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observeowl · 9 months

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Her Assistant | Chapter 22 - Shopping

Summary: After losing her family, Natasha Romanoff builds her company from the ground up. During the rise of her company, she decided she needed an assistant, one that works in her office and her house. That's when she saw your resume. After working five years for her, how was it like working for her? Or more importantly, how things progress?

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Natasha POV After settling the issue at Weston College yesterday, it was a pretty chill day in the house for everyone, except me. After not being in the office for almost a month, there was work piled up on my desk. Even though Wanda took a big chunk of it, there were still pending budget approvals needed to be done and I have to read through the reports as well. Talking about reports, I have yet to do the one for Weston College.

My pleading eyes drifted to Y/N. "Better finish now than later. It's only going to add up." She shrugged her shoulders and slowly retreated out the door and away from the mess. I could only sigh at the work that was to come. I can't catch my breath can I?

Between working, Y/N entered a few times to pass me lunch and dinner. She'd ignore my puppy eyes of me wanting to stop working. I mean, how can she have fun with Bucky and the rest and I have to be stuck in the office working?

Eventually, it was night time when I was done with what I had to catch up on. The lights outside were off and the rest of the household had already gone to sleep. This used to be my lifestyle before I hired Wanda, Pietro and even Bucky, Working late into the night and starting early the next day. I thought it was going to be it for the rest of my life and I was content with it then.

But now, it feels a bit lonely. I'm not exploring my life and the things beyond my work. Those were not things that made me happy anymore. I want to pass milestones with Y/N and experience new things with her.

I can no longer imagine a life without her.

"Finally done with your work?" Y/N asked coming out from god knows where.

I let out a sigh and nodded my head. "Yeah..."

"Time to rest then, there's no escaping work tomorrow." Y/N suggested. I nodded my head. Work is a constant, but at a slower rate tomorrow as compared to today.

---

I was in such a nice slumber, perhaps I worked too much these few days. Coupled with the Cricket Tournament I did and working overtime, I passed out pretty quickly after my head hit the pillows.

I woke up naturally the next day and was surprised no one came to wake me up. "Morning. I thought you would like breakfast in bed today after all the hard work you've done yesterday." Y/N walked in with a tray of food and placed it in front of me. "I thought the usual American breakfast would be easier eaten on the bed."

Pancakes, eggs and bacon paired with my coffee at the corner. "It's wonderful. Are you eating with me?"

She shook her head. "I ate with the rest this morning." The scowl on my face told her I wasn't too happy with her answer.

She chuckled slightly. "Eat up. We are heading out later." She removed herself from my bed and plopped herself on my ottoman next to my bed.

"Out? I still have work to do."

"I did them yesterday. So today's schedule is free. I thought it would be great to bring Bucky, Wanda and Pietro out today."

She did my work yesterday? Was that why I didn't see much of her? I just thought she was just allowing me to do my work in peace.

"Sure? Where do you want to go?" I nodded at the idea while cutting into the pancake.

She just smiled at me. "It's a surprise."

---

Everyone dressed casually, even Y/N, who I never saw her out of her suit and mission related clothes, was dressed in a plain shirt and jeans. All of us took the same car since only Y/N knew where we were going.

The sitting arrangement was different though, Wanda, Pietro and Bucky were squeezing behind the back and I'm sure this was the first time Bucky sat at the back.

Y/N drove for quite a bit before parking and she told us that the place was the biggest mall in New York. Wanda was very excited to see what they had to offer and Pietro wanted to get some sports equipment.

"Are you looking for something in particular?" The salesman asked.

"Something as cool as the Empire-" Y/N stopped him before he was able to embarrass himself.

"He's looking for a pair of running shoes." Y/N said.

As Y/N assisted with the talking, I looked around seeing if anything caught my eye. Someone did though. Wanda was still standing outside the shop looking at the sign intently. I thought she was afraid of coming in, but she entered when I was about to go to her.

"Both of you can get anything you want as well." I told them just in case it wasn't clear for them.

Pietro did not hold back on spending and acquired two pairs of running shoes and a couple of dri-fit tees. He was very happy with his purchase and happily held the bags as Y/N paid.

We walked around a bit more and entered some shops but neither Bucky nor Wanda saw anything that caught their eyes. Eventually, we had our lunch as we were feeling a little peckish and we wanted to avoid the lunch crowd.

"Is there a bookstore nearby?" Wanda asked.

"Yes, it's at the fourth level if I'm not wrong." Y/N answered. "We can head there after lunch."

"Thanks."

Books and Bucky don't go well together so he was waiting for us outside together with Pietro. I'm sure they were able to find something to bond over.

This time, all of us went our separate ways as Y/N wanted to find some books as well. I came across some games and puzzles and my eyes drifted to those maps that you can scratch out places you've visited. I decided it would be a nice piece of decoration in my office and took it to find one of them.

Wanda was in the young adult section but in her arms was a book about marketing. "I hope I am not making you work too much."

"Not at all. It is the marketing aspect of things that intrigues me, like what makes them decide they want our products."

I nodded my head. I thought she'll be more interested in science considering she has a lot of knowledge in chemistry.

"Looks like all of us got something from the bookstore." Y/N came from behind us showing us she got a book, The Maid by Nita Prose (google the movie, there'll be a fun surprise). She took our items to the cashier and before she was about to hand her card, Wanda added another book, a fictional book this time.

"Sorry."

"No worries."

When we exited the bookstore, Bucky and Pietro were chatting and didn't even stop when we started walking around again. There was a lot fist bumping going on but I had no idea what they were talking about. Y/N seems to know where she was taking us as she walked without hesitation. She has that cheeky smile on her face which means she has something planned.

"Bucky." She called out to him and his head immediately turned to her. She pointed at the store in front of them and I could see his eyes lit up.

"I can... really buy anything?"

"Yup. Don't go overboard though. Yours is different from what the rest of us bought. If you want to show Pietro around, you can." Y/N told him. This was the first time I saw him this excited since I hired him.

"Did you plan all this?" I asked her as it was our turn to be waiting outside.

"I did. That day, when I was in the car with you?" I nodded my head. I thought she was checking where she wanted to meet Nicole.

"How was it like working in Natasha's company?" Y/N turned the conversation to Wanda. She was shocked to hear this from Y/n and looked between the both of us. "I think the employee would speak more liberally if the boss were to excuse herself for a moment."

I raised my hands in mock surrender before heading into find Bucky talking to the salesperson.

"Hi ma'am, how may I help you?"

"It's alright, I'm here with him." I pointed toward Bucky and Pietro. I stood and watched as Bucky disassembled the guns to look through the parts before assembling it back again. There were a couple of models in front of him and he was making a hard choice on which one to choose.

"Why not take all of them?"

"Miss Romanoff!" He didn't expect me to walk in. "I can't do that. It'll cost a lot."

"I'm not doing it for free. I'm asking you to teach Wanda some self defense."

"What?" Pietro was alarmed.

"It's what you have to do if you want to work for me." I looked him straight in the eyes. "Especially..., if you're living with me."

When he had no words to reply, I asked the salesperson who and where I should pay. We were going to carry it around with us so I arranged it to be delivered to our house.

"Why did Pietro come out looking gloomy?" Y/N asked when we exited the store.

"I told him Bucky was going to train Wanda self defense." She looked behind her shoulder and saw Pietro speaking to Wanda.

"He didn't take it too well then."

Y/N checked the time on her phone before turning around with a clap. "Natasha and I have something to do before we head back." She pulled me closer by the waist. "So all of you can take an Uber home. Just charge it under the company card." She looked at Bucky at the last sentence.

"Where are we going?" I asked. She shrugged her shoulders before walking off. She kept adjusting her collar so I knew she was nervous about something.

"You don't have to agree to it, but I'm meeting Nicole here. I was thinking you can see what she's planning?"

"Of course, I'm interested in knowing who dares to drug you." I linked my arms with hers and she started walking to the cafe. Of course she also made the reservation for the place. This whole day has been according to her plan. She took a seat next to me as we ordered a drink for ourselves while waiting for Nicole.

A woman walked closer to us, which must be Nicole and I gave Y/n a slight nudge to let her know she was coming.

"I didn't know what you wanted, so I didn't order anything for you." Y/N said as Nicole sat in front of her. I vaguely remember her telling me that she doesn't treat her friends the best, was that what she meant? "By the way, this is my girlfriend, Natasha Romanoff." Y/N introduced me.

"Girlfriend?" She looked at me surprised. "I never thought you would ever get in a relationship! You were always so cold to everyone and I thought you would have scared everyone away." She laughed slightly before extending her hand towards me.

"Nice to meet you, my name is Nicole Turner, you can call me Nicole. I've been a friend of Y/N's since High School." I shook her hand with a smile. So she's been Y/N's friend longer than Victoria.

"Likewise, call me Natasha."

"I still can't believe that you're in a relationship! With Natasha Romanoff, no less, the CEO of Romanoff Corporation. You don't date, but once you do, you take the big shots huh."

"It wasn't part of my plan, but I'm happy it happened."

Watching Y/N and Nicole interact, I can believe that they have been friends for a long time. The insults they dared to throw at each other and the bantering were evident.

"So, did you make a police report on your ex-boyfriend?" Y/N asked after we had finished their food. She shook her head. "Yeah, well, since it has been so long, I doubt there's much evidence incriminating him. I won't push you to put charges against him, but it was me, I won't stop here." Y/N said. I looked carefully at Nicole's facial expression. The perk of being the one interviewing and negotiating all these years was that I was able to tell the microscopic muscle movement.

"Yeah, Y/N is just protective like that, even to her friends. I couldn't imagine what would happen if I were to betray her." I wrapped my hands around hers and rested my head on her shoulder.

"Only people who matter to me."

With that, the lunch meeting was over and we went our separate ways. From our car, we were able to see where Nicole parked and followed her to her next destination. I've never been on this side of the mission. Usually, I would be the one giving a mission to Y/N. Now, we are embarking on a mission together that's hers.

Maintaining a safe distance, Nicole finally stopped in front of a bar. A bit early to be partying, but who's to stop a lady? I was about to get out of the car when Y/N stopped me. "I know this kind of bar. It doesn't start until 7pm and only starts preparing at 5pm. It's way too early to be entering this bar, even if she's working here."

"Well, that's a simple fix. We can ask Wanda or Pietro to come. They don't know about them." She nodded her head as she thought about the idea I presented. "One of them could act like they are drunk as they survey the area inside." I continued to pitch my idea.

"Alright, I think let's call Pietro."

Pietro POVY/N gave me an address and told me to head over as soon as possible. To say that I was surprised that Y/N wanted me to enter the bar was an understatement.

"You look alright, but you could do better. I want you to act as if you've just got dumped by your girlfriend, act all drunk and ask for some drink while looking for this person, and who she's with." Y/N showed me a picture of a lady and I nodded. "Here, change into this." She gave me a suit that she got from her trunk and gave me some privacy as I changed in the back row of her car.

Y/N gave me a weird look when I stepped out of her car. I looked at myself thinking perhaps I buttoned the shirt wrongly or didn't tuck in my shirt but I looked alright to me. "You're way too put together for someone that is sad." With that said, she scrunched up my shirt and unbuttoned the top button before spraying some alcohol on me.

"Should I ask why you have a spray bottle in your car?" Natasha spoke my mind before I formed a sentence.

"It helps in ironing the shirt. In case you didn't realise, you love to change your schedule on a whim." I looked between the two women, eying each other.

"Should I go in now?" Y/N gave me the go ahead while Natasha got in the car. I took a deep breath before channeling my inner drunk self and pushing the heavy door open. Lots of women were inside chatting and turned to look at me. I ignored them and continued making my way to the bar, making sure to bump into a few tables here and there. "One screwdriver!" I quoted from Y/N what to say as I plopped down on the bar stool and placed my head on the cold wood.

My eyes scanned the area looking for Nicole and when she didn't appear, I turned my head to the side. "Excuse me Mister, our bar isn't open yet." Well, what do you know? It was Nicole who approached me.

"One screwdriver. My girlfriend just dumped me. I know the bars are already open, I've been to two." I stuck the peace sign right in front of her face.

"Sir... perhaps you don't understand. We are not serving." I turned my head to look at the guy behind the bar. His accent was different from what I usually hear around here. His black frame glasses stood out to me the most and his hair was combed to the back. He really doesn't strike me as someone who is a bartender. In fact, he was the only guy in the entire bar.

"WHY IS IT SO HARD FOR ME TO GET ONE SCREWDRIVER?" I banged the table and glared at him. He didn't say anything but nodded for another lady to drag me out. I shouted all the way, resisting. And I mean, resisting. These ladies are stronger than they looked.

"Don't show up here again." Her accent was deeper than the guy inside. When she slammed the door in my face, I walked back to Y/N's car across the street and got in.

Natasha POVI got a glimpse of the lady who dragged Pietro out but she was too quick to let me see any distinctive features. Once Pietro got in, Y/N asked him what he managed to get.

"Nicole was definitely there. There were a lot of ladies in that bar but only one guy. There is something about them that makes me feel like they don't look like they work there though." Y/N sighed when he listened to what Pietro had to say. He would have been able to gather more data had he been working with us longer.

"My reports tell me that Nicole has been visiting that shop almost every day. While she is the type to party, I don't think she would be there every day." Y/N said.

"So, what are you going to do about it?"

"Force her to make a move."

---

It was a few hours later on the same day, it was definitely darker and the streetlamps that were functional were working and bars were definitely open for business. We could have sent Wanda in but we wanted a drastic move to make sure Nicole would start acting. We weren't sure if she was the head of it all or if she was working for someone.

"I'm going to leave you alone to plan what you need to do. I'm sure you can handle yourself." Y/N told me as we got prepared to enter the bar once again.

"Yes... yes... I just need to make her feel threatened and jealous. Isn't that what I do everyday?" She shook her head before looking at Wanda and Bucky who were going to enter after us.

