#stop I saw someone else say ‘this is why I can’t read fics I don’t want to see them in anymore scenarios’ I’m

[puppydoggraham]

Tiktok pisses me bad why did I just see someone say they want s4 not to see them be gay and living their best lives but so they can see Hannibal and Will get caught and then proceed to act like the shit they got up to was insane (derogatory) like THEY ARE GAY MENACES IN LOVE WHAT DO YOU EXPECT?!

“You broke out of prison, used a stolen cop car to pick up your ex bf so y’all could kill somebody. Say that out loud and you hear it to your ears right”

THAT WAS LITERALLY HIS BECOMING??? HELLO????

Can people who are not the target audience for Hannibal/do not understand it stfu forever about it and I mean that disrespectfully

#hannigram #tiktok fuckery #nbc hannibal #hannibal #someone in comments just said ‘will fully loved molly’ I beg your finest pardon? #stop I saw someone else say ‘this is why I can’t read fics I don’t want to see them in anymore scenarios’ I’m #I forgot how bad tiktok gets with Hannibal #oh dear fucking god I’m mad as fuck rn LMAO #why do people act shocked about what they get up #like do you understand what this show is #no you do not #imagine wanting them caught bitch what the fuck is going on this hwre day

[alexlwrites]

𝐑𝐞𝐝 𝐃𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐞𝐬

✿𝑷𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈: OT7 x Plus Size! Reader

✿ 𝑺𝒖𝒎𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒚: "What was so outrageous about someone like you, you asked yourself and the universe. You had tried your best to compensate for any shortcomings with everything else that was expected of you: femininity, understanding, a sense of humor. Never enough, those were never even the first thing that came to mind when people thought of you.

Why bother then? If nothing you did made any difference at all, why try? If people hated your body just for existing, why not give them a reason to hate your personality as well?"

OR  

The one where seven campus princes who are used to getting everything they wanted get enchanted by your distrust and brattiness, climbing over each other to get a smile from you who could not be bothered to give them a single second of your day.

✿ 𝑻𝒂𝒈𝒔:  Romance, Humor, Fluff, Angst, College AU

✿ 𝑨/𝑵: I wanna leave this here as sort of a trigger warning: this work features a plus size main character and throughout the story there will be mean comments from characters about her body and her journey dealing with said comments. A lot of it comes from my own experience as a plus size girl myself and my path to living peacefully within my body. And although this work is about Y/N's relationship with the boys, I like to think that she still would've continued to grow and blossom happily on her own. Let this be something you learn from this fic, as I say right on the first chapter: You don't have to love the way you look right away, you just can't let it stop you from doing the things you want and, in a greater scale, from being happy and treated with respect.

Thank you for reading <3

P.S: Red daisies, like many red flowers, represent love and romance. Florists often use them to communicate affection to someone who doesn’t know how beautiful they are—a.k.a. beauty unknown to the possessor. 

(Fanfic masterlist)

(support me on my ko-fi)

°•. ✿ .•°

𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐞: 𝐒𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭

The pattern in your relationships - if you could call them that - was tiring, to say the least. Once, they might have been soul crushing, but time and repetition took away the novelty of your pain and now the endgame was a mild, resented disappointment.

It started with kindness and a gentle smile, mainly from your part. You treated anyone who gave you any smidgen of attention with the utmost sweetness, hoping your energy would be matched. And sometimes it was, for a while. Sometimes you got to be on the receiving end of a blinding smile or a casual touch and you allowed yourself to hope - no, pray -that that could be it. That someone, some modern day knight in shiny armor , saw through your looks and decided that you were deserving of love, despite societal norms,

But men had a way of setting you up for disappointment. A talent, truly.

You were tired, you decided that night. No, beyond that, you were exhausted, scarred, bitter, hopeless, resentful… You could keep going. You could list every bad feeling you had been carrying in your chest by alphabetical order or by how badly they hurt and honestly you just wanted it to stop.

Would you have to change everything about your body to be happy, you wondered watching the boy you had been seeing for a few weeks make fun of you in front of his circle of friends at the party you were both at. Would you never be allowed to be happy just the way you were?

Would you have to change everything about your body to be happy?

“Yeah, she’s nice” Junsuu said, winking suggestively at his giggling friends “if you know what I mean.” you felt your face heat up in humiliation at the renewed round of laughter “But we just don’t match, like, physically. You know, looks-wise.”

“Right” someone agreed way too enthusiastically, sending a spear through your heart “I really just can’t see you with someone like her.”

What was so outrageous about someone like you, you asked yourself and the universe. You had tried your best to compensate for any shortcomings with everything else that was expected of you: femininity, understanding, a sense of humor. Never enough, those were never even the first thing that came to mind when people thought of you.

Why bother then? If nothing you did made any difference at all, why try? If people hated your body just for existing, why not give them a reason to hate your personality as well?

“You’re right” you said out loud, drawing attention to yourself. Filled with hatred (for him, the world, the circumstances), your heart had no room to be mortified when all eyes turned to you “we don’t match.”

You watched as Junsuu’s eyes widened, clearly not expecting you to hear, much less reply “I am a big girl” you continued, words dripping with rage “And I know for a fact that there’s nothing big about you.”

You turned around to leave the room, cringing at the petty comeback, ignoring the murmurs and Junsuu’s panicked calls of your name. Walking fast, you fled the scene of the last heartbreak you would allow yourself to go through, deciding that a change was needed, but not the change everyone wanted from  you.

Despite the rumors, you didn’t turn into a huge bitch overnight, didn’t start kicking puppies or spitting on the poor. Truly, the only thing you did was establish boundaries and reevaluate the amount of respect some people deserved, but very quickly people started seeing you as some sort of villain, especially when they realized how little you cared for how they saw you. How disrespectful of you to not allow yourself to be disrespected, right?

At first, there was still an air of uncertainty about you - years and years of non-reciprocal niceties drilled into your brain, habits hard to quit. But the more you let go of those things, these tiny acts of self-aggression disguised as pleasantries and altruism, the lighter you felt; Your days became easier to get through, existing within your body felt less and less like a punishment. You had yet to reach an Instagram-worthy level of body positivity, but you had become accustomed to body neutrality. You didn’t have to love the way you looked right away, you just couldn’t let it stop you from doing the things you wanted and, in a greater scale, from being happy and treated with respect.

And respect you started to demand and much happier you became, living in relative peace and solitude - safe by a few close friends - up until your days started being pestered by seven headaches you could not seem to shake away.

—-

Jungkook was the one that saw you first.

It was 3 weeks into the semester and he finally decided it was the perfect time to start going to classes, sitting in the back and only listening to about 25% of what was being said, mind floating towards more important subjects such as the package of ramen waiting for him at home. Only mildly interested in what the professor had to teach, he couldn’t help but to be startled when everyone started getting up from their seats to shuffle around the room. “What’s going on?” he asked the guy sitting next to him.

“Professor gave us a duo assignment.” the other man said, standing up “You're with Y/N.”

“Who?”

The guy just pointed towards you with his chin, redirecting Jungkook’s attention before leaving. You were sitting a couple rows further down, hunched over your little green IPad as you wrote something with impressive velocity. Jungkook walked over to you, already mentally going over what he would have to do to charm you into doing everything on your own “Y/N?” he called and you raised your head.

You were pretty, he noticed with satisfaction, all bright eyes and lovely features, curves everywhere he looked “Yes?”

“I’m Jungkook.” he extended his hand with a casual smirk “The professor put us together for this project.”

There had been a small, but pleasant and polite smile on your face up until he said those words, replaced by pursed lips and an arched brow. “Yes, I know. We’ve had classes together for over a year now and been partnered together before.”

Uh oh. “Right” he coughed awkwardly, fumbling under your hardened stare “so, about this project…”

“We will meet once a week,” you said, straightforward as you turned your eyes back to your sticker-filled IPad “I will go over the theme and split the work evenly, so give me your number and I can text you with what you’re supposed to do.”

“Woah, woah, asking for my number already?” he said in a flirting manner, sitting on top of your table so he could be directly in front of you.

“Would you prefer it if I emailed it to you?” you asked without looking up.

“Actually, I was thinking you could help me out a bit,” he placed his finger under your chin, raising your face towards him “you know I have soccer practice and…”

You pushed his hand away “Unless you’re playing at the World Cup, I can’t see how that would be more important than your studies, so you either do your part of the assignment or get an F in it, I don’t care. I won’t do all the work for you, Jeon. Not again.”

Again? Jungkook winced, trying to remember when you had met before. Surely he would remember getting his head bitten off by a snappy, pretty thing like you, wouldn’t he? Surely your attitude would stand out to him amongst all the sweetness and compliance he received just for existing and smiling.

“Here’s my number.” you gave him a piece of paper with your digits written in gel sparkly ink “Text me when you decide if you want to pass this class. Good day.” 

You looked down again, going back to your notes, signing that the conversation was over before he even had the chance to add anything more. He jumped off the desk and stepped away, looking back to see if you were looking at him, but there wasn’t a single glance from your part.

Shit. Shit. He actually did have to pass this class, otherwise his overbearing soccer coach would kick him off the team. He stared down at your number, wondering what he would have to do to get you to cut him a little slack and forgive him for absolutely forgetting about your existence. 

—

“Hey, this is Jungkook” the text from an unknown number said “looking forward to us working together. We should get dinner sometime, get to know each other better.”

You read over the text once more, willing your heart to slow down its beating. Sure, Jungkook was charming and handsome, but you had seen this dance before. He would talk his way into your good graces, making you laugh and giggle until you had a four thousand word essay done with both your names in it and your texts to him would go unanswered and unseen. 

This was not your first hurtful rodeo. You put your phone away, facing down, ignoring as the poor device vibrated itself off the table with the upcoming texts.

Meanwhile, across campus, Jungkook was fuming.

“Or breakfast. We should get breakfast. I know a great place.” he tried once again, but his message was left unread. Still, he persisted.

“I have a lot of great ideas for this assignment. Don’t you want to know them?” he texted, even though he didn’t have the faintest idea on what the assignment was even about.

“You know, it’s rude to leave a guy hanging.”

“How can we do this if you won’t even text me back?”

“I thought we were in this together.”

“You know, like High School Musical.”

He kept typing out absurdity after absurdity, hoping you would dignify one with an answer. He just needed one opportunity, one opening…

His text stopped going through.

“She blocked me!” he gasped out loud.

“Who?” his roommate, Taehyung asked from where he laid on their couch, feet up on the coffee table.

“This girl in my class. We have this project together and she blocked me!”

Taehyung sent a disbelieving look his way “Were you actually planning to do the work?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Obviously not.”

His friend rolled his eyes “Obviously not. So what’s your plan here?”

Jungkook didn’t answer, too busy looking for alternative ways to contact you. After a few minutes of research, he found your Instagram. You were cute, he noticed again, scrolling through your few posts, all relatively recent. You had a very specific style, a tasteful mix or dark and edgy with splashes of pink and bows, tight corsets under leather jackets that he couldn’t help but stare appreciatively, the flattering material clinging to your waist line and pushing your breasts up, exposing the soft freckled top of cleavage to his always hungry eyes. In your pictures, your eyes shone brightly, crinkling at the sides from your ever present smile and he could not understand why you hadn’t directed one of those to him. 

It was unsettling, to say the least, but he could not allow his annoyance to take over. He needed your help if he wanted to pass that class and if he had to use unconventional ways to get your attention, he would. 

And so, much like a little boy pulling at a girl’s braids, he started liking and spamming the comments of every single post you had.

—

There were whispers all around you, your worst nightmare.

You were at the school library, getting work done while drinking from your fourth cup of coffee, hands shaking due to caffeine and anxiety, your ever present friends. You tried to focus on your books and carefully written notes, but every word you could barely hear and every look you felt over your shoulder seemed to dig claws into your skin. You knew what they were saying. You heard it all the way from your dorm to your classes and couldn’t seem to escape them. 

“Did you see Jungkook’s comments on her pictures? What’s that about?”

“It’s not like there’s a lot to comment, is there?” 

“Maybe he thought it was someone else?”

“It’s probably a prank.”

“I bet he was hacked.”

Of course, why else would someone like Jungkook - a campus prince, popular soccer player, heartthrob - show interest in you? 

It hurt, but a small part of you still agreed with those mean spirited whispers. You closed your eyes, trying to even your breathing and will those thoughts away. You knew better, had learned better than to measure your value by how interested some boy was in you.

When you opened your eyes again, Jungkook was in front of you.

You barely had time to process his presence when the voices picked up volume, your skin prickling and eyes aching to remain dry. 

“What’s Jungkook doing with Fat Y/N?”

That word shouldn’t be as hurtful as it was - after all, it was just an adjective, just the current state of your body that served only to carry your thinking mind, your feeling heart. But people always said it like a curse, wielding it like a sword.

You closed your eyes again and when you opened once more, Jungkook was still there. Looking furious.

“What are they saying?”

“What they always said” you shrugged, avoiding his eyes by looking down at your papers.

Jungkook didn’t move for a while, hearing people pretend to whisper around you but it was clear that the motherfuckers wanted you to hear. Was it always like this for you, he wondered, watching as you focused on whatever book you had in front of you, hunched over with tense shoulders, your face a far cry from the luminescent one he saw on your Instagram, not a hint of that smile he wanted directed at him so unreasonably.

He couldn’t just stand there and watch you struggle to keep your posture. 

You felt him standing up and leaving more than you saw him. Good, you thought. He should leave, like everyone did, scared away by that one word that followed you around like a brand. He was probably embarrassed to be seen with you, you assumed bitterly, and there was no place in your life for people who didn’t want you proudly by your side…

Jungkook sat back in the chair in front of you and you couldn’t help but gape at the impressive bouquet of red daisies he extended towards you.

“Take it” he said, but you couldn’t move, could barely hear the furious voices around you over the roaring beat of your heart.

You… You had never gotten flowers. 

“Take it” he repeated “I almost got run over because of this, the least you can do is accept it.”

“Jungkook” you whispered, dumbfoundedly accepting the bouquet “what’s this?”

“People keep doubting I could be interested in you” he said and there was an edge to his tone you did not expect “maybe this could help clear up some rumors.”

“This is not your battle to fight” you held the flowers close to your chest carefully, looking up at him with distrust, unable to understand his motives “I’m used to this sort of thing and I don’t care about those stupid rumors.”

You were used to it? That just made Jungkook angrier. How could you be used to that sort of treatment? 

Jungkook was a lot of things - spoiled, a little lazy, sometimes a dick. But he wasn’t a bigot and he wasn’t about to stand around and let you become used to being disrespected if there was something - anything! - he could do about it “I like picking up fights”.

“Is this just pity?” you asked and he could see walls around you that stood thousands of feet tall “Is this because of that stupid assignment? Because I’m not going to do all the work just because you got me some flowers…” 

He raised his hands and smiled at you “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’ll do my work” he said, a new goal in mind as he saw you recoil from him with eyes filled with wariness like a suspicious kitten “You said once a week, right? How’s friday for you?” 

You still clung to your bouquet like a lifeline “That works, I guess.”

“Great!” he clapped loudly, standing up and catching the eye of those around him “I’ll see you around, sweetheart.”

“Don’t call me sweetheart” you mumbled, but he pretended not to hear as he crossed the table around to your side, quickly leaving a kiss to your heated cheek before you had the chance to react.

“Alright, sweetheart, I’ll see you around” he said, making sure everyone in the library could hear him “do me a favor and unblock me, ok?”

You flipped him off, both for stealing a kiss and that stupid nickname, but he just laughed it off.

“That’s my girl” he said and the library erupted in renewed whispers.

°•. ✿ .•°

𝐌𝐲 𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧! 𝐂𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐡���𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐝𝐝𝐞𝐝

°•. ✿ .•°

[Red Daisies taglist: @purplelady85 ]

[Permanent taglist: @imknewattis ; @dreamamubarak ; @onlythebest-106 ; @betysotelo18 ; @havetaeminforbreakfast ; @uno7 ; @chimchimmarie ; @anaya123world ; @junecat18 ; @kayleefriedchicken ; @jkselcouth ; @ivrose21 ; @svnbangtansworld ]

#bts fanfic #bts x reader #bts #jungkook x reader #alexl red daisies #ot7 x reader #ot7 x you #bts x y/n #kim taehyung x reader #park jimin x reader #kim namjoon x reader #jung hoseok x reader #min yoongi x reader #kim seokjin x reader #ot7 fluff #bts romance #bts college au

[its-time-to-write]

I saw you asked for requests a few days ago. I was wondering if you would consider doing another part of the Kent!reader x Jamie fics.

I was thinking they do end up pregnant and its them telling everyone they’re pregnant . I can see everyone being so excited for them. And then Roy is just freaking out.

Since they’ve already discussed wanting to be together forever and have kids I can also see them deciding to get married before the baby is born in a small ceremony like Beard had.

I have quite a few requests about Jamie x reader having a kid, so if that ain’t your jam, maybe don’t read my next few posts😂 It’s totally my jam tho, maybe bc I’m suffering from baby fever again. thanks for requesting and for your patience!!

let’s fall in love for the night  

Jamie’s jiggling his leg up and down so fast that you’re surprised he hasn’t cramped yet. 

“Calm down,” you hiss, hand on his knee. 

“Can’t,” he whispers back. “Roy’s gonna fucking kill me.”  

You have no sympathy for him. “Yeah, and whose fault is that? Yours.”

Jamie shoots you a sideways glance. “Excuse me, this was a team effort.”

“Whatever,” you say. “I still say it’s your fault.”

Molly swoops by to refill your water glasses. “Dinner’s ready in a few minutes. Roy and Phoebe have been working very hard,” she says. 

She raises her eyebrows on the word very, and you’re sure that Roy’s patience is being pushed to his limits. He loves cooking and refuses to let anyone help him, but he also loves your niece and can’t deny her anything she wants. 

“Better go check on them,” she says, leaving you and Jamie alone again in the backyard. 

Jamie resumes the previous conversation and says, “Well, I wasn’t the one wearing that blue thing with the flowers.”

“Well obviously,” you shoot back, “it wouldn’t even fit you.”

Jamie’s stopped jiggling his leg and he places his hand on top of yours. “Oi. Has Roy ever actually killed anyone before, or does he just have serial killer eyebrows?”

You wrinkle your nose and ask, “Why the fuck would I know?”

“You’re his sister,” Jamie replies in Phoebe’s patented duh tone. 

“I’m his baby sister,” you say. “I’m even younger than Molly. If he’s killed someone, they’ve both conspired to make sure I’ll never find out. And hey, don’t make fun of the eyebrows. There’s a good chance this baby’s gonna end up with them.”

“Babe you don’t have ‘em,” Jamie points out. 

“I wax,” you say smugly. “Oh, Molly texted. Time to go inside.”

Jamie groans but lets you lead him to the table. 

—

All told, Phoebe didn’t do half bad. 

“Auntie, I did the potatoes all by myself,” she says. 

You look to Roy for confirmation. He grunts and gives a tiny nod. 

“Great job, Phoebs,” you say. 

Molly sets down her fork. “I’ve been thinking of changing my name back to ‘Kent,’” she says. 

“Brill,” says Jamie. 

“Fucking finally,” Roy says as he hands Phoebe some money. “For future words,” he mouths to her as she counts it before depositing what you’re pretty sure is 20 quid into her pocket. 

Molly says, “We’ll all be the Kents again,” and you can feel Jamie go stiff next to you.

“The fuck’s wrong with you?” Roy asks, and you turn to see Jamie’s gone completely pale. 

You pinch his thigh and he jumps. “Nothing,” he says hurriedly. “Well, not nothing. But, I dunno, don’t want to overshadow Molls’s good news, ya know? It ain’t important.”

You pinch him again. 

“Ok, it’s actually a little fucking important (sorry Phoebe, take it from Roy). But um, maybe you could help me babe?”

He shoots you a pleading look so you take pity on him. You’ve had more than twenty years dealing with Roy, so you’ll let Jamie slide this once.

“Right, so, we’ve been meaning to tell you- I’m having a baby,” you blurt out. 

Roy’s dinner roll gets crushed in his hand as his face goes bright red. 

“What,” he growls, and you’re not sure if you’re more terrified by the absence of “fuck”s or the fact that it was a statement, not a question. 

“That’s wonderful, love!” Molly says before Roy can say anything else. She’s not looking at him but you can practically feel him take psychic damage from the shut up and be happy you prick, message she’s sure to be telepathically sending him. 

“It’s Jamie’s, right?” she continues, taking a bite of salad. 

“The fuck kind of question is that?” you ask indignantly. “Who else’s would it be?”

“You don’t have to pay me for that one,” Phoebe pipes up. “I’ll give you a free tab of one hundred words because of the baby. If it’s a girl, you can have fifty more.”

You grin. “Sounds like a plan.”

“You’re probably going to owe her the fifty, Phoebs,” Molly says. She points to Jamie with her fork. “I mean, look at him. He practically screams ‘girl dad.’” 

“That’s- fucking- great,” Roy garbles out. “‘Scuse me.”

“We’re having a backyard wedding next Saturday, too,” you call after him. “So we probably won’t all be the Kents again.”

You wince as he slams a door from somewhere in the house. 

“He’ll come ‘round,” Molly says consolingly. “Remember how he was with Phoebe? And I was already married!”

You grip Jamie’s hand. “Molls, why can’t he just emote like a regular person? I mean honestly, did our parents fuck him up that bad?”

Molly raises a shoulder in a half shrug. “I don’t know, babe. Think he’s just like us, really, afraid of loving something so he just pushes it all away. And besides, you’re the baby of the family. We’ve always tried to protect you and keep you safe, and sometimes he feels like you’re out of reach.”

You ask, “He told you that?” and Molly just laughs. 

“Not in so many words,” she replies. “But you know how he is.”

“He’s an arsehole,” you grumble. “I’m going to go talk to him.

—

Roy is, predictably, in the backyard. Not many places for him to go and think properly. 

You find him sitting under the tree. 

“Oi,” you say, “budge over.”

He grunts and moves so you’re not quite in the dirt. 

“Can you be sitting on the ground?” he asks. 

“It’s been like three months,” you reply, “That isn’t long enough for me to get stuck places.”

Roy says, “hmm,” but doesn’t offer up anything else so you just sit in silence next to him, pressing your shoulder to his. 

“Why the fuck did it have to be Tartt?” he asks after a beat. “Could’ve been fucking anyone in the fucking world, and you fucking chose him.”

“You like Jamie,” you say in confusion. 

“I don’t,” Roy replies, “he’s a prick. And a fucking footballer. Why’d you have to go for a fucking good-for-nothing footballer? He can’t even be around for his family when they go through shit because he’s going to be busy scoring fucking meaningless goals or some shit.”

That stings for a moment, but you take a good look at Roy’s face. It’s stoic, but shit if you can’t read it like a book. Blood is blood, and you’re a Kent just like him. 

“This isn’t about him, is it. It’s about you. You think you did a shit job as a brother and an uncle so Jamie’s going to be a shit father.”

“I missed out on a lot,” Roy says hoarsely. “And before you say fucking shit, I’m not fucking crying. So shut the fuck about it.”

You grin and wrap your arms around him. “You’re the best big brother a girl could ask for. Took all my cues from you. And anyway, you’ve been there when it counts. Phoebe fucking adores you, practically attached at the hip you two. And yeah, Molls and I missed you when you were at Sunderland and Chelsea and wherever. But… you came back. We needed you, and you came back. So don’t go projecting your stupid self-image on Jamie, because he’s not like that. And you’re not either, you absolute fucking ape-armed frizzy-haired shit-faced twat.”

Roy huffs out a chuckle. “Ape-arms. Haven’t heard that one in a while.”

“Almost went with ‘camel knees.’ Haven’t used that since I was ten, but I thought it might hit too close to home these days.”

Roy laughs for real this time and tilts his head so it’s resting on yours. “Still fucking weird that my little sister’s having a kid.”

You say, “You’ll get over it. Oh, and don’t wear a goddamn T-shirt on Saturday.”

—

It’s rainy, so the backyard wedding becomes a living room wedding, because who really gives a shit? Richmond have a game tomorrow, but for today they’re in yours and Jamie’s house all dressed up (but still in trainers) laughing and smiling as Dani officiates what you’re sure is your dream wedding. 

It’s not the one you and Molly would’ve giggled about as kids when you sneaked from your bed into hers, but everyone you loves is here. 

For once, Jamie’s house almost seems too small.  

(Dani was the only person you two knew who was ordained or whatever. And hey, could you have picked a happier person for it?)

Molly and Keeley had gone out with you to find a white dress, Sam and Phoebe were the flower-people, and Roy walked you down the stairs to where Jamie was standing with Isaac by his side. 

“I’m not fucking crying,” Roy whispers in your ear. “It’s fucking allergies from being in this prick’s house for too long.”

