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satans-helper · 8 months

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Reaching for Stardust - Part I

Read Looking for Space here.

Listen to the LFS playlist / RFS playlist (all fic playlists get updated even to this day!!)

Word Count: ~3300

Warnings: none

A/N: Y'all...I'm so happy to be here, immersed in this new series. I began writing this back in April after I, seemingly out of thin air, came up with a foundation that seemed solid enough to even attempt writing a sequel to my beloved LFS. Ever since I finished that fic, I thought that one day, I might return for more. I have a very hard time letting any series go and LFS was truly a momentous project in my life--the fact that so many people have read it and continue to read it brings me so much joy, I can't even tell you.

Having been a fan of GVF for about five years now, I do feel a lot of sentimentality and nostalgia surrounding the band, the music and definitely my own fics, too, particularly all my series. I can still remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I was mapping out certain pieces of them in my mind. I felt a huge rush of nostalgia recently when I revisited my city's planetarium for a star show, which was a huge source of inspiration for LFS, and I realized that it was literally this same month, August, in 2019 that I was just finishing up the first 8 chapters of LFS, not even planning on making it a 30-something part series (LOL!). You'll see, if you read, that some of these feelings find their way into RFS. This isn't because it's a self-insert fic, rather that's inspired by how much this fandom has seen, experienced and grown over the years. I imagine my friends and readers who were back there in the pre-pandemic GVF era can relate to some level of nostalgia. A big theme in RFS is change. I think we all can absolutely relate to that, too. One thing remains the same though--this is a love story, through and through.

This probably seems like major overkill to introduce fan fiction but this is how I feel. Many of my old GVF friends have moved on in some way or another and I've often felt alone the past few years with still being so tethered to this group of beautiful, silly, fascinating boys that spark so much joy and fantasy for all of us. So, as always, thank you so, so much for reading my fics. I really hope you enjoy

P.S. I am cross-posting to wattpad (comments bring me life!)

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I was getting lost in the pictures of Alaska–deep, shiny blue water, towering, white-capped mountains, a vivid stream of neon green in the Aurora Borealis, lush green forests. Even enormous, graceful whales surfacing, their tails nearly popping out of my screen as I unconsciously leaned in closer, hovering over my desk. I blinked hard as I turned my attention to the next picture that had been emailed over to me–a huge white ship, lined with windows that seemed endless–and huffed, shifting in my squeaky second-hand office chair. I didn’t even have a true desire to go on a cruise or even go to Alaska, but the neverending research into foreign lands nagged at me, reminded me that it felt like a very a long time since I’d been anywhere new. At least not anywhere exciting, really.

I grabbed my phone and opened the gallery to scroll through the last trip Josh and I had been on. It’d been a long weekend about nine months prior, which reminded me that it wasn’t all that long ago at all but it still felt like ages since returning to the normalcy of day to day life. It had been a gorgeous summer excursion where we’d had a comfortable, clean hotel room, a warm pool and three nights out all to ourselves, and I found myself yearning for that freedom and escapism again. Plus the sunshine and heat. Michigan winters persisted, long and brutal, and we hadn’t broken through into any real spring weather until just the past week, which had at least given Sam a nice birthday. Josh and Jakes’ birthday was coming up fast. I thought it’d be nice to do something for them, with all of us–go somewhere for real again, all four of us, run amok in a hotel or airbnb. Or just have a nice dinner together followed by bar-hopping. Whatever the twins wanted, really.

The picture I’d secretly snapped of Josh in our hotel room wandering out of the bathroom completely naked save for a towel twirled around his head came up after a dual selfie of us at the pool and I laughed loudly to myself, throwing my hand to my mouth. I’d nearly forgotten about so many of the little moments. It was so easy to forget when time kept slipping by like the wind, each good moment gone in the blink of an eye and each bad moment suspended in the air until something else came along, and the minutes turned to days and the days turned to weeks and months and before I even knew it, years had gone by and it felt like nothing and everything had changed all at once.