"Alright, let's go."

She walked ahead before I pulled her back and placed my arm around her waist. "Follow the master." I smirked before walking in confidently. We found a place in front of the bartender and ordered our drinks as we waited for the guest of honour to arrive.

"9 o'clock." Y/N said as I saw our target greeting the guest. "Waiting for the target to approach."

"Y/N! I didn't think you'd be here. Natasha, nice meeting you again." Nicole came round to serve us as she saw Y/N.

"I didn't think you'd be working at this sort of place."

"I needed some income and this was the fastest way of getting paid. Should I refill your drinks?" She questioned at the end.

"I think I saw my friends entering. I'm gonna catch up with them for a moment. Catch you guys in a minute."

When Nicole returned with our drinks, we talked for a while before I started the plan. "Don't you dare try anything with Y/N. I know what you've done. And I'll be damn to let it happen again. She's mine and mine only. I won't let anyone touch her and that's you included."

"How is it going ladies?" Y/N came back cheering and I just smiled at her before giving a quick kiss on her cheek.

"It's great, I'm getting to know more about Nicole. I think we are going to be great friends." I flashed her a genuine smile before looking back at Nicole. "Don't you think?"

"Y-yes. I'll leave you two alone. I have other guests to serve."

"Do I even want to know what you said to her?" Y/N shook her head when we were sure she was out of earshot.

"If you ask, I'll tell you."

"Nevermind, let's just take a seat with Bucky and Wanda before you do any further damage."

Reader POVNot wanting to leave Pietro out for a long time, we decided to head back home after Wanda had a few experiences with getting tipsy, saving the experience of being drunk another time. Her face was almost matching her hair after a few drinks, and it wouldn't be wise to get drunk at this point in time.

After threatening Nicole, sitting in the house and waiting isn't the way to go. I was a bit skeptical of letting Natasha plan this, but she managed to convince me to let go of the reins. Her methods require a bit of luck and understanding of the enemy which can be hit and miss at times. "You've done so much for me. Let me do something in return."

You know, in hindsight, I probably shouldn't have let Natasha do this. I knew she would get back at me for that one time she had to go blindfolded into an underground auction for human trafficking. Now, I'm trapped on a chair facing who I once called my best friend.

"Why are you doing this? You're not like this." I said when she turned to face me. Even though she didn't say anything I could tell there was a bigger force behind this. "You used to jump at the chance to help people."

"I had enough of people using me. Leaving me. I lost my job, my boyfriend, my house. There wasn't any purpose in my life until he came to rescue me. Everything was so... dreadful..."

"Who's he?"

"Dreykov."

"He took me in, gave me a place to stay, gave me a job, gave me a purpose. I finally felt like I had some sort of light in my life." She picked up a parry knife and continued speaking. "But he knew about you. Knew what you have been doing with Natasha. He couldn't allow someone like you to be near me. And I knew what I had to do."

"And you decided to rape me?"

"He gave me a test. I needed to pass it in order for him to accept me. So I used the new house he gave me as an excuse to lure you in. You were always a people pleaser even if you refuse to admit it. You are way more noble than me. You think of others more than you think for yourself. You give others the credit even though you were the one who thought of the idea. You're the shadow behind us."

I shook my head at her words. Where the heck is Natasha? How long am I sped to be talking to her? "So he gave you another task? To kill me?"

She shook her head. "I am supposed to keep you here until he's done with what he needs to do." This made my head turn. What is it that Dreykov needs to do? Is Natasha safe? I don't even know where the heck I am.

"That being said, I think that's enough talking. I fear I have revealed far too much." Where the heck is Natasha? I started struggling against my restraints, pulling whatever I could hold on to and trying to wiggle out of it. I shouldn't have trusted her to be the hero this time. Finally, I managed to free one hand without her knowing and it was a lot easier to free the other.

When she came closer, I caught her wrist and pushed her onto the chair as I disarmed her. "You know what I work as and who I work for. You're no match for me when you've only done this for a few months." She continued looking at me with determination in her eyes. "Please... you don't have to do this anymore." I watched as she visibly relaxed and I moved the knife further away from her.

"I know... but I have the element of surprise." She pushed me harshly causing me to drop the knife and lose my footing. Using that to her advantage, she placed both legs at my side and started punching me. "I know you had feelings for me. Dreykov told me to never forget it." Her repeated punches render me unable to see my target. I could only choose to either protect my head or flail my hands trying to get her to stop.

"Ohhh you don't have to forget it alright. You won't even get a chance to think about it. Get your filthy hands off my girl." A gunshot rang out and Nicole flopped down beside me.

"Took you long enough. I thought you weren't coming." I pushed Nicole off my body before looking at Natasha. "What happened to your face?" I noticed there were a few cuts and blood on her face but it doesn't look that bad for a cause of concern.

"Yeah... about that... I was on the way but Bucky told me someone ransacked our house and I had to go back and settle some things, that's why I was late. Sorry." Natasha kept her gun as she came closer. "You alright? Sorry I couldn't come here quick enough."

"What happened?" I asked as I tried cleaning up this place. A murder is still a murder, even if it was not under the order of SHIELD. There can be no evidence left behind even if there was no one to help us clean up.

"I think it was the work of Dreykov."

"You know him?" I asked, she talked as if she knew how he performed.

There was a beat of silence. I thought Natasha wasn't going to answer until she spoke again. "I used to work for him for about a year and a half before I joined SHIELD. I knew that if I wanted to open my own company, I needed a strong backing that could at least prevent Dreykov from taking action on me."

Even after working for her for five years, there was still something I didn't know about her. Something as big as this. We worked silently for the rest of our time there before Bucky came to fetch us and disposed of the body.

When we got back to the house, there were still people cleaning it up. The house was really turned over, was there something they were finding? Most of them were trying to put things back where they thought it belonged but I knew that I had to make adjustments later. For now, I'll let them clean the place and bring the broken pieces of furniture out.

Surprisingly, even Clint was there. Was he there to help? I couldn't really tell, he was sipping his coffee while barking orders to other people who were putting their backs on it. "Oh? There's a photo sticking out of a book." He bent down to pick it up but was swiftly snatched out of his hands before he could get a good look on it.

"My things are none of your concern." She crumpled up the papers and threw it in the fireplace that still had some light in it. Clint raised his arms in surrender before going back to sipping his coffee and giving out orders.

Soon, it was night time and Clint stayed behind for dinner. Thank goodness whoever did this decided to be kind enough to leave the food alone but there were a few things missing from the pantry. Nothing too important that dinner couldn't be made but there were a few spaces left empty that should have been filled.

"We need to bring down Dreykov." I raised my eyes when Natasha said that, speaking it in front of Clint? Should I assume that he was going to participate in this as well? "We have to act soon before he moves base again. We'll strike tonight." Natasha turned very authoritarian as she gave out orders on what she had planned for that mission. Apparently SHIELD had given approval of such a mission and the after work can be dealt with by them. I have a feeling that Natasha is emotionally involved with this. Granted, she was trying to eradicate this group that she was working with but I feel like she was hiding the true reason for wanting to take out this group so quickly. Even Hydra was not dealt with such importance.

"Pietro will stay behind to protect Wanda. Bucky will come with us and Clint as well. We are doing this with as few people as possible. Find Dreykov, kill him and free the other girls." The briefing was short and clear cut before we got out of the house and into our cars.

Instead of waiting behind the line this time, Natasha was the first to walk right in after picking the lock. I even had a hard time trying to follow her. When I looked behind to check if Clint was following, he was no longer there. I had no idea if he went off on his own or got lost. And when I turned back, to my horror, Natasha was gone too! I looked left and right, trying to hear footsteps but it was silent. How am I supposed to find my way into where everyone is? I should have followed Bucky and stayed at the rooftop instead.

Using my best and educated guess, I continued walking and seemingly in the right direction since all the doors were opened. I could feel the bar was not as it looked. From a deceivingly small bar in the front, there actually had a large underground system.

As I walked along the long hallway, there were many small rooms but no occupants. There were traces of someone living there but the living conditions were so bad that it wouldn't be any different compared to a prison. My eyes scanned each of them swiftly as I continued walking and my back nearly hit the wall when another pair of eyes stared at me. I regained my composure swiftly before moving forward hoping to find Natasha soon. In my haste, I didn't see the trip wire and set off an explosive that no doubt brought attention to the unwanted.

"You'll always come back to me." I heard Dreykov saying and Natasha was standing in front of him looking fine. My eyes flickered between both and I had to make a decision either to create a distraction or let Natasha solve this problem herself. With Clint's location unknown, it was very hard to determine what his plan was.

I pulled out my gun just as Natasha slammed her head on the table and smashed Dreykov's head down as well. They began fighting and it was very hard to aim at him as they were moving so much. I went in when they were distracted and tried assessing Dreykov's computer but it was protected with a passcode.

"I need a passcode!" I shouted when they were mid-fighting. Dreykov was definitely more shocked than Natasha was when he noticed I was standing by his computer. He attempted to get near me but was stopped by Natasha pulling him back.

"It's his ring!"

Instead of protecting his ring, he went ahead and smashed it to the floor and tried stepping on it but was stopped by Natasha who dove for it. There was a distinctive crack followed by a loud scream. Taking advantage of the shock, I went forward and punched him right at his jaw, taking over Natasha's position as she went to the computers.

"You're going to pay for that." I seethed as I punched him over and over again, making sure he wasn't able to get up.

A projector lit up and there were numerous pictures flashing while Natasha downloaded the files. "You! Are the lowest form of human life and I am going to end it with my own hands." Natasha screamed as she pulled the USB out and took out her knife before beginning to stab Dreykov over and over again. "You claimed to give them a place to stay but you use them for your own benefit without getting your hands dirty. You took advantage of their situation, you despicable person."

Natasha was heaving by the end of it and in the pool of his blood. Just then, Clint rushed into the room. "Natasha! Oh... are you guys done here? I just finished evacuating everyone that I could find. Bucky is with them."

After hearing that, she immediately got up on her feet and ran towards the exit. Clint and I gave each other a look before following after her. She was looking through each of the girls, not registering that we were calling for her.

"Natasha!" She finally got out of her stance. "Who are you looking for?" I asked.

She shook her head before walking away. "Don't follow me."

I caught her wrist before letting her slip away. "You injured your hand. At least let me fix it." I knew I wasn't going to be able to persuade her to stay, the least I could do was to make sure she was alright. I placed her in the backseat before taking the first aid kit from my boot/trunk. "I think you fractured your bone when you tried to save the ring. Please have someone check it and don't exert too much on it." The bandage can't do much other than to remind her.

As soon as I placed her hand back down, she walked away without a care in the world.

#natasha x reader #natasha romanoff #natasha x you #my writing #Her Assistant #natasha romanoff imagine #natasha romanoff fanfiction

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princesssarcastia · 1 year

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in this land of milk and honey, we're too shy to say we're thirsty

here, have 1.5k of fic i just wrote about mission: impossible: rogue nation. AU of the scene where Ethan Hunt wakes up a captive of the Syndicate, where Ilsa Faust gets to run the interrogation the way she wants to, instead of being interrupted by the Bone Doctor. title from “Little Mercy,” by Doomtree. read it on ao3 here.

“What Vinter and the rest of his stupid ilk never realize is that torture doesn’t work, especially on their own kind. Pain is cheap.”

Ilsa grabs her tools by rote memory, uninterested in taking any care in the work she’s about to do. This isn’t the first time she’s worked someone over for Lane, and it won’t be the last time; she needs to stay numb to it, numb here in the moment and numb after his latest acquisition bends and twists, numb when she has to stand there in the aftermath as the others move in to take what they want from him, numb to the part of her that wants to perk up at the praise following a job well done.

The door groans under its own weight when the guards push it open for her, and she sees the man tense ever so slightly where he’s tied to the post. Conscious, then, but not quite awake. Her heels click in the silence after the door slams shut.

She leaves the lights off; the shadows help, sometimes, with some agents. Paired with the right kind of drugs, the right kind of touch, darkness can add a dreamlike quality to an already intimate process. People like them feel safer in the dark.

This one is dangerous. Lane wouldn’t take such a personal interest if he wasn’t. So, she slips off her shoes, sets them on the table with her tray and her jacket, unbuttons the top button of her shirt and rolls up her sleeves.

Ilsa turns around and—

He’s awake now.

He’s staring at her.

She stares right back.

The moment yawns and stretches between them, arching languidly. Ilsa breathes in sharply, quietly, and takes a step toward him, still caught on his eyes—although the rest of him is hardly a chore to examine.

He doesn’t move, focused intently on her. Assessing. Calculating. It feels—it feels a little like when Lane looks at her, like he’s cataloguing her expressions and picking apart the things that make her tick. But it doesn’t make her want to curl up and hide when this man does it.

“Nice shoes.”

Ilsa blinks, then quirks her brow, amused. That’s a new one.

“American intelligence, yes?” A soft opener.

He tilts his head, silent, but clearly not buying that she doesn’t already know.

“But not the CIA,” she continues, moving closer in even steps. “No, you have too much personality for that, I can already tell.”

Now he’s amused, letting his lips twitch, but he keeps his silence. She starts turning his reactions in her mind, letting her gaze fall over the whole of him to catch them all. This one is a talker; she just needs to get him started. And stop getting distracted by his eyes. There’s something about them that draws her attention, but Ilsa can’t figure out what.

“How long have you worked for the IMF?” She stops well outside of his reach but still close enough to see his chest rise and fall minutely with each breath. If she focuses, she imagines she might be able to see it twitch with the beating of his heart.

“How long did you work for British intelligence, before you turned traitor?” He fires back. Right on the money. Not that it’s a difficult guess, given where he is and how she speaks.

