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peachesofteal · 9 months

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I need the next part of the disco baby trap hospital drabble🥺 Simon and Johnny take Darling and Bee home, maybe their apartment where they can better keep an eye on them, but it’s so tense because Darling is worried they’re going to try to take Bee from her, is still feeling the sting of betrayal, maybe is afraid they’re trying to trap her again

🍄

🩵

18+ / Takes place after this / baby trap au

“Alright, alright.” Johnny murmurs, walking a pattern back and forth in the kitchen, arms slightly bouncing an unhappy Bee to try to settle her. “I know, ‘m not mum. I know.” He can’t help the anxiety that flickers through him, eyes casting quickly to the closed bedroom door, where he can just barely hear the low hum of Simon’s voice, vibrating underneath the echo of your coughing.

He paces in the between the countertops and the fridge, working a pattern, stepping in time to a melody that he’s barely whispering to his daughter, something old, a forgotten tune his mother used to lull him to sleep with. At first, it doesn’t do much to settle Bee, and a wash of emotions threaten to pull frustrated tears to his eyes.

Why should it? He’s but a stranger to her, after all. She does not know either of them, and there’s no one to carry the blame of it except for him, and Simon. She was miserable in the hospital, and neither of them could soothe her, the only thing that succeeds in calming her was to be placed in your bed, by your side, even though you were too weak and too sick to even hold her.

“Let’s get ye some food, eh?” He fidgets with the jar lid, and Bee’s brows furrows with indignation as she glares upwards. This attitude reminds him so much of you, from before, when things were good, and you were happy, safe and secure, confident. Bee fusses at him, but when he goes to put her in her high chair so she can eat, she wails in protest, like something new is upsetting her. “What is it?” He strokes a finger across her cheek and then up to her forehead, checking for warm skin, and breathing a sigh of relief when it feels normal. Her fever broke in hospital three days ago, and your doctor finally agreed to allow the two of you to go home yesterday, even though you were still incredibly weak and exhausted from the pneumonia.

“I’d feel better releasing you both if you could assure me there will be someone to support you at home.” Your doctor sighs, while she thumbs through a tablet at your bedside. Bee sleeps in the bassinet next to your bed, laying between where they sit on the other side of the room, and you. “You’re still running a low fever, and the shortness of breath is going to persist for a while.” Your lower lip trembles, and a tear forms on your waterline, spilling over onto your check when you try to take a deep breath as you quickly wipe it away.

“We can help.” Simon says, keeping his voice soft. The doctor glances at him, before looking back at you. “If you’ll let us.”

“We’d love to be there, for you and Bee.” Johnny adds, hopefully, rubbing a palm against the back of his neck. He’s having a hard time standing still, and Simon knows it, tries to calm him by pressing the outside of his thigh to Johnny’s.

“I’ll let you three talk it out.” The doctor says, before putting the tablet away and patting the bed. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

Bee cries aloud, and he holds her against his chest, patting her back gently, swaying side to side. “Okay baby girl, you’re okay.” He kisses her softly on the top of her head, trying to shush her gently. Your voice crests from the bedroom, a sob that fades into a cough, and he tenses, worry thrumming through him. Bee settles a little, her face going blissfully sleepy, and he picks the lullaby back up, eager to rock her into her dreams.

“You need more sleep.” Simon tries to ease you into closing your eyes from where he sits on the bed, halfway down the mattress, far enough away that you’re comfortable, but close enough that he feels like he can get you to focus. You’ve been in a fog, head cloudy and a little off kilter, the low grade fever still running through your system and the cough wrecking havoc on your rest. He doesn’t think he’s seen you sleep for more than a few hours at a time, and your body is weak as a result.

He’s trying to be gentle, to be soft, to let you choose and decide. He’s determined not to overstep, not to make you feel like you’re backed into a corner, or that they’re here for nefarious reasons. He knows, you don’t want them here. He knows you reluctantly agreed because you’re doctor practically demanded it.

He also knows you know, that you’re too sick and run down to take care of Bee right now. The realization is a difficult one to swallow because you’ve been so strong, so resilient all this time.

He’s in awe of it, of you. Of how incredible of a mum you’ve been to Bee, all the sacrifices you’ve made to give her an opportunity to flourish, how you’ve taken care of her, given her the best of everything you could find. It doesn’t escape him, the toll it’s taken on you, the way you’ve neglected yourself for her, the way you’ve put yourself dead last in every aspect to make sure she’s well and happy.

Their darling girl, so brave. So strong for your daughter, but never for yourself.

But at the same time, it makes him hate himself even more. Hates what he’s done, hates how he let himself get out of control and do something so hideous to the person he loves. Hates how because of him, you’ve suffered so greatly. Hates that he let his most selfish urges cloud his judgement, hates how he ruined everything for you, and Johnny. How he ruined your happiness, Johnny’s happiness, his own. He tries not to think about how it felt to see the fear in your eyes, how it was when you were convinced they were there to take Bee away from you, like he was a wretched monster.

Like he was a man as wicked as his father.

“No.” You shake your head, trying to reach towards where Bee is cradled in Johnny’s arms. “I wa-want Bee. Give her to me.” You cry, and push away from Simon, stumbling before careening towards the ground. He catches you, wrapping an arm around your waist.

“Darling, we’re at the hospital. We need to go inside.”

“No, no. I won’t… I won’t let you take her.” He grits his teeth, jaw tightening as he turns your face towards his.

“Look at me.” You try to twist away but he holds you still. “Shhh, darling. Look at me. It’s okay, everything is okay.” Your breath is ragged, wet and heavy, and he can feel how hot your skin is beneath his touch. “We’re not here to take Bee. We’re going to see a doctor okay? Bee needs a doctor, right? That’s why we’re here.”

Your hand curls into a fist by your side, and he beats back his urge to reach for it, to try to comfort you, even though he knows you’d recoil from him. He wants to soothe you, pull you into his chest, ease your worries and fear. He wants to take control and fix this, to do what he knows to do best, but he can’t.

You’ll never trust him again.

You cough, hunching forward, and he grabs the glass of water from the bedside table, pointing the straw towards your mouth. Your features soften when you sip, and once he’s satisfied you’ve had enough, he pulls away. You sag where you’re propped up against the pillows, practically wilting and he wants to scream in frustration, in fear. He has half a mind to take you back to the hospital, and almost did this morning, but stood down after talking to your doctor on the phone.

“Do you think you can sleep?” He asks, and you blink at him, lips parted, like you’re processing his words but unable to answer.

“I don’t know.” You moan, miserably, and his heart breaks a little bit while tears web in your lashes. You’re so sick, and uncomfortable, and he wants to help you but no matter what he does, nothing comforts you. “Where’s Bee?”

“Johnny was going to give her a bit of lunch. In the kitchen.” His fingers spread wide on the bed, desperately seeking you, like they’re moving on their own accord, pulling him closer and closer.

“I want to-“ your words are choked off by another cough and he grimaces. “I want to see her.” You cry, the tears that were gathering in your eyes spilling freely down your cheeks, and you gasp a sob. “I want Bee.”

“Okay, okay.” He tries to console you, and his hand moves closer, now resting against the outside of your knee. “You were resting, darling. He only took her to the kitchen.” He explains, and you shake your head before slumping farther into the bed, your body now overcome with sobs.

“Please.” You moan, and then cough between your tearful breaths. “Simon.” You cry his name, eyes half closed. Something shifts above the sheets, and then warm fingers are brushing against his.

His heart stops in his chest before he realizes it wasn’t intentional, that you were just moving. Still, he can hope.

He says your name, and you cry harder, head heavy, your lungs fighting for each breath, the combination of your distress and the pneumonia choking off your air. “Hey, hey. It’s-“

“Si-Simon.” You gasp, and then your eyes are widening in a haze of fear. “I ca- can’t… can’t breathe.” You’re panicking, you’re scared, and he can’t fight himself well enough to keep his hands for reaching for you.

To his shock, you don’t fight him. He moves slowly, painstakingly so while your body shakes with sobs, but you don’t tense or flinch away.

“Darling,” he whispers. “Can I hold you?” He wouldn’t dare try to without your say so, not when he’s hurt you so badly, betrayed your trust beyond a level of comprehension. If you don’t want him to, he won’t.

But you’re also free falling into a panic attack. Your body is trembling, and he’s scared, holding his breath while you answer with a nod.

It’s enough, enough for him to move forward and pull you into his arms, wrapping you up without holding you too tight, settling his palm on the back of your neck to gently squeeze you there. He runs his other hand up and down your back and you cry into his chest.

“I want Bee.” Your plea is interrupted by another coughing fit, and he leans you back slightly and tilts your face upwards to try to help you breathe.

“Shhh. It’s alright. She’s just outside, Johnny will bring her in. You’re okay. Everything’s okay.”

“It’s n-ot.” You wheeze as he coos above your ear.

The bedroom door creaks open, revealing a hesitant Johnny with a very sleepy baby in his arms, who stops dead in his tracks when he sees what’s happening the bed. The image of you, cradled against Simon, letting yourself be held, letting yourself be touched. He blinks in surprise, and Simon gives him a look. Do not make a big deal.

“She’s right here.” Johnny calls to you, crossing the distance and then sitting hesitantly beside Simon. “Bee’s right here. We didn’t go far, just to the kitchen. Promise.” Your shaking hands reach for her, but you don’t try to hold her, you just place your palm on her chest while you rest against Simon. Your breathing evens out slowly, matching his own, and Bee’s, and your cries quiet to occasional sniffles while your lungs rasp. Minutes pass, and yet you still don’t pull away, instead staying tucked into Simon, body relaxing slowly. His thumb rubs circles into your neck, and Johnny watches with wide eyes.

“Everything’s alright.” Simon murmurs into your hair. “It’s okay. Bee’s here.” You nod, eyes starting to slip shut, body and mind wrung out with exhaustion.

As you drift, Bee does too, until you’re both asleep, with Simon and Johnny holding their breath collectively, eyes flicking from you, to Bee, to one another every other second, like they can’t believe what they’re seeing.

#🍄 anon #peaches asks #peaches writes #soap x reader #soap x ghost x reader #ghost x reader x soap

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amateurasterism · 1 year

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worst neighbor ever (or is he?) !

synopsis ; you’re convinced yoon jeonghan is the worst neighbor you’ve ever had…until a couple drinks help you realize he isn’t.

pairing ; yoon jeonghan + fem!reader featuring yunjin from lesserafim

notes ; non idol au, frenemies to lovers, neighbors to lovers, fluff, harmless and cute arguing, sort of very suggestive towards the end, reader is in denial, reader gets really drunk, jeonghan makes like two sex jokes because he’s a little shit, small mentions of eating. idk if this is a weird concept but whatever. anyways this is my first svt fic lets goo (and first fic of 2023 yay happy new years guys)

word count ; 2.6k

You have never seen Yoon Jeonghan’s face, yet you know him well enough to consider him the worst neighbor you’ve ever had.

Does seeing his face really matter to you, though? He’s the worst, and that’s all you need to know.

“You’re not listening to me, Yoon Jeonghan!”

“I am.” Jeonghan finally responds after five minutes of you calling him from your balcony. You’ve spent much more time on this balcony than you expected, all thanks to the constant shouting you two do from your balconies.

His voice is irritatingly calm, hinting that he’s been listening to you this entire time, but couldn’t care enough to reply as he was singing one of those stupid love songs again. Which you always considered weird, because he didn’t have a girlfriend to begin with.

“Could you just be quiet for just thirty fucking minutes? Although a full day would be great,” you add the last part under your breath.

“I heard that.”

“Good. I can’t stand you.”

“You don’t mean that, if you did, you would’ve talked to the landlord and filed a complaint already,” Jeonghan replies, a tease in his voice, because when was there not? You hate that you know he was right too.

You sigh and accept the defeat. “Would it kill you to sing a quiet song inside your apartment instead of outside on your balcony?” Yet another failed day of convincing him to shut up. You’ve learned to become less and less expectant of any outcome from arguing with Jeonghan. By now, the insults you share are filled with something a lot unlike hate.

Sometimes you wonder why you even bother; you’re used to his noisiness at this point anyways. You’re failing at convincing yourself his stupid songs aren’t what help you fall asleep at night, both of you huddled on your balconies with the thickest blankets in battle of the chilly night air, Joshua’s fingers strumming his guitar lazily as you fight to keep your eyes open, your ears using Joshua’s voice to lull you to sleep. You hoped he didn’t know of your routine, for the sake of your dignity. Hopefully you were the only one aware of those nights were it felt like you, him, and the stars.

You know all too well that Jeonghan has become a part of you. The reason why you haven’t failed at missing a day without talking to him between those balconies if that you would feel missing if you were derived of him. It was stupid to admit that, especially because… well, you had never seen his face before.

Before you step back inside your apartment, you stop and yell, “At the very least, could you grab my mail and drop it off today? It’s a package and I have a party later.”

Jeonghan hums curiously. “Dunno. What’s in it for me?”

“Nothing. It’s the least you could do for being a pain in the ass everyday.”

“Eh,” Jeonghan says dismissivley and resumes strumming his guitar.

You don’t bother pleading anymore, entering your apartment and sliding the glass door behind you, because you know he would get your mail—in fact, he did it everytime you asked.

—

If there was one thing that everyone knew about you, it was that when you got drunk, you were drunk. It was not to say that you had a poor alcohol tolerance, in fact, your tolerance was quite high—but when you crossed that tolerance line with a specifically high amount of drinks, it was as if another brain took over.

The music blasting from the surround sound speakers in the living room of your best friend’s house is only adding to your hazy mind as you try your best to make it through the crowd of bouncing people. Fuck, you mumble curses under your breath at the stench of sweaty bodies, spilled tequila, and other humanly liquids coming from couples doing some other kinds of dancing god knows where.

“Hey, y/n!” your best friend, Yunjin, greets you near the kitchen island, but her comforting smile is quickly replaced by a concerned frown as she looks at you up and down. “Shit,” she sighs, immediately taking away the red cup in your hands and fixing your ruined outfit: your tangled hair and sheer top falling away from your slumped shoulders, and skirt that had moved a bit too much during dancing. She takes off your heels revealing sore feet with blisters just beginning to form and brings you outside to the porch.

“Too much to drink, babes,” she chuckles. Truthfully, she’s a little happy you allowed yourself some freedom tonight. Since you moved, you’ve been holding back at parties due to your lack of a ride home.

Yunjin holds out her hand for your phone, which you give, and dials your closest friends. Which is only a couple of people, since most of them were at this party, and none of them answer.

She would drop you off by herself, but this was Yunjin’s house and your apartment was almost an hour away. And with the chaos ensuing inside, she didn’t want to leave the fate of her house in someone else’s hands. “Y/n, who can I call to pick you up?”

“Mmm,” you hum absentmindedly and look at the sky, and the stars freckling it. The stars remind you of someone. Funny how you can grow on someone without seeing their face. Is it the alcohol in your system making you go insane, or did the alcohol finally bring down the fourth wall and make you realize? Suddenly all you can think about is the sound of his singing on the balcony, and his teasing voice every time you tried to shut him up. Those love songs you hated so much filling the frigid night air.

Then, you realize, all the love songs he sang were about you.

“Jeonghan… you idiot,” you mumble, the smallest of smiles pulling at your lip.

“Jeonghan? Who the fuck is Jeong—” Yunjin remembers. “You’re right, I forgot. Your neighbor. Don’t you hate him though?”

You don’t respond.

“Doesn’t matter, because he’s your only choice.” Yunjin finds him buried in your contacts as a nameless number, but she knows it’s him from the fact he was the last person you texted.

You’re sure the alcohol has completely taken over your brain when your legs and arms are moving to their own accord, and suddenly you’ve snatched your phone from Yunjin’s hands and have pressed it to your ear as it starts to ring. You could barely process the fact that you were smiling when Jeonghan picked up on the first ring, let alone anything you would say next.

“I fucking love you, Yoon Jeonghan.”

The words are out of your mouth so fast, it takes you about thirty seconds of silence between the both of you for it to register. Although for some reason, you don’t take the words back. It feels right.

Jeonghan coughs on the other side of the phone, though you can hear the smile in his voice when he says, “Shut up, and tell me this when you’re sober, y/n.”

“Drunk words are sober thoughts.”

You hear him laugh, and if you could take that laugh and keep it with you for the rest of your life, you would. But the laugh is gone as quick as it came, replaced by his voice a tone lower, concerned laced through it.

“Where are you, y/n?”

Yunjin, as shocked (and happy for you) as she is, steals the phone to give him her address. “Thank you, and hurry up please. She’s…gone. I think you can tell.”

“Yeah,” Jeonghan says with a chuckle, and true to his word, he shows up forty minutes later to find you absolutely gone sitting on the porch steps with your head leaned on Yunjin’s shoulder. He’d seen you in a collection of small glances he treasures in heart, you in the laziest of outfits in the apartments lobby getting mail, or even sneaking a tiny glance as you yelled at him form your balcony below. It was funny, because you had no idea the guy in the grey hoodie and black sweats you ran into in those small occurrences was the same guy you yelled at every day, and now confessed your love to.

Even now, as you’re the complete opposite of how he finds you in those moments, he recognizes you in an instant. You’re just as gorgeous even with mascara just about to run past your lashes in black gunk, lipstick smeared from what he hopes not to be another guy, and a skirt rolled up a bit higher than he’d like to notice.

He’s instantly running towards you, but stops right before his hands make it on your shoulders. His mind is yelling at him for how wrong this is, because you’ve never seen his face before. Yet, you look up at him with the most infatuated look he’s ever seen and suddenly it all feels right. He’s so caught up in that glance that he barely notices Yunjin go back into her house with a small “be safe!”

“Come on, take it slow,” Jeonghan gently ushers you, letting you lean on his side as he guides you to his car. It’s proving to be a bit difficult as you haven’t taken an eye off of him since you’ve seen him.

You had been wrong this whole time. Secretly, a part of you knew you wouldn’t care if he was ugly. You had fallen for him anyways and that was all that mattered. But looking at him now, you could burst into tears because even through your drunken thoughts, your entire conscious knew that his man was perfect. He had bags under his dark brown eyes, and his hoodie had fallen off to reveal his nearly black hair, grown to nearly reach his shoulders. And his lips—

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Jeonghan teases. Of course. It was never Jeonghan unless he was teasing.

