least attempt sobriety if he wanted us to work.

There were a few sleepless nights, I didn’t know if we were going to make it. But one morning he asked me to go to an aa meeting with him.

Going together, being in the same boat as a group of people gathered in the back room of a dusty church finally gelled us together. For good. He’d been sober since.

We moved in together 7 months ago. Even though it doubled my commute time—tripled with delays, I had never been more sure that I was exactly where I needed to be.

We held space for each other. Even the heavier bits; we knew what they were. What it was like to hold them on our own. We always joked about how our loads had halved despite taking on half of the other’s. Because just like our venn diagram of love, our venn diagram of hurting was the same.

“Oh god, I better not be hallucinating.” I nearly jump up and down when the twin headlights of the next train peek in the distance. The platform board still says 6 minutes.

“You’re cutting up what?”

“Nothing! Train’s here!”

“I’ll pick you up from the station.” Harry says before I hang up.

I spend the remaining 15 minute ride going over the lecture I’d given tonight.

3 years ago when I applied to be a lecturer I didn’t actually think I’d get it. But in the 10 years of my career I had collected, I had done exceptionally well. It was ironic with all the bullshit life threw at me, I had somehow channeled it into a determined work ethic. After failing many math tests in high school I had found a love for it in uni—it made me work hard, get out of my head with its constant thoughts. Harry now took to calling me a masochist for teaching something mathematical.

In reality it wasn’t that mathematical. I taught Management Econ which was a snorefest on paper but I tried to be engaging and include a whole host of ways to teach—I knew not everyone excelled with a textbook.

It had made the course popular, it went from being offered once a semester to 3 times this year because the waitlist spoke for itself. It was one of my proudest accomplishment—getting students motivated and interested. And because it was mostly first and second year students, they were still eager and not jaded by the uni system.

That was how I spent my evenings on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Otherwise I worked for the city the same hours Harry worked his creative exec job at a major firm in the city. Sometimes we met up for lunch. It was the little things like that, making time to see each other in the middle of the day even though we woke up and fell asleep to each other, that made this relationship feel so secure.

It felt like coming home each time I caught sight of his face, and knew his smile was just for me.

My thoughts drift to our daughter. She would have celebrated her 18th birthday a few weeks ago. I always lit a birthday candle for her, this year Harry and I bought a cake and a symbolic drink for her. Our baby was old enough to drink.

“Do you think she takes after her parents?” Harry had asked.

“I think she grew up alright.” I always imagined her to have. “I hope she has no reason to drink herself silly.”

“Being 18 is reason enough.”

We talk about her often. She slips into conversation as easily as inhaling. It keeps her with us.

When I spot Harry’s car at the station I nearly weep.

“Your cheeks are so cold,” Harry says after a peck hello. He holds them both in his heated hands and plants exaggerated kisses on each cheek.

“Please sir,” I kiss his mouth and continue in what Harry called my Oliver Twist accent. “Take me to the chicken noodle soup. I hunger.”

Harry responds in the same accent (although it wasn’t as good as mine) and pretty soon I’m forgetting the 20 minute delay, the lecture with 100 technical difficulties, and anything in between.

After dinner and completing my 20 step night time routine I crawl into bed beside a cozy-looking Harry.

“Whatcha reading?” I peek at his book. I can’t believe he was the reading-before-bed type. In a way it was so different from the 17 year old guy I knew. It was also a reminder that even though we knew each other through and through, there were still so many habits and stories and quirks to discover.

“It’s a boring as hell sci-fi novel, don’t ask.”

“Then why are you reading it?”

“I accidentally joined a book club at work!?”

He tells me the story of how he told some people he enjoyed reading, and then being unable to say no when they bought this month’s book for him and presented it to him a week later.

“I bet you that’s their ponze scheme. It’s like an MLM, the latest recruit has to guilt the next joinee. You’ll be doing it soon.”

Harry laughs and holds his book out to me. “That actually brings me to my next question with this very generous gift, do you like reading?”

“Nope.” I push the book away. “I also don’t like book clubs.”

He tosses the book down lightly. “Damnit!”

We laugh. I cuddle into his side and lay my head on his chest as he finishes his chapter. His heart beat is steady, like the life he’s helped me create as we committed to each other. I listen to it as it lulls me to a calmer place.

“So how was work? How’s your students this semester?”

“Work’s good. Same old right now. Teaching was interesting. It’s the second week of classes so still seeing a lot of people come and go. You start to see the regulars by week 3.”

“Full class?”

“Almost,” I tell him. “A few empty seats. There was one girl who was obviously watching tv the whole time, another guy that fell asleep halfway, and this other kid kept looking at the door like he was physically trying to decide whether he would stay. Weird lot.”

“They won’t be there next week.”

“Nope.”

“You think she’s starting uni? I wonder what she’s decided to study.”

“Mmm, I always think it’s something creative like you.”

Harry squeezes his arm around me. “I think she’s a masochist like you.”

We talk more about her, about the upcoming weekend, and as sleep visits we drift away still intertwined like most nights.

***

“Does anyone know why?” I ask the lecture hall. Just like I predicted, most of the people I knew wouldn’t make it were gone. Now there were just under 60 students in total. What had surprised me was the guy who looked nervous the second week stayed. He’d been joined by two friends who only showed up in week 4. He was probably the designated note taker.

A girl to the left puts her hand up and I point to her. “The growing gap between upper and middle classes?”

“Yes.” I give her a reassuring smile. Until I started teaching, I forgot that most answers they gave were questions. “Anyone else?”

The girl beside nervous guy puts her hand up. “The ageing population, it skews the demographic from what was initially projected?”

“Exactly,” I try not to show favourites but that was beautifully said. Maybe she didn’t need to come to all the classes.

“That would also affect the workforce,” a guy sitting in the front pipes in. I smile, pleased that a discussion was forming.

A few others join in and I nod at each point. I loved this job.

After class is over I always got a few stragglers asking questions. The nervous guy comes up to me.

“Um professor,” he hitches his backpack and glances back at his friends. “For the assignment due next week, can groups of 3 be okay?”

I glance at his friends, it was supposed to be in pairs but what the hell. “Sure. But I’ll need extra stuffing in the assignment to make up for it.”

I say it with a joking tone but he’s so wound up that he takes me seriously.

“Of course. We’ll increase the citations and make sure to include more research-“

“Philippe,” one of the girls is suddenly a few feet away.

“Thank you.” He says, finally meeting my eye. I smile and he relaxes. I turn to his friends, to acknowledge them but they stare at me like I’d grown a second head. One of the other students asks her questions and I turn my attention away—weird.

***

“Mid-terms?” Harry asks. I’m reading a textbook while I stand over the simmering pot. We had accidentally ordered 4 times the tomatoes on our online order last week and with three still left I’d decided to batch make spaghetti sauce. It had been a long time since I made it from scratch.

“Kind of.” I push the book aside. “Someone in the department wants to update the textbooks and they left notes in the old one for what needs updating. They asked me to take a look.”

“That’s cool,” Harry walks over to me. He smelled like cologne and outside, the way he usually did right after he came home on chillier days. “That he wants your opinion?”

“She actually,” I poke him. “And it is! I can’t believe I get paid to lecture about one of my passions.”

“Economics,” Harry makes a face like he smelled something bad.

“Makes the world go round,” I smile sweetly.

“Remember when you liked things that were cool like Harry Potter and Coldplay-“

“I still like them! If I recall you’re the one who motivated me to do well in maths.”

“I did?” Harry looks off into the distance but his slow smirk is evident that he was remembering. He tilts my chin up and brushes my lips. “You’re right. So how about now? Would that still work?”

“Do you want me to stroke your ego right now?”

“Amongst other things,” he muses, his hands drop down to my hips and then lower, giving my bum a squeeze.

“Cut it out,” I scold him but it’s cancelled by the smile on my face. I shake my head and go back to the simmering pot.

“Is that tomato soup?” Harry’s suddenly distracted by the pot. We’d been having a lot of it this week because…well tomatoes.

“Nope, I’m making spaghetti sauce. From scratch.”

“Hey, didn’t you make that one time? When we were kids.”

“Hm,” I think back. It felt like so long ago but something niggles at me. “I think? I used to help my mum—it’s her recipe. Maybe you had dinner on a night we made it?”

“Yes. Dinner at your place, around Easter.”

I remember that Easter clearly but not for dinner. It was a night Harry and I had talked our lives all out.

“Aw. We were so young then.” I wrap my arms around Harry.

“I’m still young,” Harry says. “I’m in my prime.”

I pat his cheek. “Of course you are love.”

***

“Taylor I can’t really do this right now!” I tell my sister as she whines to me. No matter how old we got we were always somehow 17 and 12.

“C’mon just call mom! Tell her you met him and he’s really awesome.”

“I’m not lying to mom so you can invite your newest loser boyfriend to dinner. Anyway I can’t talk. I have to get to class!”

“I know.” She says weirdly. And I understand why when I walk into class and see her sitting in the front row. Ugh she knew I would try to blow her off!

My sister had somehow taken up the bad habit ever since her mid-20s of having a string of shitty boyfriends. We all blamed it on her longterm bloke breaking it off around her 26th. I don’t think she ever fully let herself heal from that.

After two separate guys were invited to two separate family dinners and both ended in mum or dad exploding over something, they were banned. This new guy, as she insists, was different. Mature. He deserved an invite.

She holds up 9 fingers and mouths, 9 months! That’s a long time!

I shake my head and start setting up my laptop.

“Hiya,” one of the students, Kim, walks up to me as I do so. “Sorry I was just wondering when we’re getting our assignments back? Will it be before midterms?”

Midterms were in 2 weeks for this class. The assignments were in my bag, marked and ready. I tell her and watch the relief spread through her.

I spend the next hour teaching, and before we break at the hour I announce I’d return assignments. As I call them out student walks down to me and pick them up, leaving with a smile or a frown.

“Philippe?” He had stuck to his word and his group had gone above and beyond. It was a beautiful paper, albeit overly-sourced. But I appreciated it.

“He’s not in,” one of his friends comes down to get it. She looks at me in that same way again, with just as much fear as curiosity. It’s odd.

“C’mon then,” I shake the paper I was holding out. “I don’t bite.”

“Oh sorry,” she grabs it from me in a rush I nearly get a papercut. She doesn’t even look at the grade, turning quickly away before halting, pivoting halfway, changing her mind, and running back up the steps to her seat. That group of kids were weird. Maybe they were on drugs.

I catch eyes with Taylor and she raises her brow. I shrug and continue handing out the papers.

I don’t expect the girl to come up to me after class. Her friend stays hovering behind, close to my sister who I know must be desperate to have sat here the whole lecture.

“Um ‘scuse me. Professor?”

“Yes?” She was the last person in the small line that had formed after class.

“I had a question about the assignment? You um, you said we missed the equations for our answers but they’re um-“ her hands are shaking as she flips the pages to the last page. “They’re on the bottom here.”

“Oh,” I did remember they were missing it but my pen marks were all over the back of it. “I must have missed that, bloody hell sorry about that!”

“Yeah um, do we get the extra points?”

“Of course but I-“ I glance back at Taylor. She’s talking to the friend. I had to get her out of here before she said something ridiculous. “I have office hours after my Monday class. I’ll have it remarked by then and you can pick it up?”

“Um, okay?”

I quickly shut my things down and grab my sister, getting her out as quick as possible.

“I’m a professional,” she reminds me. “Jeez. Anyway Y/n listen it’s the longest I’ve been in a relationship since, well y’know. 9 months! It’s different with this guy. He works like you! A cushy office job. He’s serious. Please!?”

I hadn’t seen Taylor since last month’s dinner when she had tried to convince me to get on board with this guy. She’d been pleading for a month. “Fine.”

“Oh I love you!” She squeezes my arm. “Text me when mom gives the okay.”

I sigh. I’d really got myself in the middle again.

I retell this to Harry when I get home.

“She’s persistent. But 9 months is a new record.”

“I know!” Harry knew all about her string of boys, I’d caught him up months ago. “Anyway I can’t believe she sat through the whole lecture.”

“Maybe this is the guy. The One.”

“You don’t believe in that do you?”

“Yeah?” He squints at me. “Of course I do?”

“So I’m The One?”

“Baby do I even need to say yes? I knew it as soon as I saw you when we were 14. You confirmed it when you kissed me on the roof that day.”

“I can’t believe I did that. I had my first drink that day by the way so I might’ve been drunk.”

“You were not drunk when you kissed me,” Harry points his fork at me.

“Look at you getting all worked up,” I tease.

“I’ll get you all worked up,” he mutters into his plate. I grin as I stretch my leg out under the table and run it up his leg. He grips my ankle when it gets too high and the look he gives me across the table sends my heart racing.

“Oops,” I drop my foot and go back to eating.

We put on a movie after, something we can zone out to. It doesn’t take Harry long to get bored and nuzzle into me, and it doesn’t take much longer after that before the movie is just for show and we’re tangled in our sheets.

There were 17 years of experience Harry showed up with now, and it was another one of those things that made catching up on lost time all the better.

***

In the first half hour of my office hours, the girl walks in. I should remember her name but I just associated her group with Philippe. I was surprised he wasn’t here actually. He seemed to be their spokesperson.

“Hi come in!” I wave her into the tiny cubicle-like room I borrowed for a few hours every Monday. “I’ve got your assignment here all done.”

“Thank you,” she hovers over my desk and I hand it over. Her fingers fidget with the strings of her hoodie and I seriously consider the drug angle. Or maybe her and her friends had serious anxiety issues. I didn’t miss that part about being a teen.

“You wanna flip through one more time? I try not to make mistakes twice but…”

She sits down tentatively and buries her head in the paper as she flips through.

“It’s alright,” she says. Her expression is so serious it nearly makes me laugh. She had pretty hair—blunt cut bangs that I remember rocking in my early 20s, but on her they hide the expression in her eyebrows. Maybe that’s why she always looked so sullen. Her lips are painted a pretty mauve colour and it complimented her green eyes.

“I really um…your class is really interesting.”

Kids saying that was like injecting pure joy right into my veins.

“I’m so glad you’re enjoying it,” I smile at her. But it still doesn’t crack a smile on her end. “It’s dense material but that’s nice to hear.”

“Yeah, I didn’t know if I was gonna keep the class.” It’s subtle but she inches back in the seat. The more she talks the more she relaxes back. “But I heard it was worth taking. And people were right.”

“Are you in your first or second year?” I ask.

“First,” she tucks her hair behind her ear. It’s covered in piercings.

“How are you liking uni so far?”

She meets my eyes for a second before they shift away. “Yeah it’s nice? I’ve never lived away from home but I have some friends here that I’ve known since before so it helps. It’s really different, less structure but I like the freedom.”

Wow, she really spoke a lot more when she was comfortable. But I find it endearing.

“That’s really nice. It’s good to have a support system, especially with such big change.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. Her eyes dart around the desk as she goes silent. I wait for her to get up and go but a minute passes and the room starts to feel even smaller.

I could ask her if she needed anything else, or maybe continue the conversation? Did she want me to ask about her? No, that would be weird.

“So um, was that your sister in class last week?”

Okay, didn’t see that coming.

“It was! My baby sister, although she’s not really a baby. Did she tell your friend that?”

She nods again. “She was talking to her.”

“You have any siblings?”

“An older sister yeah.”

“So you get it,” I say. “You love them, they get under your skin, you’d do anything for them, and the cycle continues.”

For the first time she smiles and my breath catches. For a moment…no. No, I was imagining things.

“Yeah. My sister and I were close growing up, but she’s the one person that really knows how to get under my skin. I swear she does it on purpose sometimes.”

“Probably,” I want to say something funny again. I just want to see her smile.

Back off, my inner voice says. Don’t do this again.

Some years back, when I was still in the throes of alcohol, I had followed a girl at the mall for nearly an hour. She had looked so much like my sister but with brown curly hair. I could have sworn it was her—my daughter. But after an hour of drunk stalking she had met up with her mum, a direct clone of her.

I couldn’t be obsessive again. Nobody knew about that phase. Not even Harry.

“D’you have any kids?” She asks. I don’t expect the question and it throws me off what with the thoughts looping in my head. She watches me, waiting for an answer.

“Um,” I usually answered no. To anyone who had asked in the last 18 years. But for some reason I nod today. “Yeah. One.”

I imagine it, I must have. Her face draws in for a second before she looks down. “Does she ever come to your lectures?”

“Oh no,” I feel the prick of tears and try to blink them away without being too obvious. “I’m not sure she’d find them interesting.”

“Oh.” She finally stands. “Maybe when she’s older…but I’ll see you on Thursday I guess?”

“Yeah,” I watch her go and realize she’d forgotten something. “Don’t forget your paper hon!”

She stiffens by the door before coming to get it.

“Sorry, it probably makes me a bad prof but there were two female names on the paper. Which one’s yours?”

“Bridget,” her voice cracks.

“Bridget,” I try to match the name to her face. It fit. “That’s lovely.”

She scurries out and I hear someone say “well!?” Outside followed by a “shh!”

I shake my head and try to focus back on my work, my heart racing an unusual amount.

***

It takes a couple days but I confess to Harry. He’d decided to meet up with me after class on Wednesday to eat out. We didn’t go far from the uni, a pub a few roads down. I actually spotted a couple former students there and they’d waved at me warmly.

“You’re not crazy,” Harry holds my hand on the table. “A few years ago I realized the volunteer interns we took on from the nearby school? They were the same age as her, teens? And I used to check up on them all the time, make sure they were feeling comfortable, until one of the guys on the team told me to quit being so weird and find someone my own age. I don’t know if it came across that way but…I got lost in that.”

“Oh Harry,” I squeeze his hand. “I didn’t know that.”

“I’ve never told anyone.”

“Me too,” I pop another chip into my mouth. “But really I’d kind of pushed those memories out of my head until the other day. I can’t explain it, when she smiled it just felt like I knew her.”

“Yeah. Maybe she just looks like Taylor?”

We finish dinner while Harry tells me about a story about some friends of his I knew. We reminisce about our old friends as we wrap up and head out into the brisk November air.

We’re near the station when I gasp and clutch Harry’s arm. Standing outside one of the nearby pubs, smoking with her friends, was Bridget.

“Harry! That’s her!”

“What? Who?” He’s so oblivious as he whips his head around.

“Hushhh!” I nod towards the northwest side. His eyes scan the group. “Red beanie. We have to walk past just look at her okay? Tell me if you see it.”

Harry laughs to himself, “This feels like we’re in high school walking past a crush.”

“Is that how you walked past me?” I tease.

“I did.” He looks at me in that way that still gives me butterflies. It never got old.

“Stop making me want to jump your bones out here. I have a reputation to uphold!”

“Hey I’ll still have a job to support us,” he whispers as we near closer to the group. “Feel free to do whatever you feel.”

“You’re a bad influence.” I whisper back. By now we’re a few feet away and I sense Harry slow down beside me.

Bridget’s nodding to whatever her friend is saying. Philippe is waving his drink around as he responds. We almost pass by unnoticed when someone completely different calls my name.

“Hey professor! Can we buy you a drink?”

I turn and spot a group of students I taught last semester. They were all friends, always battling out their wits during group discussions. It made my class lively, even distracting at times. But I tried going with the flow of whatever group of students I got.

“Hey kids!” I say. Then I have no choice but to acknowledge Bridget and her friends. “And more kids! Is this the new spot to be at?”

I sounded so lame but shite! We weren’t supposed to get caught.

“It’s always been popular,” one of my old students says. “Can we pick your brain? Buy you a drink? We can buy one for your friend too.”

“I uh,” I glance at Harry but he’s frozen solid. I look to what he’s looking at and it’s Bridget. They’re locked in some silent conversation and her friends eye each other. “Harry?”

“Huh?” He focuses on me, flushed and just as confused as I had looked on Monday.

“We’ve gotta get him home,” I pat Harry’s arm. “Our alcohol metabolizes differently at our age.”

“You’re not that old,” Bridget says. She seems to be surprised she said it at all and her eyes widen. “I just mean you look younger than my parents.”

“We’ll take that as a compliment.” I smile up at Harry who still looks a little lost.

“Miss aren’t you going to introduce your male friend?” One of my old student goads.

“Don’t assume,” the other chides.

“Aren’t you a nosy lot after a few drinks.” I missed dishing it back in class with them.

“Oops!” They laugh.

“Anyway. This is Harry.”

“You can call me Mr. Professor,” Harry jokes and it’s a crowd pleaser. God they were drunk. Harry leans into me, “I can see why you like teaching. They’re an ego-booster.”

“Not in a 6pm lecture on a Thursday night.” I whisper back. He hides his laugh.

“Are you guys heading home?” Now it’s Philippe. I’m surprised he was getting involved in the conversation. He was usually the quiet nervous type.

“We are. Need a good night’s rest so I’m not falling asleep in your lecture tomorrow.”

“We wouldn’t mind,” Philippe goes for joker but his face flushes. It’s cute.

“Philippe you take way too many notes during class for me to believe that.”

His two friends, Bridget and the other girl, look at each other wide-eyed before losing it. And I watch Bridget’s face transform again and I get the same feeling. I look up at Harry and he’s transfixed.

I tug his sleeve and he looks at me, swallowing like he was parched.

“Weird right?”

“Yeah,” he whispers but his mouth turns down ever so slightly.

The girls are too busy cajoling Philippe to say goodbye to so we make our exit quietly. We don’t talk much on the train ride home but Harry simple holds his hand out on my thigh, palm up, and I lock my fingers into his. Even when we didn’t have words, we never stopped staying in touch.

