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#sometimes i feel i should write in a journal but it always feels too formal
hippolotamus · 6 months
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Seven Sentence Sunday 🖋️📖
Tagged by @wikiangela @daffi-990 @your-catfish-friend @rmd-writes @giddyupbuck @wildlife4life @spotsandsocks Thank you loves! 💖(And don't forget to check their snippets!)
Here's Buck's journal entry to Ch 2 of you're where I wanna go (prev snippets here)
To have and to hold. Until death do us part. Those phrases, those vows should mean something, yes? Something deeper than words spoken for an audience. And when they are uttered, the experience should be as if every consonant and vowel are taken from one’s very soul. Written by God himself upon every blood vessel, nerve ending, ligament and bone. Pumping through the heart, waiting for the day they can be shared with another.  Vow is defined as a solemn promise or assertion; specifically one by which a person is bound to as an act, service, or condition. Supposedly the earliest marriage vows can be traced back to the medieval church, originating sometime during the 11th century. In earlier times a bride was negotiated for. When all parties were satisfied the couple was declared married. Simple. I suppose Lucy and I did a bit of both. I always thought, when I formally pledged myself to another, it would be joyous. That I would give part of myself, but still feel fulfilled because I was gaining pieces of my partner, too. As it turns out, all I felt was more of me being lost. Once again offered in service to a greater purpose. The only comfort, if it could be called that, was knowing the fragments I received in return were never mine to keep either…
No pressure tagging @shortsighted-owl @eddiebabygirldiaz @stereopticons @apothecarose @vanillahigh00 @disasterbuckdiaz @elvensorceress @monsterrae1 @honestlydarkprincess @eddiediaztho @barbiediaz @thewolvesof1998 @forthewolves @chaosandwolves @spaceprincessem @mysteriouslyyounggalaxy @heartshapedvows @loserdiaz @watchyourbuck absolute loml @lizzie-bennetdarcy @ladydorian05 @statueinthestone @buddierights @911onabc @jesuisici33 @pirrusstuff @eowon @cowboy-buddie @fionaswhvre @steadfastsaturnsrings if you wanna
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khensaptah · 9 months
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Heyo! New to kemetic paganism, and a little less new to witchcraft. But what would be your advice for newbies building praxis? I know this is probably a SUPER common question, I'm just kind of in the absorption-of-knowledge phase and was curious. Thanks!
Always feel free to ask "common" or newbie questions! We are all new to this once, and every Kemetic has a different take on what praxis should look like, and those takes will change with time. My practice as a Kemetic Humanist is a mixture of historically informed devotional work, personal mysticism, and Seen world work to promote ma'at and fight isfet.
In that vein, the three things that I suggest to new Kemetics:
Read. A lot.
Develop a gratitude practice.
Volunteer.
Reading
Even if your practice isn't reconstructionist focused, there is so much out there to learn about Kemeticism! Blogs and social media and old forum posts are everywhere; books aimed at folks with lay person interest in Egyptology are easier to come by in bookshops; and articles and more heavy reading are accessible through both physical and online libraries.
Reading is a conversation with the author. If it's your book (or an ebook!) highlight things! Leave notes! If something really speaks to you, post a quote on your blog (or other place you like to hold onto tidbits, like a journal). This is especially important for online resources, which can disappear at any time. Write reviews if that's your jam! Once you start feeling more comfortable with your basic knowledge, read things by people who you disagree with, or whose sources are only so-so. You'll be surprised what you can learn from them. I am currently learning a lot while arguing with a book on the Pyramid Texts!
You can also learn a lot by reading from adjacent practices (religions from the Levant, the Mediterranean, and from other African nations all influenced ancient Egypt; likewise ancient Egypt influences modern Coptic and Islamic practices in Egypt; ) or even vastly different religions (every time I learn something about Shinto, I feel like I learn more about Kemeticism).
Gratitude
Now, this might seem a little out there, but one of the best things I ever did for my practice was steal this neat trick from @tybarbary. Make a list of ten things you're grateful for every day (or at least, every time you have a bad day). Sometimes, this really sucks. Some days are terrible. Things can be repetitive (I cannot say how many times the ten things have been a list of every pet or lover in my life). BUT.
Listing those things is great for your mental health. Mental wellness is ma'at; it's so important to do what you can to maintain balance inside your heart. These things also become a list of offerings. In times where you might not have much to give, you will have your gratitude to offer the Netjeru, and this too will feed them.
The second thing this does is help build a daily practice. If you're checking in once a day to celebrate your victories in life, it becomes easier to add more steps. Habits build off each other. If you already have a habit of making a gratitude list, it's easier to light a candle or incense before hand. It becomes easier to work in heka or more formalized rituals as part of that.
Volunteering
The core of this religion is ma'at: the balance of the world; all that is right and true. Kemeticism is not apolitical: it is about trying to bring the Seen world back to that moment of harmony that existed in Zep Tepi, and doing that over and over again.
Pick a cause. There's millions of them, but pick just one. Get as small and local as you can. And see what you can do to help. It doesn't have to be a lot! We are all trying to survive under capitalism and facism, and we all have unique circumstances that compound the situation. But try and do something small to help your cause once a month (more if you can).
My personal favorite causes to look for, because literally every neighborhood has them are food or housing justice organizations (this doesn't have to be a formal organization, it can be as simple as a micropantry or a facebook group for folks who need a safe space to crash for a night) or mutual aid organizations (mutual aid isn't always financial. Sometimes folks need help with tasks of daily living, or to borrow an item, or someone who understands how [your niche interest or skill here] works).
Bring the light of the gods into your world. This too is an offering!
Hope some of this will be helpful for you! Thanks again for the question!
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Author’s intent
Literary analysis is an essential component of high school English classes. It’s a challenge right now because reading and writing stamina are low, as are attention spans. It’s also difficult to balance literary classics with modern literature. This is why I love short stories so much. I’ll address that in my next post.
Today’s debatable issue: how important is authorial intent? I would not dare say it’s totally unnecessary, however can we really know an author’s intent? Isn’t that ultimately a form of conjecture?
My favorite professor from High Point University said this:
Ben, That's a raging question these days. My answer is that a writer has no control over the interpretation of his/her poem, which will always be filtered through a reader's intellectual background, experience, and feelings. I'm a poet with four books; I give readings often in North Carolina. I am delighted by the range of reactions conveyed by listeners and readers. Some are stunningly perceptive; others discover nuances I never imagined were in the poem; some seem irrelevant. When a poem leaves my hands, it belongs to others. I do not want to limit their responses to what my intention was. Ben, sometimes I don't know what I mean to do in a poem. I start with an image, a snatch of dialogue, or a memory. My poetry rises from life, not from ideas. It often leads to strange, unanticipated places. That's good. When you develop thoughts, you are writing essays or sermons. Poets don't sit down and think, "Now what do I want to say?" When you follow a trail in the woods instead of a train of thoughts, you never know where the trail is going until you get to the end. It could be a fork and the road not taken; it could be a pregnant deer wounded by a hunter; it could be the ghost of your grandfather saying, "It's time for us to talk." Poetry is not pro forma; paint by numbers. Now here's the flip side: Formalist critics like T.S. Eliot and the Fugitive School argued that an analyst needed to restrict interpretation to the words of the poem, to what was on the page. They emphasized formal analysis instead of the author's biography, history, or personality. I admire this approach until it becomes too rigid. I think everything should be taken into account, beginning with what's on the page and then considering outside factors. No real poet would ever want to insist that a poem means one thing and one thing only or that the poet's intention must be exalted above all. The Formalists called focusing on an author's intention "the intentional fallacy." I think you should stress what's on the page but be willing to move outside the poem for influences, etc. If you google me, you can find some of my poems in journals. If you want to ask me about my intention in a specific poem, I'll try to answer and to mention where the poem went….Congrats on your teaching career. You were a sharp, energetic student--a pleasure to talk with.
#literature #books #analysis
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dannygronerportfolio · 3 months
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10 Things I'm Most Proud of from 2023
I entered this year in transition, looking to formally split my role in half. I spent 50 percent of my time and with my attached metrics focused on what got me here, which is PR portfolio support. And the other 50 percent of my time and attached metrics went toward dealflow, measured on total number of introductions I made to the investment team. I learned quickly in Q1 that while those two pursuits might leverage the same sentiment and sensibility from within me, they required different outlooks and approaches. I had to learn to be be both - at once.
My proudest achievement of 2023 has yet to close yet, but it's a deal that we expect to land in the arriving weeks. That would be the first I sourced to make it into our active portfolio. On the one hand, I had hoped to boast this deal before the end of the year. On the other hand, I am riding this wave for what it is and how it will get done, and I have something to look forward to along the continuum of the years. This lead of all of the leads I've generated - 18 qualified ones in 2023 - has the best backstory to it. And I look forward to telling the tale.
I continued this year to assist job seekers in looking for work, mostly marketers who I can help more than others. In a similar vein to the above, I shifted from racking up volume to considering precision, finding the people who might be left without completely if not for my gentle touch. I clocked less than 50 percent of the volume I did last year while giving myself more grace and also spare time to expand into other arenas, too. I have made this endeavor a set part of my everyday work and life, and I am confident that dozens more will get on their way in part thanks to me next year. Several of this year's candidates told me that I changed the game for them and unlocked something in them they didn't know was there. It's all so gratifying.
I completed another year of posting weekly in my Substack, which is the equivalent number of words of a second novel. I didn't grow the readership this year as I had hoped, and I have lost some of my readers from the year prior. I am not too worried about that, as the initiative continues to be valuable to me as a place to put the topics and ideas that would have otherwise died inside my head. Journaling has always helped me grasp how I feel, and whether I have something to say. And this project solidifies that aspect of my self. I know what the next 10 topics to write about will be. And I have gotten good feedback of late from active readers that I am writing well in addition to writing often.
A popular PR newsletter featured my essay this year about my transformation from PR guru to business consultant. I received some immediate accolades when that went out, but I have continued to plug it with mid-career job seekers since as a model for how they can and should be thinking about themselves and their careers. I send it along, unprompted, after calls with those who'd benefit from reviewing it. I've adopted a similar approach for how I conduct follow-ups with appropriate people for Forecast Labs. The meeting is the middle of the process, not the beginning. And I supply them with two podcast episodes we lined up this year as part of our one-pager. That serves well as top of funnel for our marketing efforts.
This year, half of the press I brought in overall was for Forecast Labs itself. The anchor came from TechCrunch in March. We continued to get a steady stream of press from top-tier publications, including Bloomberg (x2), Financial Times, Inc. (x2), and Quartz. We have begun to receive enough inbound that we don't really have to pitch more at all anymore, and reporters see us as a go-to source and resource to find what they seek. We pair up reporters with the sources they need, sometimes within our portfolio and often not. This is a winning formula for us to keep focused on achieving our business goals first and always, PR goals to complement what we're already seeing and saying.
In particular, we were helpful to reporters during the Silicon Valley Bank crisis. As other PR people and executives faded to the back, waiting for the fiasco to pass, we went to work in those first few hours to make ourselves available, actively pitching into the storm. We were rewarded for it, both for Forecast Labs and for the portfolio companies that happened to bank at SVB. You can find our coverage in The New York Times, Fortune, Crain's, Slate, and The Verge, among other places. That episode was an example of how we didn't prepare specifically for something we could have predicted, but we had built expertise and also trust internally to seize on what we could say when others weren't able to.
There's nothing I enjoy more than lining up press for a new portfolio company even before they are announced as one. That's what happened in May when on my initial call with the executives I heard a nugget that I felt was a standalone story, outside of our corporate announcement. So we went and got that story done first, in Modern Retail, before writing up the formal press release that yielded coverage in Axios. I listen closely for both paths forward, knowing that we have more legs to stand on after the announcement is in the past if we have original insights to offer for how the business is growing.
The best example of that came from Public this year, our furthest-along property, that yielded the most coverage of any portfolio company with 10. Among the publications that covered them were AdAge, CNN, BBC, Bloomberg, and Yahoo Finance. That company had a massive year in terms of corporate announcements, and we were there every step of the way to support the growth opportunities that they spearheaded.
For one of our latest portfolio companies, Outcomes4Me, we found a clever way to squeeze into The Wall Street Journal, and we also saw a long profile run about one of their workers in Cure Today. This assignment perhaps more than any other that has sat in our portfolio requires a deft hand because of the nature of what they offer and who they serve. Sensitivity to cancer patients comes first always, and if we can foster those stories publicly to help the next person feel less alone and more supported that extends the coverage beyond mere placements for its own sake. There's a strong sense of purpose when speaking to the operators in-house at Outcomes4Me, and it raises everyone's awareness of how the media writes about the most devastating times of many people's lives.
And, finally, I got myself cited in a couple of stories, as usual, this campaign in The Washington Post and Shondaland, among others. Additionally, I spoke to several reporters on background this year, pointing them in the right direction and offering perspectives on some topics and themes that wouldn't match exactly to where I can be the leading expert rather more as a conduit to get there. Whenever I am the right person, I step up. And otherwise I'm just happy to assist in the ways I know how.
(Here’s a link to the 2022 list.)
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renticat · 4 months
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𝑯𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝑰 𝒈𝒐 𝒂𝒈𝒂𝒊𝒏
Tuesday and I am crying over my own stupidity.
Please don't post so much sadness duh. And hey tumblr is like wrecking things up when I am typing this on my phone instead of laptop but it's still readable so...
Yeah. I should stop saying yeah. In the writing lol but it's not formal or anything, hello this is my journal and I am not mean bitch. Of course I share just enough not all the unnecessary details you don't need to know but sometimes i feel like out of track also.
I love you! Well, what is love? Because it could mean something different to each person on this earth. For me love is a long term commitment and not just because you like it at the moment. But in the english speaking world it could be mean not that serious like I care about you, and I like you just something like that, hence I don't often saying this love that much even for the people I really likes because I don't know what they're feeling about me. Is it something mutual?
𝑺𝒍𝒆𝒆𝒑𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒏 𝒎𝒚 𝒃𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒉𝒐𝒘 𝑰 𝒏𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒔𝒂𝒊𝒅 𝑰 𝒍𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒅 𝒚𝒐𝒖
Yeah that's the Happy/Sad song by Ryan Woods, and I could totally relate to that. It's disheartening I know but apologize won't fix me now. They're saying so much I love you until the word has no special meaning whatsoever. It's just that at that time they have feeling for you or maybe because they're lonely and you always there so you are the easy target. I am the easy target because maybe I tried to make up for the time I am gone, as is just my habit if I fell off to the sadness, I kinda retract to everyone even the people who have not done me wrong. It's like I really need time for myself to processing all the feeling but then because I already found comfort in loneliness is hard to just make any little convo about hi, how are you doing again? Cause I don't like small talk.
I like the long talk with someone that I know it safe to say anything with them because they're also sharing something with me. Or at least we have the same hobbies or maybe they taught me something like new language and sing for me. I don't know, it's like yeah knowing new people it's exhausting and if you haven't resolved the past issues of the old ones it's just you just want to take out the nastiness but into the wrong person, it's not fair at all.
Because all of this I develop trust issues but again is it trust issues or just my gut feeling telling me that is just bad idea from the first time? I don't know, I am blind with the red flags because I love red that much or maybe because I know everyone has it so you pick ones you can tolerate with. Then it becomes dangerous as is like they're crossing boundaries but then you don't have the same power to do this, (if you're the one whose mainly the speaker of the conversation; the ones who talks that much but the other party seem just give you enough answer).
Wow I just realized that it's like I am posting this to enlighten myself but also it could be tool for people to use me. I know your words could be use as double edge swords that's why the Robert Greene's book of power said that you don't reveal yourself too much if you want to be in control but then are you ever truly loved someone if you never let your guard down?. I don't mind they knew my flaws as I don't believe anybody live in this world without it. I just hate it now that my trust has been taken for granted and now I am sad again. Like I hate lies and people who manipulate others but then I sort of give them ammo for hurting me in the right way. Wow. Yeah hou could he, after giggling and saying I love you! But I am the cruel ones?
