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#theres something so intimate about dying at each others hands
edenfire · 3 months
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🗡❤️ you are my moonlight ❤️🗡
still thinking about rank 8 if they abandoned their weapons😳💦
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nailgunstigmata · 11 months
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no fr why is macden bein gentle and sweet wid each other on an inflatable sofa more OBSCENE than macden full penetration... they got my horny ass reading general audiences fics
no but ur so real anon….they got my horny ass WRITING general audiences fics. ive literally never done that before not even joking. theres just something sooo intimate about two adult men who are sharing their entire lives with each other cuddled next to each other on an inflatable pullout couch….the same ep where we see into their fridge for the first time and see more of their kitchen…..we are catching glimpses of something we‘ve never seen before but that doesnt mean it hadnt been there.
we are kind of like charlie invading their privacy and busting down their door…..it makes u think what else we have been missing all this time for this to be so casual to them. i think its really just how normal and natural the whole thing is presented like…for us macden sleeping in a bed together and dennis making sure mac isnt dying next to him by gently checking his pulse is smth special but for them its just another night. even for charlie its nothing new. and the extra layer of mac throwing nuts everywhere and being gross and swollen and dennis still sleeping next to him? of them sharing one duvet? of the matching bedsheet with two pillows? the extra blanket they clearly arent using?
theres something so obscene about the way mac goes over to gently touch dennis when he asks about the pine nuts. something so insane about the way his hand is resting in the dip between them. not joking when i say that when the pulse check happened i think i got more hysteric than i would have during a kiss. i felt something shift inside me
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henqtic · 3 years
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our language- d.m.
- summary: finding a love language was a beautiful— even if that said language was showering the other. 
- word count: 1.1k 
- warnings:  talks of insecurities/self hatred with scars, hip dips and, stretch marks. descriptions of blood, non sexual nudity, and that’s about it... please contact me if theres more !
- more works with black readers → Hat // “just one more hour” // Learning 
- masterlist //  gif creds // taglist form 
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love language— a marvelous thing it was, varying from person to person, soul to soul. and it was all to express a deeper love.
the languages weren’t linear nor limited to the vowels humans could make, there were all sorts of different forms it’d come in. notes, words of affirmation, touch, and for you— well it took you some time to figure that out.
at first, it was pinky promises. because for some unknown reason, an eleven year old thought that was the best form of insured security, linking your finger with another’s.
then as you grew, it transformed into notes— if you’d count what was written on them as love. the pale boy from the other side of the classroom making eccentric shapes with parchment just so they could go unnoticed when flying to your desk. nothing special there, not even love— just innocent children who didn’t know any better, nothing about the future.
then it became something else, thirteen year olds becoming aware of their surroundings— crushes in a simpler sense. it seemed that he couldn’t go a week without getting hexed by some student who had had enough or someone who generally didn’t like him so there it came— bandaging the others wounds.
memories rushed through your mind of him sitting overly proud in a wooden chair as you cleaned him up, nose bleed, lip bleed, uncontrollable... puking once. you liked to think back to those days when he’d smile at you with nothing but adoration, a new love that wasn’t said but shone because what set of fifteen year olds are ready for that sort of advance, responsibility?
so for many years, you’d claim that as your love language, taking care of them to show them how much you cared but one day that changed.
no longer claiming it as anything, deep cuts and scars being a token of the day and at first you couldn’t handle seeing them without a feeling of dystopia raining over your spirits because there were too many bad memories linked.
the way he wept on the white mattress that professor snape had been earlier instructed to lay him on. he was attempting to keep his composure in front of the many other students in the hospital wing while he had just survived almost bleeding out.
and it wasn’t then when your disdain towards the markings grew but it was how you watched him go from a person who’d stopped an unreasonable amount just to catch a look at himself in the mirror— some sort of cheeky look directed at himself for added humor to someone who’d shy away from the reflective glass. ashamed of the new pale whites that painted his torso.
but that led you to finding a more solid love language— together this time. you couldn’t recall how you two discovered it but it all happened one day— showering, washing off the other.
and while it was an intimate time, it could never be considered anything sexual. it was an unspoken promise made between the two of you that first day in his private shower— just two people finding solace within each other.
it was how his hands traveled down the curve of your back and to the indent of where your hip bone decided to be placed a little higher than your femur, a dip forming as result.
and how his fingers would take their time delicately tracing the lines of a lighter shade riddled across your brown skin. thighs, lower stomach, upper arm, you name it— stretch marks.
they were deep rooted insecurities of yours for long amounts of time, sprouting at the prime age of puberty. thoughts of appreciation for the body you had never stood a chance against the ones of negativity and hatred. thoughts of that maybe shiver molded you had made a terrible mistake, or maybe that didn’t like you, held a hatred for the person you would become.
but that wasn’t true, not in the slightest.
you were built in your own way, not the same as anyways else but at the same, not out of the ordinary — imperfectly perfect.
that’s what he called them, draco— imperfectly perfect features because while you didn’t need anyone to validate or invalidate what you didn’t have the ability to, he wanted needed to make sure everything about you was perfect to him— there was no way it couldn’t be.
and it was how your hands touched on and soothed every aching muscle his body held as the water showered you both from above.
because as time grew on, past hogwarts and past the war, his scars were no longer a direct remnant of what happened in the bathroom and the cries that followed but an automatic thought to how much he went through and how you held nothing but love for the man standing in front of you.
“i think they’re beautiful,” you whispered to the man almost out of the blue. your eyes were trained to the spot where your hands had stopped on his bare chest.
“hm?” he hummed in question, looking down to you and inhaling the scent of coconut scented soap.
“your scars, they’re beautiful. I hated them at first, for what they did to you and made you feel.” your head tiled mid sentence to looking into his eyes, waterline starting to well with a liquid other than water.
the brick wall that he’d put up as sixteen year old was no longer there, having been chipped away ages ago.
“what changed?” he whispered with a small smirk, dying to know what caused you to think of them in such a way, in a way he didn’t think was possible for a long time.
a bubble formed after that, in a figurative sense— there was now a dome shaped bubble trapping you two closer together than you ever were. because it was two lovers showering with each other, praising the features that neither found to be the best or even do he wanted.
“i think it was my mindset that made all the difference. I used to think of them as some burden forced on you but not anymore. when i say i love you, i’m including them too.” you admitted causing the smirk on his face to grow.
“and when i say i love you, i mean it. i’ll love every single part of you until you do. and when that does happen, I’ll love them even more,” he professed, his hands now on your face, the pads of his thumbs now rested against your skin, wiping away any tears that had formed and fell.
his actions encourage you to do the same, contrasting arms over lapping each other as they wiped away the feeling of pain induced by stubborn insecurities until airy laughs sounded, a meet in the middle.
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jojosbizarrefanfics · 4 years
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Hello! Can I order up a Jotaro x childhood friend(he has a crush on her ahdhhehshda) and she's kinda like Microphage from Cells at work? Motherly, a stand user(so she tags along on the journey), and she's busty so she accidentally smothers the joot in them? Not nsfw, but maybe something a bit light hearted and funny bc theres so many angst and we need more silliness. Hope you're okay with this, and hope this isn't vague or anything! Bye~!♡
One order of Jotaro x busty lifelong friend reader coming right up! I got carried away oops
I’ve never seen Cells At Work but the fandom wiki + your request being not-vague = I think I got what you’re going for and I love it for Jotaro fkkdfkskfkskfk
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You were friends with most of your class in elementary school, but that changed once you hit puberty. Jotaro was the only friend who didn’t care that you suddenly had boobs, and you were the only girl in the class that didn’t have a weird crush on him. You valued each other as people and had a deeper bond than most people even realized.
Holly loved you and often made comments when you weren’t around about when you two would start dating. Especially while he was still in high school, Jotaro always shrugged her off, insisting that you two were just friends.
When his Stand awakened, you were there for him. Along the way to Egypt, you’d explain to him how you were born with yours but no one could see it and, as a child, your parents and teachers just dismissed it as an imaginary friend so you never brought it up to anyone. Your bond only grew deeper, and as you joined him on the quest to defeat Dio — he tried to tell you it would be too dangerous, but you refused his refusal — you two just grew even closer, especially over nights of you dressing his wounds and grieving lost friends. Your Stand, called Macrophage, took the form of a stark white woman wearing a maid outfit and would often cuddle with Star Platinum during these intimate moments.
You both shared your first kiss during one of your Stands’ cuddle sessions after you helped patch each other up. It was in a hotel room in Egypt and you both weren’t totally sure you’d live to see the next sunrise. Neither of you ever spoke about it again.
Ever since returning from Egypt, Jotaro started to wonder if there was any merit in what Holly was suggesting: should he ask you out, or was it better to not risk ruining a decades long friendship?
He decided against testing those waters. He convinced himself that kiss you shared was just the heat of the moment and from a fear of dying. But over the years, he noticed you denying men left and right — just like how he’d deny women. He knew why because he experienced the same thing: people tended to not care enough to look beyond the surface.
Josuke Higashikata was still trying to figure out the enigma that was his nephew when he saw Jotaro heading to the train station. Was he leaving already? It didn’t look like he had a ticket. Josuke, alongside Okuyasu, followed Jotaro in from a distance, but before they could approach to ask, a train pulled up and the passengers departed. They decided to linger back and wait.
You spotted Jotaro instantly: he was hard to miss due to how tall and broad he was, so you always knew to look up and go wherever you saw one of his signature hats. Josuke saw Jotaro smile for the first time when the gorgeous and large-chested (HC) woman ran up to him and jumped up, her arms wrapping around his shoulders.