Next I scrolled to a picture of the best breakfast I’d ever had, this amazing brie-stuffed French toast with a warm berry compote and housemade whipped cream, then the picture of Josh’s breakfast, which had been a skillet full of chorizo, bell peppers, eggs and queso that he’d deemed to be “orgasmic.” My stomach clenched in response and I looked at my phone clock, suddenly eager for dinner once again. My hours were almost up with 5 p.m. creeping on me and my mind turned its attention to Josh and I’s relatively new Friday night ritual–binging on Chinese and watching the most obscure, nonsensical horror movie we could find. With that, I swiveled around to stretch my legs in the sun through the window and pulled up the menu on my phone, trading pictures of Alaskan mountains for pictures of fried dumplings and greasy lo mein; a few seconds later, a very appropriate text popped up:

Hey mama, I’m gonna be a little late tonight. Want me to pick up dinner on the way home?

Yes please. What’s your ETA?

8ish? What’s on the menu tonight?

I’m gonna do the orange chicken and an egg roll. Wanna share some crab rangoon?

yes I do. What about dumplings?

obviously!

;) see you soon

I’d need something to hold myself over until Josh got home, though I was glad to have this part of our routine to look forward to. Stability was important and even Josh had come to understand that more and more. I turned my attention back to Alaska, mulling over the images and cycling through words in my head that I could bring to the page and entice people with, as if cruises needed more promotional materials and marketing to bring in profit. They were relatively cheap, all-inclusive and easy for people to handle and reminding myself of this made me bitter all over again–why couldn’t my company make one of their perks a free trip for employees once a year? I didn’t know their exact state of finances but I bet it could be done. They just didn’t want to. And the irony was that they didn’t pay most of their employees enough to take extravagant trips of their own.

Whatever. There were other, more important things I told myself, getting up to stretch and find something from the fridge or snack cupboard. In 32 more minutes I could clock out and put these wild places out of my head for a bit–the weather called for a long walk somewhere.

It was the nicest day we’d had so far, which I fully realized once I was driving and headed out to a familiar, easy forest trail Josh and I often did together on the weekends. But we had a busy weekend coming up, actually. We desperately needed to stock up on groceries–my most recent find of an old packet of peanuts as my last snack was testament to that–and then the boys had a show at Waterstreet. Sunday wouldn’t be as fun–my sister was repainting the entire interior of her new house and had somehow roped Josh and I into helping, in part because we were just that nice, according to Josh anyway, and also because she let each of us pick one color for one room each. Josh had chosen a shade of dusky desert red for the den and I’d chosen something called “spring morning,” a pale lilac, for the powder room, which seemed pretty fitting for the time of year she was making these renovations.

The trail was bustling, which I wasn’t surprised by, and much of my walk was spent nodding and smiling to other people passing by. The break in weather was infectious for all of us in the area–everyone seemed to be in better moods finally, myself included even despite the gripes I had with work and money and everything else. Sometimes it felt like just yesterday that Josh and I were lying on our backs in the deep black night, gazing up at infinite stars and trying to come up with material for that poetry class that had been the catalyst to bring us together. The warm sun above me while I continued down the dirt path also reminded me of days past, of the first hike Josh and I ever had together when we both stripped down to our feelings, laughed, kissed through sweat, and had decided that was it. We’d made a lot of decisions over the years, so many that I felt like I hadn’t even noticed some of them, but I’d never decided to let fog cloud my memories. I hated that it happened regardless. And sometimes I absolutely hated what changes all the decisions had led to. I wanted to go back in time every once in a while to relive those moments and those days and it made my heart ache to know I couldn’t. Josh would assure me that the future would be just as good–and sometimes even better–than what those memories had to offer.

