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wanderersbell · 1 year

Text

𝐁𝐀𝐁𝐘𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑!!

⌇ feat. scaramouche, xiao ⌇ premise. your boyfriend and a child? a match made in hell ⌇ cw. modern au, fluff, gn!reader, children

notes. baby fever is real and i'm feeling it

apples⌇kunikuzushi

The last thing Scaramouche expects to see when he enters your apartment is a child waiting for him at the door. He immediately backs out of your place, slams the door shut, and then whips out his phone to text you.

kuni [12:43pm] there's an intruder in your apartment

you [12:44pm] ???

kuni [12:44pm] there's a child in your apartment what the fuck

you [12:44pm] oh shit hang on i'm on my way!!

you [12:45pm] can you watch her for me?? i'm supposed to babysit today

And so Scaramouche finds himself glaring at some stranger's daughter on a Saturday afternoon.

"Up!"

"No," Scaramouche deadpans.

Two small hands clutch onto the fabric of his pants. "Please?"

"Absolutely not," he grumbles, but he begrudgingly picks the child up, one arm supporting her back so she doesn't topple over backwards. "What the hell do you want, brat?"

"Can you make me a snack?" she asks, hands coming up to yank at his purple strands.

"Say please," he scolds, indigo eyes narrowing as he shakes her grubby hands out of his hair.

"You're mean, I'm not saying please."

"Oh, what the fuck," Scara mutters under his breath, but he playfully pinches her cheek before heading to the kitchen to ransack your fridge for a snack suitable for a six-year-old.

And although he preaches loudly about how much he hates children, Scaramouche remembers to wash the kid's hands before wrestling her onto a chair (although he accidentally knocks her head against the dining table in the process).

It's the effort that counts, he tells himself.

When you rush in through the front door, the first thing you hear is a child's laughter and your boyfriend's quiet swearing. And then you see Scara peeling an apple, eyebrows furrowed as he focuses.

In front of him is a plate of apple slices, shaped like bunnies.

polychrome⌇xiao

Xiao doesn't know how to do a lot of things.

Working an air fryer, keeping a plant alive, entertaining children—all of these fall out of his expertise, and you know this. But somehow he finds himself alone in your apartment with your neighbor's daughter, and Xiao doesn't know what to do.

It's your fault, for shoving the kid into his arms and racing out the door while muttering something about forgetting to buy groceries. But you promised him that it wouldn't take long, and Xiao prays that you'd come back soon. He nervously glances at the clock hanging on the wall, pointedly ignoring the two round doe eyes peeping out from beneath the table top.

"Mister?" There's a small hand tugging at his sleeve now, and Xiao feels his heartstrings getting pulled as well.

"...You can call me Xiao," he says gently, leaning down to look her in the eye.

"Xiao!" The child beams, displaying two missing front teeth, and pulls him into the living room. "Can I color the picture on your arm? Please please please?"

"I guess," he says flatly, and awkwardly sits on the couch while the child rummages through her backpack. There's a brief moment where the kid pulls a pack of permanent markers out and Xiao panics, but after fumbling to snatch the markers out of her hand, he settles back down (kid in his lap) with a few washable markers that he found in a random closet.

When you come back from your impromptu grocery run (hours later than you promised), you find Xiao on the couch with colorful scribbles covering his tattoo and a sleeping child in his lap.

You owe me one, Xiao mouths, glowering when you take a picture of your boyfriend and the drooling child.

reblogs and feedback are always welcome :)

#very talented authors <3 #scara concussing a child not clickbait !!!#shitting crying throwing up i’m so soft #maybe. maybe i do want kids.#sunny i hate u i hate u i hate u i hate u i cant believe i said that #BUT THIS IS JUST SO

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wanderersbell · 1 year

Text

between the pages

wanderer x gn!reader

genre: modern!au, meet-cute, fluff

warnings: none

word count: 2206

✧.* a/n: sorry i haven't posted in forever teehee i had to use all of my effort to squeeze this out of my brain ૮ ◞ ﻌ ◟ ა

try as you might, it’s impossible not to notice the new customer perusing the bookshelves in the old, worn down shop you’ve taken a job at over the summer. compared to the aged shelves and creaky floors, it’s like seeing a shiny new car in the middle of a junkyard, pristine and vivid against the washed out backdrop.

it’s pleasantly cool inside away from the sweltering july heat so for a moment you’re sure he only ducked in to cool off, but he actually appears to be looking for something as he approaches one of the towering displays.