Jotaro was quick to lift you up into the hug, strong arms wrapping around your torso. This wasn’t his style, but it was yours and he knew by now to just let you have your moment of affection. There was no stopping you and resistance was pointless.
“How’s my favorite marine biologist?” You asked.
“I’m the only marine biologist you know, (YN),” he replied as he set you down.
You ran your hands over the lapels on his jacket, then one up to cup his cheek. “You look good. But have you been sleeping?”
“Trying to,” Jotaro said. “It’s good to see you, (YN). I’m glad you came.”
“Come on, now. My best friend tells me there’s some weird, potentially-Stand related activity going on in a normally quiet town and you think I’m not gonna drop everything and catch the next train?” You said with a laugh.
“Do you have any other bags?” Jotaro asked.
“Just these two. I tried not to overpack but you know how well that works out for me,” you said with a nervous laugh.
“やれ やれ だぜ,” Jotaro said playfully as he picked up your bags. “Don’t even fight me on this. Come on, the hotel’s not far from here.” He swallowed, not sure why he suddenly felt nervous asking you, “Are you okay with sharing a room with me? I’m not sure how dangerous things could get.”
“JoJo, please,” you said. “You should know by now that it’s okay.”
“Did she just call him JoJo?” Josuke asked Okuyasu. Now that you two were on the move, it was easier to overhear.
“Look at her! Do you think it’s his girlfriend or somethin’? Man, she’s hot!”
The hotel was just across the intersection, but you stopped Jotaro before you could cross. You held a hand up and took a deep breath. Macrophage emerged and confirmed what you thought for you.
“What is it?” Jotaro asked.
“We’re being followed,” you said. “Two men... no. Teenage boys?”
Jotaro groaned. “Remember what I told you with my grandparents?”
“Oh, is this..?”
“Mhm.”
“Do you like him?” You asked.
“I’m not sure yet,” Jotaro said flatly.
Suddenly, the two of you were much closer to one another: it was almost as if the space between you two vanished into an invisible vacuum. Jotaro, carrying your bags and not expecting the sudden shift, lost his balance a bit and, as you tried to help catch him, his face ended up firmly planted between your chest.
“(YN), forgive me,” he said as he stood. You noticed a hint of pink to Jotaro’s cheeks, a rare sight indeed.
“It’s ok. Is your... uncle?”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Is he a Stand user?”
“I swear that half this damn town is,” Jotaro said. Just when he felt the embarrassment fading, he felt someone pushing him and his face landed right between your breasts again.
“Clearly they want a show,” you said. You looked around, saw no one on the street, and to Jotaro’s surprise, you pushed his face further between your breasts. “Trust me, ok?”
“What the hell?”
Suddenly, the sound of Josuke and Okuyasu screaming could be heard clearly as they ran from the alley they were hiding in. From there, you helped Jotaro stand up.
“I’m so glad you were never like that as a teenager,” you said with a laugh.
“Jotaro-san!” Okuyasu cried as they approached you both. “We’re sorry! Miss! We’re sorry!”
“Please tell your Stand to not kill us!” Josuke cried, hands clasped together.
Jotaro was hiding his face with his hat. He was equal parts furious and mortified, hoping you wouldn’t think any less of him.
“If you two got your heads out of your pants you’d have seen Macrophage coming,” you said. “ばかやろう...”
“Her Stand is just as deadly as Star Platinum,” Jotaro said. “You two should be more careful next time you decide to snoop around.”
“We’re sorry! We thought it would be funny!” Josuke said nervously.
“Is this your girlfriend, Jotaro-san?” Okuyasu asked.
You looked to Jotaro, who simply picked up suitcase with one hand, slung your backpack over his shoulder, and then grabbed you by the hand and dragged you across the street. They didn’t follow.
“You okay, JoJo?” You asked.
“I’ve decided I don’t like them.”
You stifled a laugh. “I can’t tell if you’re pissed off or flustered.” He never let go of your hand. “You don’t have to worry about it, you know.”
He was silent still, so you said nothing. You knew pressing it wouldn’t get you anywhere. But, you noticed, he didn’t let go of your hand.
Jotaro sighed in relief once the hotel room door was closed behind you both. The Morioh Grand Hotel lived up to its name, you thought. Once Jotaro set your things down, you sat next to each other on the edge of the bed.
“You have this look in your eyes that I know all too well,” you said. Jotaro looked up at you and you both made eye contact. “There’s something you want to say. And it’s not about the Stand users in Morioh.”
“Do you remember that last night in Egypt before we faced DIO?”
You nodded. “I’ll never forget it.”
“Have you ever thought about what it would be like if I were to kiss you again?”
You smiled. “Yes. I do, and frequently.” It all made sense now, why he was so nervous when Josuke and Okuyasu pulled that prank with their Stands.
“And I’m not just thinking this because of what just happened.”
“I know,” you said. “I know you better than that, JoJo.”
Jotaro didn’t say anything else. Instead, he just kissed you again. This time, the world wasn’t ending. This time, he allowed himself to feel everything in full.
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mimik-u · 4 years
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Flower Child: Chapter 15 (Daze)
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3:32 AM:
If fault was to be placed, assigned, consecrated, and ordained, then Blue Diamond supposed it was her own fault in the end.
This was nothing new.
How could it possibly be when it was everything familiar? 
It was a cycle studiously recapitulated, and it was a tango long danced, and it was a litany of the damned carved deep into the facets of her memories, buried there and intimately known only to the ghostly choir of her own head.
It all circles back to me, does it not? She had asked on a balcony full of light. She had very nearly collapsed. I’m sorry, Yellow.
For being like this.
For being me.
When Blue pulled her nightgown on that evening and stared at her sleeping pill for a few seconds less than her usual disdain for it entailed, she supposed that she should have estimated right then and there that hope was not enough to save her from the night, and that hope was an imperfect solution, and that while grief was one dangerous entity, hope was still another.
At least she knew grief, the very dimensions of it and what it took from her—piece by piece over so many days, months, and years. 
She couldn’t say the same about hope, the emotion having eluded her for so long.
If grief was wasting, then hope was generous. It gave and it gave, and it swelled like a tentative blossom in her chest, rising up from a ribcaged ground against all the odds of a cruel, forbidding world.
It gave her a false sense of security.
It gave her the strength to swallow one sleeping pill more.
And so, when the dreams came that night, seething over Blue like a restless tide, she hadn’t expected to be taken so far away from the shore, dragged beneath the undertow, and churned and churned and churned.  
She sat on the edge of the hospital bed, leaning over the pale form of Steven Universe who smiled up at her with all of his teeth. Even in the feathery edges of a dream, his dark, brown eyes seemed to be lit from within, candles behind tinted lantern glass, flickering gently.
Sunlight drifted in from the nearest window, falling like a thin, golden blanket across them both.
She dreamed that she was kind, that she reached up and brushed a stray curl from his clammy forehead as various machines hummed all around them. The oxygen cannulas weaving around his ears and into his button nose hissed pneumatically. Wires indicated his aliveness, his hereness and his thereness, in steady, rhythmic beeps.
“Hello, sweet boy,” she murmured, the beginnings of a tentative smile lifting her parenthetically enclosed lips. It was becoming a little easier every time now—to smile and to mean it, to smile and to do so without reflexive condemnation.
“You looked away from me, Mom,” the child beneath her whispered, her skin cool beneath Blue’s long-fingered touch. “Why?”
Pink Diamond had taken Steven’s place in the bed, brown eyes dull and feverish, her accusation and her question alike caked on her cracked lips. Blood dribbled warningly down her mouth in a thin line.
“Pink!” The name was stolen from her, violently wrenched. She was just a little girl, and they still killed her anyway.“I—“
“Excuses,” Yellow Diamond scoffed in that singularly imperial way of hers.
Pink was gone—she was always gone—and her wife remained, her sharp facial features arranged in a knowing sneer. If Steven Universe’s eyes glowed like candlelight, then the businesswoman’s amber eyes seemed to burn with all the ferocity of a dying sun. It was a wonder that she didn’t simply implode on herself with all of that anger, shatter from the inside out and crumple to thousands of unrecoverable pieces.
“That’s all you have these days, Blue. Excuses, excuses.” Each word was a cruel crack of the whip driven into her skin with relish. How they loved to rake the nails of their words across each other’s faces these days; how good it felt to take some of the pain out on themselves and each other and the whole, damn, godawful world. “Why? Why now?”
Blue’s tongue fumbled for an answer, but it was hard, nigh impossible to think over the insistent shrilling of the disconnect tone of a long interrupted call. How long had she sat in that waiting room after Yellow had hung up?
Five minutes?
Maybe ten before the woman named Amethyst plodded over? 
Seconds were eternities these days; they felt like years upon years upon bitter, aching years.
“Defend yourself,” Yellow demanded.
“You’ll never let me grow up, will you?” 
“So, please , Blue Diamond… please don’t look away,” Steven Universe whispered.
He begged.
Blue Diamond did not wake with a start.
Nor did she wake with a scream.
She woke because a doorbell pealed through the silence of the penthouse suite, its sliding tones slipping beneath the darkness and into Blue Diamond’s half-empty bed, pressing an insistent hand against the wrenched open ‘o’ of her mouth.
It was a gruesomely familiar sound, heard so many times in so many different iterations of the same echo which seized across the twilight zone of her memories.
2:38AM.
That was when a police officer came to their front door and shattered the portrait of the Diamonds’ picturesque lives.
He’d rung the doorbell ever so politely.
He told them that their daughter was dead.
Pale eyes wide in collecting, growing, abscessing horror, Blue Diamond slowly turned her head to the left where she could just make out the change of one minute to the next on the alarm clock as the bell continued to chime, its music walking briskly down the hallway, its urgency knocking insistently at her bedroom door. 
