#especially with how some of these things clash VERY heavily - if you were ever found out to be a noble's kids adopted or not

[butwhatifidothis]

It was funny realizing that Yuri's backstory is extremely convoluted, but had it made me wonder, if you were Yuri's writer. How would you rewrite Yuri's backstory?

There's actually one really simple way to fix his backstory that requires little straight up rewriting: double his age.

Some things that happen after his backstory will have to be reworked or discarded entirely - pretty much all of his support relationships would have to be changed in some way - but the fundamentals of his backstory work infinitely better on a much older character. I can far more readily believe that a 38-43 year old man is as experienced with such drastically different lifestyles than a damn 19 year old, especially with it being the case that so much is pre-baked into his character (aka an older man could more realistically have been all of a street rat, adopted noble, assassin, spy, and gang lord off rip than a teenager could ever be).

Plus it would've given the player an older male LGBT+ option to romance, bumping it up from the... none that we have available in reality lmao, so that'd be a nice bonus

#ask #anon #it allows for more breathing room between the times Yuri would've been all these different things #and thus gets rid of a good bit of the convolution and allows for more suspension of disbelief #especially with how some of these things clash VERY heavily - if you were ever found out to be a noble's kids adopted or not #then you are gonna have a HARD time convincing those of the slums that you're worthy of their respect #because you are almost certainly gonna be seen as a cushy spoiled brat trying to rile in the dirty peasants for a WHILE #i cannot believe a 19 year old could overcome that before the story starts; i can believe a 38 year old has sometime before the story start #to give an example of what the bumped-up age would do #hope that answers your question nonnie!

[tokoyamisstuff]

Scandal Ch. 3 - Loki x Reader

Summary: You find shelter in the freezing lands of Jotunheim, and surprisingly some new allies. But Loki is already coming after you...

Warnings: Angst

Words: ~1500

A/N: Sorry, this one is a little short.

I Story Masterlist I General Masterlist I

Taglist:  @hi-there-x @haloangel391 @misssilencewritewell @babayaga67 @accioremuslupinn @mochimommy2002 @just-someone-who-likes-to-write @damalseer @bethanystan @loser-alert @star017 @nina1800​ @queenariesofnarnia @n1fangirlsblog​

Only the anchestors keeping watch over you would know just how long you had been resting until your body was eventually able to move again.

As you looked around, you found several pairs of glowing red eyes observing every one of your moves, clashing with the otherwise darkness around you.

You bolted in an upright position, chest waving heavily as your breath was forming a cold mist. Much to your surprise, you were covered in warm furs.

“Worry not” one of them spoke, their body almost inseparable from the icy cave you apparently resided in. “We are a warrior tribe, not warmongers. What do we gain from killing a weak Asgardian noblewoman and their child?”

“Where is he?!” you choked on your own sob, only able to calm down when yet another giant handed the small bundle into your arms. 

They seemed to have cared for him while you were unable to, having fed and cleaned the small boy who was still impossible to distinguish from those powerful giants.

“What is his name?” A female of them seeked to know.

You stopped in your tracks at her question. Everything happened so fast, there was no time to think about it until now.

“His...his name is...L-Liam*. Liam Lokison.” The unintended alliteration made you smile. Yes, this was a formidable name for such a little fighter.

“Loki, you say?” A row, deep voice drang to your ears, huffing at hearing the name of your husband.

It is him again - Laufey.

Initially, you wanted to express your gratitude for his benevolent hospitality, but concluded it would be better to not interrupt.

“Loki, you say?” he repeated the name, tone laced with venom pumping through his heart. “That pathetic excuse of a Jotunn?”

What in hel did he just say?!

“No wonder that crossbreed of yours is so pathetically tiny.” Laufey would now eye his grandson with great fascination, even though adverse. “A disgrace, just like his father.”

“Wha- what in the realms are you...talking about?”

You took in a sharp breath,pulling the child deeper into your arms and away from his wary eyes.

The king could only laugh at your attempts, finding this farce absolutely amusing.

“Hilarious”, he scoffed, “I take from your reaction that Odin is still the old, pathological liar.”

The Allfather had expected you to die in this environment before you’d ever find out the truth, and even if not - Odin thought Laufey to be wildly ashamed of his son, and he would never admit that this freak was his child.

And that was where he was wrong.

“He still didn’t tell any of you?” The Jötunn thought back to that day of indescribable loss. First and foremost the war with Asgard and them taking away his power, together with the Cascet of Ancient Winters - and then...

“The man you call the God of Mischief was born on Jotunheim, as Laufeyson” he declared, and the following words made your heart clench dreadfully. “For whyever I deserved such misfortune, my firstborn came into this world as a failure.”

“Our world is harsh and unforgiving” Laufey continued and apparently, none of the folk seemed surprised. “It is an act of mercy to erase the weakest of our kind, since they wouldn’t survive either way.”

“Lies” you hissed - but the proof was right there, in your arms. “You are lying!”

However, deep inside, you already knew that his words were true.

Why?

Not minding the surrounding giants, you began crying from all the weight on your heart - mourning over the fate of your lover.

From his very first day, Loki Laufeyson was doomed. His only birthright was failure, exclusion and resentment, with death’s grip constantly at his throat.

“Then-” Connecting the dots, fear overcame your system. “Why did you help me?”

“Too much blood of Asgardians and Jotunns had been shed.”

Now that you thought of it, they had saved you - cared for Liam, even. Neither had they left you to die, nor tried to harm you or the child in any way.

Odin was really the greatest liar in all of history - for there were no monsters in Jotunnheim. Only a different race of people.

“I have stained my own hands in countless battles against your kind. But we are in dire need of peace, Y/N of Asgard. And your child could be the key.”

Anger began boiling inside of you, thoughts still revolving around how Loki had been lied to for all those years - and for what? Diplomacy? Using him like a tool, to control the Jötunn?

“Loki is Asgardian just as much as you are.” Somehow, the king almost sounded pained at the revelation. “He is unaware of his heritage, taught to despise us from childhood on. There is no way he would connect our two cultures with how much hatred he bears in his heart.”

At first, you felt close to passing out once again - the emotional exhaustion being way worse than what your body could take.

Those past two days were just too much for you: Liam’s birth, his genes, being cast out by your own people - and now, knowing that Loki had been lied to and used, even might be in danger at the hands of his own father?!

“So, you want me to...raise him here?” The thought alone made your insides churn, thinking back to your homeland. “I think I have to decline that generous offer.”

“No, not like that.” Laufey slowly approached both of you, wary to not touch your skin in any way. He signalized the want to touch his grandson, and you allowed it.

Of course, in a primal tribe like that, showing weakness was unforgiveable - especially if you were the king.

Yet you couldn’t really describe why, but somehow you knew that Laufey wasn’t as heartless as it appeared to be. Maybe, back then, he really thought his decision to be best - but now?

Everything you could decipher in his orbs as he touched Loki’s child was remorse, yearning and guilt. The loss of his firstborn was still present in his heart, aware that even though alive, they had grown apart from each other beyond repair.

“You need sunlight and warmth to survive.” Homesickness could also kill you, you knew that much. “We only ask of you for visits during his upbringing, so he can learn our ways and traditions. See both sides of the coin.”

A bridge between worlds, huh?

On the one hand, it was a huge responsibility you would burden on your child - yet you knew that at least learning about his heritage was his birthright.

Never you would allow yourself to dwell on comfortable lies like Odin, just because you didn’t want to be condemned for the past!

You would save Loki, as well as ensure this wonderful child’s future!

“Laufey, my king and inlaw, so it shall be. This child is now part of your tribe, as much as it is Asgardian.”

_____

[Several weeks later]

“To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Laufey looked down on the Asgardian prince, standing in front of the gates of the Jotunn village.

“I demand on seeing my wife, you dull creatures!” Loki materialized a dagger, threatening to throw it right into the Jötunn’s eye. “Whatever you’ve done to her, I will repay a thousand times!”

Unimpressed, Laufey spoke “I see Odin has taught you his manners. Violent, hotheaded and selfish. No wonder she did not stay with you.”

“I ask you this one last time: Where. Is. Y/N?!”

Without any second thought, the God of Mischief had left in secret, facing the giants all alone without help of his brother or soldiers.

Because your husband was devastated beyond relief.

Without you at his side, the half-god had completely lost his way. All this time since he thought you dead, nothing could save Loki from his own mind.

For weeks, he wouldn’t leave his chambers, sitting in the dark for hour after hour without nourishing his body in the slightest.

He was haunted by how your belongings reminded him of those blissful days of your marriage. Your scent was still present on those now empty bedsheets, fogging his mind and keeping him from much-needed sleep.

The only matter he busied himself with aside from screaming and crying until his throat went sore, were the thoughts of what could be:

Knowing himself responsible for your imminent demise was eating him alive - even if that child wasn’t his, if only he didn’t rush things and would’ve let some time pass, to become clear-headed again as he was now.

Would Loki be able to forgive you and live on, overcome this hardships like so many before?

Most certainly! Because he needed you at his side, more than anything else.

Loki Odinson couldn’t live without the light of his life.

And if there was even the slightest chance of you still being alive, he would claim what was his and start anew.

“Loki, your eyes are wide open, and yet you don’t seem to see the full picture.”

When Laufey refused to descend to the entrance, Loki would immediately teleport himself towards the giant, blade aiming at his throat. “You will answer to your crimes, monster!”

The king was able to repel the attack by grabbing the god’s wrist - yet instead of the incoming pain Loki was expecting, merely his clothing froze into crumbles...

...and his limb turned in a shade of dark blue.

“You’ve grown strong, my son.”

_______

*Liam is a irish name, meaning “strong-willed warrior” or “protector”.

#Loki #Loki x Reader #Loki x You #Loki Laufeyson #Loki / Reader #Loki / You #Loki x Y/N #Loki Odinson #Loki Friggason #God of Mischief #Marvel #Disney #Self Insert #Fanfiction #Writing

[gwynrielendgame]

Nyx x Tamlin’s daughter part 3

Y’all cannot stop me from writing this series 😭😭I want to write more gwynriel, but the thought of a love triangle has angered me once again, so my hyper fixation has transferred elsewhere.

If you have any suggestion for future fics leave a comment below.

"Do you think mates are as rare as the Fae say? Everyone in my life seems to have a mate, yet lore claims it to be rare." Nyx turned his head from his spot next to Isa in the meadow. They laid right next to each other as they stared up at the sky. Close enough to touch, yet not feeling it necessary in the moment.

"That iz odd that your entire family iz mated." She laughed. "Your family are the only mates I have ever met, so I would say it iz rare for everyone except them." He sighed deeply.

"What troubles you?" Isa turned her head away from the sky to look at Nyx.

"What if I never get a mate?"

"Then you never get a mate."

"Isa, I am being serious right now." He groaned as he lifted himself up onto his elbows, so that he could look at her without the grass getting in the way.

"I am too. It will happen or it will not happen. No point in fretting over it." She shrugged as if it truly did not bother her. Nyx did not understand her.

"You really do not care if you ever find a mate?"

"I do not need a mate to find love or pleasure."

"But what if you find your mate while with someone else?" He felt the need to point out. He could not love someone while his mate was still out there. Nyx thought it selfish to love someone with the knowledge they were not his mate. What would they do once he did find his mate? What would he do?

"Like my father and your mother?" Isa raised an eyebrow at this.

"Well not exactly like that, but yes I suppose." Nyx laid himself back on the grass and looked back up at the sky. Isa turned her head away after a minute as well.

"Well if they were truly my mate, then they would wait for me. And if the person I was with is not my mate, then fate has us ending at some point, no? I would let everything occur naturally I suppose."

"If you were my mom, would you have left Tamlin for my father if he had not been awful?" Nyx had always been curious about Isa's opinion on the matter. She always seemed so spiteful of Feyre that perhaps she had heard a different story than what Nyx knew to be true.

"Yes. I would have found myself unhappy with life as a wife. I was made for so much more than that." She let out a deep sigh. Nyx contemplated her answer. He supposed that to be true. He could not imagine Isa playing house wife to anyone, but especially one that expected her to pop out babies and display herself only when beneficial to them.

"Would you ever marry?" He asked. She seemed quick to offer a marriage proposal to Nyx when they first met, but that had obviously been a joke.

"For love?" She shrugged. "I am far more likely to marry for political power than I am for love. I am strides behind with alliances among the seven high lords. When I take power the Spring Court will be weak simply because I am unknown of. Other courts will test my strength and intelligence."

"That is strategic." He also felt it was sad. She clearly was not a romantic at heart like he was. "I want more from life than power. I want what my parents have. Is that too much to ask for?" Nyx found himself frustrated with the fact that he had not found his mate yet. He had to keep reminding himself that it took his father five hundred years and his grandfather nine hundred years. It might make him mad if he had to wait that long though.

"I shall pray to the spirits about it."

"About what?"

A noise interrupted them before she could respond. Both of them stood quickly to surveil their surroundings. They saw nothing, but moved to put their backs to each other so that they could not be blindsided. Isa pulled her two short swords from their sheaths as Nyx prepared his ax and shield.

"What was that?" He whispered to her. She shushed him as they turned simultaneously with their backs still firmly placed together.

"Let's get out of here." She finally responded back but before he could respond a figured winnowed right in front of each of them and blew a powdery substance onto them. They winnowed away again just as Isa lifted one sword.

"Shit." She muttered. Nyx tried to winnow only to discover that he could not. Fucking faebane he thought. Nyx's hand went slack around his ax, and then a group of six males approached them. They came at them from Isa's side so Nyx turned to face the males. He stumbled a bit. The line of Fae males stopped about twenty paces away. Nyx did not recognize them. It was possible that Isa did, but she did not say otherwise as they stood across from them. Each male was armed with a weapon and a shield.

"I will take the three on the left. You got the other three?" She asked. He did not respond as she ran towards them. He wanted to wait to let them make the first move, but after she started running, the assailants came forward as well.

He seemed caught in a trance, watching Isa fight. One of her swords clashed with the tallest male while she simultaneously swiped at another one of the fighters. The tallest one swung his arm out, almost decapitating Isa, but she bent backward at the last second. She sliced an artery in one of their legs before checking her surroundings. Nyx assumed she was looking for him, but he had not yet moved for some reason. The second of distraction allowed for the tall one to cut her arm. It was so deep that Nyx swore he could see the bone all the way from here. The only acknowledgment of pain from Isa was a grunt, and then she ran her sword right through him. Nyx was jostled from his trance by an approaching fighter. Surprisingly, he walked up to him at a leisurely pace. Isa, once again, glanced back.

"Nyx!" She shouted as the male lifted his weapon. Isa tried to run back towards Nyx, but was tackled to the ground as she started to flee. Right before the male delivered the killing blow, his face started to droop. Nyx stared in horror as his face appeared to be melting off. The assailant went to grab at his face as he stumbled away from Nyx. His screams would haunt Nyx's nightmares for a very long time after this. He looked for Isa again. She was slicing the neck of one of the males on his knees. To his surprise though, her tattoos were glowing. She used witch magic, he realized.

"Move your ass, Nyx." She shouted from where she engaged all three males.

He continued to find himself surprised that they focused all their attention on her. He was not proving to be much of a threat, he supposed. He willed himself to move towards Isa, but something stopped him. He wanted to help his friend, he truly did. Her use of blood magic made things complicated. He did not want to be associated with the mayhem that was bound to be the consequences of it. As she took out her fourth male, the last two winnowed away. He watched her take a deep breathe of relief. Their eyes made contact, but before she could start berating him, the males reappeared right in front of Nyx.

"Fight!" Isa shouted. Nyx assumed his reflexes were worse than he originally thought because he did not move a muscle. The males smiled at each other and then they burst in flames. It horrified Nyx to watch them burn, to hear their pleas and screams. He could do nothing to stop it. He flicked his eyes to Isa as she intently watched the burning men. Her tattoos were glowing still, and she was reciting something. He could not hear her, but watched as her lips moved. After what felt like an eternity, the males were nothing but ash. He could hear their screams echoing in his ears though.

"Vat da fook vaz dat?"

It was the thickest he had ever heard her accent which meant she was spitting mad. He could not necessarily fault her for her anger, but he was in shock. Even in war, he had not quite seen brutality to that extent in a fight. Nyx continued to stare at the body with the face that Isa melted off. His eyes flickered back to her. She was breathing heavily and had a deep cut on her arm that she was now trying to twist around with a ripped piece of cloth from her dress. Her tattoos were no longer glowing, but several new ones appeared on her hands and fingers. They looked similar to her others, but now they were bright red and irritated as if someone had scratched them into her skin instead of tattooing ink. She wiped sweat and dirt away from her forehead and roughly pulled her hair away from her bruised face in a messy updo.

"Are you actually insane?" Isa asked.

She was more composed now as she slipped into strategic mode. She was planning on what to do now since Nyx was obviously going to be of no assistance and they could not winnow for probably a few more hours. He continued to stare at the bodies, thinking of how easy it seemed for her to do this. Even now, she seemed unbothered.

"I mean when Lucien said you were a mediocre fighter, I assumed that meant you vould at least fight. Not just stand there as I did all the work."

She was digging through all their pockets rather roughly. She was looking for any identifying information from their attackers, but it only managed to annoy Nyx. She did not have any respect for the dead if this was how she handled their bodies.

"You melted his face off." Was all he could say. Her head snapped up to glare at him harder than she ever had anyone else. She was upon him in an instant, shoving him by his shoulders.

"To save your unhelpful ass!" She screeched.

"You set these two on fire!"

"Well I apologize that in the heat of battle I did not consider more humane methods of death." She turned to walk away.

"My father was right." He muttered to himself. Isa stopped cold in her tracks, slowly turning around. Her face was void of emotion.

"Say that again." Her voice was deathly calm. It unnerved Nyx after what he had just witnessed.

"You have claimed that witch magic is not malevolent. Clearly, your definition is a bit skewed."

"I make no apologies for how I save the people I love. And you have no right to pass judgement when you just stood there and watched! You vould have let them butcher me, yet I am the immoral one?"

They both recognized what she accidentally admitted but neither of them was willing to call attention to it or address it.

"Why did it have to be like that though? You could have used any method."

"That iz not how it works." She grabbed at her hair, clearly frustrated. "I request the help from the spirits and they oblige. I do not get a choice in the manner of their help. But trust me, it iz not without a price."

"What is the price for this?"

She pursed her lips. She would not tell him what she must give for saving both of their lives.

"You have been waiting to throw this back in my face, no? Waiting for one moment where you could prove your parents were not in the wrong?" Isa was pacing back and forth at this point, but her tattoos had finally stopped glowing.

"Trust me, I never expected something like this from you." Nyx spat at her. He wanted to reel in his anger. However, he found it almost impossible.

"Do not zit on your high horse and pretend your father would not have done the exact same thing for your mother."

"We are not my parents." He reminded her. She tried to compose herself before Nyx could see her reaction. Unfortunately for her, she was not fast enough. Nyx watched her flinch at his vehement response.

"Vell you are certainly right about that. Neither of your parents would have stood and vatched as the other risked their life."

He had no excuse for why he stood there. Normally, he would have fought side by side with her. He had fought in battles before and he thought he had seen all the evils war had to offer. This was a completely different level. While they had been outnumbered, the males were unskilled and untrained. Isa could have held them off alone with no magic. It may have required more effort, but Nyx believed any magic was unnecessary. As much as he wanted to help, for some reason his body refused to move. The faebane the attackers used did not allow for them to winnow away, but Nyx had never heard of it impacting the body physically.

"You could have shape shifted." She laughed almost hysterically at that.

"If you knew what my other form vaz, you vould realize that death by it vould not be lezz brutal."

He shook his head and finally moved from his position. He started scouting the area to make sure there were no more assailants hiding anywhere.

"Oh, zo now you are helpful?" It was full of sarcasm as she rolled her eyes. She plopped herself down on the ground and closed her eyes.

Nyx was not exactly sure why he was so angry. Perhaps it was because he felt embarrassed that she saved both of them while he stood there like a statue. Perhaps he felt lied to like everything she had ever defended was really just a scheme to win over the Night Court. But truly? It had more to do with the fact that if he had aided Isa, she would not have felt the need to use her witch magic.

"Damn-ti your parents to come retrieve us." She demanded after laying down on the grass and covering her eyes with the crook of her arm to block out the sun.

Now why could he not think of that before? Just another thought to make him feel guilty. He almost corrected her enunciation like he normally did, but he stopped himself in the last second.

"Oh and next time, a zimple thank you vould suvice."

                                           ***

"What the hell happened?" Tamlin shouted as Feyre and Rhysand winnowed in Isa and Nyx. Isa was looking worse for wear, but since neither of the children were talking, the high lord and lady did not have an answer. Tamlin zeroed in on Isa's hands and the new tattoos that were present.

"Oh Isa," his voice changed and was suddenly much graver than it had been. "What have you done?"

"Vat I had to." She snapped as she dropped herself down on the couch in Tamlin's study. She was exhausted after the fight and just wanted to sleep.

"Well you look fucking fine." Tamlin turned his glare to Nyx from where he stood in front of his desk. "Care to explain why you leave with my daughter in perfect condition, and return her home on the brink of collapse?"

Nyx clenched his jaw. He did not want to say anything in front of Tamlin or his daughter. He wanted to go home and talk to his parents. Though, his parents kept giving him nervous glances, so he was unsure if they would be willing to do that right about now.

"Just leave it." Isa muttered. Her eyes were closed with her good arm thrown over her face. Rhysand scanned Isa's entire body. His eyes rested on her hands like Tamlin's had.

"What did you give? To protect our son?" His voice was soft and his eyes were sad. He must have known more than Nyx about potential consequences of witch magic. Feyre sat next to Isa on the couch to grab her hand. Nyx was confused by his parents change of heart where Isa was concerned. Previously, they had always been antagonistic towards her, but now they were being...soft.

"My first born." She muttered. Feyre sucked in a harsh breath as Tamlin closed his eyes in frustration. Nyx did not know how to feel. She was willing to give up her first child for him? He felt that only proved his point further. What kind of female was willing to give up a future child for a male she barely knew just three months ago? And one that was not even her mate? Nyx furrowed his brow.

"I never asked you to do that." He defended, but he was only met with three pairs of glaring eyes that told him to remain quiet. Isa must have been exhausted though because her response was understanding.

"I know."

Tamlin did not understand, however. He pounded his fist on the desk.

"Isabelle, you are my only offspring. It is your responsibility to continue the family line. There will be no one to succeed after you die, if you do not conceive multiple children. You know how difficult this is for the fae." Something he said ignited a fire in Isa. She immediately sat up from the couch to glare at her father.

"That iz not a fair responsibility to put on me! You could have more children! All you would have to do iz stick it in a different woman everyday until one stuck."

"Isabelle, watch your mouth." He scolded her as though she were a child. Tamlin walked back around the desk and took a seat. Isa took a long, deep breath before speaking again.

"I do not," she paused nervously, looking around. "Think I vant children." She finished. Isa rubbed her hands together in a way that she normally did when she felt anxious. Suddenly, Nyx felt his parents and him should not be here for this conversation. It felt private. Nyx never knew Isa may not want children. They had never really discussed it, but had assumed- as much as Tamlin did, apparently- that she would have at least one to continue the line.

"Oh." Tamlin awkwardly shifted in his chair. He made eye contact with Feyre and tried to motion to her to say some words of comfort. Feyre patted Isa's arm gently.

"You might change your mind once you find your mate?" Feyre offered unhelpfully. Tamlin put her on the spot and she was unsure what words of comfort Isa may be seeking. Those were not it if her reaction was anything to go by. She huffed loudly.

"Does not matter now, no? I cannot have children without sacrificing the first one which I vill not do. Besides, I am no mare meant for breeding. I vas meant for something more than being stuck at home caring for and nurturing a child."

"That is hardly a fair assessment of motherhood Isa." Feyre shook her head as she said this. "You can still do great things and be a mother."

"Are you to tell me that you took trips to the Court of nightmares to handle izzues while Rhysand stayed home and breastfed Nyx?" Isa raised her eyebrows at his mother. "That you vere able train amongst Rhysand, Cassian, and Azriel while pregnant? Vould you have ever earned the title 'cursebreaker' if you had been a mother at the time?"

"Motherhood is not without challenge." Feyre once again defended.

"And that is what I speak of. I do not want challenge. I have too many obstacles to overcome as it is. I do not want to add the obligation of a child to that." Isa pulled at her hair. Nyx felt it best that he stay quiet. There were too many emotions flying as it was, no need to add fuel to the fire.

"Enough." Tamlin declared. "Isa, you are right. I should never have put that responsibility on you. I could just as easily have another child."

Isa let out a breathe in relief. Nyx could see that she feared disappointing her father. He wondered if she would have had multiple children if Tamlin had insisted on it. Luckily for Isa, Tamlin seemed to have changed his ways from when his mother and him were together.

"I think it is best if you were to leave." Tamlin suggested as he stared at Nyx's parents. "I need to check on Isa's wounds and continue this conversation...privately." Feyre nodded before walking over to where Rhysand stood.

"Thank you again, Isa." Rhys murmured before grabbing both wife and son and winnowing away.

"Thank fuck." Is all Isa managed to say.

#nyx acotar #tamlins daughter #tamlin #rhysand #feyre archeron #acotar

[withastolenlantern]

What do you think it was like?” Rafael asked as he hacked at the tough vegetation with his hoe, pulling the dense vines into a pile in the pathway. The soil was nitrogen poor, even when heavily fertilized, and the local flora had a fibrous root that was always threatening to choke out their transplanted species. The ground cover was too thick for the harvesters to handle, so the crops were still pulled by hand at the end of the wet season.

“Why do you always ask that?” I said, stooping down to the ground and dusting the dirt from the now exposed potatoes, gently brushing them clear like an archaeologist might some ancient, precious treasure. I pulled the tubers from the ground and put them into the cart.

“You don’t wonder?” He leaned on the handle of the hoe, brushing the sweat from his dark brow.

“I try not to.”

“Come on, Shan. If I have to have one more meeting about soil nutritiation, I’m going to kill myself. And you’re down there all the time…”

“We’re not having this conversation again.” I hadn’t come out to the fields looking for a fight, but I was always prepared for one. “Stop changing the subject.”

He frowned. “Please don’t start.”

“I’m just saying. The season’s almost over, and we’re not getting any younger.”

He put down the hoe and knelt down next to me, lifting another potato and cradling it. He looked at me plaintively. “I just… are you sure this is what you want? To spend your life toiling in the dirt? I mean, your father…”

I put my hand on his shoulder. “My father is a drunk, and he has nothing to do with this.”

“He didn’t used to be. He might snap out of it. Some of them do,” he said. “I’m just worried you’ll get bored of me, of this. It’s not a glamorous life.”

“No, but it would be our life, Rafe,” I pleaded.

“One more season. The bureau is due to review the allotments soon, and I almost have enough saved up for a down-payment on my own forty.” He kissed me gently on the forehead, then stood, and stared up toward the sky and sighed. “You honestly don’t wonder? What it was like, knowing what was happening out there?”

I stood too, matching his gaze. I put my arm around his wrist and held it gently to my chest. “Come with me. I have to check on him, and then maybe you’ll see why I’d much prefer to farm potatoes with you.”

It had been one-hundred fifty-nine years since we’d last heard from anyone outside the system. The Network had gone down July 17th, 2938, or at least that’s what the history books said. And that is only if you went by the original Earth calendar, which no one did anymore. With a twenty-eight hour day and a rotation period of six-hundred seventeen days, matching time here on New Caledonia to that on Earth was pointless. With The Network, information would take an interminable time to transit the two-hundred eighty-four light year and four relay distance between us; even then, relativity was unclear on whether there was any such thing as simultaneous events at these stellar distances anyway. For me it was irrelevant: the Earth might as well not exist, may not exist, and Sol was just a very dim star you could barely make out in the southern sky.

For us, it had been a normal Sunday, Wet Season 12, CSY 134. New Caledonia is an eccentric planet with a single landmass in its northern hemisphere surrounded by a large planetary ocean. Because of its near forty-five degree axial tilt relative to the ecliptic, the year is divided into two seasons of nearly equal length. During the Wet Season, the more direct sunlight heats the seas, driving strong currents that bring strong storms to the western coast. The moist air blows in and dumps copious rain across the western plains before climbing into the central mountain range that separates the continent, the only remnant of the clash between the two gigantic tectonic plates that formed the land we now call home. This quirk of a jetstream leaves the eastern plains beyond the mountains in a giant rain shadow, barren and dry. For this reason, all the major settlements are here in the west, and in the Dry Season, the ocean gyres cease and we hunker down for a long, cold, arid winter.

The rains were strong that Wet Season, or so the stories go. At first they though the heavy cloud cover and unstable air was interfering with communication to the satellite arrays. Minkowski Transmission provides a supraliminal link through the interstellar void, but it was still subject to the space-time warps of a heavy gravity well; we are forced to rely on more pedestrian broadcast methods to communicate with the Network Relays out in longer orbits free from gravitational interference. But they checked the dishes and the transmission center and everything was fine. Then they checked again. Then they waited until the Dry Season, and checked again. And then they waited.

We walked up the path to the main road where I’d parked my truck, and Rafe loaded the cart, only half-full of potatoes, into the rear cargo bed. “How is he doing?” he asked, hopping into the cab and pulling on his safety belt.

I pushed the ignition switch and the engine purred to life. The battery chimed a plea that it needed to be recharged soon, and I felt that deep in my soul in a way the inanimate vehicle could never understand. “He has good days and bad.”