“Twenty years,” she says calmly, and watches him mentally turn on a dime, reassessing. “They recruited me right of secondary school. I imagine it was much the same for you. Sometimes, they catch people later, but MI6 knows how to recognize a good asset in the making fairly early.”

Ilsa takes a step closer. “The agency was my whole life. It consumed all my time and energy. My waking hours and my sleeping ones. And I was…eager to please. An excellent agent, willing and capable of doing anything they asked of me. It was hard, sometimes, but in the end it was worth it because I knew everything I was doing was for queen and country. The greater good,” she adds, letting her mouth twist wryly.

He watches her for a moment, and she lets him, lets the silence sit, lets it build. It’s an obvious enough cue, and he’s curious enough now to take the bait. He wants her talking as much as she wants him talking, neither of them in control nor sure they have the upper hand, yet.

“What changed,” he asks finally, and Ilsa’s gaze catches on his eyes again.

“I woke up,” Ilsa takes three steps to her left, changing the angle of approach. “I realized, one day, that I only thought I was fighting for the right side because it’s what I chose to believe. None of my experiences actually supported that conclusion.

“Have you ever killed an innocent person, Ethan?” She doesn’t wait for his answer. “I know I have. On accident, sure, as an unintended casualty of my mission; but on purpose, too. Sometimes it was the mission. To make things easier for MI6, for my handler, for England. For their convenience.”

Now he shifts, the cuffs on his wrists and ankles clinking. He doesn’t respond, but she can see it in his eyes. He has. Of course he has. No one in their line of work hasn’t.

That fact of life actually bothers him, unlike Lane and the rest of the men here. The same way it bothers her when she forgets to be numb.

She knows what it is in his eyes, now, that’s pulling at her attention.

His eyes are kind. He looks kind.

It’s impossible.

“I realized I was only loyal to them because of a lie I was telling myself. And that loyalty certainly wasn’t returned. The agency doesn’t exist to care for its agents, it exists to use them up until there’s nothing left. How many times did they leave me out in the cold, dangling in the wind, to survive or die under nothing more than my own ability?”

“That’s the job,” he says, with a hint of condescension. It grates. He probably means it to.

“That doesn’t make it right, the way they treated me. The way your government treats you.”

His eyes shift. He knows her game, now, has mapped out the path she wants to take, the weak spots she’s aiming for. The muscles in his limbs tense and relax minutely, imbued with the strength of surety, surety that what she’s trying to do won’t work.

But his faith in himself is misplaced, because now she can tell he hasn’t realized yet that what she’s saying is true. He’s like her, two, five years ago: unable to value his own life. What his handlers do to him doesn’t matter because he doesn’t matter; you can’t hurt someone if they don’t see themselves as person capable of being hurt. It’s fine if they use you because you’re letting them. You’re a tool; if you’re not being used, then what’s the point of you?

The truth is, it does matter. It does hurt them. And they only let themselves be used because the right people broke them at the right time, cracking them wide open to let someone else in to twist them into knots.

Truth will out. It’s more powerful than people like them, steeped in lies and deception, ever expect, which is why Ilsa is so fond of using it.

Faster than the eye can properly see, she lunges for him, sinking her needle into the meat of his bicep and depressing the plunger. Too quick for him to stop, although he pulls his legs up to kick her in the chest and send her sprawling.

Truth will out. But of course, the drugs help.

His kind eyes blink rapidly, then slowly, clearly tensing to try and fend off unconsciousness that isn’t coming. Oh, it won’t knock him out. Unconscious is no use to her. But it’ll ease the way for the truth; make him more pliant, more sociable, more open to suggestion.

What Vinter and the rest of his stupid ilk never realize is that torture doesn’t work, especially on their own kind. Pain is cheap. Their bodies are disposable, their lives are disposable. Ethan Hunt would happily die for the IMF, for the greater good, probably even for his fellow agents. He’s a fighter, this one. He’ll die before they break him.

But if Ilsa can lay the truth of their lives out in front of him in ways he can understand, it will plant seeds of doubt his lived experiences can’t help but nurture. Doubt is more dangerous than pain.

Ethan Hunt and his kind eyes will never work for Solomon Lane, not after Lane shot that poor woman in the head in front of him. Not after Lane made him feel helpless—and she’s sure Lane did, it’s his favorite way to make people feel, and he’s spectacularly good at it.

She just needs to make sure Ethan doesn’t work against them. Finding the ways his handlers have made him feel helpless is a good place to start.

Ilsa waits for his pupils to blow wide and his pulse to slow in his chest and neck before she starts. She stays where he put her on the floor, only shifting enough to sit up.

“How long have you worked for the IMF, Ethan?” She asks softly.

One breath. Two breaths. He blinks again, licks his lips.

And tells her.

#mission: impossible #m:i rogue nation #ethan hunt #ilsa faust #fic #mission: impossible fic #fanfic #my fic #when no one interrupts her interrogation #ilsa unfortunately doesn't have the opportunity to help ethan escape #so things unfold very differently #still completely captivated by the fact that these two had a 'same hat!!!' moment #with one of them tied up and the other preparing to interrogate them #anyway all the covert operatives in this movie are fundamentally broken #and incapable of recognizing their own worth as human beings #the ones that realize it only do so when its too late to back out #ethan hunt? never does #unless...#ilsa is still working for mi:6 here to be clear #because she knows lane is bad news and needs to be stopped #but she has no love or loyalty for her country anymore #they finally beat it out of her #(its why lane lets her stay. its why he 'believes in her potential'#because he can tell she see the system for what it is)#(he's just arrogant enough to believe he can make her sign on with him with the same loyalty #that she once showed mi:6)#if you're wondering why the hell i'm writing mission impossible fic now #good news! i am too #no fucking clue how i ended up here

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dangerousstrawberryshark · 3 years

Text

Love in a Hopeless World

A/N: Hello, my 🍓Little Strawberries🍓! I’m back with another fic for you! This was one of the options given to me.

Pairing: Chris Redfield x Male reader

Requested: @evansphnx12

Rating: Mature

Warnings: NSFW, smut, bottom male reader, sir kink, degradation, creampie, size kink, Choking kink, breeding kink, masturbation, and all characters are above the age of 18+

Word Count: 2355

Summary: Its turns out there weren't that many supplies in the old abandoned campus. So, you and Chris have to go deeper into the city to find more but during the little scavenge, Chris began to dirty thoughts...

I hope you enjoy it! Sorry if it’s bad! And sorry for any errors that are found!

If you like what I write, how about check out my masterlist?

Keys:

M/n: Male name.

«••••••••••••••»

[1]

[2] YOU ARE HERE

DISCLAIMER!: I never played or watched any gameplay of the resident evil series. And this doesn’t follow any of the resident evil timelines, it’s on its own.

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MINORS DNI. FEMALE READERS… I’LL ALLOW YOU TO READ MY FICS BUT DO NOT FETISHIZE ANY OF MY STORIES

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Previously...

Then y'all had another round of hot steamy sex. And the others at the base had a hard time sleeping that night.

«••••••••••••••»

Your eyes twitch at the unpleasant light hitting it directly. 'It's morning already?' you moved around only to feel wet sheets. 'What happened last night?'

Then you felt a body move and a muscular arm grab you, pulling you closer. You could feel the warmth, and muscular chest pushed against your back.

'Oh! That's right!' now you remembered why you were all sticky and sleeping against Chris. 'I had sex with my superior! But he felt the same.'

Then you felt Chris move around and waking up. "Hey, baby boy," Chris said with a raspy and deep voice. "Morning." you pressed your lips against his.

"If you continue, we may have to repeat what we did last night, baby," Chris growled as pulled back, gripping your waist. You smirked before getting up.

"Come one, we have to get ready. We have important business," you said. "Ugh, can't we just sleep in and have some... Fun?" Chris complained.

"I know you haven't had sex in 5 years but we need to go get those people. We'll have fun at the end of the day," you said stressing your muscles and popping your back.

The bed creaked meaning he finally got off his ass to get ready. "We need to go get those survivors. And scavenge for more supplies," you said putting your armor on and fixing it up.

After you both got your gear and weapons, you both walked into the main area with all the others.

Everybody looked at you both and immediately looked at way. There was awkwardness in the room. 'They must have heard me last night!' Hell! maybe the whole city heard it is quiet

"Uh,- sir... We have a situation." one of the soldiers said. "shot." Chris said. "Well... it turns out there weren't that many supplies found on the campus. We need more supplies if weren't gonna go get those survivors." the soldier said

You heard listening but your mind began to wonder. You still couldn't let go of the past, you remembered one of your siblings was accepted into MIT. This was 3 months after the Raccoon City Incident.

You would see on the news- Raccoon City survivors being discriminated against by the American people. "Hey, what do I keep saying?" Chris said next to you. His conversation was done.

"Stop thinking about the past, it's long gone," you replied, mimicking his voice. Chris laughed, "Okay, baby. But we need to go get those people."

You nodded but kind of chuckled at the fact that he didn't want to do anything today but now wants to do business.

"Come on, M/n! We have to get going. EVERYONE, protect the base at all cost." Chris commanded. "YES SIR!" they all said at the same time.

You, Chris, and a few others left the confines of the base. Even though it was morning, the sky still had a grey color to it. You open the door to the back seat and closed it.

"We should be there in 20 minutes or less." the driver said starting the engine up. "Alright, let's go." the armored car pulled out before driving down the messy road.

It wasn't long before you reached the waterfront. You could see the skyline perfectly, most buildings were on the verge of collapsing. Others were burnt to where the wall showed the skeleton.

Up ahead, you saw a bridge leading into Cambridge was destroyed. 'Longfellow Bridge.' You have been to Boston before and got to explore everything before the world went hell.

The ride continued for a while. There was nothing or anyone in sight. You could see the freeway ahead but like all other ways leading into Cambridge was destroyed.

"We're closing in on Bunker Hill. They said they are taking refuge by the monument." one of them said.

And wouldn't you know it? In the distance, you could see the tall granite obelisk peaking out. It kind of looked like the one down in D.C. but this one is still standing.

What you meant by "This one is still standing" is because the capital was hit by a nuclear warhead, along with other cities across the US.

The President and other government officials were evacuated and the countries important documents were evacuated as well. So, the legacy of the US would still live.

That means the President is still alive and is in some remote area devoid of zombie life.

"I see some people! They appear to be walking around." one of the soldiers said. And the people seem to notice us because they were waving at us.

"Stop the car," Chris said, the car stopped. He and others got out. Two of the survivors looked familiar? Like you have seen them before. They both were tall and had beards.

They walked up to y'all. "Please, are you here to rescue us?" one of them pleaded. "Yes, we're here to take you to our temporary base," Chris said.

They all smiled and some hugged each other. Chris ordered the soldiers to help some things and you approached the two survivors. "Why do you two look familiar?"

One of them laughed and smiled. "Well...- are you fan of Captain America and Thor?"

Your jaw dropped and your eyes widen. "No. Way. You're Chris Evans and Hemsworth!" you were lost at speech. "I thought y'all was dead! I- how-"

"Well, we survived! I'm not too sure about the others though..." Chris H said with that thick Australian accent. You both were just talking, unknown to Chris R was glaring holes into your head.

After y'all returned to MIT Dorms, you still talked with Chris E and H. You didn't even acknowledge Chris R's glares.

He was getting more and more jealous. 'I hate those two!' Chris yelled in his mind. They were taking your attention from him.

"We have to go M/n! We need to find supplies." Chris yelled at you. 'What's wrong with him?' you thought to yourself. "Bye guys!" You waved at the two Chris.

"He was fun to talk to." Chris H said and Chris E agreed.

«••••••••••••••»

TIMESKIP (To Supermarket)

«••••••••••••••»

You and Chris arrived at the market. There were some abandoned cars in the parking lot. "Come on." You both walked to the doors and opened them.

The place was absolutely trashed. Lights flickering, aisles tipped over, some cans on the floor - also money, which was useless-, and the roof caved in on the left side.

"Look for non-perishables. Canned food would be good and find any water- if there is any that is." you nodded your head before going down one of the aisles.

There were some canned foods but no water. The smell of a rotting corpse filled the air, you could hear flies buzzing. "Ugh." you covered your nose and looked at the rotting corpse. "Poor bastard..."

Meanwhile, Chris was looking for the same stuff, but he was still bitter about you talking to those guys. And completely ignoring him. He could already imagine your punishment.

He could imagine you begging for more, feeling the tightness of your ass wrapped around his cock. 'Shit.' Chris was getting hard. His cock was feeling restricted by the tight pants.

"Hurry up, M/n!" Chris yelled from the other side of the store. "Okay!" you finished gathering anything you could find. 'Why are we leaving early? We have few more places to loot/raid.'

You left the aisles and made your way to the front doors. "Come on, we have to go." you both we made went to the vehicle and drove back to base.

You had found some supplies. 15 canned foods, and some water as well. It wasn't much, but it's something.

«••••••••••••••»

TIMESKIP (Arrival at the base.)

«••••••••••••••»

You and Chris arrived at MIT. You were gonna go talk with Chris E and H, but Chris R wasn't having it.

"Hey-" Chris grabbed your hand and began to rush to the room. Everyone knew what was gonna happen. 'Ah, shit- there gonna go at it again.'

At the room, Chris pinned you against the wall and latched his lips onto yours. The kiss rough, his much larger body pushed against yours shows the difference in size.

His tongue pushed against your teeth telling you to open them. You slowly pushed your mouth, Chris immediately pushed his tongue and invaded your mouth.

"Mmm-" you moaned into the kiss as Chris began to grip your ass. "Up." He growled into your ear. You wrapped your legs around his waist and continued to make out.

He lifted you and carried you to the bed. He slammed you onto your back before pulling away and attacking your neck. "A-ah!" Chris found your sweet spot.

"You belong to me, M/n! I claimed you that night we had sex last night!" Chris growled. "Strip." he quickly removed his clothes, leaving him in his boxers.