3:36AM.
She waited for Yellow Diamond to burst through the threshold in a mass of panicked limbs and bedstruck hair, alarm in her golden eyes, the collar of her silky pajama shirt rising against her neck, but no such reassuring image erupted in the darkness.
The knight didn’t clamber through the trapdoor.
Her wife didn’t come.
It was an untenable oxymoron to Blue.
A contradiction.
An impossibility.
Because Yellow always showed up.
Perhaps she never arrived as quietly and as kindly as Blue would have preferred. Goodness knew that she was loud. Heavens knew she was harsh. The entire world called her abrasive and was almost entirely correct to do so. She wielded the sharpness of her persona like storied warriors had once done their gleaming swords.
But even so, and all the same, Yellow Diamond, for all of her faults, was there—constant, unwavering, stoic, and steady. She was never more than a step across the hallway, the door to her study never completely closed. 
She hadn’t come home before Blue had gone to bed, though.
She’d texted.
Brusquely.
And indicated that her meeting would hold her up.
“Don’t stay up. I’ll be home shortly afterwards.”
The doorbell chimed again, loud and ugly.
Ruinous.
8:13AM:
Stunned silence followed the nephrologist’s proclamation as morning light leaned in from the window, eager and insistent, yellow fingertips braced on the sill, as though it was straining to hear the news, too. They crowded around Steven’s bed—Garnet, Amethyst, and Greg—and stared at Priyanka Maheswaran with open disbelief, the emotion naked across their wide eyes and half-opened mouths. Greg’s fingers gently gripped his son’s shoulder.
Softly.
With all the delicacy that his condition required.
Kidneys.
His son was getting—
“No fuckin’ way, Doc!” 
Amethyst’s exclamation shattered the vacuum that the extraordinary words had made, and it was with a smile that transformed her entire physiognomy—so harsh and often weary—that Priyanka Maheswaran succinctly replied, “Yes, Amethyst. Yes fucking way.”
It was the most visible marker of how exultant she was that the usually prim doctor swore aloud in front of Steven.
And it was the most audible sign of how overwhelmed Pearl was that she, on speaker phone, didn’t bother to even scold the doctor, her affected gasp nearly unheard over the resulting din. For, in the blurred rush of seconds that followed, there was only incomprehensible noise and laughter and celebratory yelling as Garnet picked Amethyst up and spun her around through the light filled air. And there was an excited tangle of voices on the other end of the line as Peridot and Lapis were handed the news, too, the thin pillars of Pearl’s voice shaking at their foundations. The girls screamed, and they shouted, and they dissolved in paroxysms of disbelief, while a cat somewhere in the midst of them happily meowed. And there was a hoarse sob, thick and unrestrained, as Greg’s shoulders shook with a relief that felt so much like agony that he could barely stand to stand upright. His knees buckled as though were about to give way beneath his feet, the ground shuddering almighty and, strangely enough, not all. 
“You mean it, Dr. M?” Steven’s throttled voice entered the fray. His heart monitor had sped up somewhere in the middle of all the commotion, betraying his emotions before his sunken face ever could.
Because, as Greg glanced down, hardly able to comprehend what he was seeing through his tears, he could at very least ascertain that the fourteen-year old’s face was partially closed off, furrowed brow questioning as he peered up at Dr. Maheswaran from darkly grooved eyes. 
This year had taken so much out of him.
He couldn’t afford another loss.
None of them could withstand so much as a singular blow more.
“I’m…” Steven grappled with the words as though each one was new on his tongue, heavy and awkward, a little clumsy between the teeth. Greg, wiping at his snotting face with one hand, brought the other downwards from his son’s gowned shoulder and onto his wrist, touching it lightly, careful of all the slithering tubes. “I’m getting kidneys?”
Complete silence then—sudden—expectant and almost fearful.
Garnet set Amethyst down.
Static crackled on the line as Pearl and Lapis and Peridot all held their baited breaths.
And then, Priyanka Maheswaran did something very un-Priyanka Maheswaran-like, and Priyanka Maheswaran had just dropped the f-bomb in a room with a fourteen-year old for God’s sake. 
With a movement as slow as it was gentle, as tentative as it was quiet, the careworn doctor sat down on the edge of Steven’s bed and placed one of her lined hands on his blanketed leg. It was a mother’s touch—Greg could tell from the way that the pads of her fingers were arced ever so lightly on top of the wool, as though she was cupping the boy, holding him, and not simply touching. All the accumulated furrows in her face seemed to breathe with a kind of easiness that seemed contrarian to the woman’s unbending nature.
Paradoxical.
Dichotomous even.
But not wrong.
No.
Tenderness very much became Priyanka Maheswaran.
“In roughly half an hour, I’m getting in a helicopter that’s going to take me across the city to Empire Gen,” she began, “to an operating room where I’ll stand for a couple of hours waiting for Dr. Keating to say that it’s time. And there they’ll be, Steven.”
Her dark eyes widened.
A smile crept, all clandestine, onto her lips. 
“Your kidneys, ready to come home.”
She squeezed his knee then and held on to it—held on to him, anchoring him, or perhaps even herself, and maybe both of them together.
And in the space following this gesture, there was a pause, a slip of a second of a beat, before Steven finally let out the shuddered breath that they had all been holding.
The skepticism melted from his face, making way for acceptance, and on the heels of acceptance, relief.
“Took them long enough,” he grinned weakly.
It was the kind of joke that wasn’t funny, but, at the same time, very much was.
In that hospital room, filled to the point of excess with light and noise, they all laughed so hard, it was a wonder that they weren’t crying.
9:29AM:
For the first time in months, there was music in the kitchen.
There was dancing, and there was laughter, and there was joy.
Oh, God, there was joy.
So much of it.
Simply overflowing. 
Lapis turned the radio on and knobbed the volume up as loud as it would go, and Peridot, cradling a bemused Cat Steven in her arms, swayed breeze-like to the folksy, jangling beat. And the kitchen smelled like bacon and eggs and the warm doughiness of freshly made waffles. And this and this and this. And sunlight glanced in through the open windows, wreathing them all in crowns made of rosy gold and capes of salt-weathered wind. And the waves jubilantly whispered the news against the shore. And the susurrus swelled to a crescendo just as the song on the radio proclaimed its triumphant chorus: love, love, love, precious love.
And this and this and this. 
And though Pearl tried to attend to the oranges that needed squeezing for the juice they would eventually drink, and though she attempted to slice a few strawberries to garnish their waffles, Lapis only shook her electric blue head and pulled the slight woman into the center of the wooden floor to dance, their fingers tangling with the sounds of their laughter and shitty singing, with the unfettered sounds of celebration and euphoria and bliss.
And this and this and this.
Because Steven was getting kidneys today.
He was going to live.
And Pearl had no choice but to be swept up with the commotion of it, for the kitchen and the beach house and all the people and animals within its boundaries were simply kinetic with it—the emotion, the feeling, the loveliness, and the respite.
She tried to care about breakfast, but Lapis’s freckled nose, scrunched up in one long, continuous laugh, distracted her.
As the song’s bridge played, they twirled on the oaken slats of the floor as Lion wove between their legs—in and out—trying to catch the rhythm of their bare, tangoing feet.
And Pearl tried to come back down to Earth, thinking through the financial logistics of the surgery that they would still have to contend with after the fact or maybe even before. Finding the kidneys was only one variable in the equation; affording them was the hefty other. And what of Steven’s hospital stay? And all the medicines he would have to take after the completion of the surgery? When would all these bills pile up with the rest? When would the numbers climb so high that her painfully organized ledger could scarcely hope to scale them?
But these worries, always so pressing in the organized corners of her minds, slipped between the folds of her thoughts as though they were but loose grains of sand as Peridot—Peridot!—barreled in to her near the conclusion of the song. Cat Steven fell lightly to the ground, and the engineer braced her slender arms around Pearl’s midsection, fingers curling into the fabric of her shirt. Physical intimacies had never come easily to the reticent twenty-one year old, and so, for this to be the expression of her own relief, for a hug to be how she communicated it to Pearl, was something extraordinary indeed.
Pearl staggered beneath the sudden weight but somehow remained upright, instinctively wrapping her arms around the girl, too.
And they both stood there for what seemed like an eternity compressed into a handful of seconds—fleeting and simply infinite.
The last notes of the song fell through the sun stricken air, and the jockey began to cycle through the daily news. It was seventy-eight degrees outside, sunny without a chance of rain, the wind crisp and cool. Traffic on I-65 leading into Jersey was pretty slow, so drivers might want to consider an alternate route.
It was going to be a beautiful day.
“This is really happening, huh?” Peridot asked, the question muffled against Pearl’s pajama top. A shock of wild, blonde hair brushed the edge of her chin.
“Pinch me,” Pearl only replied, her throat thick with emotion. “I half-think I’m dreaming.”
“Don’t wake up,” Lapis advised dryly as she moved back over to the counter, plucking a piece of bacon from a plate and snapping down hard on it.
“No…” And she smiled then, very softly, the gesture quiet but somehow, simultaneously loud. “I don’t think I will.”
The radio jockey said something then that Pearl tried to care about. Famed Diamond Electric CEO Yellow Diamond had been in a car wreck last night in Empire City. No one was seriously injured, but—
And that was all she deigned to hear before she kissed Peridot lightly atop of the head and extracted herself from the embrace.
“Lapis,” she laughed fondly, “you’re going to eat all the bacon.”
“Oh, like you eat it anyway.”
10:01AM:
Her name was Laura Norwood, and she had been twenty-eight years old—a young woman in the prime of her life. Someone’s daughter. Someone’s fiancée. Someone’s sister. Someone’s very best friend. A drunk driver pulled out in front of her tiny Impala at a red light, and that was that, the damage irrevocably dealt and done.