And he was often right. Life was good, and I reminded myself of that as I narrowly avoided tripping over an obtuse rock sticking out of the dirt, it was just more challenging now. There was no school to fall back on–I hadn’t realized how much of a safety net that had really been at the time–and less free time. There were more financial worries. More pressures in life. But if nothing else, I had the best people in my life possible; if nothing else, Josh and I were rock solid. He didn’t let a week go by without reminding me that we were soulmates and I agreed wholeheartedly–no matter what might happen, we’d have each other.

After my walk, I thought about running our necessary errands on my own but ultimately decided that’d be a deviation in routine I didn’t want to make. Josh was the best person to go grocery shopping with, being surprisingly focused and deliberate in his choices. He also was the best at picking out produce, somehow always able to discern which fruit was just the right amount of ripe, and he was good at finding the best deals. He was the coupon cutter, which always made me laugh, and I was the one who followed instinct more than the list we mutually made the day before. I would get caught up in being frivolous, more often than not tossing special treats into the cart that I couldn’t excuse beyond something like, “Come on, you like them too” to which Josh would agree with his cheeky little grin.

And that same grin was on his face later that night when he came home with the bag bursting with Chinese takeout. His voice and the smell of soy sauce and that syrupy orange stuff made me hop up from the couch, excited for all the things, but mostly him.

Josh gave a little groan as he headed into the kitchen, his backpack still over his shoulders while he carried the white plastic bag in his right hand and his keys in his left. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, shuffling and rustling all the way out of my sight. “Stephanie needed extra time–she’s having trouble with the new cameras. And to be fair, they do have a steep learning curve. You remember how much trouble I had with them last week?”

I followed him in, taking the bag out of his hand so he could zip back out and discard his keys and backpack. “Which one is Stephanie again? The one who’s obsessed with ‘film noir?’”

Josh chuckled from beyond the walls before appearing again, pink-cheeked and smiling. “Yeah, that’s her. And that’s another thing–I’m gonna have to review how these cameras even film in black and white because for the life of me I can’t remember right now.”

“Does she have any movie recs?” I asked as I opened a cupboard to get plates. “We gotta figure out what we’re watching tonight.”

“What about Night of the Reaper? You haven’t seen that one yet.”

“Yeah, but you've seen it,” I replied, wagging a pair of chopsticks at him. “That’s like, cheating. We gotta watch something we both haven’t seen.”

“We’ll find something.” Josh moved in close and pressed a quick kiss to my cheek and my heart fluttered–it always did. “What about you? What’d you get up today in my absence?”

“I went to the Hemlock Trail. It was busy,” I told him while we both plated our respective dishes, my stomach growling. “It was nice though. Looks like we’re gonna have good weather for your birthday.”

“That would be ideal but I’m going to be cautiously optimistic. Last year we had snow, remember?”

“Yeah, like a dusting,” I said with a little laugh, purposefully knocking my hip into his. “I’m gonna be blatantly optimistic and say it’ll be good. And we still gotta figure out what you wanna do.”

“We'll figure it out, my love.” Josh led the way to the living room and sank into the couch which we could have probably done with replacing; he set his can of sparkling water on the end table then grabbed the remote. “I’m so excited for these dumplings. I don’t care if it’s cat food.”

“They do kind of taste like cat food, don’t they?” I concurred, settling down on the other side of the couch. I put my plate on the coffee table in front of us and pulled it closer.

“They smell like cat food, too,” Josh said, picking a dumpling up between his pair of chopsticks. “I don’t mind. They’re fucking delicious.”

“I really don’t get how you’ve always known how to use chopsticks,” I remarked, opting for a fork instead to pierce my own dumpling while Josh fished through the cushions for the remote as he chewed. “It’s not fair.”

“I’ve tried to teach you, doll.”

“And I haven’t learned, so either you’re a shit teacher or I’m a shit student.”

Josh laughed and swatted my arm with the remote. “Hush! I’ll have you know that my students love me.”

I nodded, chewing. “So I’m a shitty student after all.”