***

It’s exam and holiday season before I know it.

I was actually looking forward to Christmas this year. It was the first that Harry was going to join with my family. Taylor’s bloke was also showing. He had been a hit with my parents and even I could admit he was the better of all the guys she’s every brought over.

It’s the last 30 minutes of the last exam I was facilitating this year. I announce the time left to the group. There were only about 15 kids left.

Bridget is one of them. I watch her tuck her hair behind her ear and bite her lip. She’d been pretty quiet the remainder of the semester, and I tried not to let my eyes wander to her too much.

After that night, bumping into her with Harry, we hadn’t spoken much about it. The hope that was initially so buoyant turned crushing as we faced the reality that the odds were slim to none. That our wishes were just pennies tossed in a fountain, sinking to the bottom of the pool.

Dreary winter days pass by and Harry and I try to keep the seasonal depression away with regular outdoor dates, cozy nights in bed, and seeing friends as often as we could.

On Christmas we go to my parents’. It’s a loud affair as my grandparents and a few cousins join us. After dinner I go up to my childhood bedroom, it’s now a guest room but some of my things still lay around. I open the window, it was cold so I drag a blanket out and sit outside. The street is quiet, I see families in a few open windows and I watch the festivities through them. I feel a mix of nostalgia and an ache that goes even beyond that, like I was missing something.

“Y/n?” Of course Harry would find me even though I’d left the door closed and the window tilted.

“Here,” I say.

“Ah,” he struggles to hoist himself out. “Some things never change.”

“You need help?” I watch him climb on all fours.

“I’m steady,” he grins as he crawls to me. I open the blanket and he gets in.

We sit in silence for a bit.

“It was getting really loud downstairs wasn’t it?” I ask.

“I think your grandma’s in love with Taylor’s guy.” Harry says so bluntly that I burst out laughing. He joins in.

“I feel like old people get to flirt with whoever they want because it’s always harmless.”

“Maybe that’s the case with older women,” Harry grimaces. “Can’t say the same thing about old men now can we?”

“Jesus!” I laugh and then laugh even harder when Harry says: “it is his day.”

By the time I wipe my tears Harry’s gazing down at me.

“Sorry,” I lean my head against his shoulder. “You have to stop being so funny.”

“Nah,” he kisses my head. “Have I never told you how much I like your laugh?”

He had. On a night many years ago on a roof like this.

I go to remind him but he’s pulling away. I watch as he shifts to face my slowly. He pulls something out from behind him and my brain only connects the dots as he starts talking.

“Y/N, this is something I wish I could have done 18 years ago but only feels incredibly right to do now. Especially out here.”

“Harry,” I gasp. When did he get the ring? When had he planned this?

“We somehow found our way back to each other again y/n, and you know I love you more than ever before.” He clears his throat as it clouds with emotion. “Some 18 years ago I told you I knew you, because the first time I ever laid eyes on you my heart knew. You were something special. And I never ever want to spend another moment apart again. So Y/N Y/L/N, will you do me the honour and finally be mine? Will you marry me?”

“Yes!” If I wasn’t sitting on a roof I would launch myself at Harry. I settle for pulling his face down to mine and kissing it. “I’ve always been yours Harry. But yes, of course yes!”

He slides the ring on and it fits perfectly.

It was perfect.

When we go back down my mum knows right away, and if it was loud before it’s absolute chaos as everyone descends on me and demands to know how he proposed and how the ring looks.

“On the roof? When there’s a perfectly pretty tree here?” My grandma asks. Harry and I exchange a look then, trying not to laugh all over again.

We ring in the New Year with friends, as fiancés. I can hardly believe it. Apparently most of our friends knew Harry was going to propose and they all toast to us and our happiness.

Somewhere in mid-January, I drop by my parents’ house to drop off some groceries. That’s when my dad hands me a letter that had been mailed home.

“It came for you, I dunno who thinks you still live here but it looks handwritten.”

I take it from my dad as I say one last goodbye. I barely make it to the tube with wobbly legs. Because somewhere inside I know.

It’s a long and agonizing 2 hours that I wait for Harry to come home. He finds me sitting in the dark; the sun had set while I waited, and I’d been too busy staring at the feminine scrawl on the front of the letter to turn on the lights.

“Hello-y/n, what are you doing in the dark?”

Harry drops his things where they are when I look at him. “Y/n are you alright? Say something.”

I open my mouth but nothing comes out. I just push the letter forward.

He walks towards it. It’s like he hits a brick wall when he puts the pieces together, he halts a foot away.

“What is that?”

“Is was…” I try to swallow so my voice doesn’t sound so hoarse. “My dad gave it to me. It was sent to the house.”

“Is it…”

“I was waiting for you.”

Suddenly he’s in motion. He puffs his cheeks out and lets out a noisy sigh. Then he paces the floor one, two, three, four times before standing in front of the couch.

“We should read it.” I say.

“Yeah,” he deflates into the couch. I want to join him but it feels like my arse has been glued to the chair.

I inch it towards me and Harry nods. He wanted me to read it.

My mouth is parched. I can barely make out any sounds as I open it up. It’s three pages folded in two, the paper itself isn’t anything very special, it’s typed up so it’s literally just ink on paper. And yet it’s worth a whole goldmine.

“Y/n and Harry,” I read before my voice breaks and I bury my face in my hands. Our baby girl had written to us. She had reached out.

“C’mon love,” Harry’s suddenly beside me and his hand squeezes my neck. The touch gives me enough strength to stand with him. He sets me down where he just sat and leaves again, returning with water and the letter.

“Can you read it?” I ask.

He settles in beside me, we touch along every edge of us. The letter sits in between us like our love, our hurting—it’s where it belongs. He begins to read in his soothing voice.

“Y/n and Harry,

I hope it’s okay I’m calling you that. I don’t know if it’s proper but ever since I found out about you two last year that’s what I’ve been calling you.”

Harry lets out a shaky breath and I intertwine my arm through his. He kisses my temple and continues.

“When I turned 15, I asked my mum about you. I started to wonder where I came from. I knew I was adopted for as long as I could remember but it didn’t mean much to me for a long time—I had a mother, a father, and a sister. I had a family so why did I need to know where I came from?

But over the last few years it’s been like an itch I couldn’t get to. See when I was 15, what set it off is that my sister decided to look into her birth parents. They were separated, her father lived in Tokyo and her mother lived in Wales. It took her a year to convince our parents to go to Wales. I went with and I found myself in the home of a woman who looked just like the girl I grew up with. The whole time it ate away at me. I wanted this ending too.

I asked my mum and dad when I turned 15 but they were weird and evasive. I turned my skills to the internet but I didn’t really know where to start.

I felt the missing part more and more as I turned 16. I used to fall asleep thinking about you two, if you were alive, what you looked like, where you were, what you did.

I love my parents. They’re wonderful and amazing, they are supportive and never made us feel like we were anything but theirs. But I wanted to know my background.

On my 17th birthday my parents gave me a letter like the one I write today.” Harry stops reading and takes in a deep shuddering breath. “She got the letter.”

His shoulder shake and he pinches the bridge of his nose. I clench my teeth so I wouldn’t cry too. I wanted to finish this letter. I wrap my arms around him and hold him.

This was unbelievable, what we’d dreamed of. Her words, in our hands.

“Here.” I take the letter from him and continue. “Let me read it.”

Harry stays hunched over, so with my hand on his back I continue, “in it you told me how much you loved me. How much you loved each other, your families, where I came from. And Why you had to give me up. For a better life. I saw the picture of you, and I felt broken and complete at the same time. I realized I was the same age as you in the photo, I had to meet you but I was terrified. And I didn’t know how.

I spent a year agonizing and looking through every google page I could find about you. I learned a lot! But I needed to meet you.

I don’t know how to do this. I’ve made decisions that may not have been the best but I’ve left my number and a picture of me when I was 5 in the envelope.

I hope you call.”

With shaking hands I turn to the third page that has one of those polaroids taped to it and a phone number in the same handwriting as the envelope.

“She’s beautiful,” Harry says while tears continue streaming down his face. I can’t even hide mine anymore.

She was beautiful indeed. She had his eyes, and her curly locks in a deep brown frame her chubby face. She had my nose, she looked a little like my sister as a baby. A scatter of freckles over her cheeks confirm it. She was ours. Our baby had reached out. We knew what she looked like.

“We need to call her,” I say. “We need to meet.”

“Yeah,” Harry wipes his face. “We…we need to do this carefully. It’s delicate right?”

I wanted to call her right now but what would I do but cry into the phone? No, I had to wrap my head around this. Harry was right. “Right.”

“She’s out there,” Harry turns to me. “She wants to know us. Y/n she wants to meet us! She saw the picture I-“

“I can’t believe it,” I whisper. “Our daughter wants to—did she leave her name?”

We open the letter and flip over every piece of it but her name is nowhere.

“Maybe she didn’t want us looking her up?” Harry offers.

“Maybe she has an awful digital footprint.”

Something about it makes us laugh and we can’t stop. But pretty soon it shifts back into tears and we’re left holding each other on the couch, tender and content and anxious.

Our daughter had made contact. Would she like us? Would she be mad at us? What did this mean for us?

The thoughts continue to spiral the rest of the evening. We don’t make much of an effort, we reread the letter and try to get dinner in us. We face each other as we try to fall asleep, whispering questions into the darkness. The darkness doesn’t answer, it grows heavier as does the night, and we fall asleep for the first time in our lives knowing the weight of a decision so long ago was a tiny bit lighter.

***

It’s a few days later. All I’d been thinking about was the letter, when I woke up, at work, during my commute, during breaks, when I went to bed.

It sits on our dining table, we glance at it as we pass by. It becomes part of the decor, three pieces of paper and an envelope. It’s so much weightier than that.

I come home from my lecture on Wednesday, a slight buzz of anxiety humming in the background. It wasn’t unusual for Harry and I to get busy at work and not talk the whole day but today Harry had been radio silent. He hadn’t answered my texts or phone calls in a very un-Harry way.

I walk in to Harry sitting on the couch in the dark, staring at the coffee table. On it sits the letter.

“Hey,” I don’t even take off my jacket. I slide next to him. “Is everything alright?”

“Hey,” he whispers. He stays frozen sitting forward, elbows on his knees, head cradled in his hand.

I wait for him to speak, to say something about what was going on. I rub my hand over his back and he glances up. I tip forward until our foreheads touch. “What’s going on in that brain of yours? Let me help you.”

“It’s a lot,” he whispers. It tears me in two.

“Hey,” I remind him. “Just one day at a time. Let’s just talk about today.”

“I want to call her so bad,” he leans away and buries his head in his hands. I wanted to call her too, I’d been waiting for Harry to give the cue since I knew I could be rash and impulsive about something like this. But something was going on with him.

“We will.”

“We gave her up. What if she hates us?”

“She wouldn’t have written us that beautiful letter, or sent a photo, or left her number if she did.”

Harry sniffles and then asks what he really wanted to, “what if she hates me.”

“Harry look at me,” He unfolds slowly and I make sure he’s looking at me. “You’re her father, you’ve carried her with you for the last 18 years. You love her. She wants to know you. Why would she hate you?”

“I’ve fucked up so much!”

“You’re not your mistakes.” I remind him. I get teary eyed as I feel the echoes of his insecurities. I’ve thought about it too: what if I didn’t meet her expectations? “She’s not going to see you and see every good and bad decisions you’ve ever made. She’s just going to see her father—her biological father, and see where she got her eyes from and her hair from and every other quirk she has.”

“You’re not worried?” He asks, looking at me with grief.

“Of course I am,” I confess, tears leaking out of my eyes damnit. “I’m so fucking worried. But my curiosity overtakes that, my love for her is what I’m focusing on.”

“I love her,” he says.

“That’s all that matters.” I cup his face and press a reassuring kiss to his lips. “That’s all she’ll care about.”

Harry untangles himself from me and my heart sinks. He paces the length of our living room a few times, running his hand through his hair.

“We really should talk about the letter,” he says.

“Yeah. I know. I want to call. Badly.”

He pauses. It’s like all the anxious energy drains out of him at once. He sits back down beside me.

“What do we do?” I ask

“How about Saturday? She’s probably going to be home then right? No school—if she’s in school.”

Two days. Two more days of agonizing over the letter.

At this point the letter is memorized, seared into my brain like I had an exam on it. I want to know the person behind it.

When we wake on Saturday it’s a cloudy day. I don’t take it as a bad omen.

We sit with our phones out after breakfast, just staring at everything before us.

“You should do the talking,” I tell Harry. “I’m too nervous.”

“I think you should.” Harry says. “She sent the letter to you.”

“Only because that’s the address my mum gave…gave her mum.”

It hits me again in another wave I try not to drown in. She was eighteen, she’d lived a whole life with a whole family. There was everything of her we’d missed out on.

“Please Harry?” I was already overwhelmed with the realization. I just couldn’t.

He watches me, must hear the desperation in my voice, and slowly pulls his phone forward.

It rings, and rings a few more times. When it goes to voicemail he turns it off.

“I didn’t think that was an option,” Harry says and we laugh. It feels good.

“It’s only 10 maybe she’s asleep. Try one more time?”

He pulls my phone and tries again but it still goes to voicemail.

We sit there, unsure of what to do. We agree to try again later, in the afternoon.

But around half past 12, while Harry’s working in our spare room and I’m scrolling through my phone, it rings. I don’t think much of it and pick it up automatically.

“Hello?” It’s silent on the other end. “Hello?”

I wait, but as I do it dawns on me. Who called me?

I check my phone screen and swipe through as I say hello again. I match the number. It was her.

I run to Harry but the phone is still silent. I wave the paper with the number saying hello again.

“Is this…well you never gave us your name. But we got your letter. We’re so gl-“

The line goes dead and so does my heart.

“You called her again?” Harry whispers, his brows furrowing as he stares at the phone.

“She called.” I think about calling her back but that was pushy. She was backing out of this.

All of a sudden I feel myself giving out. I catch myself against the wall and slide down.

“She’s backing out. It must be…too much for her.”

Harry stares at a spot on the ground, a million thoughts flickering through. Finally it settles on acceptance. He sighs.

“We can’t force her to talk to us,” he says softly what I already know. But his words are like a saw to my resolve and I just start crying. He gathers me in his arms but the grief feels endless. It felt like she was slipping away again; I’d lost so much and I lost her again. She had been so close. How could she do this? Why did she reach out if she wasn’t ready?

Questions without answers. More of them piled on top of the lifetime of questions I’d built for her.

I know Harry feels the weight of them too. We carry them together. That’s the only reason I hadn’t broken yet.

But I come close to it that day. We don’t hear back from her. And we don’t try to call her back. It didn’t feel right.

It killed me she was so close. And something changes inside.

For weeks I feel like I’m on autopilot. It’s like my first semester of uni all over again.

Harry tries his best to keep me together but he struggles too. It makes me feel worse I was taking the bigger hit, not being there for him as much as I wanted. But life feels like a a million blankets covering me.

I try to keep my usual momentum for my classes, but I’m always exhausted after. It pulls me deeper into my sadness, something I loved made me so tried.

It’s a Thursday at the end of the semester and I’m marking exams during my study hours when there’s a light knock on the door.

I’m surprised to see an old student.

“Bridget,” I wave her in. “Come in, what can I do you for?”

“Hi professor-“

“Call me y/n, I’m not teaching you anymore am I?”

“No,” she says with a stiff smile. The last time I saw her was in February, I’d spotted her with Philippe and a few other friends at a local coffee shop. She had been explaining something to one of her friends from a textbook.

Now her hair was short and more pronounced with waves. I wonder if she styled it, her longer hair had been pin straight.

“I had a question?”

You already asked it, I want to joke. But she was usually wound up so I knew it wouldn’t land well.

“What’s that?”

“Um, well.” She perches on the chair and I wait patiently for her to continue. “Are you taking any applications for TA next year?”

I wasn’t expecting that. She always found a way to take me by surprise. I stare at her for a few seconds, trying to remember what year she was in.

“Aren’t you in first year? If I do TAs they’re usually 3rd or above.”

“I know,” she tucks her hair behind her ear. “But seeing that one of my majors is in econ and my gpa is really high, and I did well in your class, I wondered if you would consider me?”

I hadn’t done TAs since my first year of teaching. I found I liked the work because it got me more familiar with the class.

“What’s your other major?” She had said one of them was econ.

“Sociology, I’m pre-law.”

Ambitious. “Why TA for my class?”

She balks as she meets my gaze. There’s something that flits through her face that I can’t quite read before she drops eye contact.

“Um, I really enjoyed it. I did really well. I think you’re super smart and would learn a lot by TA-ing for you.”

“I don’t give special lessons to my TA,” I let her know. “You’d typically attend some of the classes, mark assignments, and maybe teach exam tutorials, and have office hours of your own for students.”

“I’m okay with that.”

“Why should I pick you?”

She pushes her shoulders back, “I’m responsible, dependable, I submit all my assignments on time and have experience teaching.”

“Teaching?”

“I used to tutor when I was in high school. I didn’t really get an allowance so I found a way to support my hobbies.”

“What are your hobbies?”

She blushes a little, was she still nervous? “I love reading, books are expensive.”

I nod. For Harry’s birthday I’d told him he could get any books from Waterstones and it had been over £100 for 3 only.

“I also enjoy cooking. And um, it’s been a while but my friends and I sometimes go to like. Do you know comic con?”

“Yes,” I’d seen things online.

“Yeah we liked to dress up for that sort of thing. We used to make our own outfits and usually the cost varies depending on what you’re making and how realistic you want it and…” she trails off as I smile. She was really enthusiastic about it. I couldn’t help it.

“Tell you what. Leave your number with me and I’ll think about it. I haven’t had a TA for the last few semesters but I am going to take this into consideration.”

“Really?!”

I laugh. “Yes. Really.”

“Um…” she starts to fidget again. “Can I leave my email? I’m getting a new phone soon so I-“

“Sure. Anywhere I can reach you.”

I expect her to get out a pen but she says it verbally and I type it out.

“Um, are you alright?” She asks out of the blue after I type in the last letter.

“Alright?” I raise my brow.

“I mean, you seem…I just heard, um.” She tries to backtrack but I ask her again and she spills. “Some people just said your last few classes seem scattered. Not that people don’t like you. I just…that’s what they were saying. And I don’t know if having a TA would help? And I just wanted to ask if you’re okay sorry I shouldn’t…it’s none of my business.”

God, this girl was so awkward. But she was sweet for caring, I think. “You’re not applying for the role because you feel bad that I seem…scattered right?”

She blushes. “Sorry. I think I said too much.”

I want to laugh but it strikes me that my students had noticed. I’d let it affect their learning. It didn’t feel very good.

“Life’s hitting me hard recently,” I tell her simply. “But I’m alright. Thank you for reaching out Bridget.”

As I finish up the semester I think about her. It wouldn’t hurt to have her TA for one of my lectures, see how she does. I didn’t care for TAs as a lecturer but something about her is compelling and I find myself emailing her in the middle of the night in June. She responds back a few minutes later,

Thank you!!! You’re the best. I’ll do whatever you need just tell me I can do anythingggh

Sent from iphone.

I laugh to myself as I put my phone away and go back to bed. My guesses were she was drunk at a party.

Harry’s asleep beside me and I reach out to touch his back but think better of it. He’d been busy at work with a project nearing its deadline and I didn’t want to accidentally wake him.

I turn around and try to drift off, thinking about my daughter, about how Harry and I hadn’t really talked much in the last two weeks, about my teaching, and my new TA.

Age 38:

It’s a depressing summer. The air of dashed hopes still hangs around Harry and I. It’s less thunder clouds and more of a fog.

One weekend morning, it’s one of those mornings that start off heavy. I can’t get out of bed, but I hear Harry pattering about doing his weekend morning thing. I hear the dishwasher turn on, and soon after he walks in with our laundry folded in a basket. I feel awful as I normally do, but not awful enough to get up and do anything about it. I think I’d have to feel less awful, to do that.

I don’t expect him to get in beside me once he’s finished putting everything away. He smells like laundry and shampoo, I must smell like rot and decay.

“Y/n,” he says gingerly. I just look at him in response. I felt too heavy to even reply. He sits up and calls my name again.

“Mm,” I say.

He sighs. Despite months of this Harry’s been nothing but understanding but this morning seems different.

Suddenly I’m being pulled up by my shoulders and I find myself sitting up in bed.

“Y/N,” Harry says again. I fold my arms as the duvet slips down and the cool air raises goosebumps. “I love you, which is why it’s so hard seeing you like this. You have to get on, my love. We have to move forward. It’s been months.”

All I could remember after our daughter hung the phone up on us was when I almost got to hold her. Right after she was born, I almost got to hold her but they took her away. And that piece of me that followed after her was nearly returned. It was that almost that was a death blow.

“It’s hard,” I feel myself tear up. It was hard not to these days.

“I know baby,” Harry scoops me into him. “I know. It’s hard for me too but we have to get better. We have to live our lives. She’ll come back to us, I just know it. She’s scared, we’re hopeful. Fear’s gonna keep her away. Hope keeps us patient.”

I cry into his shirt and he rocks me.

“I’m sorry,” I say into his shirt.

“It’s alright,” he grips the back of my neck.

So for Harry, for us, I try to get back to myself. I start to pick up my outdoor hobbies, I try to keep conversations going with Harry, I reintroduce my multi-step night routine. I look forward and re-light the candle of hope, even though I ache to blow it out before it can burn down to its wick.

My wounds inside stay tender.

We had booked our wedding for November and as the days approach we find ourselves with one thing on our mind.