Five seconds was the difference between Laura Norwood being someone and becoming an empty shell, her head all bandaged up, a ventilator breathing for her because she no longer could. Five seconds was scarcely longer than the blink of an eye, and yet, it was enough to the eradicate everything this girl had been and anything she might have ever hoped to be. 
She had a pale scar on her upper lip.
There was a tattoo of the phases of the moon trailing down the fair skin of her upper right arm.
A strand of curly auburn hair escaped the confines of the gauze wrapped around her head wound.
It was always these little things that struck Priyanka Maheswaran so fiercely, piercing her through like a nail hammered in at just the right angle.
Apart from being Steven Universe’s savior, she had been her own person first.
For twenty-eight years and never again.
In the spacious OR at Empire Gen, Priyanka stood in line with the rest of the surgeons who would receive the last gift Laura would ever offer to the world: her organs. The theater was quiet, studiously solemn, as Dr. Alan Keating, the transplant attending, made the first incision, his hand steady as he dragged the scalpel down in a fluid motion that spoke to so many years of having done this dance of vicious contradictions. He had a bushy brow that collected like fuzzy caterpillars above his eyes. Crow’s feet pecked the leathery skin just beneath his wire-rimmed glasses.
“Some of you don’t know the drill,” he said, the bluntness of his words somewhat muffled behind his mask, “but whenever I do this procedure, I have to have a little pick me up, somethin’ to keep me going, somethin’ to remind me why I’m toeing the lines of the Hippocratic Oath that prevents all of us in here from doing any harm.”
Priyanka knew what was coming, and yet, she briefly closed her eyes against it anyway, nausea and aching relief commingling in the pit of her stomach. When she opened them again, she looked at Laura Norwood’s hand, stretched out at a perpendicular angle, and saw that her nails were painted a bright sunshine yellow.
“Startin’ from the left, tell me what organ you’re picking up and who it’s going to.”
Dr. Keating pointed his scalpel at the first person in line, a nervous-looking resident in maroon scrubs. They nearly dropped the cooler they were holding beneath the spotlight of the surgeon’s stare.
“H-heart,” they stuttered, but there was a certain conviction in their voice that spoke volumes. “Masumi Hashimoto. Forty-two years old. She and her husband want to travel the world after she recovers. First stop’s Paris.”
“Good,” Keating nodded gruffly as his fellow passed him an instrument. “Excellent. Next?”
And down the line they went.
“Lungs. Leo Russell. Nineteen and three quarters. He’s the captain of his uni’s debate team.”
“Liver, sir. Jane Myrick. Sixty-three years old. She wants to spend more time with her grandkids... there’s so much more she has to give them.”
“Pancreas. Kitty Coleman. Thirty-one. She and her partner are hoping to rescue a puppy soon.”
And on and on. 
Because Laura Norwood’s parents and fiancé had both agreed that she would have wanted to give everything, even if it meant that there was barely nothing of her left. 
When Keating’s gray eyes finally lit upon Priyanka, there was a silent understanding that passed in the clinically clean space between them.
Because they’d both been here together, dozens of times—what felt like hundreds—locking gazes over death in order to save just one life more.
“Steven Universe,” she said, her voice low, thick with sudden emotion. She conjured his beaten face in the theater of her mind’s eye. The echoes of all the hands and arms that had embraced her in his hospital room earlier that morning pressed against her skin with a softness that the nephrologist scarcely allowed herself to know. “Fourteen-years old. He’s going to get to grow up, Alan.”
It was a quick gesture, fleeting, but Keating smiled beneath his mask, the wrinkles around his eyes creasing.
“Those stories are always my favorites.”
10:10AM:
If consciousness was a black sea—sloshing, vicious, endless, primordial—then Blue Diamond’s soft voice was the lighthouse that called Yellow Diamond’s vessel safe to shore. She heard the faint strains of it from somewhere within the darkness, and she crawled towards it, simply stumbled, like a child just gaining its feet, all clumsiness. She craved its gentleness. God, how she wanted to be enveloped in its silken embrace. How she wanted to come home.
(Because home was not a place to the consummate businesswoman. It was not a multimillion dollar penthouse suite, nor a study, nor a master bedroom in which she never slept. It was a person. It always had been—Blue and Blue and Blue.)
“She was... inebriated?” 
The incredulousness in her wife’s hushed tone was so pronounced, that it was almost, if not entirely, offensive. 
“Heavily, Mrs. Diamond,” returned a wry voice that Yellow didn’t recognize. “I doubt she’ll remember even being in the ER when she wakes up, which is a shame. She was absolutely engaging.”
“Insomuch as?”
“She threatened to sue anyone who so much as touched her as we tried to assess her injuries.”
“Ah…” A rustle of heavy fabric and then a sigh, soft and exasperated. “Charming.”
When Yellow Diamond finally wrenched her eyes open, she struggled at first to gather a cohesive impression of her current situation.
Her entire body ached all over, stiff with the sort of heavy soreness she vaguely associated with her college running days, when she’d wake up riddled with cramps after doing ten miles the previous day. If she thought about it, though, really focused, most of the irritation was isolated to her left arm and her head... 
Granted, if she had to guess, the latter symptom had more to do with the copious amounts of alcohol she had imbibed the night before as opposed to anything else. 
(Another recalled relic from her university days—what it felt like to have a goddamn hangover.)
Apparently lying flat on her back, wherever the hell she was—though she was already beginning to construct a solid theory—Yellow’s heavily-lidded gaze found an unfamiliar white ceiling, upon which she pieced together scattered memories of the night before. Her temples ached dully. There was a heaviness like concrete settled in the dry oasis of her mouth. 
They’d been on their way home at who knew what time… it was amazing she had possessed enough of her faculties to be capable of calling her valet to begin with… traffic must have been bad because she kept yelling at the poor woman to drive faster… and then, there was a metallic screeching sound… a simultaneous jolt… a collision… someone had rear ended them… glass shattered with a piercing kind of finality… smoke poured into the entrails of the car, smothering the leather, her clothes, her hacking mouth… Yellow hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt… her entire body had slammed forward with the momentum… and then there was darkness, rushing… the sound of sirens clambering through the night… a jumble of confused noises… people in white coats trying to demand her attention… the coppery scent of blood in the air…
With a wince that wasn’t entirely voluntary, and a conviction that was wholly sure, she concluded that she was absolutely in a hospital.
The question now was the state of her own body.
What was the damage?
How fucked up was she?
Careful not to move her head, she glanced downwards and saw that her left arm was propped on top of a pillow and wrapped tightly in a stiff, dark brace. It comforted her, at the very least, to see that it was not a cast. A cast would have implied brokenness; a brace opened up the possibility that she had been lucky, that she may have escaped nearly intact.
A quick surveillance to her left proffered the view of a wide, glass window with the blinds pulled down. Pinpricks of daylight seeped through the slats, making horizontal rows on the darkened floor. 
“She was lucky, Mrs. Diamond.”
Yellow briefly smirked to herself.
Damn right she was.
“As far as we can tell, she only has a hairline fracture in her left wrist and a few small abrasions on her face and neck where glass shrapnels hit her,” the woman she surmised to be her doctor explained. “However, I want to keep her another night for observation, just to ensure that she doesn’t have a concussion we didn’t catch during triage.”
A pause as her wife mulled over the words in that thorough manner of hers, grazing them slowly in the silence.
“That makes sense,” she finally returned. “Thank you, Dr. Reed.”
“Mm, of course.”
The voices waltzed together on Yellow’s far right, the one direction that had escaped her otherwise thorough assessment of her surroundings. Though, perhaps escaped was not the correct word. Escaped was too coincidental; it eliminated the possibility of foresight; it implied a scarcity of intent. And Yellow Diamond, consummate to the last, was not the type of woman who ever committed an action without purpose, who made a movement that did not have an objective neatly attached.
For she was a tactician in her bones, all utilitarian ideology.
Everything had a place stiffly governed by reason.
Every movement was a cosmological chess piece in the game she so adamantly played against the cruel machinations of an unthinking world.
She hadn’t looked to her right because she hadn’t wanted to.
Because she couldn’t bear to face her wife.
Couldn’t stand to comprehend the emotions in her tall, oval face—whatever they happened to be.
The fear.
The shame.
The silent disappointment.
And maybe, worst of all, the love which had long been absent from her grief-torn physiognomy—that Yellow Diamond had craved—desperately—at the very same time that she had grown to fear it in its deficiency.
It was ridiculous—goddamn absurd—but if Blue Diamond still loved her, and it was written all over the softly curving lines in her face, then Yellow didn’t know what she would do.
She supposed she would say it back.
And she would mean it.
Absolutely.
Entirely.
Or, maybe, just maybe, four years of anger and bitterness and sadness and grief and horror and painstaking care and long, sleepless nights and how many missed meetings and hundreds of trips to the cemetery and hundreds of trips to the doctor’s office and fear and loneliness and frustration would rise up the column of her throat and erupt.
Maybe, just maybe, she would simply explode, and the both of them would burn where they laid and stood.
Turning to ash and dust together at last.
All their history consigned to smoke.
So, even now, as Yellow made a motion to slightly tilt her head in that direction, she only allowed herself to ascertain their elongated shadows on the floor, where they stood in the rectangle of light thrown into the room from the hallway. She saw the hem of Blue Diamond’s dress pooling at her feet, and comprehended the metallic supports of her cane sucking the cold, hard ground.
But didn’t dare to glance up.
Because she was afraid that her wife still loved her, and she was terrified that she would say something fucked up to ruin it all over again.