“How much longer?”

“Too long.” I put the truck into gear and programmed the destination into the navigational system. It lurched forward, the tracks catching slightly in the soft, damp clay of the plain. “Honestly I stopped counting a long time ago.”

We made it maybe half a mile before the rain started again, at first light pricks ricocheting off the windscreen of the truck, but quickly growing to fat blobs that exploded with a violent thud. I opened the valve to the distillation unit on the roof and a slow drip of cleansed water trickled into my canteen. After a few seconds I closed the valve and took a sip; the water was cool and clear. I offered some to Rafe, but he demurred with a slight wave. “Do you think he’ll go back to his career, after?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. At the beginning they said they’d welcome him back, but I think we all expect that was just a pleasantry. I’m… I’m not sure if he could handle it, now.”

We rode in silence for a few more minutes before he spoke again. “I’m not sure he’ll approve,” he said with subtle defeat. “Especially if he goes back to work.”

“He doesn’t get a say,” I replied. I reached across the seats and took his hand in mine. I smiled as brightly as I could in reassurance. “I’ve made my choice. This is what I want, for myself. For us. He can object if he wants, but what’s the worst that happens? It’s not like we can be further apart, not after what’s happened.”

It was several days into the Dry Season before the panic really set in. The original settlers had always known it was a one-way trip out here- four hundred years was a long time in stasis, and there was never a guarantee the planet would provide a sufficient fuel source to power the generation ship’s massive thrust engines back up. So like seeds in the wind humanity scattered itself across the stars, secure in the knowledge that the Network Relays would prevent them from ever being truly alone. Mankind might diverge physically and spacially; over time genetics and environmental factors would certainly breed out several new homo subspecies. But with the Network we could at least stay connected enough to share our stories, our art, our discoveries, and what else has humanity ever been but that?

The governor made an address and appealed for calm. New Caledonia had been self-sustaining since the beginning, she reminded everyone. They’d be fine. It was always a known possibility that this might happen, and the best everyone could do was to go on with their lives. The Network would come back, or it wouldn’t; they’d keep trying to re-establish communication.

The rumors started swirling immediately. The panel show ratings skyrocketed. We watched some of the footage in school, when I was younger; one talking head insisted it could be an alien threat, splitting us up before some pending invasion. There’s never been any sign of extraterrestrial intelligence even exists, let alone in competition for colonization, the other shouted. A third argued it was a sign from God, that humanity had outreached its grasp.

A popular conspiracy stream posited that maybe it was just New Caledonia. What if everyone else’s Network connection still works, and they’re cutting us out? The opposition party saw an opportunity and ran with it- what if the government shut down the link? On purpose! What if this was all a ploy to consolidate power and rule the planet as an oligarchy? The riots lasted three days, with violence and looting in the city streets before cooler heads prevailed. The government stayed in tact, and the opposition leaders were purged for fomenting insurrection. And thus was born the New Caledonian hermit kingdom.

“I don’t think I’d even want it to come back, at this point,” I groused. “Not after all of this.”

“How can you say that?” Rafe asked, incredulous. “You’re not the least bit curious?”

I thought for a moment. “Curious, yeah, I guess. But I don’t know that it would change all that much. It’s been so long. What if it comes back and it’s just… too different?”

“Yeah but think of what we might be missing out on,” he argued. “It might have helped with The Rot. It might have…”

“Don’t,” I warned, feeling the threat of tears welling my eyes.

For one-hundred fifty-nine orbits we’d tended our flocks and tilled our soils alone. Without a broader knowledge base, technological progress slowed. In CSY 204 a plague came, some meta-organic compound released from a pit mine dug too deep. The Rot claimed thirteen percent of the population before we could quarantine it out. When I was nine they finally found a way to inoculate against it. I remembered wincing at the shot as my father looked on, relief evident in his face that I’d be spared the fate that had claimed so many lives, including my mothers.

Maybe Rafe was right; maybe someone out beyond the stars might have helped us avoid that tragedy. And maybe someone here might know or do something that could save lives elsewhere. But in the years since the Network went down, we’d persevered, raised generations on our own. And inevitably just like Rafael they would stare up at the night sky with the same wonder as those before. And then they’d also ask about the abandoned broadcast center in the empty valley beyond the outskirts of the main settlement, grown over with the local moss-analogue from years of disuse.

The truck crested a small hill, the tracks struggling for purchase in the mud as they pulled the vehicle over the incline, and we looked down into the valley where that broadcast center sat. Every two years an adult was selected by random lot to man the station, in the increasingly unlikely event communication with the Network was re-established. The government called it “The Receiver” in an effort to present it as some important position, but everyone knew it was a joke. It came with no real benefits, just a small stipend and the obligation of a community. We all prayed at the Harvest Festival that our number would not be drawn from the bowl.

My father was a proud man, an engineer who helped manage the settlement’s geothermal power station. His luck had run out eight-hundred sixty-three days ago. He swore up and down that the lottery was rigged; that the government thought him being a technical expert instead of a field-hand, that the fact that his wife was gone and his children all grown, made him expendable. He might have been right, but that didn’t absolve him the responsibility. So he’d resigned himself, and us with him, to the doldrums of minding an interface that may never come back online.

He read a book a day, or at least he claimed, and while the library did have a fair amount of humanity’s literary efforts prior to the cutoff, their plots and concerns were divorced from life here on the frontier. He took up drinking, inevitably, as did everyone else assigned to the posting. What they don’t tell you when your name is pulled from the bowl is that the sacrifice is not yours alone- the burden is your family’s to bear. My brother’s and I took turns minding him, bringing him food and checking on his mental well-being but they all had families of their own now, and I was desperate to start mine too. We were all ready to move on, and I hoped by bringing Rafael with me he could see that I was serious about starting our life together.

We pulled up outside the comms center and dismounted from the truck.

“Hang on a second,” Rafe said. “I want to talk to him.”

I looked at him quizzically.

“Just… let me do this, okay?”

I smiled and kissed his cheek gently. He went inside while I unloaded a tote filled with fresh fruits and a sandwich I’d laced with some amphetamines to help keep him lucid. The interior of the building was dark; the lights hard burned out several months ago and no one from the government could be bothered to maintain the place on any expedited time scale. I brushed some of the local vines from the threshold of the entryway as I entered. “Dad? It’s Shan. I brought some food.”

As I passed from the mottled grey sunlight outside to the dark interior I could make out blurry figures backlit by the eerie glow of his reading lamp.. They were both standing, which was odd. Dad was usually in the chair when I visited, most of the time asleep.

Rafe emerged suddenly from the shadows and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Shan. Stop.”

“What is it?” I asked, taken aback. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s… here. Let’s go outside.” He pulled me gently but forcefully toward the door.

“What the fuck, Rafe, stop it. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“It’s your dad. He…”

I shoved Rafael out of the way and stepped forward into the comm station. My father came into clearer focus, and I could tell immediately something wasn’t right. I came closer and dropped the basket to the floor in shock. His body hung limply, his feet swaying gently five centimeters from the floor. A length of electrical cord, half-stripped from the wall behind him, was wound tightly around his neck. I grabbed his feet and lifted, crying. “No no no no no, dad, fuck.” I pushed and contorted his body, trying to free him but to no avail. Tears were streaming down my face now, hot and wet.

I pulled a short table across the concrete floor and climbed up onto it, my vision blurred with anger and fear and sobs. I yanked at the cable, trying to unwind it, to free his body. I pulled and wrenched and screamed in desperation, banging on the overhead truss that supported it until I nearly broke my hand. I collapsed onto him, my hands around his shoulders, my face against his chest. His skin was cold and pallid. I was too late to save him.

“Shan.” Rafael stood in the entryway to the station. He offered his hand I took it gingerly, climbing down from the table and following him outside. He pulled me in close as I wailed. “I’m so sorry. I don’t…”

I pulled Rafe to the ground and cried for another few minutes, my chest heaving with agony. “It’s not your fault,” I whispered finally.

“It’s not yours either. You did the best you could.”

“I know.” I pulled the sleeve of my jumper up over my hand and wiped my eyes. “I think a part of me knew it would always end like this. It has so many times before. In a way it might be… I don’t know. Better? I’d always worried about what he would be like after.”

I gulped in air as my breathing stabilized. “Come help me get him down?”

“Sure,” he said, mustering a weak smile.

We went back into the station and looked upon him once more. He looked frail, fragile in a way he hadn’t before. Being alone this long, it just did things to a person. Rafael grabbed his feet as I climbed back up on the table. With Rafe bracing his weight I was able to loosen the taught cable and slip it free, and we lowered the body gently down to the table. He went out to the truck to get a bag to cover my father, and I stood silent vigil, until in the quiet I heard a strange humming noise from across the room. I turned and saw that the Network terminal screen was activated. “That’s… weird.”

I walked across and stood in front of the terminal, suddenly alive with activity. Rafe entered back in with the bag. “What’s that?”

“I don’t know. It’s not usually… on.” I leaned in close. “It’s displaying something.”

A line of dots and dashed appeared on the interface. “I… I think it’s old morse code. Dad had to learn it. I helped him practice.”

“What’s it say?” he asked, a sudden dread in his voice I didn’t recognize. I could feel my stomach welling up in anxiety as well.

“It says.... HELP.”

#was thinking about this again the other day #and then i expanded it to... this #i legit think this is one of the better short forms i've ever written #anyway screaming into the void etc

[cottoncandyjester]

Hey guys im sorry I haven't been posting, honestly tumblr is making it hard to. every single story I write tumblr crashes then deletes it so it's been HIGHLY frustrating...guess I need to invest in a laptop or a better phone

Sorry this was so long I always want the boys' back stories to be only 2 parts

This story contains: death, torture, abuse, toxic relationships, murder, violent themes

"you're too soft! They are sinners theodore why are you being so damn sensitive"

Theo winced at the punch his father landed which caused him to stumble back his back hitting the table which held their latest victim, a young woman that theo cleaned up and dressed in his mother's clothes, he didn't like the sight of her all bloody and mangled it made his heart sting.

Theo never helped to Kill any of these women, only cleaned them up and made sure they looked beautiful in death it was his way if asking for forgiveness.

When he was ten he idolized his father but it's been two years since he caught his father and been training under him to take his place and all that love vanished he found himself feeling nothing but hate and disgust for his father, what made matters worse was the fact that his mother had to take half the brunt of his father's anger.

"I won't do this anymore, you're wrong. Women aren't devils, mother is an angel and I wont hurt her"

Theo's harsh remark earned him yet another punch in the face this one knocking him down as he spat out blood the metallic taste making him sick to his stomach.

"you're a damn fool boy, I'll make you see her filth"

With that his father left him in the attic to starve for the night which was always a common occurrence. As he laid back on the floor the boy let out a dry chuckle.

"Just a little more...then you'll be the one burning in hell father"

Theodore felt everything go black and it wasn't long until he had passed out soon waking back up in bed with his mother caring for his wounds. He could smell her sweet perfume and hear her soft humming, something about those things made his heart flutter in the purest of ways.

"you should be careful theo, you know making him angrier will only result in pain"

"it's okay, we'll leave together one day..just me and you.."

There was silence after that and for a while things were okay, the family was quiet during dinner and once it got late theo figured his father would have went to bed forgiving him for his outburst in the morning.

Theo woke to the sound of two metal objects clashing together, the sound was enough to stir him awake though when he tried to move he realized he was tied up against a chair. That clashing noise he heard was his father sharpening a few knives, the sight made theo's blood run Cold.

"f-father?"

"god told abraham to kill his son, and abraham was about to do it like a loyal sheep. God will make you do awful things theodore and as a man we must do them"

Theo frantically struggled against the ropes binding him only feeling more and more stressed as his father stepped closer and closer thing soft steps of his shoes making theo feel like he had to puke.

What's going to happen to me?

Am I going to die?

Theo felt his father press the tip of the blade pressed softly against his forehead on the left side of his face, the cool metal only brought theo to reality more, his father was going to kill him cause god said so.

"i-i know we are nothing alike but please-"

"we are absolutely nothing alike! You are exactly like your mother a sissy little housewife! You were never going to be a good man or husband! When I asked God for a son I thought he would send me one I could be proud of!"

Rage fuelled theo, he wasnt sure why but something about what his father said made him want to scream, his father was wrong... absolutely wrong.

"I'll be a perfect husband, and a better Father than you"

As soon as he said those words theo felt the sharp pain of his father pushing the blade into his skin earning a sharp inhale of breath trying not to show too much weakness. Theo kept thinking about his mother and how in a way he was protecting her, their goal were to run away safely together.

"we might have one thing in common theodore, you have a devil in you just like me..it's time to show you just how tainted you are"

With that theo felt a harsh intense pain as his father dragged his blade along the boy's face earning screams coming from him as he thrashed and tried kicking but his father pressed his knee onto the boy's legs now carving his skin off in such a slow and unbearable way that it was driving theo crazy

"accept your sins theodore! This is your punishment for being unloyal!"

Theodore couldn't stop screaming as the knife raked down his face roughly cutting a large chunk of his skin clean off, the pain was so great he was close to fainting but his father came prepared and injected him with an adrenaline shot.

"p-please f-father please please please..."

Theodore at this point didnt know what he was begging for, maybe death? The overwhelming taste and smell of his own blood was making him sick and not to mention there was a lot of blood pouring down his face.

I'm dying.. god has forsaken me

"may you be reborn as a perfect child next time"

Theo kept his head down but felt a soft kiss on his head before hearing footsteps walk away from him before the door to the attic closed, his father left him to die!

Theo swayed side to side hoping to get free, if he could just get to his father's desk and grab a knife though without his glasses seeing things far away was near impossible though he could see the shape of the desk.

"mother needs me, I can't die.."

Theo grunted in pain as he fell forward which wasn't his plan but he'll take it, with every fiber of his being he crawled and scooted along the ground towards the desk before seeing a knife handle over the edge of the desk. Thankfully his legs were tied just his arms so with some embarrassing attempts to stand of even kneel before turning around to grab the knife with his hand.

Before he could cut himself free he heard banging on the attic door before a crash, the sound was enough to startle him into cutting the palm of his hand and dropping the knife

"argh! I-it hurts!"

Soon the attic door opened and rushing towards him was his loving mother, her frantic questions and worrying about him made him feel far better especially when she untied him from the chair.

"I'm leaving tonight theo, my fiancee is waiting for me outside"

"t-then let's go mother! Now is the perfect time to go!"

There was a tense silence after that as theo felt his mother bandage his wound up, his mother was hiding something and he didn't like it.

"w-we have a little girl and he's very protective of her and well with how your face looks now you'll scare her and I don't want to bring any baggage from my pa-"

Theodore felt as if his head was spinning, what was she saying? He did everything for her he almost died for this woman and she saw him as baggage to toss away before going to her new family.

"y-you're going to leave me here? J-just like that?! I protected you from him! I made sure he never hurt you! Were you ever going to bring me with you?!"

"keep your voice down theo, please calm down you're scaring me-"

"I'm scaring you?! I'm the one scaring you?! How could you?! I'm your child! I love you!"

He watched his mother look down shamefully and slowly back away clearly afraid of what will her next words do to him. Theodore was feeling a little unstable at the moment, his own mother just betrayed him can he truly trust no one in his life?

"your eyes just...look just like him. I can't theo I'm so sorry I can't it's too painful for me.. you're too much like him"

That was the thing that broke theo all together, it was like his brain just snapped and no clear thought came just pure anger and pain. How could she think that?! Theo thought he was nothing like his father absolutely nothing!

"no! I'm nothing like him! Nothing! He's abusive and a horrible man how could you say that!? I thought you loved me but you're just like him-yeah you're like him not me! I'm pure! A good person"

Theo couldn't stop himself, before he knew it he had grabbed the knife he dropped earlier, the large blade held tightly in his hand and scaring the one person he thought he can trust.

"w-why do you want to leave me? You're just embarrassed of me..you don't want me around cause you hate me"

"no no no baby I love you I just-"

Theo swung the knife slashing his mother's arm, hearing her cry out in pain made him only smile as he gazed at her fearful expression. His sense of reason was vanished and all he wanted now was to show everyone how much they hurt him

"maybe if you were a better mother I wouldn't have gotten hurt all the time, maybe if you weren't too busy being a good wife instead of a good mother I wouldn't be in such pain!"

"t-theo please I just-"

"why couldn't I just have a normal family?! I prayed for one! So why!?"

Theo slashed at his mother again and again over and over sloppily slashing at her without caring about where he aimed. He was far more focused on releasing all this pain and betrayal he felt

"why doesn't anyone want me?! Why don't you want me! I want you so what's wrong with me?! Why am I so broken?!"

Theo ignored the sobs and begging for her to stop, they were not processing clear enough to him he just wanted to hurt them to hurt them in ways they hurt him. Her thrashing soon stopped but it wasnt enough for theo, he moved ontop of her now raising the blade and slamming it down inside her chest his eyes glossed over as he did so.

"I'm not like him, I'm nothing like him! I'll be a good father! A good husband! I'll never abandon my family! Never! Never ! Never!"

The knife slipped I his hand and when he tried to catch it he grazed his hand before hearing the knife clatter onto the ground, theo panted heavily before looking at his hands seeing hands were lightly bruised from gripping the knife so hard, he then looked down at his mother and her horror stuck face.

"look at what father did, I told you we should have left before...it's okay I'll protect you"

Theo reached out taking the scarf his mother wore before putting it on himself before pressing it to his nose and taking a deep inhale, the sweet scent gave him shivers.

The sight of his dead mother made the boy tear up but he honestly didn't realize he was the one who had did such a thing, it was something he refused to accept. Now gripping the knife he once had before he creeped down the attic stairs each step more and more anxiety fuelling, from the quiet sounds it seemed like his father was asleep.

Theo had never acted out so violently than when he saw his father sleeping soundly in bed, once again much like before he had completely snapped now walking over and plunging the knife deep into his father's side earning a painted grunt along with his father's eyes to snap open

This caused theo to panic and he did the first thing he could think of which was to bite his victim's ear using that time to shove the blade into his father's chest before biting his ear off and spitting it onto the ground in a feral snarling mess.

"t-there's your demon... y-you're just like me"

"I'm nothing like you! Nothing!"

Theo gripped the knife blade shoving it deeper til it became stuck and his father stopped breathing, what struck theo as odd was the lack of struggling..didn't his father want to live? That escaped his mind as he tried wiggling the blade out of the corpse only to whine lightly at how stuck it was

"heavy, too heavy"

Theodore decided his next plan was to change out of his bloody clothes except for his scarf of course and to turn on the gas stove as high it can possibly go, he used his bedroom window to escape since his mother's boytoy was still waiting for her outside.

One match, it took one match to burn the place down starting the fire in his bedroom and letting it spread. A few minutes after theo jumped out the window the house roared to live now completely on fire.

Theodore only 12 years old had killed his parents and burned the place down, he had no one else to turn to no family or anything so he turned to his local church. They sent him to a boarding school where he grew up and found a passion for medicine as well as helping others.

His dark past always haunted him, he was known as the boy whose family died horrible deaths. There were always rumors about what happened that night some say that his father killed everyone before burning the place and stabbing himself others think that his mother's lover killed them all in an angry rage. Theo would always just shrug and laugh it off thanking God that he's alive

Those dark desires of having a family only grew as he grew older, it became a twisted obsession that festered stronger and stronger by the time he was 18 he was already waiting for marriage..after all a good husband waits for the perfect bride.

"theo? Hey theo? Hello earth to theo?"

Theodore snapped awake only to see his sweet darling staring at him worriedly, he must have fallen asleep in his office again. Theo simply smiled as he stood from his chair

"what's wrong?"

"well, dinner's ready have a good dream or something?"

Theo chuckled softly before running his fingers through his hair trying to come up with a suitable answer

"just dreaming about the past my angel, though I should focus on the future with you after all the past is the past..."

#yandere imagines #yandere #yandere ocs #yandere oc x reader #tw death #tw toxic behavior #tw yandere #tw religious themes

[thebluelemontree]

Is it wrong to say that Sansa uses an out of sight out of mind coping mechanism? I noticed it because it's what I do a lot. I know some ppl say she rewrites traumatic memories to make the memories bearable but it doesn't make sense. If that was how she coped, wouldn't she have been telling herself lies about Joffrey still in acok? Or found a way to erase/rewrite Marillion's attempt to rape her?

Yes and no. She does that except all the times she doesn’t. ;) I think that characterization is extremely reductionist (and ignores character complexity and  growth) when it’s applied that broadly to every situation Sansa has been in. You have to take these things instance by instance because they aren’t all the same. Sometimes that labeling doesn’t fit at all. In many cases, it feels more like the fandom pathologizing the act of romanticizing or trying to push aside or reframe something unpleasant or even traumatic when that’s just something most human beings do now and then. Some do it more than others, but its all within the realm of typical coping behavior and being older or more educated or more “logical” doesn’t make one immune to it. So I hope you don’t let those interpretations make you feel abnormal or more fallible for identifying with Sansa in that way. Romanticizing doesn’t even have to be about coping at all, but simply expressing desire through daydreams. People imagine being in idealized scenarios with crushes all the time.  

You also hit the nail on the head. Sansa just doesn’t go around making up false narratives about every objectively awful thing that happens to her. In fact, her actual responses to those moments can be a useful basis for comparison when we’re analyzing the unkiss, for example. Misunderstanding the unkiss is usually where a lot of these assumptions stem from. That’s a whole other can of worms in itself. The unkiss is just too long of a discussion to put here, so I just recommend this post as to the reasons why it isn’t about trauma and take a browse through my unkiss tag. It does bear repeating that Sansa factually remembers every scary thing that happened during the Blackwater and why it happened, indicating she has processed it honestly and critically, before any incarnation of the unkiss happens. The unkiss is a mismemory added on to the facts, which began as her being the actor that kissed him first. It’s not a lie to deny the facts or to excuse his behavior. It’s regrettable to her that Sandor was not able to be the person she could rely on to get her out of KL at that time. Nonetheless, this repressed desire is just so strong in her that it manifested in a kiss so real she could remember how it felt after the reality of his leaving KL for good sank in. 

Early AGOT Sansa tended to want to move past unpleasantness rather quickly. Just sweep those red flags under the rug so everything can go back to blissful harmony. Sansa is naturally averse to conflict and just wants her present with the royal family to be smooth sailing into a bright future. Ned had a very similar tendency when it came to concerns over Robert’s true character. He saw things that disturbed him, but he hoped and clung to his idea of Robert anyway. For Sansa, this resulted in some misplaced blame and rewriting events so she could deal with the aftermath. This is mostly seen in her processing the Mycah incident after Lady’s death and how her perception of all the characters involved shifted in varying ways. This is after she knew perfectly well what really happened, because Ned says Sansa had already told him the truth of what Joffrey did while Arya was still missing. However, it would also be unfair to completely chalk this up to Sansa’s idiosyncrasies. We have to put her flip-flopping in the context of the situation as well. She’s also experienced a gutting loss with Lady’s death and the fact that the first blow to her innocence was her father volunteering to put Lady down. She doesn’t have Catelyn to go to with her confusion and hurt, and Ned has largely been silent. She’s also still engaged to Joffrey through all this, this is still a patriarchy, there are political ramifications to speaking against a crown prince, and she doesn’t know how to deal with seeing such cruelty and vindictiveness in her future husband. Especially when he responded to her tender concern and wanting to help him with venom and hate. 

I mean, jeez, she’s 11. I don’t expect an 11 year old to understand how to identify the signs of emotional manipulation or see how this situation can escalate into domestic violence. Just because Sansa can’t articulate what is happening within her relationship with Joffrey, doesn’t mean she has blocked out any notion that Joffrey can turn his anger on her. Part of the reason she misplaces blame on Arya (and rewrites what happened) is because Joffrey turns scornful of Sansa for being a witness to his emasculating shame. He punishes her with the cold shoulder because she didn’t immediately take his side and pretended not to see instead. He regains power through making Sansa feel small and fearful of his moods. 

“He had not spoken a word to her since the awful thing had happened, and she had not dared to speak to him.” -- Sansa II, AGOT.

Sansa looked at him and trembled, afraid that he might ignore her or, worse, turn hateful again and send her weeping from the table. -- Sansa II, AGOT.

This is coming from someone who is supposed to love her and someone she will spend the rest of her life with. To fix things, she must be unequivocally on Joffrey’s side going forward or suffer the consequences, which we can see happening as her story completely flips over breakfast sometime later. This is not saying Sansa is fully exonerated from not supporting her sister when she needed her, but that it’s understandable how she arrived at this point. Even when things start to get really bad after Ned’s arrest, Sansa still holds out some hope that she can appeal to Joffrey’s (and Cersei’s) love for her to get him to be merciful. Is it really her fault she believed a part of Joffrey really loved her (and thus was reachable by her pleas) if he also heavily love bombed her and treated her like she was the most special girl in the world? Love bombing is a classic feature of the seduction phase leading up to abuse.  

So we can see Sansa does ignore truths and rewrite events sometimes and her personality is a factor; however, the context surrounding it matters a lot. Post Ned’s execution, Sansa does a full 180 regarding Joffrey and Cersei.

Sansa stared at him, seeing him for the first time. He was wearing a padded crimson doublet patterned with lions and a cloth-of-gold cape with a high collar that framed his face. She wondered how she could ever have thought him handsome. His lips were as soft and red as the worms you found after a rain, and his eyes were vain and cruel. "I hate you," she whispered. -- Sansa VI, AGOT.

Once she had loved Prince Joffrey with all her heart, and admired and trusted his mother, the queen. They had repaid that love and trust with her father's head. Sansa would never make that mistake again. -- Sansa I, ACOK. 

"A monster," she whispered, so tremulously she could scarcely hear her own voice. "Joffrey is a monster. He lied about the butcher's boy and made Father kill my wolf. When I displease him, he has the Kingsguard beat me. He's evil and cruel, my lady, it's so. And the queen as well." -- Sansa I, ASOS. 

There’s also her conscious efforts to push away thoughts of her dead family and Jeyne Poole, but she states why she does that. It’s traumatic, the tears start flowing uncontrollably, and she is desperately trying to avoid falling into another suicidal depression. Her survival in KL depends on her holding it together and appearing loyal and obedient to Joffrey. Mourning her loved ones would imply to Joffrey she is plotting treason. Besides, she knows that even if she did ask Cersei or LF about Jeyne, she has no reason to believe they’d do anything but lie to her face in a patronizing way. There’s no point being plagued with wondering what the truth might be when she can’t do anything about it. Still, she prayed for Jeyne wherever she might be. She genuinely thought Arya had made it to WF on the ship and was safe at least until she got word of her brothers’ deaths and her home being sacked by the Iron Born, though there was initially a touch of projection and fantasizing about Arya being free while she remains captured. As of Feast, she believes she is the last Stark left alive and she has no one but Littlefinger to help her. So while she is suppressing her grief, it’s done with good reason, and it’s not being replaced with any false narratives to cope. 

We also cannot ignore that her relationship to Sandor Clegane has instilled in her an appreciation for the un-sugarcoated truth now that she has experienced betrayal and injustice first hand. In his own way, he’s encouraged her to listen to her own inner bullshit detector. The rose-tinted glasses have become a lot more clear compared to where she started. This is a newly learned skill though, and her self-confidence has been wrecked by internalized verbal abuse. She’s also been left on her own to figure out people’s intentions by herself, which runs parallel to her mounting desperation to get out of KL as Joffrey’s violence escalates. Developing a touch more of a jaded, skeptical side does sometimes clash with her enduring idealism and faith in other people (like with the Tyrells). This struggle is not a bad thing. The goal isn’t to become as cynical as the Hound, but to arrive at an earned optimism that has been tempered by wisdom and practical experience.

Her situation with Littlefinger is much more challenging than anything she faced in KL. He moves her where he wants her to go with complex web of lies, manipulation, grooming, isolation, coercion, dependence, guilt and shame. Her safety and desire to go home are tightly bound to being complicit in his lies and criminal activities. She feels indebted to him for getting her out of KL, even though his methods push her past her boundaries and force her to compromise her moral integrity. The thing is, there are things Sansa does know about LF, but she doesn’t seem to be ready to try and put the puzzle pieces together. She’s not daring to ask probing questions about Lysa’s reference to the “tears” and Jon Arryn or about the possible dangers of Maester Colemon prescribing sweetsleep for Robert’s convulsions. While the subject of Jeyne’s fate is still one she doesn’t want to revisit, somewhere in her mind she does know LF took custody of her friend. If it feels like this is somewhat of a regression back to her early AGOT self, there’s probably some truth to that; however, it’s perfectly okay for positive character arcs to be an imperfect progress. There can be relapses, regressions, setbacks, missteps, and misguided actions. All that growth isn’t lost. Everything she knows is just stored in the back of her mind, not forgotten completely. The general trend line moves her toward successfully confronting Littlefinger with the truth when GRRM is ready to pull the trigger. She’s definitely aware of Littlefinger lying to her more than she lets on and she knows his help is not out of the kindness of his heart, but motivated by what he wants her to be to him. But it’s not like she has the option to go anywhere else, does she? She’s a wanted criminal with a bounty on her head and has no other friend or ally in the Vale she can trust with the truth of her identity. Confronting LF without any means of neutralizing his power over her isn’t the smartest thing to do when he’s shown her he can literally get away with multiple murders. Again, it’s not just her personality that makes her hesitant to pull back the veil and face the horrible truth head on. The outside forces pressuring her perceptions and behavior cannot be discounted either.    