“Because,” You stop him halfway to his car, placing your hands on his shoulders, hoping this drunk side of you will pay off, “I really want to kiss you right now.”

Jeonghan knows it’s wrong, you’ve known him for months but have only seen his face now, and you were so drunk he wasn’t even sure any of the words you had said for the past hour were true. But he hoped they were, and took this one chance before it was stolen by tomorrow morning.

“Then do it.”

So you pulled him closer by the front of his hoodie and did.

Oh.

It hit like a truck: you were kissing Yoon Jeonghan, the guy you had convinced yourself was your worst neighbor until today, and it was the best damn kiss you’d ever had.

You wanted more. You wanted him forever, and you knew it wasn’t your drunk mind thinking. Your tolerance allowed that one truth to slip, you know everything you said was true and all the alcohol did was get the feelings out.

You stop the makeout to get air from how heated it was, but Jeonghan pulls away before he can get trapped in your lips again.

“Stop. This isn’t right, y/n.”

“You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”

He sighs. “You’re drunk. This isn’t actually you, as much as I wish it was.”

“Trust me, Jeonghan. This is right. I may drunk but I know it.” You’re so painfully sure of it, and mad at him for not getting it. “So shut up and get back to kissing me already.”

That was all it took for him to let go, and he wished on the shooting star above that he really could trust you. A part of him knew he could, and he would, for however long he lived.

He continued kissing you again, and let’s just say that thanks to that stupid short skirt you had worn, the drive home wasn’t exactly the safest thing in the world. The skirt didn’t survive the rest of the night.

—

You woke up the next morning to an empty bed, a headache, and very sore legs. It took a bit of effort to get up to find Jeonghan, but you had a feeling he was on that balcony. You were right.

You found him there with his guitar and coffees on the small table. There was even a bagel from the cafe downstairs, your favorite especially during a hangover. How did he know?

He stopped strumming and watched you sit down on the chair next to him and take a gratefully munch on the bagel and coffee, taking note of the faintest wobble as you walked. He stifled a grin and waited for you to say the first word.

“Thank you for the meal,” you say between bites, trying to break the tension. You know he was being hesitant, you could tell from how he was looking at you like you were a piece of pottery on display he was too afraid to break by his touch.

Jeonghan took you being here as a sign you somehow remembered most of what happened yesterday. “This meal or last nights?” He says jokingly, a smile creeping up on his face.

“Yoon Jeonghan!” A blush appeared over your cheeks.

He narrowed his eyes at you then looked back at the sunrise. “I didn’t know you were a clumsy drunk.”

“I’m not.”

“So your sober self had planned to say you love me and proceed to get rail—”

“OKAY. I get it. Shut up.”

Jeonghan laughs cheekily, silence covering the two of you as you watch the sunrise and listen to Jeonghan strum his guitar and hum another love song. You now know every lyric is for you.

Somewhere along the way, your eyes strayed from the sunrise to Jeonghan, watching his long fingers pick at the strings and expertly dark across the guitar’s fretboard. Lips lifting to let out his song.

“I love you.”

Jeonghan looks up at you with the most lovesick expression, “A bit quick there, aren’t we? Only confessed last night, love.”

“Well,” you shrug, “you told me to tell you again when I’m sober.”

He hums and says nothing in return, but you don’t miss his cheeks covered in a blush, barely escaping from underneath his bangs.

“Why though?” you ask.

“What?”

“Why do you like me back after everything?”

Jeonghan doesn’t reply, but you can see his mind working through the words.

“Why do you like me back after four months of me yelling at you? I was always scolding you, I don’t think we’ve had a single conversation where I haven’t. I only confess to you after getting drunk. It seems unfair.”

Jeonghan stares at you, dumbfounded, and even the slightest bit angered that you see it that way.

“Y/n, you’re a dumbass. You could give me nothing and I’d still treat you like this.”

“Why though?”

“Because that’s what love is. And I love you.”

one reblog = one hot neighbor

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lemons4u · 6 months

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𝐈 𝐌𝐄𝐓 𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐎𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐍𝐄𝐓 ! - 𝐀𝐋𝐇𝐀𝐈𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐌

𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒┊i’ve left you guys w nothing for so long 💔 so take this small series (multiple chapters) as a apology, hopefully you guys will forgive meeee— AND i’d like to add the kazuha smut isn’t gonna come out till the end of november or thee begging of december, anddd expect a albedo smau ❤️

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒┊fluff, suggestive (ofc, it’s written by pri, what else do u expect?), fem! reader, modern au, somewhat ooc alhaitham not rly though, AND CUTIE PATOOTIE READER… w a little attitude

“ come on alhaitham! it can’t hurt to try dating someone… ” kaveh tried to reason with him— claiming that he’d been single long enough and needed a relationship. ( also he is very attractive, and has chicks swarming all around him… you’d think he’d make the effort to start something with one of them… but! guess not! )

“ kaveh, i said no. i’m in no need of a reltionship— plus all these.. girls. ” he hesitated— thinking of a proper way to describe them.

“ their annoying, and clearly don’t care much for their studies.. i need a partner who actually has a brain. ” alhaitham said sourly.

“ ugh… ” kaveh pouted, “ brains aren’t everything, you know? if i were you i would’ve got a girlfriend already!! ”

“ i hope one day these girls realize you’ve got no personality and are rude and— and well, you know!”

“then they’ll realize what a true man is… ” he grinned. “ aka, me. ”

“ brains aren’t everything? i disagree… a persons brain is—”

“ shush! i don’t need one of your lectures about how blah blah means blah blah. ” kaveh scoffed, frowning once more.

“ one day you’re going to end up dating a no brainer, just because their pretty. ” alhaitham murmured, closing his book and leaning his head back on his seat.

“ and you’re gonna end up dating no one. ” kaveh snapped back.

“ fine by me. ” alhaitham said stoically, but to be honest… he did want to love someone eventually, but he wouldn’t admit that to kaveh.

“ you know what? if you can’t find anyone you like here at our uni… why not get a dating app! there’s plenty of smart people on those! ” kaveh exclaimed excitedly, desperate to get his “lonely” roommate a partner.

“ and get catfished? no thank you. ” alhaitham declined quickly… but seriously, a dating app might be a good idea— maybe he could meet someone at his intellectual level.. not some dumbass like all the girls here.

“ not everyone on dating apps are catfishers, come on! please try one! and i’ll pay you a visit to the library…!! ” kaveh pleaded. “ you don’t even have to date… you can just make a friend! ”

friend….? well he certainly needed more of those— as well as new books.

“ a visit to the bookstore, not library, and you have a deal. ” alhaitham tilted his head up at kaveh.

“ ugh… fine. just don’t buy too many books! or else i’ll never be able to afford supplies for my project. ”

alhaitham hummed. “ alright, i’ll limit myself to… eh, three books. ”

from the most expensive section too…

“ three?! come on make it at least two… ” kaveh pouted. “ you always get the most expensive books, so two! ”

alhaitham sighed, “ fine, two books, and i’ll try that stupid dating app. ”

“ bet! ” kaveh gleamed, picking up alhaitham’s phone which made alhaitham jolt up a bit.

“ hey what are you— ” kaveh shushed him.

“ getting you the app, obviously!! ” kaveh chuckled, flashing the phone over to alhaitham’s face for face-id.

poor alhaitham couldn’t even snatch it back.

kaveh was typing away on alhaithams phone ( without alhaitham’s consent too! how rude! )

“ here! now you can set up your profile. ” kaveh handed alhaitham back the phone.

“ okay, okay. ” alhaitham muttered, sounding unhappy… but in reality he was a little bit excited.

“ kaveh. why do you even want me to date someone….? ”

“ because haitham, your 23 and haven’t even gotten a peck on the lips— and your like, i dunno, attractive? i have no idea i just wanna help you live a little… ”

alhaitham blinked at his friend a couple of times… live a little? he was already living his life the best he could.

well actually, that was debatable.

“ yeah, okay. ” alhaitham clicked on the profile… he needed a profile picture and bio..

“ use the photo from the festival! you know, the one with the glasses and you actually smiling! ” kaveh suggested.

“ that one…? okay. ” alhaitham scrolled through his gallery, which was mostly just photos of kaveh making faces, books, and some things he found appealing (aesthetic sunsets, and photos of trees and plants).

“ what about for my bio? ” alhaitham asked kaveh, who seemed to already be conducting something “good”.

“ say your name, age, mbti, zodiac, and major! and whatever else you think is important for your soulmate to know. ” kaveh nodded proudly.

“ soulmate? you make me laugh. there’s no such things as soulmates. ” alhaitham scoffed. “ people fall in love and that’s it, there’s no mystical soulmate thing behind it— think realistically kaveh. ”

“ i am thinking realistically! ” kaveh snapped back, brows furrowing. “ your so ungrateful. ”

“ and my zodiac? the fuck does that have to do with anything? ” alhaitham raised a eyebrow, but typed it down anyways.

“ i thought you believed in astrology! ”

kaveh sighed, trying to calm himself down— screaming wasn’t going to help him. he couldn’t get a another sore throat from alhaitham.

“ whatever, just put anything down at this point…”

“ i should write down ‘ lover has to be smart ’… ” alhaitham said with the faintest smile.

kaveh gave him a look.

“ it’s a joke dumb ass. ” or was it?

( 2 days later ) it was about 1:24 a.m— and for some reason alhaitham was awake watching tiktok.

i mean he couldn’t sleep because of kaveh’s loud snoring.. and he has finished his books— and didn’t exactly want to binge on his new ones all in one night.

and that’s when he got it— a silly little notification.

‘ you matched with… [ name ], [ last name ] ! congratulations!! ’

“ the fuck… ” alhaitham squinted, clicking on the notification to be brought to your profile.

he examined it for a moment, you took the same major as him and were fairly… pretty.

he stared at it for a moment longer before receiving another notification.

‘ [ name ], [ last name ] would like to chat with you! ’

of course, he quickly clicked the approve button.

⟣ master list ⋆ next ⋆ prev

#alhaitham #alhaitham genshin #alhaitham x reader #alhaitham fluff #alhaitham smut #genshin impact #genshin x reader #genshin scenarios #genshin imagines #alhaitham smau #smau

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x-aefx · 1 year

Text

Back to you - Ellie Williams

Pairing: Ellie Williams x female reader

Modern au!

Summary: college!ellie au. Having once been close friends, Ellie and you begin to talk again while new feelings bloom and old ones return.

Part one

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

“Fuck!” You whisper yelled as you stared at your clock on your messy desk, internally wishing the hour would go back two hours so you wouldn’t be late for your first class since spring break.

Throwing an envious glance at your roommate, Lily, who didn’t have class until the afternoon, you climbed out of bed still half asleep. Walking to your dresser you pulled out the first thing your cold hands touched, your ‘Queen’ band t-shirt and black cuffed jeans. Brushing your hair quickly and spraying perfume you had no memory of buying, you awkwardly put on your shoes whilst trying to maintain balance in your standing position. Turning to your desk you grabbed the textbooks stacked on top of each other and your bag that was on the ground. You stole a quick glance in the mirror and said a mental ‘thank goodness’ for your somewhat decent appearance.

Grabbing the tin of mints on the edge of the desk you made your way out of the dorm and across the campus to your class.

Any other day and you would’ve taken your time seeing as you were already going to be late, but you wanted to get a good seat in class. Sure there was technically nothing stopping you from taking somebody else’s seat tomorrow when you would hopefully arrive on time, but you didn’t want to be that person.

Trying to hide your disappointment and annoyance as you walked into the class seeing you were probably the last to arrive, you looked to where your usual seat at the back beside the classroom wall was, now occupied by a girl who had the brightest blue eyes and straightest hair you had ever seen sat laughing loudly to her friend who looked nearly the same.

‘my fault for being late’ you thought bitterly to yourself.

Your eyes scanned the classroom for an empty seat. Finding one in the middle row you made your way towards it. Dropping your books on the desk and your bag on the floor you sat down. Not a moment later you felt someone kicking the back of your chair.

“what the fuc-“

“language’”

“seriously Dina?”

“someone's in a mood”

“Shut it Jesse”

“Hey!”

“You’re going to the party this Friday aren’t you? The one for Stacey’s birthday?” Dina asked smiling enthusiastically, seemingly not paying attention to Jesse’s angry mumbling about how rude people were.

“I can’t promise anything Dina” you sighed. “I could really use some time for myself”

“You had plenty time for yourself over spring break!” Dina pointed out.

“Yeah and I miss it already”

Jesse snorted at the comment earning a hit to the arm from Dina.

“Ow! Christ woman I’m fragile!”

“Oh I know” Dina rolled her dark eyes, “what about you Ellie? Your going right?”

You turned to the side slightly surprised having not noticed Ellie sat beside you. Hair tied in a half up- half down style, the sleeve of her blue flannel rolled up her forearms revealing her tattoo, legs stretched out to their full length under the table, Ellie Williams screamed confidence. Her attention focused entirely on what she was drawing in her sketchbook, Ellie didn’t notice her friend mention her name.

You doubted she even noticed you sat beside her if it weren’t for Jesse nudging her arm with his leg causing her pen to trail a messy line on the page

“hey what the fuck!”

“language! Honestly you two have the most foul mouths” Dina’s eyes glanced in your direction before looking back at Ellie. That’s when Ellie’s green eyes met yours. It was a quick glance but it was enough for you to look into those familiar green eyes.

“what’s up” Ellie ignored Dina’s comment. She placed her pencil on her desk and turned her body to face Dina and Jesse who sat behind her.

“will you be at the party on Friday?” Dina wasted no time in asking her friend.

“Eh-well, I was just planning on staying in.” Ellie looked at Dina with a guilty smile.

“Ellie!” Dina pleaded pouting her lips to really persuade the girl.

“Dina-“

“it will be so much fun I promise! And Y/N is going and everything!”

“wait no-Dina I never actually-!”

“please Ellie! You’ll have a good night, I swear!” Dina made her best puppy dog eyes. Ellie found herself accepting the invitation before she could really comprehend what she was doing. She never fell for Dina’s pleading looks yet she said yes.

Dina made a triumphant noise, her smile wide as she thought about the upcoming party she and her closest friends will be attending. Jesse smiled at his girlfriend, shaking his head with a chuckle at her antics.

Turning back around in your chair you opened your textbook to the page written on the whiteboard by your professor who was only now arriving. You never had a hard time concentrating in class, yet today you did. You couldn’t make your eyes move from word to word instead staring blankly at the white page.

“Ethan hasn’t quit staring at you since you walked in. It’s quite annoying.” A voice muttered.

Your head snapped to the side making eye contact with Ellie. Her brows furrowed as if in deep thought.

If you looked over to the other side of the classroom you would of noticed the captain of the basketball team, Ethan Gilbert, making heart eyes at you. But you didn’t break the eye contact between you and Ellie.

You didn’t think she had noticed you. Sure you and Ellie were close once, at the very start of college. You considered her your best friend but you two became distant with each other over time for reasons you were unsure of. Ever since then you presumed Ellie Williams had erased you from her life, that was how it felt for you anyway. To hear her say something to you at all was a change after all this time.

“What can I say Williams? I’m a total catch.” You shrugged your shoulders sending her a wink.

Ellie only scoffed before turning back to her drawing, a beautiful farmhouse you recognized as her home from the picture you had seen in her dorm. You noticed her smiling but said nothing.

#ellie williams x female reader #ellie williams x reader #ellie tlou #ellie williams #the last of us #ellie williams x y/n #the last of us ellie #tlou ellie #tlou2 #college!au #ellie williams x you #ellie williams fanfic #ellie williams imagine #the last of us 2 #ellie x reader

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arc-misadventures · 10 months

Note

Dragon Faunus AU: We see that Jaune has fire breath. But could we see something where after he learned how to use aura, maybe get something akin to aura breath? That or some godzilla traits and have him glow when he uses it now.