You could see the outline thick meaty cock. "You got hard from just kissing me?" you laughed. "You don't talk me like that! You're the slut here." Chris growled as he gripped and slapped your thighs.

You whimpered under the touch. "Look at you, whimpering under me. And your pathetic cock got hard from me hitting you. But let's see what this ass has to say." Chris said as he put your legs on his shoulders

You then felt his thick slicked fingers at your entrance. One finger slips in, your muscles immediately clenched at the invader. "M-mm." you gripped the sheets as his finger pushed deeper.

Then a second finger went in. You clench even more as it did a scissor motion. "Aagh!" you felt his fingers touch the bundle of pleasure. "You're ready."

Chris pulled his fingers out to see your hole doing a grabbing motion. 'Fuck... that's hot.' Chris threw his head back while jerking his cock. "Can't wait to pound this slutty boipussy."

You felt his fat tip push past your tight ring. "Mmm... C-Chris!-"

Smack

"YOU DON'T CALL ME THAT! You didn't learn from last time? You. Call. Me. Sir. You got that?" Chris growled/yelled. "Y-yes, Sir... It's just that... You're so big..." You whimpered.

Then with one Thrust, Chris pushed his entire cock inside. "See? You're taking all 12 inches of me! Fuck, so tight..." Chris groaned. His cock was touching your prostate.

His thick meaty cock filled your insides perfectly. Like you were made for each other. "Y-you're... splitting m-me... in two!" you moaned as you felt it throb and twitch.

"P-please... fuck me... make me your slut." you begged. Chris smirked before snapping his hips.

He began pounding into you. His big cum-filled balls smacked against your ass as he thrusts harder. "S-sir! Y-you feel... s-so good!" You moaned as you threw your head back and gripped the sheets tighter.

"You think those guys can fuck you like I do?! Only I can give you this pleasure, only me!" Chris growled as he thrust harder, hitting your prostate repeatedly.

You used the last of your strength to get up and wrapped your arms around Chris's neck. You clawed his back as he thrust more, you were sure those were gonna leave marks.

"Maybe those guys can give me more pleasure," you smirked at your fake statement. You heard a deep growl as Chris dropped you on the bed and flipped you onto your stomach.

"You fucking slut! Only I can give you this much pleasure! Those guys don't deserve you. Bet their cocks aren't as big as mines." Chris growled as he gripped your hips.

Sounds of skin-slapping and balls slapping against your ass filled the room and the others in the building had to hear it. The walls weren't soundproof.

Your cock was twitching, ready to release a load. "You're about to cum without me touching you! Well, I'm -FUCK- about to cum too." Chris groaned as you tighten around him.

"P-please... give me... y-your load!" You moaned as you arched your back to give Chris more access. "Want me to fill this slutty ass with my cum? Gonna... cum... soon!"

After 5 more thrusts, Chris reached his breaking point, and so did you.

"FUCK! I'M CUMMING! CUM WITH ME!" Chris groaned, he wrapped his hand around cock stroking it before you released it all over his hand. That was enough for him.

"FUCK!" you felt his cock twitch before pumping his hot load inside, filling you up to the brim.

*Breathing intensifies*

Chris collapses onto the bed right next to you with his cock still inside. You felt him pull out with his cum leaking out. "I'll never leave you for those two. My heart only beats for you," you said sincerely turning over to face him.

"I'll never leave you too. We'll be together until our time runs out." Chris said pulling you into a kiss filled with passion and love.

'There is still Love in a Hopeless World.'

THE END.

«••••••••••••••»

A/N: Finally this is done! I hoped you enjoy this, by 🍓Little Strawberries🍓!

#x male reader #male reader insert #male reader imagine #male reader #chris redfield x male reader #chris redfield #chris redfield imagine #resident evil #resident evil fanfic #chris redfield x reader #requested #sorry if it's bad #i hope you enjoy #sorry for any errors

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tricksters-captain · 4 years

Text

Benny Watts/The Queens Gambit imagines - From Pawn to Pen Part 4

AN: I’m sorry I missed posting last week. I’m currently going through a hard break up and it’s really taking a lot of energy out of me so I struggle to write at the moment.

Overall Summary: You’re a young journalist for Chess Review, with a love for chess and a desire for knowledge. One day at a tournament, you come across the famous Benny Watts...

In this chapter: You return to Boston for the week.

(PART 1) (PART 2) (PART 3)

Pairing(s): Benny Watts x Fem!reader

Word Count: 1,940

Warnings: Some strong language

You smiled as you looked at the copies of ‘Chess Review’ on the racks.

Your first front page piece for Chess Review.

They had used one of the pictures of Benny that you had taken at the hotel and you were pretty proud of your photography skills.

You picked up a copy and took it inside to pay for it.

On second thought, you picked up two so you could mail one to Angelie.

You left the store quickly after and started to walk back to your apartment.

Boston was busier than you had remembered and you finally had some time to sort out the apartment after your article went down well with the big man.

You opened the door to your apartment and put down your groceries on the kitchen counter top.

The last tenant hadn’t left the place in too bad a state, just a carpet stain here and there and a broken lamp.

You had bought some paint to redecorate your living room and bedroom since it seemed too boring after where you lived in Paris. You had spent the last couple days painting and then you finally left to go check out your title page.

The books that Benny had given you were still on your small two person dining room table where you had left them when you first got back. You looked over at them and furrowed your brow as you thought about whether you are actually going to bother to read them or not.

Your phone started to ring and your frown disappeared when you realised it was probably Angelie. No one else had your number besides your work.

“Hello?” You answered it, taking the phone off the wall as you leant beside it.

“Miss (Y/L/N)?” You’d recognise that voice anywhere after listening to it so much over the last tournament.

“Benny Watts?” You asked, almost in shock.

“Have you read those books I leant you yet?” He asked, not even bothering to confirm it was him.

“It’s been four days.” You told him flatly.

“You could’ve easily gotten through at least two of them by now.” Benny challenged you which caused you to shake your head (even though he couldn’t see).

“You know, Benny Watts, I do have a life to live.” You defended yourself to which Benny found amusing.

“So, you’re back in Boston since you picked up this phone.” Benny changed the subject completely.

“How did you even get this number?” You asked, genuinely curious and a little worried.

“You really think Chess Review won’t hand over your telephone number to their favourite US chess player?”

“You got it from Beth Harmon then?” You teased the boy to which he responded with a dry laughter.

“Ha Ha. Very funny.” Benny retorted, “If you’re in Boston, it means you currently aren’t working. Fancy an educational trip to New York City?”

“Benny, I told you. I’m not coming to New York.” You reminded him about how you declined previously when he asked.

“Come on, just for the weekend? We’ll play some chess, do some tourist shit and eat some food?” Benny asked, trying his best to persuade you Benny Watts style.

“I’ve also told you before that I don’t play.” You felt a small bubble of excitement in your stomach as you considered going to New York but you quickly squashed it down.

“What are you afraid of?” Benny asked. Deja Vu.

“Why are you pushing this?” You closed your eyes as you let your head roll back to press against the wall.

“Because I see that same light that’s in Beth Harmon, that’s in every decent chess player when you see a chess board.” Benny confessed to you.

“I’m sorry, Benny. You’ll just have to find someone else to play with. I don’t want to be apart of this little game.” You hung up the phone with a sad sigh before Benny could respond.

You found yourself looking at the books again.

You picked up Benny’s and you opened it...

“I’ve been waiting all day for your call.” You half scolded Angelie as you answered the call.

You heard Angelie’s laughter through the phone and it made you home sick.

“Je suis désolé!” Angie apologised. “This new project has me so busy, constantly on set, costume changes, make up changes, redoing scene..!”

“It sounds awful.” You chuckled,

“It is! You wouldn’t understand... You’re just a big time American journalist.” Angelie pouted. “Anyway, how are you?”

“I’m okay.” You lied.

“Menteuse!” Angelie called you out. “Tell me the truth. What is bothering you, Mon Cher?”

“Benny Watts called me today.” You had filled her in on the tournament with him once you had first arrived back in Boston and she had already previously told you off for not taking his offer to New York.

“He did?!” Angie gasped.

“Yes, he did. He got my number through work and called me to ask if I had read the books he gave me which I haven’t because it’s been less than a week since. the tournament.” You explained.

“That boy is in love with you, I am telling you now.” Angie was always the hopeless romantic type. It’s how she has had her heart broke so many times.

“The boy wants to play chess with me to assert his masculine dominance over me and boost his ego with an easy win.” You argued.

“You are always so negative about men! You hardly know this one!” Angelie groaned.

“He’s Benny Watts. That’s all I need to know.”

“I think you should go to New York and meet with him.” Angelie told you. You hadn’t even informed her about the fact he asked you again.

“I think I should stay here and enjoy my first weekend off in six months.” You shook your head at the idea.

“(Y/n), you only live once and how many girls are invited to New York by the Benny Watts?!”

“Probably quite a lot.” You knew Angie was only trying to hype you up but you couldn’t help but knock her down.

“Even if that is so. You could probably get another article out of it. Benny Watts and his life in the big apple?” Angie suggested.

“I’m sure ‘LIFE’ has already done that piece before.” You pushed another idea aside.

“Trust me, (Y/n). You need to stop being so afraid of the unknown and who knows, maybe you’ll enjoy yourself?” Angelie had had enough of the negativity from you at this point.

There was a sudden knock at your door.

“I’m sorry, Angie. Someone’s just knocked on my door, I’ll have to call you back.” You looked over at your front door and wondered who it could be.

“Ça va. Call me back!” She told you as the knock occurred again.

“Je t'aime.” You hung the phone back up on the wall and went over to your door.

You opened it and you felt your face go white at the sight of who stood there.

“Jesus, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Benny Watts.

BENNY WATTS.

“What the hell are you doing here?” You asked him.

“Well, you wouldn’t come to me so I came to you.” Benny shrugged.

“You can’t just stalk someone. This isn’t okay. This isn’t cute!” You were bewildered.

“This isn’t stalking. It’s simply coming to Boston to visit a friend.” He defended himself as he stood out in the hallway.

“I wouldn’t call us friends, Benny.” You scoffed.

“Ouch.” Benny put his hand on his heart.

You went to close your door on him but Benny stopped you.

“Wait.” He pleaded. His cocky demeanour suddenly dropped. “Look, I know this is weird but I really wanted to see you.” Benny started to explain.

“I––” He cut you short.

“–– This isn’t some game. I just want to help you. I want you to play chess again. I want you to play with me.” Benny stayed with his hand against the door and his foot in the gap as he spoke.

“This is crazy, Benny.” You told him, your eyes locked on his as you felt your heart race.

“I know.” Benny stepped back. “I’m staying in the hotel down the block. I’ll be here all weekend. If you don’t want to see me, then don’t. But if you change your mind. I’ll be around.”

You watched him back away from the door and head back down the stairs.

Benny fucking Watts.

You rushed back to the phone and dialled Angelie’s number.

“Bonjour?” She answered,

“You’ll never guess who was at the door.”

You ended up tossing and turning all night.

You caved in at around 3am and started to read Benny’s book again.

You finished it by the time the sun was rising.

You had a cold shower to wake you up at around 9am and then you stared in the mirror as the thoughts racked your brain.

You walked over to your chess set that rested on the dresser top and you took it over to your bed, opening it up.

You set up the board and stared at it.

You picked up the queen. The same queen that Benny had held in the photo you took.

You caved.

You dressed and did simple make up before heading to the hotel that Benny had told you he was staying.

“I’m looking for Mr Benny Watts.” You asked the elderly lady at the front desk.

“He’s staying in room 306 but I’m almost certain I saw him leave about an hour ago for breakfast.” She informed you.

You thanked her then sighed.

You left the hotel lobby and started down the street. There was plenty of places to eat around the hotel, you almost considered just waiting in the lobby for him to return.

Then you saw it.

Through a window of a small diner.

The famous black hat.

You pushed open the diner door and walked towards the booth where Benny was sat.

He had his back to you but he didn’t seem surprised to see you when you sat down opposite him.

“Morning.” He greeted you as he munched on some pancakes.

“I won’t play chess with you.” You stated. “I won’t play chess with you but I will spend the weekend with you and you can talk about it.”

Benny remained silent as his brown eyes watched you carefully.

“I finished your book.” You told him. “I'm ready to learn.”

Benny placed his knife and fork down, picking up the napkin beside his plate to wipe his mouth.

“Great.” He nodded, interlinking his fingers above his food as he elbows rested on the table. “Let’s begin.”

(WHAT HAPPENS NEXT HERE)

TAG LIST

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#benny watts x reader #benny watts imagines #benny watts imagines #benny watts x femreader #benny watts #the queens gambit imagines #the queens gambit #Thomas Brodie Sangster #Thomas Brodie Sangster imagines #newt #Beth Harmon #Anya Taylor joy

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dothwrites · 4 years

Text

15.19--freedom

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose/Nothing, don’t mean nothing if it ain’t free, no, no”--Janis Joplin

---

Freedom.

Dean rolls the word around on the tip of his tongue and tastes how it feels. Freedom.

It’s a strange concept, especially since he always assumed that he was. Ever since Apocalypse Version 1.0 was averted, Michael and Lucifer locked in the cage, thanks very much, he’s always assumed that he was the one calling the shots. No matter how badly he fucked up (and he fucked up a lot), he could at least take comfort in the fact that those were his choices. No one’s hand up Dean Winchester’s ass, no siree.

And then Chuck came and ripped that certainty away from him in one quick motion and then...everything was suspect. Sam, Mom, Jack...Cas. Every word, every action, every emotion... He couldn’t trust anything, so he trusted nothing.

He still wakes up from nightmares with those words echoing in his head: You’re dead to me. He bolts upright, almost puking, because he can’t believe his past self, he can’t believe that those words came out of his mouth, to Cas, to Cas of all people--

He splashes water on his face and notices that his hand is shaking. His stomach churns in warning, but he doesn’t think he’s going to puke. However, he also doesn’t think he’s going back to sleep tonight.