#valyrianscrolls #sansa stark meta #sansa stark #joffrey baratheon #sandor clegane #littlefinger #cersei #asoiaf characterization #the unkiss #character arcs #my meta #anonymous

[scullyverse]

Roses & Restraint: Chapter One

Dana Scully

Stella/Scully || multi-chapter || rating: E (Explicit)

Summary:

London, 1990. Stella Gibson and Dana Scully both enrol in University. Dana is lonely and insecure, Stella is distant and guarded, until they meet.

Notes:

This story is something that has been conceived and created through many months of brainstorming and endless conversations between me and my wonderful other half Lieke. This little universe has evolved into a life of its own and I can't wait to share it with everyone, finally! This story starts AU with Stella and Dana in University but will maintain heavily elements of both canon The X Files and The Fall later on in this series. I hope you all enjoy reading this as much we have had creating it together.

Also available to read on AO3

Dana

London, England

September 1990

Dana Katherine Scully had never felt lonely before. Growing up in a house full of siblings, she constantly found herself surrounded by noise and the warmth of having people close. She had always been connected with her mother and father, tolerated and even loved her two brothers and was especially close with her sister Melissa. So sitting alone on her new bed in an alien country surrounded by nothing but silence was certainly a different experience.

Tucking her legs up to her chest, Dana rested back against the headboard, looking around her new dorm room. It was fairly empty for the moment save for the essentials like some fresh bedsheets; her closet was open and half-filled with the clothes she had brought with her, and a stack of freshly shrink-wrapped textbooks resting in a neat pile on her desk. Her mother, Margaret, or Maggie as she liked to be called, was planning to take her out shopping later today for a few things to make the space feel more like home. But Dana knew it would probably never feel quite like home to her, this was just a space that she occupied for the time being.

Dana rested her hands on her knees, tilting her head to look outside of the window, seeing mostly brick from the dorm building next door, some leaves barely visible from the trees below. She had been so excited to get accepted into London University - as one of the only places that delved into Biophysics, it was at the top of her list of places to study because of their curriculum. And she was still excited, it was just a different feeling from imagining it to being here, and she suddenly felt very out of her depth. In just two days classes would start and she had never felt this underprepared for anything before in her life. Everyone else surrounding her would be older and have those extra years of life experience she just didn’t feel she had acquired yet.

Being academically brilliant she had skipped a few grades and was able to apply for college at only 16, much to her parents' delight and also uneasiness and worry. It seemed such a whirlwind of a year last year, applying to many different establishments, and finally getting accepted here. Her mother had flown her out at the beginning of the year for interviews and entrance exams to see if she would be a fit for the course she was applying for and if she was able to handle the caseload that would be expected of her. They had gladly invited her and seen her potential. So why don’t I feel that potential right now? Dana thought, her teeth gnawing on her bottom lip.

Things would be fine, her mother had told her so, and she was sure she was right, it was just hard to shake the feelings away when her head could think of nothing else. Letting out a sigh, Dana pushed herself off the bed and made her way towards the suitcase sitting in front of her closet, still filled with numerous things from home. Kneeling and rummaging through the items inside, she pulled out her worn copy of Moby Dick and put it on the floor next to her before grabbing the family picture from last Christmas and put it on her desk, angling it towards her bed. She wasn’t one for clutter, but she always kept a photo of her family in her room. Normally it was the only thing that rested on her desk besides books and stationery.

With the book in her hands, she made her way back towards her bed, her fingers absentmindedly playing with the dog-eared cover before she heard a soft knock. Turning towards her door, Dana quickly fixed herself up, adjusting her blue oversized shirt and brushing her frizzy hair away from her eyes with her free hand.

Dana pulled the door open and smiled warmly when she saw her mother standing in the hallway, a plastic shopping bag in her hands.

“I thought you could use some snacks for your room.” Maggie greeted her with a hug. “Maybe you could keep some in your desk drawer as you did at home, they even had your favourite,” Pausing, Maggie rummaged through the plastic and pulled out a bag of gummy bears. “-I was surprised to find them, but they were in the little supermarket down the street from the hotel.”

Dana stepped aside to let her mother into the room and shut the door softly. Taking the candy given to her with outreached hands, Dana put both the bag of gummy bears and her book down on her desk and stepped forward to wrap her arms around her mother’s waist, her chin just able to rest on her shoulder.

“Thanks, mum. But you didn’t have to do that.” Dana insisted.

“Of course I did, Dana. I know how much you love them.” Maggie replied, brushing her concern off with a smile.

Feeling Maggie’s arms wrap around her, holding her tight, Dana felt warm and secure as she closed her eyes. She would miss her mother’s hugs more than anything. Even though at times she couldn’t stand the way her mother coddled her, she would never get tired of her love. Taking a deep breath, Dana tried to get her emotions under control as she pulled away, looking up at Maggie with slight embarrassment.

“Sorry, I’m just feeling a bit overwhelmed.” Dana apologised, rubbing under her eyes.

“It’s okay sweetheart, you’re allowed to feel like this. Is it too much though? You know you can always come back with me and we can apply somewhere else.” Maggie reassured, placing a hand on Dana’s head and brushing down her hair before resting her hand on her cheek. “This is a big step and something I know I wouldn’t have been able to do at your age.”

“No mum, I want to do this. I’m fine, just a lot to take in for the first few days.” Dana answered, looking into her mother's eyes and giving her a slight smile as she leaned into the familiar hand against her cheek.

Stepping away, Dana peeked into the bag still in her mother’s hand to distract herself from the sour feeling in her stomach. Maggie watched for a moment before smiling as Dana took the bag from her mother’s hands and made her way towards her bed, tipping the contents onto the covers. Dana wasn’t a big fan of sweets, but she did tend to like the odd one here and there when she was studying, a habit she had picked up in her second year of high school. Dana’s eyes lit up when she saw a few more packets of her favourite gummy bears and some chocolate bars that she didn’t recognise, but sounded pretty delicious. She looked up at Maggie and gave her a grin before Maggie took a seat on her bed, picking up one of the chocolate bars.

“I wasn’t sure if this brand would taste good, but the cashier recommended it to me as something that seems to be quite popular here, so hopefully it tastes okay. Though I’m sure it’s not as sweet as the chocolate we’re accustomed to at home.” Maggie said as she gave the bar back to Dana.

Dana gathered the candy and put it back into the plastic bag to put it away somewhere later before she put her hands in her lap, fiddling with the bottom of her shirt. Dana looked up at her mother with slight nervousness as a silence hung between them before Dana felt a warm hand rest of her own.

“Come on sweetheart, let’s go have a look around the city. We still need to buy you some essentials. And I know you wouldn’t say no to a new outfit or two,” Maggie urged, a reassuring look on her face.

Chuckling, Dana got to her feet and walked to her closet to grab a pair of worn sneakers, slipped them on and then led Maggie out of her room, making sure to grab her keys and lock the door on the way out.

——♡——

Dana had only ever been to London once before, that time being earlier that year when her mother had brought her over to have some advisory meetings at the University. They hadn’t had time to stay longer than they needed as it clashed with school, so Dana hadn’t gotten the chance to explore the city she was going to call home for the next few years. Maggie was staying at a little hotel just outside of the city’s business district and over the last week, Dana had gotten used to the bus routes and timetables as she travelled between the hotel and the campus.

Taking her mother’s hand, Dana helped her off the bus and onto a busy street, filled with people making their way to work as it was rush hour in the morning. Dana had done a little exploring on her own the previous days but hadn’t had much of a chance to look at the storefronts like they planned on doing today. She hadn’t brought much with her, only her suitcase and the majority of space in her mother’s too, as Maggie had promised they would go and buy things once they were here as it would be easier that way. And that way her belongings would still be at home for when she came back to visit during the school breaks.

They spent their morning walking around the different streets and Dana ended up getting a spare bedsheet, some new towels as well as some toiletries from a little boutique store that was filled with soaps and hair products that smelt like roses, Dana’s favourite. Maggie insisted on buying her a new bag and a few new outfits that Dana had loved the look of as well as all the stationary she would need for the first semester. Dana would be left with a savings account that her mother and father would deposit money into every month so she could have an allowance until she got a job. Maggie urged that she shouldn’t hurry in finding work, that she should take a while to settle into her new schedule and that there would always be money there for emergencies. Dana wasn’t one to spend money frivolously, only planning on using it for the essentials like food, school supplies and accidentals.

Maggie had already taken her to the campus shop to purchase the textbooks she would need, which Dana had felt guilty for as both her Anthropology and Biophysics textbooks had ended up costing quite a bit. Maggie had just waved her off, not hesitating to pay, but Dana intended to keep them as pristine as she could in hopes she could get some money back for them at the end of her degree and repay her parents.

After almost a full day of shopping, they ended up walking past a bookstore on the way back to the bus stop and Dana proposed they have a look inside. Dana smiled when her mother went straight to the murder mystery section - it was the first stop she went to in every bookstore, while Dana headed for the general fiction section. Dana’s fingers brushed over the covers as she tilted her head, looking over the titles with interest. Reading was always a good escape for her and she would never turn down a novel where she could lose herself in the pages for a while.

Dana walked her way slowly up the aisle, before she reached the end and caught sight of a blonde crouched down in the literature section, pulling a book off the shelf with black polished nails. Dana watched her flick the book over before she brushed her short hair back, revealing a set of piercing blue eyes. The girl opened the book and read a few lines before she rose to her feet, turning and catching Dana’s gaze.

Dana gave a polite smile as the blonde walked towards her, tapping her fingers against the cover of whatever book she had grabbed from the shelf. Stepping back slightly, Dana made room for the girl to walk past her in the aisle, but she bumped into the shelf softly in the process. The blonde smirked at her clumsiness and Dana watched her walk around the corner and out of eyesight. Way to look like an idiot, Dana.

Turning back around, Dana resumed looking at the titles before she heard her name being called and saw her mother making her way towards her, a Joanne Harris novel in her hands. Maggie had always been a fan of the murder mysteries ever since Dana could remember so it was no surprise that she had found another book to add to her collection.

“Have you found anything you like sweetheart?” Maggie inquired.

Shaking her head, Dana closed the distance between them as she reached and took the book out of her mother's hand, flipping it over to give a quick read of the back before she made an impressed face.

“Sounds like a good one. Come on, let me get it for you as a thank you present for everything you have done for me this past week.” Dana said with a grateful smile.

Maggie began to protest, but Dana cut her off with a scowl.

“Mum, please. It’s the least I can do. Besides, it will give you something to read on the plane home tomorrow.”

Maggie sighed and relented as Dana walked towards the counter to pay for the book with some of the crinkled bills she had in her jeans pocket.

After the book was purchased and they made their way to the bus stop, Dana and Maggie juggled their bags of shopping into the dorm room and spent the rest of the afternoon organising everything and putting things into their new home. Dana was impressed with how comforting they managed to make it look, though it still didn’t feel like home and she was sure it wouldn’t ever have that feel to it.

Just as it started to get dark, Dana walked her mother back to the bus stop and hugged her, promising to meet her the following morning at her hotel so they could go to the airport together. Dana wasn’t looking forward to sending her mother home and being left alone, but she was sure the feelings would get better the longer she stayed there by herself. Missy had told her that it would be good for her to go out on her own and spread her wings. Dana wasn’t sure what that meant yet, but hopefully, that would come to her in time too.

Once the bus carried her mother out of sight, Dana let out a shaky breath. The sour feeling in her stomach was hitting her with full force and she had to swallow down a rise of bile in her throat. Loneliness wasn’t something that agreed with her just yet, it would seem. Turning on her heels, Dana tucked her hands into her pockets as she walked back towards her dorm room, suddenly not having the energy to smile politely at the people walking around her. She just wanted to retreat to her room and not have to worry about people seeing her cry.

——♡——

Most of the people had started to arrive in the other rooms on her floor, so she didn’t have the communal bathroom all to herself as she had hoped for. Wrapping a towel around herself, Dana ducked her head and avoided the other girls in the bathroom who were chatting in a thick northern English accent that Dana couldn’t quite understand.

Hugging the towel to herself, Dana grabbed her toiletry bag and quickly walked across the hall to her room before slipping inside, resting her wet hair against the door. She hadn’t thought about bringing a change of clothes with her as everyone else had, and she felt lucky that her room wasn’t far and there were no people in the hall for her to make a fool of herself in front of.

Taking the towel off her body, Dana walked towards the small set of drawers next to her bed, drying her hair roughly as she rummaged through the second drawer to find her pyjamas, which consisted of a large navy shirt of her father’s she had taken a few years ago and a pair of checkered shorts. She threw the wet towel onto the bed, got changed, and hung the towel on the hook behind her door.

Suddenly, she felt very small and the constant dull chatter from the other dorm rooms did nothing to settle her feelings of sadness. Dana stood for a moment, feeling her wet hair seep into the back of her shirt and a warmness fill her eyes. Shaking her head, she quickly blinked the tears away.

“You can do this. Come on, Starbuck. You can do this.” It was a mantra she spoke to the empty room that gave Dana a tiny flicker of courage, picturing her father’s warm face and soft eyes that he only ever showed to his family.

Dana looked at the red lights on her clock and sighed when they read 9:47 pm. It was still early, but her body was almost acclimated to the change in time zones enough for her to begin to feel tired. Grabbing her copy of Moby Dick off her desk, she turned off her ceiling light, leaving only the slight warm glow from the small lamp on her bedside table. Maybe she could read for a little bit to get her mind off things, it usually worked at home. Getting into bed, Dana put the blankets over her knees as she rested back against the headboard, reaching over to her bedside table to grab her glasses and slip them on before she opened her book to the page where she left off a few days ago.

But no matter how many times she read the same lines over and over again, nothing seemed to sink in enough for her to focus on the story. Her stomach was churning and it was starting to make her frustrated. Huffing, Dana threw the book to the floor, and watched as it tumbled on the rug before it fell with half the pages tucked under the cover and now folded. Taking off her glasses, Dana held them in her hand and gripped them tightly between her fingers. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe she should just go back home right now and just choose a university closer to home.

Pulling the blankets back, she placed her glasses back under her lamp before she walked over to pick up her book from the floor, pausing when her fingers touched a piece of white paper, a stark contrast to the worn yellowing pages of her book. Dana picked the book up and pulled the piece of paper out from in between the pages. She couldn’t remember leaving any notes in this book.

Dana opened the folded paper and sucked in a breath when she immediately noticed her sister’s handwriting, a mass of messy nearly illegible script. Dana put her book down on the bed as she sat down, quickly grabbing her glasses so she could read the words her sister had written to her.

To Dana,

I wrote this for you when you first told me where you planned to study. You have your heart set on it, I can see that stupid little sparkle in your eyes when you talk about it. But I also know how you can doubt yourself, how you can think you don’t deserve things you’ve achieved through all your hard work and dedication to the things you want. You don’t need to doubt yourself, I know you can do this. You are strong and can be so determined when you want to be, even if it gets you into trouble from time to time. Trust yourself, Dana. I’m your big sister and I will be here for you, even if you screw up. But you aren’t going to do that. It seems like you got all the brains in the family and all of us are always trying to catch up to you. I’m only a very expensive phone call away.

You can do this,

Missy

Dana held the letter in her shaky fingers, not able to see the words anymore from the blurriness of the tears behind her glasses. She took them off and put them on the bed to rub her eyes, wiping away the tears now threatening to fall down her cheek. She wasn’t sure how Missy knew she would need words of encouragement, but she had a way of always knowing Dana better than she knew herself.

Sniffling, Dana looked back down at the note in her hand with a smile, somehow feeling Missy sitting right next to her even though she was hundreds of miles away. She would have to remember to tell her mother to thank Missy for her when she got home. Folding the note in half again, Dana held it to her chest for a moment and let out a breath, less shaky than a few moments ago. Missy believed in her. That was something they didn’t really speak about. Her relationship with her sister meant more to Dana than anything. They fought like crazy sometimes, but they both loved each other fiercely. That would never change.

Grabbing her glasses once again she put them back on the nightstand before she got back into bed, the note in her hand as she situated herself under the covers. Leaning over, Dana switched off her lamp and the room flooded with darkness. It took her eyes a few moments to adjust to vaguely see the outlines of solid objects as she snuggled down, slipping the note under her pillow before resting her head down. She could feel her wet hair seeping into the material of the pillow, but Dana didn’t care.

Lying on her back, Dana looked up at the ceiling, the silence now becoming deafening. Closing her eyes, Dana rolled over on her side, curled up, and wished sleep would take her away for a few restful hours.

——♡——

Sleep didn’t come at all. Dana hated that. Once the light of the early morning started seeping through her closed blinds, Dana turned her head to look at the clock. 5:06 am. Her mother’s flight would leave in a few hours so Dana figured she would just head over to the hotel now and spend a few more hours with her mother before she left. She couldn’t bear to lay in bed a moment longer anyway.

Sitting up, Dana threw the blankets off her and got to her feet, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror she had fixated on her wardrobe door. Her hair was a mass of fluffy red curls and her eyes were red from the tears she had shed as well as the lack of sleep. Dana ran her fingers through her hair before grabbing her toiletry bag and heading to the toilets to both relieve herself and try to make herself somewhat presentable for the day.

Dana returned with her hair brushed but still fluffy and curly, unable to do much else and she didn’t have the energy to style it today. She would deal with that tomorrow when classes started. Dana picked one of the new outfits her mother had bought her; a knee-length black denim skirt, red flannelette shirt and black singlet top. Dana slipped on her black converse, slightly dirty from years of wear, before she grabbed her bag and put in the essentials: wallet, book and a bag of gummy bears from her drawer. Something was telling her she might need the pick me up later when she eventually crashed from lack of sleep, and she was anticipating the final separation from her mother was going to be something that would knock her around too.

It took Dana a short walk in the brisk early morning air under the faint glow of the streetlights and a 15-minute bus ride to reach the hotel. Dana paused in the reception area, looking at the large clock on the wall. It wasn’t even 6 am yet. She knew her mother was an early bird, but maybe she should wait a little while longer before disturbing her.

Sitting down on one of the small lounge chairs in the lobby, Dana reached into her bag and pulled out her book. Crossing her legs, Dana opened the book and began to read, her eyes flicking up every couple of minutes to the clock. She would read for another hour or so and then make her way up to her mother’s room. They served breakfast around that time so Dana was sure she would be up before then.

The lobby had slowly begun to fill with the bustle of people over the next hour and Dana had put her book away in favour of people watching. Maggie had picked this hotel because of it being so central to London’s business district and now Dana understood that it was favoured by businessmen and women for the same reason. There was a steady flow of people dressed for work leaving and arriving and by the time the clock hit 7 am the lobby chairs had been filled with people drinking coffee and reading the morning papers. Dana smiled slightly at the nice old lady sitting next to her and grabbed her bag, slinging it over her shoulder and walking towards the elevators.

Stopping in front of her mother's room, Dana pulled her bag tighter onto her shoulder and raised her hand to knock a few times on the wood. It took only a few moments before Maggie opened the door, her hair sitting perfectly on her shoulders and the slight makeup on her face making her appear years younger. Maggie’s eyes went from happy to worried in a matter of seconds as she took in the rough appearance of her daughter.

“Dana, you’re here early…” Pausing, she reached for Dana, resting her hands on her upper arm, giving it a slight squeeze. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, mum, just a bit of a rough night that’s all. I was up so I thought I would come over a little earlier and spend some time with you before we have to leave for the airport.” Dana gave her a small smile as she rested her hand on her mother’s arm, rubbing it gently.

Maggie let her daughter into the room and shut the door as Dana flopped onto the neatly made bed, letting her bag fall to her feet. It was amazing how efficient her mother was, it was like no one had stayed in the room at all. Looking around, Dana saw how the room was spotless, all traces of her mother tucked away into the suitcase resting next to her on the bed, all except for her handbag resting on the chest of drawers closest to the door.

“When’s your flight again?” Dana asked, her voice soft.

Maggie grabbed her bag and walked over to Dana, removing the suitcase off the bed and making room for herself to sit down next to her daughter. Rummaging inside, she pulled out her boarding pass, handing it to Dana. Looking down at the ticket in her hand, Dana’s fingers ran over the time.

“10 am boarding time… 9 arrival time. So we don’t have too long then, huh?” Dana stated, giving the ticket back to her mother with sad eyes.

The tight feeling in her stomach that had been bothering her all morning was getting worse as the seconds ticked by. She wasn’t sure what she would do without her mother there with her. Even though she was staying across town, she was still within reach. But soon, she wouldn’t be. Maggie would soon be on a plane back home to the US and Dana would be rooted there, alone. She was getting tired of crying, but she could feel herself getting hot in the cheeks as she turned her head.

Maggie reached under Dana’s chin, turning her head back to look into her eyes. The moment Dana’s eyes met the soft warm eyes of her mother, she broke. Her bottom lip trembled as Maggie pulled her close, wrapping her arms protectively around the small child in her arms. Because in this moment that was how Dana felt. Like a child. And in some instances maybe she still was.

Sobbing, Dana buried her face into Maggie’s chest, enveloping herself in the familiar scent of jasmine and home. Maggie said nothing, just held her tightly, her hand coming up to rest on the back of Dana’s head, brushing her hair soothingly. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go, she needed to be strong like Missy had told her to be and spread her wings on her own. But it was so hard to have to eliminate the comfort only her mother could give her.

Dana wasn’t sure how long she stayed in her mother’s arms after she had stopped crying, but the gentle encouragement of Maggie’s arms guiding her away and saying, “Sweetheart, we need to get going,” told her that it must have been close to an hour.

Pulling out of Maggie’s embrace, Dana wiped her eyes and tucked her fly away hair behind her ears. Nodding silently, she got to her feet and helped her mother up off the bed too, out of courtesy more than necessity. Maggie gathered her handbag and boarding ticket as Dana put her bag back over her shoulder before reaching down to pull up the handle of Maggie’s suitcase. Maggie objected but Dana brushed her away with a small smile, her lips dry from the previous hour crying against her mother’s chest. Gathering the fragments of courage inside, she tried to stand a little taller than she felt.

“It’s the least I can do, mum. Come on, let’s go.”

#stella x scully #stella/scully #stella and scully #stella gibson #dana scully #txf #the x files #the fall #fanfiction #fanfic #my fanfiction #stellaxdanafic #stellaxdanaxrar

[alderoo]

A Better Captain

I’m reposting this because I wanted to edit the the post and tumblr said “no you’re on a computer now” so I couldn’t edit it. It’s here now though lmao

This was originally for the 2020 Summer Exchange on the LU Discord Server for Crab!

Description: Wild recovers a memory in Warriors’ Hyrule, and a certain concerned captain goes to see if he can help.

Also Sky just wants a nap he’s tired.

A03 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26189509

The sound of swords clashing echoed through the training yard. Warriors smiled to himself, enjoying the moment of contentment in his own era. Most of the trainees were new to him, but he didn’t mind that. Besides, Impa had taken it upon herself to help train while he was adventuring with the others. 

The band of heroes had been traveling for days, with hardly a break from the onslaught of infected monsters that suddenly started appearing more often. Even Wind had looked dead on his feet, despite being the most energetic of the bunch. Since then, the heroes had split up, some retiring to rooms, others lounging near the kitchens, eager for a nice meal.

Now, it was just him, Sky, and Wild, the only ones who had been given formal training. Wild couldn’t remember it, as far as Warriors knew, but that didn’t seem to matter much to the younger hero, who was watching the clearing with interest. Sky almost looked as if he was going to fall asleep standing up. 

“Chosen, you know that you can go nap in the guest rooms, right?” Warriors asked jokingly. Sky snorted, and turned to look at him, yawning. 

“We’ll see. I was half listening to the conversation this time,” Sky insisted, drowsily waving his hand through the air in a half-hearted attempt at redeeming himself. 

“Do you even know what we were talking about?” The Captain shot back jokingly. Sky thought for a moment. 

“Something about you telling Wild the proper technique for… something. Yeesh, maybe I should go take a nap,” 

“No, I have to know, have you never tried using a spear?” Wild asked, flipping through his slate and holding it up to show the other heroes. “It’s great! I could be attacking fifteen bokoblins and it’d be easy because I can keep them six feet away from me!” 

“Just wait until I tell the Rancher that you did that,” Warriors threatened, and Wild gasped, hooking the slate back onto his belt. 

“I said that I could have, not that I did. Get your facts straight, Captain,” Wild argued, failing to keep a straight face. Warriors snorted, and turned to face him.

“And for some reason I don’t doubt that you actually did that,” He retorted, shutting Wild up in a silence that meant he indeed had tried it Sky giggled, distracting the two from their conversation. 

“If it’s any consolation, I am very proficient with a whip,” He offered, smiling. Wild beamed, and started asking where he even found a whip in the first place. 

“You’ve never seen a whip before?” Sky questioned, baffled at the response. Wild nodded eagerly, and gladly held the offered item. He studied it with intense interest, and resigned to taking a picture of it on his slate, probably to show his Zelda when he got home. 

“Actually, I don’t think I’ve seen one like that either,” Warriors added, taking the whip from Wild. He was about halfway through inspecting it when a clang louder than the rest echoed throughout the clearing. 

Looking up, a trainee had been knocked to the ground by another, the sturdy armor scraping against the ground. Warriors watched as Impa seemed to offer some advice to the little recruit, and helped him up to try again. 

“If anything, I think that woke me up,” Sky said after a moment of silence between the three. 

“I doubt anything could- is Wild alright?” 

At a first glance, it would look like the champion was merely staring off into space, but Warriors and Sky knew better. They had seen it before, after all. His eyes were blank and far off, looking straight through the training yard and straight into a memory. 

“What do we do now? Should one of us get Twilight?” Sky nearly whispered, worrying his lip. Warriors thought for a moment. He could get through this, right? What if Wild was reliving a bad memory, and something happened? The captain had no idea, having not seen what it was like when Wild actually came out of his nostalgic stupor. 

“I don’t know. Let’s wait it out, then we’ll decide what to do. If things are bad, I’ll find the Rancher and you talk to him, if not, thank Hylia,” Warriors decided, resuming his focus on the training yard in what seemed like a small ditch attempt to take the attention off of their amnesiac friend. 

Warriors and Sky waited in silence for nearly three minutes when Wild returned. At first, all they heard was a little gasp from the boy, turning their heads to see his brows furrowed, eyes staring at the ground while he was lost in thought. 

“Wild, are you alright?” Warriors prompted, speaking gentler than he had in awhile. He stayed silent for a few moments before responding.

“Yeah. I’m just going to take a walk,” He murmured, turning away and exiting back inside the castle. 

“I’m going to take a guess here and say that it wasn’t a good memory,” Sky muttered, wearing a look of concern. Warriors sighed. 

“Do you think- maybe I could talk to him?” He offered, and Sky turned around faster than he had moved that entire morning. 

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? I’m pretty sure he punched Legend when he tried to wake him up from a nightmare. I think we should get Twilight,” Sky insisted, and Warriors shook his head.

“If he got a memory in the training yard, it must have been a memory of his training, and I know the most out of that than anyone. If anyone could help him, it’d be me,” Warriors replied, and Sky considered it. 

“Okay,” He mused. “Just be careful. Don’t make him any more upset,”

“I’ll do my best,” Warriors promised, and then turned to walk off in the direction of the champion. 

**********

Warriors found Wild in the courtyard. He was leaning against a wall, in the shade of a bush, hiding from the sights of everyone else. Warriors steeled himself, ready for a backlash. Taking a step forward, he purposely stepped loudly, noticing the way Wild’s ear twitched in recognition to his presence. 

The Captain sat down, a good three feet away from Wild, growing uncomfortable in the awkward and heavy silence. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asked hesitantly, glancing over in Wild’s direction. The person in question shrugged, and kept silent. “I can leave if you want me to, just ask. I wanted to see if there was any way that I could help,”

“What does it mean to you? Being a captain, I mean,” Wild murmured, taking Warriors by surprise. He shrugged.

“To me? It means a lot. After the war and everything, I take pride in continuing to protect my kingdom, just like we’re all trying to do. To others, I’m supposed to be a role model, someone to look up to and ask questions. Calm, collected, patient. It’s a lot of responsibility, but I’m happy to do it,” He answered after a moment of thought. Wild tensed, and for a moment Warriors tried to consider what Wild would say if Warriors had said something wrong. Wild laughed dryly, leaning his head back against the stone wall. 

“I don’t know how to feel about that answer. Didn’t you ever wonder why I was so quiet when I met you all?” He croaked, voice becoming hoarse. Warriors shifted uncomfortably.

“Well, I can’t say I didn’t, but for a time I didn’t talk too much either. My fairy friend did most of the talking for me back then,” He admitted, and Wild furrowed his brows. 

“Why’d you stop?” 

“Stress. The pressure of suddenly becoming a hero was the worst of it. Before that, all I can remember was people expecting more from me then they got. I poured myself into training, becoming the perfect knight I was supposed to be. I didn’t start talking more until I met some of the people from the other eras, especially all the sassy ladies that came through. You should have seen Time’s Zora Princess lecture me out,” He laughed at the memory, getting a small smile from Wild, before it faded, and he continued to speak. 

“I remembered my old captain. And I think- I think that I wanna tell you some things,” He finished, looking at Warriors, suddenly making the Captain feel very small. But nevertheless, Warriors nodded, and Wild started telling the story of his newest memory.