Gorjia eh?

~~~

Who Will Know?

The log was ripped to shreds as, Jaune’s razor sharp talons tore through the hunk of would like paper. Ripped apart wood chips, and torn up metal plates littered the floor as a result of, Dr. Oobaleck’s rampant testing of his abilities.

Oobaleck: Excellent! Well done, Mr Arc. These test will prove highly valuable at testing the limits of your faunas abilities.

Jaune: Thanks for helping me with this Dr. I’m sure my friends could have help, but I’m not so sure about the whole data collecting aspect of it all.

Jaune, and his team, along with team RWBY made their way to the, Emerald Falls in order to run a series of test to determine, Jaune’s faunas ability. Considering his rather unique nature as a faunas, tests needed to be done. The only reason they were doing it outside was to be away from prying eyes.

And, potential property damage.

Oobaleck: Think nothing of it ! Why, this research opportunity is unlike any other I have been tasked to do. I relish the opportunity!

Jaune: Well, glad someone enjoying themselves, bar Nora…

As if on cue, Nora slammed another log before him with her usual wild eyed maniac gaze within her eyes.

Nora: Again!

Jaune: Must I? I mean, I’ve already shredded an entire tree. Possibly more than that.

Oobaleck: No, we have gained enough research on your talons, now it is time to test you ability to breath fire!

Yang: Whoo!

Ruby: Yes!

Nora: FINALLY!

His friends suddenly drew out sticks with marshmallows at the end of them, Jaune couldn’t help, but stare at his friends dumbfounded.

Jaune: Serious?! Is that the whole reason you’re here; For smores?!

Yang: Yes.

Ruby: Absolutely.

Nora: Hell yeah!

Jaune sighed as he turned his head as he looked towards the rest of his team.

Jaune: Can you believe…?

Jaune saw something that surprised him, but really shouldn’t have surprised him. The rest of his friends with marshmallows on sticks. What surprised him the most however was that, Weiss had several of them on the end of her rapier.

Jaune: Really? And, seriously, Weiss? I thought you would find smores too pedestrian for your refined pallet?

Weiss: I thought so too, then, Ruby shoved one in my mouth, and I became hooked to the taste of it! Now, less talking, more smore making!

Jaune: Oh gods…

Oobaleck: Now, now students! There will be time later for smores, class is still in session!

NPRRWBY: Naww…

Jaune: Yay!

Oobaleck: Now then, since we already know the much control you have on your flame. Lets see what happens when you let loose with your fire breath.

Jaune: Uhh…?

Jaune nervously looked around him, before addressing his teacher again.

Jaune: You want me to let loose with my fire breath…

Oobaleck: Yes.

Jaune: In the middle of a flammable forest?

Oobaleck: Worry not, Mr. Arc, Ms. Schnee’s surplus of, Dust should prevent any accidents from happening.

Jaune: Will it?

Weiss: Depends on how strong the fire is.

Jaune: Oh… Okay… Haa… Let’s do this then.

Oobaleck: Direct your fire to the tree in front of you. This one is relatively father away from the rest. This will prevent the fire from spread. Hopefully.

Jaune: I heard that.

Nora: Lest talking, more fire!

Jaune: Haa… Okay, let’s do this…

Jaune turned towards the tree, and took a deep breath, opened his mouth, and a torrent of fire erupted from his mouth. Growing bigger, and bigger as it drew farther away from, Jaune. A huge cloud of fire engulfed the tree, lighting it ablaze in seconds. Jaune held his flame for a few seconds, until he stopped admiring his handy work in a stunned, but an oddly thrilled feeling.

Yang: Whoa… That was intense…

Blake: That trees still green; ‘green’ trees are harder to burn, and yet this ones going up in smoke…

Ruby: You think we should have done this inside?

Pyrrha: Well, the fire alarms would have been triggered because of all the smoke so…?

Nora: Yes. Burn. Burn the trees, burn the city, burn the world… BURN…

Ren: Okay, semblance time for you.

As, Ren said that he channeled his semblance into, Nora, removing her maniacal smile as she fantasied about the world being engulfed in flame. Ren, then turned to, Weiss giving her a pointed look.

Ren: Weiss?

Weiss: Huw, what?

Ren: The fire?

Weiss: Oh yes, the fire!

With a few flicks of her wrist a glyph appeared above the tree, before dumping gallons of water atop the tree, instantly putting the fire out leaving them to watch a cloud of steam rise up from the trees charred remains.

Jaune: Whoa… Did I do that…?

Oobaleck: That is quite impressive; Your ability to produce a controlled jet of fire is akin to a flamethrower. Though naturally produced in your body it behaves like most like natural fuels used in modern flamethrowers. While testing your abilities we have determined that you can control it like a blow torch, with same fine percussion, and intensity required to melt metal plates. Here when you ‘let loose’ the flame will burn at a high heat, a high rate of intensity, and seemingly sticks to the target’s surface. Even though you were breathing fire for a few moments, you managed to go a few cm’s deep into the wood. This is quite the impressive natural weapon you posse, Mr. Arc.

Jaune: And, deadly… I should probably refrain from using this in training bouts, and matches.

Oobaleck: I agree; While running some tests on human, or faunas opponents would be advisable to understand the extents of your fire’s effects. I will ask you to refrain from doing so, because of the unknown potential affects of said fire.

Weiss: Wouldn’t, Jaune’s fire behave like the, Fire Dust I use in training matches?

Oobaleck: The effects of, Mr. Arc’s fire is similar, but acts differently to the effects of your, Dust, Ms. Schnee.

Weiss: How so?

Oobaleck: While you’re aura would act as a protective blanket preventing the fire from burning you, the fire will slowly be chipped away as you are bathed in fire. You therefore could easily avoid your aura from braking by moving out of the fire. However, even if it’s only a glancing blast of, Mr. Arc’s fire, it would not only take off a substantial chunk of your aura. What’s worse, the fire would stick to you until it is set out.

Yang: Meaning if my aura broke, and he bathed me in his fire, it would still be on me, then I would get set on fire?!

Oobaleck: Correct. The results of which would be quite… severe.

Pyrrha: Uhh… Save the fire for the, Grimm then, Jaune.

Jaune: Will the fire go out with the, Grimm though?

Blake: You will have to test that out, Jaune.

Jaune: Should I?

Ruby: Carry some, Water Dust on you incase there’s a fire.

Jaune: That could work, so long as I don’t eat them when I get thirsty again.

Weiss: Wait, did you say you eat dust?

Oobaleck: On to the next test! Mr. Arc, I want you to breath fire until you run out!

Jaune: Testing my capacity?

Oobaleck: Exactly! Begin when you are ready, Mr. Arc.

Jaune: Okay…

Jaune opened his mouth again, and a torrent of fire erupted from his his mouth settling the tree ablaze in seconds.

The others watched in stunned amazement as his fire burrowed deeper into the tree, creating a hole of fire from the shear ferocity of the fire.

Yang: Okay… I think the passing glance would incinerate you.

Blake: Least it would be quick.

Pyrrha: I don’t think that’s a comforting thought.

Nora: BURN!

Ruby: Uhh… Ren, she’s doing it again…

Ren: On it.

Weiss: Is he opening his mouth wider?

Pyrrha: Yeah, I can see his fangs.

Jaune’s mouth had indeed widened, and his fangs popping upward as the force that he was breathing fire seemed to intensify. Causing the fire to burn hotter, and harder, reducing the tree to ashes in seconds.

Pyrrha: Hmm… His stance is becoming more rigid, and he seems to be flexing his muscles to maintain his posture.

Yang: Not to mention his flame is growing stronger since he started doing that.

Blake: How intense is his flame going to get…?

Nora: Oh cool! Jaune’s hair is glowing!

Pyrrha: Wait, what?!

As, Jaune’s fire breath was intensifying in it’s rampant destruction, his hair started to glow to a golden white hue that shined like a flashlight in the darkness. They watched that while his hair started to glow brighter, the blue flames erupting from his mouth started to narrow in its wide berth, but strengthen even more in its intensity until…

A narrow beam of golden white fire erupted from his mouth, blasting through a dozen trees within fractions of a second. They watched in what could only be stunned horror as, Jaune’s head moved side to side, cutting a large swath of the forest in seconds.

Jaune continue to breath fire until his head suddenly shot up, and his mouth snapped shut. His fire was extinguished as steam seeming rising out from his mouth as his lips devolved into a deep snarl. The glow of his hair slowly faded as a deep guttural growl echoed deep from within his mouth as he servied the destruction he wrought upon the forest.

Jaune: Haaa…

Jaune: …

Jaune: Well… Ain’t that something?

Jaune turned to look at his friends, teammates, and teachers, all of whom seemed to look on in stunned horror at the raw destruction, Jaune had wrought upon a whole forest in a matter of seconds. Even, Dr. Oobaleck looked on in shear shock for a few minutes before he managed to collect himself, and continue on with the test.

Oobaleck: That was quite… Impressive, Mr. Arc, I did not expect your fire to… evolve as it did, and cause such rampant destruction within a few seconds.

Jaune: That’s putting it lightly…

Oobaleck: Indeed. Stay where you are, Mr. Arc, I need to add additional tests considering these new developments. Ms. Rose would you be so kind to measure the distance from, Mr. Arc to the end of his beam of fire? Ms. Rose?

Ruby, just like everyone else couldn’t help but stare on dumbstruck at the shear chaos, Jaune had inflicted on the forest.

Oobaleck: Ms. Rose!

Ruby: Huw?! What? Yes?!

Oobaleck: Could you measure the distance from, Mr. Arc to the end of the blast radius?

Ruby: Oh yeah, sure, on it!

Ruby placed the beacon at, Jaune’s feet, before exploding into a cloud of rose petals darting to the end. She was gone for nearly two minutes before, Ruby darted back with her head covered in a sheen of sweat.

Ruby: Whoa… It’s really hot over there…

Oobaleck: That is to be expected; The shear amount of damage, and the speed of which he did so shows the shear amount of heat was capable of producing. Now then; What was the measured distance you acquired, Ms. Rose?

Ruby: It was… 1.3 kms.

Jaune: Seriously?!

Ruby: Yeah… I checked it twice just to be sure.

Jaune: Okay, no letting lose with my fire then.

Weiss: Yeah, I think that would be a good I…? Hey… Have your horns grown bigger?

Jaune: Huw?

Jaune’s hands reached up to his head, and touched the bumps where his horns were only to feel two long bone’s extruding from the top of his head. They were two inches long, and one, and a half inches wide. They curved along the top of his head before moving upward to a peak of a crown at the end.

Jaune: Okay… That is an unexpected development… Do they… do they look good?

Blake: They look… great really.

Ruby: Yeah! They’re white with golden tips.

Pyrrha: It looks like you’re growing a crown.

Jaune: A crown? A natural crown… Sounds cool.

Oobaleck: And, yet they have grown at such an exceptional rate. It should have taken at least a month for them to reach this stage in their development. Perhaps it was due to the serge of power you were displaying during your blast.

Ren: Perhaps it was happening while his hair was glowing.

Jaune: My hair was glowing?

Pyrrha: A bright white! It was quite pretty really…

Jaune: Huw… We’ll have to check the film later then.

Oobaleck: Indeed we will. But, we are not done yet! We still have one more test left to do!

Jaune: We have more test to complete?! What’s left?

Oobaleck: To test your capacity to withstand fire.

Jaune: My capacity to do what?!

Oobaleck: Ms. Schnee, at your nearest convenience.

Weiss: Sorry, Jaune. But, it has to be done.

Weiss spun the revolver on her weapon as she activated the fire dust, then she pointed at, Jaune and a glyph appeared under his feet, and his eyes went wide in shock, and fear. He held out his hand as panic flooded his face.

Jaune: NONONONONO WAIT!

An exsplosion of fire erupted underneath, Jaune burning the ground beneath his feet. The blast last only half a minute, but the flame burned at a such a high temperature that when it stopped they were faced with three very prominent facts:

1: Jaune was indeed fire proof.

2: Jaune was absolutely furious.

And, 3: He was naked.

Ruby: EEP?!!

Ren: Uh oh…

Weiss: Ahh! Put that away!

Blake: Holy hell…

Nora: Hehe! Told you he had a zweihänder~!

Yang: Damn!!! You had that inside you?!

Pyrrha: Ha! Wait until you see it when it’s hard~!

Oobaleck: Impressive, Mr. Arc! You are capable of withstanding several hundred degrees! It may have only been a few seconds, but I hypothesize you could endure for several minutes, maybe even our since the fire had no affects upon your body!

Jaune: That’s… Nice…?!

Weiss: I-I-I’m so sorry, J-Jaune I didn’t mean to… Uhh…?! H-Help?!

Jaune snarled as a deep growl escaped his lips, he was furious, absolutely furious. He reached down and grabbed the chest piece, the straps burning off in the intense heat with the rest of his clothes. With this one piece from his armour, he coupd at least give himself a sense of dignity as he stared them down.

Yang: Uhhh… J-Jaune… E-Everything okay…?

Jaune: You ever… Any of you! Ever do that to me again; I will burn you… Okay…?

Ruby: N-Noted!

Weiss: S-Sorry, I just… Uhh…?!

Jaune: Now if you’ll excuse me… I need to… Redress myself… When my armour cooled, can you bring it to my room?

Nora: Can do fearless leader!

Jaune: Thank you!

Pyrrha: I-I-I’ll come with you, Jaune!

And, with that, the two members of, Team JNPR, leaving the others to deal with the aftermath of the tests. The other were left standing their many of the females of the group with a deep blush across their faces. For all, but one however; for, Dr. Oobaleck was having the time of his life with all the new found information he had gathered on, Jaune.

Oobaleck: Well, that was a resounding success! Wouldn’t you say so students? Students?

///

The inspirational music for this particular prompt.

It’s a great song.

Till later then.

#rwby #jaune arc #yang xiao long #blake belladonna #pyrrha nikos #nora valkyrie #weiss schnee #ruby rose #lie ren #bartholomew oobleck

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rosewaterandivy · 11 months

Text

5. a ticket to anywhere

Summary: Rumor has it, that hometown hero-turned-teacher Steve Harrington is hot for teacher. The English teacher next door to him at Hawkins High, who also happens to be his childhood friend, that is.

Pairing: Steve Harrington x chaotic!dumbass reader

Warnings: No use of y/n - reader goes by the nickname Trouble instead, depictions of bar fights, winter holidays (Christmas), call outs to It’s A Wonderful Life, two idiots making bad decisions in spite of their feelings, Modern!Teacher AU, English teacher reader, History teacher Steve, slow burn, friends to lovers, romance.

A/N: Ohmygod, sorry for falling off the face of the earth! Had a bit a writer’s block with this bad boy, but hopefully that’s rectified now. Here’s 5K of idiots being bad at feelings; feedback and reblogs are appreciated, enjoy!

series masterlist | playlist

previous || next

Then - Winter break, December

Going to The Hideout the last day of term was tradition. A celebratory drink to kick off the festivities of winter break (mostly sleeping in, if you were being honest) and relax a bit. Unfortunately, that was not in the cards tonight. As Steve quickly found out at the bar.

“Funny seeing you here Harrington,” he says, sipping from his pint glass. “Would’ve throught the two of you’d be cozied up by now.”

“Look man, I don’t want any trouble,” Steve says, signaling for the bartender, “Just ordering drinks and I’ll be on my way.”

He pauses, considering Steve’s words. A scoff as he shakes his head, “Course she didn’t tell you, figures.”

Steve ticks his jaw, fuse growing shorter and shorter the longer he stands here with him. He should’ve just sent Robin to get the drinks.

“Not at all curious why we broke up?”

That about tears it.

He turns to your ex, appraising him in his drunken stupor. “No offense,” he spits, “But I could give a fuck about your excuse for putting her through all that.”

“Mm, I see.” He signals for another drink, “Guess it doesn’t matter the reason, as long as you get yours, eh?”

“Excuse me?”

Kyle sets the drinks down in front of Steve, staying close to keep an eye on the situation. Steve nods in thanks.

“Well,” he sighs, grabbing the drinks in both hands, “I would say it was nice talkin’ to ya, but we both know that’s a lie.”

He’s halfway back to the table when he hears it, a snide voice ringing out from the bar: “Told her it’s ‘cause I didn’t want your sloppy seconds.”

Steve stops short, beer sloshing over the glasses where they’re balanced between his hands. Robin sees as he girts his teeth, jaw strained. She hops up from the booth and takes the drinks from him, nods when he says, “Keep her distracted or get her out of here.”

The bar isn’t silent by any means, but the regulars know enough to be wary as Steve turns on his heel and slowly walks toward the man in question. “What was that now?”

His voice is soft, just loud enough for it to pique your ex’s interest. He turns toward Steve, smirk fixed on his face. “Too many knocks to the head Harrington? I said—“

Thumb tucked over his fingers and knees slightly bent, like your dad taught him, Steve’s fist collides with the man’s jaw before he can finish the sentence, liquor and spit spilling from his mouth. He stumbles back against the barstools, attempting to stand back up.

“Think that’s last call for you,” Kyle says, sliding the bill toward him, voice gruff. “Close out and leave.”

His eyes narrow as he wipes his mouth, hand coming away bloody. “Considering the circumstances,” he spits on the floor, saliva tinted red, “I think you’ll find my tab comped for the trouble.”

Steve remains where he is, both stunned by his own actions and terrified for any retaliation. Kyle looks from the man in front of him to Steve and back to the booth where Robin is struggling to restrain you.

“Considering the circumstances, I think you’ll find yourself banned from The Hideout.” He sighs, exasperated, “Come back to fuck around and find out,” he warns eyeing you as you make your way toward them, “And I’ll let Trouble finish the job.”

He takes the hint, shrugging into his jacket as he walks toward the door. “Sorry sweetheart,” he calls out mockingly, “I tried. Seems like Harrington just can’t take a hint!”

“Hey, fucko!”

You’re in the middle of it before Robin or Steve and wrangle you back - one hand fisting his jacket, knuckles turning white as the shirt beneath, teeth bared and glinting in the light. Your nose is pressed up against his, voice biting and acidic when you hiss, “You feeling brave today?”

Steve is suddenly reminded of that fact that you played roller derby in college. And you were scary good. Not just the skating and endurance, but the shit-talking and intimidation tactics, too. The occasional brawl. He swallows audibly, earning a look from Robin.

Shocked silent, your ex shakes his head furiously and you exhale, satisfied with the response.

Slowly, your fist uncurls, leaving a wrinkled shape of your fingers and thumb in a vengeful imprint. With a calm smoothing of your palm, you press the jacket flat and leave the bar without another word.

Eddie finds you in the parking lot as he’s walking in to The Hideout. Shivering in the cold as the adrenaline leaves your body. Coat left behind in the booth, your wrap your arms around yourself for warmth.

He drops his jacket around your shoulders and turns you around. “Hey killer,” he greets with a soft smile. “Wanna go for a drive?”

You nod as he leads you to his car, opening the door for you to slip in. You’re reeling from the confrontation with your drunk ex-fiancé and the fact that Steve punched him–holyshit–and then bartender Kyle banned him.

What the actual fuck.

Eddie is quiet as he pulls onto the main drag, fingers tapping along with the beat of the music. You’d wager Metallica or Dio, but it sounds an awful lot like—

“Jeremy spoke in class today,” Eddie warbles out in his best Eddie Vedder impression.

It’s enough for you to crack a smile at the ridiculousness of it all. To be fair, it was a truly terrible impression, a disservice to both Eddie as a singer and the frontman of Pearl Jam.

“There it is,” he says, noticing your smile, “Knew you didn’t stand a chance against 90s grunge.”

He turns on a county road just outside of town, ignoring the notifications piling up on his phone. Eddie has half a mind to ask you to text Rob for him, but thinks better of it.

You’re still quiet, taking in the frosted scene outside of Hawkins. He still finds it odd that you can be this quiet, much more accustomed to your general vibe of chaos and a complete lack of impulse control.

“Steve punched him,” you say, seemingly out of the blue, as Eddie comes to a stop by the lake. “My ex, I mean. Just popped him on the jaw after he started talking shit.”

“Huh.”

The car still thrums with heat, as you sink down into the seat closing your eyes. “I wasn’t close enough to really hear what he was saying,” you continue, “Rob was basically yelling in the booth and showing me these dumb TikToks at like, the loudest her volume could go.”