Harry and I finally talk about it.

“I always thought she’d be there at the wedding once she reached out.”

We’re sat in an outdoor space near King’s Cross, coffees in hand as we people watch. We’d just come back from a cake tasting and neither of us felt like going home with such a glorious August day. Kids splash in the water sprinklers and couples sit around arm in arm. I touch shoulders with Harry unconsciously.

“Me too. I think that’s what’s kept me from mentally committing to the fact that the date is coming closer.”

“It can’t be forever,” Harry says. “She reached out. She just needs time. She’ll call again one day and we’ll meet her.”

“I know.” I lean my head on his shoulder. This was a realization I’d also been slowly digesting. I’d waited 18 years, what was a few more months, another year? Her baby picture lived on our fridge, at least we were one step closer.

And the love, I had to remind myself in these moments. Hold onto the love.

***

“I can’t stay for this class,” Bridget tells me. It’s the second week of classes and there were still 10 minutes until it officially started.

“Is everything alright?”

“Not really,” that’s when I notice her nose is red and her eyes are too. “My um, my parents had to put my dog down. She…she wasn’t feeling well yesterday and the-they found cancer? And she was in a lot of pain but she never showed it? And-“

I put my hand on Briget’s shoulder and lead her to the exit. There was no reason for the whole class to see this.

“Sorry. I’m-“

“Don’t apologize.” I rub her shoulder. “I understand. Take the time you need I have this covered.”

True to her word, Bridget had been a loyal TA over the summer. I considered it a trial run not expecting much but she had shown up, aced marking, and I’d gotten good feedback from the students at the end of the semester.

I’d also taken to her. She’d join me during my 2 hours every Monday and when no students would come she would loosen up. She’d told me all about the dog she grew up with, she showed me costumes her friends and her made, I’d asked her about the books she was reading and the classes she was taking. It was like having a younger sister again, except I was mature enough to appreciate her.

“I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” Bridget says and this statements seems to be the breaking point. She curls in on herself, shoulders shaking. I don’t even think, I just pull her into me like I would for Harry, for Taylor, for any of my friends.

“You have a lifetime of memories with her,” I hold her. At first she stiffens up and I almost let her go but she only breaks down further and wraps her arms around me. Tighter than I expected.

“I wish I said goodbye,” she says into my shoulder.

“I know hon,” I squeeze her against me, something maternal washing over me. “I know.”

After a minute or so she regains her composure, wiping her face with her sleeve. When she looks at me she looks so much younger, her face grief-stricken and regretful.

“I’m sorry-“

“Don’t be.”

She seems to want to say something more but whatever it is, she swallows it and takes a step away.

I don’t see her for two weeks and I miss her.

When she walks into the lecture the first week of October I try not to rush her but I’m overjoyed seeing her face. It had become so familiar to me.

She smiles shyly when she walks up to me and I pull her into a hug. This time she doesn’t stiffen.

“How are you?” I whisper. Students were still trickling in so I use the time to catch up.

“Okay. Better than that day I cried all over you sorry again. I went home last week, thanks for letting me take it off.”

“Of course. You forget I’ve been doing this without a TA before you. I can hold down the fort.”

She cracks a smile, her dimple making a rare appearance.

“By the way, week 10’s lecture is supposed to be cancelled.” I tell her later during office hours. “But I wondered if you wanted to hold a tutorial that week for some of the material?”

“Really?” A light comes on in her eye. It’s fiery and bright with excitement.

“Yeah! You know the material! I’ll leave you with slides and you can go about teaching them.”

“I’d love to!” She grips her laptop close to her. “Wait why is it cancelled?”

“I’m getting married that week!”

The light dims. Or maybe I imagine it.

“Oh! I thought you were married already?”

“No,” I’d referred to Harry as my partner any time he was brought up. “We’re getting married in November. You’ve met him actually, kind of, that night we ran into you and some students at the pub. Last year?”

“Oh yeah I remember,” she says but her eyes are somewhere else. “So you’re getting married?”

“Yes Bridget,” I laugh. “Married. Tying the knot. You alright?”

“Yeah,” she blinks and she’s back. “You never mentioned the wedding. Do you have a dress?”

“Yeah! Just finalized the tailoring last week. Most things are ready, we’re just finalizing the rings!”

“Cool!” She fidgets with the hem of her shirt. “Is it in London?”

“Yeah, it’s not too big but we didn’t want people travelling too far. This is where Harry and I were born and raised so this is where we want to marry too.”

“Wow,” she seems lost in thought and she stays pretty quiet the rest of the time. I didn’t realize my news was that surprising.

Maybe I still didn’t have Bridget completely figured out.

***

“Harry I can’t pick them up! I need to get home and then head back out to class!”

“Y/n it’s on your way home!”

“Not really! It’s a 30 minute detour. Why can’t you do it?”

“Because you can still get to him right before he closes. I won’t be done here until after he closes. I’m sorry love!”

“Agh and why can’t he do tomorrow?”

“He’s off until Saturday! We need it today.”

It’s the Wednesday before we marry and our rings are still at the jeweller’s. He’d finished them last weekend but we’d been so busy with other things we hadn’t had time to pick it up. And now it was either today and be late for class, or the day of the wedding.

I had gotten delayed at work and missed Harry’s texts explaining the situation. I’d only responded while on the tube, but going out of my way for 30 minutes meant I’d be 30 minutes late to get back to class. And since I’d left marked assignments at home that the kids needed for next week’s tutorial, I had no choice but to head back.

The idea hits me at once.

I hang up on Harry and ring Bridget. She picks up right away.

“Bridget, I’m on a crazy tight schedule. I’m going to be late to class by half hour at least.”

“Oh no. Is everything alright?”

“Yeah it’s just wedding thing but can you do something crazy? And feel free to say no okay?”

“Okay?”

I explain to her that if she rode to my flat, Harry would be there by then and she could pick up marked assignment. She can delay class by taking them up.

She’s silent but eventually I get a yes. “Okay. Can you text me your address?”

“Yes! Yes. Thank you Bridget. I owe you your trip fare and lunch or something. I’ll text you now, leave as soon as you can!”

I call Harry again and confirm he’d be home by the time she arrived. Everything works out.

I get the rings, and have to head home so Harry can try his on. The jeweller was expecting both of us, and let me know he couldn’t do adjustments if I didn’t text him by today. Just my luck!

When I get to the flat I tell Harry not to read his inscription but to try it on and thankfully it fits.

“Hey,” Harry calls out as I try to rush back out the door.

“What?” I was out of breath and frantic.

“Slow down,” he pulls me into a lingering kiss and despite being breathless before, I get some air into my lungs when we part.

“Sorry, so hectic.”

“I know I’m sorry,” he strokes my cheek. “I would have gone if I could make it. Also don’t be mad.”

“Be mad?” I let go of the door handle. “What did you do?”

“Your TA stopped by, Bridget. I forgot she was coming so I didn’t have your papers ready. I invited her in and she was in the living room looking at our pictures and she stopped in front of the baby picture. Of our daughter.”

“Okay,” did Harry tell her our history? I get antsy. “And?”

“Well she asked if that was our daughter. And I didn’t know what to say, if you’ve said anything to her? I panicked?” Harry runs his hand through his hair. “I just changed the subject.”

“Okay, that’s not bad. What’s the bad part I don’t get it?”

“Well. I changed the subject and told her she should come to the wedding.”

My jaw drops. “Harry.”

“I know! I know I’m sorry! I know she technically works for you, she was a student, all that! You’re so fond of her though maybe it’s not a bad thing?”

“Harry that’s…she was my student! I’m a prof at that school I…is that even allowed?”

“Yes? I panicked and googled it.”

I groan, “I swear you’re getting worse the closer we get to the wedding.”

The other week he had tried to buy out a whole bakery in case there wasn’t enough cake for our guests.

“You can tell her we have a full guest list? I don’t know what came over me! She just looked at me with those puppy eyes and she asked about the picture and I tried to talk about something else but the only thing on my mind-“

I kiss him. Just to shut him up. I was getting really late.

“This is like that book club you were tricked into joining all over again-“

“Hey I really like that book club now! It might be a good thing!”

“We’ll talk later.” I shake my head at him. “It’s fine, it’s not a big deal. It’s weird but what’s one more guest?”

“I also said plus one.”

I let out a long exhale and then kiss Harry again. I didn’t want him spiralling while I was gone.

“Baby don’t worry, it’s okay. I’m fine with it. We’ll talk when I get home?”

I mull over it on the ride to uni. But I can’t find a way to uninvite her without it being awful. I text our wedding planner if we could squeeze in two more seats and she gives me the thumbs up.

I did have a soft spot for Bridget, and technically I’ve known her for over a year now.

During office hours, we get a few people in for the first half hour. Then we’re back to just the two of us.

“Thanks for taking over today,” I tell her. “I really appreciate it.”

“That’s alright. Happy to help out.”

An awkward silence slithers in.

“So my partner invited you to our wedding.”

“Yeah! I didn’t know if that was serious am I…?”

She looked so hopeful I couldn’t shoot her down. “Yes! I have a couple people from the faculty coming. And some colleagues from my day job. You’ll probably have to sit with them but?”

“That’s fine!” She’s chirpy Bridget again. “I’d love to. That would mean a lot.”

I watch her as the smile stays on and she gets out her phone, typing away. Maybe her friends, her plus one.

I realize I’m not entirely against it. It had happened, and I was okay.

***

I stare at myself in the mirror, smoothing down my dress in a nervous habit. I never thought I’d get married twice, I always thought after Tatum I was done with marriage, but Harry would always be the exception.

I feel a flutter of nerves thinking about him. Walking down the aisle to him. We started talking on a rooftop one day, we had just been two kids.

“You better not cry,” Taylor threatens as she walks into the room. She had gone to fetch lash glue after my teary eyes loosened an edge.

“I’m not,” I say weakly.

She stands beside me in the mirror, “They’re all waiting downstairs.”

Just 30 minutes ago this room had been a chaotic mess. From my mum, to my friends, to the wedding planner. I’m kind of glad my lash came loose, I’m able to ground myself in these few minutes of silence.

Taylor talks about our family downstairs as she fixes my face. I get up with her help and she beams, but her eyes look misty.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Nothing!”

“Why do you look sad what happened?”

“Oh my god calm down, I just can’t believe you and Harry are getting your happy ending! I’m just…emotional.”

“Aww,” I cup her face even though I want to squeeze my baby sister against me. But my white dress, although not entirely traditional, would be ruined for the ceremony.

A ping on her phone—mum. We rush out. It feels like getting caught when we were younger and quickly getting away from the scene of the crime. I grip my sister’s hand until I stand in front of the doors leading down the aisle.

I don’t remember walking, it felt more like floating. Even if there was a chimpanzee and a talking dog in the pews I wouldn’t have noticed. My eyes are locked on Harry’s teary ones, they anchor me as I glide towards the man I’ve never stopped loving. Who always saw all of me.

When he reaches for my hand I grasp it and I know I made the right decisions. Even the painful ones. After all, I wanted to be nowhere but here.

“Y/N,” Harry reads his vows to me and I try not to cry as he sweeps me away with his delicate words about our love story.

“To be so deeply known by another, without even saying a word, shouldn’t make sense and yet with us we have a language that goes beyond words. A brush of your hand or a look in my direction, it can be enough to unload whatever burden I’d just been carrying. I promise to do the same for you, and to never end this dialogue between us. To love you and to cherish you forever.”

Harry couldn’t keep the tears in and they slide down his cheeks as he reads his words out to me. I reach out instinctively and brush his tear away and he laughs because I was doing it again.

“You’re can’t make me cry in my makeup,” I tell him and our guests laugh.

I had sat and thought so hard about my own vows. In the end after 50 versions, I’d settled on short and sweet.

“Harry, when we first spoke on the rooftop of that party in high school,” I say at my turn. “You told me everything you wanted. One of them was to make the world a better place. And I don’t know if you still want those things as much now as you did then, but one thing is true. You’re made my world a better place. I can’t imagine doing life without you. I love you with all of my heart, there’s no equation that could calculate how much.”

Harry grins at me and my breath catches. My man, he was my Harry.

We finish our vows with a kiss and a lot of noise from the crowd. When we turn to everyone I’m struck by how lucky we were.

The absence of our daughter was tough but when it came to love we had an abundance of it. I see it in every smiling and shiny face in the crowd. It’s like photographing a sunny day with one of those old school films, the sun is covered by a dark spot but the rays still wash everything in gold.

Harry squeezes my hand and I look up to him. He’s already looking at me.

He holds his hand up and lets out a whoop before he pulls my face towards him again for an even longer and borderline inappropriate kiss. I feel myself start to blush in front of the crowd.

We start down the aisle and this time I beam at every guest I catch eyes with.

My mum and Harry’s wave with tear-streaked faces. My friends from high school shout out, always the biggest supporters of our relationship. I catch eyes with Bridget, forgetting for a second she was here. Philippe is beside her, but what’s surprising is her blotchy face. I didn’t take her for someone who got emotional at weddings. I throw her a wave and she smiles through the tears.

Whoever ordered weddings to have a small break between the ceremony and the reception deserved a billion dollars. Harry and I spend the quiet moment doing our outfit change but afterwards we hold each other and let the moment sink in. The day sink in.

“We’re married,” Harry whispers when I tell him we should get going so we weren’t late.

“We took the long way to get here didn’t we?”

“Yeah,” he tucks me under his chin again and even though we would be late we just sway together for a little while. Our own private first dance, before the one for our family and friends.

“We did it all quite backwards actually.” I look up to him.

“Yeah, but we were never ordinary.”

“No, and I don’t think anything we’ve ever done is either.”

“Including our kid. I really wish she were here.”

“We’ll tell her all about it one day,” I promise him. His face eases into a loving smile, the fact that we’d made it to a place again where I can comfort him about this said a lot. Said we’d make it through everything, despite.

“I don’t want to do life with anyone else y/n, I have everything I need right here.”

“Remember that day at Whole Foods?” I remind him. “The first time we bumped into each other.”

“It’s a core memory,” Harry remembers. “I feel like the sun never set on that day. Getting to see you after all those years…it’s cheesy but it felt like coming home.”

“Yeah,” I nod. “Me too. I recognized you by the back of your head did I ever tell you that?”

“Stared at it enough in maths, of course you did.”

“That’s probably why I did so poorly that year remember,” I laugh. “Just staring at the back of your head.”

“That’s why I never sat anywhere but in front of you.” He swipes lightly down my nose and I smile. “Now I get to see every angle of you whenever I want.”

“Oi,” I slap his chest. “Save it for tonight.”

He brushes my cheek. Under his gaze I’m stripped naked. There was nothing to hide with him, ever.

“I understand how long it took you to get ready,” he says in his deep silky voice. My stomach flips. “So I can’t do anything right now. But y/n, our wedding night will turn into a wedding dawn, and then to day again. I promise you.”

I tip-toe, even in my heels, and brush my lips along his cheek. In his ear I whisper, “I don’t expect anything less.”

I step away, feeling unravelled by the look of desire in his eyes. I’m sure I had the same look of want. But before we can give in to what we wanted to do, I open the door to our suite and embrace the gust of cool air.

“You should get some air too,” I say and he laughs, following me behind.

***

“Bitch!” Taylor comes up to me on the dance floor later that night. We had dinner, Harry and I had our first dance, there’d been toasts and tears in between. I was finally letting loose as the wedding party crowds the dance floor. We had been taking pictures all night, after this next glass of champagne I was going to call it quits on photos lest anyone captures anything that’s not an elegant bride.

“What?” I turn away from Harry to face Taylor. She’d been running around all day making sure my wedding day was perfect and seeing her just warms me with love. I squeeze her against me despite her protests. “I love you Taylor. Thank you for everything!”

“Ugh c’mon,” she wriggles out. She’d never been very affectionate.

“Where’s your bloke?” I look out for him.

“He taking a call. Anyway don’t change the fucking subject!”

“What subject!?” I ask as someone dances past me, fluttering their fingers in my direction. I blow them a kiss.

“C’mere,” she’s annoyed I’m distracted. She drags me off to the side and I hold a finger up to Harry as he watches us. “When the fuck were you going to tell us about her? And you invite her to your wedding and everything and nobody knows anything!?”

“What?” I was drunker than I thought or Taylor was making no sense. “Wha?”

“The girl you just took a photo with? Don’t act stupid Y/N jeez I can’t believe it. You hid it from me when it happened but why are you still hiding…”

My sister grows more upset as she talks, I realize it was serious. Taylor rarely allowed herself to get this worked up in public.

I put my hand on her shoulder but she shakes it off. I think hard about who she was talking about. Who had I just taken photos with?

Some of Harry’s friends took a picture lifting us up, then there was a photo with my cousin but that can’t be who Taylor was talking about. There was Andie, a few other friends and their partners, then Bridget and Bridget and Philippe.

Bridget.

“Wait what are…who do you think that is? Taylor I work-“

“Your daughter! Why are you still acting fucking clueless!”

“What’s happening?” Harry walks in mid-way into the conversation.

“God you too!” Taylor turns to him and hits the back of her hand on his chest. He rubs the spot and stares at her like she’d gone crazy.

“Me too what?”

“Harry?” His mum walks up to us, her brows pulled together the same way Harry’s does when he’s confused.

“Yeah?”

“Who’s that girl? With the brown hair? Purple dress?”

She’s eyeing Bridget who’s laughing with Philippe.

“Bridget?” Harry glances at me and Taylor grows more pink.

“Bridget? That’s her name?” Taylor blinks away tears. “Really y/n? I get when it happened I was a child, you and mom kept it from me. But she’s, you invite her to you-“

“Invite who?!” I shout. What the hell did Taylor think.

“Y/n,” Harry puts his hand on my lower back in warning.

“Your daughter?” Taylor says with teary eyes and a look of betrayal on her face. “That’s your daughter isn’t it? She looks just like…”

“Jesus I thought the same thing,” Anne looks at all of us. “Harry?”

“That’s not-“ he stops talking and we all look over at her. I had to say, right now she really could be. With her hair curled and wearing what she’s wearing. She could be family.

“She’s my TA. I’ve known her for a couple years guys I’ve bloody taught her. That’s not our daughter. She wasn’t even supposed to be here tonight? Harry invited her last minute.”

They all turn to look at me. Taylor looks miffed, she bites her lip as she looks at her one last time.

“That’s weird. Nevermind.”

She leaves like she didn’t just make a big scene. Anne covers her hand with her mouth and shakes her head. “I’m sorry loves, I didn’t mean to upset anyone-“

“You didn’t do anything,” I reassure her. Taylor did. And she couldn’t even say sorry.

“Don’t worry mum,” Harry pays her arm. She fades into the crowd and Harry stands in front of me so all I see is him. “She’ll get air, she’ll be fine.”

“But how could she just cause such a big scene like I’d hide something like that from her? On my wedding day! And then leave without even apologizing ugh! She is still such a brat sometimes!”

“I know, she’ll apologize later just let her be.” He knew Taylor enough. He knew her at 13 and he knew her now. That’s exactly what she would do. “We’re getting you a shot.”

“That’s the last thing I need! I’m already kinda tipsy Har.”

“This won’t tip you over c’mon. Shake it off.”

He leads me to the bar and we take a shot. I nearly spill half of it, it was awful whatever it was. I lose Harry as we get back to the dancing and end up behind Bridget instead. Philippe noticed me first and slows his dancing, which signals Bridget to turn around.

“Y/n!” Her smile is so bright it hurts to look at. It dims as I just stare at her.

It would be crazy. It was a big fat coincidence. She had a mum, a dad, a sister, she told me all about them. Her childhood dog and the time she twisted her ankle playing football in year 4. She wasn’t who we wanted her to be.

“Are you alright?” I read her lips. There’s only ringing in my ears. “Hey! Y/n!”

Philippe is suddenly on my other side and I’m being led to a chair. He disappears and Bridget pulls a chair beside me.

“What’s,” my voice sticks and I clear my throat. “What’s going on between you two? He’s your date?”

“Philippe?” Bridget’s brows draw together and I can’t stop looking at where they meet. I knew her. I didn’t know her. I was too afraid to ask. “No just friends.”

“That’s not the way he’s looking at you.”

“What?” She tucks her hair back. “No we’ve been friends since high school. It’s not like that?”

“What would you do if he got a girlfriend?” It was a random conversation to have, here and right now but it helps me from tumbling anywhere else. Especially into a pool of what-ifs.

“I’d,” she shrugs but a flicker passes through her face, for a second her jaw clenches. “Be happy for him.”

“Liar!”

“I’m not! Why are you asking?”

“You two like each other. I see the way he looks at you when you’re not looking. Why did you invite him tonight?”

She shrugs, picking at something on her arm. “I dunno. He’s good at being a plus one. He always supports me? He’s always been there for me.”

“Sorry,” he shows up with a glass of water. “I swear the guy behind the bar was ignoring me.”

“Thank you Philippe,” by now I didn’t really need the water but I hold the icy glass in my hands. “Let’s see the pictures you took. I want them in my inbox or something soon. We don’t get our official photos for months.”

“Oh yeah here,” Phillipe hands over his phone after opening the photo. There are a couple of all of us, and then a few with just Bridget standing between Harry and I smiling.

I look between all three of us and feel something in my gut. But it’s too scary and big to unpack right now. I shove it away. I couldn’t do this. Not today, not tonight.

“You look beautiful Bridget,” I touch a lock of her hair. “Did I already say that?”

“Yeah,” she smiles awkwardly. “You said that before the photo.”