“It’s my house too,” you remind him. 

Roy just sniffs, pats your hand where it’s tucked into his arm, and presses a kiss to your cheek.

All in all, it was pretty great. 

Gifts range from hair products to restaurant gift cards to designer baby clothes, including a tie-dyed onesie from Phoebe. 

“I have a matching one at home,” she explains. 

But now it’s the evening and everyone is gone except family. 

“Can’t believe my baby’s married,” says a beaming Georgie as she ruffles Jamie’s hair from their place on the couch.

“Can’t believe he attained his childhood goal of marrying into the Kent family,” Molly remarks. 

Jamie grins smugly. “What can I say, I’m a fucking goal-getter.”

You’re snuggled in Jamie’s arms, dress exchanged for a white sweatshirt and sweatpants set, courtesy of Rebecca. 

“I’d’ve had a poster of you on me wall if they made one, babe,” Jamie says. “Better sight than that hairy git.”

Roy just rolls his eyes and says “I’m getting another beer.”

“Can you bring me a piece of cake?” you call after him.

“Me too?” Phoebe asks, looking hopefully at Molly. 

Jamie pats your knee. “Don’t think he heard you, love. I’ll get it for ya. You too, Phoebs.” He shoots a wink in her direction, and she giggles. 

“Oi, grandad,” Jamie says, walking into the kitchen. “Did you hear your sister?”

Roy turns around from the fridge with a menacing look.  

“If she has a single moment of unhappiness, I’m going to fucking kill you,” he growls.

“Jesus, sorry,” Jamie says, hands in the air. “What’s got your knickers all in a twist?”

Fucking Jamie, never able to back down from a good squabble with Roy. 

They’re both keeping their voices down because they know if they got caught, no less than three people would be grabbing them by the ear and yelling. 

They might know this from personal experience. 

Roy says, “She’s my little sister. I’d fucking murder for her, and so would Molly. Always tried to make it easier for her when she missed our parents and shit, but it always fucking got to her anyway. Didn’t help that I fucked off to Sunderland at fucking nine, before she was even fucking born. She’s wanted a family of her own for fucking ages, and if you fuck this up for her they will never. Find. Your body.”

Jamie’s not sure Roy’s ever looked this menacing, which is saying something, because he’s Roy fucking Kent. He always looks menacing. 

So he nods and says quietly, “I ain’t gonna fuck it up, Coach. Had a shit dad too. Always wished he were around, except when he was then he’d get all fuckin’ angry and shit. But… still wanted him, y’know? Weird. Anyway, not gonna be like that with her. I want a family too.”

Roy looks straight into his eyes, looking for the barest hint of insincerity. Jamie’s gaze doesn’t waver. He’s not sure of much, but he’s sure of this. He’s sure of you. 

Roy says, “Right,” nods once, then claps Jamie on the shoulder right at his phone dings. 

Jamie pulls out his phone to a text from you that reads, pls stop fangirling over my brother. baby wants cake and so does ur mum

He smiles and tries to figure out how to balance three plates at once. 

#jamie tartt x reader #jamie tartt fanfiction #jamie tartt imagine #jamie tartt x y/n #jamie tartt x you #jamie tartt #ted lasso

[gh0stsp1d3r]

Omg I love all your fics and was wondering if I could request a wonka x reader where she is Mrs. Scrubitts child and she secretly takes care of noodle and she falls hard for Willy and try’s to stop him from signing the contract.

Entranced

MASTERLIST

taglist: @kpopgirlbtssvt

I love thissss! Readers adopted, I did kinda change it so that they had some more chemistry ): Might make a part 2, if anyone wants one

You watched from behind the counter, along with Noodle. You both peered through and looked at the new man coming in.

He was attractive, and he spoke with a smile on his face. You both were crouched down, out of sight from your adoptive mother.

Noodle looked to you knowingly.

Scrubitt opened the door up, yelling “Get the man some gin.” She said sharply, you quickly stumbled and stood up, going as quick as possible. Willy watched, feeling bad at the treatment you seemed to be getting. Noodle followed as you got a cup.

You looked down as you handed it to him.

“Thank you.” He looked at you, his eyes with something you couldn’t quite place. You looked up and then walked into the back again.

Noodle looked at you, you looked down at her and you both crouched down again, looking out.

He soon was about to sign when you mouthed the words. “Read the small print.”

“What?” He whispered, leaning in and glancing at Ms. scrubitt.

“Don’t sign it!” You mouthed.

Ms. Scrubitt cut you off, closing it and laughing nervously.

He looked back at the paper, and unfolded it.

He looked back to where you once were.

“Y/n, and noodle. Adopted them both.” She explained. “Lil troublemakers.” She laughed nervously again.

“Go.” You told Noodle, already knowing your fate.

“I’m not gonna leave you-“

“Go, noodle.” You whispered again, she sighed and ran away, you stood up and waited. Bleacher came bursting through the door, grabbing your arm roughly.

"I question why she adopted you." He grumbled out, along with some other insults. He threw you onto the floor, you looked up at him and he sneered at you before shutting the door on your face, locking you away.

---------------------------—————————

“Room service.” Noodle said, knocking on the door.

“Told you not to sign. Should’ve read the print.” You said from behind her. He was staring out at the window, then turned to you both, a small smile.

“Slight problem with that.”

“You can’t read, can you?” Noodle said from besides you.

“I focus my studies almost exclusively on chocolate. I had nowhere to stay, I was going to freeze out there.”

“It’s okay. I know what you mean.” You nodded at him with an understanding smile.

“For everything else, I’ve relied on the kindness of strangers.” He said, smiling back. And he knows he just met you, but he found himself entranced by your smile. And you wouldn't admit it, but you have felt attracted to the man since you saw him yesterday.

“Look where that’s got you.” Noodle said. “The staff quarters.” She said, referring to the room.

“Least you’ve got a bed.” You said, and he was going to sit down on it. The old bed collapsed the second he got onto it. His eyes widened in shock.

“You had a bed. Happen’s to all of them. I’ll get someone to fix it tomorrow.” You waved it off.

“Desk, and a wash basin/toilet. The water comes in two temperatures, cold and colder.” Noodle continued, pouring the colder water into the cup.

“How much do you owe them?” You asked the man.

“Ten thousand.”

“Count yourself lucky. I owe 30.” Noodle said again.

He looked to you, his face in shock at the amount.

“50.”

“What?! How do you owe them money? I thought they found you down a laundry chute. And I thought they adopted you.” He looked to Noodle and back at you.

“Oh, they did. Took me in out of the goodness of their hearts, and charged me for the privilege.” She said.

He looked to you now, interested in your story.

“The hag adopted me but when I grew up, they said that they had regretted it. Charged me 50,000 saying how I had caused too much trouble. I get one sovereign a day, and to pay it off I would have to work for.. roughly 137 years.”

“What a pair of monsters.” He said, arms folded as he leaned against the wall now.

“The greedy beat the needy everytime, Mr. Wonka.” You started, with a shrug as you picked the pail up, carrying it and beginning to leave the room.

“Guess it’s just the way of the world.” Noodle said, finishing your sentence.

“Oh come on. That’s just your orphan syndrome talking.”

You both turned back now, you furrowed your eyebrows.

“Our what?” You both said in unison.

“Your orphan syndrome. And we are not gonna be eating any slops.” He dumped the food away.

“What are you doing?” Noodle asked him, you both entered the room again.

“I’m making chocolate of course. How do you like it? Dark? White? Nutty? Absolutely insane?” He tilted his head to the side.

You shrugged, “We’ve never had it.” You had a small smile on your face as you looked back at the man, he was intriguing. He was handsome, and he had a smile that you felt was the best you’ve ever seen.

“you’veneverhadchocolate?” He said quickly, you couldn’t quite understand what he said. “You‘ve never had chocolate?”

“No…” Noodle and you said.

“What?!” He exclaimed loudly, “You’ve never had chocolate?!”

“Still no.”

“Well, this is unbelievable. This is outrageous.” He mumbled to himself, opening up the wooden box.

“Well lucky for you, Y/n, Noodle, I have a selection of the worlds finest ingredients right here in my travel factory.”

He got to work soon and made 2 different chocolates. While working, he explained how he started his business, how important his mom had been to him.

"She sounded like an amazing woman." You said, offering him a smile. Your smile comforted him.

Noodles was a cloud with a lightning bolt, yours was a heart-shaped one. You smiled at it, and he smiled back as he watched you both bite into it. You watched Noodle, but her smile disappeared.

“I wish you hadn’t done that.” She said, you quirked an eyebrow. You thought it was amazing.

“You didn’t like it?”

“No, I like it. It’s just…” you could tell she was hesitating to say something.

“Now each day I don’t have chocolate will be a little harder.”

You frowned at her, if you knew she had liked it before you would’ve saved up all the money in the world to buy it for her. Willy opened his mouth to speak but you spoke faster.

“I think I have a few sovereigns saved. Next time we go out, I will buy you as much as you want.” You said to her, a smile on your face she looked up at you.

“You already waste all your money on me.” She said, she already felt terrible about it. You did more for her than anyone else had ever.

“No need to.” Willy interrupted, you both turned to him now.

“How would you both like to have all the chocolate you can eat, all day, every day, for the rest of your life?”

“A lifetime supply?” Noodle asked.

“A lifetime supply.”

“What do we have to do?” She asked.

“Not much… just get me out of here.”

Noodle stood up, you remained seated and furrowed your eyebrows. How would you do that?

“Are you crazy?” She said loudly.

“Sh, sh, it’s easy. I’ll get someone to cover my shift, and y/n, you could smuggle me out of your laundry cart.”

You thought about it, and it wasn’t a terrible idea. You both looked at each other for a moment, then he turned back to Noodle when she began to protest.

“Just for a few hours, mind. No one will even know I was gone.”

“What’s the point in that?”

“To sell chocolate, of course! We’ll split the profits and pay off Mrs. Scrubitt in no time.”

“It’s a nice idea, Willy.” You started, he began to walk away to the window again.

“It’s a great idea.” He corrected.

“It is. But, it’ll never work. It would take forever to pay off all three debts. That’s 90,000 sovereigns.”

“It will work. I promise. Even if it does take a while. Eat your chocolate,” he said the last sentence to Noodle.

“And Mrs. Scrubbitts like a hawk. She keeps her beady eye on everything that comes out the wash house except…”

“There was that one time the aristocratic came and she was all over the poor man.” You said, they both turned to you.

“All we have to do is find an aristocrat and slip out while she’s distracted.”

“Where would we even find an aristocrat..?”

He also ate a piece of chocolate, and the lightbulb going off. Literally and metaphorically.

"Huh." he said.

"Huh?

"Huh."

"A double huh."

He turned back both of you now.

"Do you have a pencil and paper?"

"Yes, why?" you asked him

"I have an idea."

#willy wonka x you #wonka movie #wonka #wonka x reader #timothee x reader #timothee fanfic #timothee chalamet x reader #timothee chamalet #timothée chalamet #willy wonka x reader #wonka 2023 #willy wonka

[livyjh]

Helloooo don't know if you take submissions but I saw in one of your fics you mentioned the use of a safe word with Joel Miller (was it you? Might've been someone else) and it got me thinking what if reader needed to use it? Maybe Joel's a bit too rough, maybe he accidentally says or does something that triggers reader and they need looked after? They just need Joel's presence to sooth them because whatever else Joel may be, he's ultimately a care taker. Soz I'm a big sucker for aftercare.

Hi, anon! 🥰 It was not me that wrote a safe word fic but I do think I know which one you’re talking about. Tho I’m sure there’s more than one with a safe word. Anywaaaays I wrote this, focusing on aftercare. ❤️ Joel is honestly just a big teddy bear at the end of the day.

Aftercare

Joel Miller x Reader

Rating: EXPLICIT 18+

Word count: ~740

Summary: Joel comes home angry one day and gets carried away, making you need to use your safe word because he got too rough.

A/N: Also I don’t know if the safe word I chose was the same as the other fic. I apologize if it was! Not trying to copy but I can’t find the original fic I read to double check.

Warnings: dub!con penetration (kinda?), use of a safe word to make things stop, rough sex, no prep or lube, choking, derogative terms used towards reader. (Let me know if I missed something)

Joel Miller Masterlist

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Joel had a shitty day.

So here you were, sucking his cock to try and help him feel better. It was the first of many things you were going to try to please him.

When he’s in a mood he likes to get rough with you. And you don’t mind it, most times. That’s why you have a safe word. So you can stop him whenever you’re not feeling it instead of having to shyly explain to him why you’d like to stop.

He’s sat on the edge of the bed, naked, with you, also naked, on your knees on the floor in front of him. Both his hands are fisted in your hair, pulling and pushing your head up and down on his dick.

Your hands are braced on his upper thighs and you can feel tears in your eyes with the way you keep choking on his thick cock.

He pulls your head off and drags you up by your hair to get on top of him, straddling his lap. It hurt but it also made you that much wetter.

“Look so good chokin’ on me. My little slut.” He lines himself up and pulls you down by the shoulders to slam down onto his member.

It was pretty painful, him going in without any prep or even extra lube besides what your body had produced. But he got home all of ten minutes ago and you weren’t quite all the way warmed up yet.

“Jesus, Joel-“ you gasped in pain and pleasure, fingertips digging into his shoulders so you could ground yourself.

“Uh-uh.” He reaches up and grabs you by the throat. “Who am I?”

“S- sir. Sorry, sir.” You squeak out, his cock slowly dragging out of you just to quickly thrust back in. “Fuck!” Your nails start to dig into his skin.

“Bet you love me takin’ you like this, huh, baby?” His dick twitches before he starts slamming up into you with what felt like all the force he could muster.

You can only manage a small whine in response.

He grabs you roughly by the jaw, fingertips poking your cheeks, making you look at him. “Answer me, fucking whore.”

“Te-“ you start, having a hard time forming words with the way he’s fucking you. “Texas-!” You choke out.

Joel stops immediately and pulls you up so that his cock falls out of you. He sits you back down in his lap comfortably before both his hands move to hold your face gently. “Honey? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I got carried away.” He shakes his head.

“It’s ok-“ you start.

“No. S’not okay.” He shakes his head once more. You sniffle, tears threatening to force their way out. He kisses you softly, so fucking softly.

“Come on.” He reaches down to the backs of your thighs to support you as he stands up and walks around to the side of the bed to lay you down and crawl under the covers with you.

You squeeze your eyes shut and a tear rolls down your cheek. You and Joel are facing each other, he leans in to kiss the tear from your face.

His arm is wrapped around your waist, thumb moving gently back and forth over your rib cage. “Baby, I’m sorry.” He kisses your other cheek now.

You sniff again and wipe at your eyes. “I forgive you.”

“You don’t have to.” He reasons.

“I know.” You give a weak smile.

“What was it? Just so I know not to do it next time.” He raises a brow.

You swallow thickly. “I don’t… it wasn’t anything specific. It all just felt like too much today. Maybe another time-“

“No, no. I gotta treat you better, sweet girl.” He kisses your lips softly. “You tell me when you want me to get rougher. From now on. If that’s okay with you.”

You smile wide now, kissing him again, deeper this time. “Yes, that’s okay with me.” You hum softly.

“Alright.” He takes a breath. “Now, darlin’, do you just want me here with you, or can I get up and make you some food after drawin’ you a bath?”

“I just want to be here with you right now.” You blink your soft eyes at him. “We can do all that later.”

He smiles at you and kisses your lips again before pulling you into his chest, resting his chin on top of your head. “Alright.”

#fanfic #fanfiction #smut #pedro pascal #imagine #joel miller #TLOU #TLOU hbo #the last of us #the last of us hbo #joel miller x you #joel the last of us #joel miller x y/n #joel miller x reader #joel miller smut #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller fluff #joel miller fic #aftercare #livyjh #rough!Joel Miller #rough smut #yes sir #joel x reader #joel tlou

[hobisstar]

What are you hiding from love?| Yandere!Jk x Reader

Summary: Being in a relationship with Jungkook you’ve always noticed the signs, the red flags if you will. Being so in love with him you ignored them, until the people you loved dearly started disappearing one by one.

Warnings: Murder, Jungkook victim blaming ( like he will say i killed you because you are too stupid or whatever), Possessiveness, Mentions of Smut, Controlling, Locking up YN.

Taglist: vante 🫶🏾

A/N: This is made to be scary! That is all. I honestly dont like mixing smut with yandere because i read yandere fics to be spooked not horny lol.

5 years,

5 long years, of nothing but love and trust but more than that. Of course honesty, right?

Well on yn’s end there was definitely honesty. Jungkook’s? Not so much. You see there is this dark secret that jungkook has been hiding since they met 6 years ago…

It’s so deadly that it could possibly end their relationship if she found out about it.

She was so beautiful, so calm and gentle with him, he loved that side of her. Hes never seen her angry, sad, or even hurt. He never wants to see that side of her.

Jungkook doesn’t want to be the reason he sees that side of her.

Like now, There are siting on their shared bed, in their shared bedroom, in their shared apartment. Telling the truth, would risk him loosing all of this. He cant have that.

Jungkook looked at her then smiled, “ You are so beautiful you know?” He smiled, kissing the top of her head. YN blushed lightly staring up at him.

YN was quite literally everyone’s dream girl. Maybe that was the problem to Jungkook.

She was too good to everyone including himself and he hated. He knows she has a bad side but he never gets to see it so when he knows someone else gets to experience that mean side of her, he’s instantly jealous.

Who got his baby so pissed that she called you a dumb cunt? A fucking bitch? Who dares piss off his queen?

He will deal with them, with torture. Slow, painful, evil, demented, twisted death.

That was the other side of him he need to never be shown to his lover. It scared him that in any means possible she found out about his… hobby.

Nevertheless, Jungkook admires yn. How she can keep it together in every situation. Worships her to be exact.

“Stop calling be beautiful and get ready for work, handsome.” Yn responded while patting his back.

Right, work. Besides his hobby, he works at a flower shop while yn works at a cafe during the weekend. It’s enough to keep food on their table, to the rent, gas but also enough for simply living. Jungkook owns the flower shop so, he makes a whole lot of money.

There are so many things that yn doesn’t know about Jungkooks basically second life. How deadly it is.

jk: I miss you, baby~

I hate this fucking job

What are you doing?

Is bam stilling your attention from my text?

Babbbbbbbbyyyyy

yn

yn

yn

yn answer the phone

yn: sorry baby! I was feeding bam and fixing me something to eat!

I left my phone in the bathroom

yn: j, you just got to work babes 🤨, how do you miss me already?

You didn’t even clock in yet SILLY!

jk: I can’t miss you now?

Since when did you feel like that?

yn: Jeon I never once said you couldn’t, don’t say that.

jk: but you where implying that…

yn: Jeon Jungkook, clock in, put your phone down, see you when you get home 😕🩷

jk: smh, why that face? Why that reply?

He waited for a reply but he never received one, instead he heard someone clear his throat. He looked up and saw it was a woman probably in her 30s, staring at him like he was a snack.

“Hi! JK right? I came in here a few days ago looking for some flowers for my sisters birthday! I doubt you remember me but I want to come back to get some for myself!” The lady bit her lip and looked Jungkook up then down and Jungkook thought he could be sick.

He forced a half smile, “ Yeah yeah, I don’t remember you. You can get them for yourself, I don’t remember the flower you got last time.” He looked back down at the book he was original decorating with different flower pictures but got bored so he texted his lover.

“oh.. I was hoping you could pick them for me, fresh ones. I know you all do that-,” “ we do but not this early.” He interrupted still looking down, knowing he is hurting the poor woman’s feelings for not even recognizing her or remembering the flower or even falling for her shitty attempt to flirt.

“Okay, ah well I’ll go grab them and pay for them.” She said waiting for a respond or even a nod but she didn’t even get that. She walked over there and grabbed them then returning to the register. While she put her things on the counter, she saw a glimpse of Jungkooks Lock Screen which so happens to be a picture of yn and bam sleeping on the couch. “ Your sister?” She asked, hoping she was right. “ My wife actually and our son.” He scanned the flowers and roughly wrapped them. Roses, it’s be sad if he left a thorn on them. He turned around and slightly cut the stem but enough to keep the thorn nice and sharp.

Jungkook turned back around and handed them to her. As soon as the woman grabbed them she gasped, in pain he assumed. He pretended to be concerned but when he saw the palm of her hand leaking red liquid, he smiled on inside.

“ Oh! Im so sorry! I thought I got all the thorns, out…” he looked up at her then saying “ I guess one snuck away.” giving her the most creepiest blank face the woman has ever seen. She then realized he left the thorn on on purpose. He even sharpened it. “ I can fix that for you-,” “ No! I-It’s fine! Thank you so much! See you!” She some what screamed and hurried out the store frightened.

“ too bad..” Jungkook mumbled and chuckled continuing to put pictures in the decorating book.

“Bam! You just keep growing!” Yn said as she walked into the kitchen smiling while seeing him staring at the spare room. It’s Jungkooks office. “ What’s the matter? You know your dad doesn’t like you going in there.Not even me.” She stooped to his level and petted his back but only received a whimper in return.

Yn stared at the door. It’s taunting her with its unlocked door handle. She looked at the time, it was only 5 pm, Jungkook wouldn’t be home for a few more hours.

“ A peak wouldn’t hurt us right?” Looking at Bam and he barked as if he understood her.

Yn stood up and opened the door walking in. It was a nice little tidy office.

It would be comforting even if it wasn’t so cold. She has to remember to turn on the air for this room once exiting.

She turned around seeing if Bam followed her inside but he was at his bowl slurping up some water.

Looking at the closet door she opened it up and turned on the light. “since when did he make this a dark room?” The red light was a little hard to see in but her eyes soon adjusted quickly.

Spooky wasn’t the feeling that she was feeling but more so unsettled. Yn looked at the photos on the table and quite literally almost vomited.

“ what… what is that?” Stammering as her eyes scanned over the photos laid out on the table.

Pictures of people being hurt, harmed. There were far more worse ones that she doesn’t even want to even mention. Gazing up on the line looking at the ones drying where pictures of, her.

This wouldn’t be weird if it wasn’t of her sleeping, in the shower, getting dressed, even at work.

“Did jungkook take these?… no way…”

Yn was flabbergasted,

Was her boyfriend of 5 years, a serial killer? A psychopath? A fucking weirdo? I mean she saw the signs but thought she was tripping.

Days where he would come home with blood and dirt on his hands and clothes. He would always say it was his and it came from the thorns he dealt with at work.

“yn! I’m home!” Jungkook shouted. As he walked in and smiled when he saw Bam sitting on the couch peacefully sleeping.

It’s where yn and bam usually cuddle so, where is she at?

“Did she leave you by yourself?” He asked Bam who was waking up from sleep. Walking towards the kitchen he saw dinner was made and a note on the fridge door.

“ Welcome home babes! Sorry I couldn’t be home to greet you, I went out to go get a few things but my sister called and said she wanted to have a little sibling time! Ha. Be back by 11 pm! Dinners fixed but do warm it up, then shower and get some sleep! See you later,

Love, Yn <3”

“Ah, I guess she did leave us by ourselves tonight Bam.” He chuckled and took off his jacket. He felt weird though.

Since when did her sister want to hang out so late? This is the first he ever heard of it. Pondering, he grabbed his phone and called yn’s sister.

“Hello? Jungkook?” She answered confused as ever at this late ass call. “Hey, sorry to call so late. is yn with you?” Jungkook asked but his full attention was on his office door.

“What? No she’s not. Why?” Without missing a beat Jungkook hung up the phone right after. He dialed yn’s number. What he wasn’t expecting was to hear her phone sitting right on the couch next to Bam. He watched it ring and sighed. Maybe she just went out and forgot it on accident, no need to panic.

For some reason in the back of his mind he felt as though she found out. She went into his forbidden office. Jungkook chuckled, “ she would never disobey me.” He warmed his food up then sat at the table but he couldn’t eat.

Nor could the feeling of her going in his office go away. He stood up and walked to the door and opened it.

At first he didn’t notice anything out of place until he realized it was warm in the room. He never turns the air on in this room. Jungkook looked around about to leave until something so obvious caught his eyes.

The red light illuminating on the other side of the closet door. With quick steps, he opened the door well threw it open. Nothing was touched but the light alone was a clear sign that someone was in there.

He mentally and physically cursed himself.

“ She knows, she fucking knows.” He calmly stated but boy was he heated.

“ I need to fucking find her…now.”