“You are not. There’s a learning curve to chopsticks too, ya know.” Josh took another bite of his dumpling then leaned forward, peering at the TV. “Okay, so–what’re we watching?”

I followed his scrolling through our shared list of choices while I tackled the orange chicken. “What about that one?” I asked when he paused on the title Devil’s Ground. “It looks pretty obscure. 1983, a director I’ve never heard of, looks grainy and weird.”

“It’s been on our list forever,” Josh said, clicking the play button. “Let’s give it a shot.”

The movie really did turn out to be obscure–the protagonist was a teenage girl who finds an old well in the middle of the woods and climbs down into it, for some reason believing that her missing brother would be down there. Josh and I chided about the already well-known fairytale parallels, except in this movie the girl encountered creatures in the world beyond the well even weirder than those in Alice in Wonderland or Labyrinth, and ended up having to get betrothed to some menacing demon, played by a giant puppet, to save her brother. Then she and her brother kill the demon and find their way out of the strange world and back in their world.

Josh laughed loudly as the movie came to an end. “That was ridiculous. One of the best ones we’ve seen so far.”

“Those puppets were something else,” I commented, watching the credits roll and hoping everyone on that production went on to do better things. “The little blue one with teeth was my favorite.”

“Why didn’t they just get a real actor for the demon?” Josh asked, shaking his head. “Good god. It was a travesty but also kind of brilliant. I could show this to my students to demonstrate the use of close-up shots.”

“The close-up on the puppet demon when he was being slaughtered seemed unnecessary.”

Josh got up and stretched, gathering all of our plates and silverware and his chopsticks. “It really was. You want me to do the dishes?”

I turned the TV off and followed him, carrying in our empty drinks. “I thought another part of our Friday night tradition was saving the dishes for the next day and we can argue about it then.”

“No argument. You get to do them since I got the food,” Josh said as he set the plates into the sink with a clatter, then pinched my side. “Deal?”

I giggled, shrinking away from his ticklish touch. “Deal.”

“Anyway, my darling,” Josh began to say, twirling away from me and to another kitchen cabinet. I watched, amused at how he always struggled to reach far enough up to get the wine glasses. “There’s a full moon tonight. Let’s go see it.”

“What? There is?” I asked, trying to peek at wherever it may have been through the kitchen window, our third-story apartment giving us a halfway decent view of the sky most of the time. That was one of the few perks of this place–we’d moved in last year, sizing up so I could have my “office” and enough space in general for both of us to not be completely on top of one another–though Josh never complained about that–but the building was old and lacking a number of things, namely outdoor space. Our little balcony was all we had anymore.

Josh trailed out, wine glasses tinkling in one hand while he held the mostly full bottle of red wine in the other, and I followed again, feeling a sense of eagerness for the night sky which I hadn’t felt in, well, about a month. Our life together was full of tradition, I had come to realize in time, and a viewing party of the full moon whenever possible was certainly one of them. I’d just been too wrapped up in Alaskan cruises to remember this one on the calendar.

The night air was chilly–a tingle ran down my spine and Josh noticed this as I sat down next to him on the cushioned bench we’d garbage-picked right after moving in. He skillfully and quickly poured each of us wine, set the bottle down and wrapped his free arm around my shoulders, pulling me in close.

“It’s gorgeous,” he declared, his voice as rich as ever but a softness brushed through those words. I always loved whenever he got so starstruck over something that he couldn’t help but be concise.

“It really is,” I agreed, pulling my gaze away from Josh’s equally–if not more so–gorgeous face to take in the huge globe of bright cool white above us. “I can’t believe I forgot about it. Sometimes I feel like I don’t even know what planet I’m on.”

Josh laughed, light and affectionate. “You’re on planet earth. It’s disappointing sometimes, I know, but if we weren’t here, I’m not sure we’d be able to see the moon and the stars like this.”