He and Sam are in the bunker, but he knows they won’t stay. It’s too empty now, their voices echoing through the halls and rooms. Maybe once, he would have been all right with that, would have even enjoyed it, but now, he can’t bear it. He remembers all too well how it felt to have Jack’s voice bouncing through the kitchen as he talked about the latest movie they had watched, or how it felt to just feel Cas behind him as he moved through the kitchen.

Every time he makes his breakfast, he’s reminded of what he lost. Every time he and Sam come back to the bunker, there’s the sinking disappointment to find themselves alone once more. Dean ends up spending most of his days in his room because anywhere else freaks him out. He can’t stop whipping his head to look over his shoulder, halfway convinced that he’ll find someone standing behind him. He’s always disappointed when he finds himself alone.

He and Sam are going to leave the bunker behind. He doesn’t know when and he doesn’t know what for, but he knows that it’s going to happen.

He asks Sam one afternoon why he hasn’t left yet. Eileen is waiting for him, biding her time a hell of a lot more patiently than Dean would, and Sam still isn’t going to her and starting the American dream life. And one afternoon, Dean either runs out of fucks and gathers up his last little shreds of courage, and asks him.

“So when are you going to move in with Eileen? I can’t imagine that she’s going to wait for your gigantor ass forever.”

Sam looks at him from across the table. There’s a book open in front of him, but Dean doesn’t think that he’s read a word. He knows that he’s been stuck on the same screen on his phone for several minutes. Without the pressing urgency of saving the world, things just seem so...pointless. Which is not necessarily bad. But it means that he and Sam spend a lot of slow, lingering afternoons like this, with just the two of them wandering through the bunker and occasionally bouncing off of each other like two very faulty pinballs stuck in a malfunctioning machine.

“She’s fine,” Sam says, which isn’t an answer. “She understands what’s happening.”

Dean’s glad that someone understands because he surely has no fucking clue.

---

His life falls into a kind of routine. Wake up, make breakfast. Find pointless chores to do around the bunker. Make lunch. Watch some bullshit shows on TV. Make dinner. Have a beer. Fall asleep.

He feels like the worst kind of retiree, devoid of purpose.

Sure, there are occasional hunts, but he doesn’t feel the need to go on them. The world is turning, same as it always did, and there are other hunters in the world. If that’s one thing that he learned through these past years, it’s that he doesn’t have to do everything.

(Plus, he and Sam literally defeated God, so he thinks they deserve some time off.)

The forced retirement doesn’t make him happy. The bunker is the cleanest that it’s ever been and he doesn’t feel happy about it. There’s a gaping hole in his chest that’s shaped like the rest of his family, and he can’t sleep at night. He makes dinner and all he can think about are the empty places at the table.

Sam sticks his head into Dean’s room. It’s a regular day, though Dean doesn’t bother to note either the actual date or the day of the week anymore. Time blends together in an endless cycle of waking, chores, and sleeping, because without a purpose to hold him together, he’s slowly falling apart.

“I’m going to head out,” Sam says. Dean notices that he doesn’t put a timeline on his departure. “You should get out too.”

Dean raises his eyebrows but doesn’t ask the obvious question: Where would he go? Sam, slightly chagrined, scuffs his feet against the floor. “Maybe go see Jody, Donna, and the girls? See if Charlie and Stevie want a third on their hunt? Bobby said something about building up his library here.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, with absolutely no intention of following through on any of those suggestions. He’s not quite wallowing in his own grief and filth (every time he tries to crawl back into a bottle, he just remembers the pinched look at the corners of Cas’ eyes whenever he would find Dean halfway through a bender, and that memory effectively nixes any desire he might have had to crawl into the nearest bottle), but he’s not exactly the poster boy for healthy coping strategies either.

“Dean.”

Dean hates that note in Sam’s voice, the oh-so-soft and sensitive tone that could soothe widows and lull children. He hates even more that it’s being turned on him, hates most of all that he derives comfort from it.

“I don’t get it,” Dean finally says, because if Sam is leaving then he might be losing his chance to ask his question aloud. “I don’t get...I mean, Jack could have brought him back. He could have done it. I could have asked him. I was right fucking there, and I didn’t ask.”

He’s dissected those moments in his head until there’s nothing left, and he’s forced to cobble them back together like some Frankenstein of memories just so he can take them apart all over again. Why didn’t he ask Jack to bring Cas back? Why didn’t Jack do it of his own free will? Jack knew how he much he needed Cas; hell, Jack brought him back once before when he wasn’t God. So why couldn’t he do it then, when Dean needed him the most?

“I don’t know,” Sam says, still in that same soft voice. “Maybe...maybe it was like Mom? I mean, Cas made his choice. For better or worse, he made it, and maybe Jack thinks that we need to respect it?”

A thick lump rises in his throat. Cas’ face replays in his nightmares, tear-stricken and yet smiling, peace and grief shining in his eyes. I love you. Like it was the easiest thing in the world to say at that moment. Like it was all he’d ever wanted to say.

“I never...” Dean swallows, but he doesn’t manage to chase away the horrid feeling rising in his chest. “I never said it back to him, Sam. I never...all those times he said it to us, and I never...he died, thinking that no one loved him. The one thing I want, I know I can’t have, is what he said to me.”

Dean doesn’t necessarily have a list of his regrets (there are too many to really list), but if he did, then he knows this would be at the top of it. Cas sacrificed himself, Cas let himself get taken, Cas died, and all to save someone who he believed didn’t love him back.

How could he not know?

Dean knows he’s not necessarily Mr. Subtle; he knows Sam knows. Their enemies damn sure have seemed to figure out through the years exactly where Dean’s heart lies. How could Cas, as brilliant as he was, as insightful, as compassionate as he was, not understand that Dean’s been lost on him, quite possible since the first time he walked through those barn doors?

Sam’s face goes on a journey and it ends up at about the same place that Dean feels. Maybe now Sam understands why it’s so much effort for him to just make it out of his room.

“He thought it was worth it,” Sam finally says. “Even if he thought...At the end, it was still worth it to him.”

You were still worth it, is left unsaid, but Dean hears the echo nonetheless. There’s an accusation there which he doesn’t want to confront, but he has to nonetheless.

“I can’t stay here anymore,” Sam finally says. “I can’t...” When he looks at Dean, his eyes are glistening. There’s a plea for understanding in his face. “There’s a whole world out there that I haven’t gotten to see since...since Stanford really. Since ever. I can finally go out there and walk around and not worry that something’s going to come after me. I can finally...” Sam rubs a corner of his shirt between his fingers. “You always said that I wanted a normal life, and I did, for a while. Then, when I figured that it was never going to happen, I stopped myself from wanting it, because what was the point? When everything we had got ripped away from us, what was the point of anything? But now...”

“If you start now, then you can probably make Des Moines by night,” Dean offers. It’s all he can say, but it’s enough.

Sam smiles, his eyes glassy. “I’ll call you when I get there.”

It’s not a goodbye, but it is. It’s the bonds of desperation and codependency snapping and shattering and reforming into something else. Dean doesn’t know how to love his brother in this new world. All he knows is that Sam deserves to live the life he’s deserved.

Dean closes his eyes.

When he opens them, Sam is gone.

---

That night, he goes up on the roof of the bunker. It’s cold, but not unbearable. There’s a light drizzle falling which strengthens to a gentle shower the longer he stays outside.

Dean closes his eyes and looks up at the sky. Out here, the stars shine clearer than ever before, visible even through the rainclouds.

He can’t help but think of Jack. His son. He can say those words now, acknowledge that Jack gave him everything he really wanted; the chance at a family, the chance to erase some of his father’s sins. Jack was gentle, he was kind, he was loving, he was theirs. And then he was gone.

Cas, Jack, Sam...

“What am I supposed to do?” Dean asks the rain, the same wild pain rising up in his throat. “What am I supposed to do now?”

---

He makes it back inside, damp and cold, and strips himself. He should shower, but he can’t be bothered, so he falls into bed naked and shivering. Not like it matters; no one is around to see him anyway. He falls into a fitful doze and is only awakened hours later by the soft sounds of someone moving around his room.

He bolts upright, snatching his gun out from underneath his pillow, because old habits die never. He blinks the sleep out of his eyes as his heartbeat catches up with his adrenaline. “Sam?” he asks, and then, more tentatively, “Jack?”

His desk lamp blazes into the life with a soft snap. Dean’s heart leaps into his throat.

Cas smiles at him, the same as always, sadness always lurking in his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. Dean finally understands why he looks that way.

“Hello, Dean,” Cas says. The sound of his voice sends shivers down Dean’s spine, but the hair on his arms doesn’t rise. Dean understands then.

“This is a dream.” He lowers the gun. His heart slows to normal and disappointment is bitter in his mouth. “You’re not really here.”

Cas’ mouth lifts in a lopsided smile. “It’s as real as you make it.”

“Don’t fucking Dumbledore me,” Dean mutters. He rubs at his temples. Somehow, even lucid dreaming has lost its appeal. Talking to Cas isn’t appealing when he knows that he’s just talking to his own subconscious.

“I fail to see what a fictional wizard of questionable sexuality has to do with this.”

“Good to know that my subconscious has your sense of humor down.” Dean glares at Cas. “Why the fuck are you here, anyway? It’s a dick move, even for my brain.”

“Maybe because I’m the person you want to see? I don’t know. It’s your head, not mine.”

“Yeah. No offense, but I think I’m just going to go back to sleep. Or wake up. I don’t know. Whatever it is, I don’t need to see you anymore. It’s just...It really hurts, all right?”

“I’m not real, so you’re not really hurting my feelings.”

“Good. Well, now that we have that sorted out.” Dean punches his pillow as a punishment for betraying him, before he turns back to Cas. “I miss you,” he says, because he’s weak and always has been.

“Dean.” The sound of Cas’ voice always manages to make Dean stop and now is no different. He turns around and looks at Cas.

Somehow, Cas looks more solid around the edges. The lines around his eyes are more pronounced, and if Dean turns his head at just the right angle, he thinks he can see grey silvering at Cas’ temple.

“Sam was right,” Cas says. “I made a choice. That’s what this was all about, ever since the beginning. Making choices, running our own course, picking our own path.”

“Yeah, thanks for rubbing it in,” Dean mutters. The last thing he needs is his subconscious reminding him that once again, Cas decided that he wasn’t good enough to stay with.

“But that doesn’t mean that you can’t make a choice as well,” Cas continues, ignoring him. “There’s nothing to stop you. You can make whatever choices you want and take the consequences that come with them. And if you make the right choices, then maybe...” Cas bites his lip, looking almost nervous. “Then maybe I can make some choices too.”

Dean opens his mouth to argue--Cas is dead, the time for making decisions has come and gone--but his subconscious is a dick, and before he can say anything, his dream fades away in a wash of black.

---

Dean wakes up energized. His eyes open into the same room, but it’s different somehow. It’s ridiculous, because the bunker is underground, but it’s almost like he sees the sun shining through his windows. Even the air tastes different. For the first time in weeks, he gets out of bed without dreading every step away from his mattress.

He glances at his phone. There’s a message from Sam along with a picture. In it, Eileen and Sam smile at the camera, their heads pressed together at the temple. There’s still a shadow of sadness in their eyes--they’ve all lost too much to be truly carefree ever again--but they look good. Happy. Whole.

Cas’ words echo back at him, both from the dream and from those last, horrible, terrifying moments.

Everything you did, you did for love.

You can make a choice.

Dean starts towards the library.

---

It takes him three weeks of almost non-stop research to cobble together enough spells to make something that has the potential to work. This isn’t his strength; Sam is much more suited for this type of work, but he won’t bring Sam in on this. If this thing goes really damn badly, then it has the potential to wipe him off the face of the earth, goodbye Dean Winchester. If this thing does what he’s halfway expecting it to, which is nothing, then he’ll have gotten Sam’s hopes up for nothing. He’s not going to expose Sam to either danger or disappointment, not when Sam’s finally managed to get to some kind of happiness.

If everything goes well...

Dean won’t let himself think about that.

He spends two days smoothing out the kinks in the spell, double and triple checking his translations. He gathers his ingredients, and then spends another hour pacing around the library. His stomach is roiling, and his nerves are jittery. He can’t bear to stop, but he can’t bear to move forward.

The memory of Cas’ smile spurs him into action. Cas went to his death a willing martyr for a man who he believed didn’t love him back. He can’t let that stand. If anything else, Cas has to know.

The drive to Pontiac, Illinois takes him the better part of a day. The impala springs forward across the asphalt, almost like she’s eager to eat up the miles after her forced retirement. Dean pushes hard down on the gas pedal, urging her forward. One way or another, this is going to come to an end tonight.

It takes him a while to find the barn. The last time he was here, he wasn’t in his right mind, still reeling from the horrors of Hell and the confusion of finding himself alive. He’d been scared and angry, lost and so very alone. And then an angel had walked through the door and told him that good things happened, that he deserved to be saved. The last little bit might have been a line fed to Cas by a bunch of dickhead superiors, but the sentiment behind it had stayed long after those superiors were all dead.

They replaced the doors which Cas shattered and painted over the walls which Dean and Bobby covered with sigils, but if Dean looks carefully, he can see the shadows of them behind the new coat of whitewash. He touches them gently for a second, remembering Bobby and all of the years which led him back to this place. Then he pulls out his can of spray paint and proceeds to deface the barn all over again.

When he’s done, he sets up the ingredients on the table. The table is where it was all those years ago, facing the doors to the barn. He doesn’t quite believe that Cas is going to pull the same trick, storming through the doors in a shower of sparks, but he can always hope.