Eddie nods, knowing she was doing her best to distract you, probably at Steve’s request.

“Then, the next thing I know, he’s back against the barstools and Steve’s winding up for another shot.”

“And you tried to stop it?”

“Yeah,” you open your eyes tiredly. “I hadn’t seen him since…” you trail off and look out the window again, “I don’t know why I did that, confronted him, I mean.”

“Did it help?”

Eddie watches as you pause, searching for the words that will somehow have this all make sense.

A slow shake of your head, “No, not really. I just wanted it to stop.”

He hums in agreement, fingers drumming against the steering wheel.

“Why do you think he did it?”

Your voice is soft, you look so small tucked against the seat, his jacket nearly swallowing you. Eddie sighs for lack of a response, and shrugs.

“Dunno, sweetheart,” he reaches for your hand and gives it a squeeze because he knows why Steve did it, he’s always known. But he can’t say shit to you about it.

He starts the car up once more, suggests something like Dairy Queen, which you readily take him up on (“Ice cream in December, fuck me up, man.”).

You’re quiet once more which allows him to ponder exactly why Steve decided to deck your asshole ex-fiancé.

And all he can circle back to is that god damn lab project he and Steve had back in high school, when Steve was with Nancy but, hand to god, would not look at, talk to, or breathe in Eddie’s general direction for a month after he’d learned you’d lost your virginity to him.

Poor Robin had to mediate the entire thing.

So, yeah. Eddie knows why Steve is the way he is about you. He’s known before Steve could figure it out for himself.

The stubborn idiot was in love with you, had been half in love with you since god knew when, and had realized it, too little, too late.

Over the next few days, random thoughts and memories are fleeting through your mind and come seemingly without prompting. Just little things, you’re not sure why you’ve fixated on them.

The conversation you had with Eddie as he painted your nails at the cabin, for example. Talking about high school and the stupid shit you’d gotten up to. Specifically, the pact: you and Eds, your parents away on business, and an empty house.

“Yeah, but I gave my v-card to you Eds,” you say, the scent of nail polish invading your nostrils.

“Pfft, on a technicality.”

You sputter indignantly, “Whaddya mean by that?” Shooing him away from your nails to blow them dry, “I give you the greatest gift I have to give and you swoop in and take a dump on me like that?!”

He laughs, moving onto your next hand, brush dipping back into the bottle of polish. “Yeah, such a travesty,” he teases you, “Everyone else has to get a sweater, huh?”

“Fuck off for real chump,” you grouse, “You should be so lucky.”

“I know babe, you’re always a delight.”

It was nice, all things considered; you wouldn’t change a thing. Steve was weird for a bit afterwards, but other than that no notes.

Eddie was good like that, your resident fuckbuddy and “safe dick” during the lulls in your respective romantic lives.

Or when Nancy, slightly sloshed after dinner, pointed out something during the bonfire later that same trip.

“C’mon babe,” Nancy tuts, sipping from her glass of wine, “You and Steve have been orbiting each other for years.”

“We’re friends!” you defend, voice a scoff, “Just friends.”

Nancy laughs, sets her glass down on the table. “Whatever you’ve gotta tell yourself, Trouble,” she stands and stretches, blanket falling from her shoulders. She sets you with a look, a fond one tinged with concern. “But friends don’t look at each other like that.” Nods to where Steve and Eddie sit across the firepit from you.

It’s there and gone in a split second; for a fleeting moment, Steve looks at you hung the moon or something. The next, his eyes shift back to Eddie, nodding along with whatever he’d said.

Huh, you think, that’s … different.

Nancy throws the blanket over her arm and grabs her glass, ready to head in for the night. Crouches beside you, hand settling against your shoulder, head bent close to yours, “He’s never stopped that,” her breath brushes against your heated skin.

“Stopped what?”

She smiles, firelight illuminating the fond pull of her lips, “Looking at you like you’re the only star in the sky.”

These are the thoughts that torment you and bring up other instances you hadn’t considered as significant before: Steve designating you as his plus one for nearly every family function he’d been drug to, your parents looking at the pair of you with knowing smiles despite your insistence of “just friends,” Mrs. Harrington knowing you by name and Nancy as “the Wheeler girl,” your exes being perpetually possessive over you and jealous of Steve.

The list goes on and on.

It’s as if everyone was privy to knowledge that you didn’t have.

God. Had you really been so blind?

Curled up on the night before Christmas Eve, or Christmas Eve-Eve as Robin insisted, sweater paws and blankets abound. Eddie and Robin were visiting their families, and Nancy had the usual Wheeler festivities. Leaving you and Steve alone at the loft, Steve’s parents opting to vacation somewhere warm while yours visit your brother in New Mexico. Cookies had been baked, flour and frosting still dusting the counters; a panoply of colors and sprinkles.

It’s a Wonderful Life played softly in the background, black and white images flitting across the screen. Somewhat a secret tradition between the two of you, watching the holiday classic without the usual obnoxious running commentary.

Your hand finds his chest in excitement, “This parts my–”

“Favorite,” he drawls, “I know, honey.”

Steve’s hand drops from your shoulder to nudge your face back to the screen, fingers caressing your jaw, the high point of your cheek, “If you don’t look now, you’re gonna miss it.”

His eyes flit back up to the film, but you can’t bring yourself to look away from him.

Lips moving along and whispering George Bailey’s lines: “What is it that you want Mary? Whaddya want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I’ll throw a lasso around it and pull it down.”

Your hand reaches up and presses against his stubble, scratching your palm. Its familiar scrape has rested upon your head countless times. You could cry as you push back the errant hair that’s fallen across his face, returning the gestures he’s always done for you.

And in that moment, it all falls into place.

“Hey, that’s a pretty good idea,” you rasp, picking up where he left off. “I’ll give you the moon, Stevie.”

Your bare legs peak out from underneath the blanket, one hand on your thigh, the sleeves of his stolen sweatshirt loose and engulfing your fingers. The hollow of your throat taut from holding your breath – it makes him want to touch you. It makes him want you.

He’s sick. He’s dying. He is so, so fucked.

“What...” he trails off, thought gone before he’d even begun.

He feels split open, like the sky after a storm. Torn up completely, unable to grasp anything in his own turbulence. All because you’re looking at him like you’ve realized something.

Fuck.

You’ve always been an oblivious idiot, too stubborn for your own good, a dumbass with no survival instincts, heart on your sleeve. He’s counted on that to conceal his big, fat, stupid crush on you. And it had worked, all throughout high school, college, and the devastating news of your engagement.

Worked like a charm, up until it didn’t. And now he’s caught out, your scope trained on him like he’s a lone stag in an open field. You’ve lined up the shot, all that’s left is to pull the trigger.

Steve doesn’t think he can bear it.

“Don’t,” he pleads into the silence, head tipped up to the ceiling, eyes screwed shut in pre-emptive heartbreak. “Don’t say it–”

“Then I won’t,” you say before miming locking your lips and throwing away the key. Calm and patient as you settle your way into his lap again.

He’s terrified and dizzy, fumbling with a million different outcomes and failing each time. Relationships have never quite worked out for him; too stupid, too jealous, too little, too late.

Steve had gotten better; dated a few girls, and liked them a lot too, but they never worked out how he’d planned. And this one–this one, he really can’t fuck up.

Your lashes are so long and pretty. The curve of your cupid’s bow, a shape he adores. Even the tiny scar on your chin and the way your hair shifts— wavy strands framing your face.

Steve’s mind blessedly stills as your lips brush his — warm and eager, coaxing his own to move at your touch, “Stop thinking Steve,” your breath fans across his lips, “And just kiss me.”

It’s surreal. He’s there, in one sense, with you curled up in his lap, watching as you press against him—palms to his chest, hips slotting against his own.

But Steve is also recalling nights at the cabin, back in November. You, idiot that you are, without pajamas and wearing one of his shirts instead, legs bare underneath the covers. He’d woken up every day of that god forsaken trip pressed against you, sleeping better than he had in months, and painfully aware of his hard on against the perfect curve of your ass.

And you, thankfully, had never said a thing about it. And he’d never brought it up; he was mindful to give you space and extricate himself as quietly as possible before an icy cold shower.

Steve feels like he’s in two places at once, the same inscrutable emotion suspended across space and time.

“It’s just me.” You say, comfortable and lighthearted. “You know me.”

Your eyes glimmer, a familiar color and gaze calling him home.

“Yeah,” he chokes out, “Yeah, I do, honey.”

He’s scared to death, terrified and dizzy. Because Steve’s known for a while now, this is it for him. You are it, alpha and omega, beginning and end, as above so below. And it’s not at all how he thought it would be.

It’s quiet and hesitant, the seconds stretching into horrible eons of passing time. You tilt your head this way and that, eyes tracing his face.

The knowing is what gets him. He’s never been one for genre conventions, more comfortable with the reliability of indisputable fact. And he’s flummoxed to learn that two things can be true at the same time.

It’s everything and nothing like the writers, artists, and visionaries say. Steve is in love with you: fact. Some part of him has known this since you scaled his fence, mistaking it for yours, as you tried to sneak back in your house after missing your curfew all those summers ago: fact.

Love at first sight, even though it’s not quite first sight at all.

It’s fleeting glances across crowded hallways, laughs echoing from classrooms, waking up in a daze having dreamt of you, last minute road trips and running through terminals to catch flights; but it’s also the melancholy as you leave for yet another date, lingering touches when you round the desk of his classroom, soft smiles meant just for him.

He really can’t fuck this up. A chance with you and your chaos, your kindness, and quick wit. It’s overwhelming, like a tidal wave crashing against the shore during a storm. Insurmountable, the pressure dissipating in his chest as he realizes it.

Steve flushes, and in the split second of your tongue sweeping over your bottom lip, he tells himself, do it, you coward, just fucking do it— and, god help him, he does.

Then the entire room bursts into flames. Your lips are searing hot against his— plump and eager, leaving scorched trails everywhere they touch, and Steve thrums like a strike of lightning trying to catch his breath.

Steve watches the way you pull him toward you, glowing and euphoric with kiss-swollen lips, and fucking Christ, he knows.

The next morning brings a swell of guilt rising in your chest, and you know that the events of last night cannot happen again.

Kissing Steve, your best friend, like it wasn’t some cataclysmic thing– you were such a fucking idiot. It was too much and too soon, and you’d somehow already fucked it up before it could begin.

You’d never been so grateful for Robin’s shitty timing, but her drunkenly stumbling in the loft with Vickie in tow had been enough for you to disentangle yourself from Steve and hightail it to the opposite end of the couch.

His eyes were wide, lips pink and cheeks fevered— he wouldn’t stop looking at you.

And you couldn’t bring yourself to look at him.

You exchanged greetings with Robin and Vickie before excusing yourself and heading to bed. Nancy said you could use her room for the night, so you quietly shut the door and failed to will yourself to sleep.

Now, it’s the morning of Christams Eve and you’re cleaning up the kitchen. Steve wandered in earlier, and methodically gathered the glasses and plates from the haphazard dinner you’d shared last night, only to deposit them in the sink next to you.

His fingers trailed against your forearm, sleeve rucked up as you sprayed and wiped the countertops ridding them of flour and cookie dough.

You fail to suppress your surprised gasp at the sensation, soft and warm, with enough latent promise to give you goosebumps allover.

He lingers, fingers grasped around your elbow now. Three successive taps to ask are you okay?

Robin and Vickie’s voices trail down the hall, letting you know they’re up even if the door hasn’t opened just yet.

You swallow, finding that you’re unable to respond verbally, throat dry and tight. Nor are you able to tap back, as per your code, hands busy with cleaning. Instead, you rock back into his frame with a sigh and allow his arm to wrap around your hips.

Content with a job well done, you leave the spray and cloth on the counter and turn to face him. And, confirming Nancy’s observation, Steve looks at you like you’re the only thing worth looking at; his hazel eyes soft, the green giving way to flecks of gold around his pupil, but tinged with apprehension.

And damn, if it doesn’t make you want to kiss him again.

But you can’t and you need to stop this before it goes any further.

While there are feelings there, for the both of you (you hope), you are nowhere near ready to have that discussion with Steve. Nor do you want to unnecessarily complicate matters. You’d only just began casually dating again, for fuck’s sake.

“Steve I–,” you croak out before he stops you with his thumb tracing the line of your jaw. He’s somehow backed you against the countertop, effectively caging you in.

And you know if you asked or signaled that you were uncomfortable in any way, he’d let you go. But you find that you aren’t, in fact, you feel the opposite, Steve’s weight against you is soothing in a way; as if he’s a perfect blend of a man too attractive for his own good and a weighted blanket.

Odd metaphor, but your addled brain allows it.

He doesn’t try to kiss you again, though the weaker part of you wouldn’t be opposed, but simply takes you in, his eyes roving across your face and body. As if he could discern your emotion or anticipate what you’d been trying to say.

His thumb settles along the notch of bone at your hip, tracing circles through the fabric of his your hoodie. His tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip before he swallows, your eyes following the movement of his throat and the constellation of freckles there.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” he says eventually, voice soft but resigned.

You stare up at him, eyes wide and can feel the heat creeping up your body in embarrassment. Your hand finds purchase against his shoulder, settling there while your thumb traces the line of his collarbone.

“I mean, I’d like to,” he clears his throat, “Eventually. But I know you’re going through a lot and I’d hate to add to that, so.” His glances down at his feet, a lovely flush on his cheeks matching the ruddy tone of his lips.

Shit, you really need to stop staring at his lips.

“Okay.”

He gives your hips a reassuring squeeze and pushes himself upright. Steve turns to check the clock on the microwave, eyes catching the time.

“Ready for your present?”

He’s all smiles now, eyes glinting with mischief as you let out an exasperated pfft and roll your eyes. Steve treated gift-giving like it was a competition to be won, and Steve always won, without fail from year to year.

With a nod from you, he drags you over to the chaotically decorated Christmas tree in the living room and sits down in front of it while you plop down on the ottoman. Another thing he insists on, Steve always plays Santa and hands out gifts to everyone, the one’s he’d purchased them go first, without saying.

Neither of you can remember when it started, but the pair of you always exchanged one gift on Christmas Eve. And you worked for years to get the gifts down to a certain budget and number, but somehow Steve “forgot” that agreement more and more as each year passed on.

Despite growing up in the Harrington household, which abided by strict holiday themes and color schemes under his mother’s guiding hand, Steve could not be fucked to 1) wrap a gift with any sense of order or presentation and 2) have thematic wrapping paper or accoutrements.

Which is how an impossibly wrapped gift proclaiming ‘Merry Rexmas!’ from shiny green T-Rexes with far too much tape and not enough wrapping paper ended up in your hand. It was also, based on its lack of weight, something that definitely should have gone in a gift bag.

He sets you with a smirk, “Go on then, open it,” your gift for him in his hand. The lights from the tree twinkle behind him, casting Steve in a warm glow and you look to the task at hand to avoid doing something stupid.

Again.

You peel back the paper and tape to reveal a soft gray leather stamped with your initials. “It’s beautiful,” you say, as you continue to unwrap it, thumb skimming over smooth surface.

Steve watches as you do so. “There’s uh,” he rasps, voice just above a whisper, “More on the inside.”

You quirk a brow in interest and pull the zip to open it up. Inexplicably, he’s moved all the contents of your previous wallet to this new one, you can’t help but laugh. Fingers tripping along the contents, you pull the flap at the back of the wallet to reveal not cash, but plane tickets.

“What?”

He moves from his position in front of the tree closer to you, hand settling along the ottoman. “I figured you could use a break.”

“Steve, this is too much. I–,” you stop before you give away how overcome you are. You blink back the tears threatening to fall and swallow in an effort to soothe your rapidly closing throat.

He’s quiet, contemplating whether you’re really upset with him over the extravagance of his gift. When your hand finds his, he’s reassured. He watches as you pull the tickets from the wallet and eye them warily.

You clear your throat, thumb skimming across the back of his hand, and say far too calmly, “These are for this afternoon. And there’s a ticket here with your name on it, oddly enough.”

“Huh,” he smirks, “How about that.”

“What are you playing at Harrington?”

Steve stands up, stretching casually before making his way to the hallway. You trail after him with furtive whispers of his name, needling him for some semblance of a response. He disappears into his room for a moment and returns with a backpack slung over his shoulder and not one but two rolling bags, one in white and the other in black.

“That’s not my luggage,” you say when he stops in front of you.

It’s decidedly not your luggage because you’ve been meaning to replace it for years since it’s falling apart at the seams. Too many excursions where it had taken a beating, whether thrown into the cargo hold of a plane or strapped to the top of a rickshaw or bus, clinging on for dear life. No tag or branding in sight, but you notice the two TSA locks and leather luggage tag and file it away for further investigation.

“It is now,” is his reply as he walks you back to the living room. He places your Christmas present to him in his backpack and zips it back up before turning to you. “As much as I love the look Trouble,” he smirks, eyes working you up and down, “I think the TSA are going to insist on pants, of some kind.”

Your face colors remembering your current state. Overheated as you baked cookies the night prior, you shucked your yoga leggings and threw them on a sofa somewhere before promptly forgetting about them as the night carried on.

Locating them, you pull them hastily back on. “But I’m not packed,” you point out. Rightfully so, since the majority of your wardrobe still resides in your former home with your ex-fiancé. “And I don’t even know where we’re going. Plus,” you continue walking toward him, “I haven’t even agreed to this ridiculous idea of yours.”

Steve grins at your petulance, he’d anticipated it in fact. “Nancy helped me out, no need to worry,” he taps the white suitcase at his feet. He steps closer to you, thumb landing at the center of your chin while his other fingers fall into place curled underneath your chin and prompts you to look up at him.

“Now,” he begins, voice soft and steady, “We don’t have to go, if you don’t want to. But you’d mentioned wanting to get away and it was either this or spring break.” His breath fans along your cheeks, and you can pick up the scent of his coffee from earlier. “The choice is yours.”

In for a penny, in for a pound.

With a sigh, you grab your new wallet and check for your phone in your leggings. Determining that as sufficient, you run a hand through your hair and say, “Did you bring my—”