Because that alone was what these four years had so deeply instilled in her, the pedagogy now as habitual as the cup of black coffee she drank every evening.
Insomuch that they still loved each other, they had hurt each other just as much and maybe even more intensely so.
“Do you think she will sleep for a little longer still?” Blue asked, her voice hushed. Yellow Diamond abruptly closed her eyes as she felt the pair’s gazes drawn towards her again, as though suddenly magnetized.
“Possibly,” Dr. Reed replied, her scratchy voice edged with amusement. “We gave her a hefty dosage of sedative.”
“For her sake?” The question was dry, resigned. “Or your own?”
“Excellent question, ma’am.”
In the darkness, Yellow’s brow twitched irritably. 
The nerve of this woman.
“In that case then… I think I may go home for awhile—rest… she won’t miss me.”
She said it so casually—and so lightly—that the businesswoman knew that the doctor wouldn’t suspect a thing, but Yellow knew. Or, at the very least, she could hazard a well-educated guess, that Blue believed in the verisimilitude of her statement. Words were always so carefully collected on the palate of her tongue, always loaded with fullness of intent.
It was funny, Yellow supposed.
Downright hilarious.
How belief, then, could be so condemning.
“We’ll keep an eye on her,” Dr. Reed said reassuringly, “and call you if there’s anything urgent.”
“Please do, and thank you. Sincerely…”
“Of course, of course…”
Yellow Diamond heard but did not watch as one pair of footsteps died away and another pair drew closer, the perpetrator’s soft soles shuffling almost imperceptibly against a tiled floor. The clinking and the clanking of an accompanying cane was just a little louder.
It felt as though her heart was about to violate her throat, pulsing so loudly, the sound and the sensation slippery and wet and hot.
Surely, she thought—she dreaded, she half-hoped—Blue Diamond could hear it, too.
Yellow didn’t dare unclose her eyes, though, this shell of a ruse her last defense against a vulnerability she was not yet prepared to confront. She was weak. She was a coward. God, she was so many other foolish things besides. Somewhere, in the hallway just outside the door, the humdrum and quiet cacophony of a hospital swarmed around the two of them like the droning of hazed bees. Somewhere, in the vast, stretching darkness, Blue Diamond stood above her, only feet, mere inches away. Perhaps she even leaned, for the velvety fabric of one of her sleeves grazed the blankets above Yellow’s chest, tantalizing a touch that the woman’s entire existence yearned to re-experience.
How she ached to be touched.
Tenderly.
By the person she loved.
But there was no such relief.
Blue Diamond pulled her hand away.
10:43AM:
While a nurse drew blood from the crook of Steven’s right arm, Garnet dutifully held his left hand, curling the striations of her fingers over the spines of his knuckles—lines and mountains and lines.
He hated needles—this she knew—but he needed one test more in order to ensure that his body was ready for the transplant surgery.
“Hey,” she grinned suddenly, and it was hard to keep the triumph from her voice as she nosed the top of the boy’s pale forehead. “Steven.”
“Whatcha cookin’, good looking?” He returned just as playfully as the nurse withdrew the needle in a flurry of expert motions. She bandaged the spot with a swath of gauze and tape before placing the blood sample carefully in her bin. With a small smile, she took her leave.
“I think it just hit me,” she said softly. She whispered it into his dark hair. Her heart swelled with the emotion. Simply soared. She could have shouted. She half-wanted to still. “You did it, my little fighter. You won.”
“The referee hasn’t called the match yet.” Steven lifted a black brow, taunting her, teasing. She could make out the barest sliver of his face beneath her.
How the side of his mouth was lifted in the beginnings of a smile.
“No,” she murmured, kissing him sweetly, “but it’s all but over.”
11:59AM:
“You suck,” Steven laughed as Amethyst slurped down the dregs of her chocolate milkshake, the straw sucking vacantly at the bottom of the styrofoam.
Because he would be having surgery in a few hours time, the kid wasn’t allowed to eat anymore.
Of course, both of them knew his ribbing was empty anyway.
He hadn’t entirely held down solid food in days.
But hey—it was a special occasion.
She gamely went along, her mouth teasing itself into a wicked smile as she propped her feet up on the side of his bed, crossing her ankles with a kind of delicacy that would have made Pearl both exasperated and faintly proud.
“I’ll drink t’that,” she snorted, raising the empty cup up in the air. “That nurse said you’ll be slurpin’ down milkshakes with me this time next week.”
And it was then, with a suddenness that nearly choked her, all the possibilities of the next chapter of their life opened up to the twenty-eight year old like a good ass preview right before the beginning of a movie.
They were going to get to hit up the Boardwalk for fry bits together again and slam all the burgers and pizzas that they wanted. They would play tag on the beach with Lapis and Peridot and Garnet and sometimes, when she could be enticed, Pearl. They would swim in the shallows of the ocean, riding the salt crusted waves until the sun set low in the carpet of the sky, signaling it was time for dinner. 
Time to come home.
They would get to live.
No more hesitations.
No more strings (or tubes) attached.
“Oh,” the little asshole simply smirked. “I can hear Pearl now. That’s disgusting! Are you cave people?”
To which Amethyst could only laugh so hard that her stomach began to ache.
Maybe she shouldn’t have drunk her milkshake so fast after all.
1:12PM:
Tender sunlight threaded itself all silk-like through the blinds as Steven’s soft snores drifted upwards from his half-open mouth. Pearl had only arrived at the hospital a little over half an hour ago, and he had remained awake long enough to smile sleepily at her and say hello before drifting off into the easiest sleep she had seen him surrender to in weeks. 
Because it was always a fight these days.
A skirmish.
A war.
To a boy with chronic kidney disease, sleep was as much as a threat as it was a relief.
But now, his purple-ringed eyes were closed in a gentle sort of way, strands of his curly black hair falling across his forehead in loose curls. Pearl was not brave—not in the way Garnet was, at least—she didn’t dare crawl into the hospital bed with him lest she accidentally disturb an important line, a wire, a tube.
Her upbringing was such that she treated all the boundaries she was presented with the respect they may or may not have deserved.
It hadn’t been until she met Rose that she began to wonder what would happen if she toed the tightrope a little more boldly than her strict mother had ever allowed.
It had been Rose who had taught her that love, in all of its sundry, multifaceted forms, was rebellion in and of itself.
A feeling so much bigger than a fixed and finite set of rules.
A sprawling complex of sensations and experiences and memories upon thousands of flickering memories: her spidery fingers tangled in pink hair, Rose’s loud, round laugh, the thrill of protest, the nights they spent exchanging secrets beneath an alabaster moon with its sprinkling of silvery stars. Lips against lips, palms against palms, the shuffle of their warm breaths coiling with the spring breeze. They waltzed together in perfect union, synchronized to even the very last step. 
And then she met Greg.
And they fell in love.
And had a baby.
And Rose died.
Simply ceased to exist, as Pearl’s world continued to turn on.
Slowly.
With distant and detached cruelty.
It was an oversimplification of their history, scrubbed free of all the complications that Pearl had agonized over night after night, trying to untangle all the knots in the hopes she would find the lifeline that would tell her where it had all gone wrong.
But the deeper she plunged, the less sure she became, her fingers all red for the effort of trying.
And so, in the end, it was easier to stick to the simple facts.
She had loved Rose, and now she was gone.
But she had left behind Steven for her to love, to cherish, and to protect.
And love?
In and of itself?
Love was rebellion—the woman knew that much at the very least. Love was leaping over sure lines, and it laying your life down on a line. It was eschewing all the boundaries of a normalized existence. It was bravery.
A gentle smile curving the shape of her thin lips, Pearl reached up and pulled the side of her hand down the side of Steven’s face, holding him gently.
Tomorrow morning, she would wrap her slender arms around him.
She would be hard pressed to let him go.
3:28PM:
The hours dripped by, the minutes plunging like saline in a steady, rhythmic drip. Time was meticulously regulated in the space of an OR, systematically quantified and accounted for by the narrow screen on the far wall where huge, red numbers indicated that five hours, twenty-five minutes, and eighteen seconds had elapsed since Keating had made his first incision. Each second, down to its tenth, counted when surgeons literally held lives in their hands, an adage that was especially true of organ procurement surgeries where even the slightest of complications could delay gratification for so many others. 
One by one, the various doctors received their organs and made their bow from Dr. Keating’s operating theater. There were places to be, lives to be saved, and new stories to tell in the darkness around the warmth of a kindling fire.
Masumi Hashimoto was going to get to travel to Paris.
And Leo Russell was going to kick ass at debate team.
And Jane Myrick was going to have the opportunity to spend more time with her grandkids.
And Steven Universe… Steven Universe was going to get to grow up.
Sitting on a stool as she waited for Alan to call her up, Priyanka wasn’t quite seeing the Empire Times crossword puzzle that she’d been working on for the last hour or so. Instead, she saw the contours of Steven’s future stretch out before her, bright and tangible where they hadn’t quite been before. There was a lot of smiling and laughter. And there was a flash of sweet mundanity as she pictured him shouldering a backpack for the first time in nearly a year as he wound his way through a crowded school hallway, And there was a certain warmth as the scene suddenly shifted to Greg and the Gems enveloping their boy in the tangle of their arms as they welcomed him home from a long day.
Healthy, safe, and sound.
It struck the nephrologist then, as it so often did when she was caught unaware, that these were all the little things that she sometimes took for granted with her own daughter—going to school and coming home all intact.
Not every parent could say the same.
And so, as Dr. Keating’s team prepared the ice slush that the surgeon would wrap around Laura Norwood’s kidneys in preparation for removal, Priyanka resolved to herself that she would be more attentive to the mundane, to the little moments, to every smile that Connie worked herself up to proffer. 