I keep saying wow to refer the way he talks. It's so annoying that also probably my over exertive, is that a word? Yeah and over anxious drift people away because I hate to end up like this but what can I do? There's nothing you do to protect your heart from breaking heart until you don't let yourself to fall in to other people, to care about them much more than they've given you. And it's hard for me because I am an empath, not really though just the result of having narc parents and if I don't cater to their feelings, life is miserable even though if I cater to their feeling back then is still miserable.
Damned if you do and damned if you don't. The theramintrees videos explains it so well and it's scary. My mind is like programmed like this and I almost have avoidance tendencies when the problem arise but now I have the little bravery to confront but yeah just a little bit to ask them why they did what they did and they never answer. Because they're in the wrong ones and not intended to apologize whatsoever.
I wish I could support my own life because depending on people makes you be the person who depending your happiness on others. But it's so hard rn, yada yada yada and no. It's not yada yada I am not joking, my circumstances is just not built for people like me and I am trapped here. Unheard and if I spoke it publicly I might ger some serious consequences so yeah I only tip toeing around the topic but I get blunt with some other people and it put me in my sadness again.
I actually envy people that so good at lying like they can manipulate others to do what they want. I can't do it as it's so wrong for me or maybe because I have always raised to be the one who cares for others feeling but not to myself. At least I should care about myself the same way I care about others and even like that I am still struggling.
IS LIKE WHY DO I HATE MYSELF SO MUCH?
because that's what I have been taught to and I hate it. It's real it's no joke matter and I am broken. Yeah I want to resolve this issue but it's hard when you can not detach yourself from the people and the environment that made you like this. Not many people have the opportunities to just said fuck it I am leaving now and yeah just be gone. Some have to adapt by being overly nice to them so they don't pick you but yeah I can only do this for so long as I hate lies and I can't pretend for so long. Well back then I am not pretending to believe something because I believe it. And the more I open up my horizon of thinking, is just clear for me is not the truth. Well it's okay if they believe it's the truth, it's their opinion but no. Here they shoving it down on you as they believe only one right fucking way to live.
Okay I am already writing outside the topic but it's like again when he said I love you and I believe it, it's because i try to believe it and wish it true but instead he broke his own words and makes me cry again. It's sickening but why do you expecting different ending while reading the same books? Well because I think people aren't books but maybe it's really applied though and desperation cloud your judgement.
Argghh there are many things that I would like to say to you but I don't know how. It's true because English is foreign for me and I guess in my mind, my brain jumping from one idea to another because actually they're similar though. Gosh he sung this song for me for what? The lies that he couldn't describe? Fuck this. Fuck me. Fuck fuck fuck....
Oh it's a bad words you're bad bad girl. Huh? So how do I get out all of the frustration with simple things then? For the bad of your lies and all the broken promises you've said to me. I hate you. I love you but not your lies. But your love is just a lie. Here I go again, running in circles.
While deep down treasuring the memories because I am just sucker for romance. Even when I am so bad at it. I even don't know how to write tags properly my goodness haha. I am writing this while feasted by the fleas of my cats cause I just bathed them and now they're licking each other in front of me. When will I find this kind of understanding in my life, forger about love.
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emmaleaurawrites · 2 years
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Ok so... Transparency is a major part of my journey... And I started this page before I was ready to be fully transparent with the world, so that when I was ready, There'd be no excuses or "I'll do it tomorrow"...
Now, I'm ready ..... So instead of writing in my journal each night, I'm gonna write here 😅
* Insert deep axx breath bc a betch is
NEEEER👏🏼VOUS!👏🏼
But, like I always advise... Imma do it scared.
My fear comes from the thought of being judged.. Along my journey, I realized that I, and many others, suffer from people pleasing and the need to be accepted. I also have this fear because of abandonment issues and a strong axx need to feel loved.
And it goes deeper... I struggle to form deeper connections with people.. I have a problem with detachment..
You see, I grew up without either of my parents. That always made me wonder 'why?'... Why was I not worthy of having them?
I've grown to understand that this happened for a greater reason than I could understand at that time... And now I'm grateful for it... But the people pleasing, need to be accepted, and detachment issues, are the residual energies of those feelings.
I'm trying to work through that and it's a WHOLE struggle!!
But, as you see, I'm working on it....
So anyways... Today was a chill day, as it should have been.
Bae let me sleep in and it was MUCH NEEDED!! He even ran some errands and took the kids out for a bit.
I cleaned our home and had some me time. It was electric ⚡😏🥂🦄🥳 It is always an easy way to release stress and manifest easily.. it's so much beautiful, organic energy behind a big fat O! NEVER underestimate that power.
After that, we visited our favorite friend couple and made plans for tomorrow ❤️ We also decided to attend an adult prom.
I really hope we go bc I have been wanting a formal night out and we always have a great time with them!!
I'm looking at the clock now, realizing we ain't got much time before we have to get up in the morning so imma try to get the rest of this in within the next four minutes!!
So we made it home, bae and I had a tiny disagreement about the kids listening to certain things with curse words. He said absolutely no cursing. I said we listen to music with it all the time so I don't see a problem with them listening to what they're exposed to. I just don't want them on YouTube watching kids and cartoons cursing.
It really grinds my gears that he is so passive aggressive. He gets in his feelings and SAY he ain't mad, but that energy, the way he acts, and the look on his face says different.
I swear he gets on my nerves but he's a great guy. He always grows for the better but he attempts at trying to avoid conflict, literally leads to conflict.. I have a part to blame in it too though... Bc I don't let it go when a mfer try to act funny with me... So yeah imma lil petty... Sometimes a lot petty. It's my toxic trait and I'm not ready to work on it. I know, I know... But this about BEING REAL #BE100 and imma do that.
He can act funny all he want to long as I get some 🪵 tonight, IDGAF. 🤷🏾‍♀️ #BIGMOOD
#mydiary #ghostwriter #ELWrites #vunerability #issasecret #canyoukeepit #busttheghost #NEVA #ILOVEWRITING #mythoughts #getyourteacup #spillingmyowntea #theworldmayneverknow #andilovedis💩
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infinitegalahad · 3 years
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GENERATION KILL: COMFORTING THERE PARTNER
"This is just me formally submitting a request for that gk boys offering their own forms of comfort fic/ headcanon/ thoughts wtevr. Lol just as a reminder. 😀"@theboardwalkbody
Gif Credit: @ymagor
A/N: You're wish is my command, homes❣️ Here's a little change of pace! @theboardwalkbody inspired this post (and asked it!), so thanks for the Inspo friend! 🤩 I'm doing this for BoB and TP because I'm going through a slight writer's block and instead of thinking about long descriptions, I just wanna so head canons that get a little out of hand. I hope this isn't too ooc😔 Reader has *inserted mental illness* btw, it's up for interpretation! ALSO GN! READER! Enjoy!
Taglist: @theboardwalkbody @contrabandhothead
Masterlist
NATE FICK-
Nate's a calculated person. He can see the patterns in people, things, etc. Like how his father's eyebrows wrinkle when he's excited, or when his mother likes to prep a meal from vegetables to the main course. So when you're happy, sad, whatever-he knows it, and you don't even have to tell him.
He'll come home and see you. He knows that you've heard him calling you're name, but you don't move. He looks all over the house and finds you inside of your tub, just sitting there with no response. The water is running, and your clothes and hair are soaked.
So in an attempt to not disrupt your peace, Nate climbs in and sits next to you. You look over and he's stares at you. Just as your about to speak, he beats you to it.
"I'll get you a towel and some clothes."
And then, he just leaves. You hear the door quietly shut, and you blink for a few seconds. What the hell just happened? It snapped you out of your depressive trance. Now instead of feeling sad-you just were confused.
So you hear the door lightly open again and then close. After a few more minutes of soaking, you get out and see a towel and a set of clothes that are most certainly not yours. It's Nate's Dartmouth Lacrosse sweater and a pair of underwear-he knows you too well.
So you exit the bathroom and you see Nate, putting two cups down of you're favorite tea
And he's got that face. You know the face were he's like ☹️
"Hey, c'mere."
The two of you climb into bed with eachtoher. He throws one of those ugg blankets over you. You rest his head in his chest and he pats your head. There's a silence, until Nate says, "Do you wanna walk about it."
Normally, you'd say no and he'd read you a book you're reading or hold you as you cry, but this time, it's different.
"Yeah, I do. You won't judge, right?"
Nate tilts you chin up, and he's got a tired smile on his face.
"Why would I?"
BRAD COLBERT-
Brad may appear horrible with emotions and reading the room...in which he isn’t
Okay, scratch that. He tries to understand them, it’s just hard for him to give advice and use words to comfort you. He feels like he’s walking on glass, But sometimes, you just need him psychically more then anything.
When you storm out of a room when Chaffin makes a comment on your weight, Brad takes a few minutes to think what he should do.
Normally, he’d just leave you be, but he’s gotta do something. Getting up, he follows you down the hallway. You’re not far, and he’s calling you’re name.
You stop in the hallway, wiping the tears coming down toye face. Brad turns you around with his hands on your shoulder. He’s got a blank face on as he looks at you, seeing your red face and the tears.
While you sob and stutter, he fixes the collar of your shirt, tucks your hair behind your ear, which is normal. He likes to neaten you up to make you feel better.
But he starts to use his thumb, wiping the tears coming down your face. You shocked as he cups your face, making you look into those icy cold eyes. He looks like the Iceman, cold and emotionless, but what he says very Brad.
“You’re beautiful.”
Then he pulls you into a tight grasp. He’s a whole foot taller then you, and you like the way he snakes his hands around his waist and slightly lifts off you your feet. His sheer presence is intimating, but for you; comforting. 
RAY PERSON-
THIS MAN. although a hick with a big mouth, he does know when to shut up and can read you’re emotions like the back of his hand.
He can just see the sadness swelling in your eyes and the way you pick at the foot at your plate and avoid all of needs for cuddles in bed. Heck, it’s making Ray sad.
So he does what he does best-not shutting up, well-about things he likes about you.
“Man! Look at my hot girlfriend/wife! There reading books by the liberal media, total smartie here! Oh! And they have a degree from-“
Ray will also beg for to your attention and follows you around like a puppy. Like you’ll be sitting on the couch and he’ll come rest his head on your lap. You ignore him, but he starts to twist and quote random movies so you finally give in.
Is Ray annoying? Yes. But did he make you smile? Also yes.
Also Ray is a cook, and knows all of your favorite meals. Of course, he sets the table, lights a few Mantown candles (yes there real google them), and comes to serve your meal with two plates.
“The most beautiful man/woman I have ever seen, the love of my life, the apple of my eye, the Avril to my Bizzy D-you’re hot pockets.”
It makes you laugh, which makes Ray happy. He feeds off of that attention. You sit in Ray’s lap, eating hot pockets, and watching The Best Damn Tour. You lean on Ray’s shoulder, and he leans right back.
POKE ESPERA-
Alexa play Whatta Man’ by Salt-N-Peppa BECAUSE! WHAT! A! MAN!
Poke is one tough mofo. He embodies the meme of “Good morning to my beautiful wife/husband and child everybody else get fucked”.
But like every baddie; baddie’s gotta have soft spots for there bitches. He has two; you and his daughter. And oh god he’s love the two of more then anything in the world.
Poke knows you and his daughter well enough. His daughter first notices that your not as enthusiastic and bubbly, and then she tells Poke. But Poke already knows because he’s observant and very in touch with his emotions.
So when he’s a work; he thinks and does a lot of self reflection. He wonders why you’re upset. Did he cause it? What can he do to make it better? He asks all the guys for advice, and even his own daughter.
An idea strikes! Poke’s got a lot of anger, so his therapist told him to express his emotions by journalling. But Poke learns that it helps him get everything out of system, so he’s a secret writer. Heck, he even likes poetry; and would kill anyone if they’d find out.
While off at work, small letters start to appear across you’re house. Some are long, some are short, but there sweet and make you’re day.
“I held the stars in my arms wen I held you”
“I can’t wait to kiss you.”
“Your eyes stole all of my words away”
And the covers of the notes are done by Poke’s daughter, covered in glitter and Lisa Frank stickers.
You confront Poke about this “mysterious pen pal” and Poke is like “I mean, your lips do sound tempting”
You know it’s Poke, and he knows it, but there’s something about the mystery that is very romantic.
WALT HASSER-
Here comes our favourie country pumpkin
Now let me say. This man LOVES you more then anything the world
Doesn’t wanna show you off (but he does)
So when you’re the slightest bit sad, Walt is even sadder then you are
Walt is someone that lives to receive attention, and also he’s someone that likes to give it. Especially to the love of his life!
Walt gives you things you actually need, and nothing that is materialistic. Growing up, his parents had a healthy relationship, and the apple clearly doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Waits on you hand and foot. A back massage? Done. A fuzzy blanket? Right on it! A specific burger from a joint that is thirty minutes away at three in the morning? Walt’s driving like a manic just for you. You have the man’s undivided attention.
“Walt?”
He stops whatever he’s doing and runs over, getting on his knees, “Yeah, what’s up baby?”
“Can you sing the song? Y’know, our song?”
Walt nods his head, now an eager puppy, and gets his gutair to play the song he wrote especially for you. And this is making me realize how painfully single I am oh my
RUDY REYES-
Rudy has an iv of respect woman/men juice. He always understands the assignment-and desires extra credit.
So whenever you’re down in the dumps, Rudy will drop everything and drag you into the car to go walk on his favorite trail. It’s ten miles long, but Rudy is a fitness freak.
First, you hate doing it. But the more you talk these long walks, the more you begin to enjoy it.
Sometimes there silence. Rudy won’t speak force you to talk. Talking is stressful, and Rudy will wait until you’re ready. The two of you holds hands, and Rudy has such a calming presence. It’s really hard to get angry at him.
You finally speak and tell Rudy you’re problems, and he listens and doesn’t interrupt. He’s got a hand on you’re lower back, or on your thigh. He’s basically you’re emotional support teddy bear and will always be a lending ear, or a total cuddle monster.
Rudy has the best advice as well. It’s always some yoga shit, but damn, those breathing  exercises do actually help.
EVAN “Q-TIP” STAFFORD-
Oh Q-Tip. My feral goblin son😭
I love him, but sometimes-things can fly over his head.
But when you start to ignore him and hide away from him, he begins to notice. And he HATES IT.
Like Christianson will ask him if he’s okay and he’ll literally quote a 2pac song and be like,
“I would drop all my girls for you, Walk barefoot 'round the world for you, Fly around like the birds for you, Thats why I wrote these words for you..”
Lilley is like “Brah we gotta help a homie out”
So the three stooges create Lovegate. The mission? to make Q-Tip’s partner happier.
Q-Tip is very artistically inclined. So with Christenson’s editing skills and Lilley’s camera, Q-Tip writes you a song and does a whole music video.
The man rents out a movie theatre venue just to show you. Of course, you’re blown away. It’s horrible and you can taste the autotone, BUT IT’S THE EFFORT THAT COUNTS. and q-tip has that smile on. you know what i’m talking about!
Doc Bryan walks in on the two of you making out and is pissed since all he wanted to do was see the re-screening of Bridemaids but NO, Q-Tip just had to rent out a theatre to show his partner a music video about them and then make out.
He see’s Lilley, who’s recording and asks to interview what Doc’s opinion on the music video, and this is what he’s says.
“I think my ears bled, but thank fuck those two aren’t acting like emo’s.”
DOC BRYAN-
The gif has a purpose. Trust me. SPEAKING OF THE MAN OF THE HOUR
Bryan, like Poke, is a very observant guy. He’s an angry motherfucker, and even a little insensitive, but ever since dating you; he’s tried to change.
He hates the world. People are shitty, and it makes him feel shitty that you’re sad because when you feel shitty, he’s in a shitter mood then he’s usually in
Knowing that his words might sound a little harsh, Byran knows how to distract you. Without words. After all, he didn’t work out for nothing.
Long hugs are you’re thing. The two of you will run into eachother, find a private place, and he’ll just wrap his arms around you. His big arms are protective, and he’s warm, and you just sink into him.
Sometimes, you’ll fall asleep. Byran sometimes will fall asleep with you, other times he’ll gently lay you down and put a blanket with a gentle forehead kiss.