**********

Link coughed, nearly tripping as he did so when he was suddenly forced to dodge away from the knight in front of him. 

“Sloppy! Clean it up! You’ll never beat him like that!” The captain called out from his location in the shade. It was boiling hot, and Link was shaking under the practice armor that he wore. The opposing knight, however, stood tall, having switched out with another only minutes ago. 

The knight swung his sword again, and Link darted under him, making an attempt to strike him in the back, but was instead shut down as the knight turned and slammed the hilt into his side. Link’s twelve-year-old malnourished body didn’t stand a chance against the older knight, and he was knocked to the ground, a sword now pointed at his throat. 

“Worthless. Get up, and do it again,” The captain commanded, and Link tried to push himself up, he really did, but his arms ended up giving out, and he was rendered practically immobile on the ground, breathing so hard that his chest was burning with the effort. 

“I said get up. You’ll never stand a chance against the Calamity at this rate. Not even close. I’ll say it again, get up,” The captain ordered, and Link, out of sheer will, managed to pull himself to his feet, and leaned heavily against his sword, unable to raise it more than a few inches. 

Then, to Link’s surprise, Impa spoke up. 

“Captain, sir, he’s clearly dehydrated. He needs to rest before he gets seriously sick,” She pleaded, and the captain turned to sneer at her. 

“This is not your decision. You may be becoming the Sheikah Chief, but this is not your place to speak,” He retorted, struggling to keep up his half-hearted calm demeanor. At that point, Link was sure that he was delirious, as the Master Sword he was leaning on seemed to be humming in his mind. Wait- that could’ve been his headache. Just thinking about it reminded him of the ache in his skull. 

Before he knew it, his vision swarmed with exhaustion, and Link felt weightless as he found himself with his head in Impa’s arms. Her mouth was moving, but Link couldn’t hear what she was saying as he gave in to the abyss. 

**********

“If I ever see that son of a bitch, I think I might kill him,” Warriors spat out once Wild finished retelling the memory. 

“He’s dead, Wars,” He reminded, and Warriors scoffed. 

“Hylia knows that won’t stop me,” He said, turning to face Wild. The captain’s gaze softened when he realized that that wasn’t what Wild needed at the moment, as tears were beginning to prick at the corners of his eyes. “You know you’re safe here, right?” 

Wild nodded. 

“And you know that I’d never treat you like that, right?” Warriors continued, voice getting softer. Wild nodded again, and Warriors took the opportunity to sit shoulder to shoulder, bringing his knees to his chest. 

“It’s just, sometimes I feel guilty that there are parts of my life now that I like more than my life before. That I could see my house, and Flora and all my friends, and even though I know I had a family then too, I could not want to go back to before,” Wild explained, and Warriors sighed. He knew nothing about this stuff. So why did he think that he was qualified to help Wild? Well, he didn’t think that, he was too eager to try and help.

“Well, I know I’m not Twilight, and I’m usually on the pep talk side of things, not necessarily giving advice, but I think that’s okay this time around. Things happen for a reason, Wild, and whatever happened with the Calamity wasn’t your fault, and yet it changed so much for you. I think it’s amazing that you know that you’re here now, and that you’ve made the most of it,” Warriors assured, nudging playfully at Wild’s shoulder. “And besides, I also think I’d take you now over you before any day,” 

Wild smiled, and sniffed, rubbing at his eyes before bringing up his arms and hugging himself. 

“I think I’m just happy to have a better captain,” He said, half to himself and half to Warriors. The captain in question beamed, and wrapped his scarf around the other’s shoulders, feeling content as the younger hero leaned into the warmth. 

“We should go inside, it’s getting cold,” Warriors suggested as a cool breeze blew by. “We can join Sky on his nap. Hylia help him if he hasn’t gone inside yet, you saw him earlier,” 

Wild giggled, a rare sound, but one that filled Warriors with pride nevertheless. He snorted, and helped his friend up, his scarf still dangling from Wild’s shoulders. He turned the way he came, and Warriors followed, taking one last look at the courtyard for good measure. 

To his surprise, he found Twilight, standing at the other end, smiling at him proudly. A smile that made Warriors feel warm even in the cold evening air. 

#linked universe #lu warriors #lu wild #my writing

[filthy-reckless-rp]

♛ Spotted on the Upper East Side…

Name: Alexandra Vandervort Pronouns: She/Her Age: 20 years old Hometown: Upper East Side, NY Occupation: TBD Social Status: Insider (on thin ice) Faceclaim: Meghann Fahy

Who Is Alex?

“Tattoos and a switchblade attitude, snakebite heart with a bubblegum smile.”

There’s my girl. Did you miss me, Alex? I know you and I have had our fun. You’ve never been boring, working hard to create the reputation we know and love today. I admit, I was a sucker for your drama, the tables you flipped, the scandalous, romantic encounters you orchestrated. You’ve been the master of spin for as long as I can remember. You love to keep people talking, shaking their disapproving heads and waggling their fancy fingers. You hate being a part of it, don’t you? The ‘scandalous elite’, the Upper East Siders. Well, I’m sure your tears have dried over it by now especially considering you have a new, ah, problem. Well, focus, shall we say. I’m sure the gasps could have been for miles around when your B-A-B-Y news hit the grapevine. Did we ever find out who the daddy was? I’ll check the polls before dropping by to say ‘hi’. See you soon, sweetie. XOXO ---Gossip Girl

A Little Extra

Alexandra Vandervort was supposed to be the perfect little lady. At least, that was her parents’ hope. They found out very early on however that Alex was never going to be a lady and what she’s perfect at is effing shit up. She’s always had a curious, adventurous, wild heart that has clashed time and time again with the Upper East Side. Alex is always scheming, thinking up hilarious pranks to pull or just how she can ruin the next big event... It’s a full time job, basically. She’s opinionated, argumentative and single minded to the point of recklessness. If it wasn’t for Alex’s parents making such generous donations to Constance Billard, she would have been expelled about a hundred times over. Alex craves to be her own person, free of the crushing weight of misguided expectations. Dare to dream, right? Nate Archibald could certainly relate. Despite her penchant for trouble, Alex had excellent grades and even tutored the classmates she couldn’t stand when necessary. Julliard was always the dream for her though, always.  Always ready to dance, have fun and flirt with some pretty face, Alex has never let her heart get involved. Besides, crushes are embarrassing and feelings? Oh boy, don’t even get her started. What turned out to be the real thing she should have been on lookout for was bonfire beach parties. And a pretty face. Alex kept it under wraps (literally in those oversized coats) for as long as possible but thanks to her cousin’s well meaning, drunk, big mouth... The whole Upper East Side found out that Alexandra Vandervort was pregnant. She refused to tell anyone- her parents included- who the father was. Her parents were in a stand off with her and it ended in them telling her to get out then. Thankfully, BFF Jesse Walker was there to welcome her home and he, and her closest friends, were more than willingly to look out for her. Alex was- is- scared and grateful, and can’t believe she’s going to be a mom. Right now though? She is heavily pregnant, deferred from her dream school and pretty much ready to eat anyone who looks at her the wrong way.

What Does Gossip Girl Have On Them?

Alex had a pretty big secret to keep, one that she absolutely couldn’t risk coming out so there was no way she was going to help with the GG Takedown. She wished Jesse good luck but nope! She and GG have a fraught relationship.

Connections

Aaron Vandervort - the big brother. They’re still as close as ever even if he has always been exasperated by her.

Scarlett, Sapphire and Sophia Vandervort - the cousins! They were never close growing up, Alex distancing herself from them. Things changed though, especially with Sapphire who has been her closest confidante and friend throughout the pregnancy. Well, until she ran away.

Jesse Walker - bestie! Jesse is her fave, her roommate, her best bro in the world.

Vanessa Abrams - tale as old as time. Two super cool girls from opposite side’s of the tracks meet and boom! Instant chemistry. A really good friend.

Xander McAllister - ugh, remember how embarrassing crushes are? Enter Xander. The Vandervort-McAllister family feud has been going on for as long as Alex can remember but she just couldn’t help it. Her parents are probably just worried he’s the father or something.

#staring cw #t #c: alexandra vandervort #aaron #scarlett #sophia #jesse #vanessa #xander #ues #insider #vandervort

[remedialpotions]

Tomorrow

ffn | ao3

He remembers their first kiss, that chaotic clash of lips and noses and bodies and adrenaline flooding through him. And the second, of course, a softer and sweeter one, in the quiet of an empty Gryffindor common room. In the very beginning, he couldn’t help but quantify it, seeking tangible evidence of what he wanted desperately to believe: that she wanted him, continued to want him, chose him to be hers. Other firsts, too, are burned permanently into his brain: her hands sneaking into his trousers; her knickers on the orange carpeting of his bedroom; her back arching with unbridled delight. But at some point in those weeks after the war, he lost track, and  now when he looks back, it’s all blurred together into a rush of happiness that most of the time seems too good to be true.

At times he worries that it is, that somehow she’ll slip through his fingers and he’ll wake up one morning to find that he never really had her at all - or worse, that the world will find a way to wrench this away from them. It always feels like he’s on borrowed time.

So they’ve snuck away from Sunday lunch at the Burrow to hide in the apple orchard. Even though it’s one of those cool, foggy days for which England is famous, he’s content to lend her his jumper and let goosebumps rise along his skin, because it means he’s with her, and that’s all that matters. 

All is calm between them. They’ve found their favorite little spot at the edge of the orchard, lounging against the trunk of a tree. Hermione’s head rests on his shoulder, her denim-clad legs slung casually over his lap. Her hand slips into his, and as he interlocks their fingers together, he notices ink stains on her fingertips. 

A pang of melancholy shoots through him.

“Have you been revising already?” he asks, causing her head to lift up from his shoulder.

“I supposed I should get started on things,” she replies, only a little bit defensive, “I took a whole year off, I can only imagine how behind I am-“

“Mhmm,” Ron interrupts with a barely-suppressed grin. “You’re so behind that McGonagall’s made you Head Girl. That’s definitely it.”

Her eyes narrow at him. “I just think I ought to be prepared. Now that it’s NEWT year, there’s so much more reading, and I’ve had to start on the schedules for prefect duties too. There’s just a lot to do.”

“And what about ‘spew’?” This only deepens her scowl, but he delights in it. “You starting that up again?”

“You mean S-P-E-W?” she says, tone haughty, before heaving a sigh. “I’m not sure, honestly. My two most active members won’t be there with me.”

“Your most active members?” chuckles Ron. “We only joined under duress.”

She scoffs. “You were hardly under duress-“

“We were!” he exclaims. “You came marching in with your badges, told us we were joining and demanded two Sickles from us. Didn’t have much of a choice, did we?” He laughs again at the recollection. “You even gave us jobs - I was treasurer, wasn’t I?”

“According to the governing documentation, yes, you were,” she confirms with a nod. “Harry was secretary, but he was awful at it. He never took minutes at any of the meetings.”

She joins him in laughter, then, and leans into him, and for a second everything is perfect.

“Like I said,” Ron grins, dropping her hand to wind his arm around her shoulders. Idly, his fingers trace random shapes into the fabric of the jumper. “We were under duress.”

Hermione purses her lips as she looks up at him. “So you’ve changed your tune again, then, from a couple months ago?”

“What do you mean?”

Her eyes are shining now, alight with mirth. “I seem to recall a certain someone being very concerned about the welfare of the Hogwarts elves.”

The memory crashes over him like it’s done countless times since it happened: the Room of Requirement, the castle shaking around them, and the never-ending queue of students escaping to the Hog’s Head.

“I just wanted them safe, that’s all,” he says simply. “It’s not like I was standing round trying to think of ways to impress you.“ He sets a hand on her knee, squeezing lightly. “Though, it looks like it worked.”

Ron smiles at her, but his amusement fades when she doesn’t return it, instead puzzling up at him. “That’s not why I kissed you.” As his stomach twists, she adds, “not really, anyway. It didn’t have anything to do with S-P-E-W.”

His fingers stop moving across her shoulder. It had seemed so simple, months ago, when his mind was spinning to process the turn of events: he’d finally done the right thing. Finally proven himself worthy. Had put the last missing piece into place, right in the nick of time, just as everything else was falling apart.

“It is that I looked so dashing about to charge into battle, then? Was that it?”

His attempt at humor falls flat. She’s still contemplative, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere in the middle distance. As Ron watches, her teeth scrape over her lower lip.

“I thought we were going to die.”

The words hang there between them as something tightens painfully in Ron’s chest. Everything about this thing with Hermione has been so marvelously unexpected, right down to the fact that it’s happening at all, but he still didn’t think he would hear that. 

He’s not sure what he even thought she would say. Something perhaps about how she can’t live without him, or maybe something remarkably Hermione-ish about how he had finally ticked all the boxes of her boyfriend criteria and was now deemed suitable. Just not imminent demise. 

Not as the main reason, anyway.

“So did you,” she says gently when he remains quiet. “You said ‘it’s now or never’.”

“I know.” Thoughts swirl through his anxious mind, slowly formulating themselves into something worth speaking. “I just thought it was about more than ‘we’re about to die, so I may as well’.”

She recoils, clearly stung, and pulls her legs roughly off his lap; his arm drops off of her shoulder. “That’s not what I was thinking at all, actually-“

“Well, then - what if it never happened?” he presses on, even as he can see, as though he’s watching himself from above, that he’s on the verge of ruining the best thing he’s ever had. “What if that battle never happened, or I hadn’t said what I did? Would…” The words stick momentarily in his throat. “Would we even be here right now?”

“If that battle hadn’t happened, we’d probably still be starving in the woods somewhere with Harry,” she says, fingers toying with the lush grass between them. “But I don’t really know, because it did happen, and it changed everything.”

“Yeah, it did,” he agrees. “But is it - are you saying that everything changed but you want to… go back to how it was?”

“No,” she says, with such force that he recoils. “No, of course not-” She shakes her head, baffled. “Ron, we’ve - we’ve been having sex, we’ve said ‘I love you’ to each other-”

He holds his hands up, at a loss. “People get caught up in things-”

She goggles at him. “I have no idea how you can think for even a second-”

“Because you just said you thought we were going to die-“

“So did you-“

“But then we didn’t.” The words fall heavy between them. “Now we’ve got our whole lives ahead of us, and I’m…” 

He hesitates, because baring his soul isn’t something he’s ever been remotely comfortable doing, but then he figures that there’s no harm in honesty. If he’s going to lose her, he at least wants to know that nothing’s been left unsaid.

“I’m scared.” He can feel her eyes on her, though he can’t bear to look. “I’m scared that now it’s not ‘I’m going to kiss him because we’ll be dead within the hour’, it’s this thing that you’ve done that has consequences now-“

“Consequences?!”

“Yeah, consequences. You kissed me ‘cause didn’t think you’d ever have to deal with it afterward, and I…” He exhales heavily through his nose. He can feel himself shaking. “And I’m scared you got more than you bargained for.”

There’s not a sound to be heard, save the occasional chirping of birds and the trickling of the nearby stream. Beside him, Hermione shifts onto her knees and sits back on her heels. Her hands land on his thigh, warm and grounding despite the damp chill in the air. 

“Ron.” Her voice is barely above a whisper. “When you said ‘it’s now or never’... what did you mean by that?”

He forces himself to meet her gaze and finds only concern there, only affection. 

Maybe it’s not completely bungled after all.

“I just didn’t want to die having never kissed you.” Of their own accord, his hands slip around hers. “My life can be complete without a lot of things, but it wouldn’t have been complete without that.”

Hermione swallows, head bobbing in a shaky nod. And yet, beneath the nerves, there’s a glimmer of happiness. 

“I felt the same way - feel the same way. I still do. When you said what you said, about the elves, and Dobby...” The corners of her lips twitch into a faint semblance of a smile. “It didn’t really have anything to do with them specifically. It just reminded me of how wonderful you are, and - and why I love you. I just couldn’t see the point in waiting anymore.”

He picks up her hand, kisses the back of her knuckles. “I love you too.”

Using her hand to tug her close, he leans in to kiss her, but just as their lips meet, she starts laughing against his mouth.

“Do you really think that I just start kissing people for the sake of it whenever I’m in mortal danger?” Even as she’s teasing him, the smile she gives him is downright adoring. He’s not sure what made him question this for even a second, because the proof is right there in front of him. “Is that really what you thought happened?”

“No, of course not,” he laughs along with her. “I just reckoned…” He pauses as the right words slowly come to him. “I guess I just never thought we’d actually have this.”

Her smile fades. “Ever?”

He shrugs. “Somewhere along the way, I just stopped letting myself picture any kind of future, especially a good one, and this - I just reckoned this would be another thing that went wrong. And I wouldn’t get to have everything I want with you.” 

Hermione looks at him, eyes dark and intense, and then swings a knee over him to straddle his lap. With hands half-covered in maroon wool, she cups his face and presses her lips firmly to his. He sinks into it, tension seeping out of him at her touch: it really is going to be okay. It’s the first time he’s actually let himself believe it, even with the war firmly behind them. It finally feels safe to let that hope rise above all of the uncertainty and the anxiety that’s had a hold on him for so long. The future doesn’t just consist of stolen minutes and hours and days anymore. It’s weeks and months and years, and she’s in every single one of them.

“I think you’ve actually gone a bit mad,” says Hermione fondly as her hands slide down to the sides of his neck.

“Yeah, well.” Ron tugs lightly on the sides of her jumper. “Whose fault is that?”

“Just for the record,” she goes on, taking that lofty tone that should drive him mad but that he actually loves, “I kissed you because I want all of that-”

“I know, I know.” He steals a quick kiss, smiling when she leans in for more. “Reckon I already did, it’s just hard to believe sometimes.”

“For me, too,” she admits. Her fingertips graze along his shoulders, down to the scarred skin of his forearms, and she tilts her head in alarm at him. “Ron!”

“What?”

“You’re freezing!”

Another shrug. “A bit, maybe-”

“And here I am hogging your jumper, we really ought to go inside-”

“But I don’t really care,” he tells her plainly. “I just wanted to spend as much time with you as I could.”

“We’ve got time.” Her voice is soft, reassuring, soothing the last edges of his self-doubt. “We’ve got plenty of it now.”

He considers this. They’re eighteen years old, and life stretches out ahead of them with no end in sight. Perhaps he doesn’t actually have to grasp desperately at every second anymore.

“Right.” He pats the sides of her legs. “Get up, then. It’s about to be time for lunch, anyway.”

She clambers off of him, and they rise to their feet, brushing stray blades of grass from their jeans as they walk toward the house. He does feel a bit less frantic now. Hogwarts still looms in the future, but there’s still so much more to come. 

As they traipse through the garden, Hermione’s hand worms into his, her other one wrapping around his upper arm. He looks down to see her beaming at him.

“I was just thinking,” she says, “that just because I’ll be away, it doesn’t mean you can’t still be involved in S-P-E-W. Maybe you can even head up the London chapter-“

Ron holds up a hand to stop her. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

#romione #rhr #ron weasley #hermione granger #romione fanfic #my writing #battle of hogwarts #inspired by a post on tumblr that led to a post on reddit that made me think about how great their first kiss really is #all I know how to write lately for these two is summer-after-the-war stuff #I just like them in a new relationship figuring it out and all blissed out on each other

[7hyuns]

million dollar man

johnny x reader

warnings; nsfw, slight angst, social class discrimination (? kinda), semi public sex

requested; yes a reallyyy long time ago by @cloroxteen sorry and thank you <3

a/n; please appreciate her this took so long

word count; 17.8k 

songs; when the party’s over - billie eilish, million dollar man / without you / music to watch boys to - lana del rey

The ceiling was leaking again. Noticing made a sudden fatigue creep into your body, your movements slowing to a stop as you stared up at where the droplets of water began to form before falling. You wondered how long the hole had been there, if it even was a hole or simply damp again, how much it would cost to fix. Whatever it was, you knew it would be too much for you to afford. As it seems everything always is. Even with taking a home that was so closely compact to the industrial part of your city, it seemed nothing was at all cheaper.

You thought how fitting it seemed that you had gotten a leak in your ceiling just as fall began. That gave you far less time than you were going to need to scrounge up the money to get it fixed, especially if you wanted to get it done before the threat of part of your ceiling caving in became all too real. Though you heavily doubted that was something you’d be able to do, and considered the all-too-likely possibility of having to do it yourself this time.

At least last year you had been able to work two jobs, and relatively comfortably considering the length the situation of Chicago’s businesses had been going on. It was only just before Valentine’s day that something had gone awfully wrong at one of the stores you worked at, and it found itself closed down. Forty-eight people had lost their jobs that day, which seemed to make finding another forty-eight times harder in the city. For a while you had thought getting by with the one job would be enough if you were cautious – and bought nothing you didn’t absolutely need – but even that seemed a strain these days.

Not only was it fatiguing to see your ceiling giving up on you, it was painful to think that with the way you were living, you would never have anything you wanted. Even if you did eventually work enough to have the things you needed, which seemed a push from where you were standing watching a puddle form on your kitchen floor. In that moment, living had never seemed more bleak.

You walked around the splattering water to reach the cupboard underneath your kitchen sink, looking for the rusted tin bucket that you’d kept from the other times this had occurred. Dropping the bucket with a clash of hollow tin onto wet tile floors, you heard the drops begin to echo onto the surface. Taking a wary glance at the thin puddle on the floor, you realised you would be better off cleaning it up before you relaxed. You couldn’t find the energy, however, and instead made the short trip from facing the back of your couch to sitting down in the small space of the attached living room. Even these short strides seemed too much for you to comprehend doing, and that feeling remained despite you already tucking your legs up underneath you as you sat on the worn fabric.

The couch itself had seen too many years since it had been gifted to your parents on their wedding day to still be considered comfortable by any means. That was only if you stayed still on it for too long, though, which seemed the only saving grace you could find in it. Much like all of your other large furniture items that you’d filled the two main rooms of your ground-floor apartment with, you hadn’t paid for it. Or even picked it out yourself. Your parents had been kind enough to give you the old stuff that had been lingering in the garage of your childhood home for fear of losing the memories attached to them.

Thinking of them when you had a moment to yourself made you suddenly regretful. For what, you weren’t sure. Maybe being away from them both seemed a better idea at the time you left, or maybe you missed the simplicity of life on the further outskirts of the city. Maybe it was only a longing for your childhood to come back so you didn’t have to think about all of the grown-up things for yourself anymore. You had regretted running off what seemed so far since the day you had done it, but there was nothing more you could do now. Sometimes you could barely remember why you had moved to the city anyway. Chasing big dreams, or following someone who was chasing big dreams. One of you had managed to make those big dreams become real, had turned them into a tangible thing.

Looking around your cosy home, it seemed simple to tell that the one who had struck out wasn’t you. You supposed, with the ever-so-wonderful hindsight, moving straight into the city by yourself at a time so obsessed with glitz and glamour hadn’t been such a fine idea. Though you knew the largest reason you had followed the someone else into the city in the first place had been to earn your own glitz and glamour life-style.

Sitting on your parents couch in a flat with a leak in the ceiling, you were beginning to think you should have done what all other American girls did when they were seeking success and education, and moved to New York. Even your friends had spoken dreamily of the big city, saying that’s the only place you could ever hope to find real culture and, as most of your friends insisted, real jazz.

Chicago wasn’t a place of real culture or real jazz, not in any shape or form. You could guess it was warmer in New York than it was in Chicago, too. If you had flourished in a certain area, or if you had a passion, maybe you could have taken the chance and followed it all the way to New York. But you didn’t and you hadn’t. Instead you had moved further into your home city at the worst possible time and found yourself, along with all of the friends who had stayed, shrouded in fear and crime.

You had to remind yourself that it wasn’t all bad. You had to, because otherwise life seemed far too bleak to keep up with. The light rain that was pattering against your window would get worse, you knew. If not over the course of the night then in the morning, surely. The thought filled you with subdued fear. You wondered if the bucket would be enough to keep your stable through the entirety of the fall and into the winter. That was a tricky line to walk, though. If you left it too long, the ceiling would cave, just as the man who had fixed it last time had insisted.

The night seemed to be taking too long, and there was too much weighing on your mind to consider staying awake any longer. You rose up and took long, dragged footsteps the short few paces to cross over the door-frame into your bedroom. You didn’t bother even turning the light on, feeling as though the weight of the world was suddenly resting on your shoulders. You kicked the door shut behind you, tugging your work short off and stepping out of your skirt to pull an older, looser shirt on to cover yourself.

When you had finally crawled into your bed it seemed colder than you had expected. Even the sheets felt icy and uncomfortable when you tugged them up to cover yourself. There’s little more I can do, you reminded yourself, closing your eyes and hoping for warmth. The thought made you want to laugh, with its consistency in your daily thinking. I hope, I hope, I hope. But what good had that been doing you in the last few years, really? You wondered whether the hope of meeting success had been enough for the boy you’d followed. Judging from where he’d made it in such a short span of time, you could only imagine it had been far more than hope that had given him what he had now.

 ///

The books had been handled badly in, “The Ox,” for such a long time that even with having worked there for over a year, there seemed so much to do. The owner, who was only ever briefly glimpsed around the bar once a month gathering his reports, never wearing a name tag, was called Sicheng. You had never found the confidence to ask too many questions about the man – what his last name was (though you had discovered within the pages of the book that his full name was Dong Sicheng and he was around your age), where he was from, why he seemed to have a lack of interest in his own business – though that was the same for many people.

Men in bars loved to talk to anyone that would listen, which happened to be the most difficult job of the women pouring their drinks. And, as usual, women – without the exemption of yourself – loved to gossip about the most interesting things they could find out. The happiest moments in your daily life was when you would be preparing to go home, or even when one of the women would spend their break in your mini-office instead of having to leave the building into the fall chill, would seek you out to tell you something exciting they had learnt. Dong Sicheng had become a natural inquisition for most of the people who had him as a boss, as there seemed to be so little available to learn about him. All they had known upon first getting their jobs was his name and that he wasn’t from Chicago, or even America at all.

Over time, with the information the women working at the bar had collected, you’d put together a vague, blurry image of Sicheng in your mind. His name was Dong Sicheng but oftentimes in letters he received he was referred to as Winwin. He was around your age, he was from China though you didn’t know where. And he was very anti-social. Once a month was about as often as he’d show his face. That didn’t seem too strange considering what it was the women said the men who grew too brave in their drunkenness for their own good.

Most of them said he was part of a gang that had come over from China to work with the American gangs, though you didn’t know how realistic that seemed. All the stories about him seemed in ultimate agreement that he worked in some kind of dirty business. Though, with the state the city was in, you weren’t sure you would confidently say that any business wasn’t like to be dirty. Either way, whenever you looked over the books, you knew that something was out of the ordinary. Too many odd payments were made or received with no reason given, or a short, ‘donation,’ if anything. You didn’t think it was probable that anyone would be making donations to some bar on a main street of Chicago when there must have been hundreds of others in the surrounding area.

You stretched out in your seat, staring blankly at the box of papers you had to sort through today. You didn’t think it would too difficult a task, and you thought if you moved quickly you could get it finished before the half-way mark of the day. Not that that meant too much, your work day would still end at the same time whether you rushed through it or not.

Despite knowing it was a littler amount than you had expected, it didn’t seem to make the first two hours pass any faster. By the first time in the day that one of the women who worked on the bar slipped into your office, every blink was beginning to feel like dragging sandpaper over your eyes. You could still feel the ever-present worry about the tin bucket on your kitchen floor; whether it had overflowed even though the rain was only light today, whether it had been knocked over by some mysterious force.

The woman had been working there just under a year, and was, to your surprise, younger than you. She had come from London hoping to find adventure in the ‘new world,’ which to her, had only been Chicago as of yet. Instead of finding her hoped for adventure, she had found a job in a bar that was possibly run by a gang member, but seemed altogether too quiet to keep her satisfied.

She was frowning when she walked into your working room, her brows drawn and eyes shying away from yours. You rose your eyebrows at her as she began to search the room for something else to look at. “Ada?” She offered you a tight-lipped smile. “Is everything alright?”

“No, I, I need to ask a favour.” She mumbled.

“Alright.”

When she looked at you, you made yourself smile reassuringly at her. This seemed to give her a shred more confidence, though she still seemed hesitant to ask. “I forgot to pick my medicine up this morning.” She declared, looking straight at you.

The difficulty she seemed to have asking the favour made you feel an odd sense of fondness rise in your chest. You smiled warmly at her. “Do you need to go and get it now?” She nodded. “So, what can I do to help you?”

She shuffled on her feet, tangling her hands with one another. “I was wondering if, you know if you had less work to do, if you could watch the bar while I go.” She paused, waiting to see if you reacted. “I would be quick! Not any more than an hour, I promise. It’s alright if you can’t, I could just, go, I could go later.”

You judged by her insistence on going now that going later wasn’t so open an option to her. You made yourself smile again to soothe her worries before you stood up. “It’s fine, I’ll be finished with this work within an hour, anyway. I’d be bored silly with nothing else to do.”

This seemed to soothe her enough for her to nod, though still not without hesitation. “An hour.” She repeated, though you assumed that was more to cool her own guilt.

You nodded. “I’ll see you then.”

After offering you an apologetic smile, she turned and left the room. The click of her short heels resounded until she reached the room where all of the workers left their belongings in the morning. When she was gone, you fell back into your same sense of empty tiredness. The fatigue wasn’t a calling for sleep, more so for some miracle gravitational shift that would change your life for the better. Or simply enough for me to not have to return home to a ruined ceiling. The sense of dramatics in your tired eyes made you wonder how much longer you had before that worry was for your whole home. Even the far away idea of it made your stomach turn in anxiety.