“God...Jack,” Dean corrects himself with a wry twist of his mouth, “I really hope this works. Cas, wherever you are, I really hope you have your ears on.”

Dean looks at his translations and begins to speak. He’s hoping that intention counts for something as his tongue stumbles over the unfamiliar words. His heart beats an uncertain pulse in his chest. This has to work. It has to work.

He puts every ounce of belief into his voice, every bit of the faith Cas once accused him of not having. I have faith, he thinks, putting force behind his voice, sending his words rocketing into the dimensions. I believe in us.

What’s real?

We are.

The last syllables roll over his tongue, followed immediately by a peal of thunder. The barn shivers, a ripple rolling through the air to settle over Dean’s skin. Electricity crackles in the air, filling him with potential.

“Castiel?” he calls to the darkness. “Cas?”

There’s no answer, but the spells and research had been unclear on whether or not there should be an answer. He would prefer knowing that Cas was listening, but in absence of certainty, he’ll have to have faith.

“Cas, I really hope you can hear me,” he says. The words bring back the memories of Purgatory and a time when he and Cas could barely look at each other. He pushes those memories away and concentrates on the truth he can feel in his heart, the same truth which has guided him through the years and all the way from Lebanon, Kansas to the small barn where it all began all those years ago.

“I know you made your choice. I know you were happy. But...it’s not the same without you. I’m not the same without you. I wake up and think about you, and you’re the last thing I think about before I go to sleep at night. Every moment, you’re there because you’re not there. I look at all the places you’re missing and I can’t help but think that everything would be better if you were there.”

Dean swallows. “I miss you,” he confesses to the night. “Cas, I miss you so much. And I want you to come back. Not because I need you or because there’s something to fight against, but just because I miss you and life is better when you’re around.” He thinks of what Sam told him before he went. “There’s a new world out there, and I can’t think of who I would rather explore it with than you, but in order to do that, you’ve got to make a choice, all right?”

His heart is pounding so hard he thinks it might explode out of his chest. “I want to share my life with you. I want to figure out this world together. I want to be able to look at you and hold you and experience everything with you. Cas, I want to tell you what I should have told you every single day for years. I’m sorry that I never told you while you were with me. And I’m sorry that the first time I say it, I’m not going to be looking at you, but it wouldn’t be our lives if something about this wasn’t shitty, right?”

Dean takes a deep breath. “I love you, Cas. Not because of what you can do or how useful you are. I love you because of who you are and how hard you try. And I want to say it to you, every single day, for years to come. I’ve made my choice, Cas. Now you just need to make yours.”

Silence overtakes the barn. The only sound is the faint whistling of the wind through the slats of the barn and the quick rasp of his breathing. There’s no flap of wings, no deep voice growling in his ears, no pop of electricity.

“Please, Cas,” Dean whispers, closing his eyes to try and stop the burning behind them. “Please.”

Thunder rolls through the barn, shaking through the wood down to the dirt floor. Dean’s head jerks upright as he scans the barn. “Cas?” he calls, hardly daring to hope. “Castiel?”

A thin, golden thread rips open in the air before him. It looks almost exactly like the rifts between worlds which Jack used to create, but that’s not possible.

It’s not possible, but Dean dares to hope anyway.

“Castiel? Cas?”

A single hand reaches out through the golden tear, and then Dean is moving, he’s practically tripping over his own feet in his haste to reach the rift. “Cas, Cas, please,” he’s saying, not quite aware of the words which are tumbling from his mouth. “Please.”

Until his fingers grip the hand, he’s not sure that it’s real, but that’s solid flesh and bone underneath his palm. Dean pulls, feeling resistance on the other end. “No,” he grunts, reaching into the rift. His hand touches skin, and his resolve grows. He didn’t come this far only to lose. They haven’t come this far only to fall apart.

“I want you,” he says, as though the force of his words can rip through the veil. “Cas, please, come home, Cas, please--”

With an almighty heave, he pulls once more and then he’s falling backward, another body tumbling against his in an ungainly pile of limbs and bodies. There’s skin and there’s warm, and there’s weight. Out of the corner of his eye, Dean sees the rift close up, as neatly as if it were never there at all.

He doesn’t care about that. He can’t, not now.

Dean looks down at the body sprawled across his lap. There are miles upon miles of naked skin for him to peruse, and he hopes that he’ll be able to do so later at his leisure, but for now, all he can concentrate on are those two luminous eyes blinking up at him.

“Cas?” Dean asks, hardly daring to believe. His hands cup Castiel’s face, fingers sweeping a few locks of dark hair off of his forehead.

Castiel blinks at him, his dark eyelashes fanning over his cheeks. A slow smile creeps across his face, like the dawn spreading across the horizon. “Dean,” he says, his voice the same as it always was, but this time it’s better, because it’s a voice that Dean never thought he’d hear again.

“Cas.” It’s the only word Dean seems capable of saying, but words don’t seem important anymore, not when he can lean forward and press his lips to Cas’, not when he can taste the small sigh of surprise on Cas’ lips. “Cas, I missed you so much, oh god, Cas, there’s so much I want to tell you, there’s so much I want to do--”

Cas interrupts him with another kiss, his arms threading around Dean’s shoulders to pull him closer. Gentle fingers tug at the hair at the nape of his neck, and Dean thinks that he could live in this moment forever.

But before he does that, there’s something else which needs to happen first. Dean pulls away, ignoring the small whine of protest from Cas.

“Cas, there’s something I need to tell you,” he starts, only to be interrupted.

“I know,” Cas says, his face splitting into a wide, gummy smile. No shadow lurks behind his eyes, no hint of tears glisten in his eyes. There’s just happiness, radiant and absolute, gleaming from his face.

“I heard your prayer.”

Maybe once upon a time, Dean would have been satisfied with that answer, but not anymore.

“I love you,” Dean whispers, pressing the words into Cas’ skin with gentle kisses over his temple and cheeks. “I love you, I love you, I love you, and I’m going to tell you every day until you get sick of it.”

“You’ll have to try for a very long time,” Castiel answers, his fingers tracing along Dean’s jaw. “I like hearing those words very much.”

Dean can’t help but kiss him again. As he does so, he feels the lost and scattered pieces of his heart knitting back together until he can finally breathe for the first time in months. “Come on,” he says, once he surfaces for air. “Let’s go.”

It only hits him then that Cas is naked. Apparently rebirth and snagging people out of alternate dimensions results in a distinct lack of clothing. Dean’s eyes want to travel over the skin revealed to him, but he waits. There will be time, he realizes with a tiny thrill of delight. He and Cas have all the time in the world.

He manages to find a blanket to wrap around Cas’ shoulders. It will do until they get out to the car where he has a spare set of clothes. For now, he helps Cas to his feet. Cas looks around him, his eyes wide and huge, as though he’s overwhelmed with the world around him.

“Where are we headed?” Cas asks as they head towards the door. The Impala waits outside, beckoning them forward once more.

Dean grins as the cool night air washes over them. It’s gentle and soft, eternity held in the breeze. There’s a world held within the palm of tonight, a world held within the rest of their lives.

“Wherever we want,” he answers, stepping out of the shadow of the barn and into the world.

As they walk towards the Impala, a light rain begins to fall.

---

“Before, I wanted to say: "I found love!" But now, I want to say: "I found a person. And he belongs to me and I belong to him.”― C. JoyBell C.

#spn spoilers #supernatural #spn15 #15.19 coda #coda fic #destiel #destiel fic #destiel fanfic #deancas #deancas fic #dean winchester #castiel #15x19 inherit the earth #fare thee well spn #dothwrites #not beta'd we die like men here

917 notes · View notes

iguessweallcrazyithinktho · 4 years

Text

Chris Evans masterlist

Chris Evans HC

Going on a road trip with Chris and kiddos (headcannon)

Being married to Chris Evans would include(headcannon)

Chris Evans Imagines

imagine chris seeing you with a kid

imagine chris talking about the day you got married

imagine:chris broke up with you before you could tell him your pregnant

imagine:you and chris divorced and have two kids together/maybe it not to late to get back together

imagine chris talking about your twins

imagine chris seeing you for the first time

Imagine Chris seeing you with a kid after 2 years of being broken up (fluff)

Imagine Chris seeing you in a beautiful dress at an award show

Imagine your son thinking your so beautiful and he doesn’t want Chris to see you

Imagine Chris finding out his 3 year old has a boyfriend

Imagine your kids finding out that Chris is captain America

Imagine Chris being your neighbor and you wondering why didn’t put on pants.

Imagine Chris feeling like he failed as a father

Imagine Chris watching you play with his niece and nephew and he can’t help wonder how amazing you would be as a mom

Imagine Chris and your son telling the paparazzi no pictures

Imagine your son regret eating Wasabi

Imagine telling Chris that you want to make him a daddy on father’s day ~ smut

Chris Evans prompts

mamas boy 9&58

make me 48

i can’t keep kissing stranger and pretending their you 1,14&33

i forgive you 11

please marry me 32

hey just breath 29&10

92 and 84( smut)

76 and 91 ( angst, smut, fluff)

4 and 99(sad)

15 and 85(slightly angst, fluff)

quarantine proposal(fluff)

big fight (angst, fluff), breath with me (fluff)

shoulder pain(fluff)

thirsty tweet reveal (fluff)

he’s okay (angst, fluff, daddy Chris), period(fluff)

54&56(smut)

50,54,59(smut)

68&72(smut)

68,69,72(smut)

31,50,72(smut)

16,40(fluff)

Chris Evans:

exes to lover

8 letter

haters

accident happen how you think we …

heart eyes

daddy little fan

build a bear v teddy bear

baby love

falling like the stars

all way by your side

i will always protect you

rain can’t ruin the fun

give me nickname

your not a real fan

don’t touch her

im sorry

will you be there

i love you just the way you are

little valentine

best valentine day ever

admire your beauty

kick ass boyfriend

you and chris in quarantine

focus on my breathing

panic attack

sweater wearing dorks

i’m not good enough for you

moving to boston

beautiful in his eyes

have each other

strong mama

jealous chris

wear a longer skirt next time

i’m bored

that hurt my feelings

animal crossing

A place to sit ( smut)

Hot model (fluff, slightly smut)

Beautiful in his eyes ( fluff)

What!(angst, fluff)

Love me (smut)

Please forgive me(angst, fluff)

Bikini fun(smut, slight fluff)

Brazilian girl(smut)

Window (smut)

Hands(smut)

Dad’s friend (smut)

Chris Evans Fluff:

Not worth it || angst

You are the reason || fluff

Plane cancellation || fluff

Skype call || fluff

Back off, he’s mine || fluff, light Angst

Everything okay || fluff, light Angst

Social anxiety || fluff

Workout or dance party || fluff

Chris Evans Smut:

Fuck it || smut

Quick quiet sex || smut

Stuck with u || smut

Tapes || smut

His fingers are accurate || smut

Wild wet dream || smut

CEO barber || smut

Language || smut

Such a good mouth || smut

One bed || smut

Not so innocent maid || smut

Bathtub || smut

Daddy Chris:

Princess Chris ( fluff, daddy Chris)

Dance with me ( fluff, daddy Chris)

cuddle and kisses ( fluff, daddy Chris)

Late night protection (fluff, daddy Chris)

No kissing mama ( fluff, daddy Chris)

Helping daddy (fluff, daddy Chris)

Junk food convinced (fluff, daddy Chris)

3 month old talker( fluff, daddy Chris)

Twins ( fluff, daddy Chris)

Workout distraction (fluff, daddy Chris)

Reading a book (fluff, daddy Andy)

She’s growing up too fast (fluff, daddy Chris)

Little sister love (fluff, daddy Chris)

Shuts that out (fluff, daddy Andy)

Finally princesses (fluff, daddy Chris)

Busted (fluff, daddy Chris)

Bubbles (fluff, daddy Chris)

Not little anymore (fluff, daddy Chris)

New best friend (fluff, daddy Chris)

Skin to skin (fluff, daddy Chris)

Hungry baby, no (fluff, daddy Chris)

Peas (fluff, daddy Chris)

What are you doing Papa(fluff,daddy Chris)

Meeting little brother(fluff, daddy Chris)

Quarantine with kiddos(fluff, daddy Chris)

Mother’s day || dad! Chris

Memories || dad! Chris

Winnie the Pooh ||dad! Chris

Puppies || dad! Chris

Shy || dad! Chris

Bring us together || dad! Chris

Curly hair || dad! Chris

Quarantine baby || dad! Chris

Strawberries || dad! Chris

Bake a cake || dad! Chris

Sugar party || dad! Chris

Cuddles || dad! Chris

Morning with the Evans || dad! Chris

Disneyland || dad! Chris

FaceTime || dad! Chris

Pool day || dad! Chris

Big hands || dad! Chris

Not food || dad! Chris

Chris Evans oneshots:

Target - you lied and told Chris that you and your daughter weren’t going to target. He catches you both ~ Fluff

Double trouble maker - your twins break something and hide behind you, even though Chris isn’t mad ~ Fluff

Birthday special - Summary: it’s Chris’s birthday and since you both are still in quarantine, you want to give him a little show at home ~ smut

legal | Request : you wrote some dad figure!tom x teen actress!reader, can i get one with Chris Evans? maybe reader has been emancipated for awhile now n despite the fact that she’s been raising herself for a long time now, she still needs that parently guidance and maybe chris gives her that??? i hope that’s ok!! -🌙 ~ Fluff

Twins - I have a request, I was wondering if u can do a request, where the reader is African American and he and Chris are expecting towns, but they revel the news to Chris’s parents and your parents and also both of y’all grandparents?? ~ Fluff

Work this out - Can I request chris or henry tried to work through there divorce but end up with cute moments working it out ~ fluff

Princess - your Andy princess ~ smut

Surprise - I had another idea, what if Chris was being interviewed and you and your guys daughter who’s 4, came and surprised him, but once your daughter saw Chris she runs up to him and yells daddy!! - Fluff