When you cry in his arms, he’ll wipe the tears away. He can feel them against his arm, and he doesn’t know what to do. Crying girls/guys are not his speciality.
But when you squeeze his arm back, to let you know what your there and that you love him, Byran will freeze. He has no idea what to next with words. He’ll put his hand over yours, and turns out; it works well.
After this is all over, he’ll check up on you and ask you simply if you’re okay. You respond with a smile. Byran isn’t one for smiles, but for you, he shows a subtle smile back. Just to let you know.
111 notes · View notes
cherrynojutsu · 3 years
Text
Title: Like Silver
Summary: A companion series for Like Gold.
Sakura misses him so much. She misses the faint smell of woodsmoke and sage, and mismatched eyes captivating in their intensity and unfathomable depths. The Rinnegan is beautiful, soft lavender ringed by hypnotizing layers of circle and tomoe, but flecks of silver dance in his right, tiny asterisms bewitching in nature, if one gets close enough; she’d first noticed it when they were children at the Academy. She knows they're Itachi's now, a slightly different scattering of luminaries aglow in the deep pitch of obsidian, but they're still as enthralling to her as they had been back then. She dreams of that silver sometimes, recalls it any time she sees something similar in color or reflet.
Blank period, canon-compliant, Sakura-centric, some expanded plot points from Like Gold, fluff and pining, eventually becomes a smut fest with feelings.
Disclaimer: I did not write Naruto. This is a fan-made piece solely created for entertainment purposes.
Rating: M (eventual nsfw-ness)
AO3 Link - FF.net Link - includes beginning/ending author's notes
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Chapter 1/?: An Introduction to Electrocardiography
Sakura gazes out the window of her office, a pile of paperwork set aside for a poetic sort of procrastination, trying to indulge for once in a Konoha spring, though she's finding it arduous.
As pretty as it is this time of year, all she can manage to feel is wistful.
Hanami has come and gone already for the most part, though there are a few stubborn cherry blossom trees lingering at the tail end of their blooming. She can see one here from her window, up on the hillside that slopes towards Hokage Rock, clinging to the uneven land. She’s sure its roots have to be all twisted, a labyrinth of gnarled wood clinging to any scrap of land it can wind itself around as its branches and petals try against all odds to reach upwards into the open sky that she can’t take her eyes off of.
There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, but it’s one she doesn’t care to unpack.
This year was her twentieth viewing of her namesake, though Sakura obviously doesn't remember the first few. Her parents take great pride in the retelling of tales from those first few years of her life, the ones she was too little to remember. The highlights come up annually on her birthday without fail, how she grasped at the petals like they were something precious, clutched in her sticky little hands the entire day.
A framed photograph is perched on one of the built-in shelves of her parents' living room, of her and her father on her first birthday. He was holding her up on unsteady legs, ridiculously proud and pointing towards the camera where her mother had been trying to get her to look. Her short pink hair was flying absolutely everywhere, matching the fluttering petals and in-bloom cherry blossom tree in the background, chubby hands grasping upwards. Strawberry cake and frosting were smeared all over her cheeks. They’d had a picnic for her, at the park nearest to their house.
“We came home and cleaned you up, and then your father helped you water your tree for the first time, in the little pink watering pail you unwrapped earlier. You were so cute.” That’s what her mom says every year. Sakura has the sentence memorized at this point, could recite it on cue, if she needed to.
Her parents had planted a cherry blossom sapling in their backyard a few days after they brought her home from the hospital as a newborn, so the tree is around the same age she is. She used to spend time under it often, as a kid, and some of her earliest memories involve sprawling beneath it to study the heavens while her mother gardened. She would also sneak berries from the patch when her back was turned. Sometimes her dad would join in her pilferage, and they would sit beneath the tree like a couple of bandits with stained lips, though those first few years she can remember he barely fit underneath it, as tall as he is. Many a tickle fight had been had, shaded by those branches. She would read books there on nice afternoons, when she was a little older.
The tree is fully grown now, also on the final cusp of its blooming for the year, floriferous wood expanded outwards to drape her childhood stomping grounds in a sea of soft pink. They have a picnic under it every year, in her family’s backyard, when they celebrate her birthday together. Her actual birthday has come and gone, but her birthday dinner is two days from now. Her parents swung by her apartment on Sunday afternoon for a bit with outlandishly large cupcakes, but her mom had mentioned they’d do dinner and a gift on their usual night, Thursday, since it works so well with their schedules every other week.
“We have to have your picnic, under your tree, like always. It’s a tradition! My beautiful girl. I can’t believe you’re twenty. It seems like just yesterday you were only yay high,” her dad had told her, gesturing below his knees before hugging her too tightly, ruffling the hair she'd inherited from him before they left. The cupcakes were strawberry with cream cheese frosting, one of her favorite treats. They’d left her with four extra to enjoy between then and Thursday, one for each day if she wanted it, turning her birthday into more of a week-long affair than a one-day celebration.
She and Ino had demolished two of them while watching some of the terrible movies they love to hate together, later that evening. It had been a smorgasbord of strawberries, really, because they'd washed them down with strawberry daiquiris, sugary sweetness topped with ridiculous amounts of whipped cream. They'd sat on her balcony, after, sipping a little tipsily and just looking.
"You should try to enjoy your namesake more this year, Forehead. You're so busy that I'm not sure you've realized, but you've really grown into it," Ino had said, beckoning vaguely towards a Konoha beginning to bloom, renewed with a warm breeze, spring ushered in by a fluttering of pink petals. Ino likes to give compliments in roundabout ways, she’s learned over the course of their friendship; crass as the blonde can be, she does have her moments. Her words meant a lot to Sakura, so she’s trying to take them to heart, to stop and smell the cherry blossoms, so to speak. It won’t be long before Konoha crescendos into the sweltering heat of the summer.
She loves her parents and her friends. She really does.
But birthdays are weird, Sakura thinks.
Last year, Sasuke had sent her a letter on her birthday. She’s reread it so many times that she has it more than memorized; it’s stitched into the muscle tissue of her heart at this point, or maybe scarred into the lining of her aortic valve, sempiternal markings adorning the tunnels that sustain her, causing her breath to catch every time.
Sakura,
Hanami has come to the wilderness in the Land of Honey. Bees are awakening and foraging for the first pollen of the season, with which to begin again. Cherry blossom petals are everywhere, lining the pathways and floating on the water.
Happy birthday.
-Sasuke
It had been short, simple, and even a little poetic; she had cherished it, as she does all of his other letters. She’d cherished the pressed flower with it just as much; a cherry blossom, neatly flattened with a precision that screamed Sasuke, near exactly the same shade of pink as her hair.
Sakura had started crying when she unfolded the paper to reveal it sitting atop his words. His hawk had waited patiently at her office window for a response to be written and tied to its leg, perched atop the windowsill and watching the goings-on of the village below, absolutely no concept in its predator brain of how much she delights in seeing it fly, a graceful tether to the boy - now man - she has been in love with for ages.
Cherry blossom petals are everywhere. Is there a hidden meaning there, or is she making a mountain out of a molehill?
She’s tried not to read too much into the letters. She's not sure if he sends any to Naruto or not; she's too afraid to ask, because she'll either get a heart-pounding hope if he doesn't get them, or a soul-crushing disappointment if he does. She can't imagine him sending a yellow flower to Naruto, but he may very well have sent him a different gift for his birthday.
Maybe he just thought she would like a flower, which she did - it’s pressed for safekeeping, along with all of his other correspondence to her, sporadically and chronologically throughout a book she keeps on her nightstand, An Introduction to Electrocardiography. It is her take on an album of small things she holds close to her own heart, things she wishes she could read in his. Sakura didn’t want to buy an actual album for such a thing; that felt too formal, for something as ambiguous as her ties to Sasuke, overflowing on her end as they may be. So she’d settled on a book about deciphering the heart’s tells based on science only, electrical impulses and repolarization, the sizes and positions of the chambers, how to diagnose conditions utilizing one’s findings. It’s one she doesn’t need access to anymore, extremely familiar with EKGs after years of study. She’d wanted it to be something no-nonsense, all hard facts and data on how to read activity plotted over time.
Evidence-based. Are letters evidence, though? She’s not sure that would hold up as empirical proof in any of the scholarly journals she’s studied or submitted work to since beginning her research. She thinks wryly, though, based on what she has witnessed get published, that scientific verification doesn’t always matter if you know the right people.
She’s thought many times sifting through it that perhaps it is too optimistic, too hopeful of a book subject for such a thing. Sakura has agonized over it, frankly, wondering whether it was an inappropriate choice.
...But now that they’re in there, it might ache worse to move them somewhere else.
It’s the last day of March now, and she didn’t get a letter this month, which is unusual, because she’s gotten one near each month in the time that he’s been away. She’s paged through the book a few times over the past several days, rereading and admiring the preserved sakura blossom, frozen in suspended animation indefinitely on a page about precordial leads.
Sakura hadn’t really expected anything from him for her birthday, other than a monthly letter like he usually sends... but this year she didn’t even get that. She’s trying really hard to not be disappointed. She has so much to be thankful for, in the grand scheme of things...
...But the petals of the cherry blossom from last year have faded over time, she’d evaluated yesterday, sitting in her bedroom. It might be like her, always pressed in a book, fading whilst stuck indefinitely between the boundless teeth of academia. There is always more data to record, more evidence, with which one can prove or disprove their findings.
No letter this month, though. Nothing to record, no new evidence.
It might be time to move the letters somewhere else, she thinks pensively. Maybe a place where she’s not tempted to look at them all the time; their placement in the book, small scraps of paper that stick out in only a couple of places, makes it easy to go back and reread them. She’s pretty sure she has an empty shoebox in her closet that she could move them to, in a pile rather than catalogued between pages rife with information and a fragile sort of hope. Maybe she’ll do it tonight, put it up in the far right corner of the upper shelf, shoved towards the back so she can’t reach it without the stool, so she’s not tempted whenever the next bout of heartsickness slams into her like one of Tsunade-shishou’s fists used to. She needs to go by the library after work first, to return some things, but maybe when she gets home, she’ll do it. She could eat a cupcake, too; that might make it a little easier.
Sakura misses him so much. She misses the faint smell of woodsmoke and sage, and mismatched eyes captivating in their intensity and unfathomable depths. The Rinnegan is beautiful, soft lavender ringed by hypnotizing layers of circle and tomoe, but flecks of silver dance in his right, tiny asterisms bewitching in nature, if one gets close enough; she’d first noticed it when they were children at the Academy. She knows they're Itachi's now, a slightly different scattering of luminaries aglow in the deep pitch of obsidian, but they're still as enthralling to her as they had been back then.
She dreams of that silver sometimes, recalls it any time she sees something similar in color or reflet. There’s an extremely unique necklace in an antique shop she visits with Ino and Sai from time to time, and occasionally on her own, over on the northeast side of town. It’s a salt-and-pepper diamond, dark grey with inclusions, dainty and set in what must be a hand-fabricated setting. It hangs from a silver chain, towards the back of a display case filled with other vintage and distinctive pieces, but it’s the only one she ever finds herself drawn to. It is so similar to his right eye, dark smoke near black, speckled with beguiling silver startling in its clarity. The bevel cut reveals new flecks dependent on the angle at which you view it.
Sakura studies it closely on each visit, because it is so hauntingly breathtaking and it reminds her of him.
Ino has said it’s not her color, and that she should stick to warm tones and gold, for which she is better suited; Sakura has not confessed to her why it catches her eye so much. Sai has agreed with his girlfriend on the coloring note, sensitive as he is to such things, but the way he studies her every time she tears herself away from it makes her suspect he knows exactly why it captivates her so. It’s been sitting there for years at this point; she has to mentally talk herself out of buying it on each visit. It’s beautiful, but she would spend far too much time gawking at it, and it might hurt more with extended study than the gentle tugging at her heart she experiences when she’s in that old building throughout tiny fragments of lackadaisical afternoons.
Sasuke has been gone for a long time. She hopes he's finding the peace he's been seeking, that he's seeing the world with new eyes just as he'd imagined. She thinks of him every day, sends out little orisons like petals in the breeze in the hopes that they’ll find him, wherever he is.
I wonder where he is now.
Try as she does to enjoy the breath of spring Konoha is right now, and her namesake as Ino said, all she can seem to do is shift her vision to the sky, hoping against hope for a glimpse of a familiar bird-of-prey that will stay an ample amount of time for her to craft a response, before it abvolates away for another month.
Sakura smiles, then, close to laughing at the absurdity of it all, because she is so predictable. She loves this village despite its many flaws and challenges, despite the things about it she and Naruto and Kakashi-sensei and Ino and even Tsunade-shishou, off in the Land of Wind, are trying to change, but even after so many years, she’s still pining for something beyond it, something in the wilds of the sky just beyond her reach.
There’s always next year, she supposes, pupils drawn again towards the outstretched branches of the cherry blossom tree on the hill, before trailing her eyes along further. She can grow a little more to try to reach him. When she was little, she had wanted to grow tall so she could try to touch a star, like the branches of the tree in her backyard did when she and her father laid beneath them on balmy summer nights. He would tell her ridiculous stories about all of the constellations, things she knew had to be untrue, even at the ripe age of five. Precocious, he’d always called her, but in the loving, joking manner he had.
Her gaze follows the horizon, leisurely taking in the rest of her home. It really is a lovely day, despite her yearning. Spring is here again, and today's is a gentle sunset, one last little bit of sunlight with which to conclude March. The temperature is already spiking, unusually warm for early spring, but summers in the Land of Fire are always hot. She really should finish her paperwork, but it’s hard to find the motivation just yet.
Something possesses her, then, to turn her neck more, take in more of the skyline's continuation. She wants to see all of it.
And then Sakura’s eyes fall on an achingly familiar figure cloaked all in black, perched only a roof away and observing her, and she thinks she must have nodded off, because she has to be dreaming.
She subtly pinches herself in the millisecond of time that follows, but she is very much awake.
The words are blooming out of her throat before she can even process what’s happening, exultation sinking into her every vein. “Sasuke-kun!” She moves to crank her window open the rest of the way, and he hops from the neighboring roof down into her office, all nimble legerity that she still thinks has to be a mere mirage conjured from her memories. When he straightens to his full height, she muses that he has to have grown taller. The mere sound of his footsteps on the tile flooring, as familiar a refrain to her as if he’d just walked out of the village yesterday, are a treasure beyond price.
“Sakura.” His voice is a rich timbre that she has desperately felt the absence of; hearing him say her name almost makes her want to cry. She smiles wider instead, to the extent that it almost hurts, and her gaze latches hungrily onto the very eye she was just daydreaming about. A storm of soot and silver, beveled into countless fragments like some kind of dark, rustic diamond, and so staggeringly beautiful that she’s pretty sure she’s blushing just from beholding it. Gods, it's not fair for someone to be so handsome.
“When did you get back?” She asks, utterly overcome with joy. This is better than a letter or any birthday gift she could have received, brighter than any star she’s beheld.
“Just now.” He’s smiling, a small and subtle upturn of lips that is so characteristic of him. Then his words hit her, and her face must be getting redder.
Just now? As in…
“I’m sorry I missed your birthday,” he adds before she can simmer on that for too long, and she has to blink in bewilderment, because that is the absolute last thing she expected him to say. Sakura wonders how much heat can creep into one’s face before they spontaneously combust.
Then she realizes she should probably respond, as humans tend to do in conversations. “Oh! Um… it’s okay.” She folds her hands in front of her shyly, grinning like an idiot. “Thank you for remembering.”
There is a lengthy moment in which she just soaks him in, hoping he can read in her eyes how much she’s missed him. He is still so beautiful, prized eyes and aristocratic angles that have solidified a bit more into the face of a man in the time that’s passed. His hair is different now, covering his Rinnegan eye. His cloak is a little more threadbare, too. He’s tall.
His expression, normally unreadable, is calm. Content, even.
There’s a question nagging at her that she knows she needs to ask. She tries not to bite her lip as she asks it, braces herself for the possibility of not liking the answer.
“Are you… just back for a little while?”
Did you find what you were searching for?
He gazes at her for so long that she thinks he may be glimpsing her soul, peeking into her ventricles to see his own words immortalized there, seared into her core to be felt each time her blood pumps.