I took a drink, already lulled by Josh’s voice and his warm, strong arm around me. He’d always been strong, considerable muscle secure beneath silky tan skin, but he’d gotten stronger still; the muscles had become even more obvious and I sometimes poked fun, and a little bit of envy, at him for being a “hard-body” because, well, he was. I’d learned to memorize the curves and lines of his body throughout the changes, tracing every plain and valley with my fingers whenever I had the chance.“Probably not, no. We’re really lucky after all, aren’t we?” I said, reaching up to stroke his hand over my shoulder.

“I think we are. Especially if we can see the stars wherever we go.”

“Speaking of–earlier I was thinking about how it’s been a while since we took a trip anywhere.”

“Yeah? Well, where would you want to go?” Josh asked, bringing his wine to his lips. “Not Alaska, I assume.”

“No, not Alaska. But I don’t know, Josh, I feel like we should go somewhere soon.”

Josh took another drink, looking ahead through the darkness that was interrupted by various porch lights from the other apartments rather than up at the jeweled sky. I’d expected enthusiasm–he’d have more free time soon with the semester coming to an end and I still had a lot of vacation days left, making the whole thing easy in theory–but he was uncharacteristically quiet.

“What?” I prodded, tugging at his wrist.

“No, nothing,” he assured me, coming alive again with his body squirming beside me, his hand grabbing mine in reciprocity. “I was just thinking about it. We should both think about it some more.”

I returned my attention back to the moon and the stars and a memory overcame me so viscerally it actually hurt–the abandoned barn, the vast field, the endless sky hanging overhead the two of us. “Alright, let’s think about it,” I concluded, wishing that the place we could travel to was back in time.

Josh sighed and curled around me. “I feel like a dumpling,” he said, lifting a hand to pat his stomach, and I laughed right into the night along with him.

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Tagging no one because my list is so outdated that none of those people are even in the fandom or use tumblr anymore LOL please let me know if you'd like to be tagged in this series!

#josh kiszka #josh gvf #greta van fleet #gvf #gvf fic #josh fic #josh kiszka x reader #jake kiszka #danny wagner #sam kszka #sam gvf #danny gvf #jake gvf #lfs #rfs #I'M BACK!!!!

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godsamael · 11 months

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Here's a Love for Sundown fic, commissioned by @anywaffle using her OC Louise. It follows Harlem's love confession ending to a fluffier (if slightly dramatic) conclusion. SFW but mildly suggestive. I had so much fun writing this! Thanks again for commissioning me :)

2k words under the cut

"…You should probably head home."

"…Come back sometime… okay?"

You didn't hear from Harlem for a while after that. Not that he's often inclined to contact anyone. It was usually up to you to seek him out at the very few spots he's guaranteed to be, creature of habit that he is.

But you hadn't done that either.

Those words keep echoing in your head. They sent you back to drifting through your life for a bit, unsure what to do in the face of such a cold, vague rejection.

You felt numb that night, the night you told him you loved him and he didn't even react. You went home that night and you didn't even cry, no matter how lonely your apartment felt. But you didn't let yourself think about what he did after you left either, what he might have felt, what shape his loneliness might have taken, standing in his own empty apartment after he broke your heart.

Broke your heart, didn't he? That's how you should feel, right? Heartbroken?

But you just… don't.

Your heart didn't break that day, your love didn't die because you… you simply…

You don't believe him.

Harlem can pretend you don't know him and you'll play along with that, but just because he's been elusive in telling you things doesn't mean you haven't come to know him in all these months steeped in intimacy.