Fort - Summary: it’s a rainy day and you, Chris, and your son build a fort ~ Fluff

Slobbery kisses - Chris wakes up to sloppy kisses by his baby ~ Fluff

Can’t sleep without you - Hi! can I request something where Chris and the reader had an argument and Chris goes to sleep in the couch, but in the middle of the night, the reader go to sleep with him there? Thanks! ~ slightly Angst, Fluff

Make up - Just after that quick one about fighting and sleeping separately could you do a quick imagine on the make up sex pls :)) ty ~ smut, Fluff

Tough guy -Can I ask for an imagine about the reader fighting with her husband Chris, about his family and the fight ending in rough sex? ❤ ~ kinda dark, smut

Giraffe slippers - Chris can’t get over your son’s giraffe slippers ~ Fluff

Switzerland - Summary: you, Chris and your son go on vacation to beautiful Switzerland ~ Fluff

Velvet - I found these prompts. They’re perfect ~ Fluff, implied smut

I’m scared, but I love you - Can u make where on how will cevans admit to a girl that he likes (or falling for) her and the girl is scared bc of the risk of dating him (privacy, fame, hate) and chris tells her he’s scared too but he’s willing to take a risk bc he can’t afford to see u w/ anyone else ~ Fluff

Interviewer - Summary: your a black interviewer and Chris couldn’t keep his eyes off of you. - smut, Fluff

Red dress - Request: After the oscars or whatever awards with Chris Evans, reader wearing a really sexy dress and even sexier lingerie ~ Fluff, implied smut

Softy -Request: Imagine Chris when he has a baby 🥺 I can honestly imagine how in love he’s gonna be in the delivery room getting handed his child. That man seriously makes my heart melt ~ Fluff

Who are you? - Request: can i request an image where chris comes back from filming and has a beautiful beard, but his baby daughter didn’t recognize him ~ Fluff

Empty theater - Request: you and chris go to the theaters and find out you two are the only one in the showing. You’re pretty invested into the movie and Chris is just horny 3000. He’s tryna fool around and you disregard him until he grabs your hand and puts it on his crotch and says in that insanely attractive Boston accent, “feel how hah’d you got me??” shweaty🤤 ~ smut

What moving in with Chris is like ~ Fluff

Long hair lover - Request: Can you write an imagine where Chris came back from filming red sea diving resort and his baby daughter is crazy in love with his long hair? ~ Fluff

Mean girl - Request: Hi, can you write one where the reader runs into a mean girl from school at supermarket and the girl start to brag for just saw Chris Evans. She doesn’t know that the reader is his wife, so the the mean girl has a little surprise when Chris find his wife at the line or something. ~ Fluff, slightly angst

Episode - Request: Hey are you taking request? I’m dark skinned chocolate and I’d love for Chris to comfort reader during a depressive episode. She’s the life of the party and she’s a new actress, not popular but she met Chris through mutual friends and he’s realized she’s been isolating herself lately, so he stops by her apt. to check in on her. She feels like she’s losing her mind. You can add smut. 😉 reader usually feels better after an episode buts its a serious battle and having support helps tremendously.😊 ~ Fluff, smut

Romantic day - Request: So Chris was asked in an interview if he ever had anyone do anything romantic for him and he had a hard time remembering. Can you write a fic where his girlfriend does something romantic for him? Like on a tooth rotting level of fluff. ~ fluff

Piglet - your daughter dress up as piglet from Winnie the Pooh ~ fluff

Bathroom and mirror - Request: Hey, I was wondering if I could request being at a party with Chris and he goes to the bathroom and you follow only for him to lift you on to the sink and eat your 🐱 then bend you over and fuck you hard watching you in the mirror ~ smut

Pink ribbon - Request: Okay but like I had this imagine in my head, like Chris is recording a video of his babygirl which is two months and he’s recording a video to help people with wants happening in the world to make then smile and then you hear a “grrr” and he’s like yes my daughter did learn how to growl before speaking thanks to dodger ! And he’s like so in love with the cutest bean to ever live ! And wife!reader be like watching this as she growls,dodger being proud! -🥺💕 ~ Fluff

Migraine - Request: Take as much time as you need 😜. I was about reader working at home on quarantine and she has this migraine so Chris takes care of her?? Could be a drabble, hc, blurb, whatever you wanna make of it ~ Fluff

Childhood bedroom - Request: Reader and Chris having sex in Chris’s childhood room when they visit his parents for a holiday (whichever you want) and Scott walking in on them ~ smut

Boomerang - Request: Can I request Chris Evans x Reader age gap where its her 10 high school reunion and back in high school she was over weight and was teased for it. Now she isnt and is engaged to Chris, but at the reunion she gets told by like an ex boyfriend an ex friend that Chris will leave her if she gets her weight back. Chris over hears this and is upset by it. Also could they make a remark like she is gaining weight again but she is pregnant like three months with a tiny bump (Maybe smut) Thank you ~ Angst, smut

Period - Request: can you do one abt chris when his girl is on her period ~ Fluff

4am car ride - Summary: at 4 in the morning Chris wakes you up to go on a car ride ~ Fluff

No Oscars - Request: Concept: reader consoling chris after he comes back from the oscars without any wins ~ Angst, fluff

Morning with the Evans - Summary: morning with 6 kiddos, 4 going to school. ~ Fluff

Wanna help? - Request: Hi there! What about Chris is in his bed reading a book as his wife were doing her routine of moisturizing her body and he start staring at her and she asks if he want to do the job for her. ~ smut

Mommy isn’t hot she’s warm

Message therapist - Request: I’m a massage therapist. I would love to see a wondering with CE and a therapist. She gets a one in a lifetime opportunity to massage the one and only, he sees her small stature and does not think she’ll be able to help him, but he is pleasantly surprised. He takes one look at her, and get simplicity and naturalness intrigues and consumes him. He’s on a mission to make her his, she’s wary. She’s wary because of her past and of what his intentions are. And doesn’t trust him right away. @creae7881 ~ Fluff

America’s ass - Summary: you make Chris celebrate that ass on its birthday `~ Fluff

Mechanic - Request: Hi! Wondering if you could make a story where Chris falls for a girl that’s a mechanic. I’ve been looking to pictures of the car Downey gifted him. She can be the one who built it. Thanks ~ @arabescapr ~ Fluff

Angry at you - Summary: Chris has to do some work and his daughter wants to play, but he can’t. She doesn’t like that. ~ Fluff

Virgin till married - Request: Hey! I really love your five and am a huge fan of your writing! Is there a way you could write a Chris fanfic in which the reader is a virgin and wants to save herself for marriage and it’s their honeymoon and she is gonna have sex for the first time with husband Chris.😙❤ It can be fluff and smut. Thank you! ~ smut

Secretly - Request: I have a request for Chris. Where the reader is a beautiful black plus-size woman and she and Chris are secretly dating, and one day they are spotted out and Chris panics and he has an interview and the interviewer asked him “who’s this girl u were spotted with” and Chris says I don’t know he personally she’s just a fan, and the reader watches the interview and gets heartbroken so she blocks him and changing a the locks to her house, and Chris finds out that she watched the interview. For the plus size request for Chris. I have to send another ask for same request because I didn’t have enough room to finish, but the reader starts avoiding and ignoring Chris, and Chris tries to get the reader to talk to him by showing up at her work, or bringing her flowers or her favorite food but she declines until one day she gets home and he’s on her doorstep and she starts walking by him ignoring him and he asks her just to talk to him please. Can there be a happy ending. ~ @briannab1234 ~ Angst, Fluff

After the show - Request: I’m sort of obsessed with the idea an anon sent in about the reader being a singer and her performing on stage and then him getting her home! I don’t know if you’re doing that already but if not can I request it for Chris Evans pleaseee ~ smut

Midnight return ~ Fluff, dad! Chris

You+me=perfect - Request: Hi! Just discovered your blog a few weeks ago and fell in love with your writing. I know requests are closed, but when you have time, could you do one where Chris and Reader (age gap) like each other and they know and everybody knows but when Reader makes a move he rejects her because since he wants a family he thinks reader is not ready for that. Please happy ending, 2020 is already too stressful :)~ Angst, Fluff

Your producing ice? - Request:Writing idea? Yk that game that Chris played with Jimmy Fallon where they poured the ice water down each other’s pants. Yeah yeah yeah. Just imagine going to give Chris a bj in the dressing room or something and there’s ice In his pants -🥺 but confused ~ smut, Fluff

Wine and sunset - Summary: you and Chris have been together for 3 years and now you got married to him. You both are on your honeymoon. He can’t help but keep his hands off of you. ~ smut, Fluff

No kissing ~ fluff,dad! Chris

At last I see the light - Request: Hi, can you please write Chris Evans x reader when he’s on the Graham Show and the other guest is a singer he have a crush on, she perform a song she recorded for the ‘We Love Disney’s album and he’s just in admiration please? ~ Fluff

Another princess?! - Summary: your pregnant and you and Chris finally figure out the gender of your baby. ~ Fluff

#chris evans #chris evans x reader #submission #Chris Evans imagines #Chris Evans x female reader #chris evans x plus size reader #chris Evans smut #dad!chris evans #Chris Evans x ofc

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jaskierswolf · 3 years

Text

An Ocean Away

Geraskier soulmate AU - A gift for my own darling soulmate @geraltrogerericduhautebellegarde.

Words: 3.8k

CW: Big mutual pining, long distance friendships, and a lot of swearing, fucking the ocean is not advised...

Read on AO3

___________

Jaskier stared at his phone and sighed loudly. Geralt was still asleep and really Jaskier should be working but he missed him. How that was even possible he wasn’t sure, they’d never even met. Geralt was all the way across the other side of the fucking ocean. Jaskier hated it. The soul bond had snapped into place on Jaskier’s birthday. He’d waited up until midnight, shaking with excitement. He’d known there was a chance his soulmate was younger than him but he didn’t care, his soulmate would be worth the wait.

Luckily for him, Geralt was a couple of years older.

Unluckily for him, Geralt also lived in America.

He sighed again and thumped his head against his desk, earning a withered glare from his boss across the room. God, he really needed to get out of his job. He was an artist, a musician! He shouldn’t be stuck in an office inputting data.

‘Geralt….’ He called out mentally, hoping to reach his soulmate in his dreams but it was no use. Geralt was down for the count and probably wouldn’t wake up for several hours.

Instead, Jaskier sighed loudly for the third time and remembered their first conversation with a fond smile.

‘Helloooooo’ he called out, fidgeting with his bedsheets. ‘anybody there?’

‘What the fuck?’ a gruff response came and Jaskier could just about make out the image of some kind of restaurant if he focussed hard enough, but that wasn’t what had caught his attention.

‘You’re American?!’ he wanted to cry. He couldn’t afford to fly out to America, not unless he followed his sisters into the family business and regained access to the Bank of Dad.

‘Fuck.’

Ah so his soulmate was a man of many words. He grinned a flopped back onto his bed. ‘I’m Jaskier, by the way, I’m from England.’

‘I’m at work, can this wait?’ his soulmate growled.

Jaskier’s heart sank. ‘Right, yes, yes… of course. I umm… well I need to go to sleep. I’m bloody exhausted. Wake me up when you’re finished?’

‘Hmm.’

Geralt hadn’t managed to wake him up. Although he still maintained to this day that he’d yelled out as much as he could without actually yelling aloud, and Jaskier had slept through the whole damn thing. Geralt’s mind was pretty quiet. He didn’t often project his thoughts unless they were actively conversing. Jaskier on the other hand kept up a steady stream of thoughts, showing Geralt the pretty flowers that he saw on the way to work, or humming new songs just for his soulmate to hear, anything that he thought Geralt might find interesting.

He pressed the home button on his phone again. Barely five minutes since the last time he’d checked. It wasn’t even time for lunch yet, let alone time for Geralt to wake up. He hoped they’d have time to video chat before Geralt had to go to work that evening but he was pretty sure that his soulmate was on an early shift. He groaned, and reluctantly started angrily jabbing at his keyboard. The endless stream of emails and shitty clients were not helping his mood. Why couldn’t Geralt be on a closing shift? At least then they’d be able to talk properly before Jaskier had to go to sleep.

“Would you stop being so pathetic, Julian?” Valdo sneered from the desk opposite Jaskier’s.

“You’re just angry because your soulmate hasn’t made contact yet,” Jaskier snapped back.

They were both twenty-four and Valdo’s soulmate was either ignoring him or was still underage. Jaskier almost pitied the man; almost.

“Just get on with your work, Julian and stop clock watching.”

Jaskier muttered a few rather inappropriate for work words under his breath and turned back to his computer. He managed to get one whole email dealt with before losing focus again. He shifted in his seat so he could sit cross-legged on the chair, and then tried again. After another few emails his feet started to tingle.

“Oh bollocks,” he whined and jumped off the chair, hopping around the office.

“For god’s sake, Julian!”

“My name… is Jaskier!” He snapped “and I’ve got bloody pins and needles!”

‘Jaskier?’ Geralt’s voice was bleary and slurred in his mind.

He squeaked and promptly fell on his arse, but it wasn’t enough to stop him from grinning madly. “Geralt’s awake!” he announced to the office.

“Take your lunch early,” Tissaia sighed “God only knows you won’t get anything else done until you’ve spoken to Geralt.”

Jaskier beamed at his boss. Fuck he could kiss her. She was so understanding and wonderful and…

And he still hadn’t responded to Geralt!

‘Geralt, darling, hello!’ he trilled happily in his mind, spinning his chair around so he was sitting backwards.

‘Are you ok?’ Geralt hummed ‘Felt angry.’

Jaskier squeaked, unable to contain the swell of love in his chest. God damn it he just wanted to hug Geralt. It wasn’t fair. Priscilla and Essi had only lived two towns away from each other. Triss had grown up with Yennefer, and yet Jaskier was stuck with a soulmate on the other side of the fucking planet.