You pushed yourself up away from the table, flattening your palms to provide yourself some stability. For a minute, you stayed like that; breathing deeply and expecting the worst of your future. Yes, let’s follow an old friend to inner-city Chicago on the off-chance that we’ll find the same glamour he undoubtedly will. What a fine idea! And what a find outcome it had evidently been, standing in a room that smelt of woodchips and liquor, desperate to return home to a flat that smelt of mould and old furniture.

Once the angry butterflies having their own little riot in your stomach had relaxed, you stood up straight, and heaved in a deep sigh. “An hour,” you reminded yourself, though interacting with drunk men didn’t seem like it had an amount of time to take before it became awful. It’s only the start of the night, you cooled yourself. You turned, pausing only to wish that you were hidden away in the comfort of you bed once more, before walking out in the main area of the bar.

Despite it being early into the night, it was swirling with movement. The band that Sicheng had play in the bar for most of the week were in full swing, though the awe of their music was drowned out by a collection of drunken young men singing along. You slipped to move past them without alerting them of your presence. Finding your way to behind the safety of the bar at the back of the room proved a tasking challenge, with such a mess of bodies and drinks being jostled and knocked, creating even more of real mess that someone would have to clean when this place emptied later. You felt a stab of pity for them, seeing an older man spill half a pint of his beer onto the floor after stumbling into one of his group.

When you finally shut the little gate behind you, you steadied yourself again. The rising noise of music mingling with the murmuring cacophony of too many conversations happening at once was making your ears ring. Fall had meant the lights had to be turned on earlier in the day, with no natural lighting being enough for the workers to find their way around. Even that seemed to make your head spin. Reminder: no more looking for second jobs as a bar maid.

Someone called out at the bar’s edge, an older man with slicked back hair and a three-piece on, though he seemed to have lost the jacket to his suit. The other girl seemed busy loading a set of drinks up onto a tray, so you exhaled heavily and turned to face the man properly.

Putting on a customer friendly smile made you feel the sleepiness settle more obviously on your shoulders. How much longer can I carry my life on my back? That’s not where it’s supposed to be. But that’s where it was, and if you ever wanted it to be anywhere else, you had to work for it. “What can I get you tonight, sir?”

The man smiled, and you tried to guess whether this would go smoothly or make you wish you were anywhere else all over again. If there was any hint of your distaste for the possibility of him being anything other than amiable, he took it. A friendly smile lifted his lips. “Just two whiskeys, please.”

Your heart settled a bit. Nodding, you turned to prepare the drinks. The smell of the whiskey was potent as soon as you pulled the top of the bottle, like the smell of men mingled with the ash-trays that decorated the tables in here. You poured an equal amount into the two glasses and turned to place them on the bar in front of the man.

He smiled again, dropping the money he was clutching in his hand down onto the counter. He inclined his head in the way men said, ‘thank you,’ when they didn’t particularly want to say it. You supposed that was better than nothing. As much as there was no shortage of people crowding, ‘The Ox,’ they all seemed fairly too preoccupied with there conversations, or with shouting along to the band’s music, to be making frequent trips to the bar. That wouldn’t be good for Sicheng you supposed, but it was something you were grateful for.

Then the door opened, and the bruised blue light of the sky outside was visible again. The noise from the street leaked in only slightly, just by the sound of some argument happening on the street. Take the back when you go home today. Last time, you had been blocked in by the police breaking up another fight-gone-violent, and then by a crowd of people desperate for something to see. You weren’t in the mood for that to be how your day ended again.

You glanced over to the large group of men walking in. They were all done-up nicely; three-piece suits with fine jackets that made you assume they were businessmen, slicked back hair, and cigarettes hanging from their lips. You could have written them off normal customers for a bar like this. Though on your second glance you saw enough to make your stomach drop again.

He was dressed much the same as all of his other companions; his suit was a dull grey, his hair was pushed off of his face, though some of it had slipped from its position, and he blew a cloud of smoke from his lips as he looked over to the bar. You thought, I wish I was invisible. You thought, I hope he thinks I look as good as I think he does.

Either way, you wished your were busy with something else, so you didn’t look like you were blatantly staring at him. It seemed to late for a regret like that one, though. He had seen you, and was making it no secret. You were sure if anyone was paying attention, they could see his eyes blatantly take in your figure, or as much of it as he could with the bar covering you. He turned to the group where they were picking out somewhere to sit, and shouted something over to one of them. The boy looked younger than he was, and laughed at whatever comment he made, nodding and turning to say something to another one of them.

Then he started walking towards you. The crowds of people seemed less of a problem to him than they had been for you, as he simply walked calmly on his path to the bar. When someone stumbled into that path, he didn’t seem to notice them at all, letting them tumble their way back out of it. The ease seemed attractive to you, though you guessed it was because you wished you had that same sense of confidence. Just like when you were growing up alongside him, you had to remind yourself he only had the confidence that you didn’t because he was a man. Boys were always brought up to think of themselves as important, even if they weren’t from the city. Girls, well, that was less of a concern with girls.

By the time he reached the bar, the bitterness you had felt at the back of your throat for most of your childhood had returned. You suddenly wished he wasn’t there, that you’d never had to of seen him again. Especially not when I’ve spent all day thinking of my lack of success. Seeing him in his fancy suit with his fancy friends felt like salt was being poured into your wound.

He grinned as he reached the bar, looking you up and down again. When his eyes met yours again, you held back the pride of having him look so blatantly and pleasantly surprised at the way you looked. You made yourself raise your eyebrows expectantly instead. “What can I get you, sir?” You repeated the question as you’d said it earlier. That way you knew he couldn’t interpret it a different way. Is it different? You weren’t sure. Your ceiling back home was leaking, you had to find another job so you could get it fixed, and you were covering on the bar for someone – you didn’t want to think about how much more of you it would take to start chasing him again.

He tilted his head at you, his grin not faltering. “That’s cold.”

You remembered how you’d smiled at the man before, the smile that said ‘I-am-just-here-to-get-payed-and-I-don’t-get-paid-enough-to-deal-with-you’ and mirrored that action again. “Is there a problem, sir?”

A hint of insecurity was beginning to reach his eyes. His grin slipped just slightly before he lifted it back to its original place. “You haven’t forgotten me. I saw how you looked at me when I walked in.”

You didn’t know how to seem cold when he questioned you. My ceiling is leaking, I am looking for another job to fix it, and I’m covering the bar for someone. I don’t have time to be messing around with him. You sighed heavily, letting him get the better of you as he always seemed set on doing. “Oh yes,” you rose your voice so he couldn’t not realise you weren’t serious, “I remember now, you’re Johnny, we were in the same hometown.” You stared blankly at him. “Ready for your drinks now?”

He quirked a brow at you. “Having a bad day?”

The bitterness in the back of your throat tasted like heat and the aftertaste of whisky. “Perhaps I simply don’t like strangers making snide observations of me.”

The grin fell from his face completely, replaced by a look of offended annoyance. “Good thing I’m not a stranger then, isn’t it, ___?”

“You may as well be.”

“I know everything about you. A stranger would know nothing about you.”

You scoffed. “I see getting your own business didn’t make you any smarter.” You glanced around to check no one else was at the bar waiting on you while you bickered. If I lost this job…There was no one but you and Johnny. “And it would be knew.” You corrected.

He recoiled at the comment, and opened his mouth to speak again before pausing. “You’re right.” His expression turned into one of mock understanding. “The girl I knew would never be as cold as you are.”

The comment stung, digging underneath your skin to wait there until you needed substance to be angry with yourself later. “The boy I knew…” you searched his face to try and find any semblance of how he used to be. The boy you’d chased was long gone, that seemed clear as day to see. Seeing it so up-close to you hurt more than it had when you’d simply pictured it. “What happened to him?”

Johnny shrugged. “He grew up.”

“And became a rich man. I suppose that’d change a person easily enough.”

He laughed lightly, nodding. “Only for the better.”

“I’ve met enough rich men to prove you wrong there.”

“Maybe,” his grin had returned. Though it wasn’t like his old smiles used to be, it was still pleasant to see when it lit up his features as it did. “What about your friends, huh?”

Confusion became evident on your features. “What about them?”

He bevelled his head at you. “Are rich women much the same as rich men? I always assumed they were worse, since their money’s being held by the rich men.”

You laughed. “I would certainly be worse if a man was holding my money.” You paused for a moment before shaking your head and laughing again. “You think I’m friends with rich women?”

“Well, rich women tend to convene together.”

You shook your head in disbelief. “Tell me Johnny,” you began, placing your forearms on the bare in front of him, “why would I be working in a place like this if I was rich?”

He seemed stunted in his point. He shook his head and searched his face to catch any impression that you were joking. “You don’t,” he paused, as if thinking his original words would be too offensive, “you don’t have money?”

I have a leaking ceiling and I’m looking for another job, and now I’m covering work for someone, though you didn’t want him to know about all of that. “I don’t know where you got that impression.” You made yourself laugh again, trying to swallow how hard the reality of how stuck you were as it began to sink back in. Talking to Johnny had almost been enough for you to forget it for a moment. Though only a short moment.

His features had become drawn and serious. Not even that rang a bell of recognition for you. “You must be alright for money if the only job you need is a bar maid, though.” He suggested. You wondered whose conscience he was trying to subdue.

Something inside of you was begging with you not to tell him that that wasn’t true. It pleaded with you to agree, or to brush it off. To do anything that would mean he didn’t figure out your financial situation. You weren’t sure you could handle that kind of embarrassment today. So you only laughed and shrugged again. “I guess so.” You made sure the smile didn’t slip, and hoped that it looked real enough for him to note see through it. You breathed in deeply again, before he could continue speaking. “So, what can I get you?”

Disappointment clouded his features for a moment before he hummed. “Five whiskeys, please.” Even thinking about the price of the order made you feel far poorer than you already were. When the bitterness rose up again, you made yourself force it back. He worked for his money, you thought, but then, so do I.

You put his order onto a tray, “Should I bring this over to your table?”

“No, no,” he took the tray away from where your hands rested on it. “I’ve got it. Thank you.” He dropped the money onto the bar-top. You thought even that much cash would be close to how much you needed to get your ceiling fixed. And he has that to throw away on drinks. The bitterness had the same aftertaste as the overbearing smell of the whisky did.

He only came back over to the bar ten minutes before Ada was supposed to be back. There was a playful smile on his lips that moved up to meet his eyes, and you tried to make yourself copy the action. You failed, only succeeding in smiling a tight-lipped, half-formed look of vague disinterest in his direction.

The expression didn’t go unnoticed. “Too long a shift?” He joked.

If he was still the same Johnny he used to be, you’d say something like, ‘oh, god, you don’t know the half of it!’ But he wasn’t. There were things your pride couldn’t let you confide in him, especially not in a place like this. So you made yourself shrug, and hoped Ada would be late getting back. “I wouldn’t believe anyone if they told me they enjoyed working.”

Johnny laughed, and placed the tray of empty whisky glasses onto the bar-top. A few of glasses clinked when they tapped together. You glanced over at the clock. “Would you believe me?”

“I meant working class people, not businessmen in fancy suits.” You chided.

He nodded in mock understanding. “Businessmen work quite a lot, you know.”

You shrugged. “So do working class people.”

“You don’t.” He grinned.

‘Oh, god, you don’t know the half of it!’ You forced a laugh to pass your lips. “Being around men like you makes up for however much time you spend tucked away in an office.” You tried to sound teasing, but the aftertaste of bitterness lingered on your words.

He didn’t seem to note any animosity, only laughing with you. “When does your shift end?” He questioned, flattening his palms against the bar-top and looking at you expectantly.

Something about the way his hair was falling into his face, with his head tilted and jaw tightened, made you fell the angry butterflies in your stomach soften enough to flutter. He didn’t look like he used to. Despite his words, and the way his brown eyes looked dark enough to be considered smouldering in the golden light, you made yourself raise your eyes in disapproval. “Flirting with a bar maid? Is that allowed for a man in your position?”

He chuckled, and dropped his head for a moment. When he looked up, you felt a blush reach your cheeks as if you were still the same young girl with a silly crush on the boy who seemed so much greater than you could ever be. “Anything’s allowed for a man in my position.”

You scoffed, “I see your confidence hasn’t faltered.”

“I see your unwillingness to answer questions hasn’t faltered.”

Shrugging, you moved to flatten your own palms on the bar-top. Though the space between your heights seemed infinite, you tilted your head up only slightly. “I don’t have to answer your questions.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

“Why?”

“Maybe they’re uninteresting.”

It was his turn to scoff. “Flirting’s too mundane for you?”

“I am a bar maid.”

Johnny hummed. “Are you now?”

You recoiled slightly, pulling your hands off of the bar-top and moving away from him. “What kind of question is that?”

“An interesting one.”

Shaking your head, you looked to the door that lead into the room before the staff exit. There was no sign of movement there. Ada was running three minutes late. Somehow that made you grateful. “An uneducated one, you mean.”

“You don’t dress like a bar maid. Or pour drinks like you do it regularly.” He pointed out.

You sighed. “Why’s that any of your concern?”

He furrowed his brows. “Because if you’re not a bar maid, that means you lied.”

“So? It’s not like you need me to tell you the truth.”

“What was that promise we made?” He asked, leaning further onto the bar-top. “That we’d never lie to one another?”

You scoffed again. “Well, we were nine. I can’t keep all the promises I made to everyone when I was that age.”

He fell into a vague silence. You weren’t sure if you were supposed to say something to fill the empty space, though you couldn’t think of anything. Not being able to have the right words to say to him made you feel strange, almost inept.

“Well, whatever it is that you do,” he began, “when does your shift end?”

You laughed, half in disbelief and half in surprise at the surrealism of what seemed to be happening. “When the bar closes.” He hummed in acceptance of your answer. “Why do you need to know?”

“I wanted to take you to the pictures.”

You laughed. “I’m sure that’s what you wanted to do.” You teased, still feeling the anticipation of Ada showing up despite knowing Johnny had already figured you out.

Johnny raised his hands in mock surrender. “You know me. I’m nothing if not a gentleman.”

I don’t, you wanted to say. Instead you made yourself smile the same smile that was a size too small for you. “As are all businessmen.”

He took the edge in your voice as comedy, and laughed loudly again, before shaking his head softly. “You know, it’s quite dangerous for a lady to be walking home in the dark at the same time as drunken men.”

You made a noise somewhere between a scoff and an amused chuckle. “Well, thank you for your concern, sir, but I’m sure I’ll be just fine.”

He didn’t laugh. His features grew drawn in seriousness as he stared at you. “Do you not want me to walk you home?”

The idea of him seeing the very exterior of your building, with its brittle bricks and boarded up windows where different flats had been shut off, made embarrassment flood through you. Though you were sure even if he happened to miss those things in the dark, he would want to come in for a drink. Then he would see the old furniture, the leaking ceiling, and he would know you had lied to him more than once.

You scoffed at him. “I think your intentions might be worse than you’re implying.”

A grin turned his lips up again. The sight of him relaxing enough to joke made the nerves in your stomach cool slightly. “Would you want them any other way?”

Humming, you saw Ada appear in the doorway. She offered you an apologetic smile, seeing as she was nearing fifteen minutes later than she had promised to be. You imagined the city at this time would be crowded to navigate on foot, so you only shook your head at her. Tapping your fingertips against the bar-top a few times, you offered Johnny a quizzical look before turning your back on him.

“Is your shift over?” He asked, following you along as you walked toward the gate that sectioned off the open area from the alcohol lining the shelves.

A breathy laugh passed your lips. “No,” you responded.

You passed out of the gate, passing Ada as you did. She paused, quirking a brow at Johnny following closely on your heels. Her hand found your wrist as she stopped you lightly in your tracks. “Everything alright?” She asked.

Smiling brightly, you nodded, moving to squeeze her hand, “He’s just an old friend.” You assured.

She studied him for a moment before releasing her grip. “Give me a shout if you need me, alright?”

You smiled at her one last time before moving to make your way back to your small office. Johnny stuck himself to your side, and suddenly getting through the dense crowds of people didn’t seem such a task. There was an energy of confidence radiating off of him that other people seemed to pick up easily enough, scampering out of his path as he walked. When you reached the closed wooden door of your office, you turned to look up at him.

“What are you doing?”

He smiled, tilting his head at you. “Maybe I’d like to see your real work-place.”

Scoffing, you began to push the door open, walking in with him close on your heels. “There you go with your false intentions again.”

Laughing, he stepped inside the small room. “So I’m the one that spends all day tucked away?” You glared over at him, though he only shrugged. “It’s like those fox holes you used to get your foot caught in back home.”

“You used to fall in them, too.” You defended.

He shrugged, walking over to your desk and looking down at the papers discarded there. “You do the books for this place?”

You tilted your head at him, raising your eyebrows expectantly. “Don’t think I have the intelligence for it?”

He smiled, lifting the latest paper you’d last been working, eyes drifting over the words before he looked back at you. “There’s nothing you don’t have the intelligence for.”

His words flattered you more than any of the times people had called you pretty. Strangely, you wished he would notice more of your skills in the work laying out on the table, though you knew that was little enough to show for your intelligence.

When Johnny began walking towards you, you found your breath growing baited. For a moment, it didn’t matter that you didn’t know him as well as you used to. It didn’t even matter that your ceiling was leaking at home, or that you were looking for a second job to try and get it fixed, or that you supposed to be working right now. Even though if I lost this job…

His eyes were searching your face for something. Whether that was hesitancy to kiss him, or a want to kiss him, you couldn’t tell. All you knew was that there was no hesitancy in your mind about him kissing you. Still, he seemed to have frozen in his position, only looking down at you, searching and searching for something you couldn’t see for yourself.

“Johnny,” you mumbled, his name feeling strange in your mouth, “get on with it.”

A grin met his features again. His hands came to cup your face, and for a moment the same searching look came back to him. You moved your own hands to grip the sides of his suit jacket, and tugged him closer. Close enough that you could feel his breath fanning across your face. There was the ever-light hint of whisky on his breath. That was the only thing you could find to dislike about his closeness to you.

When his lips finally met yours, you felt as if something inside of you was settling. Nothing else seemed to matter but the fact that you were finally kissing him. It felt unattached from the dreamy imaginations you’d had about the possibility of kissing him when you were younger. Then, you had always pictured his lips tasting like the candy he used to steal from the shop on the outskirts of the city, and you had pictured his hands feeling soft like the rose petals that grew in his parent’s garden. Now, his lips had the suggestion of whisky on them, mixed with the faintest memory of the cigarette he’d been smoking earlier. And his hands were rougher, and they seemed to shroud your entire face as he cupped it.

The girl version of you would probably have been disappointed at the idea of kissing someone who wasn’t the Johnny she knew. Things, you supposed, had changed quite significantly since you’d moved into the city. And with as little experience – or even basic knowledge – that you’d had with romance, you decided you knew barely enough to know what a relationship was back then. Now, with Johnny’s hands mapping out over your body, something in you decided that this could at least be a learning point. If not of love, then of affection.

When his lips left yours, a flood of disappointment moved through you. As much as a heavy whine wanted to pass from your lips, your pride wouldn’t let it, your lips locking closed. There was amusement lighting up his features, and no matter how hard you tried to force it you couldn’t bring up that bitter feeling again.

You wondered if you should whine again, or if you should complain, or maybe even just pull away and stop playing a game that was so childish in retrospect. At whatever glare had come into your eye, Johnny cocked his head. “Is there a problem?”

You pushed his hands away from you, scoffing as you did. “You’re a tease.”

He hummed, curling his arms around your waist and nodding. “If you don’t want me to tease,” he started, dipping closer to you again, “tell me what you want me to do.”

Drawing away from him slightly, you tried to study him like he had with you. You didn’t know what he’d been looking for, so in turn you didn’t know what you were looking for in him. You felt amusement mingling with excitement inside of you, and only when it met a burst of confidence did you let yourself speak. “Do whatever you’ve been thinking about doing to me all night.”

Another boisterous laugh left your lips. He spun you both around, turning and beginning to walk you both away from the closed door. When you felt the edge of the desk touch the tops of your thighs, you let him lift you. As one hand held you steady against him, the other swiped papers out of the way to make room to set you down. Part of you wanted to be anxious about the work getting muddled, about whatever work you’d already done in the day being wasted, but you couldn’t think about anything other than the way Johnny attached his lips to your neck. Flattening your palms against his chest, you let him begin to push your skirt higher up your legs. When you felt it bunch at your waist, you finally stopped biting back the whine that was sitting impatiently at the back of your throat.

He unravelled himself from you for a moment, “Quite bold of you to assume I’ve been thinking about you all night.”

You whined impatiently again, feeling his hands move higher up your thighs. “Of course you have. I’m a delight.”

He laughed, dropping his head into the crook of your neck to leave more kisses in the bare space there. When you felt his fingers hook into the sides of your underwear, a desperate moan tumbled past your lips. Johnny offered you a mock wary glance. “You’ve gotta be quieter than that if you’re gonna let me do whatever I want.”

You tried to shrug off the words. “I didn’t say whatever you wanted. I said whatever you’d been thinking about.”

“Same thing.” He pulled your underwear the rest of the way down your legs, stopping only to give you a quick glance as you kicked them off. A vague feeling of insecurity came over you then, with your skirt bunched into a roll of fabric at your hips and your underwear discarded on the floor. The feeling wasn’t given very long to grow, with Johnny crouching down in front of the desk shortly after.

There was a look in his eyes that told you he had a million teasing remarks sitting on the tip of his tongue for the sight that greeted him. Though he remained silent as he gripped the backs of your knees and tugged you closer to the edge of the desk. A surprised gasp left your mouth before you had the chance to recover from the shock. You wanted to say that the light chuckle that left his lips was because of something else – some joke his friends had said earlier that he’d only just caught on to – but you knew that wasn’t possible.

Johnny didn’t seem too keen on giving you a clear amount of time to overthink anything. You placed your flattened palms against the desk as he attached his mouth to your heat, curling your lip to bite back the moans that begged to leave your mouth. The noise from outside of the small office seemed distant and drowned out now that all you could fully focus on was the feeling of Johnny’s lips against you. It’s been too long, that’s all it is. Though you wondered if it was really that, or just something too difficult to accept. That maybe this was just another of Johnny’s many skills.

As the coil already began to start forming in the pit of your stomach, you were coming to the vexed realisation that that was going to be the case again. Oddly, even in such an intimate position of him having his head between your thighs, you felt that moving to thread your fingers through his hair would be too much. You wanted to think more about that, but the coil in your stomach was shifting into a pressure that made you try and stutter a warning to Johnny.

But all of a sudden the feeling stopped altogether, and he was pulling away from you slightly. Still with his knees against the floor, he bevelled his head up at you. Your head was spinning too much for you to be sure what expression was casting across your features, but you almost sure it was one of childish irritation. “Problem?” He questioned, running his hands up your thighs from your knees until his fingertips were dancing over your core.

You tried to push your hips forward to gain something more, but the short space you had on the desk prevented you. “Is that you’ve been thinking about?”

“Seeing your face when you start to beg?” He grinned, “Yeah.”

Sighing, you shook your head at him. “I’m starting to think you’re just a bad person nowadays.”

He pulled his fingertips away from you, bringing them to his lips before he spoke again. “Well, just this once, then,” he began, pressing a few light kisses to the inside of your thighs, “I’ll give in and, well, you know – be nice.”

“How kind.”

And then the room felt like it had gone underwater again. The noise that had previously just become loud background volume had turned back into distant, dreamy chatter again. Small moans fought past your mouth, but you reminded yourself of just how awful things would be if anyone caught you in this position. Well, I might finally speak to Sicheng. Nothing’s all bad. But the way Johnny moved his mouth against you made it difficult to think rationally about anything.

When the coil in your stomach began to push against you again, you imagined the worst; Johnny pulling away from you again, or maybe even someone wandering in. By the time you felt the coil snap, you were too distracted by the euphoria of it to think of anything else. It’s just been too long…but you weren’t even sure that by the time your bitterness for Johnny reappeared you would be able to say he had made you feel that good for any reason other than sheer talent.

He remained silent for a few moments, kissing the inside of your thighs softly as they shook slightly in the aftermath. When he rose to stand up, he placed your underwear back at your feet, pulling them up until they reached where your thighs met the table. You pulled in a breath to steady yourself and then let your legs drop onto the ground, lifting your underwear up until they were back into their correct place.

Johnny was looking at you with his head tilted. You glanced over at the old clock that hung above the door and saw it was two minutes until the under-boss for Sicheng would come and throw everyone out. You usually tried to get out five minutes or so before this happened – as did all the women – to give them a safe head-start. Thinking about walking home with packs of drunk men staggering around in every direction, with the high likelihood of rain, sounded like the last thing you wanted to do.

“You gonna let me drive you home or am I supposed to walk you back?” Johnny asked, pulling your attention back to him.

You made yourself laugh, even if the question didn’t directly suggest itself to be a joke. “I guess I’ll let you drive. Only because I wouldn’t want you making two journeys for me.”

He hummed, pulling the door open and waiting for you to walk out in front of him. “You’re such a delight.” He teased, falling in behind you as you made your way through the packs of people. It felt odd that not one of the people crowded into this room seemed to have checked the time enough to try and get out before the rush. Maybe you were just trying to think of anything other than the way Johnny’s hand was resting on your hip so he didn’t lose you as you directed the two of you to the main door. When your hand caught the handle, you hesitated, wondering if you should scrap this entire idea and go out your usual way. Something about leaving the building without telling anyone you’d finished your shift felt unnatural, and made a small tremor of anxiety make itself present.

But there was too little time left for you to push your way back through the crowds to the opposite side of the room. Instead, you pushed the handle down and pulled the door open to let the smell of the city into the main bar room. After a while of living in the middle of Chicago, you got used to the collide of different smells surrounding you at all times. Though in that moment, with your head feeling fuzzy and your legs feeling half as strong as they usually did, everything seemed more present than it really was.

Especially the cold. The second Johnny gave you a light push outside, the icy air curled around your bare arms and the sliver of skin exposed where your socks didn’t meet the end of your skirt. Part of you wanted to push yourself further into where Johnny had wrapped his arm tightly around your waist, but the other – still far more dominant – part of you refused to look like you needed anything from him. Rain was falling harshly against the ground, splashing up to greet your grey socks and darken in shade.

No matter how much you wanted to feel like you were entirely governing the moment between you and Johnny, you couldn’t do much more than let him guide you in whatever direction you needed to take to reach his car. You took the chance to glance up at him, and despite the lack of light, you could tell he still looked just as good as he had when he’d walked into the bar. His hair was growing damp from the rain now, as you imagined yours was, too. But more strands were starting to fall into his face, and he was looking straight ahead with the few directing lights shining in his eyes. He doesn’t look like he used to. Somehow that didn’t seem too important anymore.

He opened the car door for you, grinning tiredly as he gestured you inside. You didn’t know whether to laugh or thank him. If he was the same Johnny you used to be friends with, you would have just laughed and slapped his hand away from the car door. Now that you were both outside, in the real world, the bitterness had transformed into your usual non-purposeful nerves around the businessmen that came into the bar daily.

“Thank you,” you mumbled quickly, shifting in your seat as he shut the door for you. Before he walked to his side of the car, he offered you a quizzical look and then a polite smile. The same polite smile you’d offer a stranger if they had just thanked you for doing something kind for them. Your chest felt drawn and tight.

When he started to navigate his way away from the other swarm of cars beginning to come back to life after being sat in a parking spot all night, you began to try and articulate an excuse. Or think of another street you knew well enough to tell Johnny that that’s where you lived. It had to be somewhere nicer than the one you lived on now, but not so nice that it would seem implausible for you to afford it mostly by yourself.

Johnny turned out onto the main street by the bar you had been working out for a little over a year. A street you had walked up and down a hundred times. “So, where am I going?” He looked across at you, a few strands of hair reaching far enough down his forehead to begin to cover one of his eyes.

You hadn’t been given enough time to think of an excuse that would work well enough to go past Johnny. Instead you only rattled off your address and hung your head, too nervous to see the look on his face as he realised. Whether that was realised you had not-so-directly been lying to him or that you were poorer than he had first imagined, you didn’t know. All you knew for sure was how businessmen got when they were around people with less money than them. You didn’t want to think of Johnny looking at you like that.

The rest of the drive passed in silence. Not an awkward silence, but in the few sneak glances you took at Johnny you could only see him focused ahead on the road. Part of you was surprised that he even knew his way to your street, as you could safely assume he’d never been there before. The rain was hitting the roof of the car loudly, though you found yourself more entranced with the people rushing along the streets outside.

The car passed one of the larger shops in the city, with it’s ‘open,’ sign still high in the window. In the window away from the door, there was a sign that read, ‘Help Wanted.’ A small gleam of hope lifted into your chest. For once, you wanted to feed into the idea that luck was on your side. That hope translated quickly into worry. Worry that you wouldn’t get the job, or that if you didn’t make Johnny stop the car right there and get straight out to apply for it then it would be gone in the morning – even the worry that the other good things that had happened through the day were beginning to make you delusional to see what you wanted.

You stayed silent and let Johnny drive you the rest of the way home. When the car slowed to a stop, part of you didn’t want to get out, in fear of the dream-like haze of the day disappearing. Getting out of the car, closing the door on Johnny – it felt all too much like waking up from some sweet dream. I just don’t want to get out into the rain, that’s all. But lying to yourself seemed to be getting harder and harder.