To be continued…

#jeon jungguk #jeon jungkook #bts #bts x reader #jk #jungkook x reader #bts jung jungkook #yandere!jungkook #jungkook ff #jungkook #jungkook yandere series

[gunilslaugh]

hello how are you doing? i like your fics so much they’re so fun to read!! ♥️ also can i please request an angst-y ot6 reaction with a fluffy ending? i was thinking of reader feeling like the member deserves someone better and they’re out of his league so they try to end things but the member finds out and reassures them 🥰 i saw this in a show and i think it would be fun to try with xh ♥️ thank you

Hello I'm doing good and hope you are too :)

All members (<3 _ <3)

Summary: Feeling like you don’t deserve Xdinary Heroes member, you try to break up with them. (idol/non-idol au)

WC:~2.6k

Warning:angsty (fluff endings though so no worries)

photo not mine credits to owner.

Gunil

There was this voice in your head that you couldn’t ignore. It grew louder whenever you were with Gunil. “He could be happier with someone else.” “He’s too good for you.” “It doesn’t make sense why he settles for someone like you.” Are things the voice would say. The worst part is you believed it. It only got worse the longer you stayed with Gunil. You couldn’t take it anymore. The feeling of weighing him down. You had to let him go, even if it hurt.

“Gunil,” you managed out.

“Yes love,” Gunil responds. You gulped. He wasn’t making this easy.

“I think we should break up,” you voiced. 

“What? No. I-I don’t think we should break up at all. Did I do something? Look whatever I did let me fix it ok? We can’t break up,” Gunil quickly rambles out, desperately reaching for your hands. 

“I don’t think that you can fix it Gunil,” you weakly tried to pull your hands from his. 

“No, no I can. Just tell me what it is,” he pleads, increasing his grip on your hands. You went silent, not being able to tell him the reason. 

“It’s for the best Gunil please. Let’s break up,” you struggled out. 

“Stop saying that! Wear not breaking up. At least not until you tell me why,” Gunil raised his voice. “Tell me why,” he voice fell soft again. He looked at you with pleading eyes. 

“I’m not good enough for you Gunil. You could be happier with someone else.” You avoided eye contact. Gunil exchanges holding your hands for holding you instead. He only holds you tighter when you meekly try to push him away. However it didn’t take long for you to relax in his hold.

“What nonsense is that? I’m the happiest when I’m with you y/n,” he tells you sincerely. 

“Don’t lie,” your voice broke. Gunil’s heart breaks at the sound of your voice. 

“I wouldn’t lie to you y/n. You make the happiest I’ve ever been and you’re way more than good enough for me. Honestly some days I wonder why you picked me,” Gunil reveals.

“How could I not pick you? You have everything,” you pulled away enough to look at Gunil.

“You’re my everything.” He looks you in your eyes. His thumbs wipe away your tears. “You’re my everything, so don’t try to leave me again,” he repeated. You nodded your head, leaning back in for another hug. Gunil gladly takes you in his arms and presses a kiss to the side of your head.

Jungsu

Jungsu was only talking to her. The two of them weren’t even close. In fact you're pretty sure she has a boyfriend of her own, but that didn’t stop you from feeling the way you did. It wasn’t jealousy though. You wished it was jealousy, but no you couldn’t stop thinking about how much better she looked with Jungsu than you did. They looked like they would make a cute couple. She seemed like everything you weren’t. She was someone Jungsu deserved. Unlike you. You really don’t get why Jungsu asked you out. Certainly whatever he saw in you could be found in someone else, probably in higher amounts too. 

“We should break up Jungsu,” you say right before entering your place. 

“B-break up? No, why?” His eyes instantly became glossy and it tugged on your heart. You couldn’t let it stop you though. This is what would be best for Jungsu. 

“We don’t work together.” You don’t work with him. 

“What are you saying? Of course we work. Why are you saying this all the sudden?” Jungsu reached out for you and painfully stepped back. 

“I know me saying this is sudden, but I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I’m sorry Jungsu.” You quickly headed inside, not letting Jungsu say another word. Your heart breaks as you hear Jungsu begging you to let him in. You have to remind yourself that it’s what’s best for him as tears fall down your face. 

Jungsu had gotten word of the real reason why you broke up with him and he could not let you continue to think so low of yourself. You had to let you know how worthy you are. He wouldn’t accept your break up on these grounds. He knocked on your door relentlessly until you let him in. 

“Why didn’t you tell me how you were feeling? This could have been avoided if you just talked to me y/n? You don’t deserve me? That ‘s the silliest thing I ever heard. You deserve me so much. I’m so lucky to have you. Our break up in invalid,” Jungsu spoke before you could tell him to leave.

“Jungsu, how can you not see how much better than me you are?” you state. 

“You’re the one who can’t see how much you are. You’re worth so much y/n seriously it kills me that you can’t see that,” he tells you. 

“But-”

“No buts. You’re mine and I���m yours. We’ll work this out together.” He hugs you the tightest he ever has.

Goan/Jiseok

It would be one thing if only you had doubts about being one who deserves Jiseok’s love, but it’s not just you. You can hear other people whisper about it along with the voices in your head. “I just don’t get why Jiseok got together with them. He could do so much better.” “How did he even meet someone like that?” “Let alone date them.” Those are the words you hear people day when they see you with Jiseok. They didn’t even try to hide it. It didn’t help that you already had some of these thoughts yourself. At first you were happy to be with Jiseok, but that quickly came tumbling down with self doubt. 

“They’re right, you know?” you tell Jiseok.

“Who’s right about what?” Jiseok asked bewildered. 

“I know you hear them. The people who whisper about me not being good enough for you. They’re right,” you explained. 

“No they are not right y/n! They’re just jealous that you’re the one dating me and not them,” Jiseok insists. 

“No, they’re right. I had the same thoughts without them even saying anything. I’m not good enough for you Jiseok. We should break up,” you say. 

“No, we are not breaking up! This is complete nonsense! What about you makes you not ‘worthy’ of me huh?” Jiseok started to lose his temper. It makes him feel so frustrated that you could think so poorly of yourself. He waited impatiently for your answer.

“Jiseok it’s just I’m…” You couldn’t formulate any actual reasons, but it didn’t change how you felt.

“You’re what?” Jiseok prompted. 

“I’m…” Again you couldn’t think of anything. 

“Amazing, pretty, kind, make me happy, make me feel loved. Your smile still sends butterflies to my stomach. Someone who I don’t want to can can’t live without. The love of my life,” Jiseok listed.

“What?” you questioned looking at him. Jiseok lets out a quasi-sigh, taking a seat beside you. He tucks a stand of hair behind your ear then lets his hand rest on your cheek.

“You couldn’t give me any reasons why you aren’t good enough for me, but I can list hundreds of reasons why you are,” he says. “So stop thinking that you aren’t good enough for me. I wouldn’t have fallen madly in love with you if you weren’t.” he sincerely tells you.

“Ok I’ll try,” you weakly smiled. 

“Good. I love you,” he firmly states. 

“I love you too,” you return. Jiseok smiles and tenderly kisses your forehead. 

O.de/Seungmin

“Y/n?” your friend called your attention. 

“Yeah?” you replied. 

“I say this from a place of love and concern ok?” they tell you. You start to feel unsettled. 

“O..k?” 

“I think Seungmin is getting bored of you,” they disclose. Your heart drops. You’ve always had this feeling that you were unworthy of Seungmin, so your friend's words felt like a punch to the gut.

“Huh?” You felt your emotions swarming over you. 

“Don’t cry please. I didn’t say it to upset you. I just think you should be prepared. He’s probably going to break up with you soon.” You couldn’t fight the tears from falling from your eyes at the thought of Seungmin breaking up with you, but you knew your friend was right. He would break up with you at some point because you didn’t deserve him in the first place. 

“Seungmin, I want to break up.” You thought that it would be easier if you broke up with Seungmin before he could break up with you.

“I don’t. What is this about?” he asked you. 

“I’m sorry. I just don’t feel the same way about you as I used to,” you say. It’s a lie, but he doesn’t have to know. 

“What do you mean? We were fine yesterday. Did I do something?” he questions. 

“No, it’s not you Seungmin, it's me. I’m sorry my feelings changed. I didn’t want to hurt you, so I didn’t tell you sooner, but I can’t do this anymore.” 

“Is that really how you feel?” he choked. He didn’t want to break up with you, but if it would make you happier he would have to. You nodded your head. 

“I’m sorry,” you apologized. Your tears cascaded as you watched him leave.

Safe to say when your so-called friend hit on him right after your break up Seungmin was pissed. Even more pissed when your friend talked about how you weren’t good enough for him. That he certainly had to be getting bored after months of dating you. He just about strangled her when she suggested that she could keep him entertained way better than you could.

“You didn’t need to break up with me, what you needed was a better friend!” Seungmin stormed into your apartment. You forgot he had a key.

“Seungmin-” you started. 

“You lied to me too.” He was clearly angry.

“Seungmin, I'm sorry. I did always have thoughts that you were too good for me and then my friend said-”

“They’re not your friend!” Seeungmin cut in. “A friend wouldn’t do that!”

“Then they said that you were getting bored of me,”

“Bored of you? Y/n the favorite part of my day is getting to see you,” Seungmin admits. “Never once have I been bored of you. You’re the light of my life. Everything felt so dark after you broke up with me. I need you. Come back to me please. I promise you’re everything I want and more.”

“Promise?” you sniffled. 

“Promise,” Seungmin stated. You ran back into his arms right where you belong.

Junhan/Hyeongjun

“What did Hyeongjun see in you?” It was a question you couldn’t find the answer to no matter how hard and long you thought about it. You didn’t understand why he liked you when there were so many better options out there for him. He was way out of your league. You really had no business being together with him. You should have turned him down when he asked you out, but he was too sweet to resist. You thought that maybe your self doubt would disappear with time, but it was quite on the contrary. It grew with time. The longer you were with Hyeongjun the more you felt like you didn’t deserve him. You decided that it was time to let him go. 

“Hyeongjun I’m sorry, but we need to break up,” you stated. Hyeongjun felt his heart crack on the stop. 

“N-no w-why would you say that? I did something didn’t I? Y/n I’m sorry. I’ll do better. I’ll be a better boyfriend,” he stammered out. 

“Be a better boyfriend?” What was he talking about? He was the best boyfriend there could possibly be. You were the one who needed to be better.

“Yes, I’ll be better. I promise ok? Please don’t leave me.” Tears fell from his eyes as he desperately grabbed onto one of your hands with both of his. 

“You don’t need to be better Hyeongjun. I’m the one who needs to be better,” you tell him. 

“What?” he asked, still not letting go of your hand. 

“I’m the one who needs to be better. I’m not good enough for you Hyeongjun. For the longest time I’ve been stuck thinking about what you could possibly see in me. I can never think of an answer. There’s nothing to see in me,” you revealed. 

“Y/n that is not true at all,” Hyeongjun says. 

“Then what do you see in me?” you asked him the question that had been haunting you.

“Everything. I see my happiness, my world, my future, my hopes and dreams. I see the person I want to spend the rest of my life with,” Hyeongjun tells you.

“How could you possibly see that?” Hyeongjun moves his hands to cup your face.

“Because that’s what you mean to me, everything.” He rests his forehead against yours. “Sometimes I just don’t know if I deserve to be your everything like you are mine,” he confesses. 

“You’re my everything too,” you reveal. He holds you like you’re his everything and you do the same.

Jooyeon

“Jooyeon could do so much better, don’t you think?” You hear someone gossip. 

“One hundred percent. I don’t get why he is with them. Specially for so long. Certainly they aren’t that great.”

“Literally not possible.” You hear laughter proceed their conversion. It’s not the first time you’ve heard people say that you aren’t right for Jooyeon. That he could do way better than you. At first you tried to brush it off, but you felt their words lingering around you. Soon enough you couldn’t help but think about them too. How Jooyeon was out of your league. That you were nowhere near good enough for him. He deserved better. You shouldn’t keep holding him back from what he deserved.

“I want to break up,” you tell Jooyeon. 

“I don’t.” He replied almost too casually. 

“Jooyeon come on. I’m being serious,” you say. Jooyeon sits up from where he laid on the couch. 

“I’m being serious too. Why should we break up anyway? There is no good reason to,” he questions. You left out a mix between a laugh and a chuckle. 

“Funny that you say good reasons,” you said. 

“How is that funny?”

“Because I’m not good enough for you,” you answered. 

“What kind of crap is that! You are so good enough for me!” he argues. 

“No I’m not. There is no way you don’t hear people talk about how I’m not.”

“Why are you listening to no good people? I’m the only one who gets to decide if you’re good enough for me and I decided that you are better than good enough a long time ago,” he states.

“I feel like I’m not good enough for you though,” you confess. Jooyeon’s demeanor shifts to a softer one compared to his previous angry one.

“Why?” His voice almost cracked. You shrugged. 

“I don’t know exactly why. I just wonder what makes me enough for you I guess.” You look down at your feet.

“Honestly I gave you my heart the first moment I looked at you. Sometimes we can’t exactly put things into words, but I just knew that you were the one for me. That I want to spend every waking moment of my life with you,” Jooyeon wraps his arms around your waist. “And I hope that you want to spend every moment of your life with me,” he adds. 

“I do,” you tell him.

“Great. We basically just exchanged marriage vows so there is no way you can try to break up with me now,” Jooyeon jokes. You laughed, wrapping your arms back around him.

Taglist: @purplelady85 @odesonnets @gingerjunhan @chewednails @ezlynkisses @dazzlinglitgh

#xdinary heroes #xdh #xdh imagines #xdh x reader #xdinary heroes imagines #xdinary heroes x reader #xh gunil #xh jungsu #xh gaon #xh jiseok #xh o.de #xh ode #xh seungmin #xh junhan #xh hyeongjun #xh jooyeon #gunil x reader #jungsu x reader #gaon x reader #jiseok x reader #o.de x reader #seungmin x reader #oh seungmin x reader #junhan x reader #hyeongjun x reader #han hyeongjun x reader #jooyeon x reader #goo gunil #koo gunil #gunil

[natimiles]

Just let me adore you (Arthur)

Summary: You loved Mozart, and Mozart loved you. Arthur would just have to deal with it and not bother you again. But it’s easier said than done when you’re left alone on your own birthday.

Words: 1372

Tags: angst; unrequited love; hurt; no comfort; Arthur centric; Mozart is a bit of an asshole (sorry); no pronouns specified for reader.

Notes: I was re-reading some random parts from Living no Matsunaga-san and decided to write something for Ikevamp based on a scene there. I just realized Ryou and Levi kinda look alike. He is so precious; I loved him way more than Matsunaga.

I also listened to “Adore You” by Harry Styles, and now I see the lyrics from a whole different perspective. And the title for the fic comes from the song.

It wasn’t fair.

You deserved so much better. You deserved to be treated like royalty, to be loved, to be taken care of. He had to ensure you were always smiling, always happy, never crying.

However, that’s not what happened.

Arthur could barely restrain himself seeing the tears streaming down your face. How many times has it been now? How many more are you gonna endure? He only made you cry. Mozart only made you cry.

The writer can’t remember when or why he fell for you; he only recalls losing his chance. He remembers talking to Theo, who encouraged him to take action quickly. With half of the mansion having developed feelings for you, he knew it was only a matter of time before someone else confessed.

He was gonna buy you flowers and a nice gift, confess, ask you out properly, and kiss you by the end of the date if he was lucky enough. But before he could finish his lunch to go to town, you and Mozart entered the dining room. 

The scene still haunts him.

Your emotionally overwhelmed face, the bright smile, the flushed cheeks… your hand holding his arm, and he smiling at you. Cutlery fell from hands, drinks were spilled, and he’s pretty sure he heard Isaac gasp and stop breathing by his side. You happily announced you were together, and the romantic music everybody was listening to that morning suddenly made sense. You were so happy. He just congratulated you, along with everyone else, and tried to move on. 

Way easier said than done.

He ended up confessing to you the first time he saw you in tears, going against all his principles of never hitting on a compromised person — much less one in such a vulnerable state! Yet, he did it. He poured his heart out, saying he loved and cherished you, that he would never make you cry. He would never choose his work over you, even if his work was so important to him.

Arthur apologized some time later; he didn’t want to give the impression he was trying to take advantage of your fragile moments. So, he waited for things to calm down and confessed again.

You kindly turned him down both times, and he accepted it with a sad smile and a broken heart. Your heart didn’t belong to him; it belonged to the musician. You loved Mozart, and Mozart loved you — despite not being good at showing it, apparently. He’d just have to deal with it and not bother you with this again.

However, there was so much he could take.

He is leaving the mansion when he sees you standing just outside the door, with a lost gaze, tears streaming down your face. He holds you by the shoulders before he thinks better of his actions, but you don’t seem to mind it. You look at him with the saddest expression he’s ever seen on your face, and he knows.

He doesn’t ask what happened; he doesn’t have to. He simply turns you around and guides you by the shoulders back inside the mansion. He takes you to your room and sits you on your bed, observing how you quietly comply.

“I’ll be right back, okay, luv?” he speaks softly, and you just nod once, your gaze lingering on the floor.

He goes to the kitchen, prepares your favorite tea, and brews some coffee for himself. He considers getting something for you to eat too, but you probably don't want to. He arranges two mugs on the tray and returns to your room. You're in the exact same spot and in the exact same state as he left you, and it hurts him to see you so... numb.

He places the tray on your nightstand and goes to your en suite to grab a towel. Sitting down beside you, he reaches for your face, placing his finger under your chin and lifting it slightly to get a better look at you. Silently, he gently passes the towel over your wet cheeks.

"Try to warm up a little now, won’t you?” He offers you the tea, closing your hands around the mug and holding them in place with his own for a moment longer. “It’s your favorite.”

You just nod again, not really in the mood for talking — and you’re not even sure you’ll be able to say something without crying again. He grabs his mug, and you two drink silently, appreciating your own beverages.

"You… won’t ask?" you inquire after some time. Your voice is so low that he thinks he wouldn’t hear you if he weren’t a vampire with great hearing. It cracks another part of his heart open.

Arthur shakes his head and takes your empty mug back, putting it on the tray with his. “I don’t have to,” he says softly.

He wants to, though. A dark part of him would like to hear you dissing Mozart; perhaps you’d realize that he could be better than the musician — he would certainly try to.

Mozart went out early and hasn’t come back yet, probably too busy with the new concert he is working on. Usually, Arthur would find his hard work relatable; he got too invested in his writing too, losing night after night of sleep sometimes. However, it was your birthday today. Your lover set a birthday date with you and left you standing outside the mansion because of work.

“I wouldn’t do it,” he blurts out in a whisper, completing his thoughts aloud. “If you chose me, I’d never make you cry.”

“Arthur…”

“I want to make you happy. I need you to be.” He reaches for you, cradling your face with a gentle touch. He smiles, but it’s sad and broken, and it doesn’t reach his sorrowful gaze. “You don’t have to love me back… But I love you so much, I can’t take it anymore.”

You’re taken aback. Your breath catches in your throat, your tears drying almost instantly, and a cold shock passes through your whole body. After two confessions, you thought you’d be used to him professing his love. But this… This is so much more. You’ve never seen him this vulnerable before. You can practically see him offering his heart on his hands for you. 

“What…” you attempt to speak, but your words falter, lost in the whirlwind of emotions.

Only then does Arthur realize what he just said, widening his eyes. He lets his hands fall limp into his lap, sighing and averting his gaze while mentally cursing himself. He was supposed to be smart, so why does he often act like a fool in front of you? Love really messes with one’s mind.

He closes his eyes and runs his hand through his hair, obviously nervous. He grasps his bangs, tightening his grip in an attempt to stop himself from being an idiot and start acting like a proper man.

“Sorry. This burden is the last thing you need right now,” he mutters, his voice the weakest you’ve ever heard from him. Arthur takes a deep breath and stands up. “But if you… If you need something, you can always call me.” He takes the empty tray and heads to the door, but then he seems to remember something and turns back to you again, forcing a better smile. “Happy birthday, by the way.”

His expression falters the moment he closes the door behind him. Arthur heads straight to his own bedroom, not even bothering to bring the tray to the kitchen; he can do it later. Right now, he just needs to lie down and hope the earth swallows him whole before he embarrasses himself again.

He needs to stop it, he knows that. How is he supposed to control his heart, though? He tried to drown this feeling with different people in town, but he always ended up not wanting to spend the night with them. They weren’t you.

He places the tray on his coffee table and flops down on his bed, covering his eyes with his arm. He feels his blazer getting wet just a few seconds later and lets out a shaky sigh.

It’s going to be another long, lonely evening.

Masterlists

#I'm sorry but I'm also not so sorry #I still love Mozart he didn't do this just to be mean #I'll write something to make it up to him later #and for Arthur too he deserves only love :') #ikemen vampire #ikevamp fanfics #ikevamp #ikevamp arthur #ikevamp mozart #ikevamp x reader #ikemen vampire x reader #ikevamp arthur x reader

[bbglewis]

ive been seeing your fic recs everywhere so pls gimme martian recs

YES I WILL!!

Everything Changes by Georgia_K 

Mature, 5,970,704 Words (and updating) (yep you read that right)

Sometimes it turns out you don't really know someone at all Life can take twists you never saw coming

All the Miles We Have to Shed by antimonyandthyme 

Explicit, 5,039 Words

Mick goes, Mark Webber is in Switzerland! You guys should meet! Sebastian doesn’t know how to convince Mick he hasn’t turned into a selective hermit, shut off from certain things (or people) that might tether him still to racing. He picks at his fingers. Reasons to himself, Mick is someone he does not lie to. Decides to text back, I know. He’s here with me.

We Are All Made Of Stars by gemjam

Teen and Up Audiences, 6,051 Words

Inspired by Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five - Sebastian Vettel is twenty one years old when he first comes unstuck in time.

There Is Thunder in Our Hearts, Baby by KaossBells

Explicit, 89,994 Words (and updating)

“Don’t be a stranger, mate,” Mark says and has to work hard not to make it sound too wistful. “Promise.” Seb’s small smile slowly fades, though, as he purses his lips in thought and looks down at his luggage. For a second, Mark thinks he’s going to say something else, but then he looks back up, gives him a quick little wave, and turns around to hurry into the crowd just like the other two before him had done. Mark is unable to move as he stares after him, a sinking feeling settling in his guts. He has no idea when he’s going to see Seb again.

Treading Softly in My Head by antimonyandthyme

Mature, 9,011 Words

“So it’s accidental?” “Of course it’s accidental,” Mark snarls. He hasn’t stopped running his fingers through his hair. Sebastian can’t help but take comfort in the fact that they’re both freaking out about this. “Why on earth would I want to, with him, of all people—” “Get off your high horse,” Sebastian says, angry now. “A soul bond runs both ways.” “An accidental soul bond,” Mark says.

Kinesis by gemjam

Teen and Up Audiences, 9,907 Words

In the year after Mark's retirement from Formula 1, Mark and Sebastian grow closer and the people around them can't help but notice.

(link to the divider I used!)

#martian #sebmark #sebastian vettel #mark webber #anons #blake.answersasks #fic talk.tag #fic recs

[vampi-fixx]

day 7, ryo: sensory deprivation

kinktobruary day 7

ryo asuka x reader // devilman crybaby.

summary: ryo is not a patient man, or a merciful one. when you don’t show up at your usual time, he can’t resist the urge to punish you.

tw/cw: minors dni, 18+ only, explicit, sensory deprivation, overstimulation, facefucking, degradation, sex toys, fingering, dubcon, uhh Ryo has a very twisted sense of entitlement and possession to someone else

word count: 1.5K

a/n: this was originally for @honeycomb-fics, but i revamped it

Humans were trifling creatures. Constantly disappointing him. Ever since he was a child, Ryo had trouble connecting to them. He never saw people as anything more than pawns in some game he was advancing towards. Akira was the only exception, of course, but Ryo made him into something more than human—a devilman. Akira, whether he realized it or not, was crafted into something beyond the dredges of humanity. 

But then there was you. Akira’s friend, and his newest lab assistant. A part of Ryo had to admit that you weren’t… awful. A complete letdown. You were intelligent, on top of things—useful to him. But frustratingly beguiling.A distraction. More often than not, he found his thoughts filled with you; it made it hard to concentrate on his work. 

Ryo had only one goal, and that was to expose the existence of demons, to finish Professor Fikira’s work. But you threw a wrench in those plans, with your damn empathy and kindness and—and humanity. Loathe as he was to admit it, he’d even started growing used to your presence in his life, craving it almost as much as he did Akira’s.

Which is why he was annoyed when you didn’t arrive at your usual time. The minutes ticked away, and with it, Ryo’s aggravation grew. He found himself continually checking the clock, growing more irate when you didn’t appear. What the hell was taking you so long? He hacked into your phone’s camera, because of course, he had downloaded a tracking app onto your phone when you started working here. A precautionary measure. Certainly useful for times such as this. And what he saw had icy fury chill his actions. 