“You do. And so do you Philippe. Thank you for attending my wedding.”

“Thanks for inviting us,” Bridget looks at me wide-eyed, like she’s about to say something but when Philippe’s hand lands on her shoulder she looks down.

“What?” I ask anyway. Her eyes dart like prey to me, to Philippe, and down to her hands. I grab her hand and force her to look at me, like I could read something in her eyes. Like I would know. “Bridget.”

She looks up and her eyes well with tears as we look into each other’s eyes. My throat feels tight like I was having an allergic reaction, it travels down to my chest, I inadvertently feel myself squeezing her hand.

“I’m so-“

“Bridget,” Philippe’s voice cuts through whatever Bridget was going to apologize for. I look up at him and he’s burning a hole staring at her that hard. Over his head I see Harry.

“Oh look I see my husband,” Harry’s spots me too, relief in his features. His eyes stay on my face as he walks towards me and his eyes keep my steady. I want to tell him something, but everything that just happened was so non-verbal and unreal that I think I made it all up. I must be because this was insane and there was no explanation other than I was drunk, and sadder than I realized. “Gotta go kids. Have fun. I think I need another shot.”

I remember the rest of the night in snapshots. I forget myself later, giving myself up to Harry after that. We actually make it to dawn in a mixture of love and declarations, filthy words and I love yous, laughter and deeper conversations. It’s everything we were. It’s just like he promised.

***

Life moves on and I don’t bring anything up to Harry. I couldn’t, either I’m wrong and get his hopes up, or he thinks I’d gone insane in my sadness.

I feel like Bridget avoids me the week after, I return to class and she sits there, even takes questions after class, but she makes an excuse of studying during office hours and I barely get a few words with her. The week after she has an exam and she skips out after class.

I’m antsy. I want to know more about her; from her. I’m tempted to find a way to access her profile, get more info via the school. But I wait.

Harry notices, as we prep for our honeymoon booked over the holidays, he continues to ask if I was alright. And I try to convince us both I was.

About 3 weeks after the wedding, it’s a Saturday afternoon. Harry’s making lunch and I’m sitting in a pile of our books trying to decide what can be donated.

“Can you get that?” Harry asks.

“Hm?”

“The door?” He says just as there’s another knock. I’d been so entranced in the book I’d randomly started reading a passage of I hadn’t even heard.

I scramble to get it before the next knock and nearly stumble back when I find Bridget at the door.

“Hiya,” she says with an awkward wave.

“Hi…Bridget. What…come in what’s going on?”

“Sorry? Now that I’m here I should have called first.” She comes in and I go further in, waiting for her to follow. She hesitates before peeling her wet boots off.

“Harry? We have a guest,” I announce as I take her further into the home. I guess she’d already been here once before. “Bridget what can we do you for? Did you need something?”

“Bridget!” Harry pops out of the kitchen into the adjoined living room when we get closer. “Nice to see you again! I’m nearly done lunch, did you want to stay?”

What was it with Harry randomly inviting Bridget to things that were not pre-discussed.

“Um, I no. I probably shouldn’t. I just, came by to talk?”

“Sure,” I lead her to our dining table. “Is it about school? Did something happen?”

I sit across from her and Harry mumbles something, turning the dials down on the stovetop before sitting beside me.

Bridget’s eyes dart everywhere, from me to Harry, to the pictures on the wall, the kitchen, the books all over the floor.

“I was just doing a clearout,” I say to fill the silence. “Hey you like books right? Look through that pile there later if you want any of ‘em.”

“Actually,” she tucks her hair behind her ear. I feel Harry tense beside me. “I have a book for you.”

She leans down to where her tote rests and pulls something out. She lays it on her lap first, where we can’t see it. When she looks up to us she has tears in her eyes and her chin quivers.

“Please,” she whispers before pausing. My stomach drops as I take her in. Her face is blotchy and her hair hangs around her face, hiding half of it. She’s definitely cried before coming here, and I almost feel like deja vu as she places the book on the table. “Please don’t hate me.”

She slides it across to us. It’s just a simple leather hardcover, about 30cm by 30cm. The thing in my gut, the suspicion or the intuition, it turns into a cackling ball of energy and moves up to my sternum. I put my hand over it, and then move it to Harry’s leg. He’s frozen like a statue, staring at the book.

“Please open it?” Bridget says with tears streaking her face.

When Harry doesn’t make a move I pull it the rest of the way towards us. I open the first page to a few baby pictures.

I’d never held her in my hands, never even saw her. I’d pushed her out into this world, into another’s arms. But somehow I know who this is.

“Bridget,” I don’t even look at her. I start to frantically flip through the pages. The baby grows, 2 months, 6 months, 1 years old. Another girl joins in some photos, she always has an arm around the other child. I flip and flip and flip and even though I’m expecting it the photo stops my breathing.

I stare at the clone, or the original, of the photo on my fridge.

I’m frozen until another photo is slid towards us. It comes into view: two teenagers on Halloween night. The guy is dressed like the girl, the girl is dressed like the guy.

I throw my chair back and in the time it takes to walk to Bridget she stands too.

“I’m so sorry,” she sobs but I just do what I wanted to do the second she was born.

I hug her. I hold her to my chest the way I never got to over 19 years ago. She belonged here. She never got to be here.

She was finally home. My daughter.

“Bridget,” I cry into her hair. Harry’s hair. She had Harry’s hair, his eyes. She got my nose and everything else. I was holding my daughter. She was in my arms, finally.

She really did look like Taylor as a baby.

“I’m sorry,” she cries again. “I was so scared and I screwed up and-“

“No.” I say fiercely. I push her out of the hug so I can grab her face. I wipe her tears and I nearly cry again. How many tears had I missed? Over skinned knees, playground taunts, first crushes and friendship breakups. How many tears had I missed? “Don’t say that. You’re here. You’re—Harry!”

I turn to him, why wasn’t he here?

He’s sat exactly where he was before. Frozen, staring at a spot between the picture of us and Bridget.

I let go of Bridget and move back to him.

“Baby,” I touch his arm and he springs up. Tears coat his lashes.

“‘Scuse me,” he brushes past me and heads out into the hall. Away from us. I want to go after him but I don’t want to leave Bridget—our daughter, alone.

“I’m sorry I knew I would ruin things I-“

“Please,” I want to go after him so bad but I go to Bridget and pull her into a gentler hug. When we part I keep hold of her shoulders. I never wanted to let her go. “He’s just processing it. He’s fine. He’s not mad at you I promise. Promise.”

She bites her lip, it reminds me of Taylor. She was a bit of everyone I knew and loved. She was the love that Harry and I always had. She was ours.

“I just got so scared when I tried to reach…I didn’t mean to deceive you. I didn’t. I felt terrible every day.”

“It’s okay,” I tuck her hair behind her ear. “There’s nothing to be sorry about-“

“But I saw you,” she cuts me off. “After I finally called you back and then just like, ghosted you. And every time I saw you at school it was like…I knew I was to blame. And it made me want to tell you even more but I got more scared any time I came close to it. I almost said it at your wedding—it would have been so stupid. Philippe stopped me.”

“I understand,” I did. I also didn’t care about any of it. She was here. That’s all I cared about. I wanted to know everything about her, I needed Harry here though. “Look Harry…your…Harry. I’m just going to check on him. You stay here and just…”

I trail off and leave. I had to be sure he was okay.

He’s not in the bedroom, or the office. I try the door to the toilet and it opens, he’s sitting on the edge of the tub with his head in his hands.

“She leave?” He asks in a hoarse voice.

“Oh baby,” I crouch in front of him. “No. She’s still here but I just wanted to check on you.”

“I’m pathetic,” he buries his hands in his hair. “I’ve been waiting my whole adult life for this and all I do is freeze. Her first impression is of her dad just freezing and then running away.”

I try not to laugh at his dramatic retelling. “Har you know that’s not true. She’s known you before this. It was a shock-“

“You were fine.”

“You know I…always suspected. Especially after the wedding.”

He looks up at that, finally. “You never said.”

“Harry, I felt crazy. Saying it out loud would have forced me to check myself into the psych ward. We all react differently, it doesn’t matter though. Our baby girl is here. The day we talked about!”

He takes a deep breath, and then another one. I guide him to stand and he looks so limp and sad that I squeeze him in a hug. “She doesn’t care how you reacted. She just wants to know you.”

Harry sighs again, he splashes his face with water and we walk out. I was nervous for him.

We walk back into the living room and my heart sinks when Bridget isn’t there. But her things are?

A few steps further and she’s at the stovetop, stirring a pot.

“Oh sorry,” she steps back and nearly throws the spatula into the pot. “It was boiling a lot and-“

“Bridget,” Harry ignores most of what she’s saying and she freezes at the sound of her name. He’s a foot away from her now. I watch him raise a hand to her face and then drop it. His face is a cross between heartbreak and awe as they drink each other in. I wait in anticipation.

“Hi,” she finally says shyly. But it breaks the ice. Harry pulls her into a hug and she returns it tenfold from the looks of it. I can’t tell who’s crying, but I give them their moment as I turn the dials off on the stovetop.

It was just a regular Saturday, except it wasn’t. Our worlds exploded with our past and was putting itself back together again, all the old broken pieces were being mended back together with love. My chest drowns in it, I can barely breathe. In Harry’s arms, there’s no denying she’s ours.

***

“Thank you,” Bridget says as we tuck into dinner. Harry’s lunch prep had gone cold as we’d all sat down and talked about how Bridget found us (looking me up, finding out I was teaching a course she was interested in, forcing her friend Philippe to take it to see if I was who she thought I was), and going through her album. I found out more about her sister Louisa and her parents. It was weird seeing pictures of them, in my mind they were the people that took my baby as their own and for Bridget they were mum and dad.

We finally decide to do something about food when our stomachs rumble. Harry goes back to cooking, showing Bridget what he’s doing until she leaves to take a call. I recognize Philippe on the caller ID.

I take Bridget’s place but I’m more of an extra weight tied to Harry’s back as I hug hun from behind. We don’t even have words on what this all means to us. For now, just touching each other keeps us grounded, it keeps is in what was happening together.

Bridget comes back from the call when we’re nearly done.

“I just want to say I am sorry—and I know you said not to be,” Bridget says quickly before I can get a word in. “But I never meant to deceive the both of you. My plan was to take your class, leave the letter and then talk. I Googled you so much it felt like I knew you. Yet when we spoke in your office that day, you felt familiar but In a different way than the person I studied. I just liked you so much, and I wanted you to like me. I was scared maybe you wouldn’t. So I just screwed the plan and messed up everything.”

“Hey,” Harry hands her a tissue and she takes it. Under the table he squeezes my hand. “It’s in the past.”

“I know. Still made me feel awful. And I couldn’t tell you but I also couldn’t stay away. I applied for TA and, it felt like having a friend and a sister and a mentor all in one. And I…I screwed up. I took it too far. And then you invited me to your wedding—I got to attend my parents’ wedding! It was so absurd. I couldn’t stop crying.”

Sounded like me. But I don’t say anything. We listen to her attentively.

“I only told my sister. I wanted to tell you two before I told my parents.”

I think about my parents. Harry’s. I didn’t want to overwhelm her but I couldn’t wait to introduce her to everyone that already loved her.

“I just hope…no, I know I hurt you two a lot. I didn’t mean to. I am really sorry about it all.”

“Bridget,” Harry’s hand comes down on hers. “What’s done is over. There are so many things we wish we did differently but ultimately it’s all done. All that matters is you’re here, now. You’re our daughter we never got to meet and you’re finally here.”

Harry’s voice cracks on the last word and he sits back and laughs away the tears. “Sorry. I’m a mess today aren’t I? Your first impression of me is a crying mess.”

“That’s not my first impression,” Bridget laughs but her eyes also fill with tears. “That night at the pub. When I saw you two together I nearly bloody fainted! When I looked you up y/n, there’d been an old wedding registry with another bloke. But then seeing you two together?! I just couldn’t believe it—I thought I dreamed it. And then I nearly cried because my bio parents were somehow together?? And the way you just stared into my soul it felt like you knew who I was.”

I laugh, remembering but also knowing exactly what look Bridget was talking about. “He does have a piercing look doesn’t he?”

“Yeah. It could gut someone!”

“That makes it sound awful!” Harry laughs. “Don’t say that.”

“It nearly gutted me! I really thought oh shite—“ Bridget freezes and looks between us like we were gonna scold her for swearing and I nearly leap across the table to hug her again then. “I uhm, I thought you knew who I was.”

“We thought it then,” I let my eyes roam over her. I realize I’d always been a mother, despite not having my daughter. Holding her earlier had awoken an instinct in me and now every time I look at her I feel a rush of love and something fierce. I wonder if Harry felt it too. “But we thought we were mental!”

Her phone chimes as we laugh. She flips it around and then tucks it into her purse.

“You need to take that?” Harry asks.

“No it’s just Philippe. He was at the wedding? I was just talking to him, I hadn’t texted him in a while he wanted to know how it went.”

“Philippe,” I say with a knowing smile. Bridget blushes and Harry asks what he’s missing out on so I fill him in.

“He sounds like a good lad,” Harry comments.

“A good lad?” I repeat. “Are you hearing him?”

Bridget laughs behind her hand and I can’t stop staring at her. I have to force myself to go back to eating.

“He is. I might have told him about how I felt?”

“Wow,” I put my fork down. “You’re confessing an awful lot lately.”

She blushes even deeper. And suddenly I’m grateful of the weird and layered way she’d come into our lives. Despite hiding the truth, it had allowed us to get to know each other as people first. Without any baggage or give me any inclination to fit who I thought she should be onto who was in front of me.

I got to know her for the young woman she was first, so did Harry in a way. And I would be forever grateful for that despite all the pain in between.

“Sorry,” I get up. The affection was overflowing from my cup. “I’m going to give you another hug because I just can’t believe all this.”

“Ohh,” Bridget stands to meet me and we wrap our arms around each other. Here was a girl I already knew, here was my daughter waiting to be known.

“God, she really is our daughter.” Harry quips from his side of the table. He explains when Bridget looks over at him, “y/n is known to be a big touchy person, I’m kinda like that too.”

“Oh my god,” she smiles at us. “I’m like that too! My sister hates hugs. My dad’s 2 pats on the back man, 3 if he’s feeling a lot. I always wondered if…”

She trails off. It seems to hit all of us all over again every so often. For me it’s when she talks about her mum and dad and it’s not Harry and I. The reminder that she went 19 years becoming her own person that we now were catching up on.

For her, it seems it was realizing all the parts of us that were in her.

“You got Harry’s hair, and eyes.” I comment.

“I did! I realized that as soon as I saw a photo online. But I do look a bit like you.”

“You do! I should show you some younger pictures of us and our families. You’ll see more similarities.”

“Wow. So you have a younger sister. How about you Harry?”

“Older sister. Seems we all have sisters.”

Bridget and I make eye contact, remembering a conversation we had what feels like ages ago about having sisters.

We continue our dinner, swapping stories and filling her in on anything she wants to know. She leaves after, claiming to have to get back home, she had an exam on Monday to study for.

When she leaves Harry and I can’t stop talking about her. Or gushing would be more accurate.

“Did you see the way she laughs?” I’d tell him. “Pure you!”

“The way she tucks her hair back,” he would retaliate. “Just like you. You did that especially back in secondary.”

We talk until we’re exhausted, crawling into bed just staring in wonder. There were still so many details to figure out, so many things to cover, it could drown a person thinking of it all.

But like an anchor in the sea, Harry and I fall asleep with hand clasped together. We keep each other buoyed amidst it all.

It was going to take time for this all to sink in but all I’ve ever had was time, and questions. I think I was finally getting time and answers.

Age 39:

Harry’s pov: Having our daughter in our lives is simple and complicated at the same time. At first there were a lot of things to untangle but as time went on, the knots loosened until our lives became their own knots, tangled into each other.

Meeting her parents, the people I met once many years ago, was likely the strangest part. They already felt so familiar as soon as they greeted us in a warm embrace, as if we were there own children. I guess the last time they saw us we were.

“Oh look at you,” Bridget’s mum had squeezed us tight. Her dad had pat us three times and we took it to mean as much as a hug.

In my mind they were always the age they had been then. They were probably around the age we are now. Seeing them sport greys and fine lines, it was like stepping into a time portal.

Lou, Bridget’s sister, eyes us for the first little while before warming up and sharing all kinds of stories—especially the embarrassing kind with us.

When Bridget meets Y/n’s family, I can tell they’re loud and overwhelming at first but we’re all surprised when Taylor embraces Bridget and takes to her immediately.

She brings out old pictures they had of Y/N and I, but every time she says, “your mum and dad…” when she talks about us through the pictures, I notice y/n protesting less and less.

It makes me feel funny, I keep thinking I was going to wake up and find out it had all been a dream.

“This feels very full circle to me,” y/n’s mum says. She’s watching Taylor talk about her baby bump—she was 3 months along. “I saw Bridget as a wee baby when they handed her over to her parents. I remember running late to hospital and making it to the room just in time to see it. I blinked and now she’s in my living room!”

“Sometimes I feel the same way,” I confess.

My family is slightly quietier but they all fuss over our daughter. They ask a million questions and when it’s all over we take Bridget for ice cream. It’s a pseudo-recreation of a life we never had.

Bridget eases into it too. At first she had bouts of disappearing on us. No more than a couple days. But we give her space, understanding it was overwhelming.

Every time I see her, I see her mum—y/n. I was never there when y/n gave birth. We had to drive up from London when we got the news and by the time I got there the dust had settled.

I never even had the potential of seeing her. I’d always been more sympathetic of y/n; her loss had been physical, mine was slightly more abstract.

Even though I’d spent every year since regretting that I wasn’t there to at least glimpse her, I’m glad now I hadn’t been there to see her. If I had to live the last 18 years with this feeling in my chest I don’t think I could have lasted that long. I don’t know how y/n did it. It’s a concoction of deep unconditional love, and tenderness, and recognition, wrapped in a shell of protectiveness. It took me a while to sort through it all but I had a conversation with my parents one night at dinner Y/n and I had visited. And they’d laughed because they had told me that was simply what being a parent was.

“Maybe she regrets it,” I had said the second time she ghosted us. Really it had just been over a day where she hadn’t gotten back to us. But I couldn’t help the overthinking, being tuned into any potential of loss with our daughter.

Somehow, y/n was the cool headed between us two in these moments. Maybe it was being a mum, maybe it was knowing Bridget beforehand, but she was very in sync with her.

“She needs space. The last thing we want her to be is overwhelmed too. Now don’t overwhelm yourself love, at least she’s in our lives.” She’d say.

It takes us the start of the summer and all those meets later for Bridget to finally feel at ease.

We invite her on a road trip, we were renting a place in the Cotswold for a few days and told her to bring Philippe. When she doesn’t even hesitate to say yes Y/n tells me we’d done it: she was finally more comfortable than overwhelmed.

“Y/N made me a better man,” I say after a couple drinks. We’re all sat around a fire outside the house. Despite it being a warm day of hiking the night had cooled significantly and we’d decided that boozy hot cocoas was the way to go. “I’ve lost my ways a lot of times as an adult. But she’s always been my north star. Even when we got back together she led me to being sober and getting my shite together.”

“Oh…” Philippe looks down at his drink. “Are you…”

“No,” I laugh, Philippe was the most-conscientious teen I’d ever met. “I got sober to get my life in order. But…it’s in order now. I haven’t done anything crazy for over a year now.”

A little before our wedding I decided I wanted to end my sobriety. It had been a thought for months, and I had waited before giving in. But I really felt more in control of my life. I faced my life decisions head on, I confronted my past with y/n’s help, and I didn’t think I’d lose control again. It had been a shaky first week but I was right. It was a proud moment for me.

“You two really have something special,” Bridget comments.

“They do,” Philippe adds. “I can’t believe you got your happy ending after so many years!”

“Yeah,” y/n says as I lay my hand on her thigh, palm up. “Y’know what they say about loving someone and letting them go.”

“I guess you did that with me,” Bridget says so quietly we almost don’t hear her. But out here in the countryside we do.

“We didn’t want to,” I remind her.

“No I know.” She smiles, it’s a bit sad. Philippe tugs her closer. I could see how much he cared for her in that small gesture. “I’m not saying it like that. I hear your story and I just imagine how different my life would have been if I was raised by my, by you two. I wouldn’t have this life. And I really like this life.”

She looks at Philippe and I feel y/n squeeze my hand. She often said they reminded her of us when we were younger; the kind of love you’d do anything for.

“But you two loved me enough to let me go. To let each other go. It’s fucking sad but it’s beautiful. Life’s weird.”

“Here here,” Y/N raises her nearly empty cup of hot cocoa. “Life’s weird, sad, beautiful, but lately my life’s been full of so much love. I wish I could sell all the excess, I think I could solve a lot of world problems with it.”

“Wow,” I lean over and kiss the top of her head. “That’s one hell of a speech.”

“I have a speech,” Philippe stands, a little tipsy, and clears his throat. Bridget rolls her eyes but they shine for him. “Bridget you’re the love of my life. Since we were 13. But Harry and Y/N, I think I love you too. Ever since we were 15, I’ve watched Bridge struggle for answers about her past. And you two have given her all the answers, welcomed her—and me actually, into your lovely life. I’ve watched her become old Bridge but even more confident. I’m falling harder for her these days. And I can’t thank you guys enough.”

“Aw Philippe come here,” y/n lets of my hand to walk around and give him a hug. How quickly strangers became family.