you watch discreetly from the counter as the boy slides a book out and opens to a random page, little specks of dust floating up from the pages and around him, visible only because of the sunlight from the window in the back that casts its glow right above him.

you cringe a bit at the sight. no matter how often you dust, it never seems to go away, which you suppose is to be expected of such an old little shop. he doesn’t seem to mind though, hardly even seems to notice it as his violet eyes stay fixed on the words in front of him.

he’s beautiful, so much so that you almost wonder if you’re hallucinating the first time he pushes through the door and takes in the towering shelves lined from wall to wall. he has an air of grace that shows through his calculated movements, almost like a robot that’s programmed to be perfect.

but he’s very much real when he finally finds what he’s looking for and brings it up to checkout.

“borrowing or purchasing?” you ask automatically, praying silently that your voice doesn’t sound weird. up close, you realize he can’t be much older than you, and that somehow makes him all the more intimidating.

his eyes are sharp and cold as he meets yours, practically the textbook definition of unapproachable.

“borrowing.” he replies. his voice is a bit softer and higher pitched than you were expecting, but there’s a hint of roughness to it that almost makes your skin prick with goosebumps in a way that you try to ignore.

as you turn away to find the notepad for him to write his information down on, his eyes drift to the whiteboard next to the counter. ‘book of the week’ is written at the top in blue marker, with the title of a novel underneath.

there’s a half written annotation on the board that you were in the middle of jotting down before he walked in. in your opinion it’s messy, unorganized, and impossible to understand. just a jumble of thoughts that you scribbled down as they came to you.

you’re the only one who ever adds anything every week and most people coming in hardly spare it a glance, but when you find what you’re looking for and slide it over to the customer you notice his eyes flitting over your scribbles.

it almost makes you feel self conscious of what you’ve written. it could be worded so much better, and your handwriting looks so much nicer when you slow down a bit, but you hadn’t anticipated anyone actually bothering to read it.

he shifts his attention back to you as soon as he realizes you’re looking at him and he takes the notepad and pen from you without a word.

you fidget with a stapler while he fills it out, suddenly becoming aware of how fast your heart is pounding behind your ribcage. when he’s done he hands it back to you, you hand him the book, and then he turns to leave without another word.

your usual ‘have a good day’ gets caught in your throat for some reason so all you can manage is a small, awkward wave that he doesn’t even notice as the door swings shut behind him.

when you glance down at the ‘borrow’ list, the first thing you notice is his handwriting, somehow equal parts neat and messy. the tops of his letters nearly loop together but blunt angles prevent it from being considered neat. the other thing, is his name.

‘kuni.’

he seems to have chosen not to write his full name, which technically isn’t allowed but also isn’t really that big of a deal at the end of the day, because his phone number is still written where it should be and your boss never checks the list anyway.

the entire thing was such a normal, boring interaction that had it been anybody else you probably would’ve forgotten about it by the next day—but this lingered on your mind throughout the rest of the week.

the following week when he returns the book, he exchanges it for another one. there’s a new novel listed this week, and you don’t even process the fact that kuni pulls his phone out to write down the name of it because your eyes are glued to the red eyeliner lining his lower eyelashes. it’s stark against his pale skin, so perfectly drawn that you once again find yourself questioning whether or not he’s even real.

you almost choke on your spit when his gaze flicks up to meet yours and you quickly slide the ‘borrow’ list over to him, completely missing the way one of his eyebrows quirks up in mild amusement at your reaction.

it takes him a bit longer than last time to write his information down because he pauses to skim over your annotation for this week's book, which is much more presentable this time around.

if you weren’t awkwardly staring at your feet still caught on the fact that he looks like he walked straight out of a painting, you would’ve noticed the flash of an impressed expression on his face, but you keep your eyes pointed down until he sets the pen back into the tin cup to the side with a clink.

when he grabs the book and silently turns to leave, you take a grounding breath.

“have a good day.” you blurt out to his retreating form, internally thanking the heavens that the words come out even and not too quiet.

kuni doesn’t stop walking towards the door, but he turns his head to the side and lifts his hand up in acknowledgement.