You were talking to some dopey delivery boy that had stopped to ask you for directions, a few blocks from his apartment. But even so, humans wereso easy to read. Ryo could discern the signs of interest. The way he chattered on for too long, the slight flush to his cheeks. And then this human had the nerve to ask you for your number in case he got lost again. Ryo’s hands were moving before he knew it. He watched the surprise play across your face when your phone screen suddenly blacked out, and wouldn’t turn back on. You apologized profusely to him, saying you were late for work and couldn’t spare much more time.

Heh. Good.

Maybe it was a reaction to Akira siding with that stupid human girl, still fresh in his memory. His refusal to let Ryo eliminate her angered him in ways he couldn’t understand. 

But what he did know was that you were his assistant. The human he’d chosen to grow attached to. And he would make sure it was ingrained into your very being.

“Ryo,” your voice comes from his live feed, bringing him back to the present. Even through the static, he can detect the strained, desperate quality to it.  He glances back at the video impassively. You’re blind-folded, arms bound behind your back. Leather straps criss-cross your naked form, press enticingly into the dips of your flesh, and even through the feed, he can hear the distinct sound of the vibrator he’d left inside you still buzzing away. “Ryo, please. I’ve cum several times already... I-It hurts.”

He pauses, before pressing down on the button that connects his mic to the audio in your room.

“I’m certain you can handle more,” is all he offers. Disinterested, disengaged.  As if the mere sight of you bound up and helpless hasn’t awakened something sinister inside him, a burning desire to have you bound up all the time. At his mercy. Every day.

“Ryo, please—”

“Maybe you’ll remember this experience the next time you consider coming in late.”

“I—”

“Fifteen more minutes. Surely you can last that long,” he says indifferently.

“I-I—” Your voice cracks. Tears stream down your cheeks, your words coming out somewhere between a gasp and a sob. “B-But… I don’t think I—c-can—”

He shuts the live feed off, disconnects his mic, then scrutinizes the tent forming in his sweatpants. He isn’t as unaffected by your display as he acts like he is.

Staring at his unfinished correspondence, he sighs before standing up, swiping the bottle of lube from his drawer. He could hardly concentrate with this kind of temptation before him. Ryo hardly considers himself religious, but he toys with the idea of flagrantly defying God even further, just as he toys with the remote to your vibrator in his pocket.

After all, Ryo could be merciful sometimes.

Plus, you need to repay him for getting him so entirely off-track.

—

He slips into the room you’re in, silent as the night. His finger thumbs the power notch on the vibrator as he watches you closely. The vibrations racking your core cease, and you sigh in relief, slumping forward as much as the straps binding you to the chair will allow you to. 

“H-He must be in an especially bad mood,” you mumble. You squeeze your thighs together, whimpering when the move brushes against your sensitive nub. 

There’s something Ryo’s always been curious about, a question that spurs him to approach you silently. How do humans act when they’re on the edge of desperation? How would you act on the edge of desperation?

As he hovers in front of you, he pushes down his sweatpants until its caught between his spread knees. His hard length bobs towards the lean muscle of his stomach. When he brushes it against your lips, you freeze, not even daring to take a breathe. It has him throbbing harder.

“Well?” His voice echoes in the quiet room. “What are you waiting for? Suck.”

“R-Ryo?”

He shoves his cock into your mouth, and you gag. Ryo hisses at the way your throat constricts around him. He begins pumping into your mouth in sharp, stiff thrusts, uncaring of the way you choke around him. But it’s not enough. Ryo reaches into the pocket of his sweatpants, flipping the switch on the vibrator again. You come to life, moaning around him. He pulls a grimace at the way it travels along the length of his cock.

His next thrusts forces you to take him all the way in, till the tip of his cock is nudging the back of your throat. He holds you there, one hand gripping the back of your head as he turns the vibration up all the way. As you splutter and cry out around his cock, it’s your tears spilling onto his length that get to him. He jerks his hips away. 

“Fuck,” he hisses, as his spend spills in ropes along your cheeks. Then he’s leaning forward, resting his hand on the chair you’re strapped, surveying the mess he’s made of you.

“Clean that up,” Ryo says once he can, shucking his pants back on. But then he realizes your hands are still bound, your mobility limited, and he scoffs. “Fine. I’ll just do it myself.”

He swipes his fingers through his cooling release on your face. And then he’s yanking out the vibrator from inside you, before replacing it with a plunge of his fingers. You jolt as if stunned. He fucks his release into you, your arousal making it easy for him to bury his fingers into you till the knuckle, and it’s borderline painful considering how overstimulated your every nerve feels.

“R-Ryo!”

“You’re going to cum for me one more time, (Y/N),” he says, cool determination hardening his words. “I don’t care if you don’t think you can. I want to see it and feel it, this time.”

His thumb extends to rub against your twitching nub as he spears his fingers into you, and you’re shuddering. Your hips press down into his fingers before retreating, attempting to put some distance between you two, but his assault is merciless. As lights burst beneath your eyelids for who knows how many times that night, you cry out his name. Your walls constrict around Ryo’s fingers, and he finds himself soaking in every last detail of your rapture.

Then not only is your world fading to black, but your consciousness too. When you come to, you’re surprised to feel you can move your arms again. You blink. The straps are gone, The blindfold’s taken off, but your sight is soon stolen by Ryo’s lips pressing against your eye. You call out his name again, and he hums. 

“I’m not certain what you’ve done to me,” he starts, fixating his icy stare on you. “But... seeing you like that, overstimulated and on the verge of collapse—it makes me want more.”

Your heart stills to a mere stutter as his words sink on.

“Will you be obedient to me?” He slips his cock, once again hard, out of his pants and lifts your hips up slightly. You gasp as he drops you onto it, finally entering you, your hands clutching at his shoulders. “I really need to finish this correspondence, but I also...want to finish inside of you.”

#ryo x reader #ryo asuka x reader #dmcb x reader #devilman crybaby x reader #tati writes #not sfw #kinktobruary

[tokkias]

Hi for a fic idea how about Natsu accidentally lost the engagement ring the day he wants to propose meanwhile half the guild are trying help search for it while Lucy has no clue what’s going on, please I thinks it’s a funny/ cute idea ^^

sometimes i get requests that just stick in my brain and nag me until i write them and this was definitely one of them. i had so many thoughts and ideas for it that what i originally anticipated was going to be a 6k fic turned into nearly 20k words. dies.

this one is a big boy, there's lot of characters, there's lots of scenes and it's a long read. i put a lot of hard work and effort into this so i'd appreciate if you read the whole thing <3

as always thank you to @nalunalu for getting me through this, i probably would have given up at 10k if it weren't for you.

ao3

"It was right there yesterday. I saw it with my own eyes."

"Well, it’s not there now."

"I can see that."

Stressed and frustrated bickering filled the otherwise quaint and quiet home, tucked away in the outskirts of the Magnolia Forest, as Natsu and Happy both scrambled around the house to find a very important item before they could head out to the guild for the day.

"Are you sure it was in here?" Happy asked, looking inside the drawer where Natsu had claimed he had left the ring, but came up short.

"Yeah, I’m sure."

"Then where is it?"

"I don’t know!"

While Happy was simply sitting on the table and scanning the area, Natsu was conducting a much more thorough search, crawling around on his hands and knees on the floor, trying to locate the small ring that had, to his knowledge, been here just before.

"Is there anywhere else you could have put it?" Happy asked, realising that their efforts searching in this one spot would be futile.

"I don’t think so," Natsu replied, brows furrowed in thought, trying to recall if he had moved it at some point.

"Maybe you took it to the guild and left it there?" Happy suggested.

Initially, Natsu blew his idea off, but the more he thought about it, the more it felt like it was a very real possibility, and panic began to set in.

"Shit," he hissed. "Maybe I did."

He shot a concerned look at Happy, who returned it with one of his own.

Natsu wasn’t usually this careless, especially with something as important to him as the ring he was going to use to propose to Lucy, but somehow, some way, it has escaped his possession. Had someone stolen it from him? It was worth a pretty hefty sum of cash, and he’d picked up countless jobs just to be able to think of affording it. That being said, his house wasn’t exactly a prime target for a robbery, and he’d know if someone had slipped by and taken it.

That only left one other option.

"I guess we’re going to the guild hall."

The guild doors slammed open with such force that they swung back around almost instantly before Natsu stopped it with his hand. His overly dramatic entrance caught the attention of almost everyone lingering in the guild, though he wasn’t interested in any of them. His eyes scanned the hall to see if Lucy was here, or perhaps more accurately, to make sure she wasn’t here.

For someone who wasn’t known for sticking to a plan, Natsu had planned the entire proposal out pretty thoroughly, and he wasn’t going to let that work go to waste by spoiling the surprise because he’d lost the goddamn ring.

He couldn’t seem to spot her in the crowd, but deciding it was better safe than sorry, he marched over to the bar to make sure she wasn’t going to be hiding anywhere in earshot when he announced his great fuck-up.

"What’s got your panties in a twist, dumbass?" Gray spat once he was in direct earshot.

"Has Lucy been by today?" Natsu practically demanded, ignoring Gray’s provocation altogether.

"Can’t say I’ve seen her," Mira replied with an apologetic smile. "Why? Is something wrong?"

He sucked in a breath, out of relief or fear of what he was about to say; he wasn’t entirely sure.

"I’ve lost the ring."

The room around him fell silent in a moment of confusion as everyone tried to process what he meant.

"The ring? What ring?" Gray asked, breaking the silence before realisation finally struck him. "Oh my god. You’re a fucking idiot."

"Yeah, I know that, dipshit, you don’t need to remind me," Natsu hissed back, his mood very clearly soured from having searched for it all morning to no avail.

"Every time I think you couldn’t fuck up any more, you outdo yourself," Cana drawled from her designated spot at the bar, drink already in hand despite the daylight hours.

Despite the immediate negative reactions, the inadvertent announcement of his intention caused a more optimistic reaction from the romantics in the room.

"Oh my gosh! You’re going to propose?" Wendy exclaimed, her eyes lighting up in delight over the romance of it all. "That’s so great! Lucy’s going to be so happy!"

"Juvia agrees! Lucy has told her all about how she’s been waiting for Natsu to propose," she gushed. "Juvia thinks this is very exciting news."

"Yeah, well, I can’t propose without a ring," Natsu spat, growing more and more irritable for each moment that passed without the ring in his possession.

"Hey, calm down," Lisanna said, her hand resting on his shoulder and giving it a comforting squeeze. "You’re not going to find it by snapping at us, so how about you take some deep breaths and maybe give us some information that might help us find it. When was the last time you saw it?"

Taking her advice, Natsu sucked in a long, deep breath to calm himself down, feeling the worry begin to wash away bit by bit.

"I had it yesterday."

"And what does it look like?"

"It’s about this big," Natsu said, holding his thumb and index finger in a circle to emulate the approximate size of the ring as he recalled it.

"Well that’s not very helpful," she replied. "What colour is it? How many stones does it have?"

"It’s gold, and it’s got three red gems in it," he described. "Two little ones on the side and one big one shaped like a star in the middle."

"That’s a start," Lisanna hummed. "Is there anywhere else you think might have left it?"

Natsu furrowed his brows in thought for a moment as he tried to recall where he had been and what he had done since the last time he had seen the ring.

"We went to Lucy’s place yesterday; I guess I could have left it there."

"You don’t think Lucy’s already found it, has she?" Happy asked hesitantly.

Natsu’s face dropped at the suggestion, all of the worry and panic that had just left him now bubbling back to the surface and threatening to burst.

"If she found a random engagement ring at her apartment, you don’t think she’d have come and told us about it already?" Gray refuted. "She hasn’t been by all morning, and I doubt she’d just keep that to herself."

Natsu relaxed slightly at his affirmation, but the stress of not knowing kept him tense, which showed in every part of his body.

"When do you need it by?" Wendy asked in an effort to distract Natsu from his worried state.

"We’re supposed to be meeting back here at six," he explained, nerves quelled slightly, but his gaze kept flicking to the guild doors, clearly growing more and more antsy with each passing moment. "I have to find it before then."

All eyes moved to the clock that hung up on the wall behind the bar to note the current time, finding the small hand creeping ever closer to the two on the face.

"Well, it’s two o’clock right now; that gives us four hours, which is plenty of time to find a ring," she added, optimistically.

"So you guys are gonna help?" Natsu asked, a glimmer of hope flashing in his eye.

"Of course we’re going to help," Mira smiled. "We’ll find the ring, don’t you worry!"

For the first time since he walked through the guild doors, his shoulders relaxed, and he let out a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding in.

"All of us searching in the same spot isn’t going to get much done, so how about we split up?" Lisanna suggested. "Natsu, Happy, and I can go search their place again, another group can go search Lucy’s apartment and everyone else can search the guild hall."

"I can check at Lucy’s place," Gray offered. "I know the place pretty well. If flame brain left it there, I’d probably know where to look."

"Juvia will come help!" She volunteered, latching herself to Gray’s arm with a look in her eyes that said she wasn’t in this for Natsu or Lucy’s sake.

"You’re gonna help?" Natsu asked again, a disgusted gaze shot in Gray’s direction, his tone thoroughly unimpressed, leaving no room for speculation about how he felt about having him join the search.

"Hey man, don’t be a dick, I’m tryna help you out," Gray spat back. "I’m not doing this for you anyway, dipshit, I’m doing this for Lucy. You can look for it yourself for all I care, but I’m not gonna let Lucy go sad because you’re a dumbass who lost the engagement ring."

"Um, I’ll come too, if that’s alright with everyone," Wendy offered, interrupting the impending feud between the boys. "I might not be much use, but I’d really like to help Natsu out."

Her words worked to sufficiently distract the boys, who seemed just about ready to jump each other, perhaps for reasons unrelated to finding the ring.

"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea," Gray agreed. "You could probably use your dragon slayer senses to sniff out the ring or something, right?"

"I can try my best!" She replied, looking more enthused now after his suggestion, her hands held in determined fists before her with an adamant look on her face.

"But what about Lucy?" Happy chimed in. "You won’t be able to search her apartment if she’s still there, and we won’t be able to search the guild if she’s here either."

"Don’t worry about Lucy, I’ll take care of her," Erza announced, standing tall and proud and looking very, very determined to play her part.

"You’re not gonna kill her, are you?" Natsu asked, a little hesitant from her choice of words and her penchant for solving problems with a very sharp sword.

"N-no! That is not what I meant by take care of!"

"I’ll join you," Levy announced, lifting Yajee off of her lap and transferring him to Gajeel’s. "You can take care of the twins for the day, can’t you?" She asked, turning to her partner.

Gajeel merely let out a gruff noise of acknowledgement that she took as his agreement.

"But don’t expect me to do none of that searchin’ shit. Salamander’s on his own there."

"Great!" Levy exclaimed, clasping her hands together, "In that case, Erza and I will go-"

Levy’s plan was cut off, and as if on cue, the doors to the guild hall swung open and the woman of the hour entered. All heads whipped around to look at her, any and all conversation about the ring came to a screeching halt.

"Good afternoon, Lucy!" Mira chirped, filling the new void of silence that had washed over the guild.

"Hi Mira," she replied, looking a little confused by the weird behaviour that was seemingly brought upon by her entrance.

"Hey, Lu-chan!" Levy called out, beckoning her friend over to the table where she and Gajeel were seated.

"Hey, Levy-chan," Lucy greeted cautiously. "Is something going on? Do I look weird or something? I feel like everyone’s staring at me," she murmured, not wanting to draw any more of the unsettling attention to herself.

"That’s just because you look really pretty today, Lu-chan!" Levy affirmed with a smile.

"You think so?" She replied, a gentle smile and blush crossing her face. "I tried something new with my hair this morning," she explained, her hand moving to twirl a strand of it around her finger bashfully. "Natsu and I are going out tonight, so I thought it would be nice."

Levy made eye contact with Natsu as he, Happy, and Lisanna all snuck behind Lucy, trying to make their exit without being noticed. Levy offered a confident smile, expressing that Lucy would be in good hands until the ring was located, and Natsu silently nodded back before the three of them scurried off in a hurry.

"I’m off of mom duty today, so Erza and I were going to get our nails done. If you’re going out with Natsu tonight, why don’t you join us?" Levy offered, an eager look on her face, hoping that Lucy would accept without much trouble.

"You and Erza?" Lucy asked, a little sceptical about the unusual combination.

"Mmhm!" Levy confirmed. "Erza and I grew up here together, you know! But it’s been a while since we caught up," she added, sensing her friend’s apprehension.

"R-right!" Erza confirmed, caught off guard by the sudden plan but scrambling to feign confidence.

"Come on, it’ll be fun," Levy pleaded, leaning over the table to grab Lucy’s hands in her own.

"I mean… if it’s okay with Erza," Lucy replied, turning her gaze towards the woman in question, a little nervous about being invited along without her input.

"Yes!" Erza replied, perhaps a little too eagerly, before noticing her mistake and trying her best to rectify it. "I mean, I would be happy for you to come along."

"Great!"  Levy cheered. "That settles it! Let’s get going then!"

"Wh- Right now?" Lucy exclaimed before she was pulled to her feet by Erza, her grip firm around her wrist. "Hey! I wanted to see Natsu before we left!"

"Natsu can wait!" Erza declared. "Today is a girl’s day!"

"I didn’t realise Levy was so fast on her feet," Gray commented, as those remaining watched Erza practically drag Lucy out of the guild hall with Levy following close behind.

"Having kids’ll do it to ya," Gajeel replied. "Ya get real good at distractions, and Levy’s great at ‘em." He began to bob Yajee up and down on his knee as Jutla started to cling onto her papa’s arm, all but begging for his attention. "But today I’m on double distractin’ duty."

"Now that Lucy’s gone, it should be safe to check her apartment, right?" Wendy said, pulling the attention of her new teammates towards her.

With a mutual nod of understanding, the three of them went ahead to make their exit before Gray promptly froze.

"We don’t have a key," he realised. "Lucy probably locked the place when she left, and Natsu’s already gone, so we can’t use his."

"No worries!" Mira chimed in, holding up a ring of keys that she jingled in front of them. "I have a spare!"

A sigh of relief was let out amongst the Lucy-apartment-trio, knowing it would be an easy break and enter, though upon closer examination, Gray noticed another familiar key dangling off of the ring.

"Hey, is that the spare key to my place?" He asked, his brow raised in confusion.

"No time for questions! We have a ring to find!" Mira diverted, placing Lucy’s key in his hand and hurrying them off.

Lucy honestly couldn’t recall the last time she had stepped foot in a nail salon. In fact, she hadn’t even known there was one in Magnolia at all until Erza and Levy had physically dragged her to it. She was more of a do-it-yourself type of girl, but the idea of taking the day to be pampered for a bit (and not getting polish smudged around the nails of her left hand) was too pleasant an offer to say no. It wasn’t exactly how she had imagined her day to play out, but Erza and Levy would hear no complaints from her as the trio sat around to pick their colours.

If Lucy hadn’t been to one in years, Erza probably hadn’t been in her entire lifetime, based on the stressed expression on her face as she stood before the wall of every nail polish colour under the sun. Though Lucy probably could have guessed that by her chipped nails, calloused hands, and the dirt that seemed like it had been under her nails since she had met her.

"Not sure what colour to pick?" Lucy asked in a hopeful attempt to try and lighten her mood.

Erza remained silent, instead merely shaking her head as her gaze remained stuck on the colours.

Lucy held out a deep red colour in offering to her.

"This one matches your hair," she suggested in an attempt to be helpful.

"Um… I think that’s a bit bold for my first time," Erza managed to stutter out, confirming Lucy’s earlier thoughts.

"Okay, well, how about a more neutral colour then?" Lucy asked, putting the red back on the shelf.

Levy took another off of the shelf and held it by Erza’s hand to see how it might look on her.

"Brown?" She suggested. "This one would look pretty with your skin tone."

"I’m not sure," Erza frowned, not looking entirely sold on the idea. "I thought I might like something more… exciting."

Exciting but not bold, Lucy thought. It seemed like an oxymoron, but she wasn’t about to criticise Erza’s choice of words, lest she be beheaded in a nail salon. She scanned the wall once again to see what her options were.

"You could go pink," Lucy offered, more for her own amusement than anything else, not expecting anything to come from it.

"Pink. I want pink."

"What? Really?" Lucy asked, taken completely off guard by her response.

"What’s wrong with pink? Do you not think it’ll look good?" Erza replied, looking worried and a little flustered by her friend’s reaction.

"No! That’s not what I think at all," she assured. "I just didn’t think you’d go for it, is all."

"How about a peach shade?" Levy suggested, much to Lucy’s relief, as she provided a distraction for a stressed-out Erza. "It’s a pretty colour, but it’s not too out there either."

Taking her suggestion, Erza directed her attention to the pinks and picked a light, almost nude pink.

"This one," she said, turning around to face Lucy and Levy and holding out the colour for their approval.

She held her options in one hand, letting the glass of the containers clack against each other as she compared them. She had managed to narrow it down to three so far: an eggshell blue, a rosy pink, and a metallic gold. Any other day she might have picked the blue without hesitation; it matched almost every outfit she liked to wear, so she wouldn’t have to think about it too much, but thinking forward to her date with Natsu, Lucy thought it might be appropriate to switch it up a little.

Perhaps pink would be too on the nose for a date, but the shade matched Natsu’s hair so perfectly that it made her heart thrum with excitement over the mere thought of him. Her face flushed red slightly when she caught her thoughts running away from her. She’d get her time with him later, but right now it was a girl’s day, and her full attention was going to be on her friends.

"Do you think you know what colour you want?" Levy probed, looking over Lucy’s shoulder, having already picked out a soft orange for herself.

"I think I want the gold," she finally decided, placing the two rejected options back in their designated spots.

Remembering Natsu’s description of the ring, Levy had to bite down on her lip to suppress the massive grin she would have otherwise broken into if she hadn’t physically stopped herself.

"That’s great, Lu-chan! It’s really pretty," she smiled, trying her best to hide the excited jitters that were beginning to build up in her chest.

"It’s been a long time since I’ve been out here," Lisanna commented as the familiar sign came into view.

It had been several years since she had last come by, but from the very moment she stepped through the door, it was as if no time had passed. The place looked exactly the same as she remembered it, which would have made for easy searching if it weren’t also as messy as she remembered it.

"Still as untidy as ever, I see," she observed.

"Hey! We just cleaned the place!" Natsu shot back.

"You call this clean?" Lisanna retorted, stepping over a stray pile of unclean laundry that had clearly been tossed there without much thought. "No wonder you lost the ring when your house is in this state."

"Lucy’s not gonna be happy you called it untidy after she just cleaned up," Happy commented.

Lucy being the one to have cleaned up most recently made a lot more sense, and yet somehow, she was not surprised that Natsu and Happy had already made a mess of it. Lisanna couldn’t help but think what a saint she must be to willingly volunteer to clean up a place like this, even more so to see it and still keep Natsu in the running for potential life partner.

"And how long ago was that?" She asked, kicking a dirty sock out of her path as she moved deeper into their home.

"I dunno, like a couple months ago?" Natsu shrugged, not seeing any issue with the discrepancy he had just created.

"That's not recent at all," Lisanna pointed out.

"Sure it is," Happy brushed off. "We only have to clean it once a year."

She grimaced slightly at his comment, regret slowly creeping up on her for agreeing to help out as she thought about what kind of gross, nasty things could grow in a home that was only cleaned once a year. If it were anyone but Natsu, she would be out of there immediately, but unfortunately, she had long since deemed their friendship too important to let him do this on his own.

"This is where I left it," Natsu called out, snapping Lisanna out of her thoughts.

He had pulled open a drawer, which, when she peered inside, seemed to be empty aside from a few miscellaneous papers that had been haphazardly shoved in there, perhaps never to be seen again.

"So you think it could be around here?" She asked as she proceeded to shut the drawer and look through the ones surrounding it.

Natsu sighed and shrugged slightly at her query.

"I thought so, but I’m really not sure anymore."

Lisanna furrowed her brows as she searched through the final drawer, only to come up with nothing. She hadn’t expected it to be easy when Natsu arrived at the guild looking as panicked as he did, but this was going to be more of a difficult task than she had anticipated.

Natsu was messy, but he wasn’t incompetent; she was certain he had already done a somewhat thorough search of the area he thought he had left it in, so there would be no point combing through it again. Instead, a more cohesive plan was needed. She scanned the room and pursed her lips as she thought through what the best course of action would be.

"How about you and Happy clear up some of the stuff from the floor, and I’ll take a look on the shelves," she decided. "Maybe you’ll find it in a pile of something on the ground."

"Aye!"

Eager to get going and find the ring, the three set off to attend to their respective jobs, but not before Lisanna got in one last word.

"We’ll find it," she assured.

"I know." Natsu nodded. "Thanks."

