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obessedwithfictionalmen · 2 days

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Chicken

John Egan X Farmer! Reader

Summary: When Meatball kills the farmer's chicken. Bucky flies to the rescue.

Warning: Animal death/ swearing/ mention of boobs/ use of Y/n/ mention of blood.

Word count: 1.2k

A/n: I'm alive y'all! And my brain functioned again!

When John Egan came to Thorpe Abbotts, he was aware of the people that already lived there. He knew they were here, but he didn’t know them personally. When he saw her riding her horse, he knew he had to introduce himself. But he didn’t have the courage to go talk to her, she looked so intimidating, riding her horse and handling the goats.

Y/n lived on her family’s farm, but her family was away, they were in Austria, the farm was their summer house, but they wanted Y/n to keep it clean and work there. Usually, she would’ve been back in Austria, but with the war, it wasn’t safe to travel. Her chores were simple, making sure the goats didn’t run away, getting the eggs from the chicken coop and keeping the stables clean. It was easy, especially since she got her horse, Fred. He was a mustang, a beast that she had trouble training, but she kept persevering and was able to ride him. She was riding Fred everywhere; she loved her horse.

‘’Cleven! Good morning’’ she greeted the blonde. They quickly became friends when he came on the base, he went to introduce himself to the people living on the base, already saying he was sorry for the future disturbance that the soldiers were going to cause. When Gale saw Y/n, he thought she was amazing and they talked for hours, quickly becoming friends. They would trade stuff together, for example, if Y/n wanted a bottle of whiskey, she would give Gale a dozen eggs. ‘’Morning Y/n! How are you?’’ he asked. ‘’Good, just counting the chickens’’ she stopped when she heard a dog barking. ‘’Why do you have a dog here?’’ she asked, stepping in front of the chickens. ‘’Brady got him, I’ll make sure he doesn’t come near the coop’’ he reassured her. ‘’He better, because if he eats any of my chickens…’’ she threatened. Meatball came running towards Buck. ‘’He’s cute, but I meant what I said’’ she looked at the dog, smiling. ‘’I’ll make sure of it’’ he smiled.

John Egan heard a horse neigh; he knew that Y/n was close. And he was right, her (Y/h/c) hair were flying in the wind, she had a cowboy hat on her head. A white tank top that made her boobs look 5 times bigger and jeans that made her legs look amazing. She was beautiful. ‘’Y/n, what’s wrong?’’ Gale asked. She got down her horse, patting him before looking at the boys. ‘’I can’t come here and say hello?’’ she smiled as she looked at Bucky. ‘’Technically, you’re on a private property’’ Murph said. She scoffed. ‘’Technically, you guys invaded our property’’ she replied. ‘’Touché’’ Murph laughed. ‘’Nice ride’’ John Egan said, looking at the horse. ‘’Thanks, that’s Fred.’’ She replied. ‘’Um, do you guys have a minute to spare? We need help moving the hay’’ she asked. ‘’Sure, we can help’’ Bucky quickly replied.

‘’Be careful with that Jeep, don’t run over my animals’’ she smiled at Bucky, before she climbed up her horse. ‘’Wanna race?’’ Bucky proposed. She gave him a challenging smile, Fred was a fast horse, he was originally supposed to be a racehorse, but Y/n bought him at the town auction. ‘’Sure, but don’t cry if you lose’’ she smiled. When Fred started to run, Bucky knew he’d already lost, he didn’t want to go too fast, in case of a loose animal. She looked like a goddess, riding that horse. He thought about her riding him for a second, but his thoughts quickly faded when he heard Meatball bark, his mouth was all bloody and he had feathers on him.

‘’Calm down! It’s only 3 chickens!’’ Gale Cleven tried to calm her down, but she was ready to skin the dog alive, Bucky was holding her so she wouldn’t kill the dog. ‘’IT’S LESS EGGS! LET ME GO! I’m going to kill that dog’’ she tried to get away, but Bucky’s grip was too hard on her waist. Meatball didn’t have any regret; he was looking around like his life wasn’t on the line. John Brady, the owner, arrived at the scene in a Jeep, with Harry Crosby and Rosie Rosenthal. The 3 bodies were lying on the ground, headless. Y/n took deep breaths and calmed down a little. ‘’What’s going on?’’ Brady asked. ‘’You’re the owner?’’ she asked, angrily. Brady nodded. ‘’Your stupid dog ate 3 of my chickens!’’ she spat, showing the corpse with her hand. Brady swallowed a nervous laugh. ‘’I told you to watch him and I’m leaving the farm for an hour, I come back, and Dave, Danny and Darrel are dead!’’ she said, looking at her chickens. Bucky had to refrain a laugh at the names of the deceased animals. ‘’I’m sorry miss, I don’t know what else to say’’ Brady explained, scratching the back of his head. She took a deep breath, realizing how crazy she looked. She touched Bucky’s hand, to show him that he could let go. She replaced her hair as she sighed. ‘’I’m sorry, I kinda overreacted. You guys can go, I’ll, uh, clean up. Sorry for the disturbance.’’ She said, with an embarrassed tone.

He felt bad for her, sure it was only 3 chickens, but still. So, that night, he decided to find the courage and go talk to her for more than four words. He rode his Jeep to her house; he nervously taped the wheel with his thumb as he shut the engine down. Seeing lights outside, Y/n got out of the house, standing on her porch, seeing it was a soldier, she wiped her hands on her pants before going down the short stairs. ‘’Major Egan, to what do I owe this visit?’’ she asked, trying to hide her joy. She found him attractive, he was a gentleman during the day and a manwhore during the night, or at least that was his reputation. ‘’Hello, please call me Bucky, and I’m here to pay you back’’ he smiled. She tilted her head. ‘’Pay me back? You owe me money?’’ she questioned. He shook his head, chuckling. ‘’No, it’s for the deceased chickens’’ he explained.

Y/n fought the urge to smirk. ‘’You want to pay me for the chickens I lost?’’ she asked. ‘’Yeah, I mean you said it yourself, it’s less eggs’’ he blurted out. Now she couldn’t fight it anymore, a smile creeped on her face as she looked at the flustered Bucky. ‘’Come inside’’ she invited. He nodded as they waled inside the small home. The smell of burnt candle filling his nose as he looked around the kitchen. ‘’Does Brady know you’re doing this?’’ she asked as they sat in the kitchen. ‘’No, it’s my idea’’ he looked on the ground, not daring to look at her in the eyes. ‘’That’s very sweet, Bucky, but I can’t accept this, you must have family that this money belongs too, what about Mrs. Egan. It’s very thoughtful but keep it’’ she politely said. He started to laugh at the mention of a Mrs. Egan. ‘’There’s no Mrs. Egan, never set that part right, and my family doesn’t need the money. Please, Y/n, take it’’ this time, their eyes were locked into each other.

‘’You know, I didn’t think you would be the one offering me money. I thought Cleven would do it’’ she said, taking a sip of her homemade alcohol. It’s been an hour since Bucky came into her home they’ve been talking ever since. ‘’He felt bad, but he has to keep it for the phones, his girlfriend wants to hear from him twice a week’’ he chucked. She smiled as she looked at him. ‘’It’s getting late, I should get back to the base’’ he said as he looked at his watch. She got an idea. ‘’Are you free for dinner tomorrow?’’ she blurted out. He looked at her, smiling. ‘’Uh, yes, why?’’ he asked. ‘’Because I enjoy your company. And I have some extra money to buy good meat.’’ She smiled. ‘’Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow, then.’’ He leaned to kiss the top of her hand. ‘’Good night, Y/n’’ he said. ‘’Good night, Bucky, see you tomorrow’’

#callum turner #callum turner x reader #callum turner imagine #master of the air #master of the air imagine #john egan x reader #major john egan #john egan

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mindmxtters · 8 months

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also I would like to thank u all for ur patience while I was MIA for so long. I was, as the kids would say, Going Through It (tm)

#ooc.#it seems only fitting I resuscitate lexi on lu's 18th birthday. our little baby's all grown up and old enough to vote now.#I've been recovering from a one-two-punch of #family having to move in with me for what was originally only supposed to be a few months before it turned into almost a full year #during which my entire living space was taken over/I was constantly treated with outright contempt #& I was saddled with all the care and upkeep of a household of 4 (+ 3 chronically ill cats)#because if I didn't do it no one did and I just could not live in those conditions #they're moved out again hopefully never to return but lemme tell ya the stress from that one. indescribable.#+ some stuff w/ an old mutual (if u can read this it's not about u no worries) rly dampening my ability to relax and play in this space #it wasn't even really drama between us so much as Bad Behavior/Disrespect directed at others and it sat rly poorly with me #but like a phoenix (or a cockroach) I return! I couldn't stop loving lu and lexi if I tried

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numinous-scribe · 2 months

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Siblings by trial and choice

So @noir-renard posted a prompt in Haunting Heroes a little while ago that's had me in a perpetual choke hold ever since.

When the Portal ZAPS Danny, he doesn't just get turned into a half ghost; he gets catapulted halfway across the galaxy. So now he's stuck on an alien ship, trying to deal with new powers, and desperately searching for a way home.

And my immediate thought was "How can I make this about Starfire?", from which everything spiraled.

[Click the pictures for better quality!]

Having assumed that the portal wasn't even supposed to be functional, Danny had absolutely no basis for anything that was happening to him. Not his new look or powers, not for wherever he was, and certainly not for the predicament of where he landed-- A ship he would later come to know as belonging to the slavers known as the Gordanians.

For all Danny knew, he certainly wasn't human anymore, and he might not have even been in the same dimension either; while Earth had been seeing more and more interactions with aliens, he'd never seen any quiet like these, and his parents had said that the portal was designed to view a whole other world.

And that was terrifying! He was Danny Fenton, just fourteen, and so far out of his depth it wasn't even funny. If it weren't for Koriand'r then Danny didn't know how he would have kept it all together.

As it were, Kor'i had already been enslaved for four years by this point. She knew what it was like to suddenly be cut off from everything she'd ever known, and the torment that was awaiting this strange boy that had appeared in a flash of green light. So even though she had nothing to give, Kor'i stuck by Danny's side.

Together, for the next two years, they fed each other hope.

Naturally, returning to Earth was a big ordeal for Danny, and by proxy for Kor'i as well. Over the two years they spent enduring harsh labor and torture from both their Gordanian captors and the Psions, Danny had confided in all sorts of stories about his home world and vice versa Kor'i about Tamaran. After confirming that he hadn't been transported to another reality, and that this was his Earth, Danny had been so excited to return home and to introduce Kor'i to his friends and family.

But while Earth was still the same, home... was not.

His parents were in jail; not only for their unethical and code violating lab, but because they were so neglectful to the point that minors were able to get into the lab unsupervised and one of them— Danny —was able to access their faulty machine and, presumably, died.

Jazz got picked up by the state, but quickly managed to get herself emancipated and now lived in some other state attending college.

The Manson's moved. Sam was a wreck and not coping well at all; her parents were considering having her committed to an institution for a bit to help her last anyone had heard.

The Foley's couldn't afford to move, so Tucker had to carry on with life as well as he could. He's quiet now, not as verbose and shameless as before, more of a hermit than anything.

And since he's been presumed dead, and can't figure out how to disprove that, honestly, Danny doesn't know how to pick back up where he left off. He can't. Because everything, including him, has changed as well.

But, like she's always done since the moment they met, Kor'i was there for him. And now they have a new family in the Teen Titans as well.

Bonus:

Close ups of Phantom and Starfire. Danny's suit design is a mixture of some of his original concept art and @the-stove-is-on-fire's designs :)

#scribe's work #tt!danny&starfire au #dpxdc #dpxdc crossover #dpxdc art #dcxdp #dcxdp crossover #dcxdp art #long post

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ja3hwa · 4 months

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♡ 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐀 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐏𝐭.𝟏 | 𝐊.𝐇𝐉 ♡

【Synopsis】 : He couldn't help but think such filth when you were innocently fast asleep only merely a couple of feet away from him.

『Word count』 : 1.12k

-> Genre: Pure smut. Little plot. DBF.

Pairing: Dilf!Hongjoong x Park!Reader [Hwa's Daughter]

[Warnings] : Slightly Noncon (Reader is asleep at first). Masturbation. Cum play. Thoughts and fantasies. Pet names. Sir kinkish. Hongjoong is nasty. Also, Joong is like in his late 30s and tatted while the reader is only 23. Whoops.

Note: No one asked for this, but for some reason, I was hooked on the thought of the Dad's best friend trope, and Hongjoong is really coming for my heart. So, It was a perfect match in my eyes.

Masterlist | Navigation | Buy Me A Ko-Fi

You didn't know what came over yourself. It felt like the heating was turned up tenfold. Your nose scrunched as you began to move more and more in your sleep. Hongjoong couldn’t help but watch your discomfort in curiosity. Were you having a nightmare? No, you weren’t one to have them. But then again, maybe you just didn’t tell anyone. And being on a family trip in the middle of nowhere would cause distress.

Maybe I should wake her?… He thought, now sitting fully up on the pull-out couch bed. You were no longer tucked under the big fluffy covers on the single bed. No, you had thrown them off moments ago, revealing your mid-drift slightly from your short sleep top and the fact you weren't wearing any pants. God, you looked so cute in your black frilly panties…No, he couldn’t think of such a thing. Not when you were his best friend's daughter.

But oh how you looked delicious. When he met Seonghwa, he had no clue he had a daughter, let alone one that was twenty-two. And when he agreed to go on this camping trip─more like staying in this large cabin on Seonghwa family’s land─he didn’t expect to see you tag along. You were stunning the moment he saw you hop out of your car. You were everything he would want in a woman and after spending hours of the day chatting and getting to know you he knew he was fucked. Anyone outside your conversations, like Seonghwa or his other friends and their kids, would see it as some harmless banter. But in reality, Hongjoong was shamelessly flirting. He didn’t mean it at first, but it just kept going, and you kept egging him on. So what was he supposed to do?

Since there were quite a lot of people that had come on the getaway, rooms were tight. And you had begged your father not to let you sleep in the rooms where the kids were cause you were certain one of San’s boys wanted more than innocent late-night chats… He ended up putting you in the same small study-turned-bedroom where there was a single bed and a double pull-out with Hongjoong. He originally offered to take the single, but you argued, saying his ‘old man back’ wouldn’t like it. He let you take it after that comment.

“J-joong…” you mumbled, almost inaudible. The older man's eyes snapped to your parted lips in a millisecond. Did you just say his name? No, he was definitely hearing things. “Joong, please.”

No, he definitely heard you that time. Your little panting, knitted brow, and soft moans. You weren’t having a nightmare. You were having a sex dream. And it was about him. God, did he wake up in another universe where everything went his way?! He ruffled his hair before rubbing his face in disbelief. He needed to hear you again, but as he took in your figure, he noticed you were now biting your lip, and your hips were jerking slowly. The pillow you were cuddling was tightly pressed up against your covered cunt in between your legs, and every little movement of your hips sent a shock of pleasure through your body.

You were humping your pillow at the thought of them while fast asleep.

He knew it was bad, but as his cock twitched for the millionth time he knew he needed to give himself some relief. And besides, you were sleeping, so you wouldn’t catch him only a couple of feet away from you, fucking his fists in time with your thrusts as your little moans carried out the nastiest fantasies his mind could conjure.... Right?

The thought of you laying out on his bed back at his penthouse. You're soaking on complete display as you beg him to hurry and touch you. He questions if you are a virgin, and if you were would you let him fuck you raw? Just the thought of slipping inside your tight virgin pussy while you tear up at his girth. He squeezed his cock tighter, staring at you intensely, he moved the sheets off himself, hissing slightly at the cool air hitting his hot angry tip. He needed more, he needed to hear his name spill from your mouth again. And it was as if the gods answered his prayers hearing you whimper, “P-please H-hongjoong.”

That was enough to tip him over the edge, speeding up his movements. He noticed the stutter in your hips. You were close to. He’d whisper to himself, “Let’s cum together baby. Cum all over my cock, fuuck.”

He wouldn’t be able to catch himself in time, splurting all over his hand, chest, and some dripping on his thigh. Fuck, he came so much. His eyes were shut, head leaning back against the backing of the couch. His heart was thumping in his ears so loudly he couldn’t even hear anything more. He was in complete ecstasy and peace. That was until he felt the bed dip, making his heart stop and eyes widen. “oh uh..I. um..” fuck, he was so fucked. You were sitting on the end of his bed, half asleep with the haziest expression while staring at his cock still tightly in his hand. His dick twitched, causing a groan, mostly from annoyance as he had been caught and he does even feel an ounce of guilt.

“D-did I cause t-that…” You said sweetly, so innocently. Could you get any more perfect?!

“I’m sorry angel, just go back to sleep, yeah…” He tucks himself back into his boxers, feeling his cum stick to the fabric which caused him to gag. He’s gonna have to slip out for a shower. But you didn’t budge as you took in his words. Instead, you pushed past any anxiety you had over the past days wondering whether Hongjoong liked you the same way, and moved closer to grab his hand that still had some of his cum on. You had woken up over five minutes ago before Hongjoong had creamed himself. His head was thrown back and he was in complete bliss and it caused you to cum just from the sight alone. “A-Angel…”

You didn’t let him speak another word as you placed two of his fingers in your mouth, swirling your tongue around them. Soaking them. And once they were wet enough, you pulled them out with an audible pop. Slowly, without breaking eye contact with the older male, you moved his hand down until those two wet fingers dipped into your completely ruined panties, letting him feel exactly how wet you were for him. They would slip so perfectly into your cunt causing you to sigh in relief, feeling so full just from his fingers alone. “Aren’t you gonna help me, sir.”

Hongjoong was done for.

—♡

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rafeandonlyrafe · 5 months

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diy

words: 1k

warnings: 18+ only!, smut, video recording sex, male and female receiving oral, a bit of cum play, p in v sex, unprotected p in v sex, overstimulation, light bondage (request)

taglist: @drewstarkeyslut @thelomlisrafecameron @f4ll-for-you @dilvcv @drudyslut @drewsbabygirll @jjmaybankswifes-blog @rafescokenostril @jjsmarijuana @jjmaybankisbae @seeingstarks @angelofcigs @cece45450 @babygorewhore @vanessa-rafesgirl

“look up at the camera for me pretty girl.” rafe calls, making your eyes flicker up to his cellphone pointed down at you, keeping eye contact as you sink your mouth down his cock, moaning as you come back up.

you pull off with a smile, wrapping your hand around his length instead and stroking as you flick your tongue out to lap over the tip. rafe moans above you, showing his appreciation at your movements, especially when you dip back down and start to bob your head.

you’ve already been sucking rafe off for a while, and he told you he wanted to capture his climax on video for when you are on vacation with your family next week, sadly leaving him alone with his left hand.

“cum on my face.” you tell rafe when you need to pull off for some air. his cock simply takes up too much space in your mouth and throat for you to keep him in for too long without getting dizzy due to lack of oxygen.

“fuck, yeah baby.” rafe reaches down to reach his hand around his length, beginning to stroke himself as you pull your tits out of your shirt so rafe gets it on video as well.

you stick your tongue out when the first droplet hits your face, followed by ropes of rafes cum as he releases all over. you moan as some lands on your tongue, greedily dragging your finger through the cum and licking it off as rafe rides out his high.

“god, i’m gonna have fun jerking off to that while you’re gone.” rafe says with a laugh.

“can i get my phone and video?” rafe asks, making you whine. he’s already been teasing you for the past two hours, starting with touching your thigh under the table and dinner and then moving riskily close to your cunt before taking you back to his room and kissing all over your body except where you really want it.

“i don’t care, just want you in me.” you say, and rafe laughs at your desperation, always so easy to break down into a whiny whore when you are deprived of an orgasm.

you hear rafe walk away to get his camera, but keep your face pressed against the mattress, staying in the position at the end of the bed on your hands and knees, or at least it was your hands when rafe originally put you in that position, your weary body has since slumped.

“gonna get a close up of your pretty cunt first.” rafe says, holding the camera up to your pussy and rubbing his fingers through your folds before spreading them, showing the most intimate parts of you, but you trust rafe to have them.

he stands, angling the camera downward now as he lines his cock up with your entrance before sinking in with a satisfied moan.

“record me eating you out.” rafe says, tossing the phone up next to you on the bed.

“i-i can’t.” you whine, flexing your hands that are still tied to the headboard with his necktie.

“fuck, i forgot.” rafe groans, like it’s an inconvenience to him, like he’s not the one that tied you up in the first place.

“i can’t believe you’re going away again.” rafe complains as he slides up the bed to undo the knot. “you just came back a month ago and now another vacation? what am i supposed to do when i crave your sweet pussy?”

“i’ll only be gone for like three days- oh!” you gasp when rafe doesn’t waste any time, burying his face in your cunt. you barely have the head space to grab the phone, but manage to begin recording, pointing the camera down at rafe as his mouth devours you.

you’ll have to remember to ask rafe to send this video too you later, because as much as you like to tease him for needing to make homemade porn for him to get off to, you need your needs met too when you are apart.

“how many times have you cum tonight?” rafe asks, his cock pistoning in and out of you.

“five.” you say breathlessly, hips undulating, unable to tell if you are trying to get away from the pounding of his cock or move closer to it.

“and i’ve recorded every single one of them.” rafe smirks, knowing this one in particular will be a favorite of his to look back on with the moans and screams he managed to drag out of you.

you glance to the camera, set up on a tripod that he got specifically for this purpose as rafes hands grip your hips so tight it hurts, but you can’t focus on that pain, or the burning in your spread thighs, just on his cock spreading you wide open.

rafe moves his thumb to rub over your clit, and this time you do try to get away as you squirm up the bed, unsure if you can handle another orgasm.

“come on baby, one more.” rafe says.

“that’s what you said after that last one!” you complain, but you can tell by the pulsing off his cock inside of you that rafe isn’t far from his own orgasm.