“Your ridiculous pillow that makes you look like a hostage when you sleep?” He smiles and does nothing to prevent his laughter at your extravagant sleep routine. “Why yes, in fact,” he takes your hand and leads you to the door to grab your coat, purse, and shoes, “I got you the travel size so you can horrify all the passengers on the plane.”

“Lucky me,” you grouse, toeing on your boots in a huff.

“Yeah,” Steve agrees with a smile, “Something like that.”

#steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x you #fanfiction #teacher!steve #stranger things #reader insert #the kids aren't alright - rosewaterandivy

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optiwashere · 6 months

Note

lmao fine I'll ask for another: «Please Don't Save Me»?

Perfect. You managed to pick the Modern/Band AU once more lmao.

That's the title for Chapter nospoilers of the AU! I write linearly and like to separate fanfic chapters out to multiple documents for easier posting. I don't do that for original work, it's a fanfic-only habit.

Anywho, here's a sneak peek.

No context given other than this is a modern AU that focuses on Shadowheart and a modern version of my OC (because I am who I am) as Shadowheart's band has to stay in the OC's city for longer than expected.

Hopefully I'll have a big enough lead to start posting this for real next week (???)

---

Ash didn’t have to ask about Shar. She already knew the answer to that without even bothering.

The cars on the streets outside resumed their bleating honks, the sounds filtering in through the windows. The noise surprised Ash, pulling her from thoughts of a darkened stage and violent, unintelligible metal music. A light rain picked up and pattered the glass reflecting Ash and Shadowheart back whenever Ash glanced over, pale ghosts of themselves in the diner booth seats.

Meager little reflections. Unimportant. Unable to say everything.

Turning back to Shadowheart, Ash waited for her to continue. When she didn’t, Ash spoke up. “So, can you sing?”

“Yeah.”

“Mind showing me?”

“Yes.”

Ash chuckled. “Fair enough.”

Their meal continued in silence, plucking open the sad excuse for distance that they were both cultivating. A greasy burger took Ash’s mind from it all for a little while, and limp, shitty fries with no salt were the perfect follow-up to keep her mind clear of all but the light slap of rain on glass and the buzzing lights overhead.

She told herself that despite catching herself staring at Shadowheart multiple times.

That distance shrunk again.

Ash waited again for Shadowheart to say something. When she didn’t, this time Ash kept her mouth shut. Perhaps this is what she’d prefer after talking so much?

“Tell me something about yourself. Not about music, or mechanic stuff.” Shadowheart chewed on an overcooked bit of fat and gristle before spitting it out onto her plate. “You know about my religion. Sorta. Now you tell me something. Only fair.”

“Only fair? All right. Um.” Ash thought for a moment. “I’m a lapsed Catholic.”

“See, that’s not fair. We can’t do religion-for-religion here,” Shadowheart grumbled. She chugged a mouthful of soda from her glass. “No. None of that. Tell me something else. Go on.”

Sighing, Ash fumbled for anything. “I like dogs.”

“Wow! I feel like I’ve known you for thirty years now,” Shadowheart joked, sarcasm bleeding from her words, “but no. That’s not good enough. Come on, Ash. You gotta have something.”

“I smoke a pack a day. I’m down from two,” Ash admitted. It was the next thing to come to mind.

“See? That’s something.” Then Shadowheart’s eyes lit up. “Do you have smokes on you?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I’ve been dying for one since we got in Rivington.” Shadowheart shuffled out of her seat and gestured for the door. “C’mon. Please. You said smoke and it’s all hitting me at once.”

Following her outside, Ash guided them to a bus stop with an awning to sit under.

“Why not your truck?” asked Shadowheart.

“Eh, if I don’t smoke in there then it’s harder for me to constantly puff up, y’know?”

“Makes sense.”

Pushing a cigarette out of the pack with her thumb, Ash held the crumpled green-and-white plastic package close to Shadowheart’s face. She could’ve just handed it over, but her head was spinning being this close to Shadowheart. Sitting on a shitty little bench under a shitty little awning on a shitty little street outside of a shitty little chain restaurant was getting to her, and with all of that she struggled to do anything coherently.

Shadowheart glanced at her and quirked a brow at her. Leaning forward without breaking eye contact, she grabbed the cigarette with her mouth and pulled it free, flipping it around in her fingers and popping the filtered end between her lips. She waited expectantly, eyes closed, and jutted her face forward.

Ash flicked open the lighter she’d held in her other hand and lit Shadowheart’s cigarette. The first puffs of smoke were heaven in the dark light of the City’s rainy street.

#hey you can ask me things!#my fic #<10% of one chapter is a bit of a large sneak peek but here we are

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oddsconvert · 1 year

Text

Shattered Shadow - Chapter 2

Shattered Shadow Masterlist | Shattered Masterlist | Shadow By My Fireplace Masterlist

This is a long-in-the-making AU collab with the amazing @quietly-by-myself! Including my 'Shattered' boys and Vamp!Cyril and Bloodbag!Sacha AU from 'Shadow By My Fireplace'.

If you do not want to be tagged in this (or would like to be but are not), send either of us an ask or message!

CW: Whumpee turned caretaker, wounded caretaker, vampire caretakers, human caretaker, multiple caretakers, bloodbag whumpee, multiple whumpees, references to previous abuse, brief allusion to noncon, wound cleaning, attempted murder

Cyril allows himself a moment of relief. They’ll be safe, at least for now. One night is not a lot of time, but it’s more time than he had before he met the pureblood. Hopefully, Cyril can get his bearings together enough to find them somewhere safer to go after the pureblood kicks them out.

“Thank you,” Cyril says with a deep bow that makes him wince, before motioning for Shadow to follow him. “I’m Cyril. The human… he hasn’t told me his name yet. I’m calling him Shadow.”

Cyril stumbled into the house, still grasping his side. Shadow is hardly standing with tiredness. “Is there somewhere he can sleep? I’ll treat him in the morning.”

Despite his hatred for the pureblood, Cyril is relieved that he passed the pureblood’s test. The pureblood is as arrogant as he remembers them being, but he is thankful nonetheless. It doesn’t stop him from showing his thinly veiled hostility, though.

“Shadow can rest in my bedroom for the night, he can settle into bed whilst I attend to your injury”, August suggests, he really doesn’t mind. The pair needed the rest more than he ever would. He watches Shadow sway slightly from exhaustion, the dark bags underlining Cyrils’ eyes. His bedroom would be the only free bed in the house now, with Declan occupying and recovering in the spare room, and it would be unfair to kick Lucas out of his own bed in exchange for the sofa.

“Would you rather I show you the way or give you direction?” August offers genuinely, although hoping his guest would choose the former over the latter so he could keep a watchful eye over the pair.

Sacha freezes when he hears the room “bedroom.” Suddenly, the whole conversation comes into focus. That was the price of getting care here, wasn’t it? He’d have to give himself up to the pureblood. Tears were forming in Sacha’s eyes, but he had to be strong. He needed to help Cyril. Cyril who’d saved his life when the attacker came. Cyril who’d saved him from Master. Cyril who was now his Master. It was his duty to serve.

“Just the direction, please.” Sacha hears Cyril say. He knows he won’t have to service someone as long as Cyril’s there - they’d had that conversation - but doesn’t know if that’s what the pureblood wants.

“Top of the stairs. First door on the right. If… if you wouldn’t mind making your way up quietly? I have a uhm…similar situation-” August awkwardly fumbles, gesturing to Shadow before quickly pulling his hand back, “there’s an ill and terrified human upstairs that I pray is fast asleep by now. I’d hate for him to wake.”

Cyril nods. “Do you have all that, Shadow?” Shadows nods, so Cyril nods in return and motions for him to go up the stairs. “I don’t think I can help you up.” He gives Shadow a reassuring glance that tells him everything is going to be alright. Shadow’s look tells Cyril that he doesn’t believe him, not one little bit.

Sacha hopes that Cyril knows what’s going to happen, that he’ll save him before the pureblood has a chance. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. It’s always an ill omen for a human to be invited into a vampire’s bedroom and Sacha is surprised that Cyril doesn’t realise what the pureblood is asking by not asking.

Once Shadow is clearly out of sight and in the bedroom, Cyril glares at the pureblood. “So, you have a similar situation, eh?”

His hostility is thinly veiled now, even more so than before.

“From what I can gather, if I can trust your word - Shadow does not appear a prisoner of yours. I’m correct in assuming that you care for the boy?” August queries, a nauseous feeling twisting in his gut dreading the response. Expecting the fellow vampire to scoff in his face, drop the limp and go grab his blood bag from his warm bed.

“You could say he is dear to me in many ways, yes.” Cyril tries to keep it vague and nonchalant. He hopes that he still comes across as caring, but not in the self-sacrificial, desperate way he really does.

Slowly but surely, August is getting the answers he wants. “The human I mentioned; Declan - he was knocking at death’s door when I found him.”

That’s putting it lightly. Declan seemed one last breath away from fading away forever. And even with helping him back to awareness, the journey is far from over.

“It’s my intention to nurse him back to health and return him home to human territory when he’s recovered. I - I hope you can see I have no ill will. No harm will come to you or Shadow, I will help as best I can.”

“Shadow was a minute away from septic shock,” Cyril says bluntly, before he remembers the story he’s telling. “As I said, my Maker is not kind, but it is not something I can expect a pureblood to understand.” There’s some sort of anger in Cyril’s eyes when he says that - something he’s letting out just a little.

“I will not be perfectly obedient if that’s what you expect of me. But I will offer my services if you need them.”

August can’t help but be taken aback, his mouth blubbering open like a fish out of water - croaking as he scrambles for words.

“O-Obedient? Cyril, I would never -” August chokes, shaking his head, “I don’t know what, or who you think I am but, that’s not me. I may not understand or know the complexities of turned vampires and their makers but, I can sympathise. Whatever has happened to Shadow-” August’s eyes flash down to Cyril’s wound on his side, noticing how this whole time his posture has been crooked and nearly bent over in discomfort and pain, “Whatever has happened to you… It shouldn’t have. Let me help?”

There’s an awkward beat of silence, “Let me try, and if you decide you can’t stand my guts long enough to be in my presence then you’re more than welcome to leave. I’ll help find you and Shadow some shelter for the night.”

Cyril feels some strange emotion as the pureblood, whose name he didn’t even know, told him that everything that happened - all the memories that flash through his head in that moment - shouldn’t have happened. All the awful things that happened between his Maker and him - the one who’s dead now, at his hands.

“I have no choice but to stay. Anyway, Shadow should be fast asleep by this point. His body is still weak, as you can see.” Cyril groans as the pain radiates in an excruciating way. He doesn’t elaborate on why he needs to stay or what his situation is beyond that, but he is happy that at least, at the very least, the pureblood is sympathetic.

August nods in agreement, oddly relieved yet worried for Cyril with the way that he stresses over Shadow’s health as his own declines.

“My surgery is just in the next room over. If you’ll follow me, we can take a look at that gnarly wound and see what we can do?”

Cyril nods and takes a deep, painful breath, forced into his undead lungs, holding his side as he hobbles over to the next room. He sits himself down on the patient’s bed and begins to take off his shirt. The wound is from a wooden stake and there’s splinters everywhere in his skin. The wound begs questions, none of which Cyril was going to answer. The person who’d attacked him was intent on killing him.

With his back turned to him, Cyril can only hear the clattering of instruments, bottles and tools being picked up. August sloshes the alcohol onto a cloth and turns around with an apologetic expression.

“This is going to sting a little, I need to clean it up before I can take a proper look. Is that okay?”

“I was a doctor. I understand.” Cyril was a little annoyed that the pureblood didn’t seem to remember a thing he’d said, but he tried not to think about it. This was about Shadow, not him. “Just get it done quickly.”

The swab of alcohol swipes across the bloody, inflamed wound and August doesn’t miss the way Cyril slightly hisses through his teeth at contact. August works at cleaning away all the fresh and hardened blood caking the wound. But it doesn’t make sense - it’s as raw and brutal as the second it was inflicted. There isn’t a speck of evidence of any healing, or any sign of it beginning.

“This should be healing. If not healed by now. There’s dried and hard blood but the wound is still open? So, what’s going on with your healing factor?” It shouldn’t sound accusatory, but there’s an edge to his tone and an element of curiosity.

Cyril shifts in discomfort. He doesn’t want to answer the question, but knows that it is expected of him. Regardless of the kind words the pureblood had said before, something in his tone now indicates that Cyril must respond.

Does he admit to not feeding? Or try to make a story about how his still-alive Maker made him starve? He’s not a good liar. He knows he isn't. But the pureblood seems easily fooled.

“Starvation,” he states simply, hoping it will be enough for the pureblood.

“By choice or force?” August quickly retorts, assessing how best to approach the situation.

Cyril looks at August suspiciously. “Why do you need to know? Starvation is starvation.”

August huffs out a sigh, taking a step back and staring down at Cyril like a frustrated parent of a toddler.

“I need to know, because if you need blood and want some blood - I have some bags stored in the fridge ready to go and before you even think it… willingly donated by a friend”, August chastises before Cyril can ever think about airing any judgement, “But if you don’t drink blood - I’ll see what else I can do. Asking for your benefit, not mine.”

“I would prefer not to drink it, then.” Cyril hopes that it doesn’t give too much about him away or that it would make August suspicious of his claim that Shadow was, in essence, his bloodbag. Why would he care if it was willingly donated or not? For all he knew, August was lying to gain his trust. That’s what this all seemed like, lies to gain his trust.

“No blood,” August holds his hands in the air surrender style, “I can work with that. It might take a bit more work but it’s doable.”

Cyril growls a bit. “Of course it’s doable. You’ve treated humans with worse wounds.” Underneath it all though, is a sense of hostility at the idea of drinking blood. He tries to hide it, but it leaks out like venom.

It’s all August can do to bite his tongue, disregard the iciness and get to work on the task at hand. If he gave it another second thought, he might feel the rage bubble inside him but he can’t let himself do that.

“Let’s just get this over and done with” August grumbles, brushing his fingers just around the wound and eyeing up all the splinters punctured within. A wooden stake, August guesses. Someone had made an attempt on his life.

“Care to elaborate on this?” August picks up a pair of tweezers, pinching them and pointing them at the wound, “Who did this to you? You’re very lucky to be here right now.”

Cyril glares a little, but he knows better than to piss off the person that’s treating him. “It’s an old spat. Nothing that should concern anyone.”

It isn’t entirely a lie. However, it isn’t entirely the truth, either. The spat is hardly a spat and it isn’t old by any means. He’s truthful, though. The vampires coming after him would not harm August or anyone in his household. They only had their eyes on two people: Cyril and Sacha.

“I truly hope you’re not bringing trouble to my doorstep. I made a vow that I’d protect the two humans residing in my home, and I won’t hesitate to kick you out for their safety”, August stresses, almost as though he can read Cyril’s thoughts.

Cyril thinks about how to answer the pureblood a little. “Those are bold questions and statements from someone who’s name I don’t even know. You’re no faerie. Vampire names aren’t sacred.” He goes quiet for a little while longer. “I promise you, there is no trouble coming to you. It’s a personal feud.”

“You done?” August raises his brows and scoffs a cheap laugh, “Got that off your chest?”

The tweezers dig inside and pluck each splinter of wood out, Cyril continues to wince and groan but seemingly puts up with it for the end result.

“August. My name is August. I apologise for not introducing myself sooner but to be honest… I didn’t imagine you’d actually be sitting here in my surgery tonight. I thought I’d send you packing.”

Cyril waves his hand a bit. “It’s not a problem.” He takes a moment of silence. “Thank you, truly.”

The gesture is sincere and without hostility. He knows it comes off poorly for the first kind thing he says to be after August helps him, but he really is thankful. Not many would treat someone who came in after an attempt on their life.

A genuine smile erupts on August’s face. For the first time tonight, he feels he can actually see the man sitting before him. Facade melting away.

“You’re welcome. I admit I may have judged too quickly this evening.” Way too quickly. The creature he thought he’d opened the door to and the troubled man sat before him now are worlds apart. He can feel the care and concern exuding from him, “You’re very courageous, it’s very admirable how much you care for Shadow.”

Cyril nods a bit, looking down at his wound. It makes him a little sad, to look at it and remember what he has put Shadow through. He quickly shakes the thought away. Whatever he puts Shadow through would not be worse than what Emery was doing to him. Even just thinking of Emery’s name makes Cyril’s blood boil. He cannot believe that such an evil vampire was his Maker.

“Thank you. It’s appreciated,” is all Cyril can say, sitting there quietly, pensively, lost in horrible memories of times he’d rather forget. It occurs to him that August, though a pureblood, might have a similar story. “I may have been the same.”

With August’s treatment finished for the time being, he leads Cyril towards the sofa to turn in for the night, chucking pillows and blankets to him. It’s not much, it’s all he can offer - but Cyril is grateful nonetheless. He’s quick to pass out into troubled sleep, between the effects of starvation and blood loss.

Shattered Tags:

@octopus-reactivated, @whatwasmyprevioususername, @ramadiiiisme @darkthingshappen @whumpsday @thecyrulik @t0rture-me, @redwhump, @the-crypid-magpie, @snowstuffscuff, @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump, @wolfeyedwitch, @interdimensional-chaos, @termsnconditions-apply, @whump-blog, @leyswhumpdump, @not-a-space-alien, @onlybadendings @darlingwhump @sparrowsage @flynnswhumpprompts @whumpcereal @wolves-and-winters @ashh-ed @idkmansomeusername @whuarri @33-sdtr-45 @pigeonwhumps @canislycaon24 @the-whumpers-grimm, @damienxozmoze, @predacon-skydrift @morning-star-whump @neverthelass @espresso-depresso-system @only-shadows-dwell-where-we-are

Shadow By My Fireplace Tags (not already tagged above):

@i-can-even-burn-salad @pumpkin-spice-whump @maracujatangerine @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi @flowersarefreetherapy @quietshae @inkkswhumpandstuff @whumpycries @whumpkinz @roblingoblin285

#Shattered Shadow #Collab #Vampire AU #Whumpee turned caretaker #multiple caretakers #multiple whumpees #vampire caretaker #references to previous abuse #whump #whump writing #whump community #whump blog #whump fic #bloodbag whumpee #Shattered #August Crinamorte OC

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north-blue-hearts · 8 months

Text

Family Practice

CisFem Reader x Trafalgar Law

CW: sex, language, violence

Summary: Modern Mafia-coded AU starts in last semester of College

Chapter 7: Twist

The next couple of days you returned to the manor with Law. He and Pops talked for hours at a time, and you were the only one that dared to interrupt them with drinks or reminders of the time. It left you with plenty of time to visit with your brothers, and while Luffy was sad that Law was busy every time he came over, even your selfish little brother knew better.