When the door to Lucy’s apartment swung open, Gray mentally thanked his past self for volunteering to come here. Lucy’s apartment was a much smaller space than the guild hall, and between the three of them, they would be able to cover plenty of ground in a fraction of the time while missing out on the chaos that was sure to ensue back at the guild.

That being said, they had come without a clear plan in mind, which left them with a very important question.

"So where do we start?" Juvia asked, her gaze passing across the apartment, examining the search area.

It wasn’t a large space, but going in without a plan felt like setting themselves up for failure.

"The ring would probably smell like Natsu, right?" Gray suggested.

He looked over at Wendy, who wordlessly nodded at his comment, not needing him to elaborate any more for her to pick up what he was suggesting. She inhaled deeply, taking in all of the different scents that lingered in the air, trying to spot that familiar smell to give them their first lead before letting out a defeated exhale.

"I’m sorry… it all just smells like Natsu," she said, an apologetic smile on her face.

"Juvia supposes that makes sense," she mused. "Natsu must spend a lot of time here if he wants to marry Lucy."

It was a disappointing start to the search, but they had been through much worse than something as trivial as searching for a ring.

"Can you pick up where his scent is strongest? Maybe we can start looking in those places," he offered.

Nodding, Wendy gave another good sniff, the scent now fresh in her brain as she tried to locate where it smelled the freshest. She wandered around the room a bit, trying to get a better feel for the layout of it. After a moment or two of tracking, Wendy thought she had a good hold on where the strongest scent was.

"The bed, the couch, and-" Wendy began to list, pointing at each of the items before making her way over to the dresser and opening a drawer that had a particularly strong smell. In her curiosity, she opened it, only to be met with Lucy’s collection of risqué panties. Her face now bright red, Wendy slammed it shut and turned on her heel to face Gray and Juvia. "That’s it! Just the bed and the couch!"

Gray and Juvia shared a sceptical look but otherwise didn’t press her on it, both having a vague idea of what she had just seen.

"Juvia thinks those are both good places to start," Juvia affirmed. "It’s easy to lose small things like Natsu’s ring in places like that."

Wendy quickly recovered from her brief traumatic moment in response to Juvia’s agreement.

"I can search the couches then!" She eagerly offered.

"Juvia and I can check around the bed then," Gray suggested, to which Juvia nodded in agreement, perhaps a little over enthusiastic for the cause.

"Try not to get lost between the cushions," Juvia giggled, much to Wendy’s dismay.

"I’m not that small!" She squeaked as she tried her best to pry the tightly fitted bottom cushion, which was almost as big as she was, off of the seat.

Wendy had said the bed had smelt freshly of Natsu, and knowing his penchant for popping over to Lucy’s for a quick midday nap, Gray couldn’t say he was surprised. If Natsu had it on him, there was a very real chance that he could have dropped it in or around the bed and it would have gone unnoticed. Unfortunately, searching the bed posed a glaring problem.

It had been made neater than he could ever hope to make it. There was no way he was going to be able to remake it to Lucy’s standard and leave it looking like he hadn’t been searching through her sheets afterwards. Deciding it would be best to leave it as is for now, he ran his hand across the sheets to try and feel if there was anything poking out from the surface. His hands confirmed what his eyes could see – no ring.

He lifted up the pillows to check under there before shaking the pillow case in hopes that maybe it would fall out of one of them. A small grunt of frustration escaped him when nothing came of it, but he reminded himself that at least Lucy had left the place neat and tidy for them to search.

"Lisanna really pulled the short end of the stick by volunteering to search Natsu’s place," Gray commented as he lifted the mattress off of the bed frame to check underneath. "At least Lucy’s place is well organised, and we don’t have to sort through trash to look for it."

"Gray-sama has been to Natsu’s house?" Juvia asked, shutting the drawer of Lucy’s nightstand to proceed to check in the next one.

"Yeah, just once, a long time ago," he replied. "Place is a pig sty. It’s kind of a miracle that Lucy’s apartment is this tidy when he spends so much time here."

"Lucy is very good for Natsu," Juvia commented. "Natsu is a better, more mature person around Lucy."

"You’re tellin’ me," Gray grumbled, dropping the mattress back onto the frame after not having found anything under it.

"Juvia wouldn’t be surprised if Lucy’s tidy habits have rubbed off on Natsu," she added.

"I wouldn’t go that far," he scoffed.

Natsu had changed a lot since Lucy had come into their lives; he had grown a lot as a person, he was more mature, he thought more before he said or did things, but Natsu was going to live and die a slob, no amount of Lucy would change that.

"Gray-sama is putting a lot of effort into helping Natsu," Juvia observed, the implications of her words not needing to be spoken aloud for Gray to pick up what she was trying to say.

"He’s like a brother to me," he admitted. "A dumb, stupid, idiot of a brother, but he’s still my family."

Juvia let out a murmur of understanding as he spoke, a smile making its way onto her lips as she listened to Gray get sentimental about the person he frequently and publicly claimed he couldn’t stand.

"And being with Lucy makes him about a hundred times more tolerable," he continued. "I don’t know what she sees in him, but whatever makes them happy, y’know?"

"From what Juvia has heard, Natsu makes her very happy," Juvia hummed, continuing her thorough search of the nightstand.

"Yeah," Gray mused, recalling the way Lucy always seemed to feel more at home with Natsu around. "He does."

"Alright, let’s make a plan then, shall we?" Mirajane announced, gathering a group of guild members by the bar who were lured in by her authority. "Natsu tends to get himself into tussles around the whole guild, so there aren't many places we can rule out," she observed.

She tapped her finger against her chin, lost in thought for a moment as she examined the search area and devised their plan.

"I think we should split up," Mira decided. "We can have one group search upstairs and everyone else look down here. If he dropped it, it’s probably on the floor, so be sure to check under chairs and tables." Murmurs of understanding were passed around the group, enraptured by her uncharacteristic authoritative presence. "I’ll be searching by the bar; someone can go check in the supply closets as well," she added.

"What? Why the supply closets? Does Natsu even go in there?" Freed asked, brows raised in doubt at her suggestion.

"Of course he does," Cana chimed in, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively. "With Luuuccyyy~"

Alzack quickly covered Asuka’s ears with his hands at Cana’s implication, much to the young girl’s distress.

Bickslow let out a loud cackle as her joke registered in Freed’s brain, and the immediate regret of asking overcame him.

"Volunteering for sex room duty, are we?" Evergreen asked, a smirk growing on her face.

"That is not what I meant when I asked that, and you know it!" Freed spat back, his face growing a deep red in embarrassment, which only made Bickslow laugh even harder.

"Great! Freed is on sex room duty then!" Mira chirped, an oh-so-innocent smile on her face that could almost make one believe that she wasn’t joking.

"No, I am not!" He protested as Bickslow absolutely howled in laughter, slamming his fist against the bar top, tears beginning to roll down his face.

His protests were cut short by Evergreen’s grip on his wrist as she pulled him over towards the nearest supply closet.

"I do not want to go anywhere near where Natsu and Lucy have had sex!" He cried out, struggling to get his hand back from a deceptively strong Evergreen.

"Don’t be a baby!" She spat back, tightening her hold on him as she tugged him to the nearest supply closet.

"Aren’t you going to help Freed?" Bisca asked Laxus as the remainder of the group watched him be pulled away by his teammate.

"What am I? His babysitter?" He scoffed. "Ever’s put him through worse than dragging him into Natsu’s sex room."

"Okay, I think we’ve talked enough about the sex room," Alzack interrupted, gesturing with his head towards an upset Asuka who was trying to pry away his hands from her ears.

"I do not want to be here," Freed reiterated as he unwillingly followed Evergreen into one of the guild’s many supply closets.

"Oh, calm down, would you? They haven’t actually had sex in here," she assured. "Do you actually think someone like Lucy would do that?"

"Then why are we searching in here?" He asked, still a little bitter about the scene that was made at his expense.

"Natsu came in here yesterday because Master made him and Gray fix the barstools’ they broke in a fight yesterday," Evergreen replied matter-of-factly.

Freed didn’t reply; he simply raised his brows at her explanation.

"I saw the whole thing go down," she elaborated, noting his surprised expression.

"I didn’t realise you paid attention to those sorts of things," he observed.

"It’s hard not to when they cause such a ruckus," Evergreen replied as she began to move some of the cleaning supplies out of the way to search one of the shelves. "Is it so surprising that I want to help? They’re still our family," she said in response to his silence. "Natsu never stopped defending Laxus after Master kicked him out of the guild, and Fairy Tail would still be disbanded if it weren’t for Lucy. If looking for this ring is what it takes to thank them, I don’t mind doing it."

Her explanation practically stunned Freed into silence. Sure, he knew Evergreen well, they were a team—a family—but rarely did she let herself show a more compassionate side of herself, even to him.

She was right, of course. If it weren’t for Lucy and Natsu, they would still be back at Blue Pegasus, and though he had found himself fond of the friends he had made there, nothing could compare to the home he had found in Fairy Tail. To help in this search was the least they could do for them, and little more than a drop in the bucket in showing just how thankful Freed was to be reunited with his family – his whole family.

"And if Natsu can propose then maybe Elfman will finally grow a pair and pick up the hint," Evergreen added.

Freed chuckled lightly at her addition, feeling as though that was the most Evergreen thing she could have said in that moment.

"Now would you quit standing around while I’m doing all the hard work?" She complained. "We have a ring to find, you know."

"Of course," he smiled.

Lucy felt completely at ease as the woman sat across from her clipped, buffed, and prepped her nails. She practically melted into the plush chair beneath her while she, Erza, and Levy chatted idly about everything they hadn’t had the chance to talk about until now.

Levy gushed about the twins, and Erza told stories of her recent solo jobs (to which Lucy and Levy both teased her relentlessly at the mere mention of Jellal’s name, causing her face to flush as crimson as her hair). It had been a while since she’d had some real girl time with Levy or Erza, and even longer since she’d been pampered like this.

A content hum escaped her lips as the gold polish went on, the metallic finish shimmering in the artificial light. There were no nail polish smudges around her cuticles like when she had to do it herself with her left hand, or perhaps more commonly, when she forced Natsu to do it for her. The bright shimmer wasn’t something she’d have chosen for herself on a normal day, her own collection only being made up of more muted tones, but she supposed the day warranted it.

As she admired her manicure, she couldn’t help but feel a pang of sadness overcome her as she noted how bare her fingers looked. The only thing that decorated her fingers were the scars that held precious memories of her adventures, which she held close to her heart, but she still couldn’t help the longing she felt to have a ring on her finger.

She and Natsu had been dating for years now, had been best friends for even longer, and Lucy had long since thought it had been time for him to pop the question. Maybe it was because she hadn’t been forthright enough on the topic or hadn’t made it obvious enough that marriage was something she wanted. She had dropped a few hints here and there, though maybe she shouldn’t be surprised that someone as direct as Natsu might not have picked them up.

It had crossed her mind that perhaps she would have to be the one to ask, but she couldn’t shake her longing for a more traditional proposal. In her dream proposal, Natsu was the one to get down on one knee and pull the velvet box out of his pocket before revealing the dazzling ring inside.

She scoffed lightly at the thought. Natsu was not the romantic prince charming that she had always envisioned herself with growing up, but she was content with that. He wasn’t one for candlelit dinners or grand gestures of love, and Lucy had long since made her peace with that. In fact, deep down, she prefered what she had with him to anything she could have imagined as a child. He was not her storybook lover, but he put more into their relationship than any other guy she had been with before him, and she valued that more than any cheesy, romantic scenario her imagination could conjure up.

Even though she didn’t expect a fancy, traditional proposal from someone like him, Lucy was still surprised that he hadn’t ever brought it up himself. He had told her that they were always going to be together, and she wholeheartedly believed that he was going to follow through on that, but she supposed that was never a promise of marriage; they weren’t even together at the time.

Closing her eyes, Lucy let out a sigh, which caught the attention of Erza next to her.

"Is everything okay, Lucy?"

"Yeah, I’m just thinking about something," she admitted.

Erza looked at her as though she wanted her to elaborate, but Lucy wasn’t so sure that this was something she wanted to talk about right now. It was supposed to be a nice outing with her friends, she didn’t want to drag the mood down with her relationship woes. So instead, Lucy waved her off and offered a smile in hopes of moving on.

Much to her relief, Erza promptly dropped it, and the conversation quickly picked back up as Levy began to recount another story about the antics Jutla had dragged Yajee into as of late.

"Have you found anything?" Wendy called out from across the room.

"Nothing yet, but if we do, we’ll let you know," Gray called back. "How about you?"

"Just this," Wendy replied, holding out a handful of bobby pins and coins for them to see. "No ring, though," she added before trying to fit the cushions back on the loveseat. "Sorry, I’m not being much help…"

"Wendy is being a great help!" Juvia reassured, to which Wendy responded with a relieved smile.

"If you’re done over there, I could use some help checking under the bed," Gray added, kneeling at the foot of the bed and glancing underneath it. "I don’t think I’m gonna fit under here."

"Oh, of course!" Wendy replied, placing her couch haul on the coffee table before eagerly bounding over to the other side of the room.

It was a bit of a tight fit, even for Wendy, but she managed to wiggle her way under and get a good look. It was kind of dark too, but enough light streamed in from the room that she could still get a good look at what was under there. It was pretty clean, save for a few dust bunnies that indicated that Lucy hadn’t cleaned under there in a while and many, many hair ties.

"Anything?" Juvia asked, feeling herself get a little antsy in anticipation after a few moments of hearing nothing from the girl under the bed.

"It doesn’t look like it…" Wendy called back, loud enough that hopefully both of them could hear her.

Once she managed to pull herself out, Gray noticed the slightly dejected look on her face.

"Don’t beat yourself up about it, alright? It’s not your fault it wasn’t under there," he said, resting a hand on her shoulder.

"That just means we have to check elsewhere, right?" Juvia added.

"Right!" Wendy agreed, not letting herself get down after another failed search.

Lucy’s apartment wasn’t that big; there were only so many places the three of them could look, which should have made this an easy search in theory. Truthfully, Gray had expected them to be in and out quickly, to find it wedged between the couch cushions or down the side of her bed, and then be back at the guild within the hour. As the clock ticked on, that expectation was seemingly becoming more and more unrealistic.

Knowing Natsu and his careless tendencies, there was nowhere that they could truly rule out as a possibility. There was no place that they could find it that would surprise Gray, he had simply accepted the fact that Natsu was stupid enough to lose it anywhere, which simply meant they had to check everywhere.

Examining the room, Lisanna immediately noticed that Natsu’s board of many memories had grown substantially since the last time she had seen it. She chuckled lightly to herself at how much of it came back to Lucy. Pictures and notes littered the board with Lucy-this and Lucy-that. The occasional job flyer, photo, or souvenir with notes mentioning other guildmates were scattered across the walls and shelves, but it seemed like nothing when put next to the sheer number of memories he had kept with Lucy. She was certain that he had kept a photo from every date the two had been on in the entirety of their relationship and tacked it onto his wall with a note recounting a summary of their day together.

Natsu loved his friends perhaps more than anyone, Lisanna was acutely aware of that, but that love paled in comparison to that he held for Lucy. She hadn’t been around when they two met, but she had seen how much meeting Lucy had changed him for the better. She’d simply assumed that his newfound maturity (by his standards, anyway) was simply chalked up to age and life experience, but if the stories told around the guild about the pair were anything to go by, Lucy was a big part of making him into the person he was today.

While she could have been content to admire Natsu’s dedication to his collection, Lisanna was well aware that she had a job to do. Between all the knick-knacks and tchotchkes that Natsu had accumulated over the years, she wouldn’t be surprised if the ring popped up somewhere on the shelves between them. It was difficult to find where he might have placed it recently given how surprisingly neat his collection was, clearly having been dusted frequently and taken good care of. Not wanting to leave any stone unturned, Lisanna checked every shelf, between, and under every trinket, mindful to be careful with everything she touched, not wanting to sour Natsu’s mood any more than it already was.

Natsu had always been pretty temperamental growing up, but he seemed to have vastly improved on that front over the years. That was why it had come as such a surprise to her when Natsu had arrived at the guild in such a shitty mood, unprovoked. Granted, she couldn’t find it in herself to blame him when she found out why.

A gentle smile crossed her face as she thought about it. Sure, they weren’t as close these days as they used to be, but that didn’t stop the joy and fondness that filled her heart at the thought of her childhood best friend getting married.

Finally, after all these years, Natsu, of all people, was going to settle down. Well, as much as someone like him could settle down, anyway.

Even then, Lucy was filled with just as much vigour and fondness for adventure as he was, that was just one of the things that made them a perfect match. The two of them were inseparable, partners in crime, never one without the other. Together, they had been on more adventures than anyone else could dare dream, and now Natsu was about to take her on a whole new adventure.

The sentiment was so sweet, it could almost make Lisanna cry.

It was like she was watching a storybook romance play out in front of her eyes, only instead of words on a page, this was a real, lived experience from her real-life family.

Holding back tears but failing to suppress the wide smile on her face, Lisanna lifted up one of Natsu’s many trinkets, this one seemingly hollow on the inside, to check if there was anything accidentally left underneath. She didn’t get much time to examine the space beneath before her thoughts were cut off by Natsu’s voice from the other side of the room.

"I’m sorry."

Placing the item down, she turned around to face him, her head tilted slightly in confusion at his sudden apology.

"For what?"

"For bein’ a jackass back at the guild," Natsu admitted, his gaze cast down and away from her as he spoke. "Everyone was just tryna help, but I was bein’ a jerk because I was stressed out."

"It’s okay; I understand," she replied. "If I were in your position, I would probably be a little snippy too."

He still didn’t look up at her, even in his apology, but she could see the way his expression changed, easing into a softer, more gentle look.

"Thanks for helping me out," he added. "It really means a lot."

"That’s what friends are for, right?" She smiled. "I know you’d do the same for me."

By now, Natsu’s smile had fully returned, much to Lisanna’s relief.

"Only I wouldn’t lose the ring," she added, a cheeky look on her face, to which Natsu didn’t respond well.

"Hey! Shut up," he grumbled, throwing a balled-up shirt in her direction, missing drastically as it hit the wall a few feet away from her before pathetically dropping to the floor and earning an amused chortle from Lisanna.

For as much as he’d grown, Natsu really hadn’t changed one bit.

Erza’s eyes were firmly stuck on her hands as the three of them exited the salon, narrowly missing walking straight into Lucy in her trance, who thankfully stepped out of the way just in time.

"Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever seen your nails look so clean," Lucy commented, taking one of Erza’s hands and holding it in her own.

"Yeah, me either," Erza replied, brows furrowed as she closely examined her other hand.

While Lucy was distracted, Levy pulled out her communication lacrima in hopes that she would be met with good news, but instead her home screen remained devoid of any new messages. Quickly, she flicked over to her messaging app to make sure, only to find no updates since they had left. She tapped on Mira’s contact, figuring that if anyone would know what was going on, it would be her.

SMS Levy Any updates on the ring?

SMS Mirajane nothing yet :( we r going to keep looking :) will let u know :)

With a slight frown, Levy put her lacrima away and tried to give Erza a look to indicate that they would need more time.

"This was really fun," Lucy mused, looking content with the outcome of their outing. "I suppose we should head back to the guild now. I didn’t get to see Natsu before we left earlier."

"N-no!" Erza cried out abruptly, to a look of confusion from her friend, before she realised how suspicious she sounded. "I mean, your date isn’t until six, right? That means there’s plenty of time before we have to make it back," she managed to stutter out as she tried to correct her previous mistake.

"How did you know what time my date was?" Lucy asked, surprised that Erza had known when she had never brought it up herself.

"Natsu mentioned it at the guild this morning!" Levy butted in, much to Erza’s relief.

That wasn’t technically a lie, they were simply omitting a key piece of information, but Lucy didn’t have to know that.

"And Erza’s right. You practically live with Natsu these days, and I never get any time to myself with Jutla and Yajee, so what do you say we make this a real girl’s day?"

Lucy’s gaze flicked between Levy and Erza, both of them practically pleading her to stay with their eyes alone. That was all it took for Lucy’s resolve to fizzle away entirely. It had been entirely too long since she’d had a day out that didn’t somehow involve Natsu or Happy and she had admittedly been having a lot of fun with Levy and Erza.

"Okay, you’re right," she agreed. "It’ll be fun."

"Real romantic for Natsu to propose tonight, wouldn’t you say so, Al?" Bisca commented, drawing out her last syllable as she referred to her husband, giving him a sly look that didn’t quite match her words.

Alzack shrank slightly under her words, hearing the implications of them loud and clear as he and Asuka crawled around on hands and knees, searching the floorboards underneath the tables in hopes of seeing the glimmer of the golden ring underneath one of them.

"Yep, sure is," he meekly replied, trying to divert away from the contentious topic.

"I wonder what it’d be like to be proposed to," she continued. "Well, at least one of us knows, isn’t that right, Al?"

He tried to shoot her back an unimpressed look but ended up looking a bit more like a kicked puppy as she bought up his proposal, or more accurately, lack thereof, earning a laugh out of her.

"I was nervous!" Alzack defended, trying his best to sound assured in his words, though he was given away by the crack in his voice. "I was afraid you were gonna say no…" He added, his voice little more than a mumble.

"Oh, come on, I’m only teasing ya," Bisaca laughed, giving him a gentle nudge in the arm that nearly shoved him on his side.

"Something tells me that this isn’t just teasing…" he murmured, trying his best to get back to the search.

"It’s kind of strange, isn’t it?" Bisca added suddenly.

"What’s strange?" He replied, turning his head to look over at his wife, taken off guard by the sudden jump in subject.

"It seems like it was only yesterday when we were all teenagers, growing up alongside Natsu, doing all the stupid things that teenagers do, but now we’ve settled down with a family but they’re still making up for lost time."

Alzack frowned slightly as he processed what she was saying. It wasn’t something he ever gave much thought to, but she was right. He, Bisca, Natsu, and Lucy had all been the same age once, in the most literal of senses. They should have all lived through the same milestones together, and yet now, through the cruel hand of fate, they had several years on them.

It simultaneously felt so recent but also like a fleeting memory.

That was over a decade ago now—to them anyway.

"Do you think that if it weren’t for those seven years, they’d already be married?" He asked.

His question caused her to pause and consider for a moment. For as much as she saw the guild as her family, she was never all that familiar with Natsu prior to the events of Tenrou Island, even less so with Lucy. In a way, the Natsu and Lucy she knew were always going to be the ones changed by the events of Tenrou, the Grand Magic Games, the Eclipse, and every subsequent challenge they had to face together so young. The Natsu and Lucy, who were barely adults by the time she and Alzack had figured out their lives, the Natsu and Lucy who were deceptively good babysitters, and Bisca was sure they would make just as good parents if they ever chose to be.

"I don’t know," she answered honestly. "But there’s no point dwelling on the past though, is there?"

Alzack looked at her with a deadpan gaze, recalling how dwelling on the past was exactly what started this conversation, but Bisca merely returned it with an innocent-looking smile that her husband could see right through.

"Daddy! Stop talking with mommy and help me look!" Asuka demanded with a determined look on her face, sounding very unhappy with her father’s lack of contribution to the search effort.

Bisca did nothing to suppress the laugh she let out as she watched her husband be bossed around by their daughter. She couldn’t exactly blame her, though. Asuka was right; they had a job to do—a friend to help—there was no time for slacking off on the clock.

"Any updates?" Happy called out from among the pile of dirty clothes he and Natsu had accumulated during their search.

The floor was mostly clear, save for a few items scattered across the floor, albeit ones that didn’t necessarily obstruct their search, but they had still come up short, no ring in hand.

"I’ve checked all the shelves, but I haven’t found anything," Lisanna updated.

Her eyes scanned the shelves once more for any places she hadn’t already checked, but at this point she was almost certain she had been about as thorough with it as she could be. If she was certain about anything, it was that the ring wasn’t there, and they would have to focus their search elsewhere.

It was beginning to get dark outside, and those four hours that had once felt like plenty of time were now beginning to feel incredibly insignificant. The thought that he had lost the ring somewhere else entirely had crossed her mind plenty since they began their search, but she had always nipped it in the bud before it overcame her. Now, though, as each moment passed with no ring, Lisanna began to worry that maybe that was the case.

"Maybe you have to postpone it," Happy reluctantly suggested.

"No, I have to do it tonight."

"Why does it have to be tonight?" Lisanna inquired.

"It just has to," he replied. "I’ve planned everything out, and it’s gotta be perfect, and that means asking tonight."

The room fell quiet for a moment, and Lisanna took that time to examine the expression on his face. He had that serious look on his face, the one she hardly ever saw on him, even rarer outside of battle. She already knew that this was something that was important to him, but perhaps she hadn’t understood just how serious he was about it until now.