Harlem is a man who struggles to connect with people. He acts like he isn't, but he's proud of the scars he gets from fight nights and he preens when you act impressed about them. He grumbles when you choose a Disney movie for your movie nights, but still holds you a little tighter when you get emotional during them. And he definitely picks mostly weird black-and-white films when it's his turn to annoy you in return. He plays up how old he is so he can smirk at you while you tease him. When he's blood-drunk in the night, holding you in his arms, he whispers against your neck his favoritism for your blood. "No one else comes close," he'll murmur, hazy and aroused. He's a man who's known such violence all his life, but when he touches you, it's like his hands were made just to cradle you with care, to do nothing but pleasure you and treat you gently. And when you're dozing on his bed after making incredible love and he's letting you use his arm as a pillow and he's propped himself up to hold his soft lips to your face, gently, sweetly, fluttering kisses as to convey his affection without waking you, he whispers 18th century French well into the night, things you can't understand but sound deeply poetic.

You try to see the good in things but you're not boundlessly optimistic either. It's not naivety that draws you to this conclusion, it's the writing on the wall. You don't believe he's rejecting your love because you don't believe he doesn't love you back. A man who refuses to respond to your confession but asks you to come back to him is a man who is desperately trying not to lose you.

It's this conclusion that drives you to make the wild decision to show up at Harlem's apartment in the middle of the night. And God help you, it turns out he's home.

You stiffen as the door opens and Harlem freezes to once he sees your face. Of course he's beautifully shirtless tonight.

"…Lou." Your name is a ghost on his breath and you almost shiver at the familiar sound, but you can't get lost in that now. Not when the man before you looks like Hell and you can smell the scent of cigarettes from his apartment without even stepping inside.

You open your mouth and… nothing comes out.

You don't know how to start. And it looks like Harlem isn't about to, either.

Unconsciously, you take a step forward. He doesn't back away; a good sign. He just stares down at you and if your nerves weren't so frayed you would almost smile at the sight, knowing that, on a usual day, you'd be gesturing for him to lean down so you could press a kiss to his forehead and he'd roll his eyes about it but allow you all the same. It's not a usual day.

Open your mouth again, you don't even think about your words, you just force your voice out.

"If I asked you to kiss me now… would you?"

Harlem's eyes darken and his breath hitches. Those full lips part. "Are you asking?"

You swallow hard. Then, nod.

He doesn't hesitate, not even a little. Instantly, you're swept into his arms and apartment, the door kicked shut behind you.

You almost lose yourself in it, kissing those lips you missed so dearly in such a short time, the heady taste of him imprinting itself on your tongue, the usual hint of nicotine stronger than ever—you can't imagine why.

However, as soon as you find yourselves in his bedroom, his warm hands on your stomach as he begins to push your sweater up, you have to stop him. You can't let this get swept away in sex, not this time.

"Wait," you gasp the word as you break the sensual kiss. "I can't do this unless you say it."

He stops completely, gazing into your eyes with an unreadable emotion in his. He seems to hesitate, eyes flicking away from you before finally saying, "I don't know… what you mean."

You grit your teeth, then release your tension with a sigh. Gripping his wrists a little tighter, you lean in to catch his gaze again, willing him to feel the sincerity and urgency tightening into anxiety within you. "You need to say it. If we are to continue anything from now on, I need to know you love me."

Harlem's jaw tightens, his resolve to not look you in the eye growing as he jerks his head away.

"I…" He chokes out the words like it hurts him. "I can't. I can't feel that way about you."

He's not denying it. He's saying he can't but he's not saying he doesn't. You'll cling to that until your fingers bleed.

Finally, tentatively, he looks at you again. Then raises his left hand. "Do you see this?"

He wiggles his fingers. Three of them, and one stump right where a wedding ring would go. He never told you what happened to it. He's never told anyone.

He swallows and gazes down at his own hand as if seeing the past play out before his eyes.