Bridget grumbles about being left out and joins the hug. Soon I join in too. I want to create a mold of this moment, I think as I squeeze them against me, I’d make it out of plaster and let it dry. Any time we wanted, we could always find our way back to this moment here.

Age 40:

Y/N and I watch our daughter cross the stage. Beside us are our parents and in front of us sits Bridget’s parents and her sister. She has a whole army cheering for her. This was the first milestone event we could all really show up for, and show up we did.

“I can’t believe this,” I was so proud of her. I know the kudos went to her parents, and herself, but I beam with pride. Honestly Bridget could spin in a circle in front of me and I would be a proud dad.

“We need to get photos,” mum leans over and says so seriously, as if we hadn’t planned on getting a million already.

We have a framed picture in our hall, Y/N and I on our wedding day, our daughter in between us. Her graduation photo is definitely making it. She makes fun of this wall, calls it the Styles hall of fame, and I never mention it but she always lingers a few second longer in front of the photo of the three of us.

I do too.

“It makes me so sad you won’t be so close to me anymore,” my mum tells Bridget later. We’re all piled in our flat, drinks and celebratory cake in everyone’s hands.

It reminds me of mine and y/n’s 40th birthday, we had gathered our family and friends here and it was some of their first times meeting our daughter. Today is more intimate, and focused on Bridget.

“I know it makes me sad too, but I’ll be here often, visiting Philippe.”

“Only visiting Philippe?” I raise a brow.

“Is there someone else I’m supposed to be visiting?” She mirrors my raised brow.

As Bridget’s gotten more comfortable, me and her could banter for hours if you let us, it’s one of those things that brought us closer together—having the same sense of humour. It’s allowed us to have just as deep heart-to-hearts, a handy joke always close to the surface.

Y/N always says seeing me like that, thoughtful and silly, reminds her of the boy she fell for. I can’t deny that I’ve been feeling closer to my 20 year old self than my 40 year old self lately.

“She’s too cheeky,” Bridget’s mum says. “But I have to say I’ll be glad to have her back.”

Lou, Bridget’s sister, was moving to Wales. Apparently she wanted to know more about her background, and take a trip with her bio mum to visit her bio dad.

I think Bridget was moving back to Coventry to keep her parents’ loneliness away; she said she would commute to Birmingham for school. Even though she got accepted into law schools in London, going to a uni close to her parents just showed me how close she was to her parents. It was a bittersweet feeling.

“I’ll have somebody to watch cricket with again,” her dad says.

“Ohh,” Bridget throws her sister a side-eye. “I love cricket…”

We all laugh at her complete lack of concealing her true feelings.

Later that night, it’s just Bridget’s parents and us. The kids are on the balcony talking.

“I know we’ve said it before,” I say after a long silence. We’d just been watching the kids talk and laugh outside. “But I want to say thank you again.”

Bridget’s dad shakes his head. “It was the greatest pleasure of our lives getting to raise those two girls.”

He looks over at his wife and they smile at one another. Seeing them interact, I’m grateful that somehow fate had led us to them. While Y/N and I were figuring life out, while I fucked up a lot of things, she was raised on a steady and stable foundation.

“She’s incredible,” I murmur. “She’s gonna be a lawyer. She’s going to change the world.”

“She sure will,” her mum says. “We should be thanking you two. For giving us Bridget. I know it wasn’t easy, you told me you thought about her nearly every day. But we can’t imagine our lives without her.”

We sit in a comfortable silence, looking out at the kids until they notice and start to ask questions through the glass.

“She’s happier,” her mum says smiling at Bridget and Lou exaggerating their words through the glass. “She stopped being like this before she left for uni. We thought we lost her but…I think everything worked out for the best.”

Y/N glances at me. Her eyes crinkle when she finds me looking at her first, her eyes steady me as she says what I was thinking, “I think so too.”

Age 45

Your pov: “When did she say she would be here?”

“6?” Harry says for the tenth time.

“It’s 6:20 do you think something happened? She hasn’t texted has she?”

“My love,” Harry puts down the cutlery he was arranging on the table and holds my face in his hands. “They’re driving from Coventry, they probably hit some traffic.”

“Maybe I should call her?”

Harry sighs and squishes my face.

“Don’t! You’ll make more wrinkles.” I warn.

“I love your wrinkles,” Harry kisses my forehead right where the pesky wrinkles had been growing deeper over the last few years despite the additions to my night routine.

Harry always said our wrinkles were just the stories of our lives showing through. I told him to get himself undereye cream.

“You don’t think I’m aging handsomely?” He strokes the moustache he started growing last year. At this age, even I couldn’t deny it made him even more attractive.

“Well it’s no good if you’re ageing handsomely and I age like a troll.”

“I will love you if you age into a troll.”

“But will you love me if I turn into a worm?”

“Do you even have to ask? I’d buy you the best soil and keep you in a beautiful pot.”

“You wouldn’t take me fishing?” I ask. He sighs. Last year while we were taking a trip up north for Lou’s wedding, we’d gotten into a fight and when I asked him the question while he was still stewing he said he’d take me fishing. It had, ironically, broken the iciness of his anger and we’d laughed about it so hard he’d nearly had to pull over.

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” he wraps me into his chest nearly suffocating me.

I’d spent half my life with a lot of difficulties, but life now felt easy compared to it. I had the privilege of getting older with the man I adored, got to watch my daughter flourish as an adult and a lawyer, watch her get married to the love of her life, and all the while live comfortably in the heart of this city I called home.

When Bruno starts barking though, I gasp and push myself off of Harry, “that’s them!”

Bruno continues to bark as I rush to the door. We’d got him a couple years ago as a pup and I can’t believe it had taken us that long to get a dog. He filled our lives with laughter and long walks. We loved him.

“Down.” I say to him. I open the door and hold my hands out while Bruno runs in circles beside me.

“Ahhh sorry we’re late!” Bridget steps into my hug and I tug Philippe’s hood so he can join. Bruno goes for Philippe when they walk in, he’d gotten obsessed with him after Philippe took care of him while Harry and I took an anniversary trip last year.

“Where are my hellos!?” Bridget says to Bruno and he barks, standing on his back legs to paw at her leg.

I hadn’t seen the two of them since March, that was 6 months ago. It had been their wedding, and they’d gone on a month long honeymoon after that, after which Harry and I had taken time off to road trip around Europe with Bruno, and then time had just zipped by.

After a hearty dinner, Harry and I carry out the birthday cake we’d been hiding.

“You didn’t have to do this!” Bridget fans her face but we treat it like we do any special occasion, plus making up for all the ones we’d missed. We get photos and exchange presents, she cries reading the cards and the whole time she says she had a present for us.

It’s a small bag, Harry and I guess that it was something for Bruno but when we take out a box it doesn’t sound like much when we shake it.

“Is this a prank gift? There’s nothing in it?” Harry asks.

“Open it!” He was making me antsy.

“You open it,” he hands me the box. Bridget and Philippe stare intently at my hands.

I undo the bow and slowly open the box. There’s a small square of tissue paper, and then a piece of paper. I remove both but something catches my eye.

I flip the paper over and stop breathing.

“Is that-“ Harry stops talking too. We stare at the piece of paper in our hands. It looks so much like one I had held 28 years ago. But it’s not.

“Bridge,” I look up at the couple. The parents-to-be.

“We’re having a baby,” Bridget says. Philippe and her are gripping hands and I throw everything off of me to launch myself at her.

“A baby!” I hear Harry say and joining us. “You’re having a baby! Y/n!”

“I never thought we’d be grandparents,” I look up at Harry.

“Those wrinkles were coming in for a reason,” he teases.

We never did have any other kids. Quite frankly, neither of us wanted any. When we first got together we were just starting to get comfortable with the reminder that we had a daughter out there and we could talk about her freely with each other. It felt like having a third person in our little family.

After Harry proposed, while we planned our wedding, we talked about it but we never thought it felt right. We both had first marriages where a lack of conceiving had just put a strain on the relationship we didn’t think we needed. We’d also felt like it was betraying something, before we met our first child.

When Bridget did reach out, it became about catching up on lost time. And then with her in our lives we knew what we suspected all along. We had each other, and that was enough. Bridge was our bonus. And getting to be aunt and uncle to our nieces and nephews it was enough. It was a full enough life.

We never even dreamed in our 20s we’d get to be parents and now we would get to be grandparents! I never realized until this moment that I wanted this. Really wanted it.

“Do you know the gender?” Harry asks.

“No,” Philippe answers. “We were thinking of doing one of those reveal parties? But not for a couple months.”

“Wow,” my hands drift down to Bridget’s belly and I remember I had something. I leap away from the group and find the box in my closet, it’s painted pink with random collages from old magazines. It hosts old diaries, photos, a hospital bracelet, and an ultrasound.

“This was you once,” I show her the picture when I get back. “I carried you like that once upon a time.”

She takes it with teary eyes, holding it close to her face to make out the shape of her. She hands it to Philippe and grabs my hands.

“I’ve thought about it before, but when I got pregnant I couldn’t wait to tell you-“

“She kept telling me I had to make a trip out to London just so she could give you the news.” Philippe interrupts, eyes scanning the ultrasound still.

“No really,” Bridget laughs. “I did. It’s like I got this new perspective.”

She puts my hands on her belly and covers mine with hers. I feel everything at once then, all the heartbreak I ever went through to get here.

“I can’t imagine giving this baby up. And it’s barely 3 months. What you were willing to do to give me a better life-“

She breaks off and Philippe squeezes her shoulder. I watch my daughter try to gain control of her emotions. I remember when I was pregnant with her, anything would set me off.

“It must not have been easy. After carrying me like this for 9 whole months. Thank you-“ she looks up to where Harry’s standing. I barely register his hand on my shoulder. “Thank you as my mum and dad, for making the hardest decision I can imagine ever making, so I could have something you knew you couldn’t provide.”

I reel my tears in, save them for later that night in bed while Harry holds me tight against him.

Right now I kiss my daughter and tell her what a good mother she will make. I tell her and Philippe how proud I was of them, how excited, how wonderful this was.

Age 46

The day we meet our granddaughter is seared into my brain. We get the call at 8:35pm, Harry and I were staying in a B&B in Coventry despite Bridget’s mum insisting we stay with her. We’d been here all weekend, booked it all week, not wanting to miss Bridget’s delivery date.

“Y/N she’s here,” her mum whispers into the phone. Her voice is filled with joy and giddiness. “She’s here.”

“We’re coming,” I say. Harry’s already at the door and we rush out into the night to see our granddaughter.

She has the perfect little face, and when she finally wakes up I gasp when I see Harry’s eyes looking back at me. I turn to him, to see if he noticed, but he’s teary-eyed and gazing at the baby in awe. I soak it in for a second, imagining this exact look if we’d kept our baby so many years ago.

Bridget’s parents had given us the room, to give us a moment alone, and I can’t be more grateful. Bridget encourages us to hold her and as her soft body is pressed into my body I let out a sob and hand her over to Harry. I excuse myself and step outside the room.

Lou’s kids sit on the floor outside, playing with whatever toys are spilling out of a miniature backpack. I focus on the flashy colours, trying to calm down, counting the number of toys falling out.

My life was a 180 from 10 years ago. This moment would go down in our history books as one of the best days of our lives.

But I can’t deny the bittersweet. The experience threatens to push me into the bitter past of not even getting to hold Baby Bridget. But with it comes an undeniable sweetness of getting to experience this now.

I take a deep breath and walk back in. Harry and Bridget stop mid-sentence and turn to me. Bridget’s face is streaked with tears, Harry’s looks concerned but I smile. He sits with the pink bundle to his chest and I ache.

“Don’t look so obvious you were talking about me,” I try a joke.

“Are you alright?” Bridget asks.

“May I hold her?” I ask in return.

I sit on the edge of the bed and she’s placed in my arms; she’s perfect. Just as perfect as Bridget must have been.

“She’s got Philippe’s hair,” I gently stroke the wispy blonde strands.

“She’s got my eyes, her grandpa’s eyes.”

I look at Harry. And he catches the stricken look on my face when Bridget tips forward and whispers to her baby.

“Look baby, this is your mumma’s mum, and your mumma’s dad. You’ve got his beautiful eyes. Say hi to grandma!”

My throat tightens. “Bridge.”

She leans away, her eyes dart between us. “I know I call you Y/N and Harry. It made it easier at first but…you are my mum and dad. Even though I have another pair. You are my mum and dad. And I want her to know you like that.”

“Oh love,” Harry leans down and kisses the top of our daughter’s head. She keeps her green eyes trained on me, grasping my hand that’s wrapped under her baby’s.

I mouth a thank you, my voice couldn’t pass through the block in my throat. She squeezes my hand and it sets the baby off. Remembering when my nephews were this young, I just hand her back to Bridget knowing she only wanted her mum.

Harry and I stay in the waiting room. We couldn’t go home, even though we had spent our allotted time we had inside the room, we stay there.

We watch Lou’s kids as Bridget’s family gathers in her room. We stay as they fall asleep, draped over us. I remember when Taylor’s kids were this small, they would fall asleep anywhere.

We talk in whispers, I don’t remember what about exactly. Mostly how excited we were. How there was so much to look forward to. How different our lives looked a decade ago.

“One day we’ll tell our grandkids,” I remember Harry saying. “We’ll tell them all about us, how we met, how our love burned so bright it shone in the sky. We lost each other but our love was always there to guide us back home.”

“We’ll see them grow up, all the memories we missed.”

“We’ll change diapers.”

“We’ll change diapers,” I giggle, half-delirious by the lack of sleep. It was probably 2am and I was tired.

When I gaze up at Harry I remember him holding our granddaughter. I replace her with Bridget. For a minute I allow myself to imagine how that would have been.

“I think you would have made an amazing mum if we did things differently,” Harry whispers into my hair.

“You too.” I whisper back.

“An amazing mum? You think?” The edge of his lips tug upwards.

“Harry,” I warn. We had kids sleeping on us we were trying not to wake.

“I love you.” He says in response. “To the stars and back.”

On our drive home I can’t stop looking at him. I always wondered how it would be like to grow old with someone; when I was younger and watch my own parents celebrate anniversaries. And then when I was older and my first marriage was so rocky.

But thinking about it now is like a simple mathematical equation. You take two lives, two individuals, and you bracket them in love. You add an exponent—the decision to continue choosing each other. And you get a lifelong commitment. No matter the situation, no matter the challenges or the changes, you choose to choose each other.

His side profile lights up by an oncoming car. For a second he’s the same boy I feel in love with, a few more gray hairs, a few more wrinkles, and a moustache. But he’d always be the boy I followed out to the roof, who held my hand in our high school hallway, the one who turned an I into a we when I got pregnant, I see the man I had coffee with after a run-in at the Whole Foods, I see the broken heart from a harsh life sitting on the steps of a church, I see a bookworm, I see a father, a husband, and now a grandfather. I see the one person who knows me like the back of his hand. The one I am home with always.

“What is it?” Harry asks as we pull into our b&b. “Have you been asleep this whole ride or have you been staring at me?”

“Staring at you?” I ask. “You think I was staring at you the whole ride?”

“Well you were really silent. And facing me

“I was thinking.”

“About me?”

“Why are you so desparate!? Do I not show you enough love regularly?”

“I could always use more,” Harry looks half asleep as we reach our door.

“The people are right: you give someone a hand and watch as they take the whole arm,” I tease.

“When you gave me your hand, I made you a wife.” Harry retorts.

“Ooh,” I poke him. “I have to say that’s a good comeback for being half-asleep.”

Harry grins back. “You keep me sharp.”

“And you keep me happy. Now open the door so I can stop freezing out here!”

We walk into the warmth of our b&b.

For so much of our lives, our past decisions haunted us. We let so much go. Now life was repaying us, returning it all back, with interest.

***

In a small b&b in the middle of a town called Coventry, two lovers crawl into bed. They’d just become grandparents and they carry an exhausted buzz about them as they try to fall asleep. They’re both thinking of the other, of their daughter, of the tiny bundle they held in their arms today.

Some 20 minutes away their daughter lays in a hospital bed, an exhausted buzz putting her to sleep. She dreams of her mother who gave her up, how she had found her parents in the end, and dreams about the kind of mother she’ll be.

A few doors down lay her newborn daughter, she doesn’t dream of much, not yet, but she’s in for a lifetime of love.

Most of life is what we made it. Y/N and Harry loved deeply enough to make it.

———————————————

TAGLIST: @quinnwritezz @unknownnbihh @dilfhrrys @umadirectioner @hermionelove @anonymous-91 @meganxfddf

#harry styles fic #harry styles x reader #writingsfromhome #harry styles #harry styles fanfic #harry styles imagine #fic #harry styles angst #harry styles fluff #harry styles series #if you love something #dad!harry #its not my fave but I was getting tired of tweaking it #to shorten it #theres just so much to catch up on #kinda nervous #but also kinda done

[justmeinadaze]

Take It Out On Me Part 16 (Steddie X You)

Warning with some notes: Please enjoy this Steddie story that I desperately need right now.

Daddy Steve and Sir/Master Eddie and Sub Fem reader and all that implies (I regret nothing) SMUT, restraints, slight degrading, dirty talk, over stimulation, THE SCOOPS AHOY UNIFORM (yes daddy), Not a whole lot of ANGST (saving that for the next chapter :P), reader mentions diabetes in her family very briefly, expresses being stressed and asks Eddie to help her relieve it, FLUFF (a lot of it; just come cuddle me please and tell me you're proud of me. )

Word Count: 3315

Steve smirks over at the booth you’re sitting in at his store as you do your homework. He loves watching your face scrunch as you focus, biting the end of your pen while you’re thinking. He could seriously just stare at you all day if you would allow him to. What you didn’t know was he had actually spent a lot of his high school years doing that very thing. 

Like he had told Masie during your prom, he always found you attractive and not just physically. For those first years, you were always so quiet so when he saw you cracking up with Masie at the lunch table or making jokes with the other basketball girls, it made him swoon. That day he heard you shout at Carol junior year; he was so proud of you but at the same time angry with himself. Steve had also heard her picking on you beforehand and he didn’t say a word. He never did. 

You had told him a few months ago how he had been tightly wound at the time you two officially met and that was part of the reason. Beside the fact that his dad was always on his ass, the popular kids were pushing him, and he was struggling at school, he hated who had become. For a boy who liked to be in control, he seemed to have very little if any. 

That first night when Eddie insinuated that you hated him, it made Steve furious but at the situation. He didn’t want you to hate him. For a moment he thought he would never have a chance with you but then you kissed him, igniting a fire he had never felt before. Even if your relationship with him ended up being purely sexual he knew he’d do anything to take care of you and protect you.

“Hey. Take a break.”, he commanded as he slid a boat of your favorite ice cream in front of you and took a seat. Steve tenderly pushed some hair behind your ear and you exhaled as you leaned against his shoulder. 

“Thank you. I’m so exhausted. I can’t wait for the semester to be over.” 

After taking a bite of the snack he brought you, you offered him a spoon but he politely declined. 

“I have to stay in shape.”

“For who?”, you cackled. “Steve Harrington, first off you always look amazing. Second, you eat all that fruit back there. I see you!”

“He does.”, Robin grins as he playfully scowls at her.

“There’s nothing wrong with fruit.”

“A little bit yeah. Too much of it, no. Fruit is loaded with sugar. My uncle’s a diabetic and he can only have so much because it raises his levels.”

“I didn’t know that. Is that the uncle in New York?” 

“Yeah, I don’t talk about it much because usually I get the ‘Oh, you should really watch your weight’ speech even though most doctors do tests and find out I’m healthy.”

Steve reaches out to pet your head as you offer him your spoon again and this time he smiles as he takes an obnoxiously big bite. 

***

“Hey, sexy.”, Eddie grins as you enter the apartment and throw your bag against the wall. “Long day?” 

You heavily nod as you stride over to him and wrap your arms around his waist, happily sighing when he kisses your forehead. 

“May I ask you for a favor?”, you ask as you push your face into his chest.

“Of course, baby, anything.”

“Can you calm me down? I’m so stressed out and I just…don’t want to think about anything for a while.”

“I think I can do that. Do you want to wait for Steve or…”

“Hmmm…Daddy gets off in an hour. I’m sure you can find ways to fill the time until he gets home.”

Eddie chuckles as he leans back and cranes his neck to find your lips. “I definitely can. Come on, sweetheart. Let me help you relax.”

###########

A little over an hour later, Steve finally came through the door, kicking off his sneakers as he entered the apartment. 

“Took you long enough!”, Eddie cackled. “Get in here, Steven.”

The man rolled his eyes as he sauntered towards the bedroom preparing a sassy comment that completely left his brain when his eyes landed on the scene before him. The metalhead was sitting in a chair across from the bed in just his jeans holding the vibrating wand in his hand. You were restrained in the bed, him using belts as handcuffs again that chained you to the headboard. 

“Pretty girl asked for a little break so I just gave her some water and before I knew it she fell asleep. Perfect time for you to come home.”

“What, uh, what’s going on?”

“Y/N came home saying she needed some help releasing some stress. I asked her if she wanted to wait for Daddy and she said that I could fill the time however I chose until you got home.”, he wickedly grinned in the other man’s direction. “So out of curiosity, I wanted to know how many times I could make her cum before you got home. Right now, I’m at…12?” His fingers gesture towards the markings he had made on your tummy with a marker. “Yeah, 12.”

“We were talking and she kept saying how much she wanted to fuck you in that uniform.” Eddie rises from his chair and pats it for Steve to take. Hastily removing his pants, he climbed onto the bed and tenderly kissed up your body. “Princess, wake up. Daddy’s here.”