"Okay," she conceded. "We’ll keep looking then."

"Thank you, Lisanna."

His voice was full of such sincerity that she couldn’t believe that giving up on the search had even been in the cards. In response, she flashed him a reassuring smile to let him know that she wasn’t about to concede any time soon.

"No problem, Natsu."

The rest of their afternoon was spent roaming the streets of Magnolia, window shopping, looking in stores, and treating themselves to lunch at a quaint café just down the street from Lucy’s apartment.

The sun had begun to threaten its fall over the horizon with no news on the ring, but keeping Lucy occupied didn’t prove to be much of an issue when she was happy to stick around with her friends until the end of the day. The three of them walked side by side along a street in the shopping district, peering through windows as many of them closed up shop for the evening, until Levy noticed that Lucy was no longer at her side.

Panicked, Levy looked over her shoulder only to find that she had stopped in front of the display of a shop that was still open despite the approaching evening hours. As she walked back to her friend’s side, she noticed the almost mesmerised look on Lucy’s face as she admired the dress that adorned the mannequin at the very front of the window display.

"It’s really pretty," Lucy breathed.

"Yeah, it really is," Levy agreed.

"Why don’t you go in and try it on?" Erza suggested as she approached the two from behind.

"It probably closes soon," Lucy frowned, clearly disappointed to turn down Erza’s suggestion.

"Closes at 6," Levy said, pointing towards the listed opening hours by the door, hopeful that this would allow for another distraction while they waited on news on the ring.

Lucy still looked reluctant.

"If I go and try it on, I think I’ll be tempted to buy it," she chuckled nervously.

"Girl’s day treat?" Levy suggested, wrapping her arm around Lucy’s, trying her very best to sound convincing.

Lucy remained quiet for a moment, her eyes still glued to the display in the window, examining every inch of the dress, from the silken straps all the way down to the very bottom stitches of the hem. It seemed as though Levy didn’t need to do much convincing of her own when Lucy had already made up her mind.

"Girl’s day treat," Lucy replied, a keen smile adorning her face.

With Lucy busying herself in the changing room, Erza and Levy were left on their own as they waited for her, and a silence befell them, neither knowing exactly what to say to the other now that the girl who connected them was no longer part of the conversation. It was comfortable, if not a little awkward, as both searched for something to occupy the quiet between them. It wasn’t until Levy finally spoke up that the ice finally shattered between them.

"Erza, can I ask you something?"

She was a little taken aback by Levy’s sudden request but obliged nonetheless.

"Of course."

"If you’re so nervous about hiding the proposal from Lucy, why did you volunteer to distract her?" She asked, head tilted to the side slightly in curiosity.

"So it seems you noticed…"

Levy bit her tongue to keep herself from telling her that she was certain everyone had noticed and simply nodded along.

"It’s a bit embarrassing, really…" she began, her cheeks lightly flushed but a fond smile on her face. "I don’t get to spend a lot of one-on-one time with Lucy, and I thought perhaps this might be our last chance before she gets married."

Levy’s expression softened at the unexpectedly heartfelt response. Erza had always been so stoic, so put-together. She seemed like someone who had no need for companionship; she was strong enough on her own. But she was only human. It only made sense that she still craved that platonic intimacy, and perhaps it made even more sense that she craved it with someone who would be more than willing to indulge her in her more feminine side, especially having grown up in a guild dominated by such masculine energy.

"So you think she’s going to say yes?" Levy asked, a smile on her face and her curiosity sated.

"I’d be a fool to think otherwise," Erza replied. "I’ve never seen someone look at another with as much adoration in their eyes as Lucy does at Natsu."

"I’m sorry for hijacking your plan," Levy apologised, feeling a pang of guilt go through her after hearing her reasons.

"Don’t apologise. You were only doing what you thought was the right choice in the moment, and it was the right choice," Erza assured with a kind look on her face. "If it were up to me, Lucy and I would have spent all day looking at new armour until I lost track of time, but I’m not sure that would be her ideal day out." Her gaze flicked from the dressing room, where Lucy was currently changing, back to Levy. "I’m enjoying myself."

"I suppose this means we’ll be competing for the maid of honour position," Levy teased, poking her lightly in the arm.

"I suppose we will be," she smiled back. "But beware; I do not intend to lose," she added, her expression darkening.

"I was just joking!" Levy squeaked out in clarification, holding her hands out in front of her in a placating gesture.

"As was I," Erza replied, the frightening look on her face having since softened into a gentle smile.

The sudden adrenaline spike prompted by Erza’s joke eased at her words, and Levy smiled back.

"I think I’ve got it," Lucy called out from behind the curtain.

"Oh! Let us see!"

Pushing the curtain aside, Lucy stepped out, revealing herself in the dress that had once been worn by the stoic mannequin in the window display. It was a pure white sundress, the skirt falling with gentle ruffles just above her knees, and the bust held up with ribbon tied in cute bows on her shoulders. Lucy did a small twirl to show off the way it flowed, and Levy and Erza clapped and cheered in excitement.

The colour, the fabric, the way she was showing it off for them, and the cheerful smile on her face all made Levy think that Lucy would make the perfect blushing bride. Based on the way tears were beginning to roll down Erza’s cheek, she could only assume she was thinking the exact same thing.

"Wh- Erza? Why are you crying?" Lucy questioned, worry growing in her chest over the unexpected reaction.

"You just look so beautiful," she sobbed, tears now flowing completely freely down her face, having found herself in the troughs of emotion.

"I don’t think that’s anything to cry over…"

Before she could even think of how to comfort her crying friend, she found herself pulled into Erza’s arms, holding her tightly to her chest, and rather than argue, Lucy could only bring herself to wrap her arms around her too. It didn’t take long for her to feel Levy’s arms snake around her back, and suddenly the three of them were holding each other in an unexpected embrace.

"I’m just so happy to have you in my life," Erza said, her voice muffled in the hug but clear as day to Lucy.

Her words were beginning to cause tears to well up in Lucy’s eyes too.

"I’m so happy to have you too, Erza."

She squeezed her two friends closer to her chest, causing Levy to squeak slightly in protest.

"Okay! Too tight!" Levy complained, trying to wiggle her way out of their grasp and eliciting a flutter of giggles from the other two girls.

Lucy would never take moments like these for granted.

"You should buy it," Levy hummed.

"You think so?"

"If it made Erza cry, who knows what it’ll do to Natsu," she giggled.

Turning back around to face the mirror in the changing room, Lucy examined her reflection once more. Erza was right; she did look beautiful.

She hadn’t put much thought into what she was going to wear on her date with Natsu this evening, and as the night approached, Lucy wasn’t too sure she would have adequate time to make it home, get changed, and meet Natsu in time. Even if she did, somehow everything she had back in her wardrobe seemed to pale in comparison to the innocent beauty of this dress.

It was almost as though fate had decided to deal her a perfect hand.

Besides, she deserved to treat herself today, right?

"You’re right," Lucy agreed, a giddy smile evident on her face as she made her decision.

Deeming their search in and around Lucy’s bed unsuccessful, Juvia scanned the room once more, looking for a new place to scavenge. Recalling Wendy’s strange reaction to Lucy’s dresser, Juvia wandered over there with the thought that perhaps he had misplaced it in one of the drawers somehow. At the beginning of their search, it might have felt like a stretch, but the rest of their attempts to check in the obvious places had come up short, and she felt as though they were running out of ideas.

Opening the drawer she had remembered Wendy reacting to, Juvia grimaced slightly as she came to face Lucy’s panty drawer. Deciding better her than Wendy, she began to pull out the garments to search the bottom of the drawer where she assumed the ring would have fallen, only to quickly find herself distracted by examining the risqué garments that Lucy owned.

"Juvia didn’t know Lucy wore this type of thing…" she murmured. "And Juvia didn’t know Natsu was into it…"

Her face held a deep flush to it as she inadvertently thought about all the indecent things Lucy would do in undergarments like these, but her morbid curiosity outweighed any hesitancy she had about looking through her panty drawer. There was more lace in there than Juvia thought she had seen in her life, along with fabric so sheer that she wondered how (or if) they covered anything.

"Any luck over there?" Gray asked, his voice enough to snap her out of the panty-induced trance she had accidentally found herself in.

"N-no! Nothing yet!" Juvia squeaked out, suddenly very aware of what she was doing, before she shoved them back into the drawer and slammed it shut, deciding her time was better spent searching elsewhere.

Wendy, on the other hand, didn’t reply to his update request, instead, his answer was met with nothing more than silence.

"Wendy?" He tried again, worried by her lack of response.

This time, the only sound she let out was as she sucked in a breath, trying to hold back the sobs that threatened to escape her.

"Wendy? Is everything okay?" Juvia asked, noticing the way her breathing had changed suddenly, becoming shallow and jagged.

"What if we don’t find the ring?" She managed to choke out. "What if- what if I didn’t search good enough? And then Natsu won’t be able to propose because we couldn’t find the ring."

Her panicked response caught Gray off guard almost instantly. No matter how old she got, no matter how much she had grown, Wendy was always going to be his baby sister, and seeing her tremble and sniffle like this had his brotherly instincts kick in almost instantly. His hands rested on her shoulders, holding them with a firm grip that made her lift her head up to meet his gaze, where he could see the tears that were already beginning to form in her eyes.

"We’re going to find it, okay?" He reassured, giving her shoulders a light squeeze in an attempt to ground her as she started to sob.

Moving a hand up to her eyes, Wendy wiped away her tears and nodded slightly in understanding.

Gray was going to be damned before he let Wendy cry because Natsu was a moron.

They had searched pretty much everywhere there was to look, but they couldn’t simply give up on it when they still hadn’t heard anything back from the other groups. So long as there was even the smallest chance that the ring was here, they had to keep searching.

"We’ll find it," he repeated.

"Okay," Wendy whispered. "You’re right. We’ll find it."

"Laxus, could you please actually help instead of doing whatever it is you’re doing now?" Mira asked.

"What? I am helping," Laxus argued. "See, I’m looking on this bar top," he added, gesturing to the empty bar top where he was sat doing not much.

Mira didn’t reply, she simply looked at him with a deeply unimpressed look on her face.

"Why are you getting on my case when Cana’s just sitting there doing nothing as well?" He spat back, clearly not happy that he was the only one getting heat for not crawling on hands and knees on the filthy guild floor.

"Hey, I’m not doing nothing, I’m searching for it in the bottom of this barrel," Cana chortled, clearly already inebriated despite the afternoon hour.

The unimpressed look that had once been directed towards Laxus was now being shot at Cana, who shrank a little under her gaze.

"Fine, you want me to help, I’ll help," she conceded, deciding to contribute in the best way she knew how.

Mira’s eyes lit up as she watched Cana pull her cards out of her back pocket. Her hands expertly shuffled the cards promptly and fluidly before splaying them out in front of her and flipping over a select few of them, one by one. Mirajane and Laxus both watched intently, waiting for any change in her expression that might indicate what her cards were reading, but she remained completely stoic. Both flicked their gazes between the cards and Cana’s face. Laxus’s previous disinterest now turned to intrigue as they watched the master at work to find them an answer.

She flipped one more card over, and for a split second, Mira could swear she saw Cana furrow her brows as she examined the new addition to the cards she had pulled. That split-second hope for a helpful answer was quickly dashed when Cana finally broke the silence.

"Natsu has the ring," she stated plainly.

Her reading was met with a let-down sigh from Mira, who had decided that it was entirely unhelpful.

"If the idiot had the ring, then we wouldn’t have been dragged into this crap," Laxus replied.

"The cards don’t lie," Cana shrugged. "I’m goin’ back to my drink."

Realising she wasn’t going to make much progress with these two, Mira decided a more productive use of her time would be to look elsewhere and left the two of them to tend to their drinks alone.

"Levy-chan, I have to go."

"Come on, it’ll be really quick," she assured, trying to keep Lucy from leaving and finding the crazed search back at the guild. "In and out, I promise!"

Lucy shot her a sceptical look, which Levy returned with pleading eyes. Her gaze flicked from her friend to the book store behind her. It was oh-so tempting—shelves and shelves lined with books of every genre for her to flick through the pages of—but six p.m. was rapidly approaching, and she wasn’t sure she would be able to cut it in time.

"Okay, fine," Lucy gave in. "But it has to be quick. I really don’t want to be late."

"It will be! Promise!"

The moment she stepped foot in the shop, any and all of her worries about the time were dashed. It was just her and the shelves of books before her, and suddenly Levy’s promise of in and out was becoming less and less realistic, but as she perused the selection, Lucy couldn’t find it in herself to care that much.

Taking one off the shelf, Lucy flicked through the pages and enjoyed the new book smell that wafted from the pages. It was as though all time had stopped as she read through blurb after blurb, flicking through the first few pages of each book she picked up, having to physically hold herself back from taking up residence on the floor for a full read-through right then and there. She hardly noticed the reassured look on Levy’s face as she slipped another book under her arm and moved on to find the next one.

"Have you read this one?" Levy called out from across the store, summoning her even deeper into the aisles.

Taking the book out of her hands, Lucy examined the cover to be met with what she assumed to be a traditional fantasy novel based on the dragon and gold embossed text adorning the cover until she flipped it over and read the description on the back. She could feel the blood rushing to her face in embarrassment as she read an incredibly not-safe-for-work description of a romance between a girl and a half-human, half-dragon and realised that what Levy had handed her was not, in fact, fantasy but an erotica novel.

"Remind you of anyone?" She teased, watching the moment realisation hit her friend.

"L-Levy!" Lucy sputtered out.

"It’s really realistic~" Levy replied, enjoying the way Lucy seemed to practically glow red in mortification.

"Oh, have you found something good?" Erza asked, peering over her shoulder, causing Lucy to pull the book to her chest in a bid to keep her from catching a glimpse at it.

"Nope! Nothing interesting!"

Erza gave her a look that was somewhere between shock and confusion, but Lucy didn’t give herself much time to analyse as she tried to hide her face and quickly move on, trying not to draw any more attention to herself as she slipped the novel in between the ones she was already carrying and shuffled away.

Lucy busied herself looking through the shelves to hide her embarrassment, trailing her finger across the spines that lined the shelves until something caught her interest. One by one, she amassed more and more novels for her collection, all self-restraint thrown out the window, until she simply could not carry any more in her arms and decided that she needed to make her purchase or she might never leave.

As she made it to the counter, Lucy caught a glimpse of the clock over the shoulder of the shop attendant.

5:52

She sucked in a breath as she realised how long had passed since they had entered the store. If she ran, she would maybe be able to make it back to their meeting spot in time.

"I’m sorry, I have to go," Lucy declared, dropping her books on the counter and making a mad dash out of the front door.

"Lucy, wait!" Levy called out as she ran after her friend.

"Levy-chan, I’ve really enjoyed our day together, but I’m already running late," she called back over her shoulder.

The composure that Levy had been able to maintain the entire day so far was suddenly beginning to wane. They still hadn’t gotten word on the ring, and they couldn’t let her go until they had found it, but she was running out of ideas, and Lucy was adamant.

She couldn’t tell Lucy what was going on, that was simply out of the question, but there was nothing she could do now that would keep her distracted without also giving away that something was up. In a moment of near-defeat, she shot Erza a worried look, though it seemed like she was already far ahead of her.

Erza took off after her, her pace far exceeding Lucy's, and it did not take long for her to overtake their friend. Before Levy could understand what her plan was, a blinding light overtook her vision, and suddenly in front of Lucy stood Erza, wielding a sword in each hand, looking more determined than she had seen her in a long time.

"I’m sorry, Lucy, but I cannot allow you to go on that date," she declared, pointing the very sharp tip of one of her swords in Lucy’s direction in threat.

"W-what?" Lucy stuttered out, her expression somewhere in the mid-point of confusion and terror.

Lisanna checked her communication lacrima, hoping that some news had broken about the location of the ring and she simply hadn’t heard it go off. She bit her lip to keep the defeated sigh from passing through as she found no new updates.

"I still haven’t heard anything from big sis," she said, trying to hide the twinge of disappointment she was feeling.

"We’ve combed every inch of the house, and we still haven’t found it," Happy complained, not at all trying to hide the exasperation evident in his voice.

"Are you sure there’s nowhere else it could be? Is there anywhere we haven’t checked yet?"

Her question was met with silence, completely uncharacteristic for those she was with, and concern began to bubble within her.

"Natsu?"

She turned around to see what he was up to, only to find him sitting at the kitchen table, holding his head in his hands.

"We’re not gonna find the stupid ring."

His voice held a sense of defeat and sorrow that she had never heard in it before and the sound of it was disconcerting and made her heart ache in her chest.

"Natsu, I am not letting you give up on finding this ring. I’ve never watched you give up before, and I’m not going to let this be the first time."

"We’ve been looking for hours and we still haven’t found it," he said, turning his head to the side, wherein she caught a glimpse of the blank, defeated look in his eyes that looked so uncharacteristic of him that it almost made her feel sick.

"You said it has to be tonight, so it’s going to be tonight, okay? There’s got to be some place that we haven’t thought of."

"We’ve literally checked everywhere," Happy emphasised.

"We can’t have checked everywhere if we still haven’t found it," Lisanna replied, not wanting the mood to get any lower than it already was. "Have you checked in your pockets?" She suggested, in a hopeful attempt to try to get them to refrain from giving up at the very last second.

Natsu shoved his hands in his pant pockets, still looking slightly defeated and not expecting anything from her suggestion, until he felt something in there and froze in place.

"Natsu… please don’t tell me-"

"Have I ever told you that you’re the best ever?"

Before she even had time to respond, Natsu had her in a bone-crushing hug, her feet having left the floor as he picked her up in delighted celebration.

"Woah-!" She cried out in surprise before laughter overcame her. "You might have mentioned it once or twice," she teased as she felt her feet touch solid ground once more.

Once he had set her down, he held out his hand to show off the very ring they had been searching for all day, as it had sat dormant in his pocket the whole time. It was something more elegant than she ever thought Natsu would pick, and she could only assume that he had had more than a few hands in helping him choose.

"Lucy’s going to love it," she hummed, admiring the way the stones glimmered as the light hit them. "Now hurry up and get changed! You don’t want to be late for your engagement."

Though Mira hadn’t expected the search to be a prompt one, the way the light streaming in from the windows was beginning to dim as the sun began to dip over the horizon had her worried that it wouldn’t be successful either. A quick glance around the guild hall indicated that others were feeling much the same way. Even little Asuka, who had been so gung-ho about the search at the beginning, was now beginning to bore of it, her eyes growing droopy as she clung to Alzack’s arm to keep herself from nodding off completely.

Erza and Levy had been doing their best to buy them time all day. Natsu, Lisanna, Gray, Juvia and Wendy hadn’t given up on their search yet, and neither would she. This was a group effort, and she was going to play her part.

She pursed her lips together as she tried to think of all the places they hadn’t already searched. She’d already searched every inch of the bar top and every inch behind it. Maybe she’d have better luck searching on the other side, beneath the barstools. She could recall serving Natsu a drink the day prior, so it wasn’t a stretch to think he could have dropped it there.

Leaving her post behind the bar, she began to search beneath any and all of the unoccupied barstools. Now that she was mostly alone, Mira didn’t try to hold back the exasperated sigh that passed her lips. After designating herself as the leader of the search, she tried her best to keep up a confident and assured façade, but even she could see that things were looking a little hopeless.

Her quiet moment of searching was cut short when she noticed her communication lacrima buzz on the counter top and strode over to check her new message.

SMS Lisanna &lt;3 we found it! i’m sending natsu over now

She sucked in a breath before subsequently letting it out with a squeal of excitement.

"Natsu’s got the ring!" Mira called out across the guild hall, capturing the attention of all who still remained in the evening hour.

Raucous cheers promptly broke out throughout the hall, both in early celebration of Natsu and Lucy’s impending engagement and in gratitude that the search was finally over.

"Someone go tell Freed, he’ll be happy to get out of the sex room," Bickslow cackled, earning him a half-hearted smack on the arm from Laxus.

"WE DID IT!" A familiar voice called out from the middle of the guild hall, drawing all attention to Makarov, sitting on one of the tables, his face a deep flush to match his deeply inebriated state.

"But you didn’t do anything, Master," Mira pointed out, though her corrections were quickly brushed off in favour of more slurred celebrations.

"Three cheers for Fairy Tail!"

"You really think you should be drinking that much, old man?" Laxus asked, not at all sharing his enthusiasm.

"I gotta if Natsu’s gettin’ married," Makarov slurred back. "‘Cuz that means soon we’re gonna have a bunch of mini-Natsu’s runnin’ around, and I’m not sure I’m ready for that," he justified before letting out a small hiccup. "I just gotta make sure I retire before then," he tried to whisper to Cana next to him, though his words evidently came out much louder than he intended.

Laxus gave him a vaguely sceptical look before shrugging and taking another swig of his drink, deciding that this wasn’t his problem.

"Fair enough."

The moment of quiet that fell across the hall at their Master’s words didn’t last long; after all, their Natsu was getting engaged, and that was plenty reason to celebrate.

Any and all concerns about keeping Lucy’s room as tidy as they found it had long since gone out the window, along with perhaps their sanity, as the group ravaged her apartment in search of the ring. All of the couch cushions had been pulled off of the couch and left in a pile on the floor, not at all dissimilar to the pile of bedsheets that had accumulated in Gray’s second search of the bed. Juvia’s section of the room wasn’t in much better shape, with Lucy’s clothes in piles by the dresser as well as seemingly thrown onto every other piece of furniture in the room.

Another pile was added as she emptied another drawer to search the bottom of it for the ring, hoping that maybe she would hear the clink of it hitting the floor between the garments. She hadn’t seen anything in her first search, but maybe she just hadn’t been thorough enough. With a frustrated grumble, Juvia began to search through the garments to ensure the ring hadn’t gotten caught in any of them before tossing each to the side once she came up ringless.

Wendy, on the other hand, had relegated herself to searching Lucy’s desk in complete and blissful ignorance of the absolute carnage behind her. She carefully rummaged through the drawers, going so far as to avert her gaze when she found an unfinished manuscript sitting at the bottom of one of them. Her brows furrowed slightly in concentration, focusing all of her energy on feeling around for the ring.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, that drawer was a lost cause, as was the one below it, and the next below that, full of nothing but books, letters, and stationery. Letting it slide closed, Wendy decided her attention would be better spent looking on top of the desk; after all, if Natsu had carelessly placed it somewhere, it was more likely on something rather than in something.

Her desk was probably the messiest place in the whole apartment, with papers and notebooks strewn across the surface. The ink on them still smelled fresh, indicating she had just left them there this morning, so it wasn’t a stretch to think that perhaps the ring sat under the papers and Lucy simply hadn’t noticed it was there.

Or at least, that’s what Wendy had hoped anyway.

Carefully, she gathered up the leaves of paper, wary not to smudge any wet ink as she glanced underneath. In her search, Wendy carelessly knocked over a pen stand that she hadn’t noticed sitting there until it was already knocked on its side, pens and pencils now strewn all across the desk.

"Oh no! Lucy’s pencils!" She exclaimed, panic beginning to take hold as she watched the pens roll off the edge of the desk.

She scrambled to pick up the stationery that had been scattered across the desk and place them neatly back in the little pot that she had knocked them out of.

"I’ve made such a big mess," she murmured, paying no mind to the real mess being made behind her.

As she placed each item back in the pen holder, a brilliant idea struck her. She looked inside the container, hopeful that maybe the ring had found itself at the bottom of it or perhaps hooked around one of the pencils, but alas, she had no such luck. A sad sigh escaped her as she placed it back on the desk with a small clink, disappointed that her mess hadn’t brought any success with it.

Juvia bit down on her lip as she looked into the empty bottom drawer at the end of her search. Although perhaps it seemed unrealistic, she had still been hopeful that maybe, by some miracle, she would find the ring safely tucked away beneath one of Lucy’s shirts, and they would finally be able to put an end to their search. Unfortunately, it seemed as though it simply couldn’t be that easy.

She glanced over at Gray and then Wendy to find both of them still searching, indicating that neither had found anything either.

Hoping that perhaps the third time was the charm, she began to dig through the pile of clothes once more. She searched through pockets and shook each garment in hopes of it miraculously dropping out of it before tossing it to the side when she inevitably came up short. With every passing moment, it was becoming more and more likely that they weren’t going to find the ring today. Trying to keep her hopes up, Juvia shoved her hand into the pocket of a pair of shorts before she felt her communication lacrima buzz in her own.

Placing the shorts back down, Juvia pulled her lacrima out while keeping her hopes low, at best expecting the search to be called off and postponed for a later day. They’d been at the search for hours, it was creeping closer and closer to their cut-off time, and there was only so long Erza and Levy could keep Lucy occupied for.