“don’t be a brat, come on, cum for me now and for all the times i watch this while you’re gone.” rafe says, flicking over your clit in rapid motion.

your body arches off the bed, unable to hold back as you follow his command, somehow wringing a sixth orgasm out of your body. upon feeling you constrict around him, rafe finally lets the flood go, filling you up as he pounds into you until he can’t move anymore, collapsing to the side of you.

you both lay in bed, breathing heavily. cum drips out of you onto the comforter but that's a problem for the morning as rafe rolls onto his back, pulling you into him.

“the camera is still recording.” you say, laying your head against rafes chest.

“i just pounded your pussy red, i don’t think i would call that soft.”

“maybe i should record you sleeping so i can fall asleep with you while you’re gone.” rafe says, pressing a kiss to the top of your head.

you tsk with a soft laugh. “imagine if people knew that big bad rafe cameron was such a softie.”

#rafe smut #rafe cameron smut #obx smut #rafe fic #rafe fanfic #rafe fanfiction #rafe imagine #rafe one shot #rafe x reader #rafe cameron fic #rafe cameron fanfic #rafe cameron fanfiction #rafe cameron x reader #rafe cameron x you #rafe cameron x y/n #rafe cameron imagine #rafe cameron one shot

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vxntagedior · 1 year

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protector

summary | the moment bucky fell in love with you

pairing | mob!bucky barnes x fem!reader

warning | angst, arranged marriage, age gap, insecurity, violence, fluff ending

word count | 1.5k

You didn’t know anyone in that room. Staying flanked to Bucky’s side, letting him parade you around the room as he talked with the other men he did business with. It wasn’t no secret about what Bucky did, it was how you married him.

Being the only child, and along with being a girl, your father wanted someone to pass down his business to, though offering it to you first, declining immediately because you couldn’t be a part of the mob, Bucky was next pick.

Bucky came from his own lineage, his own family wealth, already the boss of his family business and now the head of yours. After getting married, you moved into his family estate, far from your father and mother, but having the little words of encouragement from your mother made it a little better.

“If he ever hurts you physically or mentally, his reputation be damned, I’ll get you out of there.”

Bucky was the opposite of what you expected, he was respectful towards you since the wedding, making sure to put your comfort first even though your marriage was purely transactional.

Your parents' relationship was the same, but your mother grew to love your father, and the way he worshiped her made her safe. You wanted that one day with Bucky.

Giving a small smile to all the people you passed, there were a few men murmuring to each other about your relationship, some of the women glaring at you, all the same looks you received once you were married.

It wasn’t no secret Bucky was handsome, powerful and wealthy, the whole package to women in the room, and they were envious, a little jealous.

Bucky’s arm was around your waist, squeezing you occasionally, reminding you that he was still looking out for you. Coming up to a group of men, Bucky slid his hand away from you, shaking the hand of everyone.

“And you all know my wife.” He smiled, reattaching his arm. Smiling behind your champagne glass, you just nodded, glancing over each other before your eyes widened.

Brock Rumlow.

Brock was originally supposed to marry you, but once your father heard about what he had done to a business partner's daughter, he cut ties with him. You remembered Brock in your father’s office, the two of them yelling back and forth, hiding behind a pillar, seeing him storm out the estate.

Looking out of the corner of his eye, Bucky noticed how you tensed you quickly, looking down at the ground, keeping that in his head, he whisked the two of you away.

“What’s wrong?” His voice was rough, turning so he could fully look at you.

“It’s nothing.” You shook your head, not wanting to ruin his night. Bucky just looked at you, but you kept up your wall, “It’s fine, I just thought I saw something.”

Bucky knew you were lying but he wasn’t going to demand you to tell him, just nodding, “You tell me anything if somethings wrong, I don’t care.”

You just nodded, agreeing with him.

Sitting down for dinner, happy that the two of you had a table to yourselves, but seeing as everyone was looking at the two of you, mostly you, waiting for your next move, like they were waiting for you to do something wrong.

“Don’t worry about them.” Bucky whispered, “They’re just envious of you.”

That made you calm down a little bit, finishing up your dinner, making your way towards the stage.

Watching Bucky walk up, you smiled, clapping loudly for him. Standing on the edge of the room, you stayed out of eyesight from everyone, well almost everyone.

Brock had been watching you since the moment you walked in with Bucky. He knew it was you that messed up the arrangement, watching as Bucky came in at the 11th hour, taking all of it from him.

“Well, well, finally alone Mrs. Barnes.” Tensing up at his voice, you tried to get away from Brock, not being past enough, him grabbing onto your upper arm dragging you away.

“Let me go!, stop!” You tried to yell but it seemed like Bucky’s speech was ending, and as everyone started to clap, it canceled out your plea for help.

“Shut up, you bitch!” He shoved you against the wall, cornering you. Turning your face away from him, your arm starting to bruise, tears starting to cascade down your cheeks. “You ruined my life!”

“What?” You didn’t understand what he had been saying. Scoffing, Brock brought his hand to your face, smacking you across the face. Letting out a gasp, your hand instantly came up to your cheek, cradling.

“BUCKY!” You tried to yell, some sound coming out before Brock covered your mouth. You knew what he was capable of, your eyes wide, pleading for him to let you go.

“You know,” He smirked, his other hand slowly creeping up your leg, “I always wanted something from Barnes, his fortune, but I think I got a better prize tonight.”

Before anything could go further, Bucky had been looking for you since he was on stage, remembering where you were standing, seeing how you were gone. Scanning the room again, he saw how Brock was also gone, assuming the worst.

Ending his speech early, he darted off the stage, making his way towards the back of the gala, hearing you call for him.

“BUCKY!”

Eyes wide, Bucky followed the sound of your voice, running down one of the empty hallways, seeing you at the end of it. Seeing red, Bucky stormed towards Brock, shoving him off you, slamming him into the wall.

“You piece of shit.” He spit at him, his forearm pressing against neck, Brock gasping for air, “You think you come here and mess with my wife.”

“C’mon Barnes, she was asking for it.” He smirked. Bucky’s eyes hardened, stepping away from Brock, before swinging a punch to his face.

You gasped, your hands covering your mouth, not knowing what to do, if you should pull Bucky off him or go call for help, both a bad idea.

Standing there helpless, you watched as Bucky punched Brock til the point he was unconscious.

Standing up, wiping the blood from his nose, Bucky turned back to you, seeing the two bruises on you.

“Are you bleeding?” His hands were soft on your cheek, caressing the bruise carefully, not wanting to hurt you anymore.

“No.” You whispered, “But it hurts a lot.”

Saying nothing more, Bucky wrapped an arm around your shoulder, bringing you to the car, forgetting about the gala all together.

“We can’t leave.” You protested.

“Your hurt, nothing is more important.” He stated, leaving no room for you to argue. Letting you hold his hand the entire way home, your thumb slightly moved over his bruised knuckles, touching it softly like he did when he held your cheek.

Driving in the estate, barely bringing the car into park, Bucky was already out the door, coming to your side, bringing you into the bathroom.

Pulling out the first aid and medical equipment he had, setting you up on the bathroom counter, Bucky rummaged through it all.

“Nothing’s gonna make it go away.” You whispered, not wanting to get him mad, “It’ll go away on its own eventually.”

You didn’t know what caused it, but watching him freeze, his head still looking down, you heard him let out a sob.

“Bucky.” You said cautiously. Looking up at you, tears now in his eyes, Bucky couldn’t help but apologize.

“I’m sorry.” He choked, “I’m so sorry.”

Wrapping his arms around you, Bucky cried onto your dress, his head pressed against your chest. Not really knowing what to do, you slowly cradled his head in your arms, running your hair through his hair.

“It’s okay.” You whispered, pulling him away from you, wiping away his tears. “I never told you about it and you were protecting me, that’s all I could ever do for you.”

It was like a lightbulb in both of your heads had clicked, looking into his eyes, before looking down at his lips before looking up at him again. Bucky seemed to have the same idea, slowly leaning in.

The kiss was soft, your hands still on his face, slowly moving your lips in sync with his. Pulling away, you rested your forehead onto his, smiling softly. That kiss was the first one since you were married and had been better than you imagined.

Letting out a watery laugh, Bucky stood between your legs, his hands on your waist. “I wanted to do that for so long.”

“Really.” You whispered, you always thought Bucky never really thought about a romantic relationship with you.

“And I know that we haven’t really been a married couple, and I didn’t want to pressure you into anything, letting you take the first steps. I know that I wasn’t your first choice, but I promise you, I will always make sure you’re okay, you are my number 1 priority, I didn’t marry you for your father’s chair, I married you because I knew that I could see a family with you.”

Smiling, you caressed his cheek, sighing softly. “I love you.”

Bucky always believed that he didn’t have a heart, he didn’t have any love in his body, never imagining he’d be married let alone being married to one of the most wonderful women he had ever met.

“I love you too, my love, with my whole being.”

fin.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x wife!reader #bucky barnes x fem!reader #mob!bucky #mob!bucky barnes #mob!bucky barnes x reader #mob!bucky barnes x wife!reader #bucky barnes #mafia!bucky

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flemingsfreckles · 11 days

Text

Newlyweds

Jessie Fleming x Reader

Preview: You and Jessie finally get married, when you get home, your original plans get derailed by your sleepy wife

Warnings: suggestive, mentions of sex (fingering), getting walked in on, no detailed smut, non sexual nudity, showering together,

WC: 1.6k

A/N: this ended up soft and fluffy, I thought about taking it the smut route but I didn’t, sorry I know yall love some smut, I also finished writing this just now and I’m just gonna post it, it’ll edit it if I find errors but it’s very possible they’re in there.

Jessie was practically cackling as she ran down the hallway of your home toward your bedroom with you cradled in her arms.

“If you fall you’re going to get us both hurt Jessie.” You tried to protest when she went to pick you up outside the front door.

“It’ll be fine! Plus it’s a tradition thing.”

“I think the tradition is the groom carries the bride through the door, last time I checked we’re both the bride.”

“Shhh just let me do it.” You had, reluctantly let her pick you up, bridal style, walking you through the door of your house. It only took 3 steps for Jessie to in fact trip over the rug that sat at the entrance.

Thankfully neither of you were hurt, she had managed to catch both herself and you before either of you hit the floor.

“Jessie!”

That’s what set her off laughing. And she couldn’t stop, she was hysterically laughing as she kept moving, using your body to push open the bedroom door. By the time she placed you on the bed you were laughing too. You couldn’t help it, your wife’s laugh was contagious.

“I cannot believe you almost fell.” You shake your head looking up at where she stood next to the bed. Going limp she flops down onto the bed next to you. She’s laying on her stomach, looking at you as you lay on your back, turned to the side to look at your wife.

“Hi wifey.” She whispers to you, the biggest toothy grin across her face.

“Hi wife.” You lean in and kiss her gently.

You both lay, just staring at each other, soaking in the fact that just a few hours ago you had officially gotten married.

The two of you had joked for so long that you practically were married, being together since you were 17 and 18, you had stayed together falling in love with each other more and more as the time went on. Now being 25 and 26 you finally had done it, in front of all your friends and family, you were married.

As you stare at her you notice her eyes starting to flutter closed, then she’d open them with a couple hard blinks, before they’d start to droop again. The sight is adorable, Jessie’s sleepy face gently placed on the bed.

“Let’s go to sleep Jess”

“No, we’re supposed to, ya know, consummate the marriage.” She cracks her eyes enough to look at you and wiggles her eyebrows.

“Babe, I think that tradition is more for people who didn’t sleep together before marriage, we’ve been having sex for like 8 years.”

“But still, we’ve never had sex as wives.”

“What do you call the fingering in the reception bathroom then?” You counter.

You weren’t too proud of it, but something about seeing Jessie in her tuxedo declaring how much she loved you in front of everyone you both cared about, turned you on. You couldn’t help yourself but to whisper some filthy words into Jessie’s ear as both of you sat having dinner. The two of you had snuck off to a bathroom during your reception to have a moment to yourselves, one thing turned into another and before you knew it Jessie had you sitting on the sink, her fingers under your dress and inside of you.

Jessie’s face turned red at the memory.

“That doesn’t count as consummation, no one finished.” She argues with you.

“That’s not my fault, you can thank your sister for that.”

Jessie’s little, but thankfully adult, sister had come looking for both of you. The photographer needed you both for photos with your brand new wedding bands. You thought you had locked the door when you walked in, turns out Jessie had already made an attempt to lock it, meaning you unlocked it. She had looked everywhere, before she opened the bathroom door, seeing her older sister between your thighs, your dress hiked up around your waist and Jessie’s hand between your legs.

“Oh, you two are disgusting.” She clasped her hand over her eyes. “Wash your hands and both of you get out here, the photographer needs you!” Jessie had been mortified, being caught by her sister of all people, she would’ve preferred a teammate. You had laughed it off and dragged your red faced wife out of the bathroom.

The party continued on for a few hours after and while you were still very turned on by your wife, the exhaustion of the day started to sink in not exactly leaving either of you in the mood for what you knew would be multiple rounds of sex.

You watched as Jessie’s eyes continued to flutter shut each time they shut they stay closed for longer and longer until you’re pretty convinced she wasn’t going to open them again.

“Hey,” you gently nudge her shoulder and her eyes crack open. “Let’s go shower and get changed.”

“But I’m so comfortable here.”

“Come on babe, we can have our first shower together as wives.” Saying the word wife and it not being a joke anymore made you smile.

“So cozy in the bed.” She mumbled as her eyes closed again.

“Alright, hang on.” You stand up, moving over to the side of the bed closest to her, you scoop your arms under her shoulders and the other under her knees. She doesn’t protest as you lift her and carry her into the bathroom.

You gently place her on the floor and give her a kiss. “Let’s get you undressed.”

“That’s what I’m talking about.” Jessie smirks at you.

“No, you were just falling asleep on the bed.”

She pouts at you, arms crossed. You gently take her wrists, undoing the cufflinks of her dress shirt and then sliding off her tuxedo coat. Your fingers move to the buttons on her vest, undoing those and helping her remove it. Lastly is her dress shirt, she works from the top down as you work to undo the bottom of her shirt. Your hands meet in the middle and she pulls the shirt off and quickly follows it with her sports bra.

“My beautiful wife.” You lean down placing kisses across her exposed skin. While your mouth stays kissing her chest, your fingers move to her belt, undoing it and sliding it out from her pants. She undoes the button on her slacks and lets them fall to the floor. You hands find the elastic of her boxers and you slowly pull them down. Moving your head from her chest you place kisses along both of her thighs as you remove her underwear.

“You’re turn.” She says, you turn away from her to allow her access to the zipper and ties on your dress.

Jessie’s hands find the top tie and begin undoing the knot. “Have I told you enough how beautiful you look?” She says as her fingers move to the next tie. “Absolutely stunning, you took my breath away.” Her hands then move to the zipper, undoing the rest of the dress. She brings her hands up to where the top of the dress sat. She begins pulling it off of your body, similarly to your actions she brings her lips, placing them on every inch of skin on your back she exposes pulling down your dress.

Jessie extends a hand to you to help you step out and over the dress. “Wow.” She takes the time to look you up and down. You had bought a new set of lingerie for the wedding. It was a lacy white set, one you knew would make your wife crazy. “Where did you get this?” Her fingers work into the straps of the bra.

“Oh you know, just something I had lying around.” You joke with her. Her eyes are locked on your chest. “Quit staring, I’ll put it on again tomorrow for you to fully enjoy.” The comment had Jessie biting her lip, likely thinking of what she’d get to do to you after a good night's sleep.

You move your own hands to your bra, unclasping the back while Jessie’s thumbs hook into your matching panties and pull them down your legs. She comes back up to meet your lips with hers.

You both stay for a second, grinning at each other, both overwhelmed with happiness. You pull away to start the shower, while you wait for it to run warm you pull Jessie into your arms, hugging from behind. You turn the two of you toward the mirror above the vanity.

“Look at my wife.” You point in the mirror at Jessie’s figure in front of you.

“Ehh she’s alright but look at my wife!” She teases you back, pointing at you in the mirror.

“I love you, wife.”

“I love you, wife”

Your arms release her, giving her a quick squeeze with your hand on her shoulders. “Let’s hurry up and shower so we can sleep and then tomorrow we can do all the consummating you want.” You give her a wink and she quickly follows you into the shower, the two of you having a moment of peace and relaxation after the day’s festivities. As you looked at her in the shower, you couldn’t help but think how it was just the two of you, and that was all you would ever need. You and her.

#jessie fleming #jessie fleming x reader #jflem #jessie fleming imagine #woso imagine #woso x reader #canwnt x reader

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hello-eden · 14 days

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DpxDC #15

Dani as mara and dan as Damian reincarnation. For those who don't know who Mara al Ghul is she is Damian Wayne's cousin. If it's not obvious by the last name it's on his mother's side. I think the idea is perfect because original Mara tried to gain approval from her family and Damien originally was the perfect heir. I think those original traits would really match what went on with Dan and Dani.

I do not know exactly when they would get their memories but Damian would at least get them before He would go to Gotham to be Robin. there would be a lot of angst with them trying to hold on to Danny's teachings but also listen to their new family.

When Dan goes to his father and finds out he doesn't have to kill, it would definitely be a relief. Dan would definitely have a hard time not referring to Dani as their sister instead of their cousin.

I'm imagining Damian ending up on a robin mission where he needs to talk to some sort of magical user and they call him by the name World Ender. he just panics. The amount of Lies he has to tell. if any one of the bats are around him would be astronomical.

I think after Dan Has been with the family and is like hey they're like Danny. Dani would just show up. like Dan gives the A-Okay and all of a sudden she just moved into a room in the manor. The only person who knows that she's there for a good 2 weeks it's just Alfred or maybe Dan as well. Dan calls Dani their sister and everyone thinks they're twins for like 3 months. It's not until Dani does something she's not supposed to and Bruce pulls the I am your father card then she's like no you're not, that anyone realizes.

If anyone has any more ideas for this please tell me I love this au that I've started.

#dc x dp #danny phantom #dp x dc #dpxdc #danny fenton #batfam #batfamily #batman #dc x dp crossover #damian wayne #danielle phantom #dan phantom #mara al ghul

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finelinevogue · 9 months

Text

i love you more than dino nuggets

summary - the night before the final show

pairing : fiancé!harry x reader

word count : +2.3k

a/n : originally was going to include the show but i have another idea for that so i’m off to write that now !!! the title will make sense as you read😭😭

It was the final night before the last love on tour show and you’d already cried three times.

Once on the plane over to Italy. Once on visiting the stage being set up today at the stadium. And once, now, crying because of how overwhelmed you feel.

You were busy getting ready in your shared bedroom, whilst Harry entertained the rest of your friends and family downstairs.

The house Harry owned in Italy, that was soon to become yours too in a week, was a massive Roman inspired villa. The orange stone that the building was made of created a cool villa to live in and with over 12 bedrooms it was the biggest house Harry owned.

All of Harry’s family and friends were staying over here for the duration of the last love on tour show, and then also for your wedding next week.

Whilst some wondered why Harry would end the love on tour shows in Italy, when nothing would ever beat the homeliness feeling of Wembley, it was all because you were getting married here a week Saturday.

How could you not? The perfect background for a summers wedding, in yours and Harry’s favourite country.

“Babe?” Harry knocked on the door and enters before you answer.

“Yeah?” You sniffled, wiping your fingers under your eyes to clear the mascara marks.

“Wha— What’s with the tears, baby?” He asked with a laugh.

“I don’t even know!” You laughed, starting to cry all over again.

“Is it ‘cause the the cake decorator cancelled on us again? ‘Cause, babe, I promise you that I will bake the bloody thing myself.”

Harry came and sat next to you on the bed, handing you a handkerchief he pulled out of his blazer pocket.

Tonight was a big celebration for him and so you’d decided to all get dressed up and have one final supper all together. Harry was in a gorgeous black slate suit, with a basic white t-shirt underneath. You matched him with a simple black halter-dress.

“Turns out these suit tissues are useful for something.”

“Thank you.” You said, dabbing underneath your eyes.

“You’re going to make me cry before the night is up, I just know it.” He nudged you with his shoulder, causing you to fall into him.

You rested your head on his shoulder and let your hands fall into his lap. His arm came around your body and hugged you close, kissing the side of your head as he inhaled your coconut shampoo.

You sat in silence for a few moments, Harry’s fingers coming to play with yours. Twirling around each other until they find home in an interlocking movement.

“Can’t believe this is all real.” You said first.

“Babe, you’re only saying that because we watched The Truman Show the other day.” Harry chuckled.

“Don’t say things like that.” You playfully hit him, but Harry caught your hand before you can go for a second playful punch. “Y’know that my worst fear is this all not being real.” You mumbled.

Harry nodded his head.

“Then let me show you just how real this is.”

Harry pushed you to lay your back down on the bed, your legs still touching the floor from where you sat on the edge of the bed. Harry moved to hover over you and took your intertwined hands with him, moving them to link above your head.

A loose strand of hair tickled your forehead and Harry blew it away with a soft blow, making you smile.

“You’re so pretty.” Harry stopped to pause and just take you all in.

“I thought you were supposed to be showing me how we are real.” You sarcastically told him. The glint in his eyes told you just how cheeky he thought you were.

Harry didn’t waste another moment before kissing you. Your lips met his instantly and just like you’d been doing for the past five years, you kissed and kissed and kissed. You both knew when to bite or slow down and speed up. You were so in tune with each other.

When you started to pant slightly out of breath, Harry slowed down and moved his lips away from yours just a fraction.

“Breathe, baby.” He whispered against your lips.

“Mhm.” You tried to inhale some air.

“Was that real enough for you?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe we should try a—”

Harry’s lips pressed back against yours and he let go of your hands, because he knew you were itching to touch him.

Your hands went straight to his cheeks, pulling him in to guide his lips against yours, whilst his own hands remained gripped to the bed sheets as he held his weight up. You kissed him until both your lips were red and swollen.