Because the kid had been smiling more often these days, the lines of her lips twitching upwards with more regularity than the doctor was used to knowing.
“Dr. Maheswaran,” Alan said suddenly. 
He only ever called her by her formal title when he was about to deliver bad news that any good friend would try to avoid. 
His fellows had abruptly stopped what they were doing, hands frozen above Laura’s body, eyes drawn to her midsection. 
It was like a grotesque Renaissance painting.
The light head glared unholily onto Dr. Keating’s bowed head.
“Come here for a moment.”
Priyanka’s entire stomach constricted where she sat on a stool that suddenly felt too small for her body. She knew that voice, but it was different this time. 
Because she'd gone soft. 
She was compromised.
She cared too much about her patient to accept the reasonable outcome of a blow.
“No,” she whispered. Her voice was garbled behind her mask. Guttural. “Alan, no.”
“Blunt kidney trauma…” he replied softly. She knew that voice. It was his best patient voice. The voice doctors used when they were delivering bad news. The voice Priyanka, in all of her studious harshness, had never entirely mastered. “…sometimes doesn’t produce outward signs… I’m sorry, Dr. Maheswaran.”
They’d called each other by their first names for nearly half a decade.
His gruff voice tripped over itself.
It hesitated, and it stared down into the precipice it had to jump. 
“These kidneys are unsalvageable.”
4:07PM:
The minutes inched onwards with all the delightfulness of paint drying on a damn wall. They crawled into hours, and they languished like poetic lovers, taking their slow, sweet time. Each second was seemingly savored by the analog clock on the wall, the hands lingering far longer than they should.
A world in love with itself.
How disgustingly saccharine.
Though Dr. Reed was pretty damn sure that Yellow didn’t have a concussion, she was also pretty damn reluctant to let the businesswoman go until her head completely stopped pounding. For, even after she had woken up properly, the dull, localized jabbing hadn’t gone away, persisting around her temples.
A hangover headache. 
“Perhaps,” Dr. Reed had hummed noncommittally, pressing a skeptical hand below her chin.
“Trust me,” Yellow returned darkly, rubbing the left side of her head tenderly with her middle finger. “I know when I have a hangover.”
But the batty woman still insisted that she stay, just so they could rule out the possibility of latent brain injury, which was why Yellow was currently hooked up to a banana bag as a means of working the last of Lagavulin out of her system. 
Because, if it was indeed a hangover, this simple remedy would assuredly help with her headache. 
And, well, if it wasn't, it would replenish her electrolytes at the very least.
Thrilling.
Situated in the chair next to Yellow’s bed, Poppy’s thin brow was woven together in concentration as she knitted what appeared to a lumpen, misshapen scarf—or was it a sweater?—her metallic needles clicking together every so often in the silence. The maid had arrived nearly an hour ago to bring her employer a set of pajamas to change into, as well as some paperwork from the CEO’s office. However, with her usual fumbling obsequiousness, she had insisted that she could stay for awhile.
She could attend to Yellow’s needs while her arm was out of commission.
Could satisfy her hourly duties.
But Yellow was no fool.
The slight woman did not linger out of the simple contract which existed between them as employer and employee. Indeed, she suspected that Poppy’s fidelity ran deeper than even that—that the maid dared to like her despite Yellow’s general sharpness of exterior, that she wanted to keep her company in a hospital room that was as empty as it was cold.
In the end, she supposed that she was… grateful for the implicit support.
She supposed, if she was forced to name an emotion at gunpoint, she would have no choice but to admit to her appreciation of someone who had been by her side, attendant to her every want, for nearly a decade.
But there was no steel barrel pressed against her tousled hairline, only the tinny clinking of those infernal needles and the occasional shuffling of papers as Yellow Diamond tried and subsequently failed to skim the brief the Zircons had left in her inbox. It was well-written—comprehensive—as it always was with Diamond Electric’s head attorneys, but what was an abstract lawsuit to the very real questions which tumbled ceaselessly across the furrows of the woman’s otherwise neatly tilled mind? What were words—nouns and verbs and adjectives—next to the torment of her wife’s almost touch?
To the simultaneous miracle and utter insanity of her sudden recovery?
Sick, angry, guilty, overcome, Yellow plucked her readers from the bridge of her nose and slapped them neatly on the tray next to her bed. The sudden thud startled Poppy from her knitting.
“D-did you need something, ma’am? Can I get you a glass of water? A snack from the vending machine?”
“No,” she snapped, and then, correctly interpreting the stung look on her maid’s face, she remembered herself.
She took a deep breath.
It wasn’t Poppy’s fault that her wife was doing better.
However…
“I mean,” she amended herself gruffly, “no thank you, Poppy… I do have a small favor to ask of you, though.”
“Yes, Mrs. Diamond?” She leaned forward in her chair, her scarf, sweater, or whatever it was flopping limply over her neatly crossed legs. “Anything.”
Gathering her thoughts in the very same way she gathered her lined fingers into a temple next to her stomach, Yellow thought to herself first that perhaps it was about time she gave her maid a raise.
Her second thought was the one she verbalized aloud, the question doled out in carefully measured words, nouns and verbs and a dash of barely repressed reluctance for good measure.
“That boy… Steven… he’s in this hospital, too, yes?”
33 notes · View notes
jawnjendes · 5 years
Text
i’m not usually like this | shawn mendes
university au, shawn x goth gf
if theres anything you wanna see happen in this series, let me know!
masterlist | series playlist
It all started because he asked a simple question. “Do you ever wear anything that isn't black?”
I've heard this question many times in my life, from family members, to coworkers, to strangers in my classes. The context in which Shawn asked me, however, was different than normal; He was pulling off my sweatpants and noticed my dark underwear. I told him to shut up and proceeded to ride him into oblivion.
When I wasn't surrounding myself with a brick wall to keep me safe, when I was not being stone cold and expressionless, I was quite the sex fiend. I'll take it anytime, and just about anywhere. I mean, you already know the story of those three hours Shawn and I spent in my bedroom, knowing that my roommate was home. That's not even the worst of it. We've had sex in his car, my car, outside my car, my living room, his kitchen, a bar bathroom, and a stranger's dorm room.
Listen… Shawn Mendes is a man of many talents. If he wasn't my boyfriend, he would be a fuck buddy.
Anyway, he liked to tease me about my wardrobe choices just as much as he liked to praise me. Sometimes he would ask who I’m about to sacrifice to the dark lord, and other times he would thirst over my black skirt and tights. Even better, sometimes he put on his black floral shirt as an attempt to match my ensemble. But this story is about his teasing.
After going at it for an hour at his apartment (my thighs were incredibly fatigued and shaky), I had to get ready for work. It was easy to get out of Shawn's hold since he was so loose and sleepy. As soon as I was ready, I kissed him goodbye and left his apartment in spirits so high it was considered abnormal for me. How did I know it was abnormal? My manager kept pointing out how chipper I was as I answered phones and helped customers. When people notice, that’s when you know things are changing.
It wasn't until I stopped by Walmart after my shift did Shawn's words sink in. I do wear black all the goddamn time. My closet is 99% black t-shirts, button ups, pants, leggings, and even underwear! The 1% is when I'm slacking on doing my laundry, that's when I would wear white.
That's not to say I don't like other colors. I used to experiment with bleaching my hair and dying it blue or green. I was a sucker for neon eyeshadow, and I was an absolute slut for red lipstick. Things are fluid, nothing is ever set in stone.
I looked through some of the clothing racks, but it’s Walmart, so nothing really stood out to me. Then I found myself in the underwear department. I was trying not to laugh at myself in front of other shoppers, because this was mildly insane. Was I really considering buying Walmart lingerie to prove a point to my boyfriend? There were some decent options after all.
My eye caught a black, sheer nightgown with a matching g-string. I studied it for a minute before deciding that I had a lot of black lace already, and half of it wasn't even intimate apparel. The next set I noticed was a simple sheer bra and underwear, also black. Getting there, but it wasn't enough. There weren't any in my size, anyway. I dug through the racks until I spotted something girly.
The first thing that put me off was that it was pink… baby pink. It was another nightie, but it was made of sheer tulle instead of lace. There were little pink and red hearts all over the skimpy fabric, and it came with a lace thong. It was cute, but it was the least Me thing here. On any other day, I would not be caught dead wearing anything pastel.
That's exactly why I ended up taking it home.
I quickly raced back to my dorm, feeling like I had some dangerous weapon hiding in the bag I was carrying. I didn't stop to speak to anyone I knew, and I was very glad that Shawn wasn't currently on campus. However, he did text me asking me to spend the weekend at his place. It only added to the butterflies in my stomach.
“Stella!” I frantically called once I had shut myself in my room.
She came practically running, bursting through the door. “What happened? Who died? Oh - oh my god.”
I was facing the full body mirror that was leaning against the wall. I tried on the daring piece of lingerie, testing it out on whoever was willing to see me like this. Stella was the only person who had seen me in my underwear apart from my boyfriend. However, I still had the decency to cover my breasts with my hands because the nightgown showed a bit too much.
“You trying to seduce me, ‘cause it's working,” Stella teased, wiggling her perfectly sculpted eyebrows.
“Listen!” I turned to face her, trying to justify my outfit choice. “This was probably a stupid idea! It, it was an impulsive buy!”
“Dude, if he sees you in this, you're gonna end up pregnant.”
“Don't say that!” I looked down and twirled my body from side to side, watching the fabric swirl. I felt and looked a little too nervous.
“Seriously, you look hot. Just, y'know, maybe skip the heavy eyeliner and add more perfume. He'll link the scent to the time he had the best sex of his life.”