You groaned sleepily as you turned towards his voice and drowsily kissed his lips. 

“Hey, honey.”, Steve cooed as he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “I’m home. Has Master been helping you clear your brain?”

Eddie climbed up further, placing his own knees by your head as his hand reached out to pet you while you nodded. 

“Can you verbally answer me, babe?”

You purred like a cat as it stretches after a long nap. “Yes, Daddy. Sir has been taking real good care of me.”

They both moaned at your high-pitched tone as your eyes fully opened to find Eddie’s cock inches above your lips. Your tongue darted out to lick along one of his veins towards his balls. 

“Fuck me, sweetheart. Don’t move, ok? Just…keep that mouth open for me while I make you cum again while Daddy watches. If you…you be a good girl for me Daddy can fuck you in his uniform just like you want, angel.”

“Yes, Sir.” Obediently, you open your lips, flattening your tongue as he slides his length down your throat. His palms slide down your skin, stopping to play with your nipples as you whimper around him. You jump as he lightly smacks them, squeaking at the sudden feeling causing Steve to salivate at the sound as his own palm finds its way to the bulge in his shorts.

Eddie grins as his hip gradually thrust against your face, his fingers sliding further down to glide through your folds and breach your core. 

“Fuck, Harrington. She’s so fucking tight. I—jesus—I love how tight you get after you cum, princess.” As his digits work their magic inside of you, you whimper around his cock as he mewls above you. “That’s it. Good girl. J-just clear your mind and let go. Focus on—mmm—focus on my dick in the back of your throat. God, you feel so good.”

The sound of your slick fills the room as he trusts his fingers into you faster, his other hand behind your head gripping your hair and holding you still. When he felt your pussy clench around him, he stopped moving his hips and held you in place as your throat constricted around him. 

The moan that left his chest was enough to send you over the edge as you came again and he promptly pulled himself out of your mouth allowing you to feel your climax. 

A small chuckle escaped him as he kissed your forehead when you started to cry. 

“Color, baby?”

“G-g-green, Sir. I just…I love you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank—”

Breathily, you kept repeating your last sentence as Eddie reached above you to release you from the headboard. 

“I love you to, princess. You’re doing so good. Stevie, hand me that marker, please?” The man does what he asks and the metalhead marks another dash on your tummy before handing it back. “Are you ready to take my cock, sweetheart?”

“Please, Sir.”

“How are your wrists? Not to tight or cutting your skin, right?”, he asks as he positions you on all fours with your head facing Steve.

“No, Sir. Hi, Daddy.”, you grin drunkenly in his direction. 

“Hey, honey.” His hand reaches out tenderly brush your hair out of your face as you fall flat against the mattress while Eddie utilizes one of the belts to tie your hands behind your back. 

After widening your legs a bit more, his chest leans against you back as he grinds himself against you. 

“Do you trust me, baby? Do you trust me to take you however I want to?”

“Of course. I’m yours.”

He mewls into your ear at your words. “It’s been a while since we’ve heard you say that.”

Craning your neck, you kiss his cheek till he turns so his lips can meet yours. “I’m yours, baby. Yours and Daddy’s. Make me feel good, Master, please. F-fuck me hard till I—”

While you were speaking, Eddie slowly slid his cock into your entrance, erasing almost all thought from your mind as he stretched your tight walls open. He growled in his throat at the feeling and you watched as the metalhead disappeared and Master fully stepped forward in his eyes.

“Keep going, little one.” His lips traced your shoulder and your eyes rolled back as he pumped his hips roughly into yours. “I said…keep…going…”

“Mmm—I want you to fuck me till—ah—till I can’t walk straight. I want to f-feel you both for days.”

Leaning back on his knees, he gave you what you wanted while taking what was his. You tried to keep your eyes on Steve in front of you as he licked his palm and stroked his cock but you struggled as Eddie hit every sensitive spot deep inside of you.

Slowly descending to his knees, he laid his face down in front of your own as you turned your cheek to lay your head flat on the mattress. 

“How does it feel, baby girl?”

“S-so good, Daddy.”

“Yeah? Are you feeling less stressed?”

When you only nodded, Eddie’s palm came down hard on your behind. 

“Yes, yes Daddy.”

The metalhead abruptly pulled out, tugging on your ankles till you were fully flat against the bed. Placing his knees on either side of your thighs, he guided himself back into your cunt as both his strong, tattooed arms came into view. When his hips slammed into yours, you swear you see stars.

Eddie was so deep inside of you, punching all the right places with his thick cock you didn’t even hear Steve asking you questions until you felt the other man’s sweaty skin against your back and his hand loop around to grip your throat. 

“You’re not behaving, little girl.  Daddy asked you something.”

“I can’t…I didn’t…”

“I guess you don’t want to fuck him in his outfit after all.”

“I do, I do. Please…”

“It’s ok, Ed. Little baby is just drunk off your cock. Isn’t that right, honey?”

“Feels so good. So deep.”

“Is Master just too much for your pretty little pussy?”

“Please…I’m…”

Eddie’s hand released you to allow his arm to wrap around until your head was resting in the nook of his elbow. His breath warmed your ear as he rolled his hips hard and fast making the bed jostle underneath you. 

“Cum, princess. You can do it. Cum on my cock so I can fill you up, pretty girl. Goddamn…”

Your hands tugged against the belt while your lower half pushed back against him as you came. He grunted loudly and with a couple for hard thrusts released rope after rope of his seed into your body.

You both panted heavily as you continued to twitch underneath him.

“You…you did so good, sweetheart. Fuck. Do-do you need anything?”

“Can we unhook my arms for a little bit, please?”

Eddie smirked at your small voice as he lightly kissed your shoulder before climbing off you and unhooking the belt. When you rolled over onto your back Steve was waiting, delicately lifting you onto his lap as he leaned against the headboard. 

He smiled to himself when your damp forehead leaned against the side of his face as he ran his palms over your arms to massage out any pain you may be having. He paused for a moment when he heard your giggle.

“What are you laughing at, honey?”

“You smell like bananas.”

“To be fair, I have cut back after what you told me.” His grin grew as you nuzzled your nose into his neck. 

“It’s ok, Daddy. I like the way you smell.”

“Lay back, babe.”, he whispered. 

Doing what he commanded, you lay flat on your back with your head on the pillow as he reaches for the marker and draws another line next to the others. 

“Well look at you, little miss. One more and you’ll be at 15.” Your eyes flutter as you flash him a slanted sultry smile. “Are you ready for me?”

“Always, Daddy.”

Chuckling, he rolls till his body is on top of yours. Allowing you two space, Eddie moves to sit in the chair by the bed, watching as everything unfolds. 

“So, you want the whole uniform? Do I need the hat?”

“No.”, you giggle as you run your hands through his hair. “No hat.”

“Why do you like this outfit so much? All the other girls seem to think I look like a dork.”

The way you smile up at him makes his heart melt. No one had ever looked at them the way did; with so much love and adoration. You didn’t know but it scared Eddie a bit the first time he saw it. After your fight with Carol junior year when he brought you food, he had found you snooping around his room. When you asked about the photo of his family, your eyes reflected that adoration and his wall went up. 

The last woman who said she loved him abandoned him and for so long he was afraid of losing you. He thought maybe if he continued to be a prick and act like the tough scary bad boy then when you did leave it wouldn’t hurt so much. A part of him thought when you got back from New York, you wouldn’t want them anymore but when he slid into the classroom that morning and your big, beautiful eyes met his he knew. He knew you missed them as much as they had missed you. 

“I don’t know. You just look so sexy to me.” Your hands gently run down his chest, your fingers grazing that little bit of chest hair that peaks above his shirt. “Maybe it’s just you in it.”

Opening your legs wider, you allow him more access as he begins grinding his hips against yours. 

“We can test that theory. Let Munson try it on.”

“Steve Harrington, there isn’t enough money in the world you could pay me to put that uniform on.”

You both laugh as Steve reaches between your bodies to push down his shorts a bit more and grip his cock as he runs the tip through your folds. 

“Fuck. Always so warm.” His head falls beside yours and your pussy clenches as his needy pants heat up the skin on your neck. “How do you want Daddy, baby? Tell me. Tell me how you need it.”

“I just need you. Please, Daddy. Take what’s yours. I don’t care if it hurts.”

“Jesus Christ.”, he groaned, lifting his head to watch himself guide his hard length into your cunt. Your tight, sore walls clung to him like a vice and it was almost to much for even him. “Fuck. I don’t think I can be fucking gentle.”

Placing your palm on his cheek, you bring his lips to yours.

“Then don’t.”

He growled as Daddy fully took control and he collapsed against you thrusting roughly into you. Your hands clung to him tightly, pulling and yanking at his clothes as you caressed him anywhere you could reach. Pushing up on his arms, one of his legs slid your own higher up the mattress forcing him deeper into you making you mewl. Reaching for your wrists, he held them above your head as he pounded into you, his cock hitting your overstimulated sensitive spots that Eddie had stuck numerous times that evening with his own cock and fingers. 

“Open your eyes, baby girl. You—mmm—said you wanted to fuck me in this. You can’t see me when those beautiful eyes are closed.”

“Feels…so—fuck—good…”, you whined. Steve released your wrists as he leaned back onto his knees and lifted your legs over his shoulders.

“Cum, Y/N. Cum on my dick, baby.” His thumb reached down to play with your clit, making you cry out as your hand shot down to try and stop him. It was no use; he was stronger than you and all you did was egg him on as he rubbed your aching bundle of nerves faster. “Come on, honey! You can do it. Number 15. This is the last one! Make it count.”

Eddie bolted up from his chair to cover your mouth, muffling your scream as you came.

“Good girl! Yes, that’s our good girl.”

You barely heard his praises as your hooded eyes watched as his head hung and with a few more rough thrusts warmed your insides. You felt the cold tip of the marker glide the final tally on your stomach before two sets of lips tenderly kissed the sides of your throat. 

##########

A little while later your eyes slowly opened at the feel fingers caressing your face. 

“Hey. There she is. You doing alright, princess?” You nodded as you scoot your body closer to his. “Steve ran out to pick up some food really quick. He wanted to have everything ready for when you woke up and after we took a shower. He’s not as disgustingly sweaty as we are.” He grins when you laugh. “I wish I knew you before junior year. Sometimes I get jealous that Steve remembers you before we met.”

His comment fully wakes you up as your eyes search his. 

“You don’t remember seeing me at all?”

“No because I’m pretty sure if I had I would have pursued you as soon as I did. Do you remember me?”

Wrapping your arm around his waist, he sighs pleasantly as your fingers trace down his back. “I knew of you but I never believed what I heard. To be fair, my head was always down 99% of the time.” He smiles, nodding to himself. “Where did that come from, Eddie?”

His movements stop as he gives you his full attention.

“I don’t have a lot of people in my life that I love and trust. My life…has been rough…pretty much until I met you. I love you, Y/N and I’m so fucking proud of you. I know school has been stressing you out but you’re just rockin’ it, babe. I hope you realize that.”

Tilting forward you place your lips on his before pressing your face into his chest. 

“I do, Sir. Sometimes I just need to be reminded.” 

##########

Some people did ask for more tags but I think I forgot some. If I did let me know!

@manda-panda-monium @sherrylyn628 @eddiesguitarskills

@needylilgal022 @local-stoner-bitch @katethetank

@strangerfreak @sidthedollface2 @mandyjo8719

@bexreadstoomuch @chelebelletx @ima1986 @perdopascalslilbaby

@shayeddie @emsgoodthinkin @anaibis @wroteclassicaly

@fireeyes-on-teller-dixon-grimes @siriuslysmoking @raptorbait529

@miarosso @micheledawn1975 @paleidiot @mrsjellymunson

#steddie x reader #steddie fluff #steddie smut #steddie fanfiction #steddie #eddie munson #steve harrington #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson smut #eddie fanfic #eddie stranger things #steve fanfic #steve smut #steve stranger things #joe keery #joseph quinn #stranger things #fan fiction #steddie x you #steddie x y/n #steve fluff #dom!steve harrington #dom!eddie #sub reader #steddie x plussizereader #steve x plus size reader #eddie x plus size reader #plus size reader

[delimeful]

to know that song (and all its words) (10)

just like virgil, it's time we get to look at the raiders' attack from a few different perspectives :)

warnings: violence, blood and injury, implied minor character death, guilt, fear, lmk if i missed any

-

CAMERA LOG SF 7

DESIGNATION: LOADING BAY

20:34:27

“You hurt him,” Patton said, and he barely even recognized the sound that came out of him as his own voice.

The crowd of aliens was frightening, the way all aliens were to him, but there were some advantages to being monsters, and one of them was that aliens were scared of him back. They parted before him like leaves scattered by a leafblower, his steps unimpeded as he made his way to where a bundle of familiar feathers and fuzz laid. Unnatural, twitching movements spasmed through them, but they hadn’t gone deathly still– not yet.

Whatever the leader alien was saying was lost to the distant buzzing in Patton’s head. Logan’s response made it through, just barely. His voice had dropped into that icy pitch that meant he was well and truly angry, an ominous tone that made something primal and hunted in the back of Patton’s mind shiver to life.

Be ready, it said. We’ll have to fight soon.

He hated fighting more than anything else in space, even the tests. He hated seeing the fear set in, with bristling spines or flinching spikes or rolling, panicked eyes. He hated the way alien bones and bug shells gave way so easily, like they were made of hollow styrofoam or old eggshell.

Feathers’ arm was broken, snapped with a nasty, jutting-out bit of bone that made him feel sick to even see. Patton remembered the chalky taste of shock when he broke his wrist as a kid, the way the hurt had overwhelmed everything, the cautionary tales about grabbing little creatures or bothering baby birds, because they would die from the shock and the stress sometimes.

Aliens were so much more delicate than the little beings back home.

There’s a sob, somewhere in the back of Patton’s throat. He folded it down carefully, because he was surrounded by danger and because Feathers was still alive, and so he couldn’t just give up or break down, not even with all his fear and dread mixing into a horrible, pulsing mess in his gut.

Feathers had always been spirited, from the first moment the three of them snuck onto the little guy’s ship. Patton repeated this to himself like a mantra as he crouched next to them, feeling his lips wobble a little at the sight of their little head craning slightly to see him.

Their eyes narrowed into little crescents, and they made a small, warbling chirp that seemed to get a little tangled halfway through the sound. Feathers had made a lot of sounds, but none of them had ever sounded like this. The high pitched whistling breaths sounded a lot like almost-whines, like a hurt dog begging for help, but Feathers didn’t even seem to know that they were making them.

The alien leader kept speaking as Patton carefully slotted his hands under Feathers’ small, too-light form. The cadence of the words was songlike and mocking, and Patton could practically feel the way Logan’s ire sharpened to a honed point, aimed directly at them like the tip of a saber. Whatever the stranger had said, it hadn’t helped their case at all.

And that was saying something, considering that they’d already dug the hole pretty deep by hurting Feathers, who they’d all grown attached to despite Logan’s best efforts.

Patton has to blink back the automatic tears when he sees Feathers’ arm up close, trying his absolute hardest to lift them into his arms without jarring the injury. He had to hurry; the last thing they needed was for Patton to be stuck on the wrong side of the room with precious cargo during their plan.

Feathers was still conscious as Patton made his way back over to Logan’s side, the hair on the back of his neck prickling in nervous anticipation all the way. They seemed… out of it, their antenna flicking in strange little circles and their feathers puffing up and smoothing back down as waves of trembling pain seemed to work through their little body.

Patton clutched them a little closer, exchanged a brief look with Logan, and scrunched his eyes closed, knowing that he’d need the advantage once Roman flipped the switch. Next to him, Logan would be doing the same, only keeping the slightest sliver of vision to make sure they weren’t ambushed.

Even knowing it was coming, he still flinched away from the burst of noise when Logan whistled the signal.

The final whistle had barely faded into silence when the orange-pink of the back of his eyelids flicked to an unmistakable pitch black.

For a moment, Patton was back in the labs. He moved to grasp for Roman in the dark, knowing that the only way he could help him through these punishments was to grab on and hold tightly, prove that he wasn’t alone in the dark through whispered words and interlaced fingers.

The only thing his hand found was empty air, and next to him, the silhouette of Logan moved.

Right. He had a different friend to look after this time, and if he didn’t hurry, he’d be leaving Logan to deal with an entire ship’s worth of armed aliens on his own. The moment of disorientation would serve as an effective distraction for a few moments– but only that.

He twisted on his heel, ignoring the sicking crunch of impact from a few feet away to lunge back through the doors they’d come in through, turning and sprinting down the hall for onetwothreefourfivesix long steps and turn again, reach out and there was the little open shelf area built into the wall for storage.

This was where he tucked Feathers, the lowest part of the shelf, pushed to the back corner, his heart breaking a little at the pain they were so obviously in.

He left them there with a whispered promise to return, his heart pumping rapidly as he bolted back to where he could hear shouting and the beginnings of screaming, steeling himself as he picked up the heavy section of pipe Logan had left leaning against the wall outside.

They were in this together. No matter how much he hated it, he hated the idea of not standing between his best friends and death– or worse– more.

With a shuddering inhale, he plunged into the fight.

–

CAMERA LOG SF 9

DESIGNATION: CONNECTOR HALL 3

20:40:56

When the sudden darkness hit, Logan’s eyes had been slightly cracked, and so his vision was still partially impaired.

So, for the first few seconds of the fight, he worked off memory alone.

While the pointless, infuriating conversation he’d had with the raiders’ apparent boss had done their opponents absolutely no favors, Logan had never been one to waste an opportunity. He’d spent the duration of it scanning the room, taking in the aliens closest to him, the ones between him and the boss, and the ones with long-range weaponry held ready.

He went for the ones with paralyzing guns first, because the risk of being hit by a stray shot outweighed the potential of letting them fire off their weapons blindly in a panic, and because it gave him higher odds of hitting targets that weren’t immediately lethal, like hands or arms or even tails.

In his experience, flight was a much stronger impulse than fight for most aliens. Seeing as they had far less adrenaline to numb the pain of an injury and allow them to keep fighting through it, Logan understood why.

He also understood that it made diving into the middle of a herd of opponents much less dangerous. The moment the first few cries of pain and crunches of wrenched limbs rang out, there was a frantic scattering away from the center of the room, like a bowl of marbles dropped on the floor.

Good. The less casualties between him and his goal, the quicker this would be over with.

Even as he twisted around the attempted strike of a heavy, lumbering alien, his thoughts still felt like a looping record, dragged back again and again to those moments before they walked in.

He’d been the one to hold up their sign for wait, paused as though he was assessing the situation even though he knew from the cameras that the Ampen had already been taken hostage.

It had been to satisfy his own curiosity, to justify his own paranoia when it came to their surprisingly resilient impromptu pilot.

The other two hadn’t been in space as long as he had, hadn’t been exposed to the depths that aliens would sink to when it came to humans. He’d taken pains to try and keep it that way, though it sometimes felt as though they were undermining his efforts with how friendly they were, even after everything.

He knew why. Roman and Patton both had far more sociable natures than him, and a willingness to believe the best of others that had been stamped out of him. It was only natural that they would be curious about the first alien they’d met that didn’t hold any sort of power over them.

Logan had attempted to warn them— an attack could stem just as easily from fear and ignorance as it could malice and greed. Feathers, as Roman had so creatively dubbed him, certainly seemed terrified and spiteful enough from the very start.

And yet, even he’d started growing lax in the face of the unexpected kindnesses that the Ampen had granted them. Guidance on the food stocks they had, explanations on the facilities, and a slow but steady easing of tensions the longer both parties went without hurting each other.

They certainly seemed to alarm and bewilder the little alien at every opportunity, that much Logan was more than practiced enough in alien body language to pick up on, but there was understanding there, too.

And it certainly wasn’t greed that motivated Feathers. They’d balked at the Dren canister as though he’d been offering them a severed head on a plate, rather than a rare resource that many aliens were willing to commit atrocities to obtain.

It was the best outcome Logan could have asked for.

It was too good to be true.

So, he’d heard the leader offer Feathers a way out, coaxing them with promises of pest removal, and he’d waited.

Because he wanted proof that he’d been right to keep his distance. Because he’d been so sure that this was it, this was the moment that he was betrayed again, except now it wasn’t only his life at risk, but that of the other two, as well.

Because nobody in space cared what happened to a few humans. Not when ‘human’ was synonymous with ‘monster’.

“I don’t… give starscourge pirates shit,” Feathers had spat, words vehement even as their body refused to do more than dangle limply from their captor’s grasp. “Nobody on this ship… ‘cept me, anyhow.”

For the first time since he’d left Earth’s atmosphere, Logan realized that his worst fears were unfounded.

He’d been stunned. Almost too dumbfounded to think, let alone move.

And somewhere in that unforgivable moment of hesitation, Feathers stalwart refusal to give them up made them expendable.

“Useless,” the leader had hissed, the vitriol dragging Logan’s mind back online just in time to hear a splintering crunch.

The high-pitched shriek of pain only lasted for a handful of seconds before it cut off, and Logan had forced himself to move before his lapse in judgement cost their smallest crewmember any more than it already had.

Only half of his mind was on the conversation, the other half spinning wildly out of control as he watched Patton retrieve Feathers and knew from his tremulous expression alone that it was bad.

‘Bad’ for a human was fatal for an alien, more often than not.

“Logan, eight o'clock!” Patton’s familiar voice snapped him back into the present, and Logan stuck a hand out to smoothly receive the pipe Patton tossed his way.

He forced himself to focus, grounding himself with the sensation of his fingers around the cool metal of the makeshift weapon. Patton was at his side. Feathers had been safely removed from the situation.