Opening her messages, Juvia’s heart skipped a beat as she read the three new messages.

SMS Mirajane natsu found the ring! :) you are free of your ring searching duties now :) you should get out of there before the happy couple gets back teehee ;)

She nearly dropped the lacrima in joyous surprise as she reread it. They had been searching for so long that part of her was worried that they simply wouldn’t find the ring today, so a feeling of relief washed over her, knowing that they hadn’t somehow missed it in their search.

"Ah! Natsu has found the ring!" Juvia cried, capturing the attention of the others in the house.

"Really?" Wendy called back, dropping the papers ungracefully on the desk.

"Really!" She replied, holding her lacrima out for Wendy to confirm herself.

Gray threw his head back and let out a sigh of complete and utter relief upon hearing the news.

"Took him long enough," he commented, glancing over at the clock sitting on Lucy’s nightstand and noting how close it was to six. "Guess that means we can finally get out of here."

Juvia murmured in thankful agreement. Lucy had a nice place, but staying there for this long, doing nothing but frantic searching was beginning to drive her to the brink of insanity, and she was more than a little thankful to finally make their exit.

"This is the longest Juvia has ever been in Lucy’s apartment," she mused on their way out of their friend’s home.

"What about the Christmas party?" Gray asked, brows raised over the discrepancy.

"This is the longest Juvia has ever been in Lucy’s apartment sober," she corrected.

Gray let out a short breath of amusement at her comment, though before the mortification of the memories of that night could kick in, the sound of Wendy’s voice coming from behind caught his attention.

"Um… Gray? Juvia?"

The two turned back around to face Wendy after hearing her call out to them.

"Do you think maybe we should clean up before we leave?"

Looking back into her apartment, Gray and Juvia noticed the absolute state they had left it in. It looked like they had absolutely ransacked her apartment, which, in fairness, they very much had, but the thought of cleaning up after themselves had completely slipped Gray’s mind until now.

"Yeah, I guess we should," he reluctantly agreed.

If Gray had known how much of a pain in the ass it would be to clean the place up back to Lucy’s standard, he wouldn’t have made such a mess in the first place.

And all for the ring to not even be here.

Even still, he couldn’t find it in himself to be mad at Natsu for the waste of a day. Outwardly, he’d keep up their façade, he’d chastise him, he’d make fun of him, he’d make sure that Natsu would simply never live this down, but if it were to happen again, he would still help him in a heartbeat.

Maybe it was the thought of the impending proposal and wedding that had him feeling particularly sentimental on this day. Gray was never one for romance, but then again, neither was Natsu. Somehow or another, just the thought of that idiot finally giving Lucy what she had been not-so-subtly begging for for months at this point and all the celebrations that would ensue in its wake was enough to have Gray smiling even as he fitted the sheets back on Lucy’s bed.

Weddings were meant to be the joining of families, but they were both already family, weren’t they?

That’s why he felt so compelled to lend a hand in the search—because they were family.

He could already imagine the ear-to-ear smile on Lucy’s face as she showed off her new engagement ring, the tears beginning to form in her eyes again as she recounted whatever ridiculous plan Natsu had come up with for their proposal. She would go on and on about how it had been the best day of her life (so far, the wedding was still yet to come), and Gray could be content knowing that he had done his part to put that smile on her face, even if that part hadn’t been all that useful in the end.

His job at remaking her bed certainly wasn’t as neat as Lucy had left it in the morning, but he just hoped that she would be so elated with the events of the night when she arrived home that she simply wouldn’t question it.

All the clothing that had been thrown in piles around the apartment was now neatly put away in her dresser, and the documents stacked up on her desk looked even more organised than when they had entered.

Pleased with their clean-up, the three of them were more than happy to take their long-awaited leave.

"Oh! Just before we go," Wendy chimed out, capturing their attention one last time before tottering over to Lucy’s nightstand, where she placed the hair ties’ she had collected from under her bed. "Okay! That’s all!"

She hurried back out into the hallway where her companions were waiting for her before shutting the door behind her for Gray to lock before they set off back to the guild, where celebrations were no doubt already ensuing.

Heeding Lisanna’s advice, Natsu scurried off to the bathroom, grabbing his change of clothes on the way before slamming the door shut behind him in his renewed vigour. From behind the door, Lisanna heard a clatter of multiple items falling off of the countertop before a loud thud rang out, followed by a loud expletive.

"Shit!"

"Are you okay in there?" She asked, trying to suppress a laugh at how much trouble he seemed to be having in his rush to get dressed.

"Yeah, I just—god fucking—" He paused for a moment and let out a frustrated grunt. "I can’t get these stupid pants on."

The image of Natsu struggling to get into his pants (no doubt because he probably forgot to unbutton them before pulling them on) made her giggle, but she quickly held her hand over her mouth to hold it in before it escaped.

"Do you need some help?" Lisanna offered, feeling bad for merely standing by the door and

"No, I-" His reply was cut off by another frustrated grunt before he finally called out in success, "I got it!"

He came out wearing something much more dapper than Lisanna ever expected him to own—a pair of neat dress pants and a deep red button-up that he surprisingly managed to get buttoned up entirely on his own without misaligning any of them. There was no tie or blazer, though she suspected maybe that was a bit much to ask of Natsu.

"You look very handsome," she smiled.

"Ya think?" He asked, already tugging at his too-tight collar, before giving in and unbuttoning the top button entirely, letting it fall open in a way that looked much more in character for him.

"I do think so," she hummed. "Lucy’s gonna be really happy that you put in the effort."

At her praise, Natsu broke out into a pleased, self-assured smile.

"Got the ring?"

To her question, he confidently pulled the ring from his pants pocket, and Lisanna could rest easy knowing that all of their searching hadn’t been for nothing.

"I gotta go," he said, shoving the ring back in the pocket, confident that he wouldn’t lose it this time. "Can’t be late, or else Lucy’ll get mad at me."

"Hey, before you leave," Lisanna called out before he could make it too far.

Natsu turned on his heel to face her, and Lisanna responded in turn by dusting off his shoulder and adjusting the collar of his shirt, making sure he looked his very best for Lucy when he arrived.

"Now go get ‘em, tiger!"

For the first time that day, Lisanna saw that signature Natsu grin spreading from ear to ear, and suddenly all that effort became worth it.

"Right!"

He left no time to exchange goodbyes before he was off, for real this time. His face had a familiar look of determination on it.

"Thanks for all your help!" He yelled out before he could get too far out of earshot.

"You’re welcome!" Lisanna called back, and before long he was on his way.

As he sprinted back in the direction of the guild, Happy and Lisanna lingered behind, content to take their time in returning, not wanting to accidentally bump into the happy couple lest they accidentally ruin the surprise.

"You think Lucy’s going to say yes?" She asked, looking over to Happy, knowing that he knew Lucy infinitely better than she did.

"I think Lucy’s gonna cry like a big baby," he replied, earning a soft chuckle from Lisanna. "And then she’s gonna say yes."

"Yeah?" She hummed, earning a confident nod from their exceed friend. "I think so too."

Lucy’s brain was telling her to run, but her body stayed frozen in place in fear. She’d been in plenty of fights over the years, but she’d never fought Erza, and she was not about to now.

"H-hey, we can talk this out," Lucy tried, wary and confused by the sudden change in her friend’s demeanour.

If she fled, she would no doubt not make it more than maybe a few metres before she found herself skewered, which was less ideal than being late for her date, but she had made a promise to Natsu that she would be there at six, and she was less than keen to break it if she could help it.

Her gaze flicked between Erza and Levy as she tried to send her a silent plea for help but was met with no action from her friend, who simply stood and stared, seemingly a little in shock herself.

"Levy! Help!" She cried out in a desperate effort to get herself out of this situation.

Levy was about as taken aback by the whole scenario as Lucy was, but she, on the other hand, was less inclined to stop it. It wasn’t ideal, but it was working, and really, Levy had no better ideas that warranted the intervention.

So long as Lucy made it out intact, she would let Erza distract her by whatever means possible. Instead, she nervously shrugged in Lucy’s direction as if to say she didn’t know what to do either.

"You will not go on that date, even if it means I have to use force," Erza interrupted, pulling both girls out of their panicked trains of thought.

"Okay! Please just… put the sword away," Lucy pleaded, raising her hands to show she meant no harm.

She was at a complete loss of what to do, aside from plead for her mercy, but even that didn’t seem to work, with Erza still holding her weapon up in threat. Her brain could hardly comprehend what was going on—the day had been going so well; they’d laughed together, cried together, Lucy hadn’t felt this close to Erza in months, but now she was only feeling close to the lethal end of her weapon.

"Erza, please, whatever’s going on, I’m sure we can talk it out," she tried again, hoping that her words would break through to her.

A group of onlookers was beginning to gather at the unusual scene unfolding in the middle of Magnolia. Chatter began to spread through the audience, with many making note of the Fairy Tail guild marks that indicated that this was simply another of the local guild’s shenanigans rather than a threat to anyone’s safety.

Levy was thankful that the scene hadn’t caused any panic from onlookers, but she still wasn’t particularly keen for this to go on much longer. At this point, all they could do was bide their time and keep Lucy occupied for as long as they could without either spoiling the surprise or maiming her in the process.

Erza hadn’t moved an inch since drawing her sword, and thankfully, neither had Lucy, but the two could only stay locked in a standstill for so long. Watching it only served to make Levy antsy.

Someone needed to find the ring. Fast.

Almost as if someone had heard her prayers, Levy’s lacrima buzzed in her pocket, and she eagerly scrambled to check it, hoping that they could finally be free from this unusual standoff.

SMS Mirajane natsu has the ring! :) he is on his way back to the guild now :) feel free to send lucy back :)

Levy read the message. And then reread it. And then read it a third time, just to be sure.

She could have cried with happiness at the words on her screen, knowing that after this unusual experience, tonight would be Lucy’s night. Instead of dwelling on that, however, Levy slipped away somewhere out of Lucy’s line of sight but still within Erza’s to let her know the good news. The large crowd and her small stature made it difficult to get her attention without calling out to her, but as she waved her arms, she noticed Erza’s gaze flick up to her.

Levy held her hand up, pointed to her ring finger, and furiously nodded in hopes that she would get the message. With the way Erza’s stiff demeanour seemed to ease at her gestures, it seemed that she understood.

"Never mind," Erza said, sending her weapon back to the pocket dimension with a bright flash as though nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred. "You may go on your date now."

"What?" Lucy cried out, perhaps more lost than she was when Erza had first drawn her sword.

"No time for questions! You don’t want to be late, do you?" Levy diverted, trying to usher her back to the guild quickly.

"But what about-" Lucy began, only to be cut off by Erza.

"If you run back, you’ll make it there in time."

Lucy’s brain simply could not compute what had just happened, but her feet moved in time with Erza and Levy guiding her back to her meeting spot with Natsu.

"Run!" Levy shouted.

Heeding her advice, Lucy pulled off her heels, stumbling as she did so, before sprinting down the stone pavement towards the guild.

Before she could get too far away, Lucy looked over her shoulder to see her two friends watching her as she ran, smiling at her as though nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.

"Thank you for today!" She called out to them, deciding to ignore the unusual blip at the end. "I had fun!"

"We did too!" Erza shouted back, both of them waving their arms at her in goodbye.

"Have fun on your date!" Levy added.

"I will!"

Lucy was almost certain she was getting stares as she bolted towards their designated meeting spot at the guild. It wasn’t every day you saw a girl sprinting through the streets of Magnolia in heels as though her life depended on it, but it was a town that was full of surprises, and this was one of the milder ones compared to the things the guild tended to get up to.

She paid no mind to the looks being shot her way as she dashed through the streets along the familiar path to the guild hall. Even as her chest began to ache and she began to heave for breath, her legs continued to carry her until she spotted a head of pink hair standing right at the place they had promised to meet.

She watched his face light up as he spotted her, and suddenly nothing else mattered.

He held his arms out for her in anticipation, and she took full advantage of it, throwing herself into them and nestling her face into the crook of his neck. He stumbled back slightly, taken aback by the force with which she launched herself at him, but he quickly regained his balance and wrapped his arms around her.

"Hey," he murmured into her hair, lips grazing her scalp as he held her tight against his chest.

"Hi," she mumbled back, her voice muffled against his skin. "I’m sorry I kept you waiting," she apologised as she pulled back slightly, trying to keep her breath steady and even as she tried to hide just how much she had overexerted herself on the way here. "I’ve had a weird day."

"Yeah? Me too," he replied.

She cocked her head to the side, waiting for him to elaborate, but nothing came of it.

"Don’t worry about it," he brushed off. "I’m real happy to see you."

"I’m happy to see you too."

Reaching up on the tips of her toes, Lucy rested her hands on his shoulders and placed a gentle kiss against his lips. When she pulled back, she found a grin on his face accompanied by a light dusting of pink on his cheeks that made her heart race in her chest. It didn’t matter how many times she did it, Lucy would simply never get over how she could make her big, strong Natsu blush with little more than a kiss.

Seemingly unsatisfied with her light peck, Natsu’s hands cupped her cheeks and pulled her in again before running his tongue along the seam of her lips. A small squeak escaped her in surprise, which was promptly swallowed in their kiss. Once the shock of the kiss wore off, her arms came to rest around his shoulders, and she let him take the lead as she melted into his touch.

He barely managed to pull himself away from her lips, his nose grazing against hers when they parted as he leant over slightly so his forehead rested against hers.

"You look really pretty, by the way," he breathed, his words grazing hot against her lips.

Lucy let out an airy laugh at his words, amused by his sudden, unusual affection.

"What’s got you so sappy today?" She asked, pulling away slightly to get a better look at him, her arms still draped loosely around his neck.

"What? Nothin’. I’m not bein’ sappy," Natsu defended. "What’s so weird about me callin’ you pretty, huh?"

"Nothing’s weird," she hummed. "You look really handsome today, too."

He broke out into a grin at her compliment, which elicited a laugh from Lucy.

"I look pretty cool, right?"

"The coolest," she assured with a smile. "So, where are you taking me?" She asked, plenty ready to head on their way for a hopefully relaxing date after the day she had just had.

"It’s a surprise," Natsu grinned.

"You’ve been saying that all week," she pouted, clearly unhappy to hear the same answer he’d already given her each time she asked.

"That’s ‘cause it is," he said. "It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you."

In response, Lucy stuck out her bottom lip even further, hoping that maybe her pouty lips and glistening eyes would finally convince him to spill the beans, but he merely laughed at her expression.

"You’re weird."

His hands moved up to her face, squishing her cheeks together and pushing both lips out.

"There, now you look like a fish," he laughed, much to Lucy’s dismay.

"You’re sho annoying," she whined, her words distorted by the exaggerated Natsu-induced pout on her lips.

Natsu didn’t reply; he simply grinned down at her, happy to bask in her presence after a day spent apart, even if she was currently shooting him a very unhappy expression.

"You wanna get going?" He finally asked, letting his hands drop from her cheeks and down to her hands, where he intertwined her fingers with his own.

"Yeah, I would like that."

Truthfully, Lucy didn’t know what she had expected Natsu to come up with for tonight. Rarely did Natsu plan their dates, even rarer was that he insisted on planning their dates, so she really had no frame of reference for what he had on the agenda.

She just wasn’t expecting an hour-long hike out of Magnolia.

"Are we nearly there?" Lucy asked, trailing behind him, unable to keep up with his pace in her shoes.

"Almost," he called back.

"You said that twenty minutes ago," she whined. "And now my feet hurt."

"You shoulda worn more comfy shoes," Natsu retorted.

"Maybe I would have if you had told me where we were going," Lucy huffed as she stopped to slip her heels off. "I thought we were going to a restaurant or something, not a hike in the woods. You’re certainly not dressed for it either."

Upon noticing that Lucy had stopped behind him, Natsu followed suit and turned around to face her.

"You’re gonna love it, promise."

Lucy fell silent for a moment as she looked him up and down. Natsu knew her better than anyone, sometimes even herself, and he’d never taken her on a bad date before now. She didn’t know what was up his sleeve, but if he said she was going to love it, then she was sure he was right.

"Okay," she conceded. "But can you please hold these for me?" She added, holding out her shoes to him.

"Sure," he agreed, and before Lucy could even understand what was going on, one hand was under her arms while the other hooked under her knees, and she was swept up off of her feet and into his arms.

"The shoes! Not me!" She cried out, clutching onto him in shock.

Natsu simply grinned down at her, not phased by the prospect of carrying her the rest of the way.

"You’ll complain less this way."

Lucy hadn’t paid much mind to the passage of time, content to rest her head on Natsu’s shoulder and listen to his steady breath as he trod along the forest floor. Her eyes had fluttered closed long ago, and she was teetering on the edge of sleep, lulled in by Natsu’s familiar and calming warmth as he held her close. It wasn’t until she heard him murmur a few words to rouse her from her slumber before her feet hit the ground that she knew that they had finally arrived.

"We’re here."

She took a few moments to rub the sleep out of her eyes before she could fully process where they were. When she looked up at Natsu, she noticed foliage still behind him, though the moonlight shining upon them indicated that they had made it out of the forest. He was still grinning at her, giddy, waiting for her reaction to what he had been planning for her for weeks now.

Curiosity piqued, Lucy turned around to see what he had been so insistent on keeping a surprise.

Behind her sat a cliff that was little more than a backdrop to the view of a sky that was undisturbed by civilisation. Gorgeous shades of blues and purples melted together into the galaxy, dotted with stars as far as the eye could see, shining like glitter against the backdrop the sky provided them.

She had never seen anything like it before.

"Wow."

"Awesome, right?"

Awesome would be understating it.

It was incredible. Breath taking. Extraordinary.

No words in her vocabulary could even begin to encapsulate the true beauty that stood before her.

She felt so small under the stars, but so alive.

"It’s not as good as Stella, but I thought you’d still like it," he said, arms snaking around her waist, chin resting on her shoulder.

"Natsu this…" Her breath hitched in her throat, unable to muster up the words to describe how she was feeling. "This is amazing."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Part of her wanted to turn back to face him, to kiss him senseless for bringing her out here, but the other part couldn’t bring herself to tear her gaze away from the sky. Only when she felt his arms leave her waist did she finally look back over at him, only to find him making himself comfortable on the grass, waiting for her to join him.

She practically dove onto him, letting them both fall back onto the grass as she pressed her lips to his, kissing him with as much passion and fervour as she could muster, which he responded with just as much. Lucy was entirely out of breath by the time she pulled away, but that didn’t stop her from littering his face with kiss after kiss after kiss, ensuring no inch of skin was left untouched.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," she murmured between each kiss.

"No problem, Lucy," he smiled before cupping her jaw with his hand and easing her down for one more kiss.

Once he pulled away, Lucy rolled off of him onto the grass beside him before sitting up and pulling her knees to her chest, where she rested her chin to admire the view, a dreamy sigh passing her lips as she did so. That position didn’t last for long, however, before she felt Natsu’s hands on her and was pulled into his lap.

"So you don’t stain your new dress," he reasoned when she let out a confused squeak.

"Huh?"

Lucy looked down to recall that she was still wearing the dress she had purchased mere hours ago.

"I didn’t realise you noticed," she sheepishly admitted.

"Course I noticed," Natsu replied. "Like how I noticed that you curled your hair and painted your nails different."

She had barely managed to keep herself together thus far, but hearing him say that made her feel like her heart was simply about to burst.

Now it was her turn to cry.

Her eyes grew glassy as tears began to form. No longer could her emotions be contained, and suddenly the tears began to flow freely down her cheeks.

"Lucy? Oh god, Lucy, is everything okay? Did I-"

"I love you so much!" She sobbed, throwing her head back to rest on his shoulder and bringing one hand up to tangle in his hair.

Her sudden declaration caught him off guard, causing him to stiffen for a moment before he finally relaxed, knowing that she wasn’t hurt or upset. He lowered his head to place a tender kiss to her bare shoulder.

"Yeah, I love you too."

A few sniffles and sobs later, Lucy finally felt as though she had finally gotten all her emotions out. She brought a hand up to wipe away her tears and restore her foggy vision so she could truly admire what Natsu had brought her out here to see. She felt him nuzzle his nose into the spot where her neck and shoulder met, no doubt preparing himself to spend the rest of the night out here with her as she pointed out each constellation she could spot and recounted anecdotes about stargazing with her mother as a child.

His arms were warm, fighting off the cool night chill as a gentle breeze passed them by, and she snuggled even further into his embrace. She didn’t even mind the cool air hitting the exposed skin of her legs and arms, definitely not dressed for the occasion, but then again, neither was he.

She didn’t get much time to mull it over before something much more enticing caught her attention.

"Natsu, look!"

Her finger pointed up towards the stars, following the train of a meteor that ripped across the sky, followed by another, and another, and another, until falling stars were all that the eye could see.

"Did you know this was happening tonight?" She asked, whipping her head around to face him.

He didn’t answer her, didn’t need to. The wide smile plastered on his face was all the answer she needed.

"You gonna make a wish?" He simply asked.

Lucy turned her gaze back to the sky, watching the shooting stars pass them by.

A wish…

She didn’t need a wish.

Everything she could ever want was right here with her.

"No, I don’t think so," she breathed, content to simply be here, to exist with him.

"Really? You’re not gonna wish for anything?" He replied, his tone almost a little disappointed by her response.

"Do I have to?" Lucy asked, a little caught off guard by his tone.

"I guess you don’t," he mused. "But it probably would have made this a lot more romantic."

He left her no time to guess what he meant before he held out in front of her a dainty gold ring, embellished with three red stones at the top, and for a moment, Lucy swore the world around her stopped.

Her jaw dropped open, words caught in her throat as she sat there gaping at the ring.

She knew exactly what she wanted to say; she’d practically rehearsed it, but now that she was sitting here, Natsu holding the ring expectantly for her, she was too overwhelmed with emotion to spit it out.

Suddenly, all the tears that she thought she had cried out threatened to break through, and Lucy did nothing to stop them.

"Y-yes!" She finally managed to sputter out, answering a question that he hadn’t even asked.

Through her tears, she could barely manage to make out the ear-to-ear grin on Natsu’s face, but she didn’t need to see it to know. Instead, she simply held out her left hand for him, and he slipped the ring onto her ring finger, where it fit perfectly snug, and Lucy had to wonder just how much help he had gotten to make that happen.

With both of their hands now free, Lucy moved to straddle him, resting her arms around his neck as he began to wipe away her tears. As his hands moved to rest on her cheeks, she leant down to feel his lips against hers once more.

She didn’t know how many times she had kissed him tonight, but she did know that it would never be enough.

"I’m so happy," she choked out once they parted, their lips barely millimetres apart.

"Me too," he breathed, his hands still cupping her cheeks. "I love you," he repeated, his voice barely a murmur against her lips.

He closed the distance between them once more, and then again, and again, and again, barely letting her breathe between kisses until she was a giggling, sobbing mess.

Her heart was well and truly full.

She’d dreamed of this day for so long, her mind had conjured scene after scene of how it would happen, but nothing she could have come up with was as romantic as sitting here under the stars with her best friend and the love of her life. If they could stay like this forever, she would be content with that.

Forever.

Yes.

Forever sounded nice.

#fairy tail #nalu #lucy heartfilia #natsu dragneel #fan fiction #fanfiction #fanfic #mya writes things #dies this took 3 weeks of writing every single day #im so glad thats over lmfao #long post

[seeingteacupsindragons]

Commenting on Meta: Quick-Start Guide

Inspired by a convo with @hergan416, I realized that while meta writers (me, at least) do still like comments/feedback on their writing, a lot of people probably don’t know how to respond to it very well. Responding to fiction can be easier.

But here’s a cheat sheet for, “Things I Like to Hear About” on my meta writing. I can’t guarantee all meta writers will agree, but I think at least a fair amount of it also applies.

This is not meant to be an all-inclusive list, but to give you ideas of where to start if this is a thing you’d like to do more of this, and maybe some general guidance on how to approach it.

This is divided into three categories: General Comments, If You Agree With the Meta, and If You Disagree With the Meta.

General:

Meta writers typically use different writing techniques than fiction writers, but they do still use them. A lot of it will be in the persuasive or rhetorical category which people are less familiar with, but if you notice them: say it!

Any comments about writing style/voice. Personally, I mix a lot of creative techniques in mine, and there are jokes and asides in there. If they made you laugh: tell me, I wanna know! If a turn of phrase haunts you or really hit you well: let us know!

Things like tone: some meta writers are more clickbait-y or aggressive, some are more wishy-washy, some more authoritative, some more authoritarian—and all of that impacts how it’s received. They might be putting a lot of effort into it.

What is the meta writer’s general approach to meta/analysis/fiction—stuff about that!

Anything you notice that seems like it took a lot of time or effort. They will appreciate you noticed!