I chuckled and rolled my eyes. “I'll do the perfume thing, but I can't skip eyeliner. I need something to make up for all the pink I'm wearing.”
Stella nodded. “Yeah, that's another thing. I know this is something you wear when you wanna get dicked down, but you look so soft and adorable!”
“Shit, if you keep saying things like that I just might spend the night with you instead.”
~
It was night by the time I was at Shawn's apartment. He was in the middle of songwriting, and he wasn't alone. His friend, Teddy, was over. I guess she helped him write sometimes. The two of them were singing to themselves and throwing potential lyrics back and forth at each other. Teddy was frequently writing on a scrap of paper or typing on her laptop. Shawn was strumming his guitar, and sometimes he would glance at me and wink.
I sat silently on the couch and half listened to them brainstorm. I was glad I decided not to leave my Switch at home.
“You're so quiet, is something wrong?” Teddy pointed out. I don't know why I wasn't expecting it.
“Don't wanna bother the artists at work,” I said, keeping my eyes on my intense game of Smash Bros.
“She's like that,” Shawn told his friend. “She'll warm up eventually.”
“That makes me sound like an asshole,” I replied with a chuckle, and then I gasped as my character on screen got knocked out.
Still, I remained quiet as they continued their session. I stayed in the same spot on the couch, curled up and thoroughly entertained. Shawn insisted I sit closer though, considering that I was on the opposite end of the couch from him. He liked my company I suppose, even if I wasn't speaking.
Eventually, Teddy got her things together and left. She gave me a hug, said it was nice to meet me, and then gave Shawn a look that said “have fun you two.”
When we were finally alone, I went into Shawn's room, telling him I wanted to change into my pajamas. It was sort of true, I mean. I grabbed my overnight bag and dashed into the en suite bathroom. Normally, I would have started with taking off whatever makeup I had on, but I only had on some intimidating winged liner and mascara. I needed that tonight.
Fixing up my hair and spritzing on a ridiculous amount of perfume helped keep my nerves at bay. My stomach fluttered when I pulled out the frilly pink item of clothing. This just might be my demise.
Once I was dressed, I looked at my reflection in the mirror and placed my hands on my hips. A wise lady in a hospital drama said standing like a superhero helps increase confidence, so that's what I did. I tried to channel my inner dominatrix, despite the fact that I was probably very far from being just that.
“I'm a strong lady,” I whispered to myself, then I huffed out a breath.
I ruffled my hair one last time before going to the door. I had my hand on the knob, but I could hear the sounds outside this very room. I could hear Shawn's footsteps, I heard the bed creak as he sat down. I heard the sounds of his guitar.
My heart started to race. It was ready to beat out of my chest.
I don't know why the first thing I thought to do when I finally opened the door was to unattractively clear my throat. It's not like Shawn wouldn't notice if I quietly left the bathroom.
He looked up from his guitar, and it took a second for him to process what he was looking at. His eyes lit up, and his jaw went slack.
Awkwardly, I placed one hand on the doorway and the other on my hip. I didn't know what to do with my face, so I slapped on the mock composure. I looked at my boyfriend, unsure if I should say something or not.
“No way,” Shawn finally spoke, a grin forming on his face. He set down his guitar and moved so he was sitting at the foot of the bed. “Come here…”
His eyes were moving up and down my body as I timidly stepped towards him. The look on his face was full of surprise and wonder, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. I mean, I was in skimpy attire and none of it was dark. Anyone who knew me wouldn't believe it.
Shawn took my hands when I was close enough, and he shamelessly checked me out. His eyes stuck on my tits just long enough to raise the tension in the room.
I was still finding my voice. I was probably more flustered than he was.
“You're too cute,” he told me, finally looking at my face. “When did you get this?”
“Today,” I said softly. “I don't know, I looked for something black… this was all I could find in my size.”
“I'm really glad you went with this. You're so cute. The pink makes you look almost innocent. Turn around for me.”
A shy smile crept up on my face as I slowly spun around. I quickly came to realize that I was willing to do just about anything he wanted. Wow, and I thought I was going to have power tonight.
“So adorable,” Shawn mused when I was facing him again. “You're the cutest fucking thing ever, you know that?”
My roommate had said similar things, but it hit me different hearing it from my boyfriend. My face was probably redder than the hearts on this stupid nightie, and Shawn could probably see that.
“I don't wanna be cute,” I mumbled, looking down at our hands. “I wanna be sexy.”
“Trust me, you're very sexy. I, I don't even know what to do. That's why I keep talking. God, you're so pretty.” His hand went up and stroked my cheek.
Stop fucking talking and just take me already!
The only way I could express that was by bringing Shawn's hands to my waist, giving him permission to touch me wherever the fuck he wanted. His breathing picked up a little more as he ran his hands down to my lower hips, reaching around to grab my ass.
I delicately placed my hands on his shoulders, and he leaned in to kiss my collarbones. He kept mumbling about how pretty I was, and it made me feel some kinda way. I could feel just how hot his body was getting being so close to mine, it made me even hotter. His hands moved up to my stomach, moving under the nightie, and running along my skin. My body felt so alive and ablaze.
“Your heart's going fast,” he pointed out, placing a hand on my chest. “You nervous?”
I nodded. “More than I'd like to admit.”
He smiled warmly, and then showed me his hands. Seeing them tremble gave me some kind of relief and an ounce of confidence. I made him feel like that. He was turned on because of me.
Shawn stopped me when I grabbed the ends of my nightie to take it off. “No. Leave it on.”
“Really?” I asked. “Won’t it be in the way or something?”
He shook his head, looking up at me with something like desperation in his eyes.  “I… wanna do unspeakable things to you in this thing. We're leaving it on. Now get your ass on the bed.”
I would have fainted if he hadn't given me an order.
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sparklyicecube · 5 years
Text
He’d be proud
This is my secret santa present for @maidenofbagend for the Harry Potter Secret Santa! It’s a prongsfoot fanfic that I hope you will enjoy!
“Why must this happen to meeeeeeeeee.”
“Well well, I never thought I’d see you on the bed contemplating life, if I might guess, wondering why you like a certain deer?”
Sirius threw a pillow at the person.
“Shut up Remus. I don’t have a crush on any deer, and it’s a stag not a deer.”
Remus smirked while Sirius’s eyes widened in realisation of his mistake and buried his face in his pillow.
“Oh come on, what is it this time?” Prodded Remus.
“You know, James has done so much for me, taking me in on holidays, pranking with me, being so kind and helpful…” Sirius trailed off.
“I wouldn’t be so quick to give him those last two compliments if I were you.”
“I just,” Sirius sighed, “I want to get him something nice for christmas.”
Remus laughed, it wasn’t often that Sirius let down his cool, smug-like demeanor to show weakness like this, and the fact that this was for his best friend made it even better.
“If it’s just about that I’m sure you can find something great. Remember, it has to come from the heart.” Reminded Remus.
The door flew open as James dramatically walked in, Remus rolled his eyes and Sirius laughed.
“I’m so sorry my dear Sirius but I do quite need Remus for as long as this activity takes.” Declared James.
Remus and Sirius looked at each other, Remus shrugged and got up from where he was sitting on the bed to follow James.
Sirius kept up his cool smirk until the door closed then threw the blankets over himself in an attempt to figure out how to cool his face down.
James on the other hand was in a similar situation, except he now had a reluctant ear for him to talk to.
“Remus I called him ‘dear’!” Wailed James as soon as he stepped out of earshot. Remus wondered why his two best friends were like this. “Remus, I need to get him the best present ever! But I don’t think he even really wants anything!”
Remus sat in a comfy chair in the Gryffindor common with his book that he managed to grab, James spread out on a couch, it was practically midnight and they could talk well without any peepers, as far as they cared at least.
“Remuuuuuuus.” James whined, “What do I get him for christmas?”
Remus’s eye twitched but he didn’t snap.
“I don’t know, why don’t you wrap yourself up in a bow and give him that?” Hinted Remus.
“Best friend status doesn’t carry that far.” James complained. Remus sighed, these two were going to need a lot of pushing to get an inch past ‘best friend status’.
He went back to reading his book before another whine came from the couch.
“Remus, I know me and Sirius are close, and I know I’m irresistible, and you’re helping me but… I think he has a crush on you.”
Remus froze and put his book down, James didn’t know all the nights that Sirius spent ranting about James’s messy hair, dorky glasses, the infuriating dance between him and James that kept them always within arms length, never more never less. However, James had a point, for someone who never knew what was said, who just knew the hours and that Sirius was dying to talk to Remus for some reason, it was quite likely that it could be true. But not in this case.
“Look, I think we both know that’s not true, and even if it were, that wouldn’t stop you from getting him a magnificent christmas present or be stressed about it, so let’s work on one thing at a time okay? Come on, let’s go to bed.”
“You haven’t done your transfiguration homework?” Asked James as he caught sight of Peter’s frantic writing.
“What’s another word for ‘this shows’?” Asked a very stressed Peter.
“Try using ‘this highlights’.” Suggested Remus, taking a bite of the very delicious-looking sandwich.
The four were sitting at the dining table, eating their breakfast and doing their homework and…
“Hey Padfoot, no matter how much you stare at my muffin I’m not giving it to you.” Teased James.
Sirius snapped out of his trance-like state, from staring not at the muffin but at a certain someone Remus observed. He quickly bounced back.
“That muffin? I was just wondering how you never get sick of the same muffin everyday, really, you’re going to turn into a muffin one day!”
“Hah!” Exclaimed James. “You’re saying that but in reality you think my muffin is awesome!” The two burst into laughter.
James leaned over to peep at what Peter was writing.
“Um, I don’t think Minnie wants an essay on changing pizzas into muffins…” Commented James.