Ace, Sabo and Luffy were playing a racing game in the living room while you, Marco and Thatch were tidying up after lunch in the kitchen.

“Really seems like he really is, doesn’t it?” Thatch prompts and you and Marco nod.

“I saw the picture yesterday morning.” You admit drying a plat and handing it off to Thatch, “His dad certainly took after the mother instead of Pops, but the resemblance is uncanny.”

“I wonder what they’re talking about, yoi.”

You snort. “So even you get curious.” You grin, teasing him a little. “I imagine they’re talking about the past. There was a whole side to his dad he didn’t know about, and I’m sure Pops also wants to be able to do as much as he can. I doubt Law will join the Family though.”

“Oh?” Thatch’s brows raise. “Straight arrow then?”

“Eh, I wouldn’t go that far. But he wants to be a doctor, he’s almost there, and the next step is opening his own clinic. Doesn’t really line up, y’know?”

“Well, hopefully he’ll let us at least help get the clinic up and rolling, yoi.” Marco says, finishing up the dishes and draining the sink. “You like him, and that’s worth more’n the blood in my opinion.”

Thatch raises an eyebrow after a moment. “Hmm.”

You can feel his eyes on you as you turn your back to the sink and keep an eye on the boys in the living room. “I can smell the gears in your head overheating, Thatch.”

“I just expected you to smack Marco,” He imitates a higher voice, “Oh I don’t like him like that!”

Despite yourself you grunt a laugh. “I’m not a teenager anymore, give me some credit.”

“Then… you do? You know, like that.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t turn him down.”

“But?”

“He’s in the last year of his doctorate. His stress has stress. I dragged him off campus in the hopes he’d at least sleep. Instead, who knows what this has done. Nothing bad, as far as I can tell, but… I don’t know. I had a plan.” You laugh a little and shrug. “I don’t know, maybe I’ll…” Your laughter fades as you realize that Law will likely start his clinic wherever Rosinante is. Some city, or some nation, far from the Metro. “Maybe I won’t think about it for now.”

“… woof.” Thatch ruffles your hair, but there’s a comfort to it. “He’s not from the Metro.”

“He’s not.”

“Chances are his clinic won’t be here either.”

“…”

“It’s a hard call either way, but if you decide to leave us over some tattooed emo doctor, we’d forgive you, yoi.” Marco assures you, and his choice of words at least makes you laugh.

“You guys know I can’t leave the Metro.” You say as your laughter fades. “Think about what Pops went through just so I could attend college outside of it.”

“I think you’d be surprised how much the underground would move if you decided to leave the Metro.” Thatch admits. “I mean, we say it as a joke, but half of the guests that showed up for Christmas would go to war if something happened to you. It’s that damned aura of yours.”

“So, you say,” you grin.

“Traffy!” You heard Luffy yell and leap out of his seat on the couch, practically launching himself off of Ace. There was swearing from Ace, laughter from Sabo and a wrecking sound from the game that lifted your spirits before you walked out of the Kitchen.

Law had adapted to Luffy’s admiration of him quickly. He managed to side step the initial lunge at him and was holding the youth at a decent distance.

“Stay a little longer and play with us, there’s room for one more in the game!” Luffy offers excitedly. He’s already trying to stretch enough to get a better grip before Law can shake him off again.

Law looks over at you and you shrug with a small smile. “We have to head back tomorrow by lunch time, so there’s no rush for today.”

There’s a defeated sigh that comes from Law as he stops trying to hold Luffy at bay. “Alright, Mugiwara-ya.”

Luffy drags Law into the living room, and a small squabble breaks out between Luffy and Ace over the younger’s earlier use of Ace as a springboard. Law starts up a new race while they’re still squabbling and Sabo laughs before catching your gaze and giving you a thumbs up before going back to the race.

“For better or worse, seems he’s already been adopted.” Thatch admits.

“I haven’t seen Luffy latch onto anyone like except you,” Marco adds.

“Haa… yeah, I,” you thought you had a better hold on your feelings and suddenly were feeling overwhelmed. “I’m going to step outside for a bit.”

“Ah, (Y/N), I didn’t-.”

“S’alright, I’ll be back.” You wave dismissively as you cut Marco off and head outside.

The cold air felt good against your face and after you got far enough away from the front door you let yourself just bawl. You weren’t even entirely sure why you needed to cry, but there was a strange relief from doing so, so you just let it happen. You couldn’t pinpoint what was causing it, but your mind wandered over a lot of things that caused more tears to overflow.

You didn’t have anything against crying, so it wasn’t like you had been holding in tears for years or anything equally silly, but your heart hurt. Like someone had reached in and just squeezed it.

After Duval you hadn’t let anyone who wasn’t already a friend or family member get too close. That wall had probably prompted Brownie to spike your drink even though the two of you were barely even officially dating. That event caused you to have to take someone’s life to protect your own, and after that you had practically sworn off all manner of letting new people in, friend or otherwise.

You had only helped Law because you didn’t want Nutmeg to turn desperate like Brownie had.

And now, here you were. Neck-deep in feelings for a guy who you probably weren’t going to see again after graduating. Sure, you’d call and chat or text and keep in touch, but you already had odd jobs lined up, and he was going to be opening his own business. Daily texts would become weekly, then monthly, then eventually you’d get a new phone and decide to clean up your contacts and his name would slide off with a dozen other numbers you hadn’t heard from in over a year.

Your tears had stopped as your mind had wandered and chuckled at yourself. Cold and jaded and not even old yet.

With a final sigh you head back in, taking a minute to pat snow on your face and cover up the traces of your outburst a little before heading back in. Pops was waiting for you when you came back in and the hug he gave you almost made you cry again, but he didn’t say anything and neither did you.

The afternoon rolled into evening, and after dinner Marco took the two of you back to your hotel. The car ride was quiet. Marco didn’t prompt anything, and both you and Law seemed to have something on your minds, because you were both staring out a window watching the world go by as your thoughts swirled.

Going from the hotel to the morning, back to campus by evening, the last 24 hours almost seemed to have gotten away from you. It wasn’t until you were at your apartment door, having been escorted by Law, that his hand on your arm pulled you into being completely aware of the world around you.

His fingers were hot on your arm, which was unusual – the few times you and he had any contact he always felt cooler than he should feel. Right now the tips of his fingers seemed to burn into your skin, or at least they were warm enough to pull you back into reality, out the haze of your own scrambled thoughts.

“(Y/N)-ya.” Law’s voice snapped you out of your focus on the feel of his hand on your arm. “You’ve been out of it for hours, are you okay?”

“Huh? I… yeah. Yeah, I guess my mind just wandered off and I didn’t realize. Sorry.” You apologize, and then laugh a little. “It’s a good thing you were around, I could’ve wandered onto the plane. I… don’t really even remember the flight. Wow, I was really zoned out.” Realization sinks in and you feel fully embarrassed. “I… can’t think of the last time I spaced out that bad, I’m sorry I must’ve been a handful.”

There’s a slight smile on Law’s face and he shakes his head. “Not really.” He lets go of your arm and his fingers slip across yours as he steps back. “I was going to ask if I could come in to talk about some stuff, but you should probably get some rest.”

“Ah, no, I mean, come in. The least I can do is listen to what you need to talk about after you basically babysat me all day.” You assure him, unlocking the door and stepping in. You made a face, reminded that your apartment was still done up in reminder of your lost bet.

“Besides, I didn’t realize how hungry I was, so I can order something.” You add, nodding toward the hallway. “Come on, you know the hookah vibe’s drawing you in.”

You catch the slight smile and grunt of a chuckle as Law follows you in. You don’t get far from the door after taking your shoes off and stepping up into the apartment when Law grabs your arm again. Stepped up from the entryway you’re closer to being at eye level with him.

“I have to say something now, before I can stay, because what I say might cause you to ask me to leave.” He says, and his bright golden eyes are holding your gaze. You can feel the heat rising in your face, and you’re having enough of an off day that you can’t think of some sort of snappy retort to break the building emotion.

You didn’t know what he was going to say, but some small part of you was worried that after three days of being around a Mafia family he had realized it wasn’t something he could handle. Something he didn’t want. Something that would hold him back, and you didn’t have a defense against that.

Even the best of relationships had splintered for far less.

“(Y/N)-ya. I want to kiss you.”

What.

“… huh?” You were certain you had heard him incorrectly.

“Even if it’s just once,” He continues, his voice less sure than before, his hand tugging you closer just a little. “I can leave if I’ve made you uncomfortable.”

You step forward, you mind is spinning, but you’re keeping up. “You don’t have to leave, I mean, I’m not uncomfortable, and… y-you can… but,” you let him pull you closer, the small smile playing on his lips catching your attention before you look back into his eyes. “why?”

“Why do you think, (Y/N)-ya.” Law’s fingers slip along your cheek before his hand goes into your hair, just under your ear, tilting your head a little as he pulls you in. You can’t think of an answer in your boggled state, but he doesn’t give you time enough to answer even if you could.

His lips press against yours and your eyes close as the soft pressure spreads a gentle pleasure through you. His other hand is around your waist, pulling you closer as your hands mirror his. One threading through his hair, the other holding onto his side. The soft kiss was enough of a rush, little lines of electricity stealing your breath, and you both lean back to catch your breath.

Law’s face is flushed, and he looks rattled, covering his mouth for a moment. “Sorry, I didn’t expect such a rush.”

“Did I take your first kiss, Pre-Med?” You muse, trying to mask your own reaction with a smirk.

“First one that ever felt like that,” He admits, kicking off his boots, and stepping up into the hall. You step to the side to give him room but not wanting to step away and feel the wall behind you. The brief ratted look is gone, and bright yellow-gold eyes are holding you in a sharp gaze. “Again.”

It’s not a request, more of a warning as he pulls you into another kiss. There’s another electric rush, a pleasure that floods down to your chest as your lips part and his tongue pushes into your mouth. You barely realize the moan that’s filled your chest until his hands flex against you pulling you even closer.

The statement that had started this had caught you off guard, but the passion coming from the usually cool and stoic soon-to-be-doctor was even more surprising. He had never talked about any past relationships, but to be fair, you hadn’t ever asked either.

The heat and taste of the kiss are making your head spin, and there’s brief moments of air before the kisses resume, but you’re not sure who leans into who after a while. You can only think that you want more, that the delightful sensation that keeps skipping through your heart is addicting and kissing hadn’t ever felt quite so good. It was almost scary to realize that you’d follow this sensation out of the Metro and into the desert if those golden eyes asked you to.

By the time you both stop you’re breathing heavy, your face is hot and you’re barely keeping your feet under you. Law’s breath is heavy too, and even though he’s turned away a bit you can see the red in his ears.

“Holy shit,” you huff, walking by him and going into the kitchen. You get a glass of water and down it in one go. “You want something?”

“I mean -.”

“TO DRINK – To drink, Pre-Med.” You interrupt almost laughing.

“Water’s fine.” You can hear the smile in his voice and hand over the glass you had emptied and refilled.

“I’ll, uh, make some tea, after… after I order some food.” You explain. You can feel your face heating up all over again, so you turn to the sink to get another glass and have another drink. There’s a soft clink of glass against the countertop and you realize that Law’s standing behind you.

There’s a tug that prompts you to turn toward him, so you set your still empty glass down and turn around. You aren’t sure what he’s going to do for a moment, until he lifts the glass and takes a sip before leaning down and kissing you. The extra bit of water feels like a flood you’re barely able to contain, cool against the hot kiss, and the small squeak of surprise is replaced by a moan as you’re holding onto the kitchen counter behind you to keep your feet.

Law’s hands are on the counter, caging you in place. You can feel his eyes on you even if you can’t pull your gaze up from his lips. There’s a strange sensation as he swallows before breaking the kiss, wiping the back of his hand across his lips before taking a step back. You swallow as well, but it has almost nothing to do with the bits of water left in your mouth.

“I…”

“Sorry,” Law interrupts, running his thumb across your bottom lip lightly before taking a step or two back. “You were trying to cool off.”

“Was… yeah… am.” You manage the words, putting an arm out between the two of you. “We have to talk this out.”

“I agree.” The knowing grin on his face is almost too much. “I just needed to do that first.”

#Family Practice #trafalgar law #x reader #reader insert #mafia au

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saturnskyline · 1 year

Text

temptation tuesday

rules: share something about an idea you have/something that's speaking to you/an au you'd like to see and are considering writing/etc. etc. Basically anything that is tempting you away from your current wips!

tagged by @lu-sn, thank you so much!! still in awe that we're mutuals tbh, you're the coolest <3

well.... the question is, what is NOT tempting me away from my current wips 🥲 apologies to anyone who has kept up with my snippet posting bc none of those are remotely close to done yet fjdkskfjs. for starters, my main wips from before were the vegaspete oneshot ("when i look deep down") and lita polycule shenanigans (as yet untitled). now, i have several more ideas that are circulating and i have no idea where i'm going with ANY of them, let alone the actual wips 😭 😭 anyway here's the shortlist eh oh el

vegaspete watersports of all things ??? i'm surprised too, this coming from a person who literally has never attempted smut ever and now i'm suddenly tempted to try THIS 💀 no title yet, but i do know that if this gets finished, there will be sexy gaslighting involved (both a threat and a promise)

drugged vegaspete sex where pete gets drugged as part of an earlier negotiation. SMUT AGAIN I KNOW. LITERALLY WHERE DID THIS COME FROM. anyway, if that even goes well, the working title is "i put your love on and sank into the glow" from a very lovely vegaspete coded song <3

had a thought recently (which i think i've read in fics before) about vegas having a garden and i just MAY have to write it smh. anywayyy most important part is he feeds pete with it and i think that's beautiful

toddblack something. very vague but i want biting and kissing for them so that's the starting point 🥰

3 will be free brainrot. consuming me always, to the point of me wanting to not only try smut but write sex for three people 😶 although i guess if i actually go through with lita there's four involved there sooooo. basically i guess i'm looking to try writing new things hehe

winteam !!!! who knows lol but they are certainly speaking to me and i have a google doc open there so that's something

so yeah, those are the current brain worms! hopefully i can finish at least one of them in the near future, or i may be in danger of losing my mind :D enough from me though, better tag some other folks @pitchercries @mandaloresson @m-a-w-a @lady-guts @shubaka in case you're interested ❤️❤️

#this literally hurts me to look through #the strength of my aspirations will be my ultimate demise 😔#n e ways here you go #tag game

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blackbutler-readerinsertsandjunk · 10 months

Note

Ok but for the Trancy Nurse AU, what if Reader is multilingual and they scold the triplets in another language (like, say, Spanish or French) when they do that thing where they purposely get themselves in mishaps in an attempt to get Reader's attention?

omgggg I love it

they're such silly boys but we love em <3

hopefully all the translations are accurate!!

Whatever happens to be going through the triplets’ heads at any moment, you don’t think you’ll ever understand.

That said, the fact that you apparently are worth going through the wringer softens any frustration you might have toward them. This isn’t the first time the three of them have deliberately ‘made a mistake’ to get your attention.

The thought makes you mentally sigh, but it appears that they all know they’re guaranteed to get your attention if they’re hurt or sick. You’re the household’s nurse, after all, and you take pride in caring for everyone under the Trancy manor’s roof. What kind of nurse would you be if you just ignored them?

Still, you’re a little exasperated with the fact that THOMPSON, TIMBER, and CANTERBURY keep doing this. If they don’t stop taking risks, they’re going to end up in real danger one day. This time their issues are Thompson with a bleeding hand claiming he got cut by thorns whilst trimming the rosebushes; Timber with a burn on his hand (curiously, the opposite one of Thompson’s) saying he touched the hot stove by accident; and Canterbury, running a 38.5 fever and complaining that he must have caught a cold from accompanying Alois out to town sometime in the past week.

As you finish wrapping a bandage with some salve around Timber’s hand, you murmur, “¿Qué os pasa a los tres, eh?” You’re not even sure they understand what you’re saying, but you’re saying it anyway. They’ve been getting themselves into all sorts of little scrapes and bumps lately.

… Ever since you confessed your interest in the three of them, actually. There must be something to the timing, mustn’t there? You can’t believe three perfectly competent servants have, upon being able to work again, suddenly become so clumsy as to hurt themselves every other day or careless enough to not look after their own health.

You reach to take the cloth from Canterbury’s forehead, dip it back into the ice water you have sitting ready, and then put it back to ensure that it keeps cooling him down. “You’re all getting yourselves into so much trouble within the last few weeks.”

“What does that mean?” Timber hums. “¿Qué os pasa a los tres…? Spanish, right?”

Thompson gingerly wriggles his fingers. (His hand, of course, has already been cleaned and bandaged, while you had Timber soaking his in a separate bucket of ice water.) “Very romantic. But we don’t speak it.”

“Other languages are hard,” Canterbury muses, before coughing a few times.

You can’t help but laugh a little. “No? Not even French, maybe?” You smooth out the bandage on Timber’s hand. “Vous êtes très drôles. Have you lot just not been paying much attention to anything recently? I find it hard to believe that you boys are this incapable.”

“We’re sorry, (Name),” the three of them say in unison.

Canterbury shifts around in bed. “If you find it hard to believe, you should just ask the master.”

“Mhm,” Timber chimes in. “He was always threatening to throw us out. Calls us as useless as a… how did he put it that one time, Thompson?”

“Oh, hm… as useless as a set of cracked teacups.”

You click your tongue at them all. “No podéis seguir haciendo esto.” With that, you tap each of their noses in quick succession, and giggle when the action makes Canterbury sneeze twice. “Hehe, salud. Now, you all have to be more careful, alright? Even though I don’t mind taking care of you, I’d like to think you can take good care of yourselves, too. You don’t want to make me worry.”

They all share a look between themselves, eyes wide as if they hadn’t considered the possibility that their antics were putting you in any kind of distress.

Checkmate, although you have one more thing to say to all of them. And you make sure to say it as you head for the door so that they can all get some rest.

“En plus, si vous voulez passer du temps avec moi, tout ce que vous avez à faire est de demander.”

#Black Butler #Kuroshitsuji #Triplets #Thompson #Timber #Canterbury #reader insert #romantic #humor #fluff #hurt/comfort #domestic #THANK YOU FOR THIS I LOVE THEM I will hold them gently #and make sure they don't hurt themselves TOO much XD #one hell of a queue