“...For more than a while.” And she smiles the biggest she ever has. Oh, this is so much better than a letter or a gift.
“Well, welcome back, Sasuke-kun. It’s… very good to see you again.” It feels as if a piece of her heart has been returned to her, something of the divine stitched back into her chest and full to bursting in omneity.
There is a pause, and then he’s reaching his hand out towards hers, initiating physical contact with a touch that is feather light, so gentle she thinks she is going to start sobbing.
She can’t help it; she pulls him into a hug, tinged with elation. She hopes he doesn’t mind too much; he stiffens for a brief moment, but then settles, wrapping his arm around her and settling his head atop of hers, and she could die happy right there, embracing him with feelings momentarily set free from where they’ve been whelved into her chest.
He smells faintly like sage and smoked cedar, just as she remembered. She can hear his heart thumping, a strong cadence, and it grounds her. Oh, she’s missed him.
“...I’m home, Sakura.” Soft words float above her head, and she can feel the vibration of them through his chest, right by her ear.
Oh, she’s crying.
Sasuke lets her embrace him for a long time, for which she is so grateful. She knows he’s not one for physical contact; it’s a privilege to be allowed into his space even for a single second, let alone for an extended period.
She draws back eventually, glancing up at him again through the tears still collecting in her eyes. Her face blazes when he reaches to wipe them away tenderly with a calloused hand, careful and with a lenity that she’s always known was there, hidden under the surface.
She could just stare at him for hours, she thinks as he lowers his hand. He’s still looking down at her with one of the softest expressions she has ever seen him wear. She really hopes she’s not dreaming.
It’s tremendously hard to get it together, but she tries, because she doesn’t want to spend the entire time crying, not when he's finally back. There are so many questions she’d like to ask him that she’s finding it a challenge to pick one with which to lead.
He surprises her by speaking first, quietly. “I… had something made for you.”
It takes a moment for the words to compute.
Made for me?
Her processing speed must be exceptionally slow, stuck in the utter mush her insides have become, because he adds, “...For your birthday.”
Sakura blinks, and furrows her brows in confusion. “Made… for me?”
He nods. “...I’m sorry it’s late.” The way he speaks it is cryptic, like the apology weighs more than one needed for a tardy gift. Doesn’t he know she doesn’t care? He could have showed up in July with something for her, and it still would have made her knees weak and her heart thump furiously in her chest.
Made for me? She’s still stuck on that sentiment as he breaks eye contact and turns to rummage through his satchel, beneath his cloak.
Sasuke pulls out a medium-sized flat box, a simple white, and she doesn’t know what she expected, but it wasn’t that. Something that comes in a box is a lot more formal than a pressed cherry blossom, something more… permanent.
She reaches out to take it on autopilot, and is stupidly distracted by the way his hand brushes against hers, a small spark that makes something in her quake. She wonders if he felt it, too.
Sakura clutches the box with both hands like her life depends on it, murmuring softly, “Thank you, Sasuke-kun.” She’ll wait until later to open it, after he’s left; whatever it is, she doesn’t want to embarrass him, and she also isn’t sure she can tear her eyes away from him just yet, anyways.
Is it just the lighting in her office, or are his ears a little flushed? She didn’t notice that before; maybe he’s had a drawn-out journey back. She wonders how much ground he covered today, if he’s still winded. He might need to rest.
But then he mumbles, voice husky with what she assumes is disuse, “...You should open it.”
His words echo in her head again. I… had something made for you.
“Okay,” she answers in a hushed voice, so she doesn’t scare him away, shifting slightly to set the box on her desk carefully. Suddenly she is very nervous, anticipation settling into her gut.
When she lifts the lid, she swears her heart ceases beating.
The most exquisitely intricate uchiwa fan she has ever laid eyes upon is placed in the box before her.
It’s carved into a likeness of a cherry blossom tree, branches twisting lissomely into bamboo framework, impossibly fine. A different set of words is reverberating in her head now.
You should try to enjoy your namesake more this year, Forehead. You're so busy that I'm not sure you've realized, but you've really grown into it.
Made for me?
“O-oh.” Sakura is not sure what she expected, but it wasn’t this. She fights back the tears, biting her lip and wide eyes soaking it all in, enjoying her namesake in a way that is entirely unprecedented in its sheer severity. The amount of time it would have taken for someone to sculpt and bind and sew is unimaginable; every detail is finely wrought, flawless down to the silk and stitching, lacquered and carved pale wood shifting effortlessly into eighty slivers of bamboo, intricately webbing silk together with the lithe grace of gossamer. It’s a cherry blossom tree, petals and all, pearlescent thread shifting slightly, gorgeously in the light, unimaginable detail. She has stitched people back together countless times over the course of years, but even her expert dexterity would look like a child’s first embroidery stitching in comparison. The stamen within the petals are nearly more detailed and finely milled than an actual, real life cherry blossom, plexure sutured in a fashion so baronial that it’s impossible to believe human hands were even responsible for it.
The silk. Oh, the silk. The color shift bears a striking resemblance to the Uchiha insignia. This is not a gift one gives to a teammate.
Oh, she's crying.
This has to be a dream, some kind of paracosm her heart thought up to give her brain the high of a lifetime. Hope burgeons and unfolds in her chest cavity, bleeding into her extremities like the pale pink shifting into red before her eyes. She’s never, ever going to forget this, not even if she lives to be one hundred years old.
Made for me?
She picks it up with disbelieving hands, grasping it more carefully than she’s ever held anything in her entire life, as if she’s going to wake up at any moment and it will dissolve into synapse, lost in the hazy juncture of morning the way one tends to lose awareness of the contents of a dream upon coming to lucidity. To her absolute bewilderment, it stays solid in her hands, a finery made even more unbelievable by touch. The grooves of the carving are as gentle as his hand had been on hers earlier. She thinks it would have had to be commissioned at least a few months in advance, outlandishly expensive. She’s never seen silk like this. She doesn't know; she's smart, but she's no artisan. Maybe she should ask Sai. She's crying.
She adores it.
Tears won’t stop welling in her eyes; she thinks they may be escaping from a tender spot inside her chest that’s been reserved for him since she was a child, a leak in a metaphorical dam. She takes a steadying breath, blinks, almost has them conquered. Get a grip, Sakura.
Then Sasuke’s hand is on hers, gently turning the handle over.
Her name is carved into the pale wood, on the back in formal calligraphy, Sakura daintier and more perfect than she could ever write it, as if it had just been uncovered in one of the inner layers rather than whittled there manually. Sasuke presses her fingers to it before loosening his grip, and in that second it feels as though his lost hand is in the wood, caressing her from split atoms in the grooves from the other side.
The tears spill over her cheeks - she admits defeat - intricacy of the entire thing blurring out of focus but still somehow burned into her retinas for all eternity.
Made for me, made for me, made for me-
Her voice finds her after a few more tears fall. “It’s beautiful.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, overwhelmed with complete and utter awe, trying desperately to choke down a sob. “Thank you, Sasuke-kun. I… I’ll treasure it. Always.” She cradles the fan closer to her chest, her heart - maybe An Introduction to Electrocardiography wasn’t a poorly-chosen book, after all; there is much to be read from something this precious - and regards him with watery eyes. She wishes she wasn’t crying; the distortion of the tears is making it hard to see the silver she’s loved and missed so much.
His hand lifts to her face after a moment, and to her surprise, he wipes away her tears again. She barely catches the something-more in his eyes, then, through the waterworks, precious metal flashing and pouring into the words scarred into her ventricles to live there forever, fortified in silver, but he is looking at her so -
“...Always,” he agrees, voice a little breathless, sparking scintilla near hypnotizing her in their luster, and he seems so happy -
Then he leans down to press his lips gently to hers, and this is better than her heart stopping, like when she opened the box. This time, her heart soars, and she touches a star she’s been dreaming of for eons.
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aaetherius · 3 years
Text
@cxffexngel:
[ cxffeexngel ] modern AU!! || because this has been in my mind for days sFÑKDSFDf have soft time!
Unlike the pouring rains of an announced storm and a message sent in a whim. Sandalphon’s invitation fell on a calm day, with pillowy clouds dusting the canvas of the stretching blue skies on a quiet afterwork hours of sundown. A confession made in days passed and an evergrowing bond with stolen gazes and lips touching whenever extra eyes did not pry over them. Sandalphon adored kissing lucifer, adored those warm welcomes whenever Lucifer was the one already first thing in the morning for their shared shifts, or taking that mantle himself and welcome the taller with cups ready in their favorite spot under the gaze of the sun filtered through the windows adorned in flowers that never had ceased coming as offerings and all the more secret words his voice couldn’t hope to whisper to the other. The you g man resided now during one of those free days closing the flowershop, dusting off tables and leaves, changing pots and moving those that needed extra hours of sun before the evening would claim the rest of the day thorough. The slightest tinge of anxiety clinging behind his mind, after mulling for hours to pour just exactly which words to type over the phone and let Lucifer know he could come over if he wanted to, having deleted the message over and over until settling with the simplest ’ I have nothing to do, feel free to come over if you want ’ only to be replied within seconds with the most adorable message, if not perhaps a bit formal considering Lucifer’s tendencies if not to how he adorned his texts with cutesy stickers the young man failed to not blush for or ever not find them less than endearing when they were between sheep, drawn cats happy with sparkles and very colorful animated ones. Ah, he really finds ways to fall in love with this man everyday, isn’t he? With the flowershop properly locked, and turning over the ’ Open’ sign to seal it for the day, the young barista and shoopkeeper is done for the day, the welcoming aroma of freshly brewed coffee permeating every inch of his home as it rests in idle silence, if not by the gentle song of water heating over the stove not too far from the main room - and the open bags of beans and cups ready to be filled. For now, Sandalphon only attempts drowning every voice about how anything could go wrong, his coffee going acid, the temperature not being right - thinking too much like Gran often liked to poke fun at the cranky barista those days the young man inadvertently broke into his house somehow despise having checked each of his locks twice or even trice just to ensure that the pest the other adored to make himself out to be couldn’t get in. Always futile because it seemed like no lock was match against Gran’s lockpicking and his indestructible will to simply invite himself into Sandalphon’s home. Sometimes even with the girl in blue who made it even easier for the barista to simply cave in and let them stay and steal his food. - those memories are enough to ignore the impending doom that could brew should he mull over the little details about this and that. A soundless sigh slips past somewhat dry lips, tired eyes blinking calmly when attention flicks towards one of the windows as gentle breeze blows curtains into a serene dance matching leaves of branches and leaves outside, palm over his cheek scratching aimlessly any tension left that arises as spontaneously as it leaves. Only finding light within the autumn scarlet within his eyes when spotting the familiar shine of opal locks shimmering behind the blurriness barely transparent curtains of white could offer casting a shadow over that form that Sandalphon could arguably recognize even amidst a crowed street. His body moving before he could think towards the main door, and fingers curling tightly over the handle to twist it and push the frame open for the other, a sheepish smile drawn all over dusted rose pale features, sporting Lucifer’s borrowed hood and black legging the young man often wore whenever there was no work to be done, and the always needed pair of heeled boots rarely Sandalphon took off. “A-Ah! Welcome, Lucifer! ” Sandalphon almost wanted to visibly wince at how drearily hoarse his voice comes despise his initial joy - but he doesn’t, instead clearing his throat with a small cough over his palm. “ Please come on! I’m readying our cups, feel free to choose any seat if you’re tired. ” Continues, while stepping to the side giving the taller enough space so he could finally step in, and their time together start and go along however it takes - ah, how feeble his heart is that the thought alone of Lucifer in his home makes it leap into his throat, and rob any coherent thought or even the plans he mulled over the whole morning about everything.
    Sandalphon’s text had kick started his heart after he had returned to his apartment to try out a handful of new coffee recipes he had written down in his journal when he hadn’t been attending to customers this afternoon - something that had become a less frequent habit of his following his confession as the slow hours were typically spent with his attention fixed on the barista instead of a notebook these days. He’d texted the other back before thinking much about his response - he could never deny Sandalphon’s company, and he had tossed off his work clothes to change into something a tad bit more casual in a matter of minutes as well…only to pause as he was slipping out of the door with a mildly displeased Ellie seated comfortably, he thinks, on the plush cushion nestled inside of the feline backpack strapped safely around his shoulders. After all, he couldn’t leave her alone for the night - that would be downright criminal when she’s spent a night on her since he had rescued her. His unwilling companion (who would have been perfectly content to romp around the apartment unattended) aside, he had realized that he hadn’t prepared anything to give to the other. Perhaps it was a somewhat trivial notion, but despite all of the flowers and beautiful poems Sandalphon had gifted him with, he hadn’t done much in return for the other. His own knowledge of flowers had come from the barista himself, and he had little talent when it came to writing out meaningful poems. Even Michael, who had known him nearly his entire life, struggled to follow his notes. Neat as his handwriting naturally was, he had a terrible habit of jotting down notes in a manner only he could truly understand. Ah, and bringing flowers to a flowers hop didn’t seem like a suitable gift either. Sweets wouldn’t do wither, Sandalphon favored bitter and savory foods, much like how he preferred his coffee. So, quickly, the smile upon his features had faded as he lingered in the doorway of his apartment, smiling softly at the various neighbors that walked past him. A low hum rumbles in throat for moment as he strokes his chin absentmindedly before turning tail back into the apartment, gingerly removing a handful of things from the cluttered bookshelf and carefully tucking them away behind Ellie so they weren’t terribly apparent before he slipped outside to a day distinctly unlike the one he had mindlessly invited Sandalphon over on when it had been storming dreadfully.
    The walk to the flower shop is a short one, yet, despite that, he checks his phone constantly on the way. He had memorized the address when the other had sent it to him, but the rush of joy that had held his heart tightly enough that it made his chest throb was enough to make that information leap to the very back of his mind. He had never been to the barista’s home before, and he hadn’t been aware of the fact that he owned a flower shop until very recently - to say he was delighted would be an understatement when he feels something akin to excitement for the first time in years; perhaps for the first time since he had dabbled in coffee that fateful say more than a decade ago. And his hand comes up to press firmly against the center of his chest as if doing so would somehow quell the swan song of his heart as every step brought him closer to the one he loves most. For so long, truthfully, he had felt numb - the emotions he harbored had been tucked deep within him, unable to break free from the constant guilt and sense of melancholy that hung over him. He had forgotten what feeling excited was like - what looking forward to something could be like, and he had thought, for quite some time now, that he was incapable of feeling something so unbridled. But Sandalphon brings him more joy than he could have ever dreamed of experiencing, despite the pain that comes alongside it, so he can only tighten his hold around the fabric clumped between his fingers as he exhales in the humid air, and allows his gaze to wander upwards towards the clear sky. Its color paling now that the better part of the day had come and gone, but it still casts a gentle, blue shadow onto his pale features as he stops in front of the flower ship, and Sandalphon’s home. Pearly strands of hair absorb the colors cast upon them, and reflect them back with a gentle shimmer that almost makes it appear as if wayward strands of his hair are glowing in an array of dazzling colors. Sometimes, he’s reminded, the world can be a beautiful place. But, truly, he’s always found the sky to be something remarkable - something free; something wondrous, and grand. As a child, he used to dream of reaching his hand up high enough to touch the clouds despite knowing all he would come away with were damp fingers. Even now, a small part of him is still drown to the vast blue, and the gentle, creamy clouds that float through it without a care.