A knock on the door is what interrupted you both.

“Fuck.” Harry mumbled, stuffing his head into your neck to hide from everyone else. Now that he’d had a moment with you, he didn’t want anyone else.

“H? Y/N?” The sound of Anne came through the other side of the door. “I know you two love each other, but you have people downstairs waiting for you.”

You couldn’t help but chuckle that you’d been caught making out by Harry’s mum. You felt like a teenager all over again.

“It’s not funny.” Harry pinched your sides playfully.

“Did y’hear me?” Anne asked.

“Yes muumm!” Harry replied, pretending like he was annoyed when in reality he could never be anything but kind to his mum.

“Be down in five, otherwise I’m coming in next time.”

Harry grunted and dropped his head back into your neck, softly kissing and biting at the skin he could find exposed down there.

“Harry stop.” You tried to push him off, laughing, but he was too heavy and you were too weak to fight him off. “I’m not having your mum come back.”

“It’s an empty threat, babe.” Harry continued to kiss your neck and it was heading straight for a hickey.

“Umm… Do you remember Christmas of 2020?”

Harry’s head shot up at that, smirking as he looked down at you.

“Be more specific.”

You rolled your eyes and huffed because he knew exactly what you were talking about, but was just too much of a tease and wanted to hear you say it.

“Your mum thought I was in pain, but it turned out I was just receiving head from her son. So thanks for that. It’s a memory that will haunt me forever.”

“What? Me eating you out?” Harry looked even more cheeky. “Well, I guess we’ll have to fix that.”

His hands shifted underneath your body as he moved down until he was knelt on the floor in front of your legs. You kicked him with your foot before he could lift your dress though.

“Harry Styles!” You scoffed. “Your entire family is downstairs. Stop it.”

You were well aware that you sounded like a teacher, or a scolding mother, but sometimes it was the only way to get him to stop his adolescent behaviour.

“You’re no fun.” Harry groaned and laid on the floor like you’d just shot him through the heart with an arrow.

“Don’t marry me then.” You said jokingly.

You shook your head and walked towards the door, heels clicking on the marble floor as you went. You brushed your dress down from creases.

You stopped in front of a full length mirror to check yourself out before you rejoined everyone downstairs. Everything was still set in place, despite the copious amounts of crying.

Harry came up behind you, having felt him before actually seeing him through the mirror.

He wrapped his arms underneath your armpits and squeezed you in a hug from behind. You tilted your head to one side of his body so he could plant a soft kiss on the skin you’d left exposed.

“I love you. And I can’t wait to marry you.” He kissed you again. “For you to be mine. Officially.”

“And you’ll be mine.” You turned your head and looked him in his eyes. They were so full of love, sparkling from the excitement you gave him.

“I’ve always been yours.”

His lips met yours once last time before you really did have to go downstairs.

Harry held your hand as you walked down the stairs together, occasionally checking that you were alright and that your heels weren’t going to make you fall.

Once you were down them, Harry immediately brought you into his side and had his arm around your waist. You copied his motion and followed him into the outdoor seating area.

Lots of long tables had been set up on the large patio for people to sit at, with an extra long table that was arranged with food and drinks for everyone here and an extra hundred people.

There was meats, fish, pasta, pizza and even veggie dinosaur nuggets that Harry had shipped from England just for you. For drinks there was everything from water to very expensive wine. Wine that come from the vineyards Harry has invested in around this area.

Everyone cheered when Harry and you finally turned up, many people already sitting down and tucking into their food and some people nursing glasses of fizz as they chatted.

The glow of the moon and the strings of hundreds of fairy lights made the atmosphere that little bit more special. There was some light piano music playing in the background and everything felt at peace with the world.

“I’m just going to go say to hi to a couple of people. Are you okay?” Harry asked you.

“‘Course. I’m starving and starting to get hangry.”

“Well nobody wants to see a hangry Y/N. Go on!” Harry shooed you along and you stuck up your middle finger at him. He watched you with admiration as you wandered off.

You made it to the buffet selection and happily see your dinosaur nuggets waiting for you. They even have a little sign on them that says ‘property of the lead singers fiance. don’t touch’ in Harry’s handwriting. Every minute he’s got spare he’s reminding people that you are soon to be forever each others.

You sit at a table with some of Harry’s relatives, chatting with them for a bit, before moving down the table to speak to your family.

You finished off your dinosaur nuggets and excuse yourself, wandering back inside the house and towards the freezer.

Opening it, you are amazed to find another three boxes of nuggets and you instantly fall a little bit more in love with Harry because of the simple action.

Your best friend, Ruby, meets you in the kitchen, as you’re turning on the oven to make more.

“Someone has been looking beautiful tonight.” She teased you, handing you over what must be your fourth glass of prosecco of the night.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” You laughed.

“Don’t be daft. No one is glowing more than you are tonight.”

“Not even H?” You challenged.

“I mean, yeah. But he’s only happy ‘cause you are.”

You blushed at her comment and take a sip of your drink. After the nuggets are in the oven, you sit on top of the granite kitchen island. Ruby clambered on after you, falling straight onto her back with how tipsy she is.

You laughed so hard that you ended up falling back too. Luckily the kitchen island is that big that you remain on it.

“I can’t believe you’re getting married next week.” You best friend says.

“Why does everyone keep focusing on that and not the final show tomorrow?” You wondered.

“Maybe because your wedding day is slightly more important than the end of Love On Tour.”

“I don’t think I see it that way.” You hummed at your own realisation. “They’re equal in importance. Tomorrow night is the biggest night of Harry’s career and it means a lot to me, therefore meaning a lot to me.”

“Girl, don’t tell me you’ve got cold feet.”

“No!” You blurted out, more sure of that fact than anything. “Never. I love Harry and I can’t wait for married life together.”

“But…?”

“But I think tomorrow night will be as equally as important to him and so it will be to me too.” You answered truthfully.

“Ugh. When did you get so sappy?” Your best friend teased you.

“Harry brings it out of me.” You gushed over your fiancé.

“You two are so sickeningly in love.”

“Don’t worry. Harry will give me my medicine later.” You attempted a bad joke.

“Okayyy….” Brad said as entered the room with a beer in hand. He’s been following your best friend everywhere she’s gone recently and you’re wondering whether he’s harbouring a little crush.

Both you and Ruby burst out laughing, you clutching onto your stomach from laughing so hard. Everything is so much funnier laying down too.

“What the fuck is going on in here?” Harry asked, smiling when he saw you laughing. He walked up Brad and slung his arm around his shoulder as they watched on.

“Mate I don’t even know. I don’t think I want to know.” Brad answered.

“Harry? Do you love Y/N?” Ruby asked.

“Yes.” Harry answered quickly.

“Y/N? Do you love Harry?”

“I doo!!” You shouted, laughing afterwards.

“They love each other! You’re now both wifed up.” Ruby announced.

“What?” You laughed. “Harry can’t be my wife.” You giggled.

“Oh yeah.” Ruby laughed and it set both of you off laughing again.

Harry shook his head at you both and nodded for Brad to handle Ruby whilst he handled you. Brad made sure Ruby didn’t fall over when he stood her up, announcing he was going to take her somewhere to lay down for a bit to calm down.

You felt Harry’s hands on yours as he pulled you to sit up.

Once you sat up you warmly smiled at him, cupping his cheek and leaning your forehead onto his.

“Hey, baby. Y’doing okay?” Harry asked and smiled at you.

“Mhm.”

“Your dino nuggets are ready if you want them.”

“Yes please.”

“Okay. Stay here for me.”

Harry arranged them on a plate and added some sweet chilli sauce on the side for you. He then came back over to you and stood between your legs.

He dipped a nugget in some sauce and held it up to your mouth. He blew on it to cool it down, only because he’d seen chefs on the TV do it, and waited for you to take a bite.

You hummed in delight as you bit into it. “Mm mm.”

“Nice?” Harry asked, wiping your mouth of crumbs with a nearby napkin.

“Thank you.” You nodded. “I’m excited for a life full of you and dino nuggets, Harry.”

“Do you love me more than dino nuggets?” He offered you another bite.

“Love you more than anyone or anything.” You finished chewing before speaking. “But veggie dino nuggets are the second love of my life.”

“As long as I’m the first.” He kissed your forehead.

Both of you were in the kitchen for another twenty minutes, talking about anything and nothing whilst Harry fed you. A few people had walked in, but had left you just as quickly to enjoy this quiet time together.

A couple of people had snapped photos of you too, which you would be thankful for later.

At the end of the night, after there was a mass of friends and family cleaning up and washing dishes, everyone retreated to bed.

Harry had been saying his rounds of good night before he had joined you in bed.

It was past midnight and you wanted time to slow down. It was unfair that the last show of love on tour has crept up so soon. How dare it.

You understood Harry needed some time to himself now though and start building more of a life outside of touring for himself. For starters, marrying you.

Harry sighed as he got into bed, peeling back the covers and immediately wiggling is way across the bed, over to your side, and spooning you from behind.

He kissed the back of your neck a couple of times, just because he could, as you wiggled in his hold to get comfortable again.

“Tonight was fun.” You said softly, speaking into the darkness and knowing it was only Harry who could hear you.

“It was. Tomorrow night will be even more fun.”

“It’ll be bittersweet.”

“Maybe.” His hands held yours. “But I’m getting tired, baby, and I just want a bit of rest now.”

“I know, bub. I’ll just miss it, is all.”

“You’ll always still have me, though. I’m not going anywhere.”

You turned around in his hold, facing him and resting your faces so close that your noses were touching.

“I’m here to stay too. Forever yours when that ring gets put on me next week, baby.” You tell him, smiling a little too much at that comment.

“I… I think I’m going to play something for you tomorrow. Something i’ve never done before.” He sounded nervous telling you.

“Just for me?”

“Everything’s always for you. This piece will especially be.”

“Can’t wait.” You leaned in and pecked his lips so he could taste your excitement. “You’re going to be amazing.”

“I’ll be sad it’s over, but more than ready to step off the stage and down the aisle instead. That’ll be the best day of my life.”

#harry styles #harry styles x reader #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles x y/n #harry styles fanfic #ask finelinevogue #harry blurb #finelinevogue #harry styles concept #harry oneshot #harry styles fic #harry styles blurbs #harry styles love on tour #love on tour italy #harry styles italy fic

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heartpascal · 8 months

Text

the sun was collapsing

▹— joel miller x platonic!reader

▹— summary: joel thought you moving to a college halfway across the country would be the worst thing to happen to his family

▹— a/n: first off. yes this is me projecting. second, this is a miller!kid fic HOWEVER. it is not specified whether reader is adopted or biological etc + there is no reference to looks/resemblance! edit upon finishing: this took a slightly different direction than i originally meant but erm. yeah. let me know if y’all want any more of this!

▹— warnings: reference to a suicide attempt / suicidal thoughts and feelings — it’s the last section of the fic, and if you wish to avoid it stop reading at “You knew that you would never get used to the sound of a gun being fired.”, i will also put *** at the start of it (joel’s, but still, be cautious), negative feelings about going to college, miller!reader (adopted/bio unspecified), regretting leaving home, outbreak day, angst!!, brief use of they/them pronouns

▹— taglist: @rhymingtree @sleepygraves @wnstice (everything) @auggiesolovey @just-kaylaa @evyiione @lemonlaides @fariylixie0915 @faceache111 @randomhoex @canpillowscry @pedropascalsrealgf @star-wars-lover @coolchick333 @soobsdior @rvjaa @sunflowersdrop (pedro)

masterlist

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

There had been a pit festering in the depths of your chest since the moment you had finished all of your exams. One which, no matter how many reassurances were provided, refused to go away, refused to allow you a moment of peace, of rest.

Strangely, it had only gotten worse the moment you had received your results, since you had received your acceptance letter, since your place at the college of your dreams was confirmed. As if all your hard work finally paying off was a bad thing, something to dread.

At first, you blamed it on the way Sarah had cried and held on to you for the way your chest caved in on itself. It felt reasonable to assume that your little sister could be the reason for such overwhelming trepidation about your impending departure. After all, you had always worried about her, had always looked out for her as best as you could, especially with everything that had happened with her mother.

When that didn’t explain away the uneasiness in your chest cavity, you shifted the blame to your father. Your dad, who you had looked after for what felt like the entirety of your life, who you had looked to in the best and worst times of your life. The very man who did his best to quell his own fear and worry about your move, just to reassure you, to encourage you.

Joel Miller was a self-made man, who raised two kids, a brother, and a business all in one short lifetime. He was a man who had struggled at practically every turn, and if this college was what would make you happy, was what would give you the head start that he had never received, he would welcome it.

You knew, really, that he would be fine. Your dad had raised you just fine, and he could handle your little sister without you, you were sure. For a brief moment, you had blamed that on the sense of foreboding within you; the idea that they didn’t need you. It didn’t take long for you to realise that they did, and that they would be glad to have you from miles away, rather than not at all.

So, you were at a loss.

It should have been an exciting time, something that you were looking forward to, rather than dreading. This was the start of the rest of your life, the reward for all of your hours spent working for the grades you had received, for the anxiety and stress of school. It was supposed to be a good thing. You couldn’t understand why your chest didn’t seem to get that memo.

The feeling persisted the entirety of the time that led up to your move, outlasting each brief flash of any other emotion. It continued the whole roadtrip up to the college, across multiple state borders, despite the multitude of karaoke covers that Sarah initiated.

Even when Joel and Tommy were taking your boxes up to your dorm room, you could feel it. Hell, when Sarah helped you start unpacking said boxes, it continued.

It was only when you were waving the three of them off, tears blurring the shrinking truck, that you realised just what was responsible for the feeling that had been bugging you for months.

You didn’t want to leave home.

Moreover, you didn’t want to grow up. You didn’t want to be alone.

The realisation was almost enough for you to call your dad, to beg him to come back, to pick you up and return you back home. Almost. Instead, you found yourself walking numbly back up to your dorm room, taking more than one wrong turn in the hallways which bled into one, and sitting down on the mattress which wasn’t your own.

For the next week, you breezed by, drifting along your timetable in some kind of half-there state. It was like you couldn’t fully comprehend that you were on your own.

You phoned Sarah on the fifth day, twisting the wire around your fingertip nervously, as if your little sister would ever ignore your calls. She answered on the second ring — unsurprisingly, given that was about how long it always took for her to answer the phone — and she greeted you with the most joyful call of your name you’d heard for a while.

“Sarah,” You responded fondly, tears immediately welling up in your eyes as you listened to her barrage of questions about your first week at college. “Slow down, Sarah, slow down!” You interrupted when her questions became intelligible over the spotty phone line.

“Sorry, sorry,” Sarah said, not sounding sorry at all. “I miss you. I wanna know everything.” She finished, which you already knew she would. Sarah was a lot like you in that way, curious and determined. You knew she was already thinking of what college she wanted to go to, and just how to get there. If she wasn’t swept up by playing soccer, neglecting her studies, that was.

Regardless, you smiled, just glad to hear her voice. “I know, I miss you, too. Is dad home yet?” You asked, unsurprised by her responding no, considering Joel Miller was renowned for his inability to stay on time, his tendency to overwork himself unrelenting. “Okay, well, you’ll tell him everything, right?”

“‘Course I will,” Sarah responded, sounding thrilled to get to relay such interesting information. She’d no doubt be sharing it with Tommy, first thing in the morning, too. “Now tell me!”

“Okay, okay.” You laughed, before telling her as much as you could about what you recalled of your experience so far. Some of it was embellished, of course, mostly for Sarah’s benefit, though also slightly for your father’s. You already knew he’d be worrying himself sick over you.

That phone call was the only time the pit in your chest lessened, the whole time you’d been at college. As if the smallest dose of home was having a real effect. It only made you miss the house back in Texas all the more.

You felt worse afterwards, somehow. As if the call had been a harsh and unneeded reminder of the distance between you and your family. It had barely been over a week by now since you had left home, and you worried that you would never get used to being so far away. How could it possibly get better? How could you ever settle in when the people you love were so far?

The days afterwards were spent mulling over all of your life choices, spending your time soaking in all the regrets you were beginning to have. Why did you work so hard to get into this college? You were miserable. Not to mention all of the experiences you had missed out on in your determination to get here.

Luckily for you, you finally made your first friend.

He had sat next to you in one of your classes, and finally, after three classes of sitting in silence, the two of you had struck up a conversation.

Strangely enough, the two of you bonded over missing home. He was all the way from Nevada, and shared your debilitating homesickness. He talked a lot about his mother, and his older sister, and it was nice to have somebody to share that with.

Things were starting to look up. Life was a lot easier when you had a friend to share it with.

But all the talking about feeling homesick didn’t actually get rid of the feeling. Your heart practically ached each time you went home to your dorm room, where you were alone, where there was no little sister to come and bug you about dinner, or about dad getting home.

You called again, on the three week mark.

Much to your annoyance and happiness, your uncle Tommy answered the phone.

“Hey, uncle Tommy. How’re you doing?” You asked, the smile obvious in your voice. Even to your ears, it was the happiest you’d sounded since speaking to Sarah, a little over two weeks prior.

“Well, if it ain’t our little ol’ Nerd Miller.” Tommy greeted over the phone, that familiar teasing tone making you roll your eyes. “I’m doin’ mighty fine, kiddo. How’re you gettin’ on?” He asked, tone taking on a more soft note, which had your chest aching all over again.

Still, you shook your head and tried your best to seem as happy as possible, for his sake. “Oh, you know, just learning the ways of the world, n’ all. Where’s dad?” You questioned, not wanting to be rude, but also desperate to speak to the man who had raised you, and who had also missed your calls since you’d been gone.

“He’s out buyin’ some last minute supplies for tomorrow’s job. Keeping himself busy, I’d say.” Tommy replied, before you heard him calling out Sarah’s name, away from the phone. “Hang on, now, Sarah wants to speak to you.”

You wait, listening to the shuffling of the phone switching hands from across the country, endeared by your sister scolding your uncle for taking so long to tell her it was you. They argued for a moment longer, their joking tones familiar, but sounding vaguely different from across the phone line.

Finally, Sarah greeted you. “Hey, little sister! How are you getting on, over there? Tommy causing you trouble?” You asked in return, hearing him yell, some distance away, straining to be heard across the phone. It sent you and Sarah into giggles, and she had to take a breath before she could respond.

“As always. So, have you been to any parties, yet?” She asked, always insisting that you were the Miller child who caused the most trouble. You vaguely heard Tommy yell out a ‘sure hope not’ over the phone. Sarah shushed him, eagerly awaiting your answer.

“No, Sarah, no partying for me! I’ve gotta work hard, make this whole trip worth it.” You said, and though your tone was teasing, your words were feeling more true by the second. You had seen plenty of fliers advertising parties all across campus, even been handed a few as you exited classrooms, but you were uninterested. Your new friend had suggested you go to one, just yesterday evening, but you had declined. You were pretty sure that underaged drinking wasn’t the right way to cure your homesickness.

“You’re so boring. Dad’ll be thrilled.” Sarah laughed, the sound crackling over the line, and you smiled. There was no doubt in your mind that Joel would be relieved about your lacking party life, as much as he said he encouraged you getting out and living. Hell, the whole reason he hadn’t called you was so that you didn’t feel suffocated by him, so that you could live your life without feeling pressure from your old man. “Made any new friends?”

You hesitated, for some reason. “Uh, yeah! There’s this guy in my—”

“A guy?” Sarah interrupted, immediately. And there it was! The very reason for your hesitation. You heard a struggle over the phone, and Sarah was sounding more amused as time passed. “What’s his name? Are you dating?”

“Okay, enough of that!” Tommy said, and there was more shuffling as he presumably snatched the phone off of Sarah. You could hear her complaining through breaks in her laughter, but Tommy was refusing to hand back the phone. “Your old man does not need this one passin’ along details of your dating life, kiddo.”

You smiled, rolling your eyes. “There is no dating life, uncle Tommy. He’s just my friend.” You responded, though your uncle sounded unconvinced. “Anyway, enough about him. About dad’s birthday, next week—”

It was Tommy who cut you off this time, shifting the phone in his hand. “Woah! Don’t you go worrying about that, now. Me and Sarah have got it covered, don’t we, kiddo?” You heard Sarah yelling agreements, though you doubted she even knew what you were talking about.

“Actually, I was thinking about coming home for it. Surprising dad, you know.” You admitted, mostly in hopes that your uncle would help you plot the journey. And he was slightly better at keeping secrets than Sarah was.

“Oh, you just worry about yourself, up there. We’ll look after your old man! You gotta get out there, live your life!” Tommy responded, dismissing your idea immediately, even though he knew his older brother would have secretly loved the surprise. But it had only been a few weeks since you’d left, and if Tommy was honest, he wasn’t sure you’d go back if you came home so soon.

You frowned at his response, eyebrows furrowing slightly. “You mean to tell me that you and Sarah are gonna manage the birthday breakfast, presents and cake? No way dad’ll remember any of it!” You said. For the longest time, you had been the one taking care of that sort of thing. Joel was always much too busy taking care of you and Sarah as well as overworking himself at his day job to sort out his own birthday celebrations.

Sure, Sarah was old enough by now to do this sort of thing, but it was something that you did. Since you were— what? Eleven? You had been the one to do it. Each year, you made Joel’s birthday cake, and either bought his presents or sent Tommy and Sarah out for them. Would they manage it without you? Did you even want them to?

It was the one day of the year where nothing else came first. Not schoolwork, homework, studying, work, not anything. You always made sure that this day was free, no exceptions. What would you do with it now?

“I think we can manage, right, Sarah?” Tommy said, teasingly, clearly not quite realising the significance of the day for you. Joel was your dad, in all the ways that mattered. He did everything for you! Hell, he even moved you halfway across the country, just because you thought it was what you wanted. This was the one day of the year where you got to return that. Where you got to show just how thankful you are for him, even if he did annoy the hell out of you whenever the chance arose. His birthday was the one day where you could get away with buying him gifts, and Tommy wanted you to… what? Stay this far? Be uninvolved?