"Hunters. A long, long time ago. I was just living my damn life. I wasn't hurting anybody. I wasn't even drinking blood. But just my existence was a crime to them and they would deal with it in the cruelest way they could think of." He clenches his hand into a fist and looks at you, so tired and worn down. "They tied me up and forced a ring on my finger. An enchanted ring. It took control of me—it wanted the sun and every day it got a little bit harder to resist the draw. It was driving me mad. Every day, I felt like I was going to die. I…"

The words halt in his throat a moment and he grimaces, squeezing his eyes shut to gather himself before admitting what he never had before. "I had to make a choice. A choice they wanted me to make. Either I die or I sever my only chance to be connected with another person forever. Monsters don't get to love." His words shake and he pretends he doesn't notice it. "I felt like I cut off my heart. I can't… I can't love you because what if-"

You cut him off. You don't even give him a chance to finish that thought before you've already pulled him tightly against you, folding your arms around his broad back.

"There's no what if." Your words shake and you pretend you don't notice. "There's nothing about a missing finger or even a missing ring that will prevent us."

"Lou…" His hands on your waist try to push you away but you don't let him and he doesn't try that hard. "Louise, I… I've loved before and because they loved me back, I lost them. I'll lose you..."

Those last three words are spoken so softly you're almost not sure that's what he said. He doesn't want to lose you. He doesn't want to admit he loves you because he fears losing you and that's the one thing he never wants to experience. But…

You swallow around the lump in your throat. "If you don't say it… you might lose me anyway."

Those simple words break him. He collapses against you, burying his face in your shoulder as he trembles in your arms.

"I'm not a good man." His voice is muffled and his protests weaker than ever.

"You're not a bad man, either," you say, rubbing his back to sooth him. He's just an awkward man. A flawed man. A hurt man.

"What if I hurt you again?" His hands are sliding up your torso again, pushing your sweater up all the way and this time, you let him take it off, separating from him just enough to allow it. It's not sexual, that's not what he's seeking right now. He needs to feel your skin against his. He needs to feel your life, your humanity, against his too-warm, night-riddled body.

"You won't let yourself." You place your hands on his biceps as you speak, meeting those deep, dark eyes with swirls of inhuman red in them, but only as long as he'll let you before he hangs his head.

"I don't know how to be with someone anymore. I don't think I ever knew, and I… I don't know what you want from me, damnit."

"All I want"—without thinking, you rest your hand over his left breast—"is to give you my heart."

He gasps a shaky breath, his chest swelling beneath your touch, and slowly lifts his head. There's a sheen to his eyes and the first glimmer of vulnerability you've ever seen on his face.

He doesn't speak at first, and neither do you.

The seconds tick by as the tears gather on his lower lash line.

You reiterate, so softly as to not spook him, "All I want is for you to accept it."

With one blink, the tears spill. Slowly, carefully, one hand comes up to rest over yours while the other finds your chest, over your heart too. Finally, the warmth you've been looking for blooms in his eyes. He takes another, deep but still shaky, breath and speaks from his damaged, painfully protected heart. "I'll take care of it. I'll protect it with my life. I won't—I won't let myself hurt you, no matter what."

You nearly melt. You did it. He accepted your confession, he accepted your love, he accepted you. But there's one more thing you're looking for. You maneuver your hand to hold his instead, coaxing him closer.

"I'll believe you… if you say it."

It feels like it's been so long since you saw a smile break out on that handsome face and you could cry at the sight now, if you weren't already.

"I-" He stops and swallows, before raising a hand to gently cradle your cheek as he smiles a slightly broken, but still just as beautiful smile. "I love you, Louise. I really do. I'm sorry it took me so long to say it."

You kiss him. Before you can even think of saying anything back or doing anything else, you've already thrown your arms around his neck and captured his lips in a kiss he readily returns.

You keep kissing him until you've run out of breath and then you kiss him some more. And in between those passionate, joyous, tearful, bittersweet kisses you say it back, again and again, all of which he returns as your kisses turn to lovemaking. You cry this time and you don't feel numb, but you're not heartbroken either.

He says he'll never let your heart be broken and you believe him, well into the night and the next night, on and on, for as long as he'll have you. And he has no intentions of letting you go this time.

#love for sundown #lfs #LfS Harlem #Harlem #i don't remember how i tag these lmao #my writing #LfS fic #com #good enough

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