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    The click of the door draws him away from his thoughts, and he quickly loosens his hold on the white shirt he’s wearing before trying, and failing, to smooth out the wrinkles he’s formed in the fabric before trying, and failing once more, to cover them with the light blue sleeve of his hoodie as an impossibly warm smile spills onto his rosy lips. Their hue nearly the same shade as the color that dusts over Sandalphon’s features, though the utterly fond look stretched across Lucifer’s visage doesn’t quite match the other’s sheepish one. And it brightens all the more once he realizes the barista is wearing the hoodie he had borrowed from him. And that, too, makes his chest ache, but in a different way than the anticipation that had crept through his bloodstream a moment ago. Love is a strange thing, he thinks, it’s not a singular emotion but rather a collection of so many complex feelings he can’t place individual names to that he hardly knows what he’s supposed to feel at any given point in time. “Good evening, Sandalphon,” he offers, his voice gentle and soft and full of affection. And the sound of the other’s name appears to be all it takes for Ellie to meow loudly from her bubbly, lavender prison upon Lucifer’s back as she tries to crane her neck around to curiously peek beyond her owner’s shoulder at the younger man - her keen eyes narrowing into a glare once she spots that familiar nest of auburn hair. Lucifer, for his part, seems entirely unaware of Ellie’s struggles when he’s utterly captivated by the sight of Sandalphon dressed in his hoodie alongside his typical leggings and heels. “Thank you, and thank you for allowing me to visit you. I’m looking forward to tasting the coffee you’ve made, and – ah, I have something for you, as well, when we have a moment.” It’s hard for him to focus when he’s still awestruck by the sight of the homely flower shop that doubles as the barista’s residence. Something about it seems magical to him, perhaps if only because it’s where Sandalphon lives. And he can’t imagine a place he would rather be than beside the other, yet, even so, stepping into the smaller’s home is a strange mixture of comfortable and wonderful. His eyes wander everything and anything for a moment before he shakes his head gently to snap his attention back to Sandalphon. “I’m grateful you invited me over, and I’m so very happy to see you, Sandalphon.” Slowly, he reaches out his hand to push a few strands of auburn hair behind the other’s ear - his fingers gently gliding over the other’s skin as he leans forward to place a kiss in greeting upon the top of the smaller’s head before withdrawing again at the sound of another meow echoing against the rounded window of the backpack Ellie is still seated in, and he can’t stop the hoarse chuckle that falls from his lips. “Forgive me, I may have brought an uninvited guest along. She has never been left alone, so I’m afraid I didn’t have the heart to leave her behind today. I’m certain; however, that she’ll be on her best behavior. She’s rather fond of you after all.” Fond is not the word most people would use to describe Ellie’s feelings towards rival, and it most certainly wasn’t how the feline felt to the man she had dubbed an intruder in her quiet, and peaceful life, but, well, Lucifer, for whatever reason, was convinced they got along wonderfully.
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thisismynerdyself · 3 years
Text
Anywhere For You
ROAD TRIP WITH FRED AND GEORGE
Fred Weasley x reader
Summary: you convince the twins to go on a road trip and attend a muggle concert with you
Warnings: little bit of fluff at the end for ya
A/N: Did I look up actual concert dates and locations for this? Yes. Did I then research potential routes they may have taken to make the road trip a little more realistic? Yes. Is some of it still gonna be inaccurate? Yep. But was this so freaking fun to write? You betcha.
Also, go listen to Anywhere For You by BSB because its hella cute AND because it’s one of the songs that would have actually been performed at a concert during the time they were still at Hogwarts (and because I’m hopelessly obsessed with this group)
***
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***
“Oh my god! Oh my god!!” You ran into the common room jumping and shouting, attracting the attention of all eyes in the room. “Oh my god! I won! I won!!” You ran around in a circle waving an envelope around in the air. You continued jumping around until your friends came up to you to calm you down enough to find out what had you in such an excited mood.
“Woah, okay there, y/n. What is it? Hermione had a smile on her face, your excitement was rubbing off.
All the jumping had you panting for breath before you could respond.
Ron put his hand on your shoulder to try to help you recover, although it didn’t do much to soothe your beating heart and struggling lungs.
“Look… at this…” you said between breaths as you held out your hands with the paper held tight.
Ginny snatched the paper from your hands to read what had you acting so strangely. She read it aloud:
“Congratulations, y/n y/l/n.
You are the lucky recipient of three tickets to see the Backstreet Boys, live in concert in London. Please report to the address below with the enclosed tickets to enjoy a formal meal prior to the show.”
“Is this real?” Ginny looked up from the note to look at you.
“Hell yeah it is. It’s their first international tour and I’m going to be there to see it!”
“But who are the Backstage Boys?” Ron asked the group. Your mouth hung open at his question.
“You mean the Backstreet Boys? They’re only going to be the biggest boy band of our generation.  How dare you disrespect the Boys like that, Ron.” You looked around the group, but no one seemed as passionate as you. Harry’s expression gave himself away, too. “You’d never heard of them either, had you Harry?”
“Uhh yeah, I listened to them loads of times.” His shifty eyes were not convincing in the least.
Rolling your eyes, you looked to your two girlfriends. “I get to bring two guests. Are you interested?”
“When is it?” Hermione asked while looking down at the date listed. 21 June. “I’m so sorry, but I can’t. I have to go home for an event with my parents at the end of the year. I wish I could, really. How do you even plan on getting there?”
“Well, I haven’t quite figured that out yet, but I’ll make a plan! I have to get there! They toured a bit last year, but we were all a bit busy then. This time, I have the tickets and the time, I will be there. I’m sorry you can’t come Hermione, it would have been so fun.”
You looked at Ginny and could already tell by the look on her face that she wouldn’t be going either. “I’m sorry, I have plans at the end of term, too. It sounds like it’ll be loads of fun, though. I hope you can find others to go with you.” She gave you a sympathetic smile, knowing it would be difficult to find any other close enough friends who would be willing to go.
“It’s okay, really. I’m sure I’ll find someone to go. I’ll make a more detailed plan on how to get there first, then hopefully I can convince at least one person to come. Thanks anyways, guys. And thanks for humoring me.” You gave them a smile and walked up to your room to begin the planning, ideas already swirling around your head.
*
You spent the next few days in the library. Sure, you worked on your lessons as any good student would. But you were also busy using maps to determine how you would get to your beloved concert at the end of the year. You only had a month to figure it all out and find two more people to join you.
You were so engrossed in your project that you didn’t even notice anyone approaching you from behind until they were practically on top of you. You could feel someone standing behind you and when you looked up, you met the upside down face of one Fred Weasley. And of course, George’s face popped out from behind his brother’s.
“Hello boys.” You sweetly replied. These two were always able to make you laugh, turn a sour day sweet, or make any situation a little less dull. Being friends with one Weasley meant you got all the Weasleys. And you couldn’t complain about that.
“Hello there, y/n. What are you working on over here?” Fred tried to peek over your shoulder to uncover your secrets. All he saw was a large unfolded map and a journal with notes and scribbles.
You laughed and leaned to the side, “just mapping out my wild summer adventure plans. What are you doing here anyway? I’ve never seen you boys in the … library.” You said the last word as if it was the scariest place to be. You knew they didn’t particularly enjoy doing their lessons.
“Hey, we study… sometimes.” George defended himself as he moved to sit down on your right side. Fred copied him by sitting on your left side. “But what’s this about a summer adventure? You’re planning something fun and didn’t invite us? How could you?” He feigned hurt at the very idea of not being involved in the plans.
“You want to come with me? Both of you?” You turned your head to each side, trying to gauge their expressions. Should you tell them that it was all for a boy band concert?
“Well, let’s see your plans first. Then we’ll decide if it’s worth our time.” Fred said with a hint of pretentiousness.
“I see how it is.” You gave him a gentle glare. “Here’s my plan so far. It’ll be a bit of a road trip, you see. And it starts right at the end of term. Bear with me, it’s quite a lot. First, we would leave Hogwarts and head south. We head to Glasgow and spend a day sightseeing. There’s still so much I’ve never seen of the world. Then we travel down to Sheffield. You see?” You dragged your finger along the map to show the route you had marked.
“What’s in Sheffield?” George looked at you inquisitively.
“Ahh, I’m so glad you asked, Georgie.” You smiled at him before continuing. “You see, a few days ago I won a contest. My prize was three tickets to a concert in Sheffield. It’s the whole reason for this roadtrip in the first place. I am going to the concert, but it’s just a bit out of the way. So I planned all these other fun stops to make the trip even more worthwhile.” You stared admiringly down at the map in front of you.
“Anyway, after the concert, we’ll continue south toward home, making a few stops along the way for rest or just to explore other places. If you boys come along, we can drive down to your home. I’m sure your mum would love to have me around for a day before I head to my own home. What do you think?”
The boys on either side of you could see from the way you looked at the map that this was very important to you. They weren’t quite sure why, but they just knew. And if you were this excited, it must be an incredible performer. They looked at each other and nodded before Fred broke the momentary silence. “Okay fine, you don’t have to beg. We’ll come with you. On one condition.”
You were positively beaming at the boy beside you. “Anything, what is it?”
“I get to choose the road trip music. And the roadtrip treats.” Fred looked proud of himself for his very simple conditions.
“It’s a deal. Thank you so much!” You leaned over and pulled Fred in for a crushing side hug. Then you leaned to the other side to pull George in too. “This is going to be the most legendary road trip. No doubt about it.” You couldn’t stop smiling. And you didn’t stop smiling until the end of the term.
*
The day was finally here and you bounded down the stairs like a child on Christmas morning, practically running people over as everyone was making their way outside to head home for the summer holiday. It was the end of term, but the beginning of an unforgettable trip. You met the two Weasley twins outside the castle where they were saying goodbye to everyone else before they headed off to board the train. You all exchanged your “goodbyes”, “stay safes”, and you stopped counting how many times you heard “don’t let them do anything too stupid”.
When everyone else was off, you looked to your travel mates, picked up your bags, and headed toward the car you had rented and had dropped off at the castle gates for you to pick up. It was small, but it would do the job. You volunteered to drive first since the trip was your idea. You piled into the vehicle and drove for a few hours until you reached Glasgow. All was going according to plan.
You stopped for a bite to eat at a local diner and asked for suggestions on local sights to see. You visited shops, museums, and historical plots. You stayed in a small boarding house for a few nights, seeing as your itinerary for the trip had some extra time before you needed to be in Sheffield. Everything was simply breathtaking. Although it could have been any combination of things making it better - the scenery, the company you brought along, or the eventual destination.
Once you had your fill of time in Glasgow, you loaded the car again and set off for the next adventure. Sheffield. The concert. George volunteered to drive, so you took the backseat to spread out and relax. The boys took turns messing with the radio and having pointless arguments, typical behavior for them. Fred’s voice rang out from the passenger seat, “You know, this whole trip would be easier if we just flew to the concert and then flew home. We have brooms for a reason.”
You were almost asleep when you heard him make this comment, so in your gravelly, half-asleep voice, you retorted “yeah, and I’m sure the muggles would absolutely love to see us flying on broomsticks through the sky. Besides, I’m quite enjoying this trip, aren’t you?” You subtly closed your eyes, beginning to drift to sleep as you so often did on car rides.
“I actually am. Really. This is a lot of fun, y/n. I just can’t wait to see how wild you get at this concert.” A smile graced your face as Fred’s comment reached your ears. Your eyes were already shut or you might have caught a glimpse of the smirk George had sent to his brother.
When you woke up from your brief nap, you were a bit disoriented and looked around at your surroundings confusedly. A blanket had been draped over your lap in your sleep and it was getting dark.
“Good morning,” George looked at you through the rearview mirror. “Have a nice rest?”
“Yes, thank you. Where are we?” You looked out of the windows but couldn’t tell where you had ended up.
“We found a place to stay the night in Sheffield, so we’re pulling in now. We’re getting a bit tired ourselves, so we thought it best to rest up before the big day tomorrow.” Fred had turned in his seat to look back at you. Your slightly sleep-tousled hair framed your face in a way he hadn’t seen before. Not that he would admit it to anyone, but he found it quite adorable.
“That’s good thinking. You deserve to rest. And- oh my gosh, it’s tomorrow. The concert’s tomorrow.” You leaned your head back against the back of the seat, letting it all sink in.
George brought the car to a stop in a parking spot and you all exited the small vehicle to go speak to the motel owner about acquiring a room. The manager at the desk informed you that they only had one vacancy left for the night. You had asked for two rooms, but you wouldn’t be getting it.
You turned to the boys, “look, you guys need to sleep. I’m fine sharing the room if you both are.” You raised your eyebrows, seeking a reaction from either boy.
“Yeah, uh, that’s fine with me.” Fred quickly responded, the slightest shade of pink rising in his cheeks.
“Then it’s decided.” George turned to the woman at the desk. “We’ll take the room.”
You made your way into the small room you had been appointed and threw your bags on the floor. You couldn’t believe what you saw before you. There was only one bed and it was barely large enough for a grown adult. Fitting three people in here was not going to be easy.
The boys immediately threw blankets on the floor and snagged extra pillows from the bed and closet to form a makeshift bed on the floor. They wanted you to have the bed for more comfort, but you felt horrible for the unequal arrangement. So you did what you thought anyone would do in this situation.
You took the pillow and sheets from the bed and threw them down next to the boys. They looked at you with questioning gazes, wondering what in the world you were doing. “You guys have done so much for me already, even just coming on this trip with me so I wasn’t alone. I’m not going to sleep on that bed while you lay on the floor. So I’m joining you. Move over George.” You plopped yourself down right between the two of them.
As you settled in for the night, you couldn’t help but feel overwhelmingly thankful for the two friends beside you.
“Goodnight, y/n. See you in the morning.” Fred whispered to you before you drifted to sleep.
“Goodnight Freddie, sleep well.”
George couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face.
When you woke in the morning, you were surprised at how comfortably you had been while sleeping all night on the floor. As you opened your eyes and consciousness slowly returned to you, you felt a strange weight on your hip. You were laying on your side and suddenly realized that there was a hand draped over you. But you felt so warm and comfortable, you didn’t want to move. So you stayed there a few minutes longer.
Fred woke shortly after you and when he realized where his arm was, he immediately withdrew it and sat up quickly. George was already awake and sitting on the bed waiting to see what would happen when you both woke up.
When Fred had moved, you stirred as well, turning over to look at him. “Good morning Fred,” you greeted him with a peaceful smile.
“Good morning, y/n. Did you sleep well?” He replied sweetly.
“It sure seemed like you slept well. Both of you.” George interjected from his position on the bed. As you looked up at him, you didn’t miss the smirk that he sent his brother this time.
“Actually, I did. I was quite comfortable. Thank you for asking. Both of you.” You returned the witty response of your friend. Then you remembered what day it was and you shot to your feet. “The concert is today. We have to get ready.” You rushed into the small bathroom to prepare for the long day ahead of you.
After everyone was changed and ready, you headed out to locate the address listed in the letter you had received. Fred and George did their best to keep your mind occupied so you didn’t explode out of excitement. You had slept in quite late after the late night of driving, so you didn’t have long to wait before the meal prior to the concert. 
And what a delightful meal it was. You were sure you hadn’t had anything so divine before. But you also admitted that it might be anticipation of the event that made everything taste better.
The time had finally come. You, Fred, and George were escorted to your designated seats in the arena. Now all you had to do was wait.
“Who are the… Backstreet Boys?” George asked as you, looking up at the banner over the stage.
You explained who it was you were seeing perform and they both seemed slightly disinterested. “It’s a boy band?” Fred couldn’t believe he had volunteered for this.
“Yes, and they’re bloody good! I’ve listened to their music and I know this is going to be a great night!” You tried to encourage them to have an open mind.
Before long, the beat of their opening song came on and the five members of the band stepped onto the stage. From that moment on, you were enamored by the production. The lights, the sound, the singing and dancing. All of it was just perfect.
They played all their hits from their newest album and some from their debut album as well. A smile never left your face all night long.
As a slower, softer song began, you looked at Fred standing beside you, but his eyes were already watching you. “Freddie, you’re missing the show.” You teased him and poked his shoulder.
“No, I’m seeing all I need to see.” He smiled at you, completely taken by how brilliant you looked in the lights from the stage, how adorable you looked when you were so excited over this event.
It was in that moment that you realized just how much this boy meant to you. All the stolen glances over the years that you convinced yourself didn’t mean anything. You took his hand in yours and leaned in toward him to speak more softly to him rather than shouting over the loud music. “I am too, Freddie.” You looked deeply into his eyes and lifted your hand to cup his cheek. “Thank you for coming with me. I know this isn’t exactly your favorite thing, but I’m really glad you’re here with me.” You leaned in a bit more and connected your lips to his, gently and slowly. He placed his hand on your hip, pulling you in closer, and returned the kiss just as sweetly.