“Tommy, I—… I always help with dad’s birthday. That doesn’t need to change now.” You murmured into the phone, suddenly feeling left out. It wasn’t a feeling you enjoyed whatsoever, and especially when it involved such an important day.

Tommy tutted, the sound just about crackling through the receiver, and you could picture him shaking his head, all the way back in Texas. “You gotta live your own life now, kid. Can’t be worryin’ about us little people back here. It’s high time you started puttin’ yourself first. Don’t worry about Joel’s birthday,” Tommy said, softer then, less mocking. “Me and Sarah’ve got it, alright?”

With a frown, you responded. “Alright.”

“Alrighty, now we better get goin’, your dad’ll have a fit if I make Sarah late again.” Tommy told you, and you nodded, before cringing and realising he couldn’t see that.

The three of you said your goodbyes, with Tommy putting the phone down soon after, cutting off his yells to Sarah about getting her shoes on. In the silence that followed after, you couldn’t help but feel more upset than before the call. Logically, you knew your family missed you. You knew that they couldn’t wait for you to be home at Thanksgiving, and you knew that they looked forward to your phone calls home just as much as you did. But it was hard. Brief phone calls with them just weren’t enough, and just showed that life was going on for them as normal, whilst you felt stuck.

You also knew that they were trying to give you your independence, that they were trying to let you live your life. Especially Joel. But you were finding, more and more, that you didn’t want this much independence. You wanted your dad to be overbearing and overly interested in your life, because he just wanted to be involved. You wanted your uncle to drive you to and from school, to sneak you a bottle of beer at family barbecues. You wanted to walk your little sister around town, because she was too nervous to go herself.

Everybody you had known back home had always told you that you’d be just fine at college. They had always told you that you were independent enough as it was, that you were practically an adult already, and that it’d be almost no different to home. For whatever reason, you felt guilty to think that they were wrong about you. You needed your family. You couldn’t do everything on your own, it was too much. It was too hard. It was too… lonely.

Where was your support system? Where were the three overbearing family members that would crowd you when you were upset, until you finally felt better? Who would you turn to when you needed a lift all the way across town? Who would you persuade to watch shitty DVDs from the Adler’s with you? Who would save Sarah from the Adler’s clutches?

As awful as you felt about it, you couldn’t help but want your family to feel as incapable without you as you did without them. You didn’t want them to manage without you. You wanted them to tell you to come home.

Part of you was just hoping that they weren’t doing it because they knew you were looking for the excuse to come home. Because they knew that if they asked, you’d come. Without question. Without even a moment of hesitation.

Your phone rang again, and you jumped up to answer it, hoping your dad was finally home, finally ringing you back. “Hello?”

“Hey!” Your newest and only friend greeted, the sound of a party muffling his voice. You sighed, hand over the end of the phone in hopes he wouldn’t hear it and misread your disappointment. “You sure you don’t wanna come to this thing? It’s a lot of fun!”

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

It was the morning of your dad’s birthday, and you had barely slept a wink, despite having a class relatively early this very morning. It had been a night full of tossing and turning, full of regrets and ideas about going home at 2AM. In the end, your exhaustion let you sleep when it was nearing 6AM, and your alarm woke you up not long later.

You’d barely managed to refrain from micro-managing Sarah and Tommy, all the way from across the country. Instead, you’d let yourself believe that they’d be able to remember everything, despite your anxiety telling you otherwise. You felt awful enough about not being there for Joel’s birthday, the last thing you needed was to feel guilty about him not getting a good birthday, too.

Not that you thought that Sarah or Tommy would allow that, of course. But Tommy was almost as forgetful as Joel was, and it wasn’t like Sarah could borrow Tommy’s truck like you had, last year. She wasn’t even old enough to drive yet! Surely it wasn’t unreasonable for you to worry, right?

You held off from calling home until it was nearing the time they would be leaving for school and work respectively, in hopes of not making the three of them late. You knew that you’d have to leave for your own class soon enough, but it felt wrong to start the day without speaking to your dad. Hell, your sad breakfast of toast had already started the day off on a pretty low note.

The phone rang for an uncomfortably long time, and you were reaching out to hang up when somebody finally answered. No greeting came immediately, just shuffling over the line, alongside some distant yelling. Finally, Tommy said, “Hello?”

“Hey, uncle Tommy. Everything alright over there?” You asked, brows creased as you listened to the commotion going on within the house, audible even over the crackly phone line. It seemed that the day was not starting off as smoothly as it usually did, no doubt due to your own dad and his persistent snoozing of his alarm.

Tommy yelled something away from the phone before finally responding to your question. “All good on our front, kiddo. How’re you doin’?” He asked, though you didn’t miss how distracted he sounded as he asked.

“Um, fine, I guess. Is dad there?”

“Huh? Oh, hang on.” Tommy replied, before you heard the clunk of him placing the phone down on the wooden table it sat on. There were some crackles that you think were his boots against the floor as he walked away, and you distantly heard him yelling for your dad. “Joel, your kid is on the phone!”

It’s awkward — the waiting, that is. The second hand on your watch ticking away until the minute hand moves, and still, there’s only faint rustling on the other end of the phone. Finally, after almost three full minutes, somebody picks up the phone.

Sarah said your name cheerfully, and you smiled tightly, despite yourself. “Hey, Sarah. How’s it been, sorting dad’s birthday?”

“Oh, not so bad. Made him eggs this morning, because he forgot the pancake mix yesterday. And he’s picking up the cake later! But don’t worry! I’ve got his present sorted.” She rambled, barely pausing to take a breath between sentences. You can imagine that she’d been stressed, trying to sort everything. It’s not as easy when you’re young, and you know that from experience.

“I don’t doubt you for a second. Where is dad?” You replied, eyebrows creased as you waited for her response.

“He’s running late, as always.” Sarah answered, and you could picture her rolling her eyes. She was punctual by nature, and definitely didn’t get that from Joel. He was always too late.

“I’m here, I’m here.” You heard faintly, the words muffled across the line. “You, go get in the truck. We’re late! Hey, kiddo.” Joel said, talking to Sarah before finally addressing you on the phone.

“Hi.”

“I’m sorry to cut this short, but we really are running late. I’ll call you once I’m home, alright?” Joel told you, sounding apologetic and frustrated. He probably missed you — and your annual birthday breakfast — just as much as you missed him.

“Okay. Happy birthday, dad.” You responded, feeling increasingly down. You should’ve never listened to Tommy. Joel’s birthday would no doubt be a disaster without you. And you already knew he was going to forget to pick up his birthday cake before returning home from work. It was the whole reason you always baked him one before he got home.

“Thanks, kiddo.” Joel said, a faint smile audible in his voice. He hung up a moment later, already shouting to Tommy and Sarah before the call was cut off. You frowned at the phone in your hand, your eyebrows furrowed as you thought of your family back home. Moving away truly wasn’t a good idea, was it?

That was what your thoughts were stuck on, for the rest of the day. Even as you proceeded to go to classes and see your few friends as normal, you couldn’t help but feel that pit in your chest getting worse, like you really were making a mistake. It was suffocating, and it felt never ending.

When you finally got back to your dorm room — much to your friend’s dismay, after having left them in the library to do an essay alone — you waited by the phone for your dad to call you back.

But when the phone finally did ring, it wasn’t your dad on the other end. Sarah greeted you the moment you answered, sounding relatively tired. She started telling you about her day, and about how Joel still wasn’t home, despite it nearing the late evening. She also told you about having to go to the Adler’s house, and helping Mrs. Adler bake disgusting cookies, followed by how creepy her mother was. Sarah had always found the old woman to be creepy, with her motionless state and blank expression, but in her words, the old woman seemed even more creepy than usual.

You rejoiced with her when she told you the title of the shitty DVD she’d borrowed from their extensive collection, though. It was one of your favourite things about your dad’s birthday traditions, even though the movie was almost always awful.

The call didn’t last long, because Sarah wanted to get her homework done before the weekend started, so you let her go, and sat in your quiet dorm room, once more. It was lonely, more than anything, and even though you often just sat alone in your bedroom at home, it was different. There was no option of going downstairs to see your dad, or crossing the hall to see your sister.

Eventually, you fell asleep, the dim lighting of your room alongside your poor night of sleep prior meaning that you couldn’t wait for Joel to call any longer.

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

The first thing you think when you wake up to a world of chaos, is that you never got to speak to your dad last night.

Even as the world rages on around you, people going insane, reports of an outbreak, shots fired on the streets, you can only think of your family, who feel as if they’re half the world away. How are you going to get to them? Are they okay? Are they alive? What was the last thing you said to them? Did you tell them you love them?

It’s a quick downward spiral, one which you’re only pulled out of when your friend appears in your vision, gripping your arm with relief that is practically palpable in the air around you. He’s covered in sweat and dirt, and you think there’s blood staining his sleeve. Still, it’s a relief to see him, to see a familiar face as the sky turns dark and chaos rages on.

He’s pulling you down the street in the next moment, past the site of a car wreck, with three, four— five cars practically piled on top of one another, one of which is already ablaze. There’s glass and blood and bodies everywhere you look, and it’s a feat that you don’t throw up.

“Robbie, what’s happening? Do you know what’s happening?” You asked desperately, straining to be heard over the sound of people screaming and crying around you.

“I—I don’t know. We need to get out of here, it’s… it’s bad. It’s really, really bad.” Robbie answered, his voice shaking even more than it had when he’d been talking of home, missing his family. You imagine he missed them far more in this moment, just like you did. He didn’t look back at you, but he did lower his hand to your own, rather than gripping your wrist. You squeezed his fingers, breathing through the growing pit in your chest, through the weight settling in your throat.

You’re not sure how long the two of you walk, but by the time you paused, the sun was rising. Half of you is convinced that you’re in some kind of delusional state, delirious enough from your lack of sleep that this is some sort of illusion that your brain is creating. The other half of you, however, knows better. It’s the part of you that keeps that pit in your chest empty, that keeps it all consuming. It’s the part that knows something is very, very wrong.

You kept wondering how this happened. How did the world turn to chaos in a matter of days? Hours? Sure, you’d caught glimpses of news reports following what doctors believed to be some kind of virus outbreak, but that didn’t prepare you for this. It hadn’t seemed so serious yesterday.

Between lapses of silence on your trek with Robbie, he’d told you everything he knew. He told you about how he tried to call his family, about how all the phone lines were down. He told you about his roommate, who had tried to attack him the moment he exited his room. It was only thanks to a few passersby that Robbie had been able to barricade his roommate in their shared dorm.

It was a mass outbreak, it seemed, and clearly, the government had no idea how to handle it. The entirety of the state was in disarray, and there had been orders to shoot civilians on sight. Both of you were terrified of coming across anybody, whether they were Infected or just hostile, neither of you wanted to die. All you wanted was to see your family again.

You knew you never should have come to this college.

Neither you nor Robbie had brought it up, but there was an unspoken question about where you were going to go. Where could possibly be safe? How were you going to get to your families? The two of you lived in opposite directions, so what were you going to do? Split up and try to get back to your home states alone? There was no way to even tell what you were going to find, if you even made it that far. Would your family be there? Would they have left? What if they tried to come to you? What if they were already gone?

There was no way to communicate with either of your families, and the uncertainty was wearing you both down. What if you got to them, and you infected them, somehow? How did you even know if you were Infected? Was there warning signs before you turned violent?

You didn’t know what to do, and it was making you even more anxious. You wanted, more than anything in the world, to be with your dad. A part of you just knew that Joel Miller would know exactly what to do. He would know how to keep you safe. It was the only thing that was giving you any semblance of comfort, the knowing that Joel would look after himself, Tommy and Sarah. All you had to do was find him, and everything would be okay. It had to be.

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

It was nearing a month since Outbreak Day, as so many had taken to calling it, and everything still felt surreal. You and Robbie had stayed together, and had come across a group of three others who had some supplies. One of them, Benny, was an ex-military man, and coincidentally, he had known your uncle, back in the day. It seemed like too much of a sore subject to ask how, so you refrained. You hoped, however, that if you could manage to find somebody who knew your uncle in the midst of an apocalypse, you’d be able to find him. And with him, would, of course, be your dad and sister. They would have stuck together, you were certain.

Regardless, Benny was keeping you safe. You felt far more comfortable with him than you did the others with him, given he knew your family. There was something reassuring about it.

The five of you were travelling together, avoiding populated areas and sticking to forests and fields to travel when you could. It seemed to be the best way to avoid those who were infected, as many of them were clustered in cities and neighbourhoods. There was more than one time, though, that you came across camps which had been ravaged by the infection. Benny had shot someone on one of these occasions, when she had broke from the tree line and approached you at a run, sobbing through breaths.

You had been terrified at the time — horrified, really, but when you got closer, passing her body, you saw the infection crawling up veins, sprouting from her skin. You weren’t sure if you’d ever get used to the sound of gunfire.

All the work you had put in to get into that stupid college seemed trivial, now. If you thought too long about it, you were almost certain that you would go insane. It didn’t matter how much you regretted all of your past decisions, it would never change where you were. It would never change the fact that you had no idea if your family were okay.

There was no doubt in your mind that you would’ve never survived if it hadn’t have been for Benny. He was strict with you, stopping you from eating anything that could’ve infected you, because he was certain that the mass outbreak must involve some kind of infection in the food supply. He kept you alert at all times, and refused to let you lag behind the rest of them. He kept you alive.

That fact became all the more clear when you when he woke you up, a hand pressed over your mouth. Instinctively, you had panicked, eyes wide and your limbs flailing until you realised who it was, and when he pressed a finger to his lips, you had nodded. You trusted Benny, for whatever reason, he seemed to care about keeping you safe. But Benny had a certain look in his eye that you didn’t like, the furrow of his brow had seemed deeper than usual.

When he pointed towards Robbie, you could see why.

He laid on top of a blanket you had found, his head turned towards you, eyes closed as if he was asleep. But his fingers were twitching, and there was a sheen of sweat across his brow. His skin looked dull, and when you squinted at him, you barely stopped the gasp from escaping your throat. Instead, it had gotten stuck, and you couldn’t breathe as you stared at the Infection raised upon Robbie’s veins.

You had looked towards Benny, and he shook his head. You knew what that meant.

The four of you tried to leave in silence, but Robbie had woken up anyway. He squinted over at you, calling your name in a slurred voice, and his eyes had looked all wrong. Against your better judgement, you turned back towards him, Benny’s hand on your shoulder. “Where’re you goin’?” Robbie slurred out, his voice failing halfway through his words, and he had stumbled to his feet. You had taken a step back at his approach, and he noticed. He looked down at his hands, brows furrowed, eyes taking in the way his fingers had twitched, and he shook his head. “No. No, no, no, no, no!” He had yelled, stumbling around before he had turned back to the four of you. “This ca—can’t be happening.”

“Robbie, I’m—I’m sorry.” You had answered, voice cracking over the words, as you stared at the boy who would never make it home to his family. You had wondered if you would meet the same fate.

“C’mon, kid,” Benny murmured, eyes stony as he had stared at Robbie, his shoulders tense and his hand had hovered over the gun at his hip. “We need to go.” He had said, hand firm at your shoulder as he turned you away from the first friend you had made at the college you’d dreamed of. How had this dream turn into such a nightmare? “Robbie… don’t make me do it. We need to go our separate ways.” Benny had yelled at Robbie, when he had tried to approach the moment your back was turned.

“I’m not infected!” Robbie shouted back, though his twitching limbs and the way he seemed to lack control of his body said otherwise. His eyes were bloodshot, red around the edges, and you had known what was going to happen next. It didn’t make it any easier.

You didn’t look back after the shot went off, after there was a distinctive thud behind you. You knew that you would never get used to the sound of a gun being fired.

∘₊✧───── ─────*───── ─────✧₊∘

***

Joel Miller tried to kill himself.

He doesn’t know how to respond to the fact that he failed. If he’s honest, he doesn’t really know how to respond to anything. He’s not even sure that anything that’s going on is real. How can it be? How can there be zombies in the world? How can his daughter be dead? How can he have no way of knowing if you’re alive?

It’s all been blurry, after Sarah. Joel spends more than a minute thinking about the fact that there’s an after her. She was meant to outlive him — you both were. And here he is, very much alive, while his daughter is dead, and you may be, too.

The world is turning around him and Joel just can’t get his bearings, can’t get past the pain at his temple, the sound of gunshots. How could he live through a bullet to the skull, when his daughter is dead? How could his daughter be dead?

He’s vaguely aware of Tommy at his side. Joel is vaguely aware of everything, really. He can hear all of the screaming, the crying, the questions, but he isn’t really listening. He isn’t really listening to Tommy begging him for something or other, either. And if he had any capacity to feel anything, Joel thinks he might feel bad for ignoring his younger brother, the man who had relied on Joel his whole life, but he just can’t.

All Joel can do is close his eyes, and watch his daughter die in his arms all over again.

All he can do is hear the sound of the severed phone line upon trying to call you. All he can do is think about how scared you must have been, alone in an unfamiliar state, with no way to get home. All Joel can do is revel in all the ways he failed his children.

What does Tommy expect from him? How could Joel possibly go on when he has just lost the most important people in his life? The only people who mattered? Of course, Joel loves his little brother, and he would do almost anything for him, but this? This is asking too much of him. Expecting him to live when his daughter is… when you could be… It’s all too much.

“Joel,” Tommy says, his voice quiet in the raging chaos behind the curtain around them, and he stares at his older brother as if he’s a stranger. The bandage across his head makes him look weird, and the despondent look in his eyes is one that Tommy doesn’t recognise. “Joel.” He says more urgently, grasping onto his brother’s shoulders, seemingly trying to shake him back to reality. “We have to keep going.”

But Tommy’s urgency means nothing to Joel, who can barely see his brother with the way his eyesight is blurring.

Tommy continues nonetheless, grasping Joel’s shoulders more roughly, unable to rid the image of Joel pulling the trigger from his mind. This was his older brother, the man who had almost raised him, who had protected him at every turn. To see that man so… hopeless, so done with the world, it was jarring, even more so than the apocalypse.

“You can’t give up on me, Joel, we gotta go find them.” Tommy says, getting louder and more desperate as the time passes and Joel continues to look dazed and far away. This seems to catch his attention the slightest bit, and when Tommy says your name, Joel’s eyes clear up slightly. “They need us, okay? They need you.”

It might be true, Joel considers. But he’s not sure what he would do if they found you anything other than healthy and well. If you’re dead, too, then that cements Joel’s failure, ensures his passage to join you.

“Okay,” Joel murmurs instead of voicing anything else, realising through the muddle of his thoughts that if you were alive, he needed to find you. “Alright, Tommy, I’m… I’m here.”

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pinguwrites · 23 days

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𝑳𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒔' 𝑺𝒚𝒏𝒅𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒆 ⸻ Chapter One

series masterlist. next chapter

𝒑𝙖𝒊𝙧𝒊𝙣𝒈 | francis mosses x reader

𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕 | 1.5k

Warnings: none

A/N: I promise it'll get more exciting later lol

The elevator dinged, and your heart raced. It was dark out, and so the lobby was dimmed — that blue hue that came right before the sun’s rising. After peeking a small look to the side, you quickly went back to the newspaper you were reading, as if you hadn’t noticed the sound at all. Though you didn’t need to hear or see to know who it was. No one else in Sama Place got up this early, except perhaps for you. It was you and Francis Mosses, every day alone at five in the morning. Perfect, wasn’t it?

“Mornin’,” he said, tipping his hat slightly. It was white, with the words “MILKMAN” etched onto the front. If anything, that added detail made him look even more handsome — uniformed, well-put-together, with just a hint of authority. Everything you liked.

“Good morning, Francis,” you greeted, resting your elbows on the desk in front of you. Placing the newspaper aside, you focused your attention on him, but when he approached you, he took it between his fingers and flipped to the page you were at.

“Crossword? It’s a bit early for that,” he mused, eyeing all the columns and rows you filled in. It was a hard one, but nothing you couldn’t handle. Besides, what else were you supposed to do, stare at the wall waiting to say ‘hi’ to the next person who came by?

“I like puzzles, they get me thinking . . . you know, you should do something like this, too.” Francis furrowed his eyebrows, just slightly. “Not puzzles, necessarily. But a hobby.”

It just occurred to you at this very moment that he probably did have a hobby, but as someone who was just a doorwoman, you weren't privy to that information.

“I’m sure you do,” you added with a chuckle. “It’s only that I never see you doing anything but work. You’re so tired all the time. How much effort does being a milkman really require?”

He bit his lower lip. “More than you think. I used to get up at one.”

The idea that whatever company he was working for forced him to do this made you upset. Francis deserved nothing but freedom and long vacations and waking up to brunch, not whatever coffee he drank in the morning to get himself going.

“One?” you repeated, absolutely stunned. “Well, I’m glad you managed to change your shift. Most bosses I know aren’t flexible with that sort of stuff.”

“I was actually doing fine with my original hours. I just changed them because . . .”

“Because what?”

He thought for a moment, his cheeks dusted pink. “Wanted to enjoy the world a little. Can’t very well do that if you have to sleep at seven in the afternoon.” He paused. “I have to go, I’ll see you later tonight, ma’am.”

“Alright. Have a nice day, sir.”

You watched as he left, a longing gaze. In your mind, you imagined spending time with him, whether it be to see a movie or just walk around the city. You found that highly unlikely, though. Mostly because you could never bring yourself to ask him, and never thought he would ever ask you.

+++

“Really?” you said, a little disappointed. “I’d hate to see you go.”

Dr. William Afton shrugged, a grin across his lips. “I mean, it’s quite the modern idea, don’t you think? I think there ought to be more family restaurants out there. And with my engineering background, I think I’m just the right man to create something fun for children.”

“Your idea sounds like a science fiction novel,” you admitted, “but I like it. What does Mia think?”