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hurricane-heatt · 6 months

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FIRSTLY i do not know how i hadn't seen your ao3 before now and i'm losing my MIND i'm about to read it all bc i just read casualty of you and now i'm SCREECHING secondly... the fic writer questions: 11, 4, 30, 49! x

FIRSTLY AWAHHHH THABK YOU SO SO MUCH!!!! i hope u enjoy <3333

secondly gonna stick these answers below the cut!!! just because i started rambling ehe

11- Are you partial to a certain character/pairing or are you more equal-opportunity? If you are partial to any character/pairing, why do you think that is?

oh absolutely pairing-wise it will always be sebmark for me… i think i am just entirely struck by the different phases of their relationship? 2009 is an entirely different vibe to 2013 who is an entirely different vibe to 2017 and that makes fic writing them sooo fun for me its never a chore to write sebmark. beyond this teammate rivalries are just absolutely compelling to me i think the dynamics and intricacies are so so interesting, especially gaining more insight on that from marks book was just eeeee i loved it (fuck u helmut marko for everything you ever do). personality wise too they both suit each other well in terms of rpf and they dynamics that i’ve always written and like writing.

character wise i love writing seb. i rlly hope i do him justice because i just love his voice and his humour and his mannerisms. he’s my love ever and i love him so any pairings with him in i am always heart eyes over.

4 - What detail in [insert fic] are you really proud of?

i’m gonna take this as any fic i’ve written so! i think anything in good men die too verse i am hugely proud of. i did a bit of research for crush about street racing (a lack of in thoroughfare which i often get annoyed about but oh well) and so i think i got the car types right. either way it sounds professional so shrug!

an unreleased fic i have a bit of detail on is my siren!seb fic, its entirely unfinished but i did some research about mythology surrounding mermaids and sirens and think it’s pretty good in that!!!

30 - Have you ever written something that was out of your comfort zone? If so, what was it, and how did it affect your approach to writing fic thereafter?

oh boy most of my ot3 fest fics (i have three fulfilled hopefully! haha 3) were quite a new experience. i won’t spoil a ton but writing threesomes is hard man. lots of limbs

49 - What are you currently working on? Share a few lines if you’re up for it!

ehehehe. its a another fucking sebmark au! heir to father’s business seb nearly gets assassinated and his driver mark (annoying, gets in the way, keeps making fun of him) saves his life and thus is made his bodyguard in order to protect him. he hates mark already but this really pisses seb off, a constant shadow. also it’s called bad for business yes like the sabrina carpenter song

it’s going to be my first multi chapter and i’m anxious as balls about it and i really kind of hate the tone at the minute so it needs reworking. first chap is basically done but want three written before i post anything just for my own sanity. but here’s a little snippet of them winding each other up

Why has Britta put the medicine on the top shelf, for fuck’s sake, she knows he’s not that tall. He gets on his tiptoes, but the box is pushed further back by the tips of his fingers, rather than grabbing it.

“Let me, Mr Vettel.”

And then, the lean body of Sebastian’s driver against the back of him, reaching up to the shelf with zero effort. His fingers dash against Sebastian’s, and it’s a much more successful retrieval, bringing down the box of pills to his height.

Sebastian turns, putting his back to the countertop, the bare skin under his hoodie just brushing the cool marble. He’s close enough that he can smell Webber’s cologne - sharp. Masculine. Like the rest of him, ever predictable.

Webber takes a short step back, probably assessing how abnormally close they were. He puts the box into Sebastian’s open palm. The pills shake inside upon impact. He’s pleased, but through gritted teeth, like a dog finally being allowed a treat.

“Thank you.”

“No problem.”

so yeah!!!! i rlly hope i do finish it and get it out because the idea has been brewing for months.

thank u so much for all the questions and ofc the love for casualty of you <33

#answered asks

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wizisbored · 1 year

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🤔👖 (fanfic ask game!)

🤔 What is the hardest part of writing fic?

writing fics that are specifically meant to be funny as the primary goal is hard. like parent-creature conferences, or my old tgwdlm fic teachers pet. hard to know if things are as funny as i think i am

more generally to my writing, though, sometimes characterisations can be a little hard to keep straight. its not something id say i really struggle with, but its a thing. beetlejuice in particular, i feel the general fandom portrayal is a bit off from the source so i gotta run through scenes from the show in my head to kinda double-check him sometimes. especially when im twisting him to be a nicer (bugebroph) or meaner (snake oil). and in a similar vein to that, it can be interesting trying to balance characterisation in aus where ive changed a character's (usually lydia's) upbringing (bugebroph, netherborne, dragon au, etc). because obviously they're going to be different because of that, but you gotta keep them them. bug is more of a brat, netherborne lydia was taught not to trust and is deeply traumatised, dragon lydia is kinda naieve, but theyre all still lydia. hopefully.

also im not great at describing settings. does not help that i like cluttered rooms and the maximalist aesthetic, so if i design a place theres gonna be a lot of stuff to describe but also i have to avoid making it into a page of just stuff that is in a room. netherborne is currently being held up by such a dilema.

👖 Are you a planner, plantser, or pantser? Is it consistent?

eh its kinda somewhere in the middle? a couple times ive written the first chapter or so completely off the top of my head with maybe a couple notes and then properly outline the rest (netherborne was like that, ive started infernal children without outlining.) general mo tho is i start with one of these:

(thats netherborne, you can see it starts at 4 because i didnt plan up to 3. green boxes are unique to this one, theyre the flashback sections)

every idea i have goes in a box. sometimes its a major plot point, sometimes its just a little dialogue idea. if i know it comes before/after/around the same time as something else i join them up. and then i arrange them into chapters, alternating colours to distinguish them. sometimes i plan a few ahead, sometimes i finish a chapter and then open this to see what the hell i can put into the next one. so like, i know roughly where the plot is going and things that are going to happen, but not really when or in what order most of the time.

(here have another one. thats snakeoil. sure hope these are small enough to be illegible)

from there i write an outline in bullet points. these used to be far more loose but ive been writing more and more detailed ones lately. sometimes they approach being their own rough draft tbh. but i find it really makes writing easier to get down roughly what happens before i think about anything like scene transitions or exact wording or anything.

(thats some bugebroph)

sometimes i note down my ideas in this format too if ive got a really clear idea i dont want to forget and thats a bit long for a box

and then from there its first draft, edit, proof read, and done :)

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fenmere · 8 months

Text

Sunspot Coffee and Tea

Against our promise to avoid writing for a bit while recovering from a minor burnout, I wrote something here tonight. It might have been therapeutic to do so, honestly.

It's a coffee shop AU self insert crossover fanfic of Wildow's Otherverse and the Sunspot Chronicles, titled "Sunspot Coffee and Tea". It takes place on this Earth, though. Descriptions of Others, Practicioners, Aware, and the Seal are from the work of Wildbow, A.K.A. John C. McCrae, and belong to him. We reference them here with love, and no intentions to make any profit from them, even if we stretch their intended canonical possibilities a bit. References to everything else not of this Earth, including Ktletaccete, beshakete, and `etekeyerrinwuf, are of the Sunspot Chronicles and belong to us, the Inmara. All the characters are headmates and therefore real people.

The Black Drop was a real coffee shop that was really like that, and we miss it. A lot.

We'll probably put this up on AO3 later. No warnings are necessary for this fic. It's 6093 words, light, hopefully cute, and totally self indulgent:

In Tanasbourne, Hillsboro, Oregon, in one of the strip malls there, there used to be an Insomnia Cafe next to a brewpub.

It’s still a cafe. Of a sorts. It was bought out a couple years ago, however, and has a new name. It’s called Sunspot Coffee and Tea.

There are some interesting things about this cafe, not the least of which is that they don’t accept money. How they manage to stay functioning without actually doing business is a total mystery to all of their neighbors and patrons, but if you want any sort of drink or pastry there, all you have to do is walk up to the counter and ask for it. Of course, the pastries have to be available, and it’s first come first serve for them. But they produce them quickly enough that if they’re out of something, you just have to wait thirty minutes or so. At most.

Before it became the Sunspot, it was like most cafes of its sort, especially in that neighborhood, attracting working class people who had at least some decent income. And that part of Tanasbourne wasn’t really known for being accessible to the less fortunate.

However, after it became known what their new mode of “business” was, people in need would take the MAX and the bus from all around to get a free meal, and they were quite welcome.

The clientele changed quite quickly, and this created something of a controversy in the neighborhood. Theories sprang up and circulated when efforts to bring the law down on them failed utterly. Stories about the mafia, or even more unbelievable things. One of the stories is true.

Eventually, things settled down, and everyone got used to the new culture and routines that the Sunspot brought to Tanasbourne.

I happen to know exactly how that all played out and why, but I’m not telling. I’ve taken oaths. I’ll give you hints in this story, though, because I think I can get away with it, and it’s kinda fun.

In any case, it was under these circumstances in that cafe that I got to watch a connection made that I had never expected to see. One that may well lead to the kind of quiet, sweet partnership that causes the world to glow just a little brighter at the ambient level, without most people quite knowing the source.

Of course, it started during a day when Eh, our boss and Senior Captain, was working the counter.

I was sitting at a table with Gesedege and Gnargrim, enjoying a round of Brekken’s tea while slowly discussing the intersections of public relations and security for the shop. Which is to say that we mostly sat, quiet, watching steam rise from our drinks, looking around at the guests and just soaking up the joy of seeing people rest who might not otherwise get to. And then, occasionally, one of us would take a sip or say a word or two, and the other two would nod or take sips as well.

And a new person walked in. Someone we’d never seen before. And I could tell by the way they entered the shop, they hadn’t yet heard about who and what we were. They hadn’t got the story yet. They probably thought this was a typical coffee shop.

They put on a double layer of masks before entering, which was good. Largely unnecessary in the Sunspot, but with covid still running rampant in the rest of the world, despite all the propaganda suggesting otherwise, their N95 disposable under a metallic hot pink mermaid print etsy number was a really wise idea. And it certainly put most of our guests at ease, even though they weren’t wearing masks anymore themselves.

But there were some smirks as this person reached into the pocket of their navy blue sleeveless cloak to pull out their card purse as they navigated through the tables and easy chairs to the counter. The long, black feather in their wide brimmed black wool hat bobbed as they went, boots squeaking on the wood floor.

Eh smiled as they looked up from a drink they were preparing for someone else.

And it was at that eye contact that the person realized they’d walked into something different.

They probably hadn’t noticed the lack of a cash register or POS yet. They’d obviously missed the appearance of me and my compatriots, since they’d been absorbed in arranging their garments and fishing out their method of payment, and had glanced at the other guests. They’d just happened to look the other way as they passed our corner, which was right near the door.

If they’d seen us, they might have had the same reaction they were having at the sight of Eh.

Eh is tall. They tend to keep their height low enough that they don’t have to crouch while in the building, but their antlers will just miss scratching the ceiling when they straighten up from a task like decorating a mocha. Their tail has a tendency to fill the walkway from the kitchen to the front counter, and their wings will block the view of the front from the rest of the staff who are in the back. And through clever programming, they’ve managed to turn the outer skin of their body into a satiny dark purple that seems to be full of stars and nebulae and is somehow constantly rim lit, regardless of the actual lighting of their surroundings.

Most human beings, upon seeing that vision, will later describe it as having been like walking right into VRChat. Only, I’ve logged into VRChat, and nobody has yet been able to create an avatar of that detail and refinement.

“How may I help you?” Eh asked.

The newcomer looked around, clearly startled and worried, and caught the vision of Gnargrim, Gesedege, and myself holding our tea cups up in greeting.

If you look at my tumblr icon, you’ll know what I look like. I’m slightly smaller than Eh, and like to sit in my easy chair backward, resting arms and chin on the back.

Gnargrim, built like a cross between Eh and myself, also uses chairs in a similar way.

Gesedege, however, has taken to dressing like a human, and will stow their tail away in order to sit in a chair. But their muzzle, parabolic ears, and pair of horns tend to give away their origins as easily as Eh’s countenance.

Most new people at this point tend to freeze and gape, and it takes a certain amount of talking and coaching from the other guests to get them to relax and start to feel at home.

This person, however, scowled, brows knitting together above their mask, eyes squinting. They reached into their cloak to where a metal handled antique cane was hooked into an inside pocket and pulled it out with their right hand, clapping its point to the floor.

Gnargrim raised an eyebrow my direction.

We hadn’t seen this reaction before at all.

They whirled to speak to Eh, and asked, “Are we in the presence of Aware?” They lightly gestured at the other guests.

Eh opened their mouth for a moment, tongue and teeth glowing, pausing to think, before speaking, “Everyone here is aware of who we are, yes.”

The newcomer relaxed and bowed their head, then looked up and spoke more softly, “I’m sorry. My name is Anne. She/her. I’ve just moved down here from Washington, and didn’t realize a place like this was here. The Lord of Portland made no mention of the Sunspot, of course, but nobody else did either. I would have thought it would be recommended or warned about. Am I welcome here?”

Eh tilted their head, “Lord of Portland?”

Anne took a step back, and said, “Asterix. Right?”

Eh shook their head lightly, “I have never heard of them.”

“Him. How?” Anne corrected, then asked, tense. Then she shook herself out and stammered, “Sorry! Sorry. Please pardon my rudeness and short language. This feels like a very unusual situation and I’m finding it hard to mask.”

“You are wearing one,” Eh pointed out.

Anne looked around, then back at Eh and said, “I’m the only one here wearing one. Do you have a ward of protection up against pathogens?”

“You… could put it that way,” Eh said. “The air is heavily filtered and everyone here is personally protected with our technology. It should be safe for you to remove your mask here. If you wish to have your own personal protection, you’ll have to give us your consent to give it to you. It comes with side effects, however. You are also very welcome here. I am assured that this is considered a safe place to be, even though I have never heard of Asterix or a Lord of Portland.”

Anne hesitated midway through taking her hat off to remove her masks, then decided to proceed. Her long brown hair had a freshly trimmed sidecut, and her face was covered with a fine layer of stubble. Like many people in the Pacific Northwest, she didn’t wear any makeup, but she had earrings and an eyebrow piercing. Her glasses had little dragons sculpted into the sides of the rims.

She smiled hopefully as she put her masks into her pockets, cane hooked into the crook of her arm as she worked.

“Can I order a coffee?” Anne asked.

“You may have one,” Eh said. “I’d be more than happy to make it for you.”

Anne paused again, blinking, then asked, “How much is it?”

Eh smiled, “It is free to anyone who asks.”

“Even a twelve ounce decaf mocha?” Anne asked, gesturing at the drink that Eh had just finished up.

Eh nodded and said, “Yes. Even that.” Then they looked across the cafe and called the name, “Maxwell?”

A man in an orange knit skull cap and a blue puffy jacket got up from his seat and wandered over to get his drink, thanking Eh and nodding to Anne before sitting down again. Anne’s eye followed the checkered handkerchief that hung from Maxwell’s left back pocket. She didn’t seem to have any strong emotional reaction. It seemed like a reflexive look followed but a decision to be satisfied with it.

Then she looked at the line of big pride flags along the wall, and smiled back at Maxwell, nodding.

“OK. Please let me know if anything is expected from me. I’d like to be a good guest,” Anne said. “I would very much like to have a decaff twelve ounce mocha, with no whip cream. And, do you have pastries?”

Eh nodded, then gestured to the case to Anne’s left, which held all the available pastries.

Anne bent to look, leaning on her cane.

“Are those cheese danishes?” she asked.

“They are!” Eh replied.

“I’d like one of those.”

“Certainly!” As Eh began to work on Anne’s mocha, they reached over with a foot and slid the back door of the case open. And then they did one of our little tricks, turning their extended hind limb into a tendril with a hand on the end of it and used it to select one of the danishes and pull it out of the case to put on a plate.

Anne watched this with an intense curiosity, completely unalarmed.

It was obvious that the other guests who were still watching were impressed with her reactions, but they also largely started to turn their attention away. To them, she might as well have been a regular at that point.

Not to us, though. She was behaving somewhat strangely. She was speaking of things that were established to her, such as the Lord of Portland, that we knew nothing about. I could see in Eh’s eyes that they were avidly intent on learning more. And I made a note to ask Morde to look into it if Eh did not.

It looked like Anne was about to ask another question when Eh beat her to the punch, “So, what brings you to Tannasbourne?”

“Ah, my girlfriend,” Anne said. “I’ve moved in with her.”

“Oh! Wonderful!” Eh said.

“Of course, what with Practice and the Seal, now I’ve got business here, too,” Anne said, a little less brightly, in a humorously onerous tone as if Eh should know what that meant.

Eh nodded absently but didn’t say anything, letting Anne think what she might think for the moment.

“How long have you been here?” Anne asked. There wasn’t anyone behind her, so she felt like she could stand and chat.

Which suited Eh just fine. Eh replied, “We arrived about eight years ago, and set up shop two years ago, after the pandemic hit the cafe that was here particularly hard.”

“And, if you don’t mind me asking again, you don’t know the Lord of Portland?” Anne asked. “How is that?”

“Well,” Eh said amiably. “We didn’t know that there was one, to begin with, if you’re really not talking about the Mayor.”

“I’m really not,” Anne said. “That’s kind of amazing.”

“Is he kind of like Emperor Norton?” Eh asked, referring to Joshua Abraham Norton of San Francisco, who had declared himself Emperor of the United States in 1859. We knew about him from one of our regulars.

Anne turned her head sideways slowly and drawled out, “nooooo? Not really. Though, I think Emperor Norton might have been a Practitioner.” She said that with an emphasis that gave me visions of both italics and a capital letter. “Asterix is an Animus,” she explained. “A surprisingly strong one, too, for his origins.”