You pulled away for a moment and leaned your forehead against his. “I never imagined this trip turning out quite like this, but I certainly don’t mind it.” You couldn’t help but smile at the handsome boy in front you.
But before you could say or do anything else, George leaned in behind you and said to the two of you, “hey, you two are missing the show.” He winked before stepping away again. You rolled your eyes and faced forward once again, slipping your hand into Fred’s.
By the end of the concert, your voice was hoarse from the singing and shouting, but it was all worth it. As you walked back to the car to prepare for the journey back to the Burrow, Fred looked back toward the arena and said what you had never expected him to say. “You know, I think I quite like these Backstreet Boys. Their concert was something I’ll certainly never forget.”
“I’m so glad you liked them, I mean, they said it themselves, they’ve ‘got it goin on’.” You stopped walking and turned to face the two boys. “But seriously, Fred, George, I probably would have been too scared to come on this trip on my own. So thank you for coming with me. Really.”
George smiled back at you, “anytime, I have to say I quite enjoyed the trip myself.”
And Fred, with a clever look on his face, swung his arm around your shoulders and continued walking. Then he added “love, I think you know by now that I’d go anywhere for you.”
***
tag list?
tagging friends until they ask me to stop (I won’t be offended): @pink-meringues @thegreatestofheck @hemmingsness @no-trespassing-mtz  @rudyypankow @simpforjiara @ssaemxlyprentxss @deathcompass @nas-marie-loves-u @trinnwazheree @bricksatanakinswindow @jellyfishbeansontoast @obsessedwithrandomthings @alyssamalfoy
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fluffymcu · 3 years
Text
Letting Loose
Part EIGHT
This series is TICKLE related. Outfits that are linked here are purely for picturing the clothes, you don’t have to look like the model.
Series Summary:  You’re the little sister of the one and only Captain America. You’re also the youngest girl on the team, so that automatically makes you the avengers’ little princess. And they spoil you as such. They have become your amazing family and you don’t know where you’d be without them. This series will show random adventures and fluffy events in the daily life of the reader and her family, along with an unexpected turn later on as you read.
A/N: I’m so excited to be writing this series! This is my first time writing one and I’m a bit nervous but I hope it all goes well. :) The first few chapters will be about random events, not really following a timeline until Chapter 9. Hope you enjoy!
Word Count: 2,823
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You and Peter leave with Happy for school and for once in a long time, you’re not 2 minutes before the bell rings! The reason you and Peter were almost late today was because you were having a hard time finding a outfit. But once you did, it was smooth sailing from there. 
Once you were in class, you were writing down some notes in your journal when you kept noticing one of your classmates looking at you weird. You had looked up  from your notes to see what your teacher was writing when you caught the glare from the corner of your eye. They were glaring at you with a grimace on their face. You looked around to make sure if it was you they were looking at. When you confirmed, you became very confused. You didn’t even talk to them. Heck, you didn’t even know their name! They were always so quiet and surprisingly, they were never called on.
You decided to smile anyway, and carry on with your work. Now that you knew they were watching however, you couldn’t help but steal glaces up at them every now and then, and every time you’d look, they’d be glaring. It made you feel a bit uncomfortable but you pushed through it until lunch. 
-----
“Get your vegetables, sweetie.” The lunch lady at the cafeteria said, smiling sweetly and nodding towards the green beans in the small clear plastic container. You grabbed it and so did Peter, following him out of the line.
“So yeah, they’ve just been glaring at me the entire time, and I’ve never even held a formal conversation with them!” You said, taking a seat at the table. Ned and MJ were still in line. 
“What’s their name?” Peter asked, taking a bite out of the apple.
“I don’t even know!” You exclaimed. “That’s why I’m telling you, It’s so weird.” You shook your head. Peter hummed, his brows furrowed.
“That is weird. Maybe it was just a misunderstanding? You know how sometimes you’re in deep thought and you just stare out into space? Maybe they were thinking about something and just happened to be staring at you?” He shrugged.
You nodded, taking a bite of your pizza. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I mean, it’s the only thing that would make sense. I’ve never done anything to them so I don’t see a reason why they would do that.” You thought out loud. 
“Yeah. So. I’m thinking we should do something fun after school. Maybe we could ride the go-kart or go by the city?” Peter asked, a wide grin creeping onto his face. You sat back and thought for a moment before your grin rivaled his.
“Or... we could do something super fun like prank Bucky!” You said, wiggling your eyebrows at him. Peter started laughing and pointed at you.
“I like that idea! Bucky’s reactions are hilarious!” He laughed, clapping his hands together.
“Right?!”
----
You were looking up at the clock every 2 minutes, hoping that some miracle would appear and suddenly an hour would pass. Jeremy was being a huge pain today and you couldn’t wait to go home when class was over. He was constantly whispering your name from across the room, throwing crumbled up notes at your head, making paper airplanes land on your desk, and so much more. You were surprised at how the teacher never caught him doing any of this, and how he got those paper planes to land on your desk every time. 
“Y/n!” You heard Jeremy whisper for the 100th time today. You sighed and decided to see if he would stop if you’d look at him. When you did, he smiled widely, faltering a bit when you didn’t return it. “I like your shirt.” He whispered. You scoffed silently and rolled your eyes. You returned your attention back to the teacher and ignored him the best you could for the rest of the day.
When the bell rang, you packed your stuff at record breaking speed and zoomed out the class. As you raced out the room, you could hear Jeremy’s obnoxious laugh. Thank god school was over now.
-----
As you got home, Peter went straight to shower and you joined Nat in the kitchen, who was baking a cake. She claimed to like cooking and baking by herself, but she told you once that you were the only one who she likes to bake with. She made you swear not to tell anyone though, and you’ve kept it. 
As you were mixing the frosting, you got a small spoon and dipped it in it, smudging a bit on her cheek. She gasped and you put the bowl down and ran away when she was coming at you with a pan. You knew she’d never hurt you but you had to run away just in case you accidentally died under her supervision.
Nat was pouring the cake batter onto the pan and you were still ‘mixing’ the frosting when in reality you were eating it slowly. You thought you were getting away with it stealthily, but, come on, this is Nat we’re talking about. 
“Stop eating all the frosting!” She growled, poking your belly making you flinch and yelp. 
“Okayokayokay!” You giggle, putting your hands up in surrender but she keeps poking and scratching around your belly and sides. “Nohoohoo! I said okahahahay!” You cry.
Nat smirks and continues, fluttering her fingertips up you your neck and behind your ears. “I know, but it’s too much fun to stop.” She hums, wiggling her nimble fingers into your armpits. You squeal before your knees buckle, bringing you down to the floor. Nat giggles along and crouches down beside you and continues to torture your sides. Her touches are so light on your sides, but they’re driving you crazy. You arch your back and shake your head side to side. 
“Nahahahat! Plehehease!” You squeak. 
Natasha smiled and looked at the stove to see it was almost time to put the batter in. She turns to face you with a smirk and moves up to scratch in between your ribs. You cackle, throwing your head back as your face is heating up. “Are you gonna keep eating the frosting?” She asks, chuckling when you give in instantly.
“NOHOHOHO! I PROHOMISE! HAHAH!” You finally relax as she stops, getting up to put the batter when the oven beeps. You get up as well once you catch your breath and finish preparing everything else, having to make more frosting now because you ate half of it. You then sit down at the island with Nat, talking about school and stuff until the cake is done. You frost the cake, add sprinkles because why not, and cover it up in a nice glass cake holder. You both high-five and take a slice, knowing if you wait ten minutes, the team would gobble it up before you even get a bite. 
Sure enough, by the next time you passed by the kitchen again, the cake was gone. You and Peter met in his room to discuss the plans for pranking Bucky. “Okay. So, I say we prank him when he’s in the shower. We mess with the temperature and turn it super super cold and run out. We know he likes to use the gym showers when he’s done working out so it would be a perfect time to prank him!” You said, making sure to keep a hushed tone in case anyone was listening. 
“Yeah! That’d be so funny. He’s working out right now, so let’s spy on him until he goes to shower.” Peter says, helping you jump on his back to go on your stealthy mission. 
----
You and Peter have been watching Bucky exercise for the past 30 minutes, and you were both bored. “Jesus, I mean, I know he’s like strong and stuff, and doesn’t get tired easily, but how long does he have to work out? We saw him go to the gym like 2 hours ago.” You whispered.
“Shhh! Keep your voice down, he has enhanced hearing.” Peter whispered, frantically holding his finger over his mouth. 
“Oh, I’m being quiet!” You rolled your eyes, scoffing sassily, flinching back in mild offense when Peter quickly covered your mouth with his hand. 
“Y/n! If you don’t stop whispering so loud he’s gonna know we’re spying on him. You think you’re whispering but you’re being very loud and he can hear you if you continue. So keep quiet!” Peter whispered, taking your hand off your mouth when you huffed and nodded. You both continue to watch him for a few more minutes, getting excited when he reaches for his water bottle and towel, walking towards the showers. 
You cheer quietly and you both wait a few moments before hearing the water run. You make your way inside the showers and find the one he’s in. You wait a few minutes for the water to heat up and so he could get comfortable in the heat, before nodding at Peter, who quickly changes the nozzle to the extreme opposite side. You clasp your hand over your mouth, getting ready for the reaction. 
“AHHHHHH!”
You and Peter burst out laughing, running out of the showers while Bucky is yelling out streams of curses and screams. As you run out into the gym, you could hear Bucky screaming out at you both. “YOU KIDS ARE SO DEAD!”
You reach Peter’s room, shutting the door behind you and falling to the floor in silent laughter. Peter was rolling around in his bed and letting out cackles. You just kept replaying Bucky’s reaction in your head, not being able to stop laughing. “Ohoho my gohohohod that was hilarious!!” You squealed, getting up from the floor. Peter nodded, sitting up and holding his stomach. “Yeheheah, he’s gonna kill us though.” He chuckled. You shrugged, giggling a but and sitting down next to him. “Eh, he’ll get over it...hopefully.”
He did not.
----- 
It was a little while before dinner and you were playing around with peter in the living room, him laying on the floor and balancing you on his hands and feet. His hands were holding yours and he had both feet on either side of your hip. You were giggling madly and struggling to keep your arms straight, so you were shaking a lot. You had fallen on top of him multiple times, but you'd get right back up. Tony was watching you guys over the counter, making dinner. He had a light smile on his face at the sound of both of your laughter. You got on top again and this time you were determined to stay up, stifling your laughter and tightening your core. You started smiling when peter began to cheer for you. “There we go! Keep going, hold it, hold it!” Peter strained, keeping you balanced. Tony left the kitchen temporarily to go help Pepper with something, mumbling at you both to stay safe before leaving. You grunted as you almost fell again, but peter caught you and kept you up just in time.
You were both so caught up in your game, that you didn’t notice Bucky stroll into the living room with a determined look on his face. His presence was made known however, when he quickly snatched you up and held you tightly against his chest. You shrieked, instantly recognizing him and you began to laugh hysterically when he started to dig into your hips. “You didn’t think I’d forget, did you?” He teased, digging in the spot right above your hips making you squirm violently in his arms.
“NOHOHOHOHO! BUCKYHYHYHY!” You cried, cackling when he began to blow several raspberries on the crook of your neck. He had your arms held to your sides, preventing you from defending yourself. “This is what you get for that lame ass prank! Regret it yet?” He teased, lifting you up a bit in his grip so he could pinch harshly at your sides. You instantly melt in his arms, kicking out your legs desperately. “WAHAHAIT! PETER HEHEHELPED!” You yelled. If you were gonna get it, so was he.
“I know; he’s next.” He smirked. Peter’s eyes widened and he decided to leave, running out of the living room and hiding in Wanda’s room. Bucky chuckled and sat down on the couch, positioning you to sit on his lap bridal style. You tried to roll off of him right away but he easily grabbed you back. “Apologize.” He says. You might have been a giggling mess, but you weren’t going to apologize for an awesome prank.
“No!” You yell, even then sounding unsure of yourself. Bucky chortles, shaking his head and bringing your stomach up to his face. You begin to giggle nervously again as he's lifting your shirt with his mouth, blowing an abnormally large and ticklish raspberry after. You shriek, twisting around in his hold, cackling when he begins to rub his scratchy stubble all around your belly, making ‘nomming’ noises and playfully biting the skin. It tickles so much and all you can do is just weakly push at his head. He's playfully growling as he bites the pudgy skin on your belly and you quickly fall into silent laughter, kicking out desperately for him to let you go.
Bucky laughs, laying you down and digging his fingers into your collarbone, smiling when you once again let out laughter, squeaking out pleads of mercy. “Hmmm, I hear all these ‘please’ and “stop’ s but I'm not hearing any apologies.” He hums, shaking all of his digits into your ribs. “Are you ready to apologize now?” You scream loudly, arching your back and giving in immediately.
“YEHEHEHES!” You cackle, turning into jelly in his arms when he stops. He giggles along with you and lifts you up to rest your head on his chest. “Ihihihim sohohorry.” You giggle. Bucky smiles and nods, kissing your forehead.
“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” He teased, pinching your side lightly. You flinch and giggle lazily, dramatically rolling off the couch and onto the floor. Bucky shakes his head at you fondly, looking up when Peter comes into the living room again.
“Sup guys, is everything settled?” He asks, like nothing happened. Thankfully, Bucky was going to be fair today.
“Not yet. You haven’t apologized, punk!” He growls, making a bee line towards Peter, smirking at his terrified screech before taking off. You giggle as you can hear their banter in the halls, Peter spitting out protests and pleads and Bucky having none of it.
“Wait wait wait wait wait Mr. Barnes! Mr. Barnes, wait! I can explain!”
“Save it for after you get your part of the punishment. You're only making this worse for you, kid! Get off the walls!”
You grin widely when you finally hear Peter’s desperate laughter echoing through the halls, pumping your fist when he gets what he deserves for trying to walk out on his punishment and leave you there.
----
Finally, you finish helping the team clean up dinner and you go upstairs with Peter to commence your sleepover. Like always, you bring snacks up and turn on the tv. After a while, peter turns to look at you with a grin. “Hey. I have an idea.”
You turn to look at him as well, mimicking his grin. “What. And it better not be pranking Bucky again, because I don’t know about you, but I've learned my lesson for today.” You chuckle humorlessly, raising your hand in defeat. Peter rolls his eyes and chuckles.
“No way. Not doing that again for a while.” He says. “We should build a fort. We haven’t built one in a long time!”
You smile and nod excitedly, ripping the covers off your body and getting to work.
It was only about 10pm when you and Peter began building it. You draped blankets over some high chairs that you both quietly stole from the kitchen and put blankets on the floor and stuffed pillows inside. You even decided to be extra and drape some fairy lights on the inside. Building a fort with Peter was one of your many favorite things to do. You didn’t do it very often, because you wanted it to be something special when you did.
You both crawled in and admired your work. You pulled out your laptop, setting it up on the ground and opening up Netflix. “We probably should’ve saved some snacks for this.” Peter chuckled.
“Yeah, we should have.” You laughed, looking at the empty wrappers. You both agreed on watching a few episodes of The Office before turning off the fairy lights and falling asleep in the fort. Surprisingly, sleeping on the floor wasn’t as uncomfortable as you thought it would be.
The next day was okay, school was interesting, especially with your classmate once again giving you weird looks. You were extremely confused. This has been going on for quite a bit now.  What did I ever do to them?
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lnarizakis · 4 years
Text
*:・゚✧*:・゚✧COACHES DON’T PLAY
THE JOURNAL OF A FORMER AUTHOR: PAGE 002
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HOT OFF THE PRESS ! Is this not what you’re looking for? Please view the masterlist [here]!
EXTRA ! miya osamu x fem! reader. 1.2k words. original characters.
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“Hey, (Y/N)-chan. It’s been a while. How’re you?” 
She held her breath, not realizing the lessened formality of their relationship. Letting out her breath little by little, (Y/N) took her time with what she wanted to say. 
It was a little too long, however, when her cousin spoke after a minute of silence. “Hello? Are you still there?”
Hastily she replied, “Yeah! Yeah, I am. I’m… okay. How are you?”