Agree:

"I never put those together!"

"I've never seen it that way before.”

“I've never been able to put my finger on this and now it makes sense"

“I’ve never been able to articulate it”

“This would be interesting to explore in fic.”

“I wonder if this could tie into XYZ, too…”

“I wonder where the series might go with this.”

"This also has XYZ implications, too!”

“This is a similar concept I saw somewhere else"

“I really like the way this part of the story was written because XYZ”

“This is well put together because…”

Disagree:

Not all meta writers are gonna want these comments, but personally, I’m okay with them…in some circumstances. If it feels like you’re writing your own meta post, then…a little weird. If you’re opposed to my approach in general, okay, that’s frustrating. But you know what I do like?

Questions about how I got there!

“I’ve always seen it as ABC because of XYZ.”

“How do you think XYZ factors into this?”

“Do you think XYZ changes this?”

“XYZ is what I made of that.”

Stuff like that. Usually I can comment back on that and have a discussion. It’s totally possible we both have valid and yet different takes and both readings are valid! There’s a conversation to be had here!

I'm totally happy to discuss other valid readings and talk about what different readings add and why we might prefer one or the other!

The Most Favorite Comments I get on writing meta tend to be:

Anything about how this changed how you read or write, or think about reading or think about writing/writers

Anything about taking the time to sit down with stuff I write—in this world of infinite scrolling and quick bites, knowing I can entice someone into stopping that for a few minutes is better than gold

Anything about how you got more excited about writing/reading

Anything about what it makes you think of me as a fiction author (I mean…hey, I’m a person and a writer, too)

Anything about how this made reading/writing different or more fun for you

Anything about sharing my meta to discuss with other people

Anything about it making you love the media more

In Conclusion:

There’s lots of ways to interact with your meta writers, and they probably want you to.

#writing #meta #fandom

[cjsarchive]

I like the insecure mc with sam fic you wrote, can you do a matthew one? like incorperating the fact he cooks a lot of sweets maybe.

Yep, hope you enjoy!<3

The Most Beautiful Girl-Matthew x Female Reader

I stared at myself in the mirror. Stared at my stomach, hips and thighs. I sucked in my stomach and turned to look at myself from the side. I definitely like how this looks. But when I let my stomach rest, I felt like crap. I need to stop obsessing over how I look. I look at myself in the mirror too much. But I couldn’t help but keep coming back to examine myself, my body, what I need to work on and fix. I sighed.

“Hey, you okay?” I turned towards the voice and saw Matthew was standing in the doorway to my bedroom.

“Oh, yeah I'm okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. I’m okay,” I forced a smile on my face, hoping to convince him. He didn’t look fully convinced, but he didn’t push any further.

“Alright, if you say so. Anyways, dinner’s done!” He grinned.

“Okay, coming!” I looked at myself in the mirror one more time. I didn’t have an appetite right now, but I followed Matthew downstairs anyway. I sat down across from him.

“I made your favorite dessert tonight too!”

“Thanks,” I wanted to smile, but I only felt worse. He was so sweet, but he didn’t know the thought of eating anything sweet right now made me nauseous. I tilted my head down, hiding my face, and began to eat.

I managed to scarf my food down, but I still couldn’t touch the dessert. Matthew must have noticed me simply staring at it, “Is everything okay? Are you tired of that? Cause I can make something else for dessert if you want!” He offered.

“Um, no it’s okay. I’m just full right now. I’ll eat it tomorrow.” I couldn’t read the expression on his face, it made me anxious.

“Alright, I’ll handle dishes and stuff tonight, okay?” He walked over to me and left a kiss on my forehead before taking the dishes to the kitchen. Ugh, why am I being so difficult?

I went back up to my bedroom. I look towards the mirror. I tried to stop myself. I need to stop looking in the mirror. But as I thought that, my feet were already making their way towards the mirror. I stared for a long time. I can’t keep being like this. I can’t keep being myself. I grabbed my phone and looked up dieting routines online. I was so focused on it that I didn’t notice Matthew had come in until I felt his arms wrap around my waist.

“I know I keep asking but are you sure you’re alright? You seemed kinda off at dinner.” He said softly. Before I could turn my phone off, he saw my search results on my phone. “You wanna start dieting?” He asked, confused. I hesitated. There was no point in lying to him now.

I sighed, “Yes. I want to lose weight.”

“Why?”

The words slipped out before I could catch them, “Because I don’t like my body.” After I let that out, the words just kept coming, “I want to feel good about my body, I really do. I try to convince myself it’s not that big of a deal. But then I see so many girls with my body type going on diets, having intense workout routines, working to be slimmer, and trying to get the ‘ideal body.’” My eyes started to water, but I blinked the tears away, “It’s hard to feel good about my body when everywhere I look, I’m being shown that my body is not ideal and I should be working to change it. That’s why I don’t want to eat dessert. I’m just so tired of feeling shitty.”

Matthew was silent for a moment, taking in what I had said. He gently turned me around to look at him.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know you felt like that. If I had known I wouldn’t have made-“

“No, you have nothing to be sorry for. You’ve done nothing but be kind and sweet to me. You always try to make me happy. I don’t even know why you’re with me, Matthew. All I’ve done lately is whine and be difficult. I don’t deserve someone like you.” I looked down, I couldn’t even look him in the eye. I felt small. Matthew stood in thought for a while before he softly smiled.

“I have an idea.”

He led me over and we both sat on the bed. He reached into his pockets and pulled out various plushies. Two of which looked like me and Matthew. He placed the plushies at the end of the bed.

“What is this, Matthew?”

“Just watch.” I looked at the toys and they started moving, like they had come to life, “I’m gonna tell you a story.” I looked at him in slight surprise before taking my attention back to the toys. “Once there was a guy named Matthew,” The Matthew plush stood front and centre and waved at me. I giggled at the sight, “After he left the demon world, he got to explore the wonders of the human world, and all it had to bring.” His plush was shown wandering and experiencing different things such as books, stores, and food. “But there was something he had yet to experience: Love. Love wasn’t a thing in the world he grew up in, he never experienced it. Until he met..” A puppet that looked like me propped up. Matthew conjured a little spotlight as well and shined it on my plush. “This girl turned Matthew’s life upside down! In the best way of course. From the day they first met, she showed Matthew kindness, letting him and his brothers live with her when they had nowhere else to go. Matthew didn’t know it yet, but from that day forward, he would never be able to get this girl out of his mind. Again, in the best way.” I laughed as I continued to watch the puppet show.

“He was attracted to her so quickly. Her kindness, her gentleness, her beauty, her independence. She was amazing! He loved being able to be close to her, he loved the person he was when he was with her. She made him feel so empowered, like he could do anything! He’d never met anyone who made him feel like that. He was 100 percent in love with her!” The plushies began reenacting all the dates Matthew and I went on. I felt a great wave of nostalgia remembering them all. Before I knew it, tears started flowing, “Even though she doesn’t feel great about her body right now, Matthew still felt her body was beautiful and didn’t need to change. She was the most gorgeous woman he ever knew. A woman he never wanted to live without. A woman he loved more than anything. And he’ll never leave her. Ever.” The two plushies hugged and I felt my heart melt. All the toys then stood in a line and bowed to me. “To the most beautiful and wonderful girl.” The toys then went limp again.

Matthew rubbed the back of his neck and blushed, “Heh, I know it’s a kinda corny but-“ I didn’t let him finish as I threw myself into his arms. I sobbed in his shoulder. I was so overwhelmed with happiness.

“T-that was beautiful, Matthew,” I sputtered out. I squeezed him tighter. Matthew hugged me back just as tight.

“I’m really glad you liked it.” He gently pulled away, but still held me as he looked at me, “If you really want to start dieting, I’ll support you. But there’s nothing wrong with your body or your size, I promise! You are gorgeous.” He reassured me again. I smiled bright before I leaned in and gave him a gentle but passionate kiss on the lips. He very happily kissed back.

“I love you, Matthew. I love you so much.”

Matthew smiled and left multiple kisses all over my face, making me giggle, “I love you too, beautiful.”

#seduce me the otome #seduce me otome #seduce me #smto #seducemeotome #seducemetheotome #seduce me matthew x reader #seduce me matthew #zecaeru

[chaotictarlos]

Fic Pride Friday

thank you yo @bonheur-cafe for the lovely tag

Who is she? Making a banner? Participating in a fandom fic tag game after months? Crazy how much motivation and time I have now that I'm not stressing over classes and just have to do my job. I've only picked a few fics to highlight here but you can read anything I've written HERE

THE LOFT || TK and Carlos decide that they're going to stay home for their honeymoon instead of going someplace else.

Carlos gives TK a look that seems like he wants to argue but then apparently he thinks better of it and sighs, looking down at their clasped hands. “I’ll never be able to thank the universe enough for putting you in my path,” Carlos says. “I don’t think there is any other person who would put up with all of this and stay or even find excuses to justify it all.” “Being with you isn’t ‘putting up with all of this’,” TK says. “Supporting you, loving you, caring about you is so far from ‘putting up’ with things. You’re not a burden for me Carlos, you’re the love of my life and I’m committed to being here with you and helping you through everything that life throws at you. We’re a team and we face things together.”

[REDACTED] || TK posts a picture that certainly gets Carlos' attention.

“I know why you posted the photo,” Carlos says as he flicks the toy on. He turned it onto his lowest vibration before going in search of his phone. Once he finds it - in his pants pocket, of course - he syncs it up with the toy. “You wanted attention and you wanted to make me jealous because you like it when I’m jealous. You know I’ll come home and give you exactly what you need. You know I’ll fuck you hard and won’t stop until you forget about everybody else who’s given you attention because their attention doesn’t matter. At the end of the day what matters is the attention I give you and the way I fuck you. You know that nobody in that phone would ever be able to satisfy your needy hole. Nobody knows how to handle you like I do.”

You took the best of my heart and left the rest in pieces || An exploration of emotions. The Breakup Era from Carlos' POV

There was no comfort to be found when he was basically told that the love of his life had a big chance of dying. He knew that TK was strong, that he was a fighter, but how many times could someone brush close to death and come back? His mind reminded him that TK had died before he was brought to the hospital and it was only because of Nancy and Tommy that he was even still around to struggle and slowly slip out of his fingers. He wasn’t sure if he would have preferred for TK to die out on the scene, to get the call and have his heart ripped out of his chest all at once, or to be where he was at the moment with TK so close, yet so far away and slipping further with each breath he struggled to take.  “Why?” Carlos asked out loud. He lifted his head and looked up, staring at the cross above. “Why can’t I have him?” All through their relationship, there had been ups and downs - more than Carlos had ever faced in a relationship before. TK always ran away from him and Carlos was dumb enough to keep doing the chasing. He saw so much in TK, loved him as a whole person, that he wanted to chase him, even if it meant that he kept getting his heart broken. “Hasn’t he suffered enough? Haven’t I suffered enough? Why does he keep ending up here? Always fighting for his life?” Carlos asked, voice barely above a whisper because he didn’t trust it not to break. “TK is a good man. He doesn’t deserve to always fight for his life and be so scared of losing everyone that he runs away from love and happiness. He doesn’t deserve the hand that he’s been dealt.” Carlos was frustrated and hurt, wrapped up in a ball of pain that hadn’t gone away since TK had walked out of their loft four months before.  Now that pain was bigger, consuming him in more ways than he had ever thought possible. He continued to talk, to plead, to beg with God as he sat there. He was sure that everything he said was going to go unanswered but it still felt good to get some things off his chest and not have someone sitting beside him and try to comfort it all away.  “Please, I’m begging you to let him wake up. Don’t take him from me before I can prove that I’m worthy of him,” Carlos finished. He wiped the remaining tears from his eyes and stood up. 

I don't know who's been tagged so sorry for tagging you again. I also don't know who to tag since I've been away for so long so if you want me to tag you in things let me know.

NPT: @kiloskywalker @paperstorm @thebumblecee @cowlos-reyes @mooshkat @detective-giggles @sanjuwrites @lightningboltreader @liminalmemories21 @lemonlyman-dotcom @bonheur-cafe @carlos-in-glasses @cold-blooded-jelly-doughnut

#fan fic pride #fan fic #tarlos #tk x carlos #tk strand #carlos reyes #911 lone star #fic pride friday

[kittyclawz89]

if i could dance with you again - Poe Dameron x GN!Reader

WORD COUNT: 1905

WARNINGS:

no use of y/n, allusions to sm*t but not actual sm*t, kissing, pretty angsty, a copious amount of taylor swift lyrics, first time writing a fic so hopefully i’ll get better lolol

thank you for reading! <3 <3 <3

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

i, i loved you in secret

Any fool on base would be able to tell you about the reputation of Poe Dameron. How he was known as a ‘womaniser’, and a ‘manwhore’.

But that wasn’t your Poe.

Your Poe was the one who held back your hair when you needed to chuck up after drinking way too much spotchka. Your Poe was the one who stayed up all night in the comms centre when your missions went slightly off plan. Your Poe was someone who cared more than anybody else.

Your Poe, above all else, was the man you loved. You admired him so greatly. His skill as a pilot, his way with people, his respect for the general… He was perfect.

Yet nobody could know. He made that abundantly clear to you immediately after you got together. It would cost him his position as commander to be in a relationship with his Lieutenant Commander without asking or telling the general first. You had to ‘work together, not sleep together’ (Leia’s exact words).

you said there was nothing in the world that could stop it, i had a bad feeling

Your first argument happened when he had returned from a mission and you ran into his arms on the hangar. He hugged you back, sure. But not a loving, warm, Poe hug. It was just friendly.

“Are you embarrassed to be with me? Is that it? Is that why this has to be-“ you cried.

Poe cut you off halfway through your sentence, “No, no baby. That isn’t the case. Please don’t say that, and don’t think it for a single second. There is nothing in the galaxy that could make me feel that way about you.”

He pulled you in, only now this hug was in the privacy of his quarters. He kissed you and laid you down on his bed, seemingly to prove this to you.

people started talking, putting us through our paces

That dreaded day in the mess hall was one you would never be able to forget. People’s stares lingered much too long on you as you ate. Whispers of your name hissed in your ear viciously tearing you apart.

And then you saw him. You straightened your posture and smiled at him, thinking he would come over like he always did, the rest of your squadron - Black Squadron - walking or traipsing along behind him. But he just nodded, a nod so brief that you couldn’t tell if you had actually witnessed anything, and sat on a separate table.

Your wrinkled your brows and curled you lip in confusion, before picking up your food tray and walking over to your squadron. Before you could sit, Poe was saying your name quietly behind you.

“Wh- How’d you get there?” You chuckled, trying to hide the nerve in your voice.

It didn’t work.

Poe pulled you outside of the mess hall inconspicuously.

“People know. About us.”

Your heart dropped. You felt ill. Not at the fact your relationship had been discovered, but at Poe’s audible and visible upset at this.

“Oh. Oh, okay, I- uhm, well do-“

He cut you off.

“This was not supposed to happen. If the general finds out we are both screwed. I’m sorry. I can’t risk it. This job, this work- this is my everything. My family legacy. My entire reputation, I- I can’t. We can’t keep doing this. We have to end it.”

if i could dance with you again…

It had been over two years since the relationship with Poe ended. Your reputation had only grown up, up, up recently. You were still Lieutenant Commander, but your interactions with Poe were scarce. You avoided him unless absolutely necessary, and you must have only spoken to him once every couple months. These interactions only ever took place in meetings with the other higher ranking members of the resistance, with the exception of talking in squadron conversations over comms.

Life was good.

It could’ve been better, sure, but you knew that a breakup with a man like Poe could have done you much worse.

You weren’t over, over him. But you didn’t feel the heartache killing you slowly anymore.

So yeah, sure, it could’ve been better. But everyone says that about their life when fighting a war.

if i could dance with you again, i’d kiss you as the lights went out, swaying as the room burned down, i’d hold you as the water rushes in…

You heard a knock on the door to your quarters. It startled you slightly, but you got up to open it anyway. You were wearing green fatigues and a black thermal top; it was downtime on base and you felt no need to wear uniform.

You pressed the button on the side to open the door, and as the two halves opened up, you seemed to freeze in time.

Poe stood on the other side of the door, the light from your room casting a light on his face which created shadows that highlighted his best features. Your bottom lip involuntarily pushed forward, your brows dropping in unison.

“Commander Dameron?” you said, clearing your throat and resetting your face to look nonchalantly back at him. “Can I… do you need something?”

“Are you free?” he spoke. You hadn’t heard that pleading, soft tone for what felt like eons.

“Uhm, I- uh, well I- now?” you stuttered.

“Yeah- actually, don’t worry. Sorry for bothering you. Have a nice evening, Lieutenant Commander.”

“Wait! No, stop!” you called after him as he walked down the corridor, heading back to his room. “I, yes, I am free. Sorry, Commander. Just- just give me a second to grab my jacket.”

You grabbed the blue jacket that you’d been wearing for years; it was comfortable, what’s a girl gonna do?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He lead you to the top of a hill on the D’Qar base. The sun was just setting over the trees, and you couldn’t help but stare at the picturesque scene.

“You coming or what, Lieutenant?” Poe laughed. You shot daggers with your eyes when you looked back at him. You caught him up, and eventually sat down with him at the top of the hill.

“So?”

“So what?” Poe said, genuinely confused. Classic Poe.

“Why am I here?” you asked.

“Do you ever think about it anymore?”

You paused. Frozen in time, like you had been outside the mess hall a couple years ago.

“I, uh, well…” you began. You just couldn’t quite find the words; you’d practiced this exact interaction so many times in your mirror, yet you couldn’t get past the first bit yet…

“Take your time, it’s okay.” Poe reassured you with a soft, gentle smile. Maker, you’d missed that smile when it was meant just for you…

“Okay. Well, yeah, I do. But it wouldn’t have… I don’t think we were meant to be together at that time. I mean, we had only just become joint in command. It was tough. You cared about your rank so much Poe.” you could feel your throat tightening. The way it did when you were about to start crying. You took a breath, and started again. “I understand that it was important, but I… I loved you Poe. I was so naïve. I’m an ace pilot. I’m smart, I’ve always been smart. People liked me. But I was willing to be undermined and hidden away by you. Because I was… I was foolish. I thought that’s what love was. And when you left me, not to sound evil, but it was so kriffing careless. You just… you didn’t even want to try to make it work. You told me nothing in the galaxy would stop it… I…” a tear fell down you cheek, and you turned to finally face him.

“Loved me?”

“Well, yeah. I guess we were kind of… I don’t know how to say it and make you understand, but we were dancing with our hands tied, Poe.” you finally said his name to his face for the first time since your split. “I thought we were in it together. I felt so strongly about you and you… you just…” you were fully crying now. You suddenly became painfully self aware, and wiped your tears with your sleeve, taking a deep breath.

When you looked back at him, he looked so… stressed. The face he pulls when something goes wrong on a mission. He mouths your name, unable to speak it through the strain of his voice - he’s on the verge of tears like you were.

“I had no idea that you even… that you cared anymore. You walk around like nothing happened, you avoid me so well, you steered conversations away from us… I thought you were over me.”

You lifted your head.

“Don’t you ever still feel any love for what we were?” he asks, his voice cracking in the middle like the way your heart broke that day.

“Of course I do. But you don’t, and i had to make myself aware of that. That was the most painful part of this all, Poe.”

He was crying now.

You stood up to walk back to base, secretly praying it wasn’t over yet. He called your name and you turned to see him.

“Wait! Just… wait! Please.”

“I’m always waiting.” you said cockily, acting like your heart wasn’t thumping in your chest.

He walked over to you and took your hand in his, cupping you face with his other calloused hand.

You leant in to kiss him, and he complied. His lips and stubble still felt the same against your skin, gently dancing with your soft lips as the kiss deepened. He broke the kiss after a while, and pulled back. His glossy eyes caught the last light of the sunset.

“I still love you.” Poe whispered.

“Poe…”

“No. Please… Please.” his voice shook woth sadness as he pleaded you. “Just… just don’t say it yet.”

“No, Poe. I still love you too. I love you in the way that when I’m flying and I’m in an emergency speaking to comms, I tell them to give you my love. I love you in the way that I keep everything you ever gave me. I love you in the way that drives me crazy and immobilises me. I love you in the way that you’re my last dream before I wake up, and when I go to stretch my arm over your chest and you aren’t there, I weep. But I have spent the last two years of my life, Poe Dameron, getting over you. Getting back under you won’t help.”

Poe’s tears began dropping onto his shirt. Finally, he replied, “So what can I do to prove myself to you?”

He spoke in a whisper. He needed humbling after breaking your heart like such a fool.

“First of all, you can speak to me like you always did. Second, you’re not using sex to apologise, like I’ve heard you have from other women. Third of all? You can just love me. Let me shine. Respect me. Respect my craft. Respect me in the way you respect the rest of black squadron. I’m black-two, Poe. Start realising it. Fourth, and finally, we’re telling Leia. Immediately. We’ll tell her this. And then we can be together. How does that sound, Dameron?”

“You ready to dance with me again?” he said with a smirk.

#star wars #poe dameron #poe dameron x reader #poe dameron x you #poe dameron fanfiction #oscar isaac fic #star wars sequel trilogy #poe dameron x female reader #based on a taylor swift song #poe dameron taylor swift

[tripleglitchwriting]

Hello everyone, I’ve been having a bit of a tough time so here’s a short VERY angsty-venty fic

Also not beta read, sorry.

Blue Flowers

TFP Bulkhead x gn Human reader (platonic)

CW: Character death, Grief, mourning, ANGST!! Heed the warnings!!

Some say “to love and lose is better never having loved at all”. I agree, to an extent I suppose. When you love someone it can be the best feeling in the world- be that platonic, familial, romantic, or anything else. And when you lose them, it can be the most devastating thing you’ve ever felt. Everybody’s been through it, and everyone will go through it. Life and death, black and white, sky and sea.

==========

“Do you miss him?”

“Of course I do. I miss everyone I lost in the war.”

“I miss him too.”

The stars were so beautiful the night you had that conversation with Bulkhead. They barely lit up the sky on Earth, but you knew each and every one could bring day like the sun could. It was a frightening to find out aliens lived among you and hardly any of humanity knew it. At least they were nice. Most of them. The ones you’d met at least. They were more human than some of the people you’d seen.

“I’m sorry.”

“What for? You didn’t do anything.”

“I know, I just- I just. I don’t know. I don’t know. How… do you do this? I can’t even imagine what it would have been like to… to be there when….”

“Yeah, well, that’s what we signed up for.”

“…Are you not, like, upset? At all?”

“Of course I am! It’s just… ‘been through it so many times… it never loses its sting though. It hurts more every time.”

“Well- well don’t you want to get revenge? Don’t you want to hurt them back? Why can’t we just- just- UGH!” Tears pooled at the corners of your eyes, joining the streaks that had already stained your face.

“I do. I really, really do. And I have, when it happened before. But killing never made it any better. It never…. I never got the relief I was looking for.” You didn’t respond that time. Instead you sat up on the grassy hill you were stargazing on and hugged your knees to your chest. Bulkhead’s usually bright optics were dimmed in the darkness. A light you had known to be comforting shaded with a grief you had never known him to show.

“I… I just can’t stop thinking…. I can’t stop thinking about how he’s- he’s-” you broke into a sob, “he’s not gonna come back.”

“I know, I know. Trust me, I know.” Bulkhead cupped his hand to you back in a contorted version of a hug. Head radiated off it, but you never felt colder. For awhile you didn’t move. And neither did he. Stoically, he watched you bawl and release the pain you undoubtedly felt. When you slowed down to a sniffle, the courage to ask a question you already knew the answer to made its way to your throat.

“Does it get better?” Bulkhead smiled.

“Yeah. Yeah it does. Promise.”

“Okay.” You managed to whimper out before collapsing into a crying mess again- but this time he put out his thumb for you to cling to. You squeezed it tight, and he brought his other fingers closer to your back. The embrace lasted for a long time. Long enough for you to fall asleep in his grasp.

When you were deep in slumber, he found it to be a good time to move back to base. You didn’t wake up at the bright flash of the groundbridge or the mildly bone rattling effects it typically brought. The last thing you saw before you went off to a dreamless rest was a very big hand putting a comparably tiny sheet of fabric around you.

It wasn’t something you experienced yourself, but from what you heard, Bulkhead spent the entire next day setting up a memorial. He put all of his friend’s favorite things together. No one spoke to him other than to check on his well being. When it was all said and done, the only thing left was a grave labeled “Wheeljack”, and blue flowers left on its topsoil.

#transformers #transformers g/t #tripleglitchwrites #transformers prime fanfiction #tfp bulkhead #grief #very different from what I normally write #it felt good though #gn human reader #gn reader #bulkhead #angst #transformers angst