“Oh, I had to convince her a little, but in the end, she’ll do as I say. Besides, we’re not moving very far. Just closer to the suburbs.”

You nodded. “I’ll miss you. Make sure to stop by again when you can.”

He agreed and went on his way to finish moving the rest of his belongings to his car. It was silly to want him to stay, but that was how it felt here. Everyone knew everyone, it was like a family. You’d made more friends here than you ever did before. Change wasn’t something you enjoyed.

+++

The day had passed by quickly. You took your lunch break and then went straight back to work. You made a few calls to make sure things were in order. If anything was wrong with the plumbing or if the wallpaper had chipped — things like that — it was your responsibility to fix it. Taking calls for potential renters, being in general a polite and pleasant person, it all came with your job.

It was unusual for a woman to hold this kind of position. Women barely worked at all. Most were housewives or teachers or secretaries. The fact that you even got this job at all was a miracle. And the fact that the people in this building were so pleasant was a blessing.

After your father died you thought everything was over. He left you a house, a small, one-story building with a nice lawn and a small backyard. It was closed off from the rest of the street, the way he liked it. Away from others, with his own peace. You supposed that trait passed down to you. Other than a simple conversation, you preferred to be by yourself rather than out with a large group of friends, partying at risqué clubs. Besides, even if you liked that kind of stuff, your father would never have approved.

You were dependent on him, right till the very end. Though you graduated from college, you didn’t know how to get a loan from a bank, drive a car, or even do your taxes. The easiest thing to do was to find a husband, but it was just so difficult. When you saw that sign outside of Sama saying ‘HIRING NOW’ you knew that was where you had to go. A new start. New opportunity. For the first time, you could make your own money, support yourself, and live the life you want.

You sighed, thinking about everything as you leaned back in your chair. The weather was hot today, so you set the fan beside your desk on. It was blowing through your hair, the coolness brushing against your skin with relief. It made your skirt rumple at the ends, but whenever it did that you just straightened it out, pulling it over your knees once more.

“Hey,” a voice said behind you.

Startled, you sat up straight, only to realize it was just Anastacha, the girl from the second floor. She lived with her mom, who was a cook at a restaurant, but apparently trying to make it as a chef. She had pigtails in her hair like always and was wearing a simple plaid dress.

“You scared me,” you said, tone both playful and scolding. “Don’t do that again.”

“Sorry,” she apologized, but she didn’t seem very sorry. “I need help with my homework. Mom says you had a good education, and that if I ever needed help I could just come to you.”

You smiled warmly. “Sure. Pull up that chair over there, and I’ll see what I can do.”

You looked through the folder. It was just basic algebra, nothing too difficult. You remembered doing this in middle school. For the next ten minutes, you both read through each problem and solved it together. She had a lot of questions — annoying ones — but it was fine. She was just a kid, and you were happy to help.

Just as you were explaining the last part to her, the front door opened.

It was Francis.

Distracted, you glanced up and down his body. Was it odd that you found him the most beautiful man ever? His long, Roman nose, and his smooth, pale skin. The way the veins in his hands flexed every time he moved them, the light blue dress shirt that hugged his slim, muscled arms, and that dark, tousled hair, widow’s peak dipped in the middle of his forehead.

He passed by you with a short nod. It almost hurt that he didn’t bother to stay longer, but you could see the bags under his eyes and his sluggish movements. He was tired. And to be fair, so were you.

When the elevator door closed, Anastacha exclaimed, “Oh, he likes you!”

“Shh!” You didn’t need people hearing that. “He does not. Do you want to finish this or not?”

“He does,” she insisted with a giggle. “You saw the way he looked at you?”

“You can’t determine things based on a single look.”

“Yes, I can. Mr. Mosses is nice, but he kind of just ignores everyone. He doesn’t do that with you.”

The thought that Francis may like you was an intoxicating one. He was just a man, one that you never exchanged many words with, yet he managed to make you feel all sorts of ways. Was it possible that Anastacha was right? That he really did like you?

“I bet you like him, too.”

You glared at her. You did not need Anastacha spreading rumors about how you were in love with the milkman, however true that may be.

“No, I don’t. Focus.” You pointed the pencil back at her homework. “Now, in order to find x, you have to subtract . . . . . .”

Taglist: @Meetmeatyourworst @hanawrites404 @Emimurphy2008

#francis mosses #francis mosses x reader #francis mosses x you #francis mosses x y/n #pinguwrites #that's not my neighbor #fanfiction #lovers' syndrome

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riverlikethelake · 1 year

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A Long Way Home pt.4

Aonung x Omatikayan!Fem!Reader

Summary – Your parents confront you and Ao'nung, causing an uproar and a stream of regrettable arguments. Your battle with your own identity and emotions gets interrupted by the arrival of humans hunting the Tulkun and your family...

Contains: complex parental relationships, heavy development on platonic/family relationships, fluff, HEAVY angst, Mature language, OOC Neteyam

Word count: 6k (wtf)

pt.1 pt.2 pt.3 … pt.5

will probably only make one more part

Decided that this part had to be as bipolar as my emotions on my period

You both sat in front of the Olo’eyktan and Tsahik, your parents standing behind you, Jake’s grip on your shoulder too tight for comfort.

Ronal only glared at Ao’nung, which somehow made you feel even more uncomfortable.

“Listen I'm sure this is just a big misunder-” Jake started but Ronal hissed, cutting him off. “Your daughter needs to stay away from my son.”

Jake was quick to rectify the tension between the two families. “And she will” you snapped your head to him, betrayal written all over your face. “Dad!” “Y/n. no” He shut you down.

You shrugged his hand off your shoulder and stood up, “No! You’re my father why can’t you defend me!” “Y/n sit down.” You purse your lips and stare at him, eyebrows furrowed.

“You cannot even keep your daughter under control.” Ronal spat. Neytiri hissed.

Ronal looked between you and Ao’nung, “You are not to see each other anymore.” You opened your mouth to object, but Ao’nung spoke first. “No mother” he was standing now. He stepped over and placed himself slightly in front of you. “I do not understand why you insist on keeping us apart.”

She stared at you; eyes narrowed. “Have you lain with each other?” she asked after a moment, causing the Marui to erupt into chaos.

“What?! Mother no!” “We have not I swear!” “Y/n is this true?” Neytiri asked, grabbing your shoulder as Jake pulled you away from Ao’nung.

“It is not! I don’t know why she would think that!” “Mother why would you ask that?!”

You jerked away from Jake and Neytiri, turning to Ronal and Tonowari but before you could speak, Jake grabbed a hold of your wrist and pulled you back. “Y/n I swear if you have, I will deliver you back to the science guys and keep you there.” His voice was harsh and cut through the bickering of the rest of the Marui.

You felt your heart drop, before he could say anything else you yanked your wrist out of his grip and turned back to Ronal. “What have I done wrong?” you cried, moving past Ao’nung. You stared at her, eyes pleading as she leaned close, grabbing your hand and displaying your fingers between the both of you.

“Your origins do not escape me demon.” She hisses in a whisper, “I do not want you near my son.” She says louder so everyone can hear.

Your chest felt heavy, how did she know? Did Jake and Neytiri tell her?

You pulled your hand out of her grasp and without thinking you shouted “You are ignorant! You do not know me!” “Y/n!” Neytiri grabbed your shoulder and yanked you back, forcing you to take a knee.

"I am sorry for the trouble Y/n has caused.” Jake nervously said to placate the situation. “You have brought shame to this family” He hissed in your ear, you felt tears welling up in your eyes. You didn’t overlook the way he only referred to you as your name.

“Dad you are supposed to defend me!” You said, grabbing his hand and looking at his desperately.

“Y/n that is enough.” He looks back up to the other family in the room. “Again, I'm sorry for her actions.”

Neytiri grabbed the hand that was holding Jakes “No daughter of mine would do this.” she hissed.

Your breath hitched, the tears that welled in your eyes now falling. You saw Neytiri’s gaze soften just the slightest before you tore your arm out of her grasp. You wanted to be back home. Where home was? You didn’t know. You couldn’t live in the biolab, you could only breathe their air for so long. Back in the jungle you had no family, no one who would take you in. Spider was who knows where and you don’t even know how to pronounce the name of the planet your mother came from. Any home you had was now gone for one reason or another.

Those thoughts you kept in the back of your head, the one about that day, about your mother, about you, all came forth.

A human orphan living through an artificial body on a planet far away from any blood relative you could have had. You just wanted a home.

You felt your face go as blank as it could, standing up you backed away. Ao’nung reached out to you, but you didn’t react. “I should have just died on that day at the cliffs.” Your voice cracked, leaving the rest of the sentence in a whisper.

“Y/n-” Jake reached out to you, but you smacked his hand away hissing. Without another word or look you turned away and ran out.

You could hear what Ao’nung was telling his parents, that they were unreasonable and overreacting, but you just hugged yourself as you rounded a corner, slowing your pace. You wiped away the few tears that fell and took a moment to compose yourself.

You know that Neteyam knows what's going on as he was witness to the initial confrontation, but you’d rather keep this from your other siblings as long as possible.

Neteyam was leaning against the Marui pod, watching you as you came closer. He stepped forward and you could see his expression clearer, Neytiri and Jake were angry, but Neteyam’s eyes were full of venom, he held out his hand revealing the unfinished necklace. “Is this for him?” he asked, his voice firm.

You stared at the necklace before back to him, your eyes hardened, “You went through my stuff.” you stated, resisting the urge to cry. After everything else he has to go and do this.

He stepped closer, eyes narrowing. “Is it” another step “for him.” He was face to face with you now, you could see the emotions swirling in his eyes but all you could feel was anger.

You stared at him before turning and walking away, you needed to be alone, unfortunately you could hear Neteyam following you.

“Y/n!” he raised his voice, “Answer me” he caught up and grabbed you by the arm, turning you around. By now you were almost on the outskirts of the village.

Your eyes bore into him. “What does it matter?”

“You lied to me.” He steps closer. You frowned “I did not.”

“You said you’d stay away from him.” He recalls. You purse your lips and raise your head “You don’t get to decide who I do and don’t stay away from.”

“You’ve been lying and sneaking away from the entire family!” He said in a low voice.

You shook your head “Because none of you could butt out of my business!”

“He’s not good for you.” He states, “I’ve seen you together” he steps closer, but you take a step back.

“You don’t know us.” You almost whispered, you were so overwhelmed, you couldn’t be doing this right now.

"I know enough, and I know you, this isn’t good” he reaches out to place a hand on your arm, but you step away.

“You don’t get to decide that.”

“I know this is hard Y/n but you are my responsibility. Tuk looks up to you and we have the entire villages’ eyes on us right now” He maintained.

“I can’t do this right now” you muttered, everything was pouring in. You couldn’t do this. You turn around and start walking further on the beach, calling for your Ikran.

“What are you doing?” Netayam asks, confusion and alarm written all over his face.

You ikran flies above and lands a few feet ahead of you. “I can’t be here right now” is all you say, as you're about to touch Tysia, Neteyam grabs your arm, you turn and see the panic in his eyes.

“Y/n I know this is hard right now, but Sullys stick together.” He stated, you felt yourself snap.

“Well, what about Spider?” You know the answer, but you want to hear it, you want to be told what you're thinking is wrong. You can’t keep it out of your head.

He’s a taken back, not sure how to respond but he settles on “That’s a different situation.”

You felt anger rising in your throat. “Was it? Was it really? Cause to me it's not.” You could feel everything you kept from saying piling up. “Cause in case you haven’t forgotten; Spider was my brother before you ever were.”

You watched as he breathed in, controlling his emotions but you read him, seeing through it all. After what Neytiri said, and Jakes threats to send you back to Norm and Max you couldn’t help but wonder if you were the only one unaware of your disposability.

“So, what's the difference?” You ask, stepping closer. “Is it that I’m Na’vi now? Or is it that I was so pathetic as a kid, and you all liked having something to protect?” The venom that was once in his voice was now dripping from you

“Y/n that’s no-” you cut him off. “What if I was never sick? Never snuck out with Lo’ak and Spider, or healed and never took over my avatar?”

His lips parted but he never said anything, he searched your eyes until he eventually replied. “You’d still be my sister.”

“Then what's the difference?” You shoved your hands in front of his face, “I’m not one of you, I’m not a sully” your hands motioned to your face and the rest of your body. “I’m not Na’vi, and Neytiri has made it damn clear I'm not her daughter so what is it?”

You got right in his face. “What makes me your sister?” You were barely loud enough for him to hear you, the venom you had before now gone, only desperation left. You wanted a reason, something that solidifies your place in the family.

Your entire world was crossing a thin tight rope and all you wanted was a glimpse of a safety net beneath you.

You watched him, his eyes, he sought an answer, but he couldn’t say anything, his breath hitching every time he gave up on a thought.

After a moment, you could feel the light draining from your eyes, you grabbed the necklace from his hand and held it up. “For the record, I wasn’t making this for Aonung” you took a step back, fighting the twitching of your lips, “It was for you. Since our birthday is coming up” a bittersweet smile taking over your face.

You saw the realization hit Neteyam, how he tried to speak but still couldn’t find what to say, before he could you continued. “But y’know I don’t think it's necessary anymore.”

You looked down at the necklace. You looked back up, deadpanning before you ripped the necklace, beads and thread falling to the sand. “I’m not your fucking sister.” Your voice cracked, blinking away tears, breaking your blank slate.

You regretted it as soon as you said it, your heart was heavy and your hands were shaking, but strangely you felt like you needed to say it. Something in you had been screaming all this time and it was finally silent.

You backed up and mounted your ikran, taking off before anything else could happen.

You didn’t fly far, to the top of the mountain on the island. Hot tears streamed down your face, when you unmounted, your legs gave out and you fell to the ground, guttural cries spilling out. You hunched over, your body wracking with sobs. You let it all out, screaming and punching the ground. Tsyía nudged you, then gently laid her neck on top of you as you cried. Dirt smushed under your fingernails as you dug them into the ground.

You didn’t have anyone. You weren’t a Sully, and you didn’t have a home.

It was an ugly truth, even when you took over your avatar you were still just a stray cat, now just with a better excuse to hang around. You didn’t want to believe it, with the sweet words from Neytiri and group hugs from the others, you felt like you belonged, but you always knew in the back of your mind.

You had Spider for a few years, two orphaned humans together on an alien planet, but then you weren’t human and seemingly had everything he wanted. Resentment is an easy hill to die on. And the Sully’s took you in but that was it. You’re still that orphan girl sitting in the lab, watching everything unfold from afar.

You continued to cry even when you ran out of tears, you sat at the edge of the cliff cuddled against Tsyía.

You heard footsteps approaching you, but you didn’t have to energy to acknowledge them.

Aonung sat next to you, crossing his legs.

Without looking at him you spoke quietly, “What if we just... left...” your head tilted back hitting Tsyía’s body, “I know you have your responsibilities but what if you didn’t and we just” you lift your hand up and flip it towards the ocean. “left....”

A beat passed “It's a stupid idea” you confessed.

Another beat

“They're looking for you.” He broke the silence

“I bet they are”

“We can still see each other though, it won't be as often, and we’ll have to be a lot sneakier, but we can make it work” He placed his hand over yours, his gaze never leaving you.

You stayed silent, thoughts running through your head, yet your mind felt blank.

“They’d miss you” he spoke again. “If you left.”

You turned your head away from him. “They would just feel like they’d have to.”

“They love you.”

“They feel responsible for me.” A tear fell down your cheek.

You felt him staring at you, waiting for some type of explanation.

“I’m not” your voice cracked, “I’m not their family” you pursed your lips together when you felt them quake.

He scooted closer, his hand that was on yours now intertwining your fingers. “I know you're not by blood, but they still see you as theirs.” he reasoned.

You shook your head, “No, they just...” you stopped. You didn’t know how to tell him.

But what's the worst that could happen? He's disgusted and leaves? What's another heartbreak, you can get on Tsyía and never look back.

You take a deep breath

“I am not... Na’vi” you almost whispered. You didn’t have to be looking at him to know his confusion. “When the humans were expelled from earth originally, a few humans who were on my clans side stayed behind.” you took a deep breath. “My mother included.”

You didn’t dare watch his reaction, looking forward to the ocean and continuing your story. “She was sick when she went into labor.” the lump now felt like bile. “Norm and Max couldn’t save her. I was born too early and got sick, I survived but it had a lasting effect on my body.”

You tried to keep yourself calm, lips trembling. “One night before the eclipse, Lo’ak and Spider snuck me out to go exploring, but without Neteyam or Kiri, we didn’t keep track of time and wandered too far...We were climbing up these boulders by the cliffs, and I fell...”

You swallowed, your hand came up and ghosted at your chest, tears stung your eyes as you spoke in just barely a whisper. “I still remember the feeling of my chest being sliced open.”

His gaze on you is intense, but you still don’t dare to look, scared of what you’d see.

“They tried to help me, but it got dark.” You started to compose yourself, “By the time we were found and taken back to the lab I was coughing up blood and running a fever.” you pursed your lips. “They had prepared me an avatar years before, I’m just lucky they were able to transfer my consciousness in time.”

After a moment, finally, you looked at him. His expression unreadable, as always, a frown on his lips and furrowed eyebrows.

“I wish it never happened.” You cried out, tears falling down your cheeks again “I wish I was still human living with the lab guys, sharing a cot with Spider and Norm fussing over our oxygen pods” Your voice cracked, and you heaved in heavy breaths of air, tears spilling out. “I just... I can’t keep being the outcast” His grip on your hand tightened.

You turned back to the ocean and wiped the tears from your eyes, leaning into Tysia.

“You heard what Neytiri said. I’m not one of them” you held out your hand in front of you. “I’m not even one of you...” you whispered. You observed the silhouette of your hand against the slow sunset.

You sucked in a breath when he took your held out hand in his, bringing them together he placed a kiss on your fingertips. You watched; he held your gaze.

He scooted closer and you turned to face him.

“I see you”

You stared at him, another tear you were holding back falling. He leaned in and kissed it, pulling back he was only inches away from your face. Your eyes bore into each other until you leaned in ever so slightly, taking the hint he kissed you.

His lips were soft, gentle. One of his hands let go to cup your cheek. Again, when you pulled away you two stayed close.

“Let’s go.” he whispered, you tilted your head in confusion and he elaborated. “Let's do it, let’s leave.” He stood up, you followed confused.

“Aonung, I can’t ask that of you, not realistically” you shook your head.

“Tsireya is Tsakarem, she will find a husband worthy of being Olo’eyktan and all will be well.” He assured.

You shook your head, you wanted it yes, but you couldn’t.

“This is your clan, your home-” you started but he cut you off with a smirk. “Hey, you did it, surely I could too”

You paused before chuckling, falling into his chest, he wrapped his arms around you.

“You’re so dumb” you murmur

“Yeah, well you fell for me so who’s the dumb one?” that made you laugh more, you wrap your arms around his neck pulling him closer. He nestles his face into the crook of your neck and holds you there for a moment.

“I don’t care that you were once humans Y/n.” He whispers into your ear “You belong here, whether that be in the forest, this reef, or with those weird science humans” he pulls back just enough to look you in the eyes “but I want to be there with you, I want to belong with you.”

You place a kiss on his cheek.

You were embarrassed by the scene you caused in front of Ronal and Tonowari, but you don’t regret it. Ao’nung apparently caused an even bigger scene once you left, blowing up at his parents and storming out after you, he ran into Kiri who asked where you were, leading to them putting two and two together and her giving him a ride up to your spot.

You didn’t want to go back to the village, scared of running into someone, but Ao’nung convinced you to at least sneak down for some dinner.

You hid behind a Marui while Ao’nung slid through the crowd to grab you some food, he was almost back to you when Lo’ak stopped him.

“Ao’nung, have you seen Y/n? Mom and dad are worried sick and Neteyam won’t say anything.” Ao’nung stared blankly for a moment, unsure of what to say.

“She will be fine, tree climber, she is strong” He assured hesitantly, Lo’ak nodded, patting his shoulder before stalking back to the dinner circle.

He waited until no one was paying attention to slip into the shadows, handing you your dinner. “What did I say forest girl?” he smirked. You rolled your eyes and sat down, grabbing bits of your food. He sat down next to you “You cannot hide forever” he nudged your arm.

“I can try” you said with your mouth full, causing it to come out muffled. He chuckled and picked at your food with you, you pushing him away when he took a rather large bite.

You don’t know how Tsireya or Kiri were so in tune to what you and Ao’nung were doing, but by the time you slipped into the Marui, Kiri was sitting there, assuring you she’d vouch for you coming back in the morning and that Tsireya would wake you up early, so you’d be up and out before anyone was awake.

It all went smoothly until you were sneaking out of the pod, light barely filtering in, when Tsireya yelped, causing you to turn and see Neteyam leaning on the far side of the pod, glaring at you both. You stood frozen for a second, holding his gaze, you turned to walk the other way but he rushed up on you, grabbing your wrist.

“You’re not running away again Y/n.” His voice was strong, demanding, but there was something else in there only you could hear. Panic, desperation, fear. Neteyam is good at hiding his feelings when it comes to ‘what he wants’, like how you knew he wanted to go home just as much as everyone else but he didn’t complain once.

You sucked in a breath, shaking your head. “Neteyam please-” “Y/n I won't let you-” “Neteyam please!” you almost yelled, trying to stay as quiet as possible. You looked at him, the bags under his eyes almost as heavy as yours.

“Please I just...” You sighed “please...”

He searched your eyes before letting go, but before you could walk away, he placed a hand on the back of your head and pulled you close, placing a kiss on your forehead before turning and walking into the pod.

Your heart hurts.

You hold your breath as you follow Tsireya to a secluded cave Kiri suggested you stay in until you’re cooled down and ready to face the family.

Could you still call them your family?

You tried not to think about it, your head still hurting from last night.