Pushing the car door open, you tried to think of something to say. A goodbye, maybe, or maybe a flirty suggestion of seeing him again. If it was still the Johnny you had known, maybe you would make that joke. But the man sat in the car with you wasn’t.

When your pause had become awkward and unnaturally long enough for him to tell you didn’t know what to say, Johnny breathed in sharply. “Will I get to see you around, then? Or do I have to charm you into talking to me every time I see you?” He asked, making himself smile to soothe your evident nerves.

It didn’t work, but you appreciated his effort. “Maybe I like to see you make an effort.”

He laughed then, and you wanted to feel confident that it was genuine. The rain was falling harder. “Well, I better get used to it, then.”

A grin turned your lips upwards. Even if it didn’t feel like you were talking to the Johnny you used to know, the Johnny you had followed all the way to the city for the slightest hope of doing as well as he had, you thought you might be able to get used to this new one. “You better.” You assured him, pushing the car door the rest of the way open.

The light feeling had returned to your chest as you hurried to your door. An odd sense of gratitude was in your stomach that he hadn’t made any mention of your living space. You hadn’t gone back to the back room to get your jacket, so you gave morning you a congratulations for forgetting to take her key out of her breast pocket after leaving the house. Johnny offered you one more wave before he drove off, rain water rising from the floor and spraying up as you stood in your doorway to watch.

When he was gone and the door closed behind you, you let out a deep breath you hadn’t known you were holding. Reality was sitting at your kitchen table waiting for you to accept her, as much as you didn’t want to. You dropped your key onto the bowl that held it on the kitchen side, and looked at the floor. The rusty metal bucket had overflowed, water just starting to tip over the side.

You knew you should empty it out and put it back, but looking up, the small leak seemed to have grown larger. The man did the say the ceiling was at risk. You pulled out one of the two chairs at your kitchen table and sat down, staring at the forming puddle. Where earlier in the day irritation and bitterness had been rising to press against your chest, now there was only faint emptiness and a perpetual longing for something you couldn’t recognise. It made you think of the papers thrown all over the floor of your office back at work. It made you think of Johnny, in a strange way. It made you think of the help wanted sign in the window of the shop. Tomorrow, you promised yourself. When you got that second job tomorrow, things would only be on the up.

///

           By the time you got to work the next day, you were late. Or you would have been if Ada hadn’t told the under-boss that you had an appointment to be at that morning. You took that as a thank you for her being late back the other day, and a good thank you at that. Though that had been the only positive for the day. Applying for jobs always set you too on edge, made you too nervous. I’ve done it now, but it was the waiting you hated most.

           The rest of the day you had spent tucked away in your office, picking up your papers and re-organising them while ignoring the growing want to see Johnny that was spreading through you. You had gone a year and a half without so much as speaking a single word to him, you were sure you could go a few weeks.

           And yet, you couldn’t stop thinking about him. For the entire day as you finished the work you hadn’t done yesterday and the work you needed to get done today, you were thinking about him. From the way his hands felt on you to the way his lips felt on you. Even down to the way he spoke. All of it had made you feel almost like you had your friend back, only he was a little different. Maybe you just felt like you had a friend again.

           He showed up again when you had almost finished your day’s work. You had paused midway through writing a sentence to try and guess if the pattering noise you heard was rain or something else. It had made dread fill up within you, imagining the bucket filling up and soaking into your floorboards again. Though, partially, the blame for that is on me. But if it happened again, you didn’t know if the floorboards would hold steady or start to rot.

           Then you heard a knock on the door of your office, and out of fear of it being the under-boss coming in to press more about your late appearance you only yelled back a quick, “Come in.” And then he was walking straight into your office, hesitating only to see if there was another chair somewhere. When there wasn’t, he settled to lean against the walking, kicking the door shut absentmindedly behind him.

           You rose your eyebrows at him, like your natural instinct when you saw him in any mundane setting was to question it. “What’re you doing here?”

           He didn’t laugh in response. His lips didn’t even twitch upwards in a grin he couldn’t quite suppress. The only feeling you could distinguish from him was light vexation. “Doyoung mentioned that you went around there looking for a job.”

           It surprised you that Doyoung and Johnny even had any ties to one another. Their lines of work didn’t seem as if they’d cross at any point, though you supposed most men in any kind of business would seek each other out to grow their circle of affluent friends. Bitterness was resting in your chest again.

           “And?”

           Johnny made a face. “And why do you need another job?”

           You dropped your pen down onto the desk. “Do I need to tell you every time I consider making a decision now?”

           “We’re friends, aren’t we? That’s what friends do.”

           You thought about the events of yesterday and wondered what the answer to that was. “What do you want me to say?” You asked after a moment.

           He breathed in sharply. “I don’t know. Tell me why you need another job or something. This one seems perfectly fine.”

           Perfectly fine, but not enough. Nothing ever is. You didn’t want to have to tell him that though. But thinking of lies on the spot had never been your strong point. Now, sitting there right in front of an attractive stranger-who-isn’t-a-stranger, your skills seemed to have gotten even worse. “I need the money.” You muttered finally, keeping your voice low enough for you to hope that he wouldn’t hear it at all.

           The room was too small and the noise coming from the main room was too low. He heard, made a face of acceptance, and then fell into silence. You didn’t know whether his lack of response was a good sign, that maybe your work ethic had surprised him into silence. Though you could only guess his thought process was one of pity. The thought made you cringe.

           “You can’t get a job there.” He sounded apologetic.

           You looked up at him, screwing your face up. “What do you mean?”

           He loosened up, stepping away from the wall and further into the room. “Dirty money.”

           A light laugh passed your lips then. “I’m pretty sure all money you earn in Chicago is dirty.”

           He shrugged, though a hesitant smile was beginning to light his features up. “The job’s not for anyone who won’t be…you know, making the money directly.”

           You huffed. “Why’d he advertise it in the window, then?”

           “Usually everyone’s assumption is that every job in Chicago is a little bit illegal, at least.”

           Nodding, you picked your pen back up. All on the up. You didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. If it was happening to anyone else, you thought you might find it funny. But the leaking ceiling, the looking for a second job, the never being able to afford anything other than necessities – that was your life. You couldn’t laugh at it until it wasn’t anymore.

           “Why do you need the money?” Johnny asked quietly, the floorboards creaking as he moved closer to you.

           You laughed bitterly, not letting yourself look up at him in case there were tears in your eyes. “You know, the normal stuff. And…” you didn’t want to say it.

           “And?” He pressed.

           “God, I don’t know.” You sighed, suddenly feeling all too suffocated, pushing your chair away from the desk. “I’ve been looking for another job for a while now.” You murmured, hoping it would explanation enough for your sudden drop in interest to the conversation.

           Johnny felt back into a silence that you could only describe as pensive. The room itself seemed to still in its wait for his answer. The only sign that the moment hadn’t completely frozen in time was the noise and movement coming from the main room.

           He cleared his throat, swiping away invisible dust from his hands before mumbling a quick, “I could help you out.”

           You were shaking your head before he finished speaking. Often times, handouts either came because of pity or in expectancy of being payed back. You wanted neither of those things. “I’m not taking handouts.” You declared, picking your pen back up to provide some security for yourself.

           For a minute he looked hesitant. Really, truly hesitant – like he didn’t know if he should say what he wanted to. In a moment of boldness, he let the words slip out. “What if it wasn’t a handout?”

           “What?”

           “What if you, sort of, worked for me?”

           You put the pen back down. The action was beginning to feel repetitive. “I thought you didn’t want me working with dirty money directly.”

           “Who said my money was dirty?” You scoffed, looking back to the desk as he sighed. “I didn’t mean, well, I didn’t mean working, as in typical working.”

           Scepticism showed on all of your features as it ran through you. “Get to the point, Johnny.”

           The same hesitation came back to him. “There’s a lot of, parties, and dinners and stuff when you’re in business.” He started. You nodded and gestured for him to continue. “Everyone brings someone with them, but I, well, I don’t.” He went silent.

           “Are you asking me to come to dinner parties with you?”

           “Sort of.”

           “And you’d pay me for it?”

           “Yes.” It was a statement but he made it sound closer to a question.

           You breathed out heavily, the confusion making your head throb. “Why would you do that? Couldn’t you just ask a girl on a date?”

           He shrugged, as if making up a reason was too much for him to be bothered with. “I’d buy you nice dresses for them, if you wanted. You could come spend some nights at my house. Maybe, if you liked it, you wouldn’t have to work here at all.”

           “Johnny,” you mumbled, standing up, “I really don’t understand. What would I be doing?”

           His arms curled around your waist. “Pretending,” he said, “pretending that you’re in love with me and that we’re one of those icy affluent couples.”

           “Why pretend when you could go out and make the real thing for yourself?”

           “How would that help you?”

           “You’re doing this for me?”

           He shrugged again. “Well, half and half.”

           Despite yourself, you laughed lightly, dropping your head against his chest. “I’d be getting payed, like I get payed here? To go to fancy dinners?”

           “If you needed me to.”

           “What does that mean?”

           “Well, you know, if you spend some time at my place and liked it, you could just move in.”

           Part of you wanted to recoil, though you stayed in your spot. “That seems like a quick decision.” You huffed. “It all sounds very nice, Johnny, but what happens when you actually meet someone you love? Where would I go?”

           “Can’t you just let me answer that question if we get there?” Something about the ‘if’ gave you a childish hope.

           This is ridiculous. I don’t even know how to make conversation. What a stupid idea. But your ceiling was going to cave in. Even if it didn’t, it was still leaking. You had been looking for a second job for far too long now. You hated the smell of whisky and men packed into bars.

           You breathed out deeply, half in a sigh and half in exasperation at yourself. “Well, things really can’t get any worse.” You untangled yourself from him, searching his face again before answering. “I accept.”

           His lips lifted, the same amusement from the day before coming back to his eyes. The butterflies in your stomach fluttered nervously. I’m ridiculous. How stupid can I be? “You accept?” He grinned.

           “Sure. Why not?”

///

           The first dinner was three days later. You had been coming and going to your work at the bar as usual, too nervous to accept that Johnny’s offer had been real and not some desperate fever dream. In those three days, he’d come by for a few moments at least on each, usually muttering the same comment about you not needing the job anymore. You never had an answer other than a shrug, too embarrassed to ask, ‘is this real? Is this really happening? Have I really gotten lucky?’

           His car was waiting outside for you when you left, just as he had promised earlier in the day that it would be. When you climbed inside, taking a nervous glance at him like you would a stranger you got into a car with, he chuckled lightly. Sometimes you wondered if he looked at you as a stranger or as someone he knew. Or maybe something in-between.

           “I wanted to get you a dress.” He told you, driving you down the main-street in a direction you hadn’t been in before. It seemed uncomfortably surprising to you to see the lines of stores you had never had the money to even consider going into before. It was even more uncomfortable to imagine spending someone else’s money in them.

           “Are you sure?” You asked, though you weren’t sure why. If he decided he wasn’t, you were back to the starting line.

           “Why wouldn’t I be?”

           “I’m not seeing how beneficial this is to you. I’m not giving you anything back.”

           He grinned over at you, laughing softly as he moved one of his hands to grip your thigh. “Would you believe me if I said the pleasure of your company is enough benefit?”

           Scoffing, you shook your head, looking back out the window. “I just might, since I’m such a delight and all.”

           Laughing again, he slowed the car to a stop. When you looked up at the shop, you couldn’t stop yourself from gaping. From the outside, you could tell the inside was nicer than your house. And a single dress inside was probably worth more than everything you owned.

           You wanted to ask him if he was sure again, but instead you just let him come round and open the car door for you. You slipped yourself out, feeling his arm curl around your waist as soon as your feet hit the floor. He walked you both up to the door, and in an odd way you felt like you were about to be turned away. In your clothes, looking at the glossy interior of the building, you felt out of place and awkward. Like everyone would be able to tell the second they saw you.

           The woman at the desk smiled brightly as you approached. “What can I help you both with today?” She asked, smiling again. You felt surprise purely at her customer service. No one at the bar was payed enough to put that much effort into their delivery.

           Johnny sensed your lack of confidence in answering. “We have a reservation under Seo.” He told her.

           She nodded, still smiling, and looked down at the books, flipping around a few pages before looking back up. “Of course, sir.” He moved then, walking you both backwards.

           He grinned at the surprise on your face. You felt like a child in a playground far too big for them. He gestured to the door furthest away from the entrance. “That’s the ladies dressing room. Tell them you have the Seo reservation.”

           You nodded. “Where are you going?”

           Laughing, he gestured to a different door. “To the men’s dressing room.”

           “Right.” You shook your head.

           He pressed a chaste kiss to your forehead, shoving you lightly in the direction of the ladies dressing room. “Don’t be nervous.” He assured, turning away from you and towards the other door.

           You paused anxiously, tapping your knuckles quietly against the wooden door. The speed at which it sprung open in front of you almost made you stumble back. But the woman standing on the inside was smiling brightly, and there was something in the curves of age on her face that made a strange part of you feel safe, like her face itself was friendly.

           “Seo reservation?” She asked, moving aside to let you walk in.

           “Uh, yeah.” You answered, looking at your hands as you tangled your fingers together nervously.

           She smiled softly at you, the most typical way of showing pity. She caught your hands and pulled you in the direction of rows upon rows of dresses of all different fabrics and shapes. “Is this your first time here?” You nodded. “Do you know what your reservation says you’re getting today?” Johnny had failed to mention that, you shook your head. She laughed. “Well, you’re getting a dress for a dinner party, and another for today.”

           You didn’t even want to think about how much a single one of the dresses here would cost, let alone two. “Who, uh, who picks those?”

           She smiled softly again, giving you the same look you’d give to a child who had hurt themselves. “I’ve picked out some options for you to choose from.” You nodded, watching as she moved to a certain row and pointed them out. All of them were prettier than all of the things you owned.

           It took you longer than it should have to pick two of the dresses. Every one seemed too nice to see put back on a shelf somewhere until some other rich woman decided that was pretty enough for her. Thinking of ‘some other rich woman’ was also odd, though for different reasons.

           Putting the dress on was the strangest thing you’d done in a while. Stepping into the fabric felt like accidentally stumbling into Johnny’s world. You felt inept, and the tightness of the dress only served to make you feel suffocated. Though the woman gushed a thousand different compliments as she saw you finally dressed. You wondered whether that was part of the job, or genuine joy at seeing you out of your own clothes that now seemed impossibly drab in comparison.

           When it was finally time to leave, the woman explained that the dresses would be payed for at the front desk. She handed you two price tags and wished you a nice day. You clutched the paper tightly in your hands, too scared to look at the price for either. The idea of having to add two numbers that you could only imagine were inconceivably high together was making your head hurt already.

           Johnny was already out by the time you were walking back to the front desk. His back was to your door, and he was busy throwing money down on the counter. You felt a desperate need to ask if he was sure again. But then, as he’d said himself, why wouldn’t he be? He didn’t seem like the type of person to not know what he was thinking. Unlike you, who couldn’t decide whether or not you were even okay with having two dresses bought for you. Even if I could never buy it for myself.

           He turned around when he heard your shoes on the floorboards. He breathed in sharply, and made a quiet humming sound as you got closer. Despite your wish to keep your head up high, the nerves drove you to drop your head as you reached him, handing him the paper price tags. He took a quick glance down at them both, placing them on the front desk before taking more money out and sliding it over to the woman.

           The ease in which he did it made you breathe in sharply. You weren’t sure if that was because of how much it was to throw away, or the innate attractiveness of the action. The memory of that day in your office was slowly coming back into your mind. A flush of heat was creeping up your neck to meet your cheeks.

           “Johnny?”

           He hummed as he looked down at you, slipping his arm around his waist as the woman handed you both back the clothes. “Yes?”

           “Where are we going now?” You asked, trying to keep your steps in line with his ones as he walked you both back outside.

           “Lunch, maybe. Do you want something to eat?” He asked, walking round to open the car door for you.

           After you’d settled back into your seat, you looked at him, curling your fingertips around the inward sides of his jacket. “Like back to your house?” You mumbled, feeling his free hand grip your thigh.

           A complacent grin turned his lips upwards as he cocked his head at you. “Do you think I have a café in my house?” He teased. You groaned, gripping the sides of his jacket tighter. He pressed a light kiss to your lips, moving away before you could deepen it. “You know I didn’t mean you have to sleep with me for money, right? Because that’d feel a little too much for me.”

           You laughed, shaking your head. “I promise I’m not looking to get payed for this.”

           There was an odd look in his eye for a fleeting second before it was replaced with amusement again. “As long as you promise.” You nodded, and he hummed in disapproval. “You have to use your words.”

           You paused, wondering how long you could hold out if you decided not to say it. You didn’t decide to test it out. “I promise.” Then the warmth of his body was replaced with the cold air and he was moving back around to his side of the car. You slipped your legs inside properly and shut the door, hoping to close out the promise of more rain.

           The drive back was more excruciating that you had wished it would be. Even staring out the window at the passing of new buildings wasn’t enough to keep you distracted from the weight of Johnny’s hand on your thigh. Whenever you stole desperate glances over at him, he seemed entirely unbothered, face blank and eyes staring forward. Rain was beginning to patter against the roof, though for once it didn’t worry you. It only felt like background noise. You barely noticed when the car stopped moving, too focused on the focused look on Johnny’s face. It felt stupid, and verging on childish, to be so enamoured with the simplest things that he did.

           For a moment after he stopped driving, he caught your eyes, tilting his head at you. He was searching again, looking for something that he didn’t seem to be able to find. In a strange way, it felt a lot like you were doing the same. He pushed the door on his side open and slipped himself out into the rain. You mirrored his action, though he got to your side before the door swung open properly. He caught it before it could slam into him, cocking his head at you and quirking a brow.

           “Sorry,” you mumbled, letting him offer his hand to help you out. Whenever you’d been caught in rain before, it hadn’t seemed of any importance at all. Now, wearing a dress that cost more than you were willing to think about, an anxious need to be somewhere dry was overcoming you.

           Johnny didn’t seem to have the same concern. His pace was almost leisurely, his arm curled around your waist as seemed his favourite resting place. You couldn’t particularly complain about the offhanded affection anymore, the warmth in his hold far nicer than the biting cold of the outside air.

           If you had been gaping up at the exterior of his house, the inside was almost enough to knock you off your feet. It was nicer than any house you’d been in before, let alone your own. The hall that opened straight from the front door was decorated with golden-painted wooden furniture and ornate fixtures that made your picture of the price tags from today look like child’s play. You swallowed thickly, suddenly self-conscious of every movement you made against the marble of the floor. Everything seemed impossibly fragile, even if rationally it wasn’t. The idea of brushing against any of the items in just the hall made you nervous.

           “You like it?” Johnny asked quietly, curling his arms around your waist as you stared at the painting on the wall. He littered light kisses across your neck, and you tried to clear your head enough to answer.

           “It’s rich.” You mumbled.

           He exhaled a laugh, his breath fanning across the skin of your neck. “Rich in what?”

           “Being rich.”

           He shook his head, turning you towards him. “You’re alright.” He said quietly. “It’s okay.” He assured.

           You tilted your head at him. “I know.”

           “Do you know that you fit here?” He asked, cupping your face in his hands.

           You laughed lightly, shaking your head. “I don’t,” you mumbled, kissing his fingertips, “but I’m not sure I mind that.”

           He hummed, turning you in the direction of the stairs. “As long as you’re alright.” He mumbled, burying his face in the crook of your neck.

           Walking ahead of him felt unnatural, especially when you didn’t know what direction you were taking the two of you. But with his hands gripping tightly onto your hips and pushing you in the right direction, the nerves felt dulled and unnecessary. “You know I am,” you mumbled. His lips were still attached your neck, now leaving marks in their path downwards.

           When you stumbled into a closed door, Johnny detangled himself from you. The few seconds it took for him to push his bedroom door open seemed like too long to have his hands away from you. He tugged you into the room behind him, slamming his lips against yours as soon as you’d pushed the door shut behind you. His hands pushed your dress up as he spun you in a different direction. Your lack of awareness about your surroundings was something you knew you should be thinking about, but the feeling of his hands mapping out over your body seemed too good to waste with letting your mind wander anywhere else.

           When you felt the bed hit the back of your knees, you were reminded again of the day in your office. A flush of heat moved through you as you tightened your grip on Johnny, letting him lift you just enough to be able to put you down on the bed.

           The sheets were soft and silky underneath you, and even the mattress felt welcoming enough to cool any nerves left over under the surface. His mouth was travelling down your neck again, though this time he was pulling your dress down to get more access. The way he adjusted the fabric so carelessly caused your heart to rise into your throat, being able to imagine nothing but him throwing away that pile of money for nothing.

           He didn’t seem too intent on letting you have too much time to think. With his body hovering over yours and his hands getting closer to where you wanted them, your brain didn’t seem to want to work properly. You couldn’t particularly blame yourself. Small hums of his name were the only thing leaving your mouth, even if the strange fear of having another room full of people so close to you still lingered.

           Johnny moved further down your body, kissing over the satin fabric of your dress that was starting to feel all too suffocating as you laughed lightly at him. He grinned lazily, pushing your dress to bunch up at your waist like he had done with your skirt. You let your head fall back further into the comfort of the sheets and the pillows.

           He curled his fingers into your underwear, pulling them down your legs until you kicked them the rest of the way off. The familiarity of the action made your lips lift upwards. His lips pressed lingering kisses to the inside of your thighs, this time, he took his time to leave marks behind. Even if his actions weren’t supposed to be teasing, you couldn’t help but feel that way. A light whine left your mouth as you lifted your hips up from the mattress.

           Johnny only laughed, slipping his forearm over your hips and pushing them back down. He waited another moment, simply observing you as you huffed at him before he moved away from you. Rising up from the bed completely and sitting on the chair at the far side of the room.

           “You want me to touch you?” He asked, eyes full of that usual amusement. You swallowed the pride bubbling up in the back of your throat and nodded over at him. “Then earn it.” He declared.

           “Or I could just do everything myself.” You grumbled, drawing a laugh from him.

           “You could, but you won’t.”

           He was right. Your curiosity was too peaked to not even try to flatter him. “What do you want me to do?” You asked quietly, suddenly too embarrassed to look him in the eye.

           He hummed, as if in mock deep thought. The sound drew another frustrated huff from you, the heat from earlier still making your cheeks flush. The room fell into silence as you stared at the silk sheets. When you worked up your nerves enough to catch his eye again, he was observing you patiently. The look in his eye made you press your thighs together.

           For a long minute it felt like he was just taunting you, waiting to see how much you could take before you had to look away again. The feeling of being challenged was enough of a reason for you to keep your eyes focused on him, even if the confidence in your gaze was artificial.

           A hint of pride was in his eyes when he finally moved, gesturing down at his lap and beckoning you forward. The same air of confidence and power was radiating from him as when he made his way through crowds and watched people move out of his path. It was something you weren’t sure you disliked anymore. There was no bitterness in the back of your throat as you swallowed, only a vague ball of nerves.

           You rose from the bed, almost slipping off and onto the carpeted floor when your dress fell back into place and glided along the silk of the sheets. You managed to balance yourself easily enough, catching your feet onto the floor before you royally embarrassed yourself. It was only when you were stood right in front of Johnny, with his eyes raking over your form, that you faltered again, pausing and not knowing what to do with yourself.

           His hands spread across your hips, pulling you to sit over one of his thighs. When you were finally in place, his hands moved away from you to rest on the arms of the chair. He looked up at your expectantly. “Go on, then.” When you hesitated again, he laughed lightly. “Or do you need my help again?”

           You felt your shoulders tighten in irritation. “Are you gonna help?” You muttered, raising your eyebrows.

           He shrugged, his hands already moving to grip your hips again. He bevelled his head at you as he dragged your core against the fabric of his trousers. The amusement was the only thing you could find in his eyes as your moans grew louder. “I always give in too easily,” he murmured, pulling your lips back to his.

           The kiss was slow and easy, though you were more distracted by the feeling of his thigh underneath you than his lips against yours. Any moans that tried to escape your mouth fell into his instead of getting any further. Though it wasn’t long before he seemed to grow tired of not hearing you as he pulled away.

           By then, the coil in your stomach had already begun to tighten, and the noises you were making were growing in volume. Just when you thought you were going to feel the coil unravel, Johnny’s palms flattened against your hips to stop you moving anymore.

           You huffed in annoyance, trying to move yourself again but not being able to push further past Johnny’s hold. “Johnny,” you groaned, gripping onto his wrist.

           “I did tell you I wanted to hear you beg.” He chided, curling his arms around your waist and rising to stand.

           You gripped to him tighter in surprise, holding back yet another huff as he laughed at you. “What if I don’t want to?”

           He shrugged, dropping you ungraciously onto the bed, making you bounce slightly as you landed. He laughed again, “Maybe I won’t give in this time.”

           You hummed as he leaned down to hover over you again. “You always give in too easily.” You curled your arms around his shoulders and tugged lightly at the hair at the nape of his neck.

He pushed your dress further up to bunch at your hips again, pulling himself away from you for a moment as he dropped his suit jacket onto the floor. His shirt went next, and finally his hands went to grip his belt. When he’d finally gotten himself undressed, he put your hands together and rested them above your head. He paused for a moment, tilting his head at you as you nodded quickly. He wrapped the belt around your hands, tightening it until he knew you couldn’t get out of it yourself.

He reconnected your lips, pushing your legs further apart to fit himself back between them. The moan of surprise that left you as Johnny pushed inside of you was swallowed by Johnny’s mouth on yours. The pace he set was far slower than you wanted it to be, though he didn’t seem to take note of the whines that weren’t able to leave your mouth.

You pulled away from him, “Faster,” you whined.

He slowed down. “What was that?”

You bit down on your bottom lip. “Please,” you mumbled quietly, too quietly for you to fully hear yourself.

“What was that?” He picked up his speed just slightly.

You groaned, half in annoyance and half at the increase of speed. “Please, Johnny.” You said again.

“Please what?”

“Faster, please.”

He finally set a faster pace, letting his hand move between your legs as you moaned louder. When you finally felt the coil begin to form again in your stomach, you let out an embarrassed few murmurs of, ‘please.’ Johnny made no show of having heard you, or if he had, he made no show of caring about your begging.

He bit down onto your shoulder as you moaned louder. “Johnny, please,” you whined, feeling tears prick at your eyes of him denying you again.

He chuckled softly, nodding as his nose bumped against yours before he pressed his lips back to yours. This kiss was more rushed, his free hand wondering as you tilted your head further upwards to deepen the kiss.

He pulled his lips away from yours just as the coil in your stomach started to unravel. His lips didn’t seem to be able to choose one place to kiss. “You’re so beautiful,” he muttered, “so, so beautiful.”

Your head was too fuzzy for you to be able to form words. All you could fully compute was the silk of the sheets against your skin underneath you, and Johnny’s lips pressing lazy kisses to your neck as he slowed a stop. You weren’t even sure when he’d hit his own high, though you knew that he had.

He stayed still for a moment, just stroking his thumb across your cheek before he moved away from you. Oddly, having the heat from his body disappear from above you made you feel empty. He reached to undo the belt that held your hands, and then brought them to his lips to press fleeting kisses there.

“Thank you,” you mumbled, leaning up to kiss him lightly again.

Johnny hummed, moving away from you for a moment as you dropped back to lie on the bed again. You noted then that there was a chandelier hanging from his ceiling. The sight made a cross between a breathy laugh and a disbelieving scoff pass your lips.

“Here,” Johnny mumbled, making you look up at him. He handed you a white-dress shirt that felt clean and soft when you held it.

“Thank you,” you mumbled again, getting up to take the dress off carefully and place it on the chair Johnny had been sat on earlier. When you got back to the bed, you pulled the shirt on, only bothering to do up two of the buttons before flopping to lie on his chest. He pressed a drawn out kiss to your forehead. “Is there really a dinner party tonight?” You mumbled against his chest.

He laughed tiredly, his chest rumbling as he did. “We don’t lie to each other, remember?”

You breathed out a laugh, pushing yourself up from his chest slightly. You glared at him for a long minute before shrugging. “I suppose.”

“Better start getting dressed soon.” He mumbled, pressing his lips to your temple. Part of you wanted to groan at the idea of moving and leaving the house again. The other part of you wanted to wrap yourself in silky fabric and eat a meal that was probably more expensive than all of the food in your house altogether. You hummed in acknowledgement of his words, starting to try and think of all the reasons to detangle yourself from him and start making yourself feel pampered enough to spend a night around people richer than you.

///

           The dinner hall was more than you had expected it to be, which was saying a lot on account of your imagination being particularly overactive when it came to splendour. When you walked in, Johnny’s arm curled lazily around your waist with him dressed in his newest suit, his air tidy and slick again in a way that made him look like he could own the building, you felt immediately out of place. The people surrounding you were about as glamorous as him. And just as rich, you knew. Which meant, of course, far richer than you.

           But then you remembered just how indistinctive you must seem in the situation. Dressed in golden silk, with your hair fixed prettily, you were entirely sure no one would offer you even a second glance for no reason other than to look at your exposed legs. The idea made you feel more confident, so whether or not it was true that no one could tell you were their least favourite thing – as it was, a very common person in the working class – you weren’t particularly bothered.