From the other end came a slight chuckle. “So am I. How’s the dating column coming along?” (Y/N) pursed her lips, and her heart beat quicker, nervous that the previous Dating-san, her cousin, was asking her about such matters. 
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about tonight,” she ended up saying. 
“Oh? What’s wrong?” 
“I… got kicked. From the club. ‘Cause my editor spread a false rumor about me. And now my entire reputation as Dating-san, and as a person in general, really, is pretty much down the drain,” she told him. She was genuinely surprised that not only her cousin had managed to stay silent throughout the entire explanation, but also how she had more to say. 
“And I feel like such a terrible person now, too. ‘Cause of both the newspaper column, that I couldn’t do my own job and be actually responsible, and that I ruined one of the relationships that I helped build.” Silence came from the other end. Again, a wave of nervousness rushed over (Y/N) and shook her; what loomed over her next was the intimidation she felt whenever she talked with her cousin, Dating-san. 
When her cousin began talking, she stiffened, despite being wrapped up in the comforts of her bed. “I see. Well, I’ll start off by saying congrats for working well enough to help build a relationship; I’ll give you that. Next, I see where you’re coming from. I’m really sorry that you had to go through this; there’s definitely some corruption in this organization. I’ll talk to Aki-san for you if you’d like. 
“You really don’t have to--”
“No, please. Let me. It’s the least I can do for my favorite cousin. Is there any particular reason why you’re on bad terms with your editor?” 
(Y/N) didn’t even have to think about the answer. “Yeah: I like her boyfriend. Or, well, ex-boyfriend.” 
Her cousin gave a good laugh, and (Y/N) felt herself smiling to his contagious laughter. “Oh, (Y/N). You really… let your crush go just for the sake of your job, huh? You’re too generous, I swear.” Laughing in between your words, you told him that you had to; it was your responsibility. 
After a few minutes of letting out a good laugh mixed with the undertones of a sob, (Y/N)’s cousin silenced her with his next string of advice for her. “(Y/N), I know how seriously you take, or took, I guess, this job and, honestly, I’m very proud of you for that. I remember you were so excited to take up the responsibility once I graduated, and your excitement spread to me, too. 
“But, you see, this job as a writer does not define who you are, got that? You are so much more than what you’re known as at school. You’re someone who’s hardworking and passionate with everything they do. You’re a lover and a hater. You’re emotional. You’re friendly; you can get along with anyone. (Y/N), I don’t know you as Dating-san, but as my cousin. I know you as (Y/N).
“And, lastly, do not feel bad that your editor spread a terrible rumor about you. She’s going to get what she deserves soon enough. I really don’t blame you for being selfish. Sometimes we as dating coaches gotta feel something, too, you know? I don’t think I ever told you, but last year I actually got with my crush because I was selfish. ‘Cause, of course, coaches don’t play, but they gotta step on the court some day.”
There was a strange feeling that washed over (Y/N) with those last words. She opened her mouth to thank her cousin, but before she could even say anything, he told her, “I do not regret making you the next Dating-san at all, (Y/N). You amaze me every day, even if you think you’re the worst person in the world. You will never be that kind of person to me.”
Even though she knew he couldn’t see her, (Y/N) mouthed a “thank you,” and hung up. She stayed underneath the blankets of her bed for a while before she hopped up to freshen up herself in her bathroom. Slowly she learned that being kicked off the newspaper club wasn’t a bad thing; in fact, she saw it as a way for herself to grow. 
When she came back, her phone buzzed with one single notification from her cousin. It was a text message. She smiled warmly at the message. 
[10:41 pm] don’t forget that if you’re troubled by all of this because of the guy you like, go for the guy! have no regrets. follow what you want to do instead of what others tell you to do. coaches can play, too!
Setting her phone down next to her on the desk, (Y/N) opened up her notebook to let out her thoughts. 
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So this is the journal of a former author. It feels much more therapeutic to handwrite than to type, though it hurts a little more to write. 
What do I want to say, exactly? Maybe it’s that I am conflicted between regretting falling for Osamu and thinking that falling for him was a good thing. If I never fell for him I wouldn’t be in this mess. However, thinking about it, if I never fell for him I wouldn’t have had that really good talk with my cousin. 
Ultimately, I wish I never liked him. 
But then again, he’s picked me up on days I’ve felt so down… and he’s good company. Maybe we’re better off as friends. I don’t think he was right for Asai. I thought he would change her, but in the end, she remained the same. She treated Osamu like a pet and made him bow down to her. 
I’m sorry, Osamu. I wish I never advised you to date Asai. My fear of her caused me to write what she wanted to see, not what you wanted to see. Though, you’re okay with anything, and that’s what kinda drew me to you, I guess. You were okay with being my friend, and you genuinely enjoy my company, even if you don’t really show it. I enjoy your company, too. 
I just wish I could tell you how I feel. Asai probably has, though. Or maybe she hasn’t. Who knows? I don’t know what I’d do if I told you that I liked you. I’d run away and hide. Never show my face to you again. Would you come try and find me? 
I should stop being so indecisive. Here are my thoughts, loud and clear: I like Osamu. I regret writing down what Asai wanted to read, not what Osamu wanted. I will never regret knowing Osamu, befriending him, and falling for him. 
I will never regret taking up the role as Dating-san, because if I’m part of the newspaper club or not, I will always be Dating-san to Inarizaki High.
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awgeog2260 · 3 years
Text
Reflecting on Geography 2260 - Applied Human Geography
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These things I know for certain about human geography research:
Firstly, I know for certain what kind of research is considered qualitative geography research. Qualitative research is diverse, has been maturing in recent years, and has strong methods to understand people and place relationships (Hay, I., 2016, p.3). Qualitative research is meant to understand human environments and human experiences (Hay, I., 2016, p.5). An example of methods used in qualitative methods versus quantitative methods is that qualitative research would include in-depth interviews, while quantitative techniques more likely would include questionnaires (Hay, I., 2016, p.5). 
Secondly, something I learned from this class is what research requires an ethics clearance, and what goes into ensuring research participants are respected. Complying with ethics requirements from an institution is a way to ensure the researcher is respecting everyone involved in the project (Hay, I., 2016, p.57). Formal ethics requirements ensures that cultural and ethical contexts are being considered before the project commences (Hay, I., 2016, p.57). If your research involves you interviewing participants, you need an ethics approval. An ethics clearance also helps the researcher get funding, increase their legitimacy, and get published. 
Thirdly, I know for certain that human geography research requires us to be critically reflexive throughout the research process. This is something we have talked about a lot in this course. Reflexivity requires the researcher to be self-conscious and constantly scrutinize their position in the research process to ensure the data is unbiased and that the research is ethical (Hay, I., 2016, p.34). Critical reflexivity is a difficult process because people are not used to analyzing their engagement in their work and I also know that not many researcher’s write about their research process in their work (Hay, I., 2016, p.34). This being said, asking ourselves self-critical questions during research, and keeping a journal to log this process, is key to providing ethical, justifiable research.
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These things I am still confused by:
I am still confused by how to write-up research findings. I find it difficult to determine categories that need to be discussed and figuring out what is salient information. We learned how to write up research findings in chapter 19 (Hay, I., 2016, p.392-416), but I still need practice in how to identify what information is the best to use in a research paper. This is something I struggled with in the Digital Storytelling Assignment. There were so many options of things to include, it was difficult to determine what was the most solid. This is a skill I continue to develop throughout my time as an undergrad student.
Secondly, I know that ethical considerations are crucial for a justified, respectful research project, but I am sometimes confused by what is and what is not ethical. In the case study we reviewed with Agafia, when I first watched the video I thought the researchers did their duty of ensuring the research was ethical, but after more consideration, I found it difficult to justify some of their actions. So, what kind of research is and is not ethical is something I am still thinking about.
Lastly, I am still confused about how to formulate a good research question that fills a gap in research literature. In the textbook chapter, Writing a Compelling Research Proposal (Hay, I., 2016, p.95-116), we learned how to write a research proposal, but I am still wondering how to find a topic that has not yet been discovered, and how to convince people that your research topic should be investigated. 
These things I know for certain about me as a human geographic researcher:
I know that my strengths are in historical research, which involves systematic collection and objective evaluation of data. This is the only type of qualitative research that I have had experience with in undergrad.  
I also know that I tend to get distracted and overwhelmed when I am met with too much information. The tips to manage data we learned in Week 5 helped me to figure out how to organize some data for the digital storytelling assignment. Specifically, using highlighters and notes tools help me to stay organized. Coding was something that helped me figure out the focus for the digital storying telling assignment and what information to focus on in the literature.
Lastly, I know that I am more interested in qualitative human geography research than quantitative. I am interested in current events and I like thinking critically. Researching in-depth human relationships to different things interests me more than numerical data.
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These three areas I need to spend time developing/learning in order to feel more confident in my skills:
I need to spend more time working with data in different ways, spend time analyzing data by coding more, and writing it all up. I feel as though the storytelling assignment helped me to work with data more by reviewing a lot of literature and going back to it throughout several months, which is something I have never done before for an assignment. I want to develop these skills of going back to research and thinking critically about my position as well as the validity of sources throughout a lengthy period of time. 
Secondly, I would like to gain experience doing basic fieldwork to feel more confident in my research abilities. I have always done secondary research at my desk, which can be limiting. I would like to develop some skills in conducting my own research outside of historical based research methods, and try out some of my own data collection.
Lastly, I need to spend some time on developing my interviewing skills. I now know about the three main types of interviewing, structured, unstructured and semi-structured interviews (Hay, I., 2016, p.150-158). I would like to specifically learn more about how to conduct semi-structured interviews, which are interviews that have some sort of structure but also allow for some free flowing conversation (Hay, I. year p.150). This I think would come with practice as well as thinking critically about what kind of interviews are at play when listening to interviews in podcasts or other media.
Resources: 
Hay, I. (2016). Qualitative Research Methods in Human Geography. Toronto. Oxford University Press.
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alwaysmychoices · 4 years
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From Across the Room
Synopsis: Charlie Green and Ethan Ramsey fell in love, and after years together, they fell apart when it became clear they wanted very different futures. But when they have a chance encounter years later, maybe it’s not all in the past...
(separate from my With and Without series)
words: 1.9k 
rating: PG 
Based on this ask from this prompt list. The prompt ("You aren’t my homeland anymore”) is in bold. Feel free to keep asking from that list!
Hit me up if you want to be added to my permanent tag list! 
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(photo source) 
I would love to say that I fell in love with Ethan Ramsey the day I met him, but that would be a lie. The first time I laid eyes on him, I thought he was the most handsome man I had ever seen, but as soon as he opened his mouth, I thought he was the rudest, most arrogant asshole I’d ever been forced to interact with. I spent the rest of the week fuming and staring from afar, hating him with such passion that it buried my instant adoration.
But in moments of vulnerability and shared secret smiles, I fell in love with him.
And for some time, we were happy — the kind of bright, beautiful happiness that painted every memory in a golden haze.
I still remember our time together with soft, warm smiles and fluttering butterflies in my stomach.
We got an apartment together where we cooked fancy dinners, painted walls, and printed our favorite memories on photos that we displayed all over our home. On weeknights, we read medical journals on our couch with our dog between us, and on weekends, we woke early enough to wander the farmers market. We took up jogging together in the mornings and shared mystery novels in our spare time.
It was perfect.
We fought, of course. We disagreed about the shade of blue we should paint the bathroom and how protective I should be of my career. He thought I was impulsive, and I thought he was too set in his ways. But our fights never lasted long enough to mean something.
The itch came on slowly. It took me several years to realize that, as much as I loved my life, I still craved more.
Sometimes, late at night, I regret it. I wish I could have been satisfied, that I could have just maintained our happiness.
In the end, I couldn’t help wanting more.
I wanted a family. I wanted a house with a yard. I wanted to leave work early to read bedtime stories to my child and spend my Saturdays cheering on soccer games. I wanted sleepless nights where I balanced my demanding career with my desire for a family.
But Ethan didn’t want more.
He was happy. He had a loving relationship and a career he valued. What we had now was everything he ever wanted but never expected to have.
He understood what I wanted, but he couldn’t give it to me. And I understood why he couldn’t. I couldn’t make him want something, and I couldn’t force him into a life he didn’t desire. It wasn’t fair to him, me, or a potential child.
We tried very, very hard to hold on. We took extra vacations and talked late into the night, hoping that communication and quality time could save us. We toured townhomes in search of a compromise, and we submitted an application to foster rescue dogs.
But it wasn’t enough, and once the cracks settled in, they began to spread.
I wanted more than he could give, and he begrudged me for it. I resented him for resenting me and for not sharing my visions of the future. The love that we shared, as strong as it was, was clouded.
The end came slowly and painfully. We stopped fighting solely because we stopped speaking. We went days without as much as a shared glance, and as winter fell, our relationship went cold and lifeless.
On our seventh anniversary, I was thousands of miles away from Ethan. I was in California, interviewing for a job. Ethan and I were both offered positions, and we saw it as a new opportunity to revitalize our lives and start over again. But really, we always knew that Ethan wouldn’t leave Boston. He didn’t even come with me to visit San Francisco or meet the team we were offered to lead.
Six months later, I was still in San Francisco, and Ethan wasn’t with me.
For the first year, I waited for him to follow me here, and often, I eyed plane tickets, imagining my own grand gesture. I called him late at night, just to hear his voice, and sometimes, he would call me with a consultation for a patient. Rarely was it a real mystery that required my help. I think he just wanted to hear from me, too.
But nothing had really changed. I still wanted a family, and he didn’t.
So, I made a new life.
I bought an apartment and adopted a dog, and I made friends. I went to parks and parties and coffee shops, and I was happy, even if I kept Ethan on my speed dial.
I was introduced to Dr. Mark Williams at a fundraiser. A week later, I met him at a trendy restaurant for our first date, and by the end of the year, he was on one knee, presenting a sparkling engagement ring. I said yes, even if I secretly wished it was Ethan standing in front of me.
Mark and I agreed on everything. We wanted children and dogs and little league games, and we were already looking for a home to build our future.
It was perfect.
Or it should have been…
Sometimes, I still felt like something was missing, something I hadn’t felt since Boston.
Not that I ever said, nor even admitted to myself.
It was easy to pretend that Ethan Ramsey was a part of my past. He was thousands of miles away, and I hadn’t seen him in so long that, if I tried hard enough, I could make his memory hazy. On a good day, I didn’t think about him at all.  
But tonight was different.
Tonight, I couldn’t pretend — not when I was so close.
For the first time in over a year, I was in the same room as Ethan Ramsey, and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stop looking over at him, craning my head to catch sight of him in the crowded conference. I was on Mark’s arm, but I could only see Ethan.
Someone was talking — maybe even to me — but I didn’t hear it.
Not until I heard my name.
“Charlotte.”
I jumped, startled into the present. I tore my eyes away from Ethan to find Mark and another man facing me. I vaguely recognized the man as Mark’s friend from medical school that we had met this morning when we signed into the conference, but I’d been so distracted by Ethan that I didn’t notice him approach us now.
“Damon has some intriguing research he wants to share from one of the exhibits. Do you want to come with us, Charlotte?” Mark asked, squeezing my arm.
Charlotte.
Mark called me Charlotte. Something about hearing it in the presence of Ethan made it feel cold and formal.
As soon as the thought registered, I felt a wave of guilt.
I was engaged to Mark. He was compassionate and kind, and he wanted a family just as badly as I did. He was my future, and Ethan was my past.
I just needed to remember that.
“I’ll let you two go ahead. I’ll catch up later,” I encouraged my fiancé and his friend to go on without me, hoping to clear my head and regain my composure in their absence.
I was a grown woman. I was well-respected and responsible. I was not the kind to remain lovesick and obsessed with a former boyfriend.
I needed to control myself.
With my back safely to Ethan, I wandered through the conference, finding comfort in unfamiliar faces. I felt safe in the ambiguity. Few people here knew me, and even fewer knew my complicated history with Ethan. Every step felt like a new beginning, a world where I could write my own future without being unnumbered by my past.
Of course, it had a habit of following me.
I could run to a new city with a new job and a new lover, but I always found Ethan. Or he found me.