You stayed in the cave, laying down and drawing your fingers through the water. Kiri and Tsireya would come to keep you company until Ao’nung showed up, you laid your head on his shoulder as you talked about... anything.

He told you about the attacks on the villages nearby, how it was Na’vi in military uniforms and a human boy who spoke the language.

Spider

You asked him to elaborate but that was all he heard from his dad, Spider was alive, but he was being hauled around by the humans, now Na’vi? As a translator... You knew his father was one of the men to come back, hopefully that was enough to keep him away from their bad side.

“They’re coming after us...” You whispered, Ao’nung held you close. Quaritch knows your face, and Kiri, Lo’ak, and Tuk’s...

fuck

You didn’t intend to leave the cave anytime soon, but when Tsireya insisted you and Ao’nung come with her follow Lo’ak you were worried and called for your Ilu immediately.

And seeing your brother bond with a Tulkun, an outcast at that was not what you expected. Tensions were high with Neteyam being present, but you ignored it, focused on Lo’ak.

You were also incredibly uncomfortable as Tonowari scolded you all in the pod for letting Lo’ak bond with Payakan, you cringed as Lo’ak spoke back to Tonowari, tensions between the two families were already too high right now.

You listened to the story about the Tulkun, but your brain was still fuzzy, mind cluttered with anxiety and heartbreak.

Lo’ak stormed out of the Marui, Tsireya following after him. You eyes trailed them until they were out of sight, as you looked back you locked eyes with Neteyam. You quickly stood up and walked out before the focus could change.

Instinctively, you found yourself walking towards your Marui, your heart seemed to weight down. You were only a few steps away from the entrance, so when Jake walked out, you didn’t have the time to react and walk away.

The look of relief that washed over his face when he saw you poked at your heart, he stepped closer, placing his hands on your shoulders to examine you. “Y/n baby are you okay?” his hand moved to your arm, pulling you closer. “Where were you last night?”

You pulled back and looked down, “I came back, you were all just asleep by then” you mumbled “not the first time it’s happened.”

You heard him sigh, he observed you. “Y/n i wanted-” he started but you interrupted “I don’t wanna talk about it right now…”

You watched you, hesitantly he put his hands down “Be back before curfew.” You knew he wanted to say more, yell at you, hold you, scold you, but you guess he saw how tired you were, how you were barely holding it together as is.

Ao’nung holds you as the village starts to quiet down, sitting on the beach slightly hidden from the village. He tells you stories as you lay your head on his chest, Metkayina legends and folklore, how his father fought and killed the Akula. In return, you tell him about growing up in the lab, Spider being your brother and adjusting to life after you took over your avatar.

“Max likes to tell me I'd be smaller than him if I stayed human, but I think he’s just still not used to me being Na’vi” You giggle.

“Was it weird?” He asks. “Being so much taller and able to breathe the air?”

You think for a moment “It definitely took Norm a couple months to stop reminding me about my air filter, and being almost as tall as him and Max? I would NOT shut up about it” you recall, giggling.

He fiddles with your fingers, seemingly memorizing every detail. You talk a little more, you tease him and he throws sand on your face until Rotxo comes running up.

“Ao’nung Y/n come back to the village now, something has happened!” was all he said before turning on his heal and running back. You look at each other before scrambling up and running to the village.

By the time you made it, the Metkayina were demanding war, the humans had crossed the line and killed Ronal’s spirit sister. You and Ao’nung looked at each other, grief filling both your eyes. You didn’t have a spirit sister, but you saw firsthand the connection that the Metkayina held with the Tulkun.

Jake grabs the tracker from Neteyam’s hand and stands on the rock in the middle of the room, he held it up making everyone go quiet. “Tell the Tulkun that if they’re hit with this, they’re marked for death.”

You slip your hand into Ao’nungs, you look around the room, Tsireya was on the verge of tears, Lo’ak and Neteyam seemed to be lost in thought.

The humans are here

The RDA is here and they’re going to take me away

They're after Jake, they’re after the family

My family

You feel yourself start to hyperventilate; your heart pounding in your ears.

Ao’nung tightens his grip on your hand, grounding you. The first thing you notice is Lo’ak slipping away from the crowd, with adrenaline already pumping through your veins, you go with your gut feelings and go after him.

You don’t even pay attention to the fact that Neteyam was walking right beside you, you were both too focused on your brother.

“Where are you going little bro?” Neteyam called out as Lo’ak slipped a saddle onto his Ilu.

“I’m going to Payakan, he’s an outcast, no one will warn him”

You and Neteyam step closer until you're both right in front of him. “Brother it is too dangerous” you insist, Neteyam places a hand on Lo’aks head “bro, why do you always make things so hard?”

Lo’ak scowled “No. You mean why can’t I be the perfect son like you?” he slapped his hand away “Well I’m not you!”

Neteyam glares at him moving closer, but you placed your hand on his shoulder, instinctively he placed his on top of yours and stepped back, glancing back at you.

“I’m going after him, he’s, my brother.” Lo’ak turned to leave but Neteyam grabbed him, turning him around.

“Hes your brother? No, I'm your brother.” He got right in Lo’ak’s face, you watched the two boys glare at each other before you stepped forward.

“Please both of you, calm down this-” “And you” Lo’ak interrupted you “I haven’t seen you in days, I’m not stupid, I know what happened, but you still insist on hiding from me!”

You sucked in a breath, before you could speak, he turned around and jumped in the water, Neteyam following after him. Tsireya, Rotxo, and Ao’nung came into your line of sight “He’s going after Payakan!” you briefly offered before jumping in after the two boys.

You followed him to Payakan, Kiri and Tuk tagging along after you passed them, but your heart dropped when you spotted the tracker on the Tulkun. You all tugged on it as hard as you could, but it wasn’t budging. Neteyam had the idea of using the Ilu and got the tracker out barely in time. The ship was now almost on top of you.

You all dive underwater, hiding in the kelp, you feel safe, but when you watch the submarines that release from the ship, you panic.

You dodge the machines easily until one jump out from the side and grabs a hold of your Ilu, throwing you off it and leaving you stranded.

You swam forward, trying to find a place you could hide but you feel your heart drop when the hand clamps down on your ankle.

You squirm and try to kick yourself from its grasp. Just as the other arm reaches for your body, Neteyam crashes his Ilu into the glass of the submarine, covering its vision. As it’s grasp lightens, you shake your foot out and Ao’nung swims by, grabbing you and pulling you onto his Ilu.

You wrap your arms around him, heart still beating impossibly fast. You make eye contact with Neteyam before you disappear further into the forest of kelp.

You needed to talk to him

Your Ilu catches up and swims next to you, you take a moment to transfer back to her. You look to Ao’nung, after a moment you both nod and go separate ways.

You swim around, avoiding the lights from the machines until you see Tuk fly off Kiri’s ilu. You rush over and grab her, you spot Tsireya swimming into one of the plants, so you follow her. You break the surfaces and your Ilu swims away as you hold Tuk close.

“Tuk are you ok?” you gasp, moving her hair to get a better look at her

“M’fine Y/n” She murmurs, obviously tired from the events. You take a moment to catch your breath, but you scream as Lo’ak suddenly breaks the surface.

“Y/n, Tuk, Tsireya are you all alright?” he asks, you all nod in confirmation as he looks down, lights approaching. “They’re coming, we need to go!”

You take a breath and swim out from the plant and away from the lights, holding Tuk’s hand tight. You only make it so far before a net wraps around you. You fight and kick, trying to get out but it only tangles you further.

Lo’ak holds onto the net as you get pulled up to the surface and in the air, he tries to cut the rope, Tsireya and Tuk crying for him to help, but you’re dropped onto the ship before he can free you.

Before you can even stand,you're being yanked up by the marines.

“Y/n! Lo’ak!” You looked up to see Spider being held back by the ship crew.

“Spider!” You cried, you reached out to him but the marine holding you pulled you back by your queue, causing you to hiss.

“Cuz, are you ok?” Lo’ak asked calmly, Spider nodded before Quaritch ordered him to be taken back into the ship. Before you can call out to him again, you’re being pulled to the side and bound to the railing. The avatars stand behind you holding guns, your heart starts to beat fast.

Tuk starts sniffling, you look over to her and scoot closer, “Tuk it’s gonna be ok” you whisper, and you move your arm over her head to hold her in your arms against your body. She scooted closer, cuddling into you.

The others were still being hunted underwater, you remembered, you looked to Lo’ak, locking eyes with him. He was way calmer than you, but you could see the fear in his eyes.

“It’s dad! They’re here!” Tuk shouts, you snap your attention to the water, a fleet of Skimwings approaching. You could only see so far, but you were able to spot Jake in the front lines. You notice Neytiri flying above, but you decide to not point it out.

After a moment, Quaritch grabbed Lo’ak throat microphone and his earpiece. “Sully, I have your kids. If you come alone, you can protect them.”

You hold Tuk tighter. You watch the marine grow more agitated at the lack of response before speaking into the microphone again “I need an answer sully” he raises a gun up to Lo’aks head, you hiss and jerk towards him, one of the avatars yells for you to stay put and points a gun at you.

“I took you under my wing Sully, and you betrayed me, betrayed your species. You killed good men and women, I will not hesitate to execute your kid.”

Your hold on Tuk tightens, you stare out to the fleet and watch as Jake moved closer, the others staying behind.

Your heart pounds in your chest, you look to Lo’ak who still had the gun pressed to his head, you resist the urge to glare and hiss at Quaritch. It’s only a couple seconds, but it feels like an eternity as Jake inches closer.

Suddenly, Payakan jumps out of the water, landing on the boat. Your restraints are the only thing that keep you from flying off the boat, you watch as the soldiers fight against Payakan and the fleet behind Jake starts moving towards the boat, ready to attack.

The attention was now off you and your siblings, the crew and soldiers deployed to their stations to attack, leaving the deck you were bound to empty once Payakan was back in the water. You leaned down to gnaw at the restraints, using your fangs to cut at them. Your fangs are sharp, but they barely make a sent in the material.

“Neteyam!” Tuk calls out, you look up, relief flooding your chest and Neteyam sneaks towards you. He quickly cut Tsireya’s restraints and moved to cut Tuk’s

“Neteyam” you whispered, he looked at you, pausing his movements, knife against your restraints. “Neteyam i’m so sorry I don’t know why i-” the words started to spill out as your eyes stung, fighting tears.

“Hey hey no” He cut your restraints and pulled you into his arms “it’s not your fault.”

“I didn’t mean what I said I really-” “I know y/n, I know” his voice was soft “you’ll always be my sister” he placed a hand on the back of your head.

He placed a chaste kiss on your forehead before moving on to free Lo’ak. You look at the interior of the ship. Spider is in there.

As if reading your mind, Lo’ak spoke “We have to go save spider” Neteyam turns, Lo’ak takes a gun from one of the soldiers lying on the floor. “he’s still in there we have to save him!”

Neteyam pursed his lips and nodded, you follow them as they sneak into the ship.

You can’t help the feeling of dread that settles in your gut.

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verspia · 4 months

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—𝐢 𝐠𝐢𝐟𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐦𝐲 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭

You frown in thought as you cradle a warm cup of hot chocolate in your hands, huddling a little close to the heat emanating from the fire place, which you’re seated in front of.

Christmas is one of your favorite holidays of, and this year, you celebrate it with your boyfriend, Oscar. Normally, with the end of the season, he would be in Australia with his family, spending the holiday under the blazing sun, not under frosted snowflakes and the biting cold of London with you.

The thought makes you pout a little, guilt eating at you for keeping him away from his family during the holidays, as if he isn’t apart from them for most of the year anyway.

Originally, you both were meant to go together, but with christmas being near, the visa application process had taken a lot longer than you’d both expected and that meant that you were only eligible to travel to down under after New Years.

You had insisted that Oscar leave without you, urging him to spend the christmas holiday with his parents and sisters, but he had resisted, arguing that he would make it up to them and it was far too late to book a flight, what with the rush that came during winter break, and you had reluctantly agreed.

That didn’t stop you from feeling guilty though, but you refrained from thinking about it more, knowing that there wasn’t much you could do about it.

Instead you wondered what you could gift your boyfriend for your first christmas together.

You knew that Oscar wasn’t much of a material person, and that he was happy with anything you would give him, but you wanted to do something meaningful.

Given the fact that gifts were your love language, both giving and receiving, it was important to you that you find the perfect gift for Oscar.

You worried your lip between your teeth as you pondered, when your eyes lit up with an epiphany, and you stood up abruptly, abandoning your hot chocolate on the kitchen top, grabbing your keys and heading out to the store immediately.

You payed no mind to the snow that nipped at your face, staining your cheeks a rosy red as you hurried out, charged with excitement for the gift that you had in mind.

When Oscar awakes on Christmas morning, you are not where you’re supposed to be, cuddled up in his arms, and the loss of your presence next to him startles him awake.

He steps into the living room, rubbing away any trace of bleariness from his eyes and finds you there, still in your pyjamas and with one of his hoodies on, Home Alone playing on the tv screen.

Your smile is radiant, and your zealousness for christmas is almost childlike. His heart warms at the sight of you and he smiles widely, trudging over to you.

“Why aren’t you in bed, love”

You turn around at the his voice, beaming impossibly wider, and your eyes sparkle with delight as you spot him.

“Oscar!” His name on your lips always makes him giddy, but the exhilaration in your tone today is tremendous, and vastly contagious, to the extent that Oscar begins to wear the same excitement you do.

“It’s Christmas! I was waiting for you,” You grab Oscar, pulling him on to couch with you, “We gotta open the gifts, Oh you’ll love what i’ve gotten you!”

Oscar stares fondly at you, “I’m happy with anything you give me, baby, you know that.”

You nod at him, not really paying attention, as you stand up and pull him along towards the direction of the christmas tree that you both had decorated together, weeks prior.

He happily lets you drag him along, and soon, both of you have unraveled the presents from your friends and family.

You open the gift that Oscar has gotten you, and gasp in elation, throwing yourself at Oscar, Thank you’s and I love you’s falling from your mouth as you pepper his face with kisses.

He laughs as he holds on to your waist, and then finally, both of you turn to the last present, that is inside a conspicuous bag, glittered golden.

You move over a little, eyes fixed on Oscar as he opens the bag, pulling out a cardboard box that is too, shimmering golden, with a red ribbon holding it together.

He unwraps it, and the sides of the box fall flat in five sections, each have attached a packet of Tim Tams on it, and another box stands proud in the middle.

Oscar uncovers the lid, and another lid appears, the words Merry Christmas on it and much like the first time, the sides fall into sections, each holding polaroids of you and Oscar.

The pictures are of monumental moments of your relationship, His first sprint win and you congratulating him with a kiss, his first podium as he smiles brightly, you wrapped up in his arms, smiling equally as bright. There’s photos of Oscar surprising you at your graduation ceremony, and kissing you when you win a debate’s competition, as well as a few pictures of your first date, and first kiss.

He pulls away the last lid, and finds a heart shaped letter inside, which he picks up and discovers a keychain for his car.

The keychain is shaped as a heart, and he examines it closely, accidentally clicking it open and finds both his and your initials together in a smaller heart inside.

He breathes softly, a little baffled at the thoughtfulness of the gift, and looks up at you, adoration clear in his eyes.

He’s a little breathless as he whispers I love you to you, and you smile shyly at him.

“Do you like it?”

Your eyes glimmer with hope and a little uncertainty, and Oscar pulls you into his lap, kissing you softly.

He’s not good with words, so he hopes to show to you just how happy you make him, pulling you closer than you’d ever thought possible, kissing you deeper to convey his appreciation to you.

You both are enveloped in a warmth that contrasts the dreary weather outside, but it’s clear that you both have a jolly christmas, under the shimmering pine tree.

This was inspired by this

didn’t proofread so pls don’t mind any errors

#formula 1 #f1 fanfic #lando norris x reader #carlos sainz x reader #max verstappen x reader #oscar piastri x reader #oscar piastri #mclaren #christmas #fanfic #papaya #fandom #oscar x reader #oscar piastri x you #oscar piastri x yn

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betweengenesisfrogs · 6 months

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A HOMESTUCK MANIFESTO

I want to think about what comes next after Homestuck.

That’s a challenge to the world as much as a personal mission statement.

I want to see writers and artists and creators making the next Homestuck, taking its themes and binding them into new fabrics, giving life to new creatures even more beautiful and uncanny than the original species.

I hunger to see new forms of story and image evolving with Homestuck in their DNA.

This process is already underway. Homestuck is a massive boulder dropped into the waters of culture, and the full wake of its ripples is still to be felt. But let’s call attention to this process and ask: what would happen if we engaged in it more consciously? If we sifted through our feelings about Homestuck to create something new, deliberately, with great and wonderful purpose?

The tools we need are within our grasp. Homestuck presents itself as magic, but it’s a work constructed in time out of specific storytelling choices. So let’s understand those choices. Let’s understand how Homestuck did what it did, and use Homestuck’s tools to build art that grips the soul of future generations as strongly as Homestuck did ours.

What follows is not a traditional literary analysis. It does not cite its sources; it does not seek to give us a comprehensive understanding of Homestuck. If it does, it does so only to the extent it suits its larger purpose.

Our goal here, our quest, if you will, is not to understand the Homestuck that exists, but the Homestuck that comes next.

Let's begin.

0. THE WILD GARDEN

Let’s lay the absolute groundwork here.

Homestuck is constructed as a re-appropriation of itself. Or to put it another way, it’s a big improvisational move, a process of “yes and”-ing so hard it develops a sprawling continuity.

Tiny details are constantly re-contextualized to become part of something else. A joke might turn tragic. A silly aside might turn into something profound.

But it didn’t have to be that way.

It’s crucial to understand that what we experience as continuities were in fact choices made at specific times. Homestuck is a garden where seeds were scattered in every direction, grown en masse, then weeded down to create patterns and forms.

The shape of the garden is designed to conceal the gardener’s hand. But the gardener’s choices are there, every step of the way.

If we are to follow in its footsteps, what choices should we make?

Let’s talk about themes.

1. THE MEANING CRISIS

Nobody in Homestuck knows what they’re doing.

And neither do we.

All the old idols have broken down. The values we were taught in our childhood fail to measure up to the problems of the world we live in. We grasp after careers and lives we were told would make us happy and wonder why we’re left empty. The selves that we were told were us now fit us about as well as clothing we’ve outgrown. Crises loom, political, economic and environmental, and everywhere it feels like the people who are supposed to guide and lead us aren’t doing enough.

It's widening gyres and slouching beasts all the way from here to Bethlehem, is what I’m saying.

The reason people go absolutely insane for Homestuck is that it depicts this crisis of meaning. It shows the questions we might want to ask, and attempts to provide some kind of answer.

The protagonists of Homestuck struggle with what I’ve called “received narrative.” That is, they’ve inherited stories from their families, from the world, that they try to use to define their lives, and it doesn’t work. But these stories are so familiar that it’s hard to think outside them. They have to develop new stories by which to live. Sometimes they succeed, but other times they can’t escape the gravity of the ones they were given.

With me so far?

Great. Now understand that all this was improvised and discovered largely accidentally over the course of ten years.

Here’s a seed that became quite an impressive tree:

The streets are empty. Wind skims the voids keeping neighbors apart, as if grazing the hollow of a cut reed, or say, a plundered mailbox. A familiar note is produced. It's the one Desolation plays to keep its instrument in tune.

It’s a joke. But it was never just a joke. There’s an idea here of dissatisfaction with the stereotypical idea of American suburban life. Egbert here is looking for something more, dissatisfied for reasons they can’t fully articulate. This is typical fantasy protagonist stuff, but there’s something more here, too.

Eventually it’s redirected towards the idea that there really is an unseen riddler. But let’s put that aside for now.

This page, in its moment, says: your life is not the full picture. There’s something else out there, waiting, that’s going to change everything.

That's a potential set-up for a very powerful payoff. It gives us the sense that Egbert and all their friends are going to have to rethink what they know. That this suburban life is not going to be enough for them, that somehow or other they’re going to encounter something they aren’t prepared for, and they’ll have to find a new way of acting and being. That, try as they might to avoid it, they’re going to change over the course of this journey.

But to understand how they change, we need to talk about SBURB.

2. THE PORTAL FANTASY OF IT ALL

A lot of people like to joke that Homestuck is an isekai. I think it might clarify things to use the term portal fantasy instead.

Portal fantasy is simply the fantasy subgenre of characters, usually kids, going to a magical other world. Maybe they make friends, maybe they learn lessons and stuff. You know the drill. I don’t have to to tell you more because the story structure is already so familiar. That’s what gives it power.

Portal fantasy differs from the related Japanese genre of isekai in that isekai in its current form is much more heavily based on video games such as MMORPGs. In the most pervasive isekai narratives, protagonists are rewarded not so much for achieving personal growth as being able to exploit the game mechanics of a game-like system. That’s pretty different from your typical Narnia scenario.

The influence of portal fantasy is everywhere in Homestuck, especially in the beginning. We have nods to the fantasy films of the 1980s that gave us our contemporary idea of this story structure, such as The Neverending Story (itself, in its original book incarnation, a phenomenal commentary on the genre). Our protagonists are genre savvy; they recognize what’s happening here.

But it doesn’t fit quite right. The odd note is first sounded when Egbert asks Nanasprite if what they’re doing is going to save the world. They’re bit unsettled to learn the answer’s no, that something else is going on here. Next we have the fantasy worlds: the planetary lands each present a veneer of exciting adventure. But their inhabitants, the consorts, aren’t fully-realized people, they’re largely cute animals going through the motions, not really understanding the story they’re telling. The carapacians are a little better, but they’re still trapped in a fatalism that feels uncomfortable.

As things rev up in Act 4, we learn about doomed timelines from alt-timeline Dave and Rose, how your entire existence in this setting may be fodder for something other than you. When we learn the true purpose of SBURB and its froggy details in Act 5, we see that SBURB is more like a biological creature, mainly interested in its own reproductive desires. It was never really about the portal fantasy at all. The kids are just along for the ride.