           Johnny had warned you before you even set off for the party that it would be a dull affair. When you’d first stepped into the hall, with its golden floor – that Johnny insisted was not real gold but was only paint, though you weren’t sure, you didn’t think you’d seen real gold often enough to be sure – and its rows of high chandeliers, and its tables full of rich looking food and decorated glasses, you hadn’t though that possible. Now, sat on your velvet lined chair and listening to Johnny and a table full of older men talk about business, you gave into the possibility that he might be right.

           Their discussions came to a stand still only when the staff came out to clear the tables and ask after everyone’s opinion on desert. Johnny had turned to you, almost as if to check you were still there. You were distracted by then, feeling a stab of guilt in your chest for the staff who had to tidy up after you and everyone else.

           He reached out to stroke his fingertip across your bare collarbones. “I should get you a golden necklace,” he mumbled, “it’d look nice on you.”

           “Gold looks nice on anyone, I’d think.” You laughed.

           He shrugged, grinning as he listened to you speak. “Everything looks nicer on you.”

           Making a noise of mock disgust, you knocked his hand away, feeling it immediately seek out to rest on your thigh. The action made your eyebrows raise as you looked back around the table as people spoke amongst themselves. “What’re you up to?”

           He laughed, lifting his hand further up the skin of your thigh as heat flushed through you. “Can’t I just rest my hand here?”

           “No.” You decided, stopping his hand before it could get any higher.

           “Don’t tell me,” he began, putting his hand back to its original place on your thigh, “you don’t want to do anything in public?”

           Scoffing, you shook your head, “I would never.”

           He bit back a laugh, but his grin told you all you needed to know. “Is this,” he lightly nodded to the table full of unfamiliar faces, “what, too public?”

           “If we get caught, it’s your business.”

           “Hey,” he defended, taking his hand away from your thigh, “my job’s attached very intimately to yours.”

           “Then keep your hands to yourself.”

           “Do I have to keep my hands to myself if we go, well, somewhere else?”

           You rose your eyebrows. “Do you not have any respect for your associates?”

           He grinned again, clutching your hand in his own and shrugging, “Not these ones.” He pulled you to stand with him, tightening his arm around your waist as he looked down at the table with a false look of concern on his features. “Excuse us,” his voice was arid and professional as the others at the table turned to look up at him, “but my girl’s not feeling too well, so I’m just going to help her find the bathrooms.” The table rose in a quiet murmur of acceptances and quick – and most likely detached – worries for you.

           And then he walked you both out of the hall. Only when you got back into the entrance hall with its red velvet carpet leading into the double doors of the dinner room did you let yourself laugh in disbelief. “You’re insane.”

           “If you had to look at yourself in this dress all night, you would be, too.” He defended, pushing the women’s bathroom door open and pulling you along beside him.

           The woman stood at the mirror startled when she saw Johnny beside you, before you cleared your throat. “Sorry, I’m, I’m not feeling very well. I thought it would be best if I wasn’t alone.” It sounded more like a suggestion than a statement.

           The woman nodded in acceptance, smiling pitifully at you the way older women always did with young girls. “That’s quite alright, I hope you feel better soon.” She didn’t offer Johnny the same courtesy, only sharpening her eyes at him and moving past him.

           When the door banged shut behind her, the two of you snickered as he pushed you towards the closest stall. His lips quickly found yours, nose bumping against yours as his hands slid up your dress as soon as he had the lock drawn across.

           He pushed your back up against the side of the stall, his hands already trying to pull your underwear down. “This is quite possibility the least romantic thing I’ve ever done.” You scoffed.

           He pulled away from you, drawing an involuntary whine from your lips. He shook his head, “We can always wait until later, if it’s romance that you want.”

           Huffing, you pulled him back to you by his jacket, feeling the kiss speed up as his hands rushed to go back to where they had been before. His hands curled underneath your thighs, gripping tightly enough for you to have to catch a moan before it passed your lips.

           “Jump,” he mumbled, pressing your back further up against the wall.

           You hesitation for a second, pulling away to offer him a sceptical look before doing as he’d told you. He caught you, keeping you steadily pressed to the stall’s wall. The grip he had on your thighs drew a groan from your lips as his own travelled down your neck. His fingers curled around the sides of your underwear in a manner that was becoming all too familiar. When he’d finally gotten them almost all the way down, he chuckled, shaking his head at himself as they got stuck. He dropped your legs back to the floor, watching you laugh at him as you kicked them off. Johnny caught them before they hit the floor, tucking them into his pocket. You laughed breathily at him, letting him lift you back into your previous position.

           He dropped down to his knees, lifting your legs so they were resting across his shoulders as he placed his mouth straight onto your core. His lack of teasing drew a shocked moan from your lips, your head dropping back to hit the stall wall. As per his usual act, the second your fingers went to tangle in his hair, he pulled away from you. The feeling in your stomach faded as he rose to stand up again, a complacent look settling over his features.

           “Do you know how to be nice?” You huffed, wrapping your legs around his waist again.

           He struggled to unbutton his trousers, grunting at the effort. The complacent look came back as soon as he had them undone, as if he had done everything smoothly in the first place. “I could be a lot meaner.” He promised, pressing his lips to your neck as he pushed into you.

           You dug your nails into his shoulders, dropping your head onto his shoulder to bite down and keep yourself quiet. Back in the room at the bar, you had only been distantly aware of the crowds of people in the other room. Now, with the tables full of people you would have previously thought of as elite with only a hallway to separate them from you and Johnny, you couldn’t be more aware of anything.

           Even with that lingering in the back of your mind, Johnny still made it difficult for you to be able to think of anything other than the way the coil in your stomach felt like forming heat. His lips were on your neck again, leaving behind a series of fresh marks that you were sure would get you some odd stares when you returned back to the table. His hands were gripping your thighs, though you could practically feel his disappointment as not being able to map out over your body like he hadn’t done it before by now.

           This time, when his groans grew slightly in volume, you pulled your head away from where you had been softening your volume in the crook of his neck to be able to see his face screw up as he hit his high. His eyebrows furrowed as dropped his head back, the muscles of his arms tightening as his nails dug into the bare skin of your thighs. You had to drop your head back onto his shoulders when the coil in your stomach began to unravel again.

           By the time the two of you had caught your breath, you hoped that your legs would be steady enough to uphold yourself when he set you back down. On the slight heel of your shoes, your hope suddenly seemed bleak. You wavered, feeling Johnny wrap his arm around your waist to keep you balanced.

           You glared at him. “I thought we came in here to be more discreet.”

           He laughed, “You looked bored, I’m just trying to keep things exciting for you.”

           “I thought I was working? Is work ever supposed to be exciting?”

           A grin turned up his lips. “I think you’ll find this job a little more fulfilling than most.”

           He opened the bathroom door, taking a quick look out before walking the two of you back in the direction of the heavy oaken double doors into the dinner hall. “I don’t feel like I’m working at all.” You mumbled, shifting to look away from him.

           Johnny laughed loudly, pulling open one of the doors as a few sets of eyes turned to look back at you. “Don’t look at it like a job then.”

           You sighed at him, tilting your head up at him as he grinned arrogantly at you. “You’re impossible, you know that?”

           His smile softened, though it stayed dashed across his features as you both reached your table again. He paused for a minute as he pulled your chair out for you, the searching look coming back to his face. This time, he seemed to find whatever he was looking for. “I’ve missed you.” He said quietly, tucking your chair back in.

           You thought, maybe he isn’t so different as I thought he was. You caught his hand in your own, gripping it tightly as you smiled. “I’ve missed you, too.” You responded. And even if the words felt foreign on your tongue, you thought, I’m telling the truth.

#hm. ok #writing #nct smut #nct 127 smut #johnny smut #johnny seo smut #nct u smut #nct reactions #nct 127 reactions #nct u reactions #nct scenarios #nct scenario #nct 127 scenarios #nct 127 scenario #nct u scenarios #nct u scenario

[chubbyheroesworthyheroes]

If requests are still open, May i request a Drabble to where Forsyth is having too much at it with the food in Alms convoy. (Especially during battle) That he soon ends up to a point where he can no longer support his terms of moving and having python sticking around to just rather tease and help him out. Thanks! ^^

War and everything that came with it was difficult enough, but with the Rigelians having collected so much of the Zofian people’s hard earned food for themselves, and the decline of the Kingdom’s lands on account of losing Mila’s protection, it was made even worse by the Deliverance’s lack of rations. It was rare that they didn’t have to limit what people took from the convoy, and more often than not, someone was set up to guard what little they had -- just in case.

Forsyth had served plenty of hours as a guard for the convoy; not just to safeguard their food, but their weapons and armor as well. If they didn’t protect their supplies, and one of their clashes with the Empire destroyed or otherwise lost them, the Deliverance would be dealt a final death blow. It was a job that he took seriously, even if he would have preferred to be on the field of battle with Sir Clive and Alm. There wasn’t much notoriety to be won from staying towards the rear to guard the supplies, but there was still a knightly honor to protecting the continued survival of his comrades in this way.

Python, of course, didn’t share the same views. Whenever it was his turn to play guard, Forsyth often caught him napping or simply not staying vigilant. And, when confronted about his lack of enthusiasm for the work, would blithely state that they had never had their supplies targeted -- and why would they, when they had so little?

It was aggravating, but it wasn’t really anything new. Forsyth was happy to jump to Clive’s or Alm’s orders, and Python was...less so. It hardly mattered, if it came down to him covering for his old friend’s shifts on guard, he would do so for the good of the Deliverance!

It was easy enough at first. Forsyth was determined to show his strengths -- be it in battle, or elsewhere. He patrolled and frequently double checked their supplies, he even maintained the weaponry and armor that they had in reserves when he had the time. It kept him busy and on task for quite a while, but, eventually, the boredom started to get to him. And, what made the boredom worse, was the gnawing hunger that came with being stuck with an unreliable food source and being forced to remain by that food but unable to have any of it. It took a great deal of his willpower to keep himself on task.

However, one day, Forsyth caved -- much to his great shame.

It hadn’t been much, truthfully. Just a bit of dry bread to fill his achingly empty stomach. It had felt good in the moment -- it had been tough to swallow down on its own, just a step above stale, but a drizzling of honey had made it easier to wolf down. Despite it only being a mouthful or two, it felt like the bread took up so much space in his belly -- of course, some of this was due to a lack of regular eating, but also the building guilt of taking something that had not been rationed out to him. It didn’t take long, Forsyth stewing in his guilt for several hours as he stood guard, for him to think of a way to replace what he had taken. A hunter he was not, but he’d read in a book somewhere about trapping techniques, and vowed to teach himself this skill in order to pay back what he had unrightfully taken.

It took him over a week, but he managed to catch himself a rabbit to add to the stock of food they had. It had been scrawny, but it was something all the same. He hadn’t really thought of keeping up the habit of trapping; it was hard to set up and check them when they were on the move, and with the odd changes in the land, there weren’t as many animals around to easily hunt. But, it seemed that someone else had taken notice of what he had done, as when he went to tally up everything one evening, there were some additions. A couple of fruit, a few small birds. It was small things, things found as they marched on from place to place. Still, it was odd, but Forsyth kept it to himself in case him bringing it up to anyone else might scare the mysterious procurer off.

It was more important that they have more supplies than it was to go off trumpeting about this anyway.

And if he swiped one of the fruits, popping it into his mouth easily, it was also not spoken of.

Things went on as such. Every week or so, Forsyth would find more and more getting added to their stores of food -- most notably when he was scheduled to be on guard duty. Whoever was behind this had an obvious motive of getting his attention. Upon first realizing this, he stubbornly avoided any of the food. But, it was hard to avoid the temptation forever when it was right there, begging to be taken and practically gift wrapped just for him. He fought off the urge to sneak food for as long as he could, but once again, the bite of hunger had him nicking some of the smaller morsels that he could quickly and cleanly gobble down without much fear of their disappearance being noticed.

This was, of course, a slippery slope. One or two small things turned into half of something a bit bigger, and then all of that slightly bigger thing, which evolved into him simply taking whatever additional and non-reported food items suddenly appeared when he checked.

It was a guilty pleasure in every sense of the phrase. Guilt for taking more than his fair share, but pleasure from how the food tasted and filled up his growling stomach. And it didn’t take long for that temporary full stomach to start developing into something more…

While Forsyth had never been incredibly muscular, he also hadn’t been scrawny either. However, this very middle of the road physique made it very obvious that all the extra food he was getting into wasn’t being worked off.

His face had filled out a little bit, the hint of a double chin coming in. His shoulders had rounded with soft pudge that lead into pillowy arms, the soft flesh of his upper arms squishing out of his short-sleeved tunic like overstuffed sausages from their stressed casings. His chest had softened and plumped up significantly, giving Forsyth embarrassingly hand-overfilling moobs that would peak out the edges of his breastplate -- at least, back when he could still get his fitted armor on. While he wasn’t as heavily armored as some, his climbing weight made it near impossible to wear most of it regardless. 

Even without his growing chest taking up space, Forsyth’s belly had gone from lean to something quite tremendous. The more food he snuck away into his stomach, the more fat accumulated on his middle and the hungrier he got; an endless cycle of stuffing himself with the growing amount of extra food in their supplies. This only caused his stomach to balloon further out as the days wore on. Where it had first started off as just a slight pooch to his middle, it quickly grew large enough to make it impossible to wear his breastplate and severely stressed his clothes, and it only kept growing from there. His gut was marred with angry red marks from his burgeoning growth, his belly button deep enough to sink your fingers in to the knuckle; its sheer mass swayed in a chaotic rhythm whenever he lumbered about, meaty slaps sounding from his underbelly as it smacked against his thighs.

The one thing he could be somewhat thankful for was that his lower half hadn’t been hit too hard by his gorging. While his ass had certainly bumped up in size, it wasn’t anywhere near as noticeable as his middle or even his tits. His thighs were chunky and they brushed up against each other whenever he moved, but their malleable bulk didn’t get too much in the way.

Really, the big problem was simply how heavy he was, and how utterly out of shape he’d managed to become. It was a complete shame, and Forsyth couldn’t even be bothered to hide his embarrassment as he’d practically eaten himself clear out of his dream to become a knight on the same level as Sir Clive. He still did what he could to aid the Deliverance on the battlefield, but it was becoming increasingly difficult. He’d huff and puff at the back of their forces, rarely if ever managing to take out any of the enemy, but still plodding along as best he could for what little was left of his honor and pride.

Honestly, the worst of trying to fight at his size came when he simply hit his limit of endurance, his weight dragging him down to the dusty earth with a gasp and a wheeze. Coming to his aid had been none other than Python, his aim true as ever as he shot the Empire soldier who had been looking to capitalize on Forsyth’s collapse.

“Hey there, big fella, need some cover?” Python drawled as he idly checked to make sure the soldier was down for good, tacking on a slightly snide, “A whole lotta cover, nowadays, huh?”

Forsyth would have argued with him, but he was out of breath and awfully hungry; they’d been marching for some time before this skirmish even broke out, and he’d not had time to fill up on his usual breakfast staples. “Spare me your attitude, Python,” he huffed out, leaning back in order to suck in larger breaths and not feel like his gut was crushing his lungs as he did so.

Python merely gave him a smarmy sort of look, posture lazy as he surveyed the battle pushing on without them.

“Y’know, they probably wouldn’t even notice if the two of us went back to camp. I’ve done...most of my share of the work out here, and you sure seem like you need to sit your fluffy self down and have a rest,” the bowman continued, already sauntering around his porcine friend’s side to shove at his -- soft, plush, squishy -- back like he was some sort of farm animal in need of a little motivation to get up and moving.

Forsyth was beside himself with how that fact wasn’t too far off now.

“We cannot just leave our comrades on their own--” he began to chide irately, grunting and making all sorts of ungodly sounds as he struggled his way back to his aching feet with Python’s less than helpful help. Forsyth was sure the man had prompted all this just in order to watch him flounder about like a ridiculously fat fish out of water.

“Ah, don’t worry about them. They’re totally fine without us,” Python hummed, rummaging around for a quick moment in order to produce something he’d been saving for just the right moment -- which this seemed to be. A sweet, sugar dusted berry tart that he’d haggled for in the last town over. He carefully waved the treat in Forsyth’s face, watching amusement as the green clad man almost started to drool at the mere sight of the little sweetie.

Check and mate. He could spend the rest of the time watching Forsyth stuff his chubby face and not do a lick of work back at base camp while the others cleaned up on the battlefield.

A real win-win in Python’s opinion.

#fattyemblem #male weight gain #male wg #chubby!forsyth #this feels like its probably wildly ooc #but i still havent gotten back into echoes & i barely got to see much of python or forsyth whoops #but i hope its enjoyable regardless!!!

[moonlightrichie]

Confessing/sad or hurt feelings in the kitchen. I wanna read your magic, sweetie, pls

Hehe hope you like it, thanks so so much for the prompt! I loved writing this ♡

READ ON AO3

(Send me a kissing prompt (place + reason) from THIS LIST)

Warnings: Alcohol, cursing, mentions of sex and smoking

Richie had just been trying to enjoy himself.

He’d had a few beers, smoked with Bev out on the porch and danced to the bass-filled music currently shaking his classmate’s house. At some point he’d been making out a little with Lisa from English class, the two having found each other on the dance floor. Nothing serious, just harmless fun; something the two of them would never talk about again after tonight.

Nothing he’d done throughout the entire night was bad, he was pretty sure. It was a party after all. There were some people having sex in the parents’ bedroom and others smoking weed in the basement. Richie hadn’t done any of those things, and not that he found any of the two to be especially bad either. If he’d wanted to, he probably could have been with Lisa from English class in one of the second floor bedrooms right now, getting it on.

But he wasn’t.

Because before he’d even thought about going that far, Eddie had put a hand on Richie’s bicep, pulling him away with fingers digging harshly into his soft flesh.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he’d spit out angrily, not letting go of Richie’s arm until they were standing alone in the kitchen, putting his hands on his hips and staring Richie down with lightning in his eyes.

Richie hadn’t known how to respond, because how was he supposed to reply to that? Instead he’d just blinked, doing a double take as Eddie’s words processed in his brain. He hadn’t done anything wrong, so why was Eddie being so mad at him right now?

But now Eddie was yelling, a finger pointing crossly at Richie and Richie really didn’t know what the fuck was going on.

“I can’t believe you just did that! Like, how do you think that made me feel, huh? I guess you didn’t think of that ‘cause you only think about yourself!” Eddie put his hands to his temples while inhaling, and Richie prepared for a new outburst. “And don’t even get me started on…”

At this point he tuned out of the conversation, his brain too damn confused to get a grip on reality. He wasn’t that drunk, was he? So why couldn’t he figure out what he’d done?

“Eddie”, he interrupted, starting to feel angry himself. What Eddie was doing was extremely uncalled for, totally unnecessary and Richie wasn’t just going to stand there and take it. “Why the fuck are you being so mad right now?”

His tone was sharp, much sharper than he’d expected with his alcohol-infused brain still behind on everything happening around him. Eddie’s face changed immediately, going from angry to shocked, a disbelieving huff escaping him while he crossed his arms as if to say ‘I can’t fucking believe you right now’.

“You don’t know why I’m angry?” he raised his eyebrows, looking at Richie like he was stupid.

“Uh… no?” Richie shook his head with wide eyes.

“Well, you should.”

Richie had to stop to breathe for a moment, just trying to collect himself as he looked away from Eddie’s red face. He really couldn’t deal with this. “Well”, he began, dragging out the word. “I don’t. So why can’t you just tell me?”

Eddie stared at him for a moment, his face still tense in anger. “You made out with Lisa.”

That made Richie stop in his tracks because wow, that wasn’t what he expected Eddie to say. “Uhhh, okay?” Richie laughed humorlessly. “So?”

“So?” Eddie echoed, voice rising to a higher volume, power booming out of his tiny frame.

“Yeah, so!” Richie yelled right back in the same volume because no way was he going to let Eddie win. Nobody was louder than Richie Tozier and he took pride in that, thank you very much.

Eddie was fuming, huffs of air coming out of him regularly. With clenched fists he looked away from Richie, jaw tense. Richie had to stop himself from staring too long, because how the hell was Eddie still so beautiful when he was furious like this?

“I still don’t get what you’re so mad about.” Richie took a careful step towards him after a moment of silence.

“I’m not mad.”

“Well, you seem pretty mad if you ask me.”

“I’m not mad”. Eddie looked at him then, eyes shiny. “I’m fucking hurt, you asshole!”

And then Eddie was in Richie’s face, putting his hands on Richie’s chest and pushing him backwards. Pain shot through Richie’s back as he collided with the kitchen counter, elbow slipping as he tried to catch himself.

“Wow, what the hell!” Richie gaped at Eddie.

Only then did he see that Eddie was crying. Streaks of tears running down his soft cheeks and eyelashes sticking together, and Eddie was crying. Richie’s first instinct was to reach out to comfort him, to pull him into his chest and tucking him underneath his chin. The two of them had grown up learning how to make the other feel better when they were upset or sad.

But Richie had to stop himself when he remembered that he was the reason Eddie was crying right now and he let his already outstretched arm fall to his side again. Disappointment flashed in Eddie’s eyes for only a moment before disappearing again.

“Eds, what’s going on?” Richie tried, feeling his eyes water up with tears too just at the sight of his Eddie all broken like that.

“You made out with Lisa”, was all Eddie said, repeating himself from earlier. He wiped at his cheeks with the back of his hand, sniffling while he did so.

“I…” Richie groaned, pushing his glasses into his hair to rub at his eyes with cold fingers. “I really don’t know what you want from me, Eds.”

When he looked at Eddie again, he was filled with a new wave of emotions. Eddie looked so small, arms wrapped around his stomach as if trying to hold himself together. Tears were still falling from his eyes.

“I want you to not want to make out with Lisa”, Eddie muttered, voice so quiet Richie almost hadn’t heard him.

But he had.

“What?”

“You heard me”, Eddie was whispering now.

“So, you don’t want me to want to make out with Lisa. Who do you want me to want to make out with then, huh? You?”

The words were out before Richie’d had time to process them in his brain, and he had to swallow down the truth behind them. He did want to make out with Eddie, more than anyone else, because Richie was so absolutely in love with him.

Making out with Lisa was just a part of Richie’s attempts to get over Eddie. And now Eddie was mad at him for it, and Richie didn’t know what to do anymore. He couldn’t ever let Eddie know who he really wanted to kiss.

He was freaking out so much on the inside that he almost missed Eddie’s response. Just one little word, even quieter than earlier, voice shaking: “yeah.”

His head snapped up to meet Eddie’s gaze, eyes widening when he saw the exposed truth in Eddie’s face, his bottom lip quivering. “Did you just…”

“Yeah”, Eddie interrupted, nodding tiredly, his eyes red from crying. They must hurt, Richie thought to himself.

He was in Eddie’s space in seconds, hands flying up to cradle his face and then they were kissing. Eddie reacted immediately, their lips pushed together desperately, tongues already meeting in the middle. It was wet, sloppy, way too much tongue and teeth clashing, but it was perfect to Richie, all his emotions pouring out and put into that one kiss.

“I’m sorry”, he breathed out before leaning back in, not wanting to separate their lips for too long. Eddie’s hands were pulling at his curls, trying to get closer to Richie than he already was. It didn’t matter that Richie’s glasses were pushing into his face uncomfortably when Eddie’s tongue was in his mouth.

Then Eddie pulled away just enough to break their kiss, breathing heavily into Richie’s face. “Don’t say sorry, I’m the one who should say sorry. I was jealous and unfair to you. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Still playing with Richie’s hair, he pushed their foreheads together.  

Richie chuckled. “No, I guess I did something right ‘cause it led to this.”

With a gentle push to Richie’s chest, Eddie blushed. But he was smiling, his eyes shining with happiness this time instead of unshed tears. “Asshole.”

Silence settled over them, both just breathing the other in. Background noise from the party finally faded back into Richie’s senses again, thumping trap beats and talking from the living room.

“I’m kind of in love with you if you didn’t already figure that out”, Eddie muttered, voice gentle.

“I’m kind of in love with you too.” Leaning down again, Richie pressed a soft kiss to Eddie’s lips, drinking in his content hum. Pulling away, he looked down at the wonderful boy in front of him. “But only kind of though”, he added with a wide grin.

Eddie laughed out loud, Richie’s favorite sound. “Asshole.”

They grinned at each other.

“No, but seriously”, Richie stroked at Eddie’s cheek. It was sticky from all the tears. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I never would have made out with Lisa if I knew. Especially if I knew I could have been making out with you instead.”

“Damn Lisa.”

“Hey”, Richie put a finger to Eddie’s chest. “You should be thanking her. Without her you wouldn’t be kissing these sweet, sweet lips tonight.”

“Uh huh”, Eddie nodded. “So I should thank the girl who had her tongue down my boyfriend’s throat 20 minutes ago? Makes sense.”

Richie blinked at Eddie for a moment, the words ‘my boyfriend, my boyfriend’ repeating themselves in his brain over and over again. Fireworks, rainbows, sparks and explosions erupted in every part of him: his brain, his heart; he was so full of love. If Eddie looked close enough, he’d probably see tiny hearts in Richie’s eyes.

“Boyfriend”, he cooed, nuzzling his nose into Eddie’s cheek.

Eddie smiled shyly. “That’s okay, right?”

“Of course, boyfriend”, Richie wrapped his long arms around Eddie’s neck, hugging him tightly. If he could, he’d stay like that forever with his boyfriend, Eddie.

Eddie, his boyfriend.

“So, boyfriend”, Riche’s voice was muffled in Eddie’s hair. “What do you say we leave this party and go do some boyfriend stuff?”

With a nod and a giggle, Eddie kissed Richie’s cheek. “Sure.”

If anybody else were asked, they’d have said that Richie overused the word ‘boyfriend’ for the next 30 seconds.

“Hey Stan, this is my boyfriend Eddie”, he’d told Stan, who was standing in the kitchen entrance with some classmates, while grinning so widely his cheeks were starting to hurt.

“Well hello ther’, m’ sweet lady”, he’d said to Beverly with a stupid voice when they met her in the hallway. “Hev ya met mah gargous fellafriend here?”

Beverly had high fived both of them with a giggle.

“Hey Lisa! I can’t make out with you anymore, I got a boyfriend now!” he’d announced to the entire party before they’d walked out the main entrance to leave, Lisa not even listening from where she’d been dancing with some other guy. Eddie had been blushing the entire time.

Richie didn’t care. He had the best boyfriend in the world and wanted everyone in the world to know.

Tag list: @annoyingtozier​, @spastuetheobsessedphylosopher​, @constantreaderfool​, @violetreddie​, @rainbow-reddie​, @tinyarmedtrex​, @thundercatseddie​, @deadlighten​, @jesuschristsupruvestar​, @queen-sock​, @appojoos​, @xandertheundead​, @lifesucksheres20bucks​

Let me know if you want to be added!

#reddie #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #reddie fanfic #reddie fic #it #it 2019 #it 2017 #it fanfic #lynn writes #my writing #purplepoisonedgem #ask

[moonlightstars16]

The Destined Truth

SO I biased this off an anime(well scene's at least) and a fan made artwork. The inspiration is just amazing!

Sword clashing against sword. The sound echoing all around them. Breathing fast and deep with every moment. Connie and Steven's movement was almost like a dance. Each side forcefully trying to lead. Getting the upper hand. However neither was willing to hurt the other. Not physically at least. But within, they each carried pain of a shattered heart.

Connie Maheswaren, a young woman who honored her duty for others and her destiny. She was a human. One who had helped defend her own home from outside forces. Villainous gems who wanted Earth for themselves. Some of their own kind started a rebellion, the Crystal Gems, and the humans were involved. However she had a deep secret. For Earth and the rebellion had a secret weapon.

Forged by gem technology but activated by human touch. However in a twist of fate, magic crept its way through. To unlock the true and fullest power, only the purest of human blood can get through. That is a very rare blood type. Not just a drop, but an entire human body's fill. With humans dwindling into lower numbers the chances of finding the person with the utmost unique blood was almost impossible.

Connie had exactly what they needed...and she was willing to sacrifice it all for the sake of saving humanity.

What stood in her way was not only a person, but someone who held her contradicting heart in his hands. Steven Universe. Half human and half gem like no others have ever known. For he was the only one of his kind. Living on Earth and learning all he can to help put an end to the war. Though he was forced to be in seclusion for most of his life. He was not only part gem, but his own mother was a Diamond. Ones who want Earth gone. Well that would be if she didn't come to care for Earth and began the rebellion.

Still to make sure no one knew of his true heritage, he was kept to himself mostly. Occasionally sneaking out to find some sort of enjoyment with his time between the endless battles. That's when he met her. In the midst of the forest as she trained to use the sword. One snap of a branch, a fallen boy and a girl's guard up was an interesting first meeting.

Over the course of there young lives(a few years), they met and did all sorts of things together. Trained for the battles ahead, did various activities including swimming in a nearby inlet, walking by the trees, reading books and conversing about many different things. Some serious like the war, others fun and happy. They talked about everything and nothing. Growing closer and closer.

One day, everything changed between them.

A town beside the sea, also protected territory from the war, was having it's annual festival. Celebrating another year of the town's founding from hundreds of years ago. Connie, though had dressed up a bit for the occasion, hid amongst the shadows. Two day's prior as she was going to meet Steven, she heard him talking. To himself it seemed, but it sounded like he was conversing with someone not in this plain of existence.