Even in a sea of strangers and their disinterested gazes, I saw him immediately. His blue eyes were piercing and determined. I felt like he was looking for me, pulling me to him until I found him in return.
He looked the same, if a bit older. The same haircut, the same hard expression to ward off fans tempted to approach him. He stood taller than the rest, a beacon of intelligence and arrogance. And he was looking at me.
This close, the distance and time between us felt so small. I could forget that we lived on different sides of the country. I could forget the months of fighting and the breakup and our time apart. I could forget the lives we built apart from each other. I could forget everything but how much I loved him.
I imagined going to him, forgetting and forgiving everything we did to each other. I thought about running away from my life – from California, from Mark, from everything. I pictured my life back in Boston, in that apartment we shared with all of our friends.
And the daydream was all so… so tempting.
So beautiful. So sweet. So nostalgic and wonderful.
He felt like home.
And right now, I just wanted to go home…
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a woman approach Ethan. She was young, probably just an intern. Her hands were full of pamphlets and journals, and I decided that she was probably his newest protégé. I felt a sense of relief when he looked down at her and lacked any obvious romantic attachment — not that it was my place to be relieved. I was engaged to another man after all. Who was I to judge if Ethan found someone else, too?
But even as I tried to write it off, I knew that I didn’t want him to find someone else. I wanted him to still be mine, even if I told myself that I didn’t want to be his.
From across the room, Ethan dropped his gaze, whispering something to his protégé. They spoke for a moment, but I couldn’t will myself to look away. I feared that, if I dropped his gaze now, I might not ever find it again. Once they concluded their discussion, his assistant walked away, and his eyes immediately returned to mine.
With a sad smile, he motioned away, signaling that he had to leave. There was something else in his eyes, a silent offer to accompany him.
I could have followed.
I could have moved through the crowd and rewritten my future.
But instead, I shook my head, even if it killed me to do so.
I whispered softly, knowing he couldn’t hear me as I explained, “You aren’t my homeland anymore.”
Before I could change my mind, I walked away.
I thought it would feel freeing, like a final goodbye after nearly a decade of shared affection. I expected to feel confident in my decision. I thought I would walk into my future knowing that I was on the right path.
But as a wiped away my tears, I felt less sure than ever that Ethan was just a part of my past…
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sketcheydyslexic · 3 years
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💛🍯 anon here, Rin (i am absolutely honored that ya trust me enough to tell me yah name <3 and i am so so proud tah call ya my friend hun). my pronouns are they/them/she/her, thanks fo asking hun and i'm also comfortable with gendered term for future reference. it's also so good to hear about ya sleeping schedule. i actually woke up earlier than i expected, about at 8 am but i did nap alot in the day
oh i had another dream and it's about the outcodes sans unfortunately no papyri ;-; i rarely dream about undertale so this was instantly typed in my dream journal. it was the bad sanses, star sanses, classic sans, fell sans, bird sans (my favorite sans in this dream, he looked amazing!!), g and i travelling to a party(?) but the travelling part felt like a road trip. we were all in a van which we somehow fit??? (dream logic) and i was at the back with axe (i call any horror sans variant axe/horror), dust and killer. i remember going in a highway with in a country side looking scenery and the murder trio loved it but i think killer and dust fought so i healed them with green magic (again dream logic). time skip, we were in the party with formal clothes (axe actually wore the same suit you drew him in and ajdnjakandj he looked hotter than i expected). as we were entering the venue i suddenly got the feeling of dread while looking for a seat (the tables were circles with the plates laid there already and there can only be 4 people at one table) i heard the sanses talking about a plan/bet they had so i instantly found a seat farthest to them but killer (i think??? it was either him or dust) managed to snag one beside me. fast forward, so i was wearing a dress with a slit on it and killer (that bastard, i dont even simp for him,,,, yet) kept his hand on my knees the whole time (i think i was in an established poly relationship with the him and the others??? but not all) and by the end of my dream his hand was close to the muddle of my thigh but nightmare's tentacle slapped it and i woke up. 😳😳😳 was basically my reaction to it.
ya doing amazing sweetheart!!! with ya honestly stronger than ya know hun. and of course i care about the situation about your course ya deserved so much. i've honestly come to be protective of ya and yes i absolutely care for ya, more than ya know honeybee <3.
i am so glad that ya safe from ya trip. also, baby's first legal drinking ugh reminds me if the first time i also drank. i was actually surprised cuz i drank my first glass of a kinda strong drink and i didn't end up drunk (for the whole night and i'm pretty sure i had about 5-7 glasses of cocktails and i ended up without a hangover), it seems like i had a strong tolerance to alcohol. my favorite was margarita tho and i assumed it was gonna make me drunk or atleast tipsy and i was all good. i was just confused the while drinking since i was expecting getting dizzy or something.
i am close to being off anon, just need to hype myself a little and finally share my art. and the thing ya do where ya put the year on the shells are so cute. oh, i finally received my sketchbook!!! and i was reminded that i can draw whatever i want, whatever idea i have, i can just draw it whether it turns how i imagine it or not. so me wanting some chaos, drew classic sans' reaction (blank sockets, tired expression, saying "what the fuck?...") to classic papyrus' leg and arm stuck on a window while my mc tries to pull him out of it m, both are sweating then papy suddenly screams "YA LIKE JAZZ??!!" while my mc just says "just kill me already" and i keep laughing while sketching papy's body (i might draw it digital but I don't know yet)
:0 i am loving the purpled and layered hair cut!! i mean any haircut ya have is beautiful but purple is a personal favorite of mine. i keep going back and forth on dyeing my hair cuz i dont really want tah damage it with bleach but i have black hair and i want pink hair and be a cloud or cotton candy with how floofy my hair is. my indecisive ass just can't handle commiting to something.
anyways, how was your day hun? oh and i love ya and care for ya Rin 💛 :))
<3 thank you for befriending me 💛🍯 Anon! Is lovely to hear from you again :)) I wake up at 5am to get to campus, and get home at 5pm. I think that's why my sleep schedule is needed up, I don't have time to get everything ready for the next day, eat dinner and sleep. It's why I forget to take my meds during the most important time to take them :/
This past week just keeps getting worse, but I'm hoping my hair comes out good today :’) they didn't change my schedule right and now it's messing everything up. I got to see my friends that I have run 2 years though so that's good. I think it just the change that bugs me so much, my school dosen't really care to help people with anxiety. But I powered through it and didn't let them push me around! (Edit) they messed my hair up. But she gave me a really nice blowdry brush thing?
(a while back) I had a dream that (a papyrus, I think it was mutt?) gave me a ring and then he had to hide because someone came storming in to my room. He hid under my dresser, that has like a 3 inch gap underneath?? So, idk how that happened. But then he was gone for real, like he fell back into his reality? But he told me that if I really need him he would hear my soul crying out for help and come to get me but only if I really beloved he would come for me. *flips desk* what in the peeter pan type of shit- I need him now, where is he?! Lmao, please dream papyrus, come back. My one and only undertale dream and it only made me miss him more. Sigh. You dreamed about sans in the suit I drew him in?! Eeeee that makes me so happy! Idk if shifting is real but if it is, I would love to be able to do it. Sounds like nightmare decided that was enough reading for one night xD
I think I got it fixed, it just seems like no matter what I do he follows me where ever I go :’( I can't let myself become a hermit because of it, I'm strong and I won't hurt myself or my mental health :) thank you, I care very much so for you as well, dear friend <3
It's a story I can tell now, so that's cool! I'm not big on alcohol, I much prefer a nice nap. Which is a weird thing guess? I just really like to catch some rest when I get the chance. One time my grandma made a ladyfinger cake and she went crazy with adding the vanilla rum, there was around 10 shots in the whole (small) cake and my aunt was stumbling. I didn't feel any different and my grandma freaked out me. She was so worried I was going to get hungover and not feel well. That's how I figured out I must have a high alcohol tolerance, It's a fun memory :)
I believe in you, whenever you feel ready ill be right here for you! Bahaha, papyrus stuck and his first instinct is to just ‘YOU LIKE JAZZ🤓😏’ I would simply pass away at that line, sans wouldn't have time to get me. It does a lot of umph for me to work on the things I've been wanting to do, since I don't really have the time to do things, and when I do I'm tired from the day. But I'm good at posting content regularly I hope. Why is papuris so hard to draw?! Like classic and stretch? I /struggle/ with their eyes and mouths. I know people don't show self inserts a lot of love, but I absolutely adore them! They always have the most personality to them.
She messed up my hair :// she charged me 150 dollars to dye my hair black over the time of 4 hours bassicly. I could have done that with a 5 dollar box dye from Walmart and got the same result :’) please I just wanted purple hair. I guess it looks okay, I'm not too happy with it but oh well. Hair is hair and it will grow out eventually. Whatever you go with, I bet you will look stunning! I love the cotten candy idea, I tease my younger brother all the time and act like I'm going to bite his hair because it just so fluffy!The thinks it's hilarious when I do for some reason, so it's always nice to see him smile. He made fun of me for matching my cat when my hair was black and white, but that was a complement to me, since I love my baby and she is just so pretty! I don't know how my cat manages to look so royal and proper sometimes, she is just so photogenic! I could gust about her for hours, but that would be weird I guess? When an animal saves your life you kind of grow emotionally attached and appreciative to them, but boy does she eatup the attention lol.
My day was eh, I still live with my dad and he can be so hurtful to be around, but I'm saving up to move out! And I'll have my own house soon. Wow I'm whining a lot, sorry about that dearest. I guess when you bottle stuff like this up you can't really stop the word vomit from coming out even if you are writing it and can ease it. Eh, if it bothers you, please let me know so I can stop <3 how was your day? I hope it was well and you are taking care of yourself! You are important, and should treat yourself every now and then. I love and care for you as well my dear 💛🍯<3
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balancemelting · 3 years
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Candlenights Exchange
Happy Candlenights to @alf-art​ and @thecandlenightszone 
Davenport/Lucretia was requested so I did some light fluff. I hope you like it!
     This cycle was peaceful, they managed to find the Light within days of it falling. With the survival of this world secure, they were able to freely explore and enjoy this world to its full extent. Lucretia had just ended a day in the city nearest to where the Starblaster was posted, she entered the ship and pulled out her journal. Not even at a table yet and already excited to write all that she experienced. Everyone else had gone out to explore the city and she was usually the first to head in so she was fully expecting to be alone on the ship. Since it was such a beautiful night, she decided it would be nice to do her writing on the deck. As she approached, she was shocked to find that someone else had gotten to the ship before her.      Davenport was standing at the helm, holding the wheel in his hand. Lucretia could tell right away that something was wrong. Over seventy years with someone makes you intimately familiar with all of their subtle cues and little quirks. Davenport was their captain, their pilot, and he looked at home holding the wheel of the Starblaster. Even when making evasive maneuvers during dangerous situations, there was still that spark of excitement. The only time she saw that comfort gone was when they were all running from the Hunger, wondering if this would be the last cycle. Here he was standing with his back too straight and his knuckles white with how tightly he was gripping the wheel.      He didn’t seem to notice Lucretia’s arrival, he was focused on muttering something under his breath. She approached him cautiously, glancing around to see any sign of a threat. As she got closer, she was able to make out some of his words. Lucretia had read every book on the Starblaster and had even memorized some of the ones that had been here for long enough, so she recognized that Davenport was repeating the steps listed in the instruction booklet on how to fly the Starblsater. He had been insisting that the rest of the IPRE should learn how to fly the ship, ever since the first time he died.      Lucretia wasn’t sure what to do, she had seen Barry do something similar before, but he usually needed someone to work through his thoughts with. Something told her that helping Davenport go over the flight instructions wouldn’t help whatever this was. Then he shifted, his shoulders slumped and gave one gentle shake and she realized that he was trying not to cry. After they had first realized that their short mission was going to be extended into the unforeseeable future, certain formalities were dropped. One of the first ones being that they started taking their meetings in the kitchen while the twins danced around each other to cook. Other formalities remained, such as they all still looked to Davenport as their captain, still followed his orders to a degree. She had seen each member of the crew cry at one point, with all that they have gone through it was understandable. She had even cried, messily in front of the entire crew after a particularly stressful cycle.      She realized that she had never seen Davenport cry, she had never even heard the other members mention seeing him cry, or yell, or anything. He was always their strong and calm captain. Lucretia felt as if she were intruding on an intimate moment and it was rude to not let her presence be known so she cleared her throat gently. As expected, he had clearly not known she was there and jumped before wiping his eyes quickly and spinning on his heel to face her, “Lucretia, you’re back early.” His voice was clear and strong and she would have thought that everything was fine if she had not seen him just moments before.      “Yes, I wanted to write down some of the things I saw today. I was actually going to go to the kitchen and make some hot chocolate while I worked. Would you like some?” They both knew that she had seen him earlier, it was clear that she was willing to not bring it up. She was also offering him comfort if he would like it.      Davenport’s shoulders relaxed and he even let out a little sigh as if he was releasing the stress from before, “You know, I think I would love that.” He released the wheel and moved to Lucretia’s side to head back towards the kitchen, “Do we even have the ingredients for hot chocolate?”      She turned to smile at him, “Taako found some in the city yesterday. He got enough to get us through the next three cycles.”      Her captain laughed, “Well then he won’t notice if two servings are missing.”      The kitchen was dark and Lucretia cast a quick spell to light the place before searching for the special hot chocolate. Taako tended to stash supplies when he thought they were good enough, but Lucretia had learned long ago where he hid them. She pulled out the powder and began prepping. Davenport sat in his usual spot at the table and watched her silently work.      “Do you remember Cycle 27?” The question was sudden and Lucretia jumped a little at her captain’s voice.      “The one with the feral grass?” She remembered that one, Magnus took it as a challenge and rushed into the tall grass every morning while Merle begged him to go easy on them.      Davenport laughed, “Alright, it wasn’t the nicest cycle, but do you remember the meteor showers?”      How could she forget? She had watched her fair share of meteor showers in the past, watched the white lights streak across the sky and sparkle in a way that was always breathtaking. In Cycle 27, there were lights of every color and instead of just shooting a straight line through the sky, they twisted and twirled around each other like they were dancing. It had been so beautiful she found tears rising to her eyes the first time she saw it. Her sketches never did it justice. “Yes, I remember them.” She practically whispered and moved to sit next to him while the hot chocolate heated.      He leaned in with a conspiratorial smile on his face, “Did you know they actually fell?” He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a deep blue gem the size of his fist. It practically sparkled even in the dim light in the kitchen, almost as if it was giving off a little light of its own. “They aren’t rare or worth anything, just colored glass, but I loved how they looked and what it reminded me of so I collected as many as I could find. I’ve got every color you could imagine, but this is my favorite.” His voice softened, “Deep blue, reminds me of calmness, coolness, comfort.” Davenport moved to meet Lucretia’s eyes, “Reminds me of you.”      She felt her face heat up and couldn’t bring herself to look away from the intensity in his eyes. It only lasted a moment before he broke into a playful smile and bumped his shoulder with hers.      “Don’t tell the others, they would probably get sour. You all are my family, I would lie down my life any day to protect you all. It’s just nice to not be the captain sometimes and there’s something soothing about being in your presence.”      Her face didn’t cool, but she smiled back at him and stood to tend to the hot chocolate. “Well, feel free to come to me at any time. I would be honored to bring you comfort, whether that means giving you a hug, a cup of hot chocolate, or just to lend an ear.” She poured two cups and made up his just how he liked it, two marshmallows exactly.      He took a long sip and hummed in contentment, “You know, I think I might take you up on that.” Placing the cup down, he turned in his seat to face her, “Could I cash in on that hug right now?”      It seemed Lucretia’s face was going to be warm for the rest of the cycle. “Of course, yes, anytime.” She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him. He hugged back and she could feel the strength in his arms as he clung to her. She buried her face in his shoulder and whispered, “We will all get through this. I can feel it, we are almost there.” She had a plan she had been working on for a few cycles now, something that could get them out of this rut once and for all. She wasn’t going to give up on stopping the Hunger, wasn’t going to give up on a life with her family.      His grip tightened just a hair, “Y’know? I think I believe you.”
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