So when we see that Rose wants to tear through SBURB, find out a way to escape fate, and snatch meaning from the jaws of futility, it makes sense. We’ve been given hints already that this is the conflict at hand: the characters vs the story that’s telling them.

(Note: it’s certainly possible to have a reading that SBURB is not evil so much as empty, that it reflects what you bring into it, that its will for you is your will for you. But that’s also a difficult thing, right? If you lack self-understanding, it’s a struggle to bring about your ideal reality.)

What we haven’t mentioned yet is that this is all mediated through the lens of video games. Which makes perfect sense. Because where do we seek meaning, especially as kids? In imaginary worlds that make more sense to us than real life, that give us achievements to take pride in and clear objectives to pursue.

SBURB evokes mechanics from games like Final Fantasy. We see its players complete objectives, cast magic spells, gain power-ups with colorful costume changes. But unlike the narratives implied by traditional video game progressions, leveling up doesn’t mean you grow as a person or process your trauma. Later, in Act 6, when we meet a player who has made his life about winning the game (Caliborn), it’s horrific to behold.

Homestuck is a portal fantasy, but it’s fundamentally a portal fantasy about games. It’s a portal fantasy that shows us how characters seek meaning in being the best at arbitrary game mechanics, but ultimately fail to find it.

So I guess…it actually is an isekai? Huh. Wild.

(But seriously, Homestuck is actually fairly prescient in predicting the ideas that come out of isekai and LitRPG. It’s engaging consciously and deconstructively with the weird ideas of self-fulfillment these genres are drowning in.)

So what might a Homestuckian work look like? It will almost certainly critique a false narrative we live by. It may comment on portal fantasy, or our personal satisfaction that comes as easily as playing a video game. But it doesn’t have to be limited to these things. It might talk about our popular TV shows and movies. It may take apart what’s flawed in Marvel, the latest triple-A game, or the modern dark fantasy novel.

Among its tools will be discomfort. Showing a disconnect early on between our character’s expectations and their happiness can serve as foundation to build on, so that when the flaws of the genre narrative are revealed, it feels like the truth. We may see characters who accept their narratives passively, or rebels like Rose Lalonde, who chose to rip everything apart in search of something better.

These are only some of the possibilities.

When I tell you the stories we live by mislead us, what is your relationship to that? If you were to tear these received narratives apart, what would you focus on, what would you try to say? The art that comes out of this question will be deeply personal to the soul who makes it.

But here’s another question:

Just who is giving us all these narratives, anyway?

3. THE PARENT FLIP

The world we live in was not made by us. It was shaped by forces that predate us, over which we have no control and are born into the grasp of without the knowledge of how to escape.

For instance, our parents.

The guardians who raise us provide our template for how to interpret life. We spend a large part of our lives immersed in the world they built, believing as they believe, living by the values that they instruct us in, so that we might carry their goals forward to the future.

This is an effort that is certain to fail.

Because the problems of today aren’t the problems of twenty or thirty years ago. At best, their messages can only to help in a limited way with the crises we go through as we live our lives. At worst, they actively hinder us from dealing with them productively.

If we are to escape the broken patterns of our world, then we need break out of the stories an earlier generation gave us.

How are parents discussed in Homestuck?

Initially? As jokes.

If we take our “future knowledge” goggles off for a moment, we can see that the early depictions of the kids’ parents are a goofy parody of standard parental tropes. Mom and Dad are nameless, faceless, exaggerated cartoon stereotypes, and conflict between them and their children is initially expressed through a silly video game fight.

There’s a seed of something real here, though. What we’re parodying is a familiar trope of tension between parents and children in kids’ fiction and YA fiction. But that trope exists for a reason. This conflict is rich with potential for any story about growing up. And Homestuck has smuggled the idea of it in as a silly RPG parody.

So we can extrapolate, for instance, that there’s tension between Egbert and their father in part because Egbert doesn’t know yet who they want to be, and that Rose and Mom’s relationship is awkward and contentious, with alcohol involved. We see that there’s something profoundly uncomfortable going on between Dave and his Bro, and Jade’s life in the shadow of a dead Grandpa suggests a psychology that’s not entirely a healthy one.

Understand that I’m not saying that all this was there from the start. Rather, a choice was made to develop these interesting possibilities out of the jokes, to tell a story about how parents that act like these ones might have affected their children.

A major turning point in this regard is when Egbert learns their father’s seeming clown obsession was the result of a failed attempt to connect with them. It’s quite silly, but it plays around with the idea of a gap in perception between parent and child. It’s also a sign the story’s starting to take more of an interest in character psychology, suggesting that what Egbert processes consciously is not the same as their deeper unconscious feelings. This in turn can become a setup for a portrait of Egbert as someone who represses things they don’t want to think about. From this moment, in the long term, comes June Egbert.

When the psychology machine revs up for all the characters in Act 4 and Act 5, it’s able to do so because this foundation was laid.

We also, as early as Act 3, get hints that the parents have intentions and personalities outside of how the kids perceive them. The original purpose is to hint at a larger conspiracy around SBURB, with Mom building a secret lab, Dad trying to investigate the mystery, and Grandpa jumping in and out of time. But what this suggests is that the psychology of the parents might at some point come into play.

But the most exciting development in the relationship between parents and children is Act 6.

The great role reversal. The parent and child flip.

How do you make your faceless parent figures into characters?

By making them kids.

We’re so used to this concept now t that it’s hard to remember how wild it is that Roxy is a teen version of a main character's mom. But the concept is genius. Meeting these characters on the same level forces our protagonists to understand them as people and reflect on their fallibility.

For us as readers, it adds detail and nuance to the cartoonish portraits we got in the beginning. Conversely, we also see what our protagonists might have been like as parents themselves—and turns it from a story of “parents just don’t understand” to a story of how people, despite their best intentions, can wound each other.

(The Homestuck Epilogues are a difficult text to evaluate, but one of the best things within them is Egbert’s arc in Candy, where we see how Egbert might have done as a parent, how their struggles with finding purpose in the world might lead them to embrace a narrative of parenthood yet struggle to have a good relationship their kid. It’s brilliant, and the culmination of everything we’ve talked about here.)

Thus the Homestuckian work of art will be concerned with themes of parents and children. It will play with the boundary between what children understand about their parents and what they don’t. It will show parents as people—fallible people, who make mistakes with severe costs, whose stories fail their children and themselves. It may build from a simple base of what children understand, or it may weave parent and child perspectives together. It may even show us how children fail when they become parents themselves. It will show us the cycles we are trapped in, how we wound and are wounded by our context.

And it will force us to look for a way out.

4. CLASSPECTS AS SIGNPOSTS

Hey. You want to know a secret?

Come closer, and I’ll whisper it to you.

Classpects aren’t actually all that complicated. Ultimately, they boil down to one thing:

Symbols we can use to construct a self.

If Homestuck is about a crisis of meaning, then classpects are part of its answer.

What do we do, when the world gives us no story we can live by?

We make one. We make one out of whatever symbols and messages we can find and put together from the stories we’ve read, from the people who teach and inspire us. Such collages are powerful things. They give us a way out of the dark, they give us a sense of something we are and can be, where there was nothing before.

They give us, in short, a personal mythology.

Classes and Aspects have often been read as codes to be unpacked and solved. It might be more productive to see them as creative tools, signposts designed not to narrow down meaning, but to allow us to explore it.

For instance, the portrayal of Light in Homestuck is unique. As a symbol, it combines notions of brightness, knowledge, future, luck, wealth, and narrative focus. These things aren’t inherently linked out in the world, but they are here, and that’s a choice, and an interesting one. It encourages us to imagine connections between these concepts, and to see if they have any relevance to ourselves. Identifying with the concept of Light, in other words choosing to value clarity, luck, and importance, might be a powerful tool for finding one’s way in the world.

Classes play with signposts at an even more basic level. Sure, we can talk about what a Knight does in the context of the story.

But a knight is already a powerful symbol. We bring so much cultural context to it. The word conjures up images and narratives of devotion, duty, violence, the slaying of dragons, armoring oneself against the world, and the rescuing of princesses. If we put that together with a concept like Time, we get a distinct character. If we put that together with our own experience of the world, we can create powerful concepts for who we want to be.

Interestingly, this complicates what we said about SBURB. As much as our protagonists struggle to find meaning within it, there’s still something there that they can latch onto. Classes, aspects, denizens, even consorts and lands—these things don’t have to be devoid of meaning. We can choose to affirm them; we can build something out of them, and say, yes, this is me, this is myself.

But it’s a double-edged sword.

We are responsible for the narratives we choose to live by. And we may find ourselves falling into a narrative that hinders us more than helps us, that creates a self-destructive self.

What does it mean to believe deeply that you are a thief, that taking from others to benefit yourself is the best way or comes to you the most naturally? What does it mean to tell yourself over and over that you’re a prince, with all the attendant baggage of power and grim responsibility that comes with that concept? Or, to follow the path further, what does it mean to tell yourself over and over that you are a destroyer or must be destroyed?

If we are to escape the story we’re trapped in, we must take care, lest we trap ourselves in a story of our own making.

Homestuck never quite resolves the ambiguity around these symbols of self, around whether SBURB hurts or helps, whether classpects are things you create or things that create you. But this ambiguity is a productive one. It gives us symbolic tools we can use in the creation of meaning, and it shows us the side of them that should make us wary.

The work that is to come after Homestuck will be about symbols. It may show us how we seek them in popular culture, or the people around us. It may use some of the clusters of meaning that that we see in Homestuck, but it will not be limited to them. It will write its own language of symbols, joining Light and Time to notions like Memory, Need, Rupture, and War, and be filled not just with knights and princes but brigadiers, lancers, healers, druids, taxidermists, sentries and waifs. It will build with tarot cards, enneagram types, and Babylonian gods. It will place all the signposts we’ve created in millennia of existence into new contexts and meanings.

By such means will it show us a way forward.

There’s one kind of symbol we haven’t talked about yet, however.

The kind that holds a mirror up to the world.

5. THE POWER OF ALTERNIA

There’s a reason dystopias have been so popular in young adult fiction. Sure, they’re cliché now, but they speak to something raw and visceral.

When you’re growing up into a world that doesn’t make sense, it’s natural to find refuge in emotional extremes. Stories of blood and violence, fates worse than death, and governments that demand horrific things of their citizens speak to the anxieties of the adolescent mind. They validate the feeling that something is wrong—that the world we’ve inherited is broken and unfair and has no place for us. And they’re right.

Alternia taps into these dystopian feelings perfectly. What makes it so fun is that it’s an inversion of a teenage fantasy. It’s a world where there are no parents, where kids can have access to power and violence, where you can sit around and play video games and design your own house. It almost feels like a response to the “parents don’t understand” themes of the early acts.

But the dystopia’s there, and it’s sneaky. A land of lost boys and girls isn’t actually all that great to live in. It’s lawless, survival of the fittest, with children killing each other left and right. And the future adult roles most of the troll kids aspire to are a glamorous veneer over competition for slots in a fascist military hierarchy. Which is to say nothing of the blood caste system as a way in which the kids are taught by their world to abuse and exploit each other. Crushes, personal slights, competition for status, group dynamics, attempts to define identity – all these familiar teenage dynamics play out on a backdrop of maiming and murder.

Which is perfect. Because when you’re young, all those social interactions genuinely do feel like life or death, and adulthood a regime of exploitation and horror bearing down on you. Alternia is a heightened, exaggerated version of reality. It expresses an emotional truth, not a literal one, validating our most intense feelings and giving us a road map to understanding them.

No wonder so many people wanted to skip to Act 5 and get to the trolls.

(See also Hiveswap Friendsim and Pesterquest, which explore these themes really really well.)

And Alternia, for a world where parents aren’t really a thing, tells us a surprising amount about the parental generation. In mid Act 5-2, Ancestors are added to Alternia’s wordbuilding, and we learn that as much as the trolls skipped having traditional parental figures, they were never devoid of role models. The deeds and exploits of notable figures throughout ancient Alternia gave them models to think about each other and themselves—even when those models were toxic ones. In a way, this isn’t so far from the human kids at all.

Furthermore, as time goes on, we acquire an origin for Alternia’s fascist worldview. Doc Scratch, manipulator of society, stands in for all those aspects of the world that work to create the false narratives we are born into, a true evil father figure – or uncle, if you prefer. And he's an extension of the ultimate evil father figure, Lord English, who controls not just Alternia but the timelines of the human children as well, whose belligerence and apathy give us aeons of toxic narratives and abuse. We see that story played out in Alternia in every interaction, in every moment, the beliefs its architects live by.

This is the power of dystopia—it can hold a broken mirror up to the world we live in.

Therefore the Homestuck that will come after Homestuck will worldbuild gardens of horror. It will not pull its punches but show us insidious societal systems and the effect they have on the people who live under them. It may depict fascism, authoritarianism, feudalistic tyranny, or all three. It will be unafraid to evoke blood and guts but use them to paint a picture of what we want, what we fear, and how we break under our false horizons.

As it depicts the path out, so, too, will it have its reverse side—it will show us all the hells and purgatories we’re trapped in.

6. SAILS TO THE WIND

Much has been written (including by this very author) about Homestuck’s metafictional aspects – the way it comes to foreground a more direct clash between character and narrative.

But the point I want to make here is that the metafictional angle wouldn’t work without these earlier choices. They allow the comic to talk about these concerns long before any notion of canon rears its head.

There are many ways of approaching these themes, and we don’t have to be limited to notions of Ultimate Selves and Beyond Canon to explore them. Such things are valuable, but they are only one retelling of the myth. If we are to make the next Homestuck, we must make our own.

I want to illustrate the space of possibility by offering some examples of works that explore similar themes. Note that I’m not saying these works were influenced by Homestuck in any way, but rather that they use some of the same tools to speak to the same questions, anxieties and concerns.

In trying to make what comes after Homestuck, we might consider:

Revolutionary Girl Utena, which foregrounds the archetype of the Prince as duelist, tyrant, and hero and dares its characters to break free from the false reality that shapes even these aspirations and dreams.

The Familiar by Mark Z. Danielewski, author of Houseof Leaves, whose core narrative concerns an twelve-year-old girl in thrall to an entity whose intentions are unclear but may be shaping the fabric of reality itself; which depicts the inner lives and uncertainties of her parents with just as much detail as they struggle, and sometimes fail, to make the right choices to help her; a story which, even in its incomplete form, explores a notion of a greater S.E.L.F that is not just you but also those who share something with you, where characters from other realities blur into transcendent archetypes in this one.

Digimon, perhaps the quintessential work of portal fantasy, not only Digimon Tamers, which steers the genre into a place of trauma, cosmic horror, and adults horrified by children saving the world, but also Digimon Adventure, which creates strong character arcs for eight very different children as they try to navigate a strange alien world, and shows us their struggle to reconcile with their parents as part of the process of understanding themselves.

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende,foundational text for Homestuck, which tells us not only about the rich possibilities inherent in reading oneself into fantasy worlds, but also the terrible potential for harm in making oneself an emperor over them.

Pale, by Wildbow, author of Worm, an urban fantasy story about three teenagers thrust into a world of magic and murder, a world where symbols literally create reality, where concepts like Carmine and Aurum have a powerful pull, where the Self is something that can be nourished or taken apart and put back together, a story where the parents are not just supporting cast but fully realized people forced to reckon with the ways in which they have deeply failed their children, and which contains perhaps the most thorough investigation of the question of “is it good for children to go on magical adventures?” ever committed to the page.

Heaven Will Be Mine, by Aevee Bee,in which the giant robots we pilot through space become the symbolic manifestation of our inner selves and our way of bringing about our ideal reality, and, relatedly, We Know the Devil, in which the repression of those selves causes them to burst out from us in terrifying and glorious new forms.

Crow Cillers, by Cate Wurtz, an often trauma-filled horror comic in which a group of kids and, eventually, adults, tries to fight back against an ever-present death cult that has its grips on every corner, all the while encountering Psyforms, beings made of pure mind, while characters from television and cartoons dance in the margins and all the while the line blurs between audience and art until it becomes difficult to tell who created who—a story that asks what it means to find meaning in stories when the corporate entities that own them are trying to devour us.

It's a tragically short list, I know. But perhaps it conveys some of the angles we might take.

We can also look at works that are known to have inspired by Homestuck. There aren’t many yet, but there are a few.

Undertale is famous for its Homestuck influences, with parallel timelines, an idea of agency that persists across them, and a contentious relationship between player and character, but for my part, I’m just as interested if not more so in Deltarune, which seems to be slowly building a grand thesis about portal fantasy, where the kids' adventures in the Dark Worlds seems to be offering them an escape and helping them become their best selves—but hints at a coming challenge to that simple worldview in the question of who’s really experiencing that escape.

The Locked Tomb, by Tamsin Muir – This is the big one, that really shows what building on Homestuckian themes can achieve. It turns out there really is an audience for weird aggro formalism in scifi publishing if you make it sufficiently gay. But smartly, like Homestuck, the Locked Tomb builds its weird mysteries gradually, adding on layer after layer on the solid foundation of characters we can follow and get invested in. There’s so much to notice – there’s the highly categorized teenagers involved in a murder feud, there’s the constant whiplash of humor and tragedy, there’s the endlessly open spaces in the story to interpret and project on to.

But to me, what stands out the most is the portrait of God and his court as every bit as emotionally chaotic as the sniping teenagers. You go to heaven, and God’s making out in the corner with his friend group, and you look for the adult in the room but the adults in the room don’t know what they’re doing and they never really did. It’s a portrait of the parents, it’s a portrait of the Ancestors, it’s a portrait of the gods of the new world, and it’s exquisite.

The Locked Tomb gives us a world at war with its own mythological narrative, rich with angst and irony. It’s a worthy successor to everything Homestuck was doing. It shows us how much these themes can say to us, and it gives us a hint at how powerful Homestuck's legacy might be.

7. THE APOTHEOSIS OF HOMESTUCK

There’s a lot of discussion about how to continue Homestuck. How to do it justice. What post-canon might look like, and what it might not. What fan comics, what fan fics, what semi-official works truly live up to the spirit of its characters and its multiverse.

To be clear, those discussions are awesome. I’m so glad those things exist, and it’s wonderful to see them unfolding.

But I don’t want the process to stop there. I'd be disappointed if it was only about adding to and re-articulating Homestuck itself.

I want this—

—This multifaceted, complicated, emotionally laden thing that is the experience of engaging with and creating with and interpreting Homestuck—

To go out into the world and to be infused into the world, to become waves spreading further and further. I want to experience the Homestuck artistic movement, the Homestuck school of thought. I want it to be an influence on the fiction of the coming generation of authors, and the next, and the next.

I want Homestuck to be one of those albums that's too obscure to be known by the general public, but everyone who listened to it went on to start an enormously successful band.

Homestuck can appear like a thing that was conjured out of the ether, but it isn’t. It’s a product of a particular time.

But that in itself is profound. When you create art, you reach back to all the things that have shaped you, and you listen to what the world around you needs, and you try to say what needs to be said. Which means you're a part of a history and culture that needs to say those things, which will be different from the things that needed to be told yesterday, and different from the stories that will be needed tomorrow.

There’s no otherworldliness to it, no platonic other reality. But for all I've talked about art being made of choices, there's still something transcendent here.

To make Homestuck—and to make art inspired by Homestuck—means being a node in a web formed of millions of people, where a light passes down the chain to you, and for the briefest of moments, you get to be filled with its presence, before it moves on to the next person in the chain.

That light isn't yours. Not really.

But at the same time, you do get to choose how that light manifests.

And to engage with that process consciously—to think deliberately about what we want to create—that gives us power and agency over that process, our sense of the world, and ourselves.

So let’s do this. Let’s make the thing that Homestuck is telling us can exist, the thing it’s paving the way for, the thing we know in our soul can come to be.

Let’s make the next Homestuck happen.

—Ari

POSTSCRIPT

“To put out a manifesto you must want: ABC

to fulminate against 1, 2, 3

to fly into a rage and sharpen your wings to conquer and disseminate little abcs and big abcs, to sign, shout, swear, to organize prose into a form of absolute and irrefutable evidence, to prove your non plus ultra and maintain that novelty resembles life… I write a manifesto and I want nothing, yet I say certain things, and in principle I am against manifestoes, as I am also against principles… I write this manifesto to show that people can perform contrary actions together while taking one fresh gulp of air…”

— Tristan Tzara, “Dada Manifesto 1918”

"The cyborg is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity. It is oppositional, utopian, and completely without innocence....the cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of re-turning to dust...This is a dream not of a common language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia. It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space stories...I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess."

— Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto"

“What we need is works that are strong straight precise and forever beyond understanding... let each man proclaim: there is a great negative work of destruction to be accomplished. We must sweep and clean…to divest one's church of every useless cumbersome accessory; to spit out disagreeable or amorous ideas like a luminous waterfall, or coddle them—with the extreme satisfaction that it doesn't matter in the least…freedom: Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE.”

— Tristan Tzara, “Dada Manifesto 1918”

“These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me,

If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing,

If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,

If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.”

—Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

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#homestuck #homestuck analysis #what comes next after homestuck #the future of homestuck #homestuckian art #you are actually 100% sure walt whitman said that

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ninapi · 11 months

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┊┊┊✧ ⁺ ⁺╚══ Wind Pillar ╝

Premise: A life without the demon corps was just meaningless. Living with a heavy survivor guilt can really eat someone from the inside. That was until a weak light arrived in the most unexpected way possible, breathing life back into his lungs, making him feel needed once more.

Word Count: 5081

Warning: spoilers, the story takes place after the manga’s original timeline.

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Shinazugawa Sanemi was not the wind pillar anymore, he wasn’t Genya’s older brother anymore either. There was nobody left in this world that needed him.

After losing his family and dedicating his youth to demon hunting, losing the corps was the final blow for him.