“you too.”

you don’t work fridays and the shop is closed on the weekends, but when you return on monday, kuni’s book is already filled out as returned, meaning he must have stopped by on your day off.

you feel a bit bummed out at the fact that you missed him when he came back, but he had replaced it with another so all you can do is hope he’d show up again sometime before friday.

much to your surprise, when you turn around to erase last week's book and change it to another, there’s something new written on the whiteboard.

just off to the side of your previous annotation are notes, scribbled in a slightly familiar somewhat elegant chicken scratch. it takes you a second, but when you realize it’s kuni’s handwriting your heart jumps into your throat.

his notes branch out from what you have written in response, taking in your thoughts and then challenging them with a counter argument that has you thinking from a perspective you hadn’t been able to see before.

after being frozen on the spot for a bit longer, you grab and uncap the marker and start scribbling a response to his response, trying to ignore the excitement thrumming in your limbs.

to think that someone else would take an interest in the featured books, and even bother to pick apart your annotation and invite you to think harder about the story was almost hard to believe.

especially because it’s him.

anyone else might feel a bit bothered having their opinions countered so bluntly, but you’re so stuck on the fact that you have someone to indulge you in this interest that it never even crosses your mind.

when you finish and stand back, an entire half of the whiteboard is taken up by two people’s handwriting where it once would have been nearly empty. instead of erasing it to add the new one, you move to the other side of the board and add the new week’s novel, as well as your thoughts on it that you had organized over the weekend.

still feeling elated by the unexpected happening, the rest of your shift goes by in a flash until an hour before the store closes when kuni finally shows up again, all intimidating sharp gracefulness.

it’s not until he walks up to the counter after wandering off to find something to check out that you finally realize it’s not the featured book he’s returning, and he had actually never even checked out the book that was listed on the whiteboard last week.

you had wanted to say something about the notes, but the way he doesn’t even acknowledge that they exist has you clamming up and doubting whether or not he was even the one who wrote them in the first place. out of the desperate desire to not embarrass yourself, you decide it’s best left unmentioned.

“thanks,” you say almost hesitantly as you add the book to the return pile to put away later and pass him the clipboard so he can cross his previous entry off the list and add a new one.

if only you had been paying attention instead of being lost in your own doubt, you would’ve seen how he eyed the whiteboard and the way a corner of his lips turned up a fraction at your messy reply, but his back is turned and he’s already leaving by the time you look up again.

and you would never know it, but a while later across town a boy with the pretty red eyeliner walks into a library and checks out another book, one that had been hastily written down on an old whiteboard where a pretty person that made his hands sweat with nervousness works.

this continues for another two weeks and another two books before you finally muster the courage to mention it to him. one of the things he had written under your annotation didn’t make any sense to you, and you can’t help but ask the next time he comes in.

he clearly wasn’t expecting you to know that it was him, because he looks absolutely taken aback when the words come out of your mouth.

“what did you mean about the protagonist's actions mirroring the dialogue in the first half?” you try to say this as casually as possible, but your hands are wringing each other behind the counter as you speak. “i mean, i noticed that the emperor almost perfectly predicted what would happen, but it was still super vague.”

it takes kuni a few seconds to gather his bearings before he responds in stride.

“it was in the story one of the elders told.” he explains. “the one that describes the man who had to pass three trials before he could figure out how to lift the curse.”

“oh!” you gasp, finally understanding what he had written. it was such a small section that you had completely overlooked it so you can’t help but feel a little amazed by his attention to detail. “i never caught that, good eye.”

“mn.” he responds stiffly.

in the silence that follows afterwards, neither of you know what to say for a moment. the annoying fluttering is back in your stomach and even though you want to say a million things, not a single word forms on your lips.

“did you know it was me the whole time?” kuni eventually asks, eyes burning holes into the counter.

“yeah, pretty much.” you admit sheepishly.

if you didn’t know any better you would think the tips of his ears looked a little red as you slid the clipboard in his direction, but you decide not to point it out and instead clear your throat and give a pathetic attempt at pushing the conversation forward.

“so did you read the new one?”

you don’t realize how stupid that question is until it’s already out of your mouth given the fact that it’s monday and you had just added the new one to the whiteboard about an hour ago, but he pretends not to notice that and glances behind you to see the title.

“not yet.” kuni replies. “i’ll get around to it tomorrow.”

you can’t stop the smile that takes over your face at his words as a rush of warmth and anticipation fills your chest.

as soon as you begin to internally debate whether or not to ask him where he’s been getting the weekly recommendations if he’s not borrowing them from here, it’s almost like he knows you’re waiting to bring that up because he’s already halfway to the door after he scribbles his information down on the list.

“do you already own all of these books or-“

“see you next week.”

you can’t stop the tiny pfft that slips out as the door swings shut behind him. and just like that, the store is empty again.

#favoniuslibrary #astronetwrk #genshin impact x reader #wanderer x reader #scaramouche x reader #kunikuzushi x reader

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