“I can’t stand it! I can’t write this! I need food!” He cried.
“I can’t wait until the holidays!” James said, ignoring Peter shovelling food into his mouth. “You guys could come over!” Realised James perking up.
“As much as I’d like to, my mom would freak if I don’t go home.” Answered Sirius with a slightly downed tone.
“Then… send me an owl when you convince her, we could meet up a week before school maybe?”
“Remember, she infiltrates all the owls.” Pointed out Sirius semi-dejectedly.
At that point the bell rang and sent the four scrambling for their books and equipment and imminent doom.
“Cleaning the trophy room is boring.” Declared James.
“Yes but we were 10 minutes late to class.” Pointed out Remus.
“Why did Professor have to split up me and Sirius?” Protested James as he attempted to wipe off the dust on a glass cabinet.
“She had a point, as long as you two were together there’d be no way the detention would be properly carried out.” Remus pointed out.
“Well in that case… Remus I still have no idea what to get him for christmas!!!” James complained, “And not much time to get it!”
“Why not a mirror, so you can feed his big ego?” Suggested Remus.
“A mirror is boring… “
“A phone?”
“What’s a phone…”
“It’s something muggles use to communicate with each other.”
“But that’s a muggle thing…” James’s eyes suddenly lit up, as if struck by a lightning bolt of inspiration. “You’re brilliant Remus! If I get him a mirror that we can use to communicate then there’s no way his mom can take it from him right? All I have to do is make it so that the mirror reflects what the other mirror should be reflecting! And audio of course… You’re a genius!”
“Well when am I not?”
Would a genius push their two best friends, who clearly want to get together, off a cliff? Yes, yes they would. Should he? Yes, yes he should. Can he? No, unfortunately there are not enough cliffs in Hogwarts that are convenient to push people off, and there aren’t any books in Azkaban. Would a genius push together, not just anyone, but Sirius Black and James Potter? The two biggest idiots and pranksters on the planet? No. Definitely not. But he shall do it anyway.
A slight trip and push landed Sirius a spot in James’s arms. It didn't end there though, nothing the marauders did ended at just that, no, James caught him like a fairy tale and spun him around. ‘Where did the rose in James’s mouth come from?’ Questioned Remus in his head. They threw their heads up in a flourish and ended on a showy pose. James looked down for a split second only the other marauders could see from their front row seats and proceeded to drop his best friend on the floor of the great hall, for now their fellow students can go back eating their dinner in peace.
James blinked in surprise then profusely apologised. Sirius made a big show of spinning his head around dizzily.
“Remus, I think I have a headache, take me to Madame Pomfrey.” Sirius then grabbed onto Remus’s hand and pulled him along out of the hall.
“What are you-”
“Remus I can't take it…” Sirius sighed. “Not that close, not that intimate just not that, you know?” Sirius looked at Remus for confirmation, a longing in his eyes.
“Then tell him already for goodness sake! It’s not my place to confess for you, you know?” Remus said.
“I would but…” Sirius looked away, “I don't think he'll say yes.”
“On what basis?” Remus asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Remus, it's so obvious, he likes you.” Sirius stated sorrowfully.
Remus thought back to the time where James basically begged him to help woo Sirius, the time that Remus had to listen to an hour of ranting about Sirius’s amazing comebacks and so on, these two were crazy similar yet surprisingly dense to no one but the other.
“Look Sirius, even if he does for some insane reason have a crush on me, I’d turn him down.” Remus deadpanned. Sirius stared at him.
“What?”
“Well yeah, I don't have any feelings for James and there is someone right beside me who’d be perfect for him.” Remus nudged him with his elbow playfully.
“Thanks.” The two started walking back to the great hall. “You know I’m thinking a scrapbook…”
As they ate dinner Remus thought of possible date ideas, library? They would never. Picnic? Not grand enough. Astronomy tower? Too cramped. Now Remus was starting to reconsider the idea of pushing the two off a cliff, maybe into the lake would be more feasible. Wait, this year they can finally go to Hogsmeade! And Remus knows for a fact that the two have the signatures ready so…
“So, The trip to Hogsmeade is coming up soon, where do you two want to go first?” Asked Remus.
“I don’t know, oh! They said that they have a joke shop! Let’s all go and get materials!” Exclaimed James.
“What about the Three Broomsticks? We can all go-” Started Sirius.
“Actually,” Remus cut in, swinging his arm onto Peter’s shoulder. “Me and Peter have plans for Hogsmeade.” Said Remus calmly.
“We do?” Asked Peter blankly.
“Remember? We have some christmas shopping to do, alone.” Emphasized Remus. James and Sirius shared a mildly suspicious look.
“Better get us amazing presents!” Teased Sirius.
James and Sirius walked into the Three Broomsticks in awe, Hogsmeade was truly magical, even to those who had grew up in it. They snagged a comfy little table, they saw some of their fellow students but when they looked like they might come over they seemed to change their minds. The two were good at keeping up appearances but on the inside both were freaking out, it was so obvious that this was meant to be a cute little date for the two but they had danced this ‘best friend’ dance for so long that it was hard to step out.
“So, how is life?” Asked Sirius in a joking way, putting his face to rest on top of his palm, propping himself up.
“Well,” Began James, mimicking Sirius’s pose. “How is the most handsome person in the world?” The pickup line had been set in place, ready for Sirius to ping-pong it back but…
“Amazing, thanks for asking.” Replied Sirius coolly, making a mental note to try and quell the butterflies in his stomach.
They both laughed for a bit before discussing about a bit of light quidditch then lapsing into awkward silence.
“So… Remus and Peter went christmas shopping huh?”
“Yeah… On that note, have you gotten my gift yet?”
James had a look of terror on his face before replying: “All done and wrapped in time for christmas.” He boasted gleefully. “What about you?”
“You really think you’d be done before me? I finished ages ago.” Sirius inwardly panicked, he had started the scrapbook but it was only half-done.
“That sure is convincing.” James pointed out before bursting into laughter with Sirius.
“Are you sure about this Remus?” Asked Peter. The two of them were under James’s very handy invisibility cloak, Remus was watching James and Sirius walk into the restaurant. Remus finally explained everything to Peter (who was legitimately
unaware of everything that was happening) and made sure their unofficial date was a success. He managed to hand all the other students notes saying to keep away from the two, and was monitoring them.
“Yes. Not really but if I don’t do this now I will have to live more of this nonsense before christmas official comes.”
“Is that their new strawberry cheesecake crumpet?!” Asked Peter, dashing out, pulling off their invisibility cloak off. It was quite dark so not many noticed it but Sirius saw him and immediately made a beeline for him, almost spilling with news. James also got up and started going towards him and Remus panicked.
Remus grabbed Sirius’s hand and with some quick maneuvering managed to get it in James’s, carrying with the momentum a twirl.
“Take Sirius, dance with him, kiss him and shut him up please.” Pleaded Remus.
James looked into Sirius’s grey eyes, Sirius into James’s hazel. The bulk of the restaurant was watching. The moment stretched out and instead of dropping Sirius like the incident before (he is never going to live that down) James pulled Sirius up to connect their lips.
The entire restaurant was clapping and hooting and many stood up to give a standing ovation. There were fireworks in the background and this was truly where the both of them belonged, in the middle of a crowd right next to each other.
James hefted Sirius to his feet and they both had huge arching smiles that haven’t been seen for forever. Remus joined them as they started towards the door.
“Did something happen?” Asked Peter, sprinting to catch up with them.
The Marauders laughed and headed back towards the big castle of Hogwarts.
“Come on.” Whined James. “Your parents won’t allow you to be away on christmas, neither will yours or yours or mine!” Gesturing to all the Marauders. “And I want to see your faces when you  open my presents!”
“He holds a valid point.” Noted Sirius.
“Just Marauder presents though, I am opening all of my other presents on christmas day itself.” Finalised Remus.
The other three nodded with so much enthusiasm that Remus couldn’t help to laugh.
They started opening their presents, shouting with glee.
“A mirror?” Said Sirius quizzically, then immediately started posing in front of it.
“Nope! That’s what you think but actually, you see in this mirror what you are supposed to be seeing in the other.” Explained James with pride.
“We can see each other even when my mother doesn’t want me to!” Squealed Sirius, grabbing James and pulling him into a kiss, which, has been a regular occurrence ever since that date.
“Open mine now.” Said Sirius with excitement, passing the parcel over.
“Is this a… scrapbook?” Asked James.
“Yep! I added as many photos as I could, especially the embarrassing ones!” They spent all night looking through the book, even when the Head Prefect told them that some people needed to sleep. The four of them went home that year with the biggest smiles ever and constantly laughing, two of them with a newfound relationship and happiness.
“I remember that, you gave me and James ‘portable fans’.”
“Yep, a very good decision if you ask me.”
“What was it you said? Oh yes. ‘The next time either of you say ‘I’m so hot’ there is a fan right there.’ Very sassy.”
The two looked wistfully out of Sirius’s window.
“Do you think Harry is going to have a christmas as good as that?”
“Well if Molly gets ahold of him I guarantee you he will, and as long as you are around I’m sure he will also be happy, Sirius.” Sirius smiled sadly.
“I miss him.”
“There isn’t a soul who doesn’t.”
“Death Eaters?”
“They don’t have souls.” The two laughed slightly, not nearly as full or as carefree as they were when they were thirteen but when you are both scarred, scared and in the middle of a war, that is good enough.
“Well I’ve got to go, Nymphadora is expecting me soon.”
“Doesn’t she hate people calling her that?”
“Your point?”
“James would be proud.” Remus gave Sirius a tired smile.
Sirius sat in his room, it was decorated with red and gold, quidditch posters and so on, yes. James would be proud.
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