Why was he the only one left?

He should have died if not with his family back in the day he should at least have died defending his brother’s life, Genya should be the one alive right now, not him.

What is the point of being alive when everything you care for was now gone?

He wasn’t particularly good at anything else besides demon hunting, getting a regular job and settling down was definitely not his style. He walked around the neighborhood he used to live in when his family was still alive, the thought of moving back into his old house crossed his mind, maybe do some renovations, hopefully he could drown in his good memories until time would come to give out his last breath.

But the house was now taken by an unknown family. A lot of people lost it all to demons and the destruction they brought with them, it wasn’t uncommon to see abandoned houses here and there, it made sense the house was deemed abandoned, they did leave to never come back.

He had nothing left, not even his old house.

Starting fresh could be encouraging to others, but for Sanemi it was torture.

None of the dojos he visited needed new instructors, majority of them were terrified by his looks alone, if a bunch of guys hitting each other for no apparent reason didn’t want him there what type of job was he supposed to get? It’s not like he was well mannered and literate like Tomioka or had a support network like Tanjiro. What’s the point of being the second strongest pillar if the demons were now all gone.

Sanemi’s lunch was now being given to stray ducks as he had no appetite whatsoever, feeding them was more productive than remaining in such a depressing head space, that’s when an orange rolled in between his feet. He didn’t think much of it, maybe someone dropped it while shopping, but then another orange came rolling next, and then three, making him look back in confusion.

A lone cart full of oranges was coming full speed down a hill with no one pushing it. He had to do something otherwise the villagers could get hurt, he saw small children playing around the area not long ago. Running towards it he was able to stop it before anything major happened, only a few oranges were lost, and the cart was still in good shape. A young woman came running in his direction panting for her life, “Thank you so much, good sir. My cart, it was so heavy, I lost control of it on my way home.”

Not trusting your current strength, he kept on holding the cart, still thinking of the kids running around and how exhausted you looked. “Were you heading down hill?”

“Not really, I was actually supposed to go up the hill behind us, but the cart was heavier than I expected, and it wouldn’t listen to me, so it rolled backwards.” Sanemi stared at said hill with a worrisome expression, that was no hill, that was a full-sized mountain. You were small, looked frail, pale even, little cuts and scars littering your hands. There was no way you could take the cart up that mountain, and it was not like he had anything else to do.

Somehow you reminded him of his mother and how they always needed to help her move heavy stuff around and reach tall places, wanting to help you came out naturally from his heart. “Lead the way.”

“Eh? It’s ok, don’t worry about me. I can take it!” your blushy surprised looking face caused him to scoff, turning the cart around and walking up the first hill. “Like hell you can. Now shut up and tell me where to go.”

“How can I tell you where to go if I shut up?” you were doing your best not to grin at his constipated looking scowl, but instead of teasing him further you just walked beside him in silence. The climb up to your house was steep, but he didn’t even sweat, before you noticed you were now at the entrance of your property, all over way too fast.

“Thank you, good sir. You can leave the cart there I will unload the oranges.” you ran into a small shed, bringing a cloth to wrap them up and bring them all inside. If the cart was heavy, the load was even worse. You couldn’t even lift them from the ground, causing Sanemi to heave a deep sigh. “Don’t you have a husband to help you? Or someone else like a father or brothers? There’s no way you can take all those fucking oranges inside unless you take one at a time and that would take a stupid amount of time.” He grabbed the load with one hand, swinging it over his shoulder like if it weighted nothing, waiting for you to open the door to your abode.

“I do not. My entire family was devoured by a wild beast while I was being treated in a hospice, far from here. Once I regained my strength back, they were all gone. My brother was the one who did all the heavy work around here, my mother and I would pick up the harvest and take care of the animals.” you had a pretty large farm, it wasn’t well tended now but it had several crops still growing and remains of what it used to be an area for livestock. “So, I do most of the work now that I’m alone.”

He knows how uncomfortable sympathetic comments are, so he doesn’t address the information gained, “Why do you even need so many oranges?” a loud thump could be heard as he set them on the kitchen floor, making the wooden floor tremble at the weight. “I was thinking of using them to make some marmalade and sell it at the markets, growing crops is harder than I thought, and I still need to eat, so had to figure something out.”

It was somewhat comforting for Sanemi hearing about the struggles of someone with a similar background. You both couldn’t protect your family, both had to worry about an uncertain future ahead of you. Both had things the other didn’t, but it felt good knowing he wasn’t the only one out there with similar problems.

“Do you like marmalade? I got some bread earlier, come sit down. Let me make you some tea, I still need to thank you for your kindness.” he nodded looking around for a place to sit down, the climb and the lack of food were starting to get to him, it sounded like a good idea.

He never thought making marmalade could be as complex, he had nothing better to do so he just looked at you from where he was sitting. Your hands were so small you needed both of them to stir the mix in the pot, it was amusing. The focus you were putting into making the treat, the tip of your tongue poking out passed your lips in concentration, it was all very eye catching. He’s always admire people that are good at cooking, always wanted to make delicious ohagi for himself, but he wasn’t the best with his hands unless it required brutish strength.

Once the marmalade was ready, you brought it to the small table in front of him, setting down a loaf of bread, a knife and two cups of steaming green tea.

Sanemi thinks back of the last time he was able to relax this way, sad thing really, he hadn’t ever since his mother left this world. Thinking of having afternoon tea without a worry in the world, it’s been over a decade since he had the luxury to do just that.

“Is it good? Do you like it? If you don’t, I can bring out something else.” the expectant look in your eyes made him contemplate what was in his mouth. It was sweet and very refreshing, he’s never had orange marmalade before so he couldn’t really compare it to any other, but he definitely didn’t hate it and wouldn’t mind eating some more. “It’s good, I’m sure it will sell well.” happy with his reply, you tried a bit yourself making mental notes of how to improve it even more.

Teacups were empty, plates clean, it was time for Sanemi to go back to wonder around town, maybe even try to find that one inn he heard about the day before. As he was getting up from his seat heavy rain came pouring down, a loud thunder making you jump. “When it rains this bad around here it takes a while for it to go away; would you like to stay for dinner? Um…sir?”

“Shinazugawa. Shinazugawa Sanemi.”

“Would you like to stay for dinner, Shinazugawa-san? I’m (Y/N) by the way.” he was starting to worry for your well being, you were deliberately letting an unknown man into your house and didn’t even know his name, that was not safe, even without demons around. “Tch, not like I have a choice.”

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

The rain was just not stopping, dinner was done for, and it was pitch black outside, the mountain’s treacherous paths were not places to wonder around in a stormy night like this one, “Shinazugawa-san, how about you stay for the night? You can stay in my brother’s room; I can even lend you some of his clothing so you can take a bath.”

A bath, it’s been days since he took one of those, an alluring offer indeed, but somehow the way you were taking the situation didn’t sit right in his stomach, rage was now bubbling inside his chest at your disregard for your own safety.

“Are you dumb or what? Do you not see me as a man? Hell, you do know you shouldn’t bring men you don’t know into your house, right? Specially not at night.” his angry outburst made you giggle, closing the front door shut to make a statement. “You sound like my brother, he used to say things like that to my mother. I do know you though, you’re the very kind young man that helped a woman in need without asking anything in return, I even know your name now.”

“So what? Is not like I couldn’t just do something to you now that it’s dark, it’s just the two of us here in the mountain, no one would hear if something was to happen, nobody would come even if you screamed for help like a damn pig. Don’t do stupid things like that even if you think you know someone, you don’t know a fucking thing about me.” he was shouting at this point, his fists shacking. He was really a kind man, all he wanted was for you to understand how evil the world out there could be, to others it could be overwhelming to have a figure like him shouting so angrily at them but you could see he was just worried.

“I won’t do it again, Shinazugawa-san, I promise. Now please come with me, I will show you where the bath is.” your attitude and gentle smile were infuriating. All he could think of was how his sweet mother got beaten down by his own father and the men he would bring home sometimes for drinks. How she could barely defend her children and would always ended up hurt, how she had no chance whatsoever to fight stronger men. You wouldn’t be able to defend yourself either, you needed some sense put in that head of yours before it was too late.

He pinned you against the bathroom wall, one of his muscular thighs going in between your legs, rendering you useless against his grip, he was glaring down at you in a strangely attractive way triggering many things within you, except fear, “See how easy it is for me if I wanted to hurt your ass? Take me seriously dammit, take every man fucking seriously, you can’t trust someone you don’t know so easily, it will get you killed.” he let go off your wrists roughly, wanting you to learn your lesson, but one of your hands reached for his, “You have a blister. Let me bring a bandage so we can clean it, it was probably the cart, it tends to do that.”

“No, stop. Why are you acting this way? Are you out of your mind? I could have assaulted you just now, open your eyes woman!”

“But you didn’t. You had more than one chance to do as you pleased with me, but you didn’t. Instead, you ate my food, laughed at my jokes, helped me when no one else did. You are a kind man Shinazugawa-san, wether you want to accept it or not. I’m not stupid, I wouldn’t invite someone over to my house if it could do me some harm.”

Sanemi was speechless. You didn’t consider him dangerous? He couldn’t even get a decent job because everyone would look at him like the killer he is. If there was someone dangerous out there it was him, he could kill you without even trying, in seconds, painfully, he was the second strongest in a chain of the strongest people humanity had to offer. There was something off with your view of the world.

“Now, stay still, I’m going to clean it.” his hand has never been held that way before, of course he’s had his wounds tended to, he’s always needing some patching up after his many battles, but your touch was different, it was so gentle, he could feel how you were really worried about him, about his tiny blister hurting with your touch, like if he was as frail as you were. “You gotta make sure the wound is properly cleaned before you apply bandages, look at yourself, all those scars…I bet they were all so painful…you need proper care if you don’t want them to get infected or leave traces. You tell me to take care of myself but wouldn’t look in a mirror first.”

Nobody talks to him like that, specially not females. The girls of the butterfly state were always scared of him and just looking their way would make them run away. The only active women in his life were his mother and sisters, he never had time to mess around with girls or to get his wounds properly taken care of, there were demons out there that needed to be killed and that’s all that mattered to him back then.

“Are you seriously not afraid of me?”

You looked up into his eyes, staring at him in disbelief, his tone was a lot tamer now you could hear the honest confusion lacing his words, “Why would I? You look tough, that’s true. But I am nobody to judge others. My brother also had many scars from taking care of the farm, even several of his toes were missing from when he stepped on a saw by accident, you’re not the only one around with a couple of fingers missing in this violent era. People used to say he was scary, all big and full of scars, skin tanned by the long hours of working in the fields, but he was a gentle man, always took great care of me and my mother. You strike me as the same type, you don’t feel like someone who would hurt the weak, you feel more like someone that protects them.”

Sanemi was left speechless once more as you left for him to enjoy his bath, you made sure the water was warm enough from the outside, blowing on the fire constantly until you heard him come out. He’s never been able to relax this much, he knew demons weren’t a threat anymore but that didn’t only mean he was unemployed, he didn’t think of what that meant fully until now. No demons meant less danger, meant being able to take his time to live life, to breathe, to relax. It was a strange feeling, not having to worry about someone bursting the door open and slaughtering the woman outside, but it was a good kind of strange.

He felt awfully relaxed that night and after years of nightmares, he was finally able to sleep peacefully.

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

It’s been three days and the rain just wouldn’t stop. Sanemi had helped you covering the crops so they wouldn’t die out in the rain but there was no sign of it stopping any time soon. It was typhoon season, and it was heavily hitting you this year.

Not only did he help with the crops, but the roof also had holes in it which you two didn’t notice until you woke up to a flooded floor, so he repaired it. Your front door wasn’t safe enough for his liking, so he used his extra time to take care of that as well. He didn’t even notice time was moving this fast and days had gone by. It wasn’t as bad having something to do, keep your mind busy and your body active, regular people life wasn’t as boring and dreadful as he originally thought it was.

There was so much to do around the house that he wondered how you’ve managed to live up here in the mountain by yourself all this time. He got to learn you’ve been living here all alone for a couple of years and you have been doing all you can to not let the farm fall, your determination was admirable and made him question his own future.

“Shinazugawa-san, I enjoy thoroughly having you here, but isn’t your family going to worry? It’s kind of been a while now.” the back of his neck was strangely hot, your comment taking him off guard. He enjoyed the simplicity of the last few days comparing it to the rest of his life, he’s never been able to just sit down and listen to the rain fall on the roof sipping on a hot cup of tea, but he didn’t know you were enjoying it just as much.

“I don’t have a family. They also got killed by a wild beast long time ago, the only brother I had left passed this year, so no, nobody is going to worry about me not returning home, I don’t even have a home.” the stoic look on his face while he was retailing his life tragedy worried you, it’s something he should feel sad for, but he didn’t look sad, he looked angry, and you could understand that feeling, your family was taken away from you in the very same way.

“I bet your brother looked like you.” he wasn’t expecting that, usually people get uncomfortable with the thought of having to empathize with something they can’t understand and start apologizing, but you did go through the same, you stirred the subject around like he usually does when facing the same situation and he was grateful. “Hm, he had less scars than me, was taller, dark hair. But he did kind of look like me.”

“I bet he was kind too.”

“He was.” you were now pouring more tea in his cup, admiring the heavy rainfall through your window. “My brother didn’t look like me at all, he was way kinder, very smart, had the prettiest face I’ve ever seen with beautiful large eyes.” this made Sanemi look at your face, it was difficult to imagine a big muscly guy that looked anything close to the delicate tiny woman in front of him, but then again, he used to see his mother in Genya all the time. “Sounds a lot like you.” blood was flowing at full speed to your cheeks, decorating your lovely face with tinges of reds.

“Sometimes I wish I was the one the beast ate instead of my brother, the farm needs him, he was so good with animals and with the people at the market too, everyone loved him, he was the best of the two of us, it’s a shame really.”

Sanemi was lost in your face, the way your eyes watered at the memory of your brother, the way a soft defeated smile crept on your face signalizing guilt, he felt understood in a very deep level, strangely. “Same. I did all I could to protect my brother, I wanted him to live a normal life, get a wife, have some kids. But he ended up following me around and dying before me anyways. All my efforts were completely useless. I should have died, not him.” his fists were now shaking against the coffee table, veins popping all around his body as a rush of anger and despair rushed through him at the thought of his dying baby brother.

“I’m sure he just wanted to be with his beloved older brother. I used to follow mine around as well, wanted him to teach me how to get milk from the cow and got myself a kick to the face, turns out they get quite stressed if you’re too excited.” the absurdity of it all felt like getting some sort of medication for the illness that consumed his heart, like a serum being injected into his blood stream, cooling his anger down.

“Dumbass.” the sound of your laughter brought new air into the house, a house that is rather quiet all the time was now loud, and it smelled like a proper home.

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

After two stormy days more, the sun was finally out. There was a lot of work to do in the fields to fix the damage caused by the storm. Sanemi started working on it as soon as he woke up without even asking you, and it took you both all day, something you thought would take an hour ended up extending throughout the entire day.

He was better at this than he thought he would, you even ended up planting some pumpkin seeds you got from the market a while back upon his suggestion of adding different types off crops. The front of the farm looked like a proper one afterwards bringing a powerful sense of completion to the both of you. It was hard work, but teamwork does really make a difference. And you two made a good team.

The sun was setting, all there was left to do was water the crops and prepare dinner, fresh rice already cooking in a pot inside the house. “Maybe you can grow some berries and do your marmalade using them instead of having to buy oranges, growing orange trees seems like a pain in the ass and there are wild berries in the forest, should be easy to find some and bring them here.” you were giving it serious thought, you’ve never thought about changing the ingredients, you were just replicating the treat your mother used to do for you and your brother when you were little. Being so lost in your head doing ingredient calculations and noting ideas for the recipe, you didn’t see the frog that was comfortably resting on your foot. Once you did though, panic filled your insides, you hated frogs and would always stay as far away as possible from them.

“Shinazugawa-san…there’s…there’s a-“ you looked like you were about to faint so he walked closer to you, spotting the aggressor, “(Y/N) is just a stupid frog, move your foot, it’ll go away on its own.” you shook your head closing your eyes shut, you didn’t want to hurt the poor animal out of your own silly phobia.

Sanemi crouched down to your feet, grabbing the little troublemaker and took it over to the edge of the river near your property. When he came back you were still frozen in place, sweating. “It’s gone now.” You were ridiculous, it was just a tiny frog, you couldn’t even defend yourself against a frog, how were you going to defend yourself against the odds of life. You let out a long-held breath, taking his hands in yours as a token of appreciation, quickly forgetting the hose was in your hand and getting his face completely wet.

“(Y/N)….you little piece of shit….” his face was red, a deep snarl on his face. You threw the hose to the ground and ran for your life, laughing in the process. “I’m so sorry!! Kyaaaaa, how are you this fast!” one step of his was five of yours, he caught up to you in no time and the look on his face was a sight to behold.

He wasn’t angry, his wet hair was sticking onto his face, and he was laughing. He looked way younger this way and it made you feel relived to see he was having as much fun as you did these days. Your hand reached his face, caressing the droplets of water away, a loving smile gracing your lips. He wasn’t sure when things started heading in this direction but he’s never felt that way before and he didn’t hate it.

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

There weren’t more excuses for Sanemi to linger around, the rain was gone, the farm cleaned up from the storm, even the marmalade was ready to be sold. He offered to help you with the cart since it was even heavier now that the load had increased.

The idea was for him to take you downtown and then leave and move on with his life, find a job and a place to stay.

But you didn’t even know how to build the display table in the market and then unloading the cart is faster between two people. Then an old lady asked him for three jars of marmalade and by mid afternoon he was still by your side selling your goods.

“Sir, could I convince you and your wife to trade two of your jars for one of my chickens? I don’t have any money left but I would really like to take some home for my kids.” His what- the cloth he was using to clean the table ended up on the floor at her statement, taking him off-guard, you also didn’t say anything to deny it. “What do you think, dear husband? I think it would be a good idea, we could look around and see if we can find her a mate and get eggs from them.” so you were seriously not just going to ignore it but also go along with it-

“Um, yeah. There’s some spare wood in the shed, I could use that to build them a house.” the lady was now handing him the cage with said chicken, waiting anxiously for the last two jars of goodness to be her own.

“You make such a lovely couple; I wish my husband was as understanding and loving as yours. Thank you, my children and I will be forever in your debt, my youngest is celebrating her birthday today, I wanted to bring something special home.” it somehow warmed both of your hearts, you both think of days when you had a large family and how much fun you had eating delicious treats with your siblings, children laughter filling out every corner. “Thank you for your kind words, we’ll take good care of your chicken. I hope you and the children have a lovely evening!” and just like that the marmalade was officially sold out.

“So where do you think we can find Mia’s future husband?” he wasn’t sure how or when you and him became a ‘we’ but he wasn’t mad at how it sounded like and the intentions behind it. “Did you just name the fucking chicken?” he was used to your silly antics by now but it was still very much amusing to him, your quiet giggles confirming he was right. “I saw someone selling some chickens by the entrance, let’s go see if they have one after cleaning up.”

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Time Skip~

It’s been ten years since Sanemi started coming to this market every morning. He still misses the fun days of demon hunting, but mostly he still misses his brother. Life wasn’t as good to Genya as it was to him, and he still felt guilty from living the life he wanted his brother to have.

Having a permanent stall in the market came with a lot of responsibilities and a lot of hard work, but his strength was put to good use by the smartest person he’s ever met.

“How much for the corn?” Sanemi, who was now cleaning the small worktable looked up to tend his first customer of the day. “If you take two you get one fr- Tomioka???” Giyuu was smirking at him from the other side of the table, a knowing look in his eyes. “That apron looks good on you, Shinazugawa.” Leaving the stall behind, he walked over to his old pillar mate, it’s been years since the last time they saw each other.

“Heard your stupid ass went to live with his old master like a sissy lost baby, near Tanjiro and the gang of brats.”

Some things never change.

“Yeah, it’s been a while, we didn’t even know you were still alive.” the conversation got cut short by a child clinging onto Sanemi’s leg, getting Giyuu’s attention. “Father, mother needs your help unloading the milk crates.”

Crouching down to his size, Giyuu stares into the child's eyes, lost in the memories of his lost friends, painful days of loss came right into his heart, “You look just like your uncle.” patting the child on the head, he smiled, the ghosts of his lost comrades shining behind the toddler. “I know, I was named Genma after uncle, but my hair is like this because of mother, the rest have father’s hair.” As if on cue you came out of the back with a baby tied to your back, an older looking boy than the one before him holding a sleeping girl in his arms. “Nemi, the milk!”

“I see you’ve been busy.” Sanemi’s face was red as a beet, making him grumble insults quietly for his child not to hear.

“I’ll do it in a second, come here, I want you to meet an old friend of mine.” this was the first time any of them had addressed the love-hate relationship they had in the past as friendship, but now being older they both agree that’s what it was. “Tomioka, this is my wife (Y/N)”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you…and your four children…” the smirk on his face was so sly nobody would notice it but Sanemi, it made him want to punch his guts like he would do back in the day when they were younger.

“Is that your wife over there, Tomioka-san? I see you also have a little one, take some of our milk, our kids love it!” The child looked just like him, it was an easy guess. You were doing your best to move around with a child on your back and a swell on your stomach, a promise of another youngster arriving soon. The woman behind Giyuu came holding his son and after a long chat and bunch of laughter they promised to go to your place for dinner soon.

Ten years ago Sanemi thought he had lost it all.

And he did.

But he made a silent promise to Genya after meeting you, he would live as long as he could, never waste the opportunity to live his brother gave him, never let his sacrifice be in vain, he would live for the both of them, he would bring life to this world and protect it the way he couldn’t protect his siblings, he would protect his family until his last breath and once that moment comes and he gets to see him again, he will have many stories to share as they embrace eternity together, as family.

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Tagged babes: @doumadono

Masterlist Bonus Chapter

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