There was only one matter he could afford to worry about now, and it was ensuring that he and his companions remained free and safe.

Logan stepped forward and swung, aiming to win.

—

CAMERA LOG SF 3

DESIGNATION: MAINFRAME ROOM

20:49:16

Waiting for the all-clear signal had been one of the most painful things Roman had ever had to do.

Up until now, every battle they’d faced, from their daring escape to boarding Feathers’ ship, had been with all three of them fighting together.

To sit in the dim red glow of the emergency light, holding a sharp twisted bit of scrap metal and his heart in his throat, ears straining for any sign that his only friends in the whole of space were alright— it was torture.

Even so, he sat.

Roman would be less than useless in the darkness that played such an instrumental role in their plan, his body responding to the threat and locking down regardless of what his mind had to say. He would become a liability, and the absolute last thing he wanted was to be used against them.

When the whistle finally came— one long call, and then two short bursts— he wasted no time before flicking the lights back on and sprinting down the halls.

Something tight and terrified in his chest loosened the moment the lighting fixtures flickered back to life, but it didn’t fully release its grip on him until he turned a corner and saw Logan, whole and unharmed.

Only Logan.

“Patton—?” he started the moment Logan turned fully to face him.

“Still in the bay,” Logan replied immediately, and for once Roman was grateful for his utter lack of any sense of drama. “He’s helping some of the more critically wounded with tourniquets and the like. They surrendered after I dispatched their leader and the more stringent bodyguards.”

Looking at the way he was splattered heavily with blood, one hand still white-knuckled around the equally-splattered pipe, Roman could imagine why.

“That’s Padre for you,” he replied, trying to remain upbeat even as he detected something distinctly wrong with Logan’s expression. “Is Feathers with him?”

Logan’s face closed off even more, and it felt like an invisible hand was squeezing all the air out of Roman’s lungs.

“They were injured. The severity is…,” he stopped, looking pained. “I need you to guard the main door so I can retrieve them and assess the damage.”

“Go,” Roman said immediately, reaching out and tugging the pipe from his grasp. “Don’t just give up, Specs. I mean, we don’t just have our resources now, right? There’s an entire ship full of supplies right here, and another connected to it. How often do you want to bet space pirates get injured on the job?”

Logan nodded, jerky at first and then smoothing into something more determined. “Right.”

Without another word, he headed down the hall, and Roman took a few deep breaths. He could keep it together for everyone. It didn’t matter if the composure was fake, so long as he acted it out well enough.

By the time Logan returned, he was put-together enough not to balk at the sight of Feathers cradled in his arms like a corpse.

The first thing Feathers had negotiated for was the right to walk for themself. They hadn’t let anyone else hold them since then, still snapped at fingers if Roman tried to pet them even a little.

There was a faint chirping, interspersed with a few nonsense syllables that might have been trying to be words, and Logan drew to a stop immediately, peering down at his passenger.

“Are you with us?” Logan asked, carefully moving a hand to hover over Feathers in an attempt to keep the bright overhead lights from blinding them.

They flinched a little, and then opened their eyes a little further and slowly moved their gaze to stare at Logan.

“You’re badly injured,” Logan told them bluntly in Common, a frantic edge to his voice. “We need to know what sort of treatment will work for you, what kind of medicine— and what amount, as well— is safe for Ampens. It’s very important, Feathers. Can you tell me?”

Roman couldn’t even find it in himself to tease Logan for giving in and using their nickname, too caught up in scanning Feathers’ tiny face for any signs of comprehension, any hope that they would be able to properly treat their wound.

After a few long seconds of blank staring, Feathers straightened up slightly and pushed their head up to butt against the palm of Logan’s hand, like an affectionate cat seeking attention.

Logan went still, like he was being held at gunpoint, and exchanged a desperate, pained look with Roman.

Feathers made a few tiny peeps, more vulnerable that they’d ever let themself be around them before, and Roman struggled not to be overcome by the feeling of his heart sinking right through the floor.

Hesitant and desolate, Logan smoothed his hand over their feathers as carefully as he could. Feathers crooned quietly and slowly settled back into unconsciousness, tiny muscle spasms still rolling through them every so often.

“Find their medic,” Logan said, and when Roman looked up, he found that his friend had settled into the harsh, sharp-edged version of himself, the one he used to harden himself to what they needed to do if they wanted to survive.

They’d all found a little of that in themselves, over the months spent in captivity. Logan had tried to use it to keep a protective shell between himself and their fluffy, stressed out pilot, but Roman was more than willing to use it on Feathers’ behalf.

“I’ll have Patton bring the first one we find to the medical room,” he agreed with a nod, already turning to head into the bay. “Once we’ve got the other ship locked down, we’ll meet you there. Take good care of them until then?”

Logan’s expression twisted the slightest amount, before firming into something determined. “I will.”

#sanders sides fic #alien au #humans are deathworlders #ts patton #ts roman #ts logan #ts virgil #tktsaaiw #to know that song and all its words #my writing #writing

[kozidraws]

Kirishima likes to make paper cranes and "flies" (flicks) them over to Bakugo when he gets bored. Bakugo naturally sets them aflame. After a while Kirishima gets the brilliant idea to write compliments to Bakugo on the crane paper, knowing Bakugo will just blow it up.

It was a terrible battle always sitting near Bakugo and resisting the urge to blurt out his every thought about the blond.

But doing it this way, Kirishima gets to pour out his feelings on paper, because his love for Bakugo is too big for even his body to contain.

He tests the waters first, just writing 'You're cute when you glare' then with practiced ease, folds it into a crane and flicks it at Bakugo.

And lo and behold, Bakugo doesn't even look up from his homework, just snatches the paper in mid-air and lights it up with a small explosion.

Kirishima grins to himself.

Perfect.

So it becomes a routine at their study sessions. Bakugo makes him study, Kirishima mind wanders as he stares at the blond, then has to write his feelings down.

Fold paper, make crane, throw at Bakugo, repeat.

Bakugo doesn't even snap at him for the increased amount of paper birds, just goes through the motions of capture and destroy.

Until one day.

Kirishima's mind just would not stop thinking about how much he loves Bakugo, so onto the paper it went. It was the fastest his pen moved this study session, that's for sure. He surprised himself that within five minutes he has a whole page written.

He had to stop there, no way was he gonna write on the other side. Too risky.

He folds the paper into a crane, turns and throws the crane-

Bakugo is looking right at him.

'Oh shit.'

The crane flies neatly into Bakugo's hand.

But it doesn't explode.

'Play it cool. Do not break out into nervous sweat, that will make him suspicious.' But now he's also been too quiet, damn it.

Bakugo looks down at the crane, still intact, then back at Kirishima.

"Now, I'm going to give you a chance to tell me what you just wrote."

There is no way in hell he was going to confess. Nope, nope, nope.

Wracking his brain the first excuse to pop up was "Uhh, new gym routine?"

Bakugo raises his eyebrow.

"Is that so?"

"Yup! Watched a fitness video so wrote down the routine to try it out."

"Which you then threw at me?"

Kirishima winces, "...yes?"

"Fine," Bakugo leans back on his chair, he almost looks relaxed, but his eyes harden in challenge. "Then as your gym buddy I better make sure it's up to my standards then."

Bakugo quickly starts to unwrap the crane.

Kirishima stares in frozen terror.

Bakugo clears his throat, lifting up the paper in front of him, a smirk gracing his features as he starts to read aloud.

"Dear Bakugo-"

Kirishima lunges.

They both grunt as they tumbled to the ground, Kirishima thought he'd have an advantage since he landed on top of the blond but Bakugo instantly got defensive.

"Fucking knew you were lying!" Bakugo shouts as he blocks Kirishima's hands.

"Okay! You got me! Just give it back!" Kirishima pleads, getting blocked again by an elbow.

"Y'know if you have an issue with me, you could say it to my face instead of a letter!" Bakugo snarls.

"It's not that either!" Kirishima shouts back. He tries to get under Bakugo's arm.

Wrong move.

Within seconds Bakugo had managed to flip him using a headlock. He's back is on top on Bakugo's chest as he stares at the ceiling in shock. Kirishima tries to pry the arm that locks around his neck but it's no use.

"Now let's see what you had to say to me."

Kirishima closes his eyes, sighing in defeat as he stops trying to escape. Can't delay the inevitable now. Now his friendship is going to go up in flames because he couldn't keep his feelings to himself.

The crinkling of paper feels like a loaded gun.

"Dear Bakugo, once again I can't help myself, and I blame you, this is all your fault," Bakugo pauses, a sour tone in his voice before he continues.

Kirishima mentally pleads with the blond not to read the whole thing aloud, he's going to die of embarrassment.

"How can you just sit there doing your homework yet I can't take my eyes off you, you're so handsome it hurts."

"It's the same when we fight, or when you cook our meals, you're so graceful and skilled and I just lo-" Bakugo stops reading aloud but Kirishima knows he's still reading it. His fate is sealed.

Oh how he wish he had a teleporting quirk now.

Kirishima can feel his eyes start to sting, he doesn't want to be here when Bakugo finishes reading, afraid of the consequences. With renewed desperation he tries to move again, grabbing onto the arm still locked around his neck.

Instead, Bakugo's arm tightens.

Kirishima keeps tugging, squirming while he can feel a few tears start to slip.

"Bakugo, please, just let me go." He chokes out cursing his voice for sounding so broken.

Bakugo must have finished reading it because he hears the paper flutter to the ground.

In the next moment Kirishima feels Bakugo's other arm wrapping around his waist as the blond sits them both up, Kirishima now sitting in between Bakugo's legs but he refuses to turn to face him.

Kirishima sniffles, wanting to wipe his tears but Bakugo has locked his arms in a tight embrace. He can feel the warmth radiating off Bakugo as the blond leans even closer against Kirishima's back, hooking his chin over Kirishima's left shoulder and sighs.

"Kirishima,"

Here it comes.

"I'm going to move you but don't try to run off." Bakugo warns, he waits for a small feeble nod before loosening his hold, arms hooking Kirishima's legs so he's now sitting in Bakugo's lap, his right side flush against Bakugo's chest.

"As I said before," Bakugo starts, raising his hand to cup the side of Kirishima's face, wiping away a few stray tears, "If you have something to say to me," the blond leans forward to touch their foreheads together, "say it to my face."

Kirishima barely feels like he can function being so close, he stutters out a breath, another tear leaks out but Bakugo is quick to remove it.

"I, I..." Kirishima stalls, Bakugo nuzzles their noses softly together and it's enough encouragement to whisper out "I love you."

Bakugo tightens his arms around Kirishima, pecks the redhead briefly on the nose before he presses their lips together.

Kirishima is so shocked he doesn't move at first, frozen because he couldn't believe this was happening.

That didn't bother the blond, he was a good tutor after all. He lifted Kirishima's arms up to wrap around his neck and kissed him again.

"I love you too Kirishima."

That was all Kirishima needed to hear.

He surged forward, renewed courage to kiss Bakugo back.

This time when they landed on the floor Bakugo let out an amused huff, bringing Kirishima closer so the redhead could pepper his face with kisses.

Bakugo seemed to enjoy Kirishima's enthusiasm, couldn't stop grinning and chuckling as Kirishima kept going.

Kirishima was addicted, he wants to hear his laugh and see his smile for the rest of his life.

"I love you so much!"

Bakugo intercepts him, sneaking another kiss before getting up.

"Let's go, I need to cook your favorite meal to celebrate." Bakugo says, holding out his hand which Kirishima gladly accepts. Bakugo doesn't let go of his hand and walks them out of his room to the kitchen.

"Also, I'm sorry for blowing up the other notes, I didn't know."

"That's okay!" Kirishima squeezes his hand in reassurance.

"I could always write you notes to make up for it." Bakugo offers.

Kirishima grins.

"Nah, just say it to my face."

❤🧡-END!-🧡❤

#kiribaku #bakugou #kirishima #bnha #mha #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #kirishima eijirou #bakugou katsuki #kozi writes #dorks in love

[missamyrisa2]

currently fantasizing an inventor roping me into trying her prototype tickle machine, thoughts?

I've had an idea for a story called Into the Machine that I've been rolling around in my head for a while~~ sooo let's try it out~

"Oh no. No. No. No!!" His fate was already sealed, but Alex kept up the defiance. He knew that looked, recognized that intent. Kaite was there at the door, hands on hips ~ angling to voluntell Alex for her latest invention and he was having none of it. He stood up from his abandoned sanctuary of evening relaxation and folded his arms, stomping a foot like a petulant child. "Absolutely not. This never ends well for me and you always say we're almost done and then the test goes on for like another hour. No!"

She didn't say a word, yet her face said a hundred. Her plush lips curled into a knowing smirk as she took a step forward. Alex shook his head frantically and stepped back. Kaite kept coming, starting to nod as her lips parted to reveal a wicked smile. His legs wobbled as he continued stepping backward. Her looks were undoing his resistance in record time, handily unknotting every barrier he threw up verbally. "Mmhmm. Mmmhmmm." She retorted. That curvy cute form paired with her flirtatious yet domineering body language, shaded by her vibrant leopard print top and thick black waistbelt completely melted his composure with every retreating motion he was force to take.

And yet, Alex thought he was parrying her advances. "Not this time. Nope. I'm leaving, you can blow up the house or whatever it is you're gonna do. But I'm having no part. So~ good...niiiiiiiiightttt?!" His deeper tone too was quickly undone as he carelessly moved backwards precisely to Kaite's design. He found himself enveloped in a shimmering green light as the machinery detected his proximity to the loading zone.

Kaite smiled brightly and nodded once more, admiring her own handiwork as a hand rest thoughtfully on her belt. "Bzzzzttt~~ identifying loadzone product." Alex screeched in protest and tried to jump out of the zone as he felt the tingling rising from his feet. Padded clamps engaged and held him firmly to the scanner. "Product identified: BOYTOY."

"Whatttt?!" He shrieked out mangling a manly growl and struggled madly as Kaite giggled and wagged a finger at him. "Bzzzt. Calibrating routine~" The machine chimed happily, releasing Alex only to snatch him by the waistline of his pants, carrying him further into the now-mechanized sunroom. The mechanical hand moved the guy like a prize in a crane game, and carelessly tossed him to the pack. Robotic hands emerged from all sides of the room, their fingers wiggling and scrunching threateningly.

"Nooo!! I said no! Oh my goshhh please not that! I'll do anyything! Anything but thatttt!!" He whimpered, seeing the unmistakable intent of the endless wriggly fingers. Kaite simply followed into the entry way of the room and continued observing. "Uh-uh~! Mmmmhmmm" she confirmed, as her mechanical minions descended on him and began working in tandem. He made to run and found a pair squeezing his sides. He frantically twisted free stifling a giggle only to run right into a poking hand twisting at his navel through his shirt. As he jumped back, another pair was grasping at his underarms with teasing strokes.

From behind the swarm of graspy hands Alex groaned seeing a lit up display proudly illuminating the machine's current mission. "BOYTOYS deserve to be:" the final word was on a spinning slot, landing on "TICKLED"

"No tickless!! No tickling!!! That doesn't tiiickle what a stupid machine! Stupid invention! You suck Kaite! I'm gonna smash ittt I'm not youuuur boyyyytoooyy!!" He screeched and fought his snickers, blushing furiously while fighting valiantly to deter the hands ~ but they worked as an efficient gang to wear him down. As he kicked he found more crawling up his legs, squeezing thoughtfully. A hand tauntingly stroked a feather at his neck and face, serving little more than to distract so that while he flailed the underarm ticklers could dig in. The hands returned to his ribs and sides with earnest skitters while he was occupied with the armpit teasers. The hands bullied him to the ground as Kaite paced closer. "Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. Subpar performance." She mused, tapping buttons on the machine's remote as he thrashed and kicked and started slipping giggles through pinkened cheeks.

"Turn it offf!! Mercy pleaseee!! I give up your invention is a success I'm sorrrrry I said I'd break it just mmmmmercyyy~!!" He pleaded and kicked fruitlessly as hands plucked away his shoes, grabbed his ankles and started tickling his soles and under his toes. More feathers and now makeup brushes entered the mix to further wear him down and humiliate his ego. The sparkly girly makeup tools brushed at his ears and neck and snuck under his shirt to taunt his belly. He burst with laughs now, his voice a squeaking mess.

"Nope nope nope~!" She sassed, snickering and leaning in to boop him on the nose through the melee of tickling teasing hands. He screamed in rage, using all his adrenaline to twist around and try to frantically crawl away from the machine. "You're not going anywhere cutie pie." She said as the hands grabbed his hips, lovingly rubbing as they pulled him back and began stripping away his clothing. Alex's t-shirt and pants went flying wildly to the side of the room and were swept up by more machinery. He watched helplessly as he kicked, his socks tossed over his wriggling body~ and found himself squeaking weakly before a gang of amassed robotic hands, all wiggling their fingers over his nearly nude body.

The manhandling machine allowed him to rise up only so it could again grasp and tickle at his hips, and taunt his tush with adoring strokes. He was given the freedom to kick and maneuver so that he found himself on a downward slant suspended by all the hands and manipulated into a position so that the spinning orbital buffers could buzz down from the ceiling and begin spinning their soft fluff under his scrunching toes. "I'm mmmhh gonna killll youuu for thisss!! You and youraahaheee stupid machineeeeeheheeee!! NNH noo moree pleeheheheheeaseee!!"

"Now, now, now. Don't try to fight it my cute boy."

"GHH I'm ALL mannnghhh~!! SThhehepppeeittt!! No nonooo!!"

"That's just gonna make it tickle moreeee~!" She sang, playfully stroking a finger under his chin as his feet were buffed with alternating presses of the buffers, soon joined by a similar pair buffing up the back of his thighs up to his butt. Down below the hands taunted and tormented his tummy and royal chest buttons with teasing pokes and strokes, as others continued to nestle in his underarms whenever he tried to reach fruitlessly to pull away. His protests became nothing but weakened gasps of giggles, particularly as two hands began slipping their index fingers into his undies to relentlessly tickle his hip dips.

Indeed his resistance did make it worse as Alex found himself breathlessly set on the floor, his legs weak as jelly having been buffed endlessly ~ his tummy twitched and trembled, hips bucked involuntarily and his upper body heaved from the laughs and gasps. With a chime, Alex looked up in horror and saw the spinner the display moving once more.

"BOYTOYS deserve to be: EDGED"

He turned to Kaite, whose eyebrows raised mischievously and luscious lips pursed, glancing at the unmistakable swell in his underwear. Alex begged and pleaded once more, the tickling and being so handled and tortured in front of his crush taking quite the effect. "Oh my gosh don't dooo itttt noooo!! I can't take thattttt! That's the worssstttt you're so talented you 're so good you're beautiful just please turn it offf turn it offf no nononoooo keep it awayyyy!! I'm begging youuuu!!!"

"Looks like it's time for Mr. Wand~!" From above the white handled, rose gold adorned toy emerged with a soft buzzing from the padded bulb. She squealed, taunting him once more while the machine hands stopped his feeble attempts to block the oversized vibrating tool from descending and connecting to the strained fabric of his briefs.

"FFFF nnnoooo nooottt AHAHH! Just justttt EeeEEHEHEE! okay okay okayyy!! OKAYYY!" The wand grazed his royal prince part through the soft material, sliding up and kissing the tip for a moment before pulling back. He tried to endure the leadup and was left giggle gasping pleading each time it went through the motion~ and soon forced to snickermoan for Kaite's amusement while she knelt close and began cooing in his ear.

"Coochie coo, laughing boy~"

The hands kept his legs open, kept him from avoiding any of the sensation. The wand freely daintily moved to tease his tip with a deep hum, then moved back to torment the base. Each time his gasping got too close to the giggly edge, Mr. Wand was pulled back and teasingly buzzed in the air until the stars left Alex's eyes. The makeup brushes soon returned to further embarrass, fluttering on his nipples and navel and hips as Kaite took a fluffy soft tool and began drawing it along his ears and neck incessantly. She snickered and imitated his moans. "MMhh yeahh? Tell me all about it. Yeah? Oooh that was close huh? Nope. Not yet uh uhhhh~"

Dreamily, Alex looked over and saw the spinner moving once more just as Mr. Wand completed another pass of bringing him right to the brink.

"BOYTOYS deserve to be: TICKLEGASMED"

Feebly fighting, the hands tossed the tickle weakened subject onto a rising padded apparatus ~ face down with his wrists forward and snatched up by automatic padded restraints just as his ankles were similarly captured ~ affixing him into the bent over position but allowed enough looseness to defiantly wiggle his tush.

"Mmhh huhhhh~~ Kaite pleeease no moreee just let me just pleaseee~"

"Yes, my cute toy?"

"Please let me cum..." He finally begged at last, the words she'd been wanting to hear. Kaite smiled triumphantly and tapped her remote. "Oh I'm gonna make you cum alright~"

From below the apparatus clicked and shifted. A hand reached out and teasingly slowly tugged down his briefs as others began groping his bouncing ticklish butt.

"But I don't think you're gonna like it~"

Alex groaned out, gasping and then screamed a squeak suddenly feeling an impossibly soft smooth sensation around his prince part. The tickles at his butt made him push forward into the milking sleeve, a multicolored tool working around his swollen part simulating soft loving lips. "UnnnhhhehehEEE! Oh my gosh ohhh mmmhh nnnhuuu not thiisss not like thissss~!!"