“An Animus?” Eh asked, clearly dawdling on Anne’s drink to maintain the excuse to do something while talking.

Anne didn’t seem to mind, but she did sway side to side on her feet a bit, still leaning on her cane. I had to admit, even though her back was turned to me I was still watching her expressions via our surveillance channel. Really Gnargrim’s job, but I was very curious about her. As were we all. She looked like she was trying to concentrate. Not frustrated, but maybe confused.

I’ve been studying human expression pretty avidly, so I’m fairly confident about that. But I could have been wrong.

“An Animus,” Anne confirmed. “You know. An Other that is a manifestation of an idea or common emotion?”

“Oh!” Eh exclaimed, stirring chocolate into the shot before pouring the foamed milk into the cup. “We do know one of those, but it didn’t follow us here. It was afraid there might be others like it, and it didn’t want to encroach.”

“OK, so you do know what a Lord is?”

“No,” Eh said. “We really don’t.”

“But, you’re Other and you know what an Animus is, and you’re here.”

Eh held up a claw with one hand, and the milk pitcher in the other, “I am friends with a thing that can be described by your definition of Animus, yes. But that’s not our word for it, though. And I’m not sure what you mean by ‘Other’. That sounded like it had a weight to it and a context that I don’t know about.”

“But you’re not human,” Anne said.

Eh shook their head, then began to pour the milk into Anne’s cup.

“So you must be Other,” she concluded.

“So,” Eh carefully waved the pitcher to create a rosette on the top of mocha. “Other, in this context, means not human? Such as an alien, yes? I’m assuming you wouldn’t call a cat or a bird an Other.” Eh was managing to verbally put that capital letter on that word, just like Anne had been doing.

“No?” Anne said cautiously, putting a question to it in uncertainty. Then she asked more firmly, “What do you mean by ‘alien’?”

Eh glanced at Maxwell with a bit of a smirk, and said, “You know, like in 3rd Rock from the Sun.” We’d all watched that show on recommendation from our eldest regular.

Anne straightened up and did the backward step again, blinking.

Eh offered her her drink.

She squinted at them long and hard, then turned to my trio and did the same to us. I noticed that her pupils glowed a bright pink. Which is not something I’ve seen outside of our own Network before.

“You’re not Other,” she muttered.

“We’re not?” Eh asked.

“You don’t look like Others through my sight,” she replied.

“Interesting.”

“So, you’re aliens? Is that what you meant by ‘arrive’?” she asked.

“Ktletaccete,” Eh said. “Our word for aliens is ‘beshakete’, or Outsiders. And to you, we are Outsiders, yes. But we call ourselves Ktletaccete. It’s fascinating that you don’t detect us as Other, though. What does that mean, exactly?”

“You all have strong Selves like humans typically do. The spirits react to you as if you do, and you might be able to Practice, if you’re not doing it already,” Anne said. “You absolutely don’t resemble any of the Others I know about. My sight is particularly attuned to that kind of thing.”

Several of the guests were paying attention again.

“I think I need to sit down,” Anne said. “But, can we keep talking?”

Eh nodded, saying “Certainly.” And then commanded a chair to form from one of the bins, graphene colored clay crawling out of what people often took for a trash receptacle and slithering across the floor to shape itself into a seat particularly suited to Anne’s height and shape. Eh gestured at it.

Anne watched this and then pointed at the chair, stating, “That’s not Practice.”

“Ninite clay,” Eh said. “It’s part of how we got here.”

Anne experimentally sat down in the chair, and then looked surprised at how comfortable it was. It molded itself to her body and adjusted itself to her needs as best it could without the neural link.

Watching, Eh said, “The nanites are also how we provide protection against pathogens for those who consent.”

“Can they replicate?” she asked, with a tone of nervousness in her voice, moving as if considering standing up again.

“Yes,” Eh said. “But not without explicit command.”

“I thought that wasn’t possible!” Anne exclaimed. “I remember reading on Wikipedia…”

“The prevailing theory is that our Animus helped us make them,” Eh said. “If it is an Animus.”

“Oh.”

“Can you tell me what you mean by ‘Practice’?”

Anne took a sip of her mocha and raised her eyebrows in appreciation, “Magic. Through vows to keep true to one's word and uphold the old pacts, humanity can command the spirits to do work. Move energies. Alter reality a bit. Summon Others. Travel places. That sort of thing. Magic.” Then she looked startled with herself, and looked back fearfully at the other guests.

Maxwell grinned and waved back at her.

“Wait,” she hissed, turning back to Eh. “If you’re aliens and you don’t know about Others and the Practice and all that, then, what about everyone else here? Are they all aliens too? In disguise? Please tell me they are.”

“No, sorry. We cater to humans,” Eh said.

“Oh, shit,” Anne said, looking up at the corners of the room.

“What’s wrong?”

“I think I just said a whole lot of too much,” she shrank into her seat with dread.

Eh settled onto their haunches and leaned on the counter with their elbows, lowering their head with deference and concern, “That sounds bad. What are the consequences? Can we help somehow?”

Anne glanced at the other guests again, most of whom were now watching with various looks of surprise, concern, and enlightenment. Some of them were clearly putting two and two together for the first time regarding things we still had no clue about. Others seemed to be familiar with what Anne was saying, and maybe displaying concern for her. And the rest might have been hearing about this all for the first time.

Anne slumped and looked down at the floor, “I’m gonna take a big hit. I don’t know that there is anything you can do. I’m responsible for what everyone knows now.”

“Don’t sweat it, Anne,” Maxwell called from his seat. “We all know they’re aliens, right?” He looked around at the rest of the room, and was met with nods. “I don’t think anything you’ve said has really changed any lives here. Except maybe theirs, you know?” He gestured at Eh and the rest of us. “But, I bet you the Kletachitay don’t fall under the protection of the Seal, right?” He pronounced our people’s name with a distinctly West Coast accent. Most people around here did.

She rose slightly out of her seat to turn and look at him.

He nodded solemnly, with an inclination of encouragement, gesturing with his drink. Then, when he was sure she took that sentiment, he turned to relax back down into his own chair.

“It’s probably true,” someone else said.

Anne visibly relaxed and grinned nervously at Eh.

“Tell you what,” Eh said. “If you want to keep having this conversation in private, we can arrange that. If it would be better for you. We have our own secrets. We understand. But I would also like to learn more about this Lord of Portland, and maybe I should meet him at some point?”

Anne nodded.

Eh smiled, “There are a couple of ways we could do this. We do have a back office, which we could use, if you like. Or – well – we don’t really have hours, but it’s usually super quiet around 4 am. Sometimes we don’t have guests here at that time. But that’s not guaranteed. Or, you could consent to a neural terminal, and we could meet over the Network, if that’s not likely to mess with your, uh… You do Practice, right? Would your spirits reject the nanites?”

Anne’s eyes went wide as she took in a breath and held it, looking up at a corner of the room in thought. She looked fearfully back at Eh and said, “I don’t know. I’m kind of afraid to try. Um. Yes, I Practice. Yes. Um.” She glanced around the room again. “Through a bit of a loophole I can tell you about later.”

“A loophole?”

“Later.”

“OK.”

While they were having this part of the discussion, I witnessed yet another thing that was unprecedented to us.

Maxwell gave several of his fellow guests meaningful looks and exchanged nods. Then, some of them got up and spoke very quietly to other guests. And as Anne and Eh negotiated how they might talk in private, the presumably human guests of the Sunspot cafe began to gather their things and file out of the shop. Some of them waved to Eh or to me, Gnargrim, and Gesedege.

Eh looked just as surprised and bewildered as I did, and Anne noticed, so she looked back at the rest of the cafe to see what was happening.

“Don’t worry, Anne,” Maxwell said. “We’ve got your back. We’ll keep as much Innocence as we have left for you. Might come in handy, right?”

Anne looked utterly flabberghasted.

“After all,” he explained. “You’re family.” Then he gestured at the trans pride flag with his paper cup, and smirked.

He tugged the fold of his hat as he passed me, uttering my honorific, “m’Drah.”

Maxwell’s one of my favorites, but he surprised the hell out of me that day.

Anne stared at the flag for a few seconds then looked at the door closing behind Maxwell’s back, eyes brimming with tears.

“I never thought I’d find a replacement for the Black Drop,” Anne said in the now emptied shop. “I thought that was an era that was gone forever.” She heaved out a couple of silent laughs, shaking her head. “But this place. How do you – ?” She trailed off, apparently unable to complete the question.

Eh brought themself back from their own bewilderment and replied, “We have some secrets we’re not going to divulge to even you. At least, not until our Council can agree to it. It looks like we could convene one right now, though.”

“Let’s go a bit more slowly than that,” Anne said, shakily.

“Sure.”

“Um,” Anne said. “I’m not exactly human, myself. I mean, I’m human enough now that I can Practice. Gaining a human enough Self was… a neat trick. I’m not sure I can explain it without giving you a whole education on the different kinds of Others and how Practice under the Seal works, though. Let’s just say that I’m old enough and experienced enough that I’m absolutely mortified that I was that careless. Bewildered, in fact.”

“Was the Black Drop -” Eh started to ask.

“A coffee shop where I came from,” Anne replied. “They weren’t like this. I knew only a few Others and Practitioners from there, but you couldn’t talk about that stuff in their lobby. You could talk about everything else, though. You could talk openly and loudly about your weirdest special interests, about being plural, or what it meant to you to be queer, and no one would bat an eye. And they called me family the first day I walked in the door, too. We had to chase the occasional bigot out a few times, but it was home in a way that no home ever was, you know?”

“I’ve heard Maxwell say something like that about the Sunspot,” Eh said. “But I don’t really know? I can’t. I can approximate from my own experiences, but I’m not human or Other, as you describe it. I didn’t grow up in this world.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Anne said, finally trying her danish. She gestured with it, “This is phenomenal!”

“Thank you.”

“You really should meet with the Lord of Portland, though,” Anne said. “I think I can arrange that. I’m really surprised he hasn’t reached out to you. Maybe he doesn’t know you’re here for some reason? But he should. By virtue of his station, a place like this should be known to him. Your presence should be felt.”

“Could it be possible that someone we’ve done business with covered that without telling us how it all works?” Eh asked. “Kind of like how we operate here legally?”

“Maybe,” Anne said. “Also, you’re not Others and you’re not Practitioners, so you technically don’t fall under his rule. It’s just that you don’t really belong here, either. How did you get here?”

“Oh, that’s a long story,” Eh said. “But I think I can summarize it intelligibly.”

“I’ll try to understand it,“ Anne said.

They were both so much more relaxed now, and my Crew mates and I fell still to let them continue talking as if we weren’t even there. Eh never gave any indication we should leave, though, so we did stay and watch. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Eh so at ease with anyone before, honestly. I’ve known them through… so many lifetimes. I wondered what was different about Anne. Something was obviously clicking between them now. The speed with which they responded to each other picked up.

“One of our people, with help from `efeje`e, our Animus or whatever it is, figured out how to warp space/time and transport a vessel over hundreds of thousands of lightyears without aging significantly inside it,” Eh said, as if this was nothing more than discovering and developing a new Art. “We let her leave the original Sunspot on her own journey, with a Tunnel aboard so we could keep communication. And she’s been jumping around from star to star, exploring the galaxy since. And she’s been collecting a bit of a crew for herself in the process. But, um… That’s several novels worth of story. Anyway, she’s gotten pretty good at sneaking onto and off of inhabited planets without being noticed.”

Anne dropped her jaw and squinted, shaking her head, and said, “This sounds just like any science fiction story.”

“It feels like one, yeah,” Eh agreed. “The idea that we can bend space/time like that is phenomenal. After hundreds of millennia of evolution and development, you’d have thought we’d have discovered it sooner, if it was that possible. But, it did take help from `efeje`e, you know. And our agreement with it was also unprecedented.”

“So, maybe your warp drive was a kind of Practice?” Anne asked.

Eh shrugged, “Maybe.”

“But, wait,” Anne tore her danish in half and gestured with part of it. The chair had a cup holder when she needed it. “How did you get here, if you didn’t go with your explorer?”

“The Tunnel,” Eh said. “We can send consciousnesses through it. Everyone here is what we call Crew. We ascended long ago, our original bodies dying, and now live in the Network created by our nanites. When Molly told us about this planet, a few of us decided to transfer over and stay here. She dropped off a bin of nanites and we started making a new home here, as quietly as we could. But it became apparent humanity could use a little help, and our local Council decided to start being a bit more overt.” Eh gestured at the cafe in demonstration.

“And you’re doing this,” Anne gestured at the cafe herself, “without the help of Practice? I don’t even see Glamour at work.”

“As far as I know, yes,” Eh said. “Though, it seems Maxwell is aware of Practice, at least.”

“You’ve definitely cultivated a clientele full of Aware,” Anne remarked. “Which I supposed shouldn’t be at all surprising. You’re a bunch of extraterrestrials giving away food for free. Of course you’re going to attract the Aware. They need people like you. And they have a tendency to take weirdness like this in a certain kind of stride, because weirdness is part of what made them Aware. And if you haven’t even been visited by witch hunters, then someone’s gotta be covering for you.”

“Kinda figures, I guess,” Eh said.

Anne looked at Eh for a while, danish in one hand, drink in the other, then asked, “You look a lot like someone’s idea of a dragon.”

“I’ve been told that, yes,” Eh said. “We think this is what Ktletaccete looked like before we took to the stars and started tinkering with our genetics and life itself. Our oldest language hints at a shape like this, and it’s what felt right to me when I decided to stop being how I was born.”

“That sounds a little like something I’m familiar with,” Anne said, before taking a bite of the last of her danish.

Eh inclined their head, twitching it in the direction of that particular flag, “we’re family?”

Anne swallowed and looked at the flag, “You have trans people in your culture, too? Assigned gender?”

“Ah,” I couldn’t help myself from vocalizing, and Anne glanced at me. I grinned back, and nodded at Eh.

“Not the Sunspot. Or, the `etekeyerrinwuf,” Eh said. “We made sure our new world, our own Exodus Ship, didn’t have assigned gender. But Fenmere, Gesedege, Gnargrim, and I were all born on a ship that did. Or something close enough to it that it’s basically the same thing. We didn’t have the word ‘trans’, obviously. But, again, close enough. We weren’t able to end dysphoria by ending gender, though. Even with technological interventions before birth, eugenics even, as abhorrent as it is, we can’t stop some people from being born with the need for physical change. Sometimes it develops later in life, too. It’s better to accommodate it when it becomes known. Anyway, I digress. We have an understanding with your transgender people. We get it. It’s ultimately why we’re here.”

Anne, apparently, was stuck on the first few words of Eh’s explanation, “Can - can I ask? How old are you?”

Eh smirked, but I wondered if Anne would read it as a smirk. Anne was too focused on the subject of her question to be bewildered by Ktletaccete expressions like a lot of other Earthly people often are, though.

“Do you want to know my age by my own personal years experienced? Or from your perspective, taking into account relativity?” Eh asked back.

Anne grimaced, “Let’s go with years you’ve experienced.”

Eh titled their head and looked at the ceiling as if to calculate. I knew this was a hard thing to answer for a Ktletaccete of our age. I don’t like thinking about my own age, myself. It kind of defies memory. Causes a kind of dysphoria itself. I could see Eh’s face twitch as they settled on an answer.

“I’m going to give you an estimate,” Eh said. “Calculated in your years, but for my experience. And really rounded off. At a certain point, the thousands digit means as much as the ones digit.”

Anne looked what I’ve come to discern as incredulous.

“Two hundred and some millennia,” Eh said. “Maybe thirty? Maybe fifty? It gets squidgy.”

Anne blinked and deflected internalizing that with an observation, “You use English vernacular like you were born here.”

“We’ve been here eight years, and we live in trillions of tiny machines that can house the consciousnesses of millions of us,” Eh said. “Our ability to translate and learn your language is… enhanced.”

“Two hundred thousand years?” Anne asked, back on the topic.

“Yes,” Eh said. “More or less. Mostly more.”

“Well,” she said. “At least you’re not embarrassingly older than me. Just a smidge, though. A bit of a smidge. Like a civilization or two. Well, technically, it’s off the other end, and there weren’t civilizations back then, so…”

Eh drew their head back and raised their lure in surprise, asking, “How does that work? If you’ll excuse me for asking. How does a human live that long? I thought your civilizations were less than a few thousand years old at this point. You only had your industrial revolution two hundred years ago or so. Your computer technology is less than a century old.”

Anne grinned, licked the icing off her fingers one at a time, and then rubbed her hand dry on her cloak as she stood up. She held out her hand as if to offer a handshake to Eh, and said, “Former Primordial Goddess of Hospitality and present trans girl, Anne Other Problem, at your service. Welcome to Earth, I guess!”

Eh straightened up and sloughed off a considerable amount of nanite clay, reconfiguring their body to be about the same size of a human, but otherwise the same shape as before. The excess clay oozed toward the large bin in the back, reverting to its graphene color almost immediately. Then they stepped around the counter to stand before Anne and took her hand to shake it.

“My name is Eh.Though, that’s really a title. My name is Yenfiri. My pronouns are they/them. Former Senior Captain and Founding Crew of the `etekeyerrinwuf, revolutionary, trans enby as you’d say, and co-Artisan of Sunspot Tea and Coffee,” Eh said. “And it is a real pleasure to meet you. Thank you.”

“I don’t have anywhere near the power I used to have,” Anne said. “But I’ll do my best to step back into my old role for you. Your customers… Or, I guess they’re your guests? Their actions speak very well for you and what you’ve done for them. We need places like this. But let’s try not to make too many waves. I think you’re in a more fragile position than you realize.”

“You’re our hostess,” Eh said, glancing at me.

I nodded. The Council would accept this. We had a habit of still treating Eh like Captain, anyway.

Eh concluded, “We’ll follow your lead.”

“Asterix might want you to pretend to be human from now on,” Anne said. “It might be for the best if you did, honestly. But that might also depend on what kind of protections you don’t know you have.”

Eh grimaced, “If it comes to that, we can comply. But it will hurt. Some of us will have to front more than others. Whatever it takes to do what’s safe, though.”

Anne nodded, “Let’s go see the Lord and find out what he has to say.”

“Sounds good.”

And nodding and waving to us, they walked out the door, just like that. Though, before they took their third step beyond the threshold, Eh had changed shape to their human disguise, which looked remarkably like Yenfiri had before their body had died. Just a different species, obviously.

#Sunspot Chronicles #Otherverse #crossover fanfiction #self insert #coffee shop au #selves insert really

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