She didn't hear much, but it was enough that she heard him talk about being the son of a Diamond and the leader of the rebellion all at once. How he felt conflicted about it. But after that her mind clouded with so many thoughts. Was he secretly working for the other side? Invading and learning our secrets?! Only coming out during battles and then hiding, excluding the time with her, until the next one?

No. He was her best friend, there was got to be more than this. Looking ahead he seemed sad and angry about it. Taking a deep breathe she stepped out revealing her hiding place. Steven was expectedly surprised. Connie explained everything she heard as he explained everything to her. How confused he felt, the frustration from not telling others the truth and being hid away all the time. She was beginning to feel comfortable around him once more.

Until he began to confess his affections. How he never felt like others knew him but her. She was his light in the darkness, someone he could talk to and never feel like he had to hide. Especially after telling her the truth of his heritage. Connie's head was turned away as tears brimmed her eyes. She felt the same as well in a sense. No one ever truly cared what she had to say until he came into her life. He made her feel less invisible. Like she was worth more than being the secret weapon.

That's what it came down to.

Connie knew it was hopeless to think she could find love because her final destination was always to be the weapon. Ending the war once and for all. The others could only delay the inevitable for so long. Love was, in her mind, forbidden to the task at hand. And she fell for him anyways. Upon hearing him say the infamous 'I love you', she broke down. Unable to face the reality at hand. Standing up from the small boulder they sat upon she finally looked up at him with tears in her eyes.

Avoiding the questions....the expressions of confusion....the world around them. Uttering a simple apology and goodbye she left in a haste. Leaving Steven in the dark as she left her heart behind. Trying everything to stop from feeling anything. It did no good.

While at the festival, she needed a place away from home to clear her mind, she spotted him across from the other side of the parade. On instinct she ran as far away. Night fell as she stopped on a bridge and knelt down to catch her breath. After a few moments of hearing nothing but her own heartbeat from the run, she gasped as the sound of footsteps approached. 'Oh no...seriously?' she thought as her head lifted up to see the young man before her. Breathing as heavily as she was.

Standing up she took a couple steps backwards before going to sprint off again. Only this time she felt his hand grip hers, pulling her close to him as she struggled to get out of his grasp. One hand on the back of her head as the other wrapped around her waist. She pressed her arm against his shoulders trying, and failing, to break free. Steven pulled away just a bit, long enough to gently press his lips on hers. Shocking her senses as she stopped struggling.

Her heart seemed to leap for joy from the simple kiss. Like a huge weight was lifted off her shoulders. The cracks she felt mended together as she slowly began to return the gesture. Pulling away only slightly as they looked into each others eyes. His actions showed that he wasn't going to back down nor leave her side. At least not until she gave him her answer. Relishing in their warm embrace. After a few moments of silence she confessed her secret. Now feeling shame for not explaining sooner, especially after he told his willingly(well more in depth than what she heard). While also confessing the love she felt for him that couldn't be denied any longer.

The month before them was filled with happiness as he whisked her away to a secret and secluded area that was once a hiding place for the rebellion. An island that felt like a tropical vacation. But When Steven was by her side, Connie felt like it was paradise. They never spent a moment alone. They were joined at the hip and soon joined at the heart. Tied together for all eternity as they were secretly wed in the traditional sense(thanks to an old forgotten building from long ago. Most likely built by humans who also too refuge there). For this brief moment, it was heaven.

But dark days clouded them as her guilt grew. Abandoning her destiny and all the people that need to be saved. This was the selfish thing she tried ever so much to avoid. While she could stay and live in paradise, her sacrifice to help ensure the safety and future happiness of others was more important. One night her guilt invaded her dreams one to many times. This was the final straw. The time was drawing nearer for her to save the planet once and for all.

Looking down upon her beloved, reaching out to run her fingers through his soft, black curls and pressing her lips upon his softly. Whispering one last goodbye and I love you. Having already changed into her old battle training outfit and cape, she took her sword and began to walk towards where the warp pad was.

Only to be stopped by Steven himself, sword in his own hand and in his battle armor, including the cape. He hand stopped her only a mile before reaching her destination. Connie turned in his direction and felt the tears brimming her eyes. Trying her hardest to push her heart's emotions down. Steven deserved better. Someone who will not only live through this war, but love him like she does. But it wasn't her. It couldn't be her. So she thought.

He was never one for the sword, having a shield for not only the defensive but in attacks as well. anything can be a weapon if used a certain and right way. But he chose the sword. During the time there he had talked and tried to convince her that she didn't have to sacrifice herself. But it was obvious she answered better with action. Not only a small match between them, but using her own favorable weapon.

'Forget me...forget my name...I have nothing more to offer you.'  Was her final thought before the battle commenced between them. As there swords crossed softly with a small ting before clashing against one another. Crossing as both swords pushed against one another, both sides looking into each others eyes with an expression that at first glance was anger. But if looked closely, you can see the torment inside.

"Leave me to my fate! Please I beg of you!"

"Never!"

As they continued their battle of the heart, Connie felt his with every struck of the sword. The moments they shared since they first met flooded through her mind. Little did she know that he was thinking the same. Another blow was struck as realization entered her mind. This was the crossroads she faced. To turn back on the ones who need her... or turn back on her love. A small secret of honest poured out from her lips.

"Because I love you so dearly, I'll shed my blood for earth. Because I love you so dearly, I had broken your heart. I tried to sneak away without looking upon your eyes. Because I feel my courage to do this would fail me if I saw them- saw you with all the love you've given me. How could I take a single step. My love... I don't want to die. ... A simple life with you would be paradise."

Her words were soft as tears fell down her cheeks. Of course this destiny would scare her. Anyone would be if they knew they had to die. Especially at a young ate she knew this fate. Trying so hard to be rid of the mere thought, she brushed it aside. Unable to brave the full truth. Little by little she knew and it tore her up inside. Now she has seen all that will be lost to her.

Connie was afraid.

Suddenly the final clash of the sword came when Steven knocked her's out of hand. Letting it fall to the ground as they breathed deep from the battle. Connie slightly bent over from being knocked back in her stance as Steven had stood his from the last strike. Dropping his sword as he walked to her side. Reaching out to pulled her close to him as she clung to him and their lips touched. Staying that way for awhile before pulling back. Her head pressed against his chest as he held her close.

"I'm here....we'll end this war together." Feeling his head rest against hers Steven clung to her tighter. Connie nodded gently as more tears fell. Tears of sadness, pain, overwhelming love and fear from it all. The future was uncertain, but she began to hope. Hope to stay by his side through it all. Hope to live.

"P-..promise?" She whispered as he pressed his lips against her head and gently rocked her as she trembled.

"I promise. I won't let anything like that happen to you. We'll find another way." After a few minutes she stopped shaking and buried her face in his chest to hear more of his heartbeat. His hand stroking her hair and back, allowing herself to lean against him as he wrapped his arm tighter around her waist.

"Steven, I love you." Connie whispered a few minutes of silence passing.

"I love you too, my beloved Connie." Their words were filled with the truth. They stayed standing and holding onto each other in there own little frozen moment of time. Safe in each others loving embrace. Both preparing for a bright future to grasp together. One they will fight for till the end of time.

#connverse one shot #connverse #connie mahaswaren #steven universe #steven and connie #stevenxconnie #steven universe future #romeo x juliet #anime #inspired

[wisteriamoons]

Pinky Promise AU

Summary: Kotoha Lives AU! This is called the Pinky Promise AU. In a oneshot I wrote called “Pinky Promise,” Kotoha managed to escape Douma’s cult and live in a Wisteria House with an older woman named Himari. Shinjuro and a group of demon slayers stay one night a month later and Kotoha is given a final push to become a demon slayer and, eventually, a Pillar. You can just refer to this summary or feel free to look up “pinky promise au” tag on my blog(Lowkey scared to link it as ya’know posts with links tend to not show up in tags) 

Also if you are not fully caught up on the manga DO NOT PRESS ON unless you don’t mind spoilers!!

-Kotoha spends five years training in an undetermined breath at first, however, she finds it hard and wants something to fit her own feelings, so she makes her own breath style; Bell Breathing

-Inspired by the one-hundred and eight rings of the nearby Buddist bell on New Years Eve, she decides to make the style. She wants to inspire people like bells do, with a balanced form set and sweet, comforting sounds 

-Kotoha took to the bell motif seriously, even making a bracelet of small suzu bells and wearing it around her dominant wrist. The balls inside that make the bells ring are removable, making stealth missions easier

-Kotoha’s Nichirin Blade is colored a sort of pastel shade of yellow, and has aesthetic-only empty bell shells tied with a red ribbon on the end of the hilt. The guard is bell-shaped, naturally. 

-Her blade forager was in fact Haganezuka, being one of the few people who stuck around even with his more rather… extreme personality. She’s one of his first clients, and they have a fairly close friendship-- she always has mitarashi dango for him when he visits or when she visits. She hasn’t broken her blade thus far

-Her uniform is the usual one but with a under-the-knee-length skirt like Kanao’s. She wears yellow tabi with zori underneath. She has a dark blue haori with yellow/white suzu bell designs all over it. She also wears her hair in a tight bun with a comb kinzashi with purple flowers and blue ribbon--she considers it a good luck charm. She also wears a bird masquerade mask and a cloth to wrap her hair in to cover her identity when on slaying missions, because,

-Kotoha is mainly into undercover and stealth missions due to her flexibility and natural beauty, making her fit in just about anywhere. She wears a kimono and more plain haori when out on such missions. No one suspects such a beautiful and gentle woman! 

-Inosuke loves the sound of bells while growing up ‘cause they remind him heavily of his mother. He starts collecting various bells at the age of seven, keeping them in his room in the Hashibira Estate. Tanjiro finds this sweet while Zenitsu laughs at him for being so rough yet has such a soft hobby. Inosuke might’ve whacked him a couple times because of this

-Kotoha is a mother first, demon slayer second. Never changes, even after she becomes a Pillar

-Speaking of which, it only takes her up to a year to become a Pillar. She kept on insisting to take jobs, so her demon count rose very quickly. She also mastered Total Concentration within weeks with Himari and her mentor’s help

-Her and Inosuke have a very very close familial bond. They tell each other almost everything with no hesitance and do many things together. They might have one argument every few months, but it’s usually over something silly and it’s resolved quickly

-Hell, Kotoha even offered to teach him Bell Breathing but he refused, having already started to develop his own technique (which would be obviously Beast Breathing)

-Kotoha is without a doubt one of if not the first Pillar to trust Nezuko. She trusts her son unwaveringly with every vein in her body, and if he trusts her, then she does too

-Because of her Pillar status, her Estate is close to the Butterfly Estate and she has a close relationship with the Kocho sisters. She cares a lot for them, and mothered them a lot, seeing them also as daughters she never had

-She also has a close relationship with the Rengoku family, Shinjuro being an older brother to her and Ruka like a sister, and Kyojuro and Senjuro being nephews. Though they also saw her a second mother on occasion. Shinjuro helps Kotoha get used to being a Pillar and gave her advice before his wife’s death and subsequent alcoholism. Their relationship becomes strained after this, for obvious reasons

-On a lighter note, this means Inosuke is much closer to Kyojuro and Senjuro, having grown up with them, he sees them as brothers--making Kyojuro’s death a little more harder :)

-Speaking upon Inosuke, Inosuke has his original personality and abilities intact, but with more… class?

-He still likes to be competitive and has a stupidly high temper, but he’s also not constantly headbutting people and has slight more consideration of others. Also doesn’t have his boar head, and wears the normal demon slaying uniform (though has a habit of discarding the upper layer, and usually doesn’t wear a haori unless it’s winter). Still dumb as rocks though

-He also still prefers his swords chipped, but his original swords being chipped was from training too much with normal swords and found that when they’re chipped they cut better to him (plus lets be real he likes how they look) When he deliberately chips his new ones Kotoha does scold him for it for disrespecting his sword and sword maker, though admittedly found it just a tiny bit amusing

-He also adored animals as a child, finding boars especially to be really cool and studied their movements a lot along with other animals, which influenced him in many, many ways

-Inosuke can’t help but perhaps sometimes feel a little inferior compared to his mother. Don’t get me wrong, he loves her with every goddamn breath and won’t hesitate to tell her, but sometimes he feels he can’t match her skill. Kotoha tries to treat him equally but sometimes her constant mothering and protectiveness can be grating

-Kotoha holds a heavy grudge against Douma for basically fucking with her, and it only grows deeper after Kanae’s death. She’s in on Shinobu’s poisoning plan, and while she’s against it she knows she can’t stop Shinobu. Makes Shinobu’s death hard on Kotoha because she knows she should’ve been more assertive, but also knows it was what Shinobu wanted

-Inosuke still has a tight platonic bond with Shinobu, though he sees her more of a sister than a mother for obvious reasons. He also has a soft spot for Kanao, and while she’s older than him he still treats her like a little sister anyway. He was probably the first person she met around her age after being adopted into the Kocho family. Inosuke wasn’t too close to Kanae, but was also saddened and angry after her passing by a demon’s hands

-Inosuke is also on pretty decent terms with the little sister trio (they like to play with his hair, he lets them while he eats usually), though has a sort of tough relationship with Aoi since they both tend to clash heads. A bit of a crumb for you AoIno(?) shippers, but the two are on decently friendly terms, finding each other tolerable enough, they’re just both stubborn

-Kotoha also never tells Inosuke, at least not at first, why they lived in a Wisteria House and why Himari wasn’t his real grandma despite thinking she was. She fears it might bring him trauma or nightmares, big plus she doesn’t want him going after Douma

-It was a slight bit of a hassle for Inosuke to make his mother agree to making him a demon slayer too; she was obviously worried for his safety, but eventually wore down, but made him promise he try to be as careful as possible. This is obviously not followed through for many reasons, but we already know them so I won’t go into too much detail

-Treats pretty much almost everyone younger than her like her children in some way, shape, or form. She’s a heavy mother figure to everyone and wears this with pride (even if she sometimes doesn’t realize it)

-In fact, Zenitsu, Kyojuro, and Mitsuri are big offenders on accidentally calling her mom. It’s less accidental for Kyojuro as he knows he sees her as a mother and has been doing it ever since they met (‘cause children do that, it’s just grown to be a habit at this point, and plus Ruka never minded so it doesn’t bother him) though he’s more likely to call her “Aunt Koto” around others by now

-She’s close to Mitsuri and they sometimes swap feminine advice and cook together, and Mitsuri isn’t as embarrassed by calling her mom now than she was the first time she did. They have a tight bond and Kotoha sees her as the daughter she never had, exchanging secrets as well

-Zenitsu has an unclear past, so I hc that his parents were probably neglectful or died by the time of his debt. So, Kotoha becomes the mother figure he hasn’t had/never had in a long time. He def didn’t realize it at first and became heavily flustered and mortified. Kotoha found it adorable. Inosuke isn’t a big fan of this btw aksjasj but he tolerates it a little more as time goes on

-Zenitsu has had such a big helping of respect women juice because of Kotoha that he is less flirtatious and weird about girls, though his love for Nezuko doesn’t waver in the slightest 

-Tanjiro also sees her as a mother, heavily reminding him of his own mother in fact. He respects her a lot, and even has platonic affection for her, especially after she so quickly accepts Nezuko despite her hate against demons

-She smells like freshly baked bread and flowers, and has a calming presence. She has a sweet sound to her, like suzu bells, as Zenitsu puts it

-Also she teaches Tanjiro how to properly take care of Nezuko’s hair and the like so Nezuko’s hair isn’t always a rat’s nest when they come back to the Estates

-Nezuko, speaking of, like Tamayo sees Kotoha as her own mother. Thus, Nezuko always feels calm around her and lets her wash her clothes and brush her hair

-Sanemi and Genya have subconscious drawings towards her, as the pattern keeps going, they see a lot of their own mom in her. While neither of them have called her mom ‘cause it’s painful to even think about, there’s no doubt they’ve had fleeting thoughts about her being a mom to them

-Muichiro also subconsciously sees her as a mother, with his memories gone he has no qualms about it but he doesn’t let it slip out loud. Likes it when she brushes his hair though. After his memories begin to return he doesn’t regret thinking of her as a mother

-Giyuu doesn’t have many maternal feelings, finding her protective nature to be a bit overwhelming, however he doesn’t hate her. In fact, Kotoha doesn’t hate him at all and loves him a lot. I think maybe he might see his sister in her a little actually

-Uzui has zero maternal feelings towards her as well, in fact he probably flirted with her a little. Nothing huge or meaningful, just harmless, it’s who he is. She never really realized it anyway, seeing him as just being nice, and cared enough but not enough to see him as a son. Saw her techniques as flamboyant, of course, and she was saddened by his departure from the Pillars

-Obanai feels a little… indifferent? Towards her? Like, he doesn’t hate her, but I don’t think he’d quite see her as a mother figure either. He does admire her drive though, and she cares about him enough to make them good partners in combat if need be

-Gyomei doesn’t have maternal feelings towards her either, since they’re extremely close in age, same for Kotoha. But he still does also admire her, tbh I can see them being more like just good friends and confidants. Being the two oldest Pillars they have much in common

-Kotoha and Ubuyashiki have a typical follower/leader relationship, considering he’s much younger than her she doesn’t see him as a father figure, but she does admire him a lot and is extremely loyal to him. She also finds his kids to be adorable and is friendly with his wife (Edit: I realize Kotoha most likely met him when he was 13-14, so yeah, def doesn’t see him as a father figure or anything. Probably thought he was adorable too aksjaksj)

-You want to face off both mother and son? Don’t.

-Seriously, don’t. 

-You’ll regret it.

-See, they’re both ferociously protective of each other, and bounce off each other so well it’s fuckin bonkers! They go hand-in-hand, easily matching their breaths and everything. They’re like a machine together in battle. When they’re on their own they do well but when they’re together they do exceptionally. It’s both amazing and downright terrifying

-Need advice? Need a shoulder to cry on? Kotoha has your back

-Also, at least once a month all Pillars and any visiting demon slayers are invited to a feast at Kotoha’s, cooked by the woman herself and occasionally with the help of Mitsuri and Shinobu. The Ubuyashiki’s are always invited, but they never really make it. It’s still one night without any worry, just bonding time and fun, and that’s what matters

-Mother and son constantly write each other letters when apart, no matter how many miles are in between them, and give them to their crow to deliver. If one party doesn’t reply after the given time, the other is instantly going to look for them no matter what

-Also, I hc that Inosuke has ADHD and social anxiety. Kotoha is very patient with him and helps him through the daily struggles they bring, and he’s so grateful for this. 

-While I don’t have any ships in mind for this au (except perhaps KanTan and ZenNezu, maybe AoIno if you squint), if anyone wants to take this au and mold it to their own ship (within reason--if I find you use this au to ship pedo/incest I will find you) I give you full permission. However, if you find yourself shipping Kotoha with anyone, I would like to note that she has a few walls put up due to the abuse she suffered, and it isn’t too easy for her to fall in love

Bell Breathing and it’s Techniques/Forms

-Bell Breathing involves a lot of speed, along with agility and grace. Kotoha became more flexible and obviously more quicker, along with some muscle. It involves many parries, quick strikes and counters.

-Kotoha developed this with her newly gained strength and her natural swiftness in mind, along with her warm personality

-There are currently six forms, three mainly defense and three offense. 

-First Form: Voided Ringing- The user steps out of range of an attack before replacing it with their sword, slashing in an upwards motion at whatever the enemy was about to attack with

-Second Form: Suzu Dance- The user advances on their opponent slashing their blade in swift, shallow motions, aiming mainly for the arms 

-Third Form: Crotal Advance- The user blocks their entire body with their blade, using all their strength, and then they twist the blade to slash whatever is attacking them

-Fourth Form: Chiming Deflection- The user deflects attacks in a circular motion with quick succession

-Fifth Form: Quiet Ringing in Winter- Much like Blessed Rain after the Drought, this move is used when an enemy surrenders, making it a swift and painless death, making a soft sound like jingle bells during Christmas--or, rather, like suzu bells during a Kagura dance

-Sixth Form: The Death Bell Tolls- The user goes as fast as possible, quite like they’re dancing around their opponent and then strike from the air, going straight for the neck in one swift round motion, making a sound like the ringing of a bell 

Extra: I made Bell Breathing without one breath in mind as I researched different sword techniques and looked at all the breathing styles, and while I’ve been leaning towards Wind, Thunder/Sound or Water, but if anyone has an idea I’m open to hearing it

#kny #kimetsu no yaiba #demon slayer #kotoha hashibira #inosuke hashibira #pinky promise au #kotoha lives au #gonna repeat myself i refuse to believe kotoha kept her husband's last name much less gave it to her son #so her last name is hashibira #kny spoilers #kotoha becomes a pillar weehee #i am no expert on making breathing styles which is why i studied each one + irl sword techniques closely before thinking on bell breathing #so sorry if there seems to be any weird overlapping #i had TOO much fun making this au i really want to write more for it actually #sorry it's super long too but i like. i just had to get EVERY thought out

[ofregiums]

silence ! raise the royal standard, for the princess of belgium, CHARLOTTE VAN LEUVEN, has arrived. being twenty-eight years old, she is second in line to the throne. many around the court call her the lost soul by virtue of her being benevolent and imaginative, while also being evasive and fragile.  — played by sarah gadon.

— THE BASICS

full name: charlotte katelijne van leuven  known in history as: the pearl of belgium date of birth: december 1st age: twenty-eight star sign: sagittarius profession: artist ( modern verse ) / princess of belgium, princess of spain ( canon verse ) loyalty: house van leuven, house de trastamara alignment: neutral good mbti: esfp spoken languages: dutch ( first ), english ( fluent ), spanish ( fluent ), italian ( intermediate ), french ( intermediate ) mother’s name: anaïs van leuven father’s name: frédéric johann van leuven ( deceased in canon ) siblings, if any: frédéric van leuven ( deceased in canon ), gérard van leuven ( deceased in canon ), florian van leuven children: celeste de trastamara van leuven-darcy, georgina darcy, rory darcy, anaïs darcy height: 5′3″ hair colour: blonde eye colour: blue

— CANON VERSE

charlotte emerged in life as quiet as a mouse, scaring the poor queen for a moment that a stillbirth had occurred. however, the midwife took one good look at her -- her flushed porcelain cheeks, her alert cerulean eyes -- and was surprised to see that the dear little princess was smiling instead.

she was swiftly adorned “the pearl of belgium”, not only because she was the first girl of the van leuven heirs, but also because her infectious smile and seemingly impossible beauty endeared her to the court and the citizens as she grew. charlotte was a darling child: very happy and kind to all. it did not matter if you were a visiting duke or a poor merchant on the side of the street, the little princess greeted everyone with a sweet smile and positive words. 

because of her loving ( but incredibly naive ) nature, charlotte was heavily protected by her parents and her three older brothers. family means the absolute world to her and she had the privilege of growing up in a healthy, loving one. she adores every single member in her family but since she was a little girl, there has always been a special place in her heart for the sibling closest in age to her -- florian.

at the age of sixteen, a betrothal was arranged between the kings of belgium and spain: the union between charlotte and the heir of spain. this would one day make her the queen of spain, an incredibly beneficial match indeed. happy to do her duty, charlotte wedded adolfo at seventeen with a big smile on her face. they may not have known one another extremely well but she had all intent to get to know him so that they may have the happiest of marriages.

charlotte left behind her life in belgium immediately after the wedding, tearfully saying goodbye to her beloved parents and leaving behind thick letters for her dear brothers who were bravely fighting in the war. however, life in spain took a turn that the princess could have hardly expected. the newly-weds clashed horrendously as adolfo was everything charlotte was not. he was childish, loud, and hedonistic -- a complete shock to her mature, soft, and selfless nature. he took mistresses shamelessly and often silenced charlotte with harsh words or the occasional slap to the face. still, despite his ways, charlotte stood by her duty as a wife and tried to love him.

her solace through the horrendous marriage were the friendships that helped to keep her afloat. people such as isandro, isabela, and catalina were among the few that she felt utterly safe around and provided bright spots in the otherwise darkness charlotte found herself in.

throughout her marriage, she has been pregnant four times: one stillbirth and three miscarriages. though physicians from all around simply labeled charlotte as barren, the loss of the children can predominantly be explained by the amount of stress she was placed under. soon enough, adolfo would be king and she needed to produce an heir for her husband and for spain. the inability to have a child broke her heart ; her one greatest joy would be to be a mother. charlotte began to fear that she was cursed.

another reason for her infertility could possibly be grief. only two times during her marriage did charlotte return home to belgium and that was unfortunately for the worst circumstances -- the funeral of her father, then her second brother gérard. 

a couple of years after those losses, her husband fell ill. it all seemed very ( and suspiciously ) sudden. a few weeks later, adolfo was dead. by the end, charlotte did not love that monster. how could she ? still, it was another death to add to the ever-growing pile of people that were in her life.

with no place any longer in spain, charlotte was packing up to return to her family in belgium. however, there was one hitch in that plan -- a month after her husband’s funeral, she discovered she was nearly four months pregnant. once the royal family caught wind, they halted charlotte’s return trip in case she gave birth to a son. an heir. 

charlotte could only view that time as a glorified hostage. she ached for home, though she was careful not to express that so heavily in her letters to her brothers. the last thing she desired was for them to invade spain in honor of returning their lost princess. instead, she claimed that it was simply too dangerous to travel. during this time, she feared especially for adolfo’s sister, the apparent new heir. the future queen wanted charlotte and the baby dead, not wanting any blood of adolfo’s to threaten her new claim.

charlotte gave birth to celeste and it was the utterly happiest day of her life. but that happiness was marred by the fact that she no longer felt safe in spain. with her dear friend isandro’s help, charlotte packed up her most personal belongings and fled with her infant daughter back to belgium. finally, she was safe.

then, she lost her eldest brother. through frédéric’s funeral and florian’s rushed coronation, charlotte clung to celeste in those times of great distress. while she was relieved that she could be close to her final brother and assist him during this new transition, the amount of loss that she endured felt utterly unbearable. but she swallowed that all aside in lieu of focusing on helping celeste grow and accompanying florian to bern.

after nearly a year and many dangers in bern, charlotte and celeste returned back to belgium with florian. her life changed drastically one random day when she took celeste to the countryside to get away from court for the day and came upon a half-dead and starving eli. flooded with sympathy and worry, she insisted he be taken back to court to be fed and taken care of. she found herself very protective of him from the very beginning, especially when everyone else is so suspicious of his motives. 

now, versailles calls. and charlotte is reluctant to heed to it, knowing that the very new queen of spain will likely be in attendance. the thought of seeing her dear friends that she had not seen in some time is the one thing that allows the princess to feel any semblance of hope. so with her now toddler daughter in tow, she -- yet again -- follows her duty.

— MODERN VERSE

born in brussels, belgium to a regional financial manager and world-renowned journalist, charlotte had quite the privileged upbringing in a large family of six. the house was filled with warmth and laughter and she never wanted for anything. 

growing up, she was a bit more naive to how the world worked. she was super sheltered, you see, especially by her father and three older brothers. they figured out the world for her and held out their hands so that charlotte could be guided.

she loved art from an early age. what simply started as silly drawings that she brought home from school escalated into a full-on passion. her parents put her in after-school art lessons to hone her craft.

after graduation, charlotte braved the homesickness to go to the states to study visual art at brown university. she happily got to explore a new place and work on her craft. she even adopted a pitbull puppy named maisie during her final year. truthfully, what more could she ask for ? 

once university was complete, charlotte made the choice not to remain in the states. instead, she moved to london where her favorite brother florian had already moved in his adulthood. once she settled there, she began working as commissioned artist as well as making pieces to sell at art galleries. over time, her clientele began to grow bigger and richer.

she met adolfo at a friend’s birthday party and pretty much fell in love with him on sight. he was handsome and charming, and charlotte really thought that she had found the one. the two began dating and despite the occasional rocky patch, the two seemed really in love. right ? wrong. 

after about a year and half of dating, charlotte learned that she was expecting. while she wasn’t expecting adolfo to immediately drop down on one knee, she certainly hadn’t expected what actually happened -- him leaving. adolfo’s harsh goodbye broke charlotte’s heart into a million little pieces, but the gift in that mess was the birth of her daughter celeste.

things were hard for charlotte emotionally at first. thankfully during her final trimester and first few months as a single mother, she stayed with her brother and sister-in-law who happily helped her out in any way possible. there are days when charlotte wants to break down but all she has to do is take a look at her baby and remember why she would do anything for her.

a couple of months after celeste was born, charlotte started getting back on her feet. she got a new flat, adopted another puppy ( ares, a husky ), and dived back into her art. things were on the upswing after much turmoil.

one day, charlotte met eli while she was walking the dogs and celeste around the neighborhood. ares broke free and ran across the street, maisie eagerly following and in a moment of panic, she asked eli – a complete stranger – to hold baby celeste so she could chase after the dogs. once she wrangled them back, a flustered charlotte thanked the man. and to her surprise, he asked her to coffee. it’s only blossomed from there.

now, charlotte lives the life that she sort of always imagined for herself. she’s grateful to be surrounded by her family and in a healthy relationship where she only grows more and more in love every day. it may not be a fairytale ending that she imagined as a little girl -- she wasn’t a princess, after all. but it was sweet and it was hers and that made it perfect.

#abuse tw #miscarriage tw #stillbirth tw #death tw #( * introductions. ) #( * your softness is what keeps you from breaking ; do not shed it | charlotte van leuven. )