She flashed him a knowing smile, knowing exactly what this particular sensation did to him, and how it overloaded his body and mind. With a wink Kaite tapped her remote once more and the sleeve began wiggling and trembling and stretching and closing on his prince part. Alex moaned out a massive giggle through his chorus of "okay okay okay okay okay okay okay" and soon was laughing madly as the hands descended once more, particularly tickling the curves of his butt, squeezing his hips, teasing behind his knees and down his ribs and into his underarms ~ all of which was designed to keep him bucking into the taunting tool~

Stopping at the brink once more, the hands slowed and traced his trembling body as the sleeve went still. Alex looked up to meet the eyes of Kaite who regarded him with a loving contempt as she grasped his chin and stroked his blushing cheek with a nail. And with one more beep, the machine activated a ticklegasm volume booster. Alex shrieked in shock seeing the multicolored nubbin emerging and sliding around to his backside.

With a soft kiss to his cheek, Kaite hummed happily and reengaged her machine, the new implement being coated in soft lube before buzzing between his cheeks to start tickling his honeyspot while the sleeve pumped lovingly and the hands tickled mercilessly all down his body. Moving his hair aside and wiggling a finger into his ear, Kaite began whispering as the machine stimulated his body towards a massive ticklegasm.

"There's no escape for you now. You're my little test subject and this is where you belong my cute boy. We're going to test your body over and over and then test it more. I have so many routines to try out on you. And all I want to hear from you is you begging me to make you cum. Let's hear it now. Beg me for your ticklecum."

"Pleeease pleeease kaite please make me cummmm!!"

"There's a boy. There's a goooood boy!" She snickered, wiggling her finger endlessly in his ear as she cooed. And with that, removed the climax restraint from the machine and allowed it to stimulate him over the edge at last. Alex screamed loudly with laughs, then silently as he grew weaker and weaker, all his energy being drained from the hands and toys tickling his prince part and honeyspot.

"Gotta make sure we got it all~" She grinned, making the machine go far past his ticklecum, the nubbin happily dipping in and out and the sleeve pumping away as hands squeezed his hips as if working the last drops out. And with that, he fell limp ~ and Kaite thoughtfully paced around looking through her invention's further routines~

[fandomsnstuff]

We're moving so i did So Much today to prep my room for staging or whatever, i didnt even get to writing until like. 9:30 or 10, so it's short and sweet today, posted with just over an hour to spare

@taznovembercelebration

Day 12: coworkers au

Lup's just trying to help Magnus out and make a little extra pocket change. Why does shit always have to go sour?

Read it on AO3

When Magnus first proposed his idea for a winter time side hustle, Lup didn't think it'd really get off the ground. Who was going to pay to have someone put up their outdoor Candlenights decorations for them? Decorating is half the fun of the season. But she agreed to help when she could.

Turns out, a lot of people will pay for it. They had to introduce a service to just put lights along the eavestroughs. People hate doing that shit, but she and Magnus run like a well oiled machine. Neither of them necessarily need the money, but it's a nice little bonus to end the ear. Plus it gets them outside during the few hours of sunlight. Take that, seasonal depression.

Lup's up on a ladder, adjusting some of the attachments along one part of the house. Magnus is somewhere nearby, fiddling with another string, trying to untie the knot it tied itself into over the past ten months in storage. “We wrap these up nicely, don't we?” He says. “Every year, we bundle them up so we don't have to do this, and every year they're impossible!”

Lup attaches a few extra hooks to the house. “Just give it a good shake, they'll sort themselves out.” She hears the jingling of little lightbulbs clinking against each other, and Magnus exclaims happily. “Told you.” She snaps the string she's working on into the new hooks. “Alright, Mags. Give that a tug.”

Magnus plus his untangled string into the end of hers, and pulls gently on the join. The droops in the string pull taut, and the lights hang perfectly straight down. Lup nods, satisfied.

She's taken two steps down the ladder when her foot slips. She tries to throw her hands out behind her, but she lands hard against the frozen ground. “Holy shit!” Mangus runs over and drops to his knees by her side. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she says unconvincingly, “just waiting for the sky to stop spinning.”

Magnus inhales sharply. “Alright, uh, I'm gonna call 911.”

“You don't have to do that.”

“No, I super do. Because, one, you just fell off a ladder onto dirt that's been frozen solid, without any snow to break your fall, and two,” he pauses, and she can see him cringe, “I, uh, don't think your elbow's supposed to bend like that.”

She cranes her neck up to look, and she really wishes she hadn't. Her arm is laying in a way it really shouldn't be. She drops her head back against the ground. “Why doesn't it hurt?”

“Shock, probably? Just- don't move.”

“Roger.”

By the time the ambulance shows up, it hurts. The paramedics do whatever tests they have to. She wiggles her fingers and toes, she knows her name, where she is, the date, the president, all that good stuff. They stabilise her arm and load her up. Magnus stays behind so he can drive his truck and meet her at the hospital.

Once there, they do some x-rays and it turns out she fucked up her arm real bad. No concussion, thankfully. They set the bone, which hurts like a bitch, but she gets a pink cast out of it.

“I always wanted to break a bone when I was younger,” Magnus says as the nurse wraps Lup's arm in the hot pink material.

The nurse laughs. “That's pretty common.”

“I dreamed of having a red cast. Like, firetruck red. And everybody at school would see my cool red cast and sign it.”

“I'm living my dreams, babe,” Lup says. “Hot pink cast for the win.”

“Hell yeah.” He high fives her good hand.

She looks back at the nurse, “how long do I have to wear this anyway?”

“With the complexity of the break, it could be six to eight weeks."

“Eight weeks?!”

“Maybe more, if an x-ray shows that it's shifted or not healing properly.”

“It didn't feel like kids had casts on for that long in elementary school,” Magnus says.

“Simpler breaks don't need as long.”

“Damn.” She looks at Magnus, “I don't think I'll be going up any ladders any time soon.”

“Yeah, god, please don't.”

#taz #taz fic #lup #magnus burnsides #taz lup #this honestly only fits the prompt super loosely but who gives a fuck #it's all for fun and flavour #i might reuse it tho if i pull it again and i have an idea

[eleanor-bradstreet]

The Hunting Party

Characters: Benedict Bridgerton, Anthony Bridgerton, Colin Bridgerton, Phillip Crane, Simon Basset, Michael Stirling Rated: T, gun use, inferred violence and a bit of blood Word count: 1.6k

Summary: The six eldest Bridgerton brothers and brothers-in-law make a shocking discovery while hunting at Aubrey Hall.

Author's Note: This isn't really a fic, it's just a single scene that came to me while I was bored on a train. I'm treating it more as a character study of how each of these men would respond in a given situation. Just a silly lil imagining. No tagging, I'm just goofin.

The men moved through the trees, spread in an arcing line, eyes and ears alert. Anthony was certain he had heard something and they were narrowing in on their quarry. It would be a triumphant highlight of their week in the country welcoming the Earl of Kilmartin into the family. He and Francesca were visiting England for the first time since their honeymoon in Scotland, and the rest of the men were eager to test the mettle of their new brother in law, and to show him that the English countryside held as many delights as his native highlands. 

It had been Kate and Penelope’s idea for the women to gather in London and send the men off to Kent, to fawn over the newlyweds with their own separate traditions. Anthony and Colin rather suspected that their wives were using it as an excuse for a reprieve, but were happy to oblige nonetheless. So they found themselves, the three eldest brothers and three eldest brothers in law of the prolific Bridgerton family, left to their own devices on the grounds of Aubrey Hall for a week of drinking and shooting and ruthless verbal sparring.

The hunt was scheduled on the fourth day when the weather was mild after a light overnight rain, in hopes that prints may be more easily seen in the soft ground. The men had ridden far out to a remote corner of the grounds, right on the edge of the property. They set up camp, left it manned by two young footmen, then fanned out with their rifles.

Now they were closing in, questing through the trees for the source of the sound that drew Anthony’s attention. Simon and Colin held the furthest edges of the line, Benedict and Phillip between them, and in the center, several paces ahead were Anthony and Michael, the host and the inductee. There was an unspoken agreement among the rest of them that they would let Michael take the killing shot as a gesture of welcome. But their eyes were failing them. They could not see a stag, or doe, or any animal for that matter.

They could all hear something crunching through the brush, growing closer. With a raised hand, Anthony signaled them all to halt and take aim. Each man dropped to a knee, bringing the rifle to their shoulder and squinting down the barrel, waiting, breathless. Michael lowered by a convenient tree stump and rested his arm atop it, holding with steely patience. If he missed, there was no way the beast would escape the subsequent shots from five other trained guns. 

The sounds grew louder, snapping twigs, irregular rustles in the branches. The anticipation was palpable as six pairs of eyes and six loaded arms swiveled silently toward their prey. Their fingers wrapped around the triggers, the hairs on their necks stood upright as they tensed.

It was Benedict who spoke first. “Wait,” he said softly as his mind processed what his eyes saw through a break in the trees. Then he stood, calling louder. “Wait! Don’t shoot!”

Heads snapped to look at him, but the rest of the men stayed crouched. Anthony scowled and hissed, “What is it?”

“It’s a woman.” Michael said breathlessly, his eyes locked forward as he too rose to stand. He and Benedict began striding deeper into the green foliage while those further back began to lower their guns and looked to Anthony. The confusing message spread between them - a woman was in the woods. 

Indeed she was. Staggering out of a thicket of trees, pushing branches aside, a young, dark-haired woman was making her way in their direction. The color of her green linen dress blended her into the shadows of the forest so well, it was a wonder any of them had been able to see her before they made a fatal mistake. When she looked up and saw the two men before her with rifles, she paused briefly, then continued to stumble toward them.

Benedict and Michael could see now that she was in the throes of distress, crying and panting, her hair mussed and skin smudged with dirt. But most alarming of all, she was bleeding. There was a streak of blood under one eye and a deep gash that ran from the torn shoulder of her dress, all the way across her collarbone and to the center of her chest, running dark with blood that was seeping down into a spreading stain on her clothes.

“Dear god,” Michael gasped as the woman reached out to them pitifully and pitched forward.

Benedict lunged out and caught her, holding her by the forearms as she sank to her knees, sobbing.

“Miss, what happened to you?” He implored. But she was crying so hard, her eyes darting in such terror, that she couldn’t speak.

The rest of the party rushed over and crowded around them with exclamations.

“Good lord!”

“Where did she come from?”

“Almost bloody shot her.”

“What in the hell?”

The woman’s fingers dug into Benedict’s arms as she fought to catch her breath. He turned back to see the others towering around them and practically growled.

“Would you give her some air? Give her a moment!” 

The men stepped back, all except Phillip, who sank to a knee beside Benedict and began to peer at her wounds.

“Miss?” Benedict tried to catch her eye, keeping his voice gentle. “Miss, can you speak?”

Hiccuping with shuddering breaths, she looked up at him, deep blue eyes wide with fear. She nodded, swallowing.

“Thank you, sir.” She rasped. 

“What happened?” Phillip asked gently.

The woman’s eyes darted between them both, then up to the four others, standing tall with all stares locked on her. It was overwhelming. “Men,” she gasped. “Bandits. They attacked me.”

“Where?” Anthony cut in with a fierce tone.

“On the parish road at the edge of the wood. I was riding to the village but my horse threw a shoe so I was walking, leading him. Then they came out of the wood.”

“How many were there?” Simon’s voice was deadly low.

“Four,” her voice wavered as she trembled.

“Did it happen just now?” Colin asked urgently.

Her eyes moved to each inquirer in turn. “I think so. I have been running but I don’t know how long.”

“Did they have horses?” Simon again.

She shook her head. “They were on foot. Hiding in the trees. They had a knife. They tried to…” Her breath began to heave again as she fought for words. “They tried…I had to run away…I don’t know if they chased me.”  She began to sob again.

Anthony’s eyes were burning. He was practically vibrating with fury, looking ready to march through hell itself. “Right.” He bit off. “Simon, with me. We shall track them down.”

Simon nodded and shouldered his rifle with determination.

“I’ll go with you too,” Colin chimed in.

“No!” Anthony barked, then calmed his voice when his younger brother jolted back. “You will collect your horse and ride for the surgeon, understood?”

Colin nodded dumbly.

“Benedict, take her back to the camp.” The Viscount ordered.

“I’ll go with them,” Phillip offered. “And see to her wounds as best I can.”

Anthony turned last to Michael, resting a hand on his shoulder. “Michael, dear chap, I’m sorry for this…unexpected turn of events but…”

“But the hunt just got all the more exciting.” Michael quirked a brow with the hint of a smirk. “I’m going with you. Two against four is poor odds.”

Anthony nodded tightly again, clapped him on the back and started to march off for the road.

“Anthony…” Benedict called out behind him, but his elder brother turned back with the withering glare that said he would not entertain a debate, so he said nothing further. Then the Duke, the Earl and the Viscount hurried off with their rifles, disappearing into the trees.

“We must go, Benedict.” Phillip’s voice made him tear his gaze from his brother. “She is bleeding quite a lot.”

Benedict looked back at the woman still clinging to his arms, wracked with sobs.

“Miss, what is your name?” He asked softly.

She gasped, rattled with despair and exhaustion. She croaked, barely above a whisper, “Imogen.”

Benedict gave her a gentle, lopsided smile. “Imogen. I am Benedict, and this is Phillip.” He tilted his head toward Colin who was tentatively inching closer. “That’s Colin. You’re on the Bridgerton grounds at Aubrey Hall. You are safe now. We’re going to help you.”

She cast her tear stained eyes around at them all, filled with gratitude, as her breath continued to hitch. She was so pale, and so tired and so overwhelmed, as soon as she was assured of her safety, she drooped, swooning into Benedict’s arms.

“Woah,” he caught her awkwardly, but wouldn’t let her fall to the ground.

“Benedict, here,” Phillip produced a handkerchief and pressed it to the gash on her chest before his brother in law was coated in blood. Then he helped him to lift Imogen into his arms and stand, as her head lolled limply against his shoulder. It was only then as her legs hung over Benedict’s arm that they both noticed her feet were shoeless and bleeding too, gashes cutting through her ripped stockings.

“Colin, go now!” Benedict ordered his brother. “Run ahead, we will be slowed.”

Looking a bit dumbfounded but purposeful, Colin dashed off ahead of them back toward the camp. Phillip gathered Benedict’s rifle and walked beside him as they slowly wound their way back through the forest, carrying the wayward woman to safety.

#bridgerton #bridgerton fanfiction #benedict bridgerton #benedict bridgerton fanfiction #anthony bridgerton #anthony bridgerton fanfiction #colin bridgerton #phillip crane #phillip crane fanfiction #simon basset #michael stirling #bridgerton brothers

[like-rain-or-confetti]

Yoo what's upp dork squad! Anyways over been doing mental health screening tests on my computer and I'm well aware that it's not the proper diagnosis and ik I'd have to see a doctor for an actual diagnosis but LOOK

(Sorry if u cant read them properly I have a night light setting on so it doesn't hurt my eyes also sorry if their blurry)

I'M COLLECTING THESE MFS LIKE POKEMON CARDS (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧✧ʸᴱˢ

Anyways how was your day? Hope it's good.

Mr. Jervis what's your favorite type of tea?

Mr. Nygma what's your favorite trap?

And Mr. Crane what's your favorite book? I've been looking for something interesting to read since nothing has caught my attention I've been very tempted to check out "Mein Kampf" mostly because I'm curious but please recommend me a book ❤❤❤

Hope your having a good day author especially with your little fur baby!! ❤

Well atleast you know it's not concrete and should go see a professional! Im glad im not the only one who makes the pokemon jokes😂 Fur baby is now 5 months old and I can't handle it. She's so big-

Alright, that's enough out of you. The people aren't here for you. They're here for us! Jonathan you're the psychiatrist get a load of this.

I'm getting my glasses, Nygma. Calm down.

The people missed me! I know they did! They're just too stupid to realise it!

Dork squad? What on earth? ♠️

Ignore it, Jervis.

Oh tea! Oh my dear, you should have different teas for different occasions and moods! I tend to go for the regular tea or earl grey but hibiscus tea is a delight for when the red queen is around, yes yes! ♠️

Harley?

No, the red queen! Keep up!♠️

You do realise you call Harley the red- nevermind, what a waste of time.

And fruit teas are delightful when feeling extra excitable! Remember the sugar!♠️

My favourite trap? All of my creations were of high intellect and unique in their own regards but I must say I recall one fondly. When I made Cash and the others walk around and around and if they stopped their heads would go kaboom! Childish, yes, but I'll remember those memories fondly.

Now let's get a look. Bearing in mind that none of this really means anything. Google is a handy tool but not a doctor. Hmm...high likelihood of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder...post traumatic stress disorder...you know, dear, I have a serum that could fix all of this fear for you?

As for your book recommendations, I haven't read many since I became a psychiatrist, and...other things took my attention. However, I do encourage your curiosity. I see little advantages to a censorship of books. It's healthy to broaden your mind and make your own conclusions on what you read.

#request #batman #batman villains #the riddler #edward nygma #scarecrow #jonathan crane #mad hatter #jervis tetch

[sanrielle]

To any of my readers who might be interested:

I know I haven't posted anything lately, but I've been working on a character study for an OC (Korra's daughter) that plays a significant role in my post-Lok fic. You don't need to know anything about that story to enjoy this sweet mother-daughter scene!

Setting: Sixteen-year-old Kiriko has decided to meditate in her backyard in preparation for her firebending mastery test. Korra joins her after a few minutes.

Rating: General

They sat facing each other in a lotus position, eyes closed, for several silent minutes. It was just like the other hundreds of times Kiriko meditated with her mom, except totally different at the same time.

For once, the sounds of birds didn’t distract her. There were no random itches to pull her focus. There was just…breath. The air around her was hot. Sweat dripped down the back of her neck and it only barely flitted across her awareness. 

A clear sky overhead seemed to open up and swallow her whole. The sun at its zenith—so bright, even through closed eyes. Breathe. In and out. An endless cycle, a solar storm. And she sat with Korra in the center of it.

Kiriko let her eyes drift open. Her mother’s face was as tranquil as she could ever remember seeing it. But where had those lines around her eyes and mouth come from? When had that happened?

“Mom.”

“Mm?”

“Will you take me into the Spirit world?”

Korra finally opened her eyes and blinked a couple of times. “Really?”

“I’m ready to try again. I think– I think I can do it this time.”

She’d been through the portal a few times, of course. It was right there in the city—a highly regulated tourist attraction. Korra had never wanted to take them too deeply in, so it hadn’t been as exciting as it could’ve been.

Anisa had meditated in loads of times, with Korra guiding her, but every time Kiriko had attempted it, she’d failed miserably—to the point where the mere suggestion of trying would piss her off.

In answer, Korra held out her hands, which Kiriko took. There was no need for words; they’d done this many times. Calluses gripped calluses. The summer heat seemed to ripple between them on a breath of wind as she closed her eyes and tried to find her earlier tranquility.

It came more easily than expected. All she had to do was focus on those hands. The hands that had carried her, held her, fed her. Picked her up when she fell. Wiped her tears away. Hands that had fought off countless enemies to make the world a better place. Hands that were as gentle as they were strong.

She was falling, but slowly. 

“Open your eyes, Kiriko.”

They fluttered open with a soft gasp. “I did it…” She looked around and swallowed hard. The grass they sat on was a vibrant green—a vast meadow with rolling hills and a distant forest. The sky was a burnt orange, like sunset but far too bright, and a flock of rainbow-colored birds with huge wings flew overhead. “Well, I guess technically, you did it.”

“It wasn’t just me. I can’t force someone into the Spirit world, only guide.”

Though she already knew exactly what would happen, Kiriko stood up and tried to summon her chi. “This feels…weird. It’s like I’m empty.”

“Yeah, that feeling doesn’t go away.”

“I feel so vulnerable.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t let anything bad happen.”

The confident smile she flashed made all of Kiriko’s concerns evaporate in an instant.

“I’m not afraid. Not with you here.”

“C’mon. Let’s take a walk.”

They strolled through the grassy meadow, hand-in-hand. Kiriko looked around in wonder. Everything felt so big, So open and colorful and just…endless, and she was so small.

“Where are we? It’s different than when we went through the portal.”

“This is a secret place. A hidden place.” Her large hand gave Kiriko’s much smaller one a squeeze. “I found it years ago, before you were born.”

Kiriko peeled her eyes away from the bizarre sight of what looked like a tree slowly roaming across the open space. She craned her neck to look up at Korra, who no longer had lines around her eyes. It was a vision out of the deep past, back to Kiriko’s earliest memories.

They stopped walking and Korra crouched down to be at her eye level. She took Kiriko’s head in her hands and pressed their foreheads together. 

“If, one day, you can’t find me,” she whispered, “look for me here.”

“Don’t cry, Mommy,” Kiriko said when she noticed the tears, though her own eyes were welling up. “You won’t get lost.”

They separated and Korra’s hands fell to her shoulders. There was now a strange, distant look in her eyes. Her attention was elsewhere. “Time to go, Fireheart.”

“Go where?”

But the question didn’t need to be answered. A thick fog rushed in and swirled around them. Kiriko squeezed her eyes shut, scared for just a moment, and opened them again to find herself back in her body. She was tall and strong once again, no longer the child she had temporarily become. Chi flowed through her veins and chased away a lingering sense of loss. What had they been talking about? Like a dream, it kept slipping out of her grasp.

Asami was crouched next to Korra with a hand on her shoulder, but it was Kiriko she spoke to with a fond smile. “It’s almost time to go. Are you ready?”

#lok #legend of korra #lok fanfic #korra #korrasami family #questions? comments? speculations? #let me know!

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