‘Fuck the ocean,’ he grumbled

He heard Geralt’s laughter, echoed with a phantom feeling of mirth that wasn’t his own. ‘Fuck the ocean’ he agreed.

‘I’m moving to America, I’m going to invent portals and I am never letting you go,’ Jaskier sighed.

Geralt hummed again. He was tired, Jaskier could feel it. ‘Go back to sleep, darling.’

‘When’s your lunch break over?’

‘I have half hour.’

‘I’ll wait.’

Jaskier smiled dopily at his phone. There was a picture of Geralt and his horse, Roach, on the lock screen. He unlocked it quickly to check his clock app. He knew the timezone difference by heart at this point but he still needed to check. It was a habit that he had yet to break. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

Jaskier felt like crying. He just wanted to hold his soulmate. He wanted to know whether that love was platonic or romantic or what? He just… he knew he would love Geralt with every fibre of his being, and would be happy no matter what. That’s how soulmates worked after all. They were your match, and not everyone’s match was romantic.

Oh but how he yearned. He was pathetic.

‘I miss you.’

‘I miss you too’ Geralt hummed and Jaskier felt an ache through the bond that wasn’t his. He smiled sadly. He wasn’t the only one being pathetic.

They fell silent, Jaskier gazing longingly at his lock screen, trying desperately not to fall apart in the middle of his office. Maybe he should go for a walk. Maybe he should just quit his job and move to America. His soulmate was American so he wouldn’t have to worry about visas as long as he could prove Geralt was his. He just….

“Fuck,” he groaned and buried his head in his arms. He could feel the tears welling up in his eyes and there was a lump caught in his throat. “Sorry, Tissaia. I’m, I’m, well, I’m going for a walk.”

He practically launched out of his chair towards the door. Not even bothering to grab his coat. He closed his eyes and reached out to Geralt, feeling a phantom embrace as Geralt reached back. It wasn’t as good as a real hug but no real hug could soothe the ache of having to live so far apart from his soulmate.

‘Jask?’

Jaskier practically ran away from his office, down the road towards the woodland that surrounded the campus. His hands were pulling at his hair and he muttered nonsense under his breath. He counted every step that took him away from the building. He liked to imagine that every step brought him closer to Geralt but really he wasn’t entirely sure.

‘I miss you,’ he hummed again. ‘It’s not fair.’

‘I know.’

‘We’ve never even met… six years Geralt! Fuck it, fuck this shit, fuck this job,’ he kicked at the ground. ‘I don’t even want to work in an office. It was supposed to be temporary.’

‘Then quit?’

Jaskier snorted. ‘I can’t afford it.’

His father’s face flitted in front of him. He could afford it if only he weren’t so bloody stubborn. He could work in his father’s company and he could go to America to see Geralt. Why couldn’t he just accept that? Why was he insisting on making his own way?

‘Jaskier, no. It’s not worth it,’ Geralt’s voice wrapped around him like a blanket. ‘Don’t compromise on your dreams for me.’

‘But I love you!’ he whined pitifully.

‘I know and I love you too, but you’ll only resent me.’

Jaskier huffed and slid to the ground, his back resting against a tree. He rest his forehead on his knees and began to cry. Soulmates weren’t supposed to live apart for this long, it was too taxing on both parties but destiny had been cruel to them. He sobbed helplessly, his body shuddering as he dug his nails into the grass, tearing up chunks and throwing them away.

It was only when he heard his phone ring that he managed sort of pull himself out of it. He wiped his eyes and peered at the phone.

Geralt.

Of course it was, Geralt. His soulmate was video calling him. He swiped the screen to pick up and sniffed loudly. He didn’t need to sniff as loudly as he did, and he didn’t need to pout pathetically at the screen as he picked up… but he was sad and dramatic. He wanted extra sympathy points from Geralt.

“Hi,” he whined, still pouting and widening his eyes slightly for added effect. Geralt’s room was dark, just a small light turned on just out of the camera. It was a shame because he couldn’t ogle the other man quite as much as he would normally like.

Still, Geralt looked adorable. Stubble was starting to grow on his cheeks and his hair was a mess, falling in front of his eyes like rays of moonlight. “Hi.”

“I love you,” Jaskier whined as if he hadn’t already told Geralt that a hundred times today already.

Geralt, the bastard, just laughed at him. “I know, love.”

“I know. I know… but… I love you?”

“I love you too,” Geralt sighed, wiping the sleep from his eyes.

Jaskier still hadn’t managed to work out whether Geralt’s eyes were really that colour or whether it was just some trick of the light. In all the photos and video calls they looked golden, but Jaskier had never met anyone with golden eyes before. He hadn’t even realised it was possible. It was like something out of a fairy tale. Then again, he’d seen Eskel and Lambert, Geralt’s brothers, and they also had the same molten gold eyes.

Between Yennefer and Geralt’s family, Jaskier felt very plain. He was attractive enough but in such a normal way, nothing compared to Geralt’s silvery hair that made him look like he’d been blessed by the spirits of winter, and his swirling amber eyes that blazed like the sun, and then Yennefer with her locks of raven hair and piercing violet eyes.

He chewed anxiously on his bottom lip. God, why was he surrounded by such beautiful people. Brown hair, blue eyes and a dead end job.

“Hey?” Geralt’s gruff voice pulled him from his thoughts. “You’re important to me.”

Jaskier smiled sheepishly and scratched the back of his neck. He wasn’t entirely sure what emotions he’d been channeling through their bond but it was obviously enough for Geralt to be concerned. “I love you.”

Geralt tilted his head at the camera and smiled fondly, it was obscured by the darkness and the terrible quality of Geralt’s phone camera but it still managed to melt Jaskier’s heart. Stupid, dumb, soulmate. Why did he have to live in America?

“I have a plan?” Geralt said quietly, looking around his room and not meeting Jaskier’s eyes.

“A plan?”

“The restaurant I work at has live music nights,” Geralt mumbled.

Jaskier frowned. He already knew that. Geralt had mentioned it before. Normally when he was complaining about the quality of the music. Jaskier adored him for that. He loved to judge other people’s music, and he rather smugly loved the way Geralt had only ever said nice things about his own songs.

“Right?” he asked slowly, not quite understanding where Geralt was going with this.

“I spoke to Dad,” Geralt paused, licking his lips. Jaskier swallowed. It wasn’t fair. How could one man be so unreasonably attractive? He tucked at the sleeves of his jumper whilst he waited for Geralt to finish his thought. The cuffs had holes in and were fraying but it was soft and made the work day more bearable. If he gave a shit about his job he might wear nicer clothes but he’d rather be comfortable.

“Vesemir?” Jaskier prompted gently.

“He could help pay for the flights, a loan and we’ll have to pay him back,” Geralt mumbled, still not making any sense. “My apartment isn’t very big but you’re welcome to share until you find your own place? If you want your own place. I’m not making assumptions. I don’t expect you to share just because we’re soulmates but it would be cheaper and the restaurant wouldn’t be able to pay that much at first. You’d be playing music for a living though, and I know that’s what you really want to do,” Geralt cut himself of with a sharp sniff, letting out a low snarl. “Actually forget it, it’s a stupid idea.”

“Geralt?” Jaskier’s heart was racing. It almost sounded like Geralt was asking him to move to America? More than that, his own family was offering to help pay for the flights that neither of them could afford on their own.

“I said forget it,” the phone snapped off and the screen went blank but Geralt was his soulmate and it wasn’t quite that easy to runaway.

‘I don’t want to forget it,’ Jaskier told him, trying to push all the love he had for Geralt through the bond. ‘Are you asking me to move in with you, Geralt?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Geralt,’ he admonished gently. ‘I can’t quit my job on a maybe.’

‘Yes.’

Jaskier grinned. ‘I’ll resign after lunch.’

Jaskier had been tempted to just grab his bag and leave the office for good, but Tissaia had been good to him. She’d put up with his moping for the last three years and even allowed him flexible lunch breaks so he could talk to Geralt when he was awake. Not all bosses would be so forgiving. So he worked his notice. She hadn’t been surprised in the slightest when he announced his plans, if fact she seemed more surprised that it had taken so long to make the plans. He supposed most soulmates did move to be closer at the first available opportunity and he’d been pining over Geralt for six long years.

Valdo had been his usual grumpy self, sneering that Jaskier hadn’t been able to cope with the job, but there was something in his eyes, a sadness that Jaskier hadn’t expected. They had known each other since university and their rivalry was almost an act these days, but he’d thought that Valdo would be pleased to see the back of him.

His friends organised a wonderful goodbye party for him. Yennefer pulling out all the stops to make sure he had the best send off. If it weren’t for the pull of Geralt and his soulmate, he’d almost be tempted to stay. England had been his home since he was born and his life was there, his friends were there.

But Geralt was not.

And there was the promise of a career in music on the other side of the pond. It was too much to resist. So Jaskier packed up his flat. He pack a rucksack full of his favourite clothes and picked up his guitar.

Then he drove to the airport, leaving England behind for good. The flight had been almost unbearable. It was long and cramped. He spent most of the time wittering to Geralt, not that his soulmate had responded much. The lucky bugger had been asleep whilst Jaskier tried desperately to block out the noise of screaming children. At one point he started singing a popular Disney tune to try and calm the children but it had only made them more excitable and he’d earned several disapproving glares from their parents. He’d been more than relieved when the plane started its final descent towards the airport.

And then the nerves kicked in.

Six years of talking through their bond, text or video call…

What if Geralt realised he didn’t like Jaskier once they met in person?

Surely some soulmates didn’t get along. Not everyone could be that lucky… could they?

He was currently waiting for his guitar case to come round the carousel and he was panicking. He should have packed more clothes. He should have brought more belongings. He should have, he should have, he should have.

‘Jaskier!’ Geralt called and the effect was instantaneous. The tension melted from his shoulders and his fingers relaxed by his side.

‘Sorry,’ he shot back ‘just nervous.’

He’d feel a lot calmer once he had his guitar strapped to his back and Geralt in his arms. He chewed anxiously as he followed the pieces of the luggage belt with his gaze. He’d always enjoyed watching the way they shifted around as they trailed like a conga line around the airport terminal. His eyes kept flickering to the entrance of the carousel where luggage was pushing through the large rubber drapes.

“Come on,” he muttered, hopping from one foot to another.

The anxiety began to rise again with each new suitcase that wasn’t his guitar, but he could feel Geralt’s presence warm and constant in the back of his mind. It was stronger now. He’d not expected that. No one had told him that the bond would be stronger with less distance between them. They could already communicate perfectly well from across the world but now he could almost feel Geralt’s heartbeat in harmony with his own, he could feel each breath that Geralt took if he focussed on it. He could even smell the stale scent of coffee from the shop that Geralt was waiting in.

It was almost too much, overwhelming.

He could have had six more years of this if he hadn’t been a coward.

He was so caught up in the new sensations of their soul bond that he almost missed his guitar case travelling along the belt. He squeaked and had to push passed a family that was blocking his way. “Sorry! I’m so sorry, umm, excuse me!” he yanked the guitar from the belt and ran to the nearest bench. He unzipped the case quickly and inspected his precious instrument.

There wasn’t even a scratch!

He laughed brightly and hugged the instrument to his chest. One thing down, one to go. Next stop… Geralt!

He zipped up the case, flinging it onto his back along with his rucksack and then ran as fast as he could through the airport. It gained him a few strange looks but he was done. He’d had enough of waiting. He stumbled a few times as the case fell down his arm but he was persistent. He bustled through the last security check with nothing to declare and then he was free.

“Geralt!!” He yelled, scanning the sea of people for a shock of silver hair.

He saw himself through Geralt’s eyes and turned on his heels until he spotted his soulmate gazing back at him with open arms. He was here. Geralt was here. He stopped frozen to the spot for a second whilst the world seemed to slow to a halt.

Geralt.

In the flesh.

And he could hug him.

“Oh fuck,” tears were already falling down his face, a waterfall of emotions. “Geralt.”

The only word he had left, echoing through the bond, and then he was running again. His bag and guitar case dropping to the floor just in front of Geralt as Jaskier leapt. His arms flung around Geralt’s neck and his legs wrapped around Geralt’s waist. Geralt’s hands supported his weight with ease as Jaskier buried his face in Geralt’s neck, one of Geralt’s hands threading into his hair. God, he even smelled divine. That just wasn’t fair.

“I love you,” Geralt murmured in his ear.

The first words he heard his soulmate say in person, and fuck. If he hadn’t already been crying then that would have pushed him over the edge. He was a complete mess but he’d never been happier. He was here, with Geralt. He sobbed into Geralt’s shoulder until his soulmate lowered him gently to the floor. His legs felt weak and Geralt had to keep his arm wrapped around Jaskier’s middle to stop him from falling to the floor. Fingers brushed his cheek, wiping away some of the tears.

“Hey?”

Jaskier looked at Geralt through a sea of tears. “Hi,” he laughed weakly. “I love you.”

Geralt pressed his forehead against Jaskier’s “I love you too, fuck… I can’t believe you’re here.”

“I’m here,” Jaskier laughed. “Holy fuck, I’m actually here, and you’re here, and the world hasn’t fallen apart. Oh bloody hell, stop fucking crying, Jask!” he snapped, pulling away from Geralt just enough so he could wipe his face. He smiled sheepishly and gazed at his soulmate through his eyelashes. If it weren’t for the bloody ocean on his face, then he would have tried to be seductive, but that ship had long sailed. “Can… can I kiss you?”

Geralt’s ridiculously gorgeous and actually golden eyes softened. He nodded, hand still cupping Jaskier’s cheek. Jaskier almost fainted on the spot. He hadn’t been expecting Geralt to agree but he was too weak not to ask. He couldn’t even close the gap to finally kiss his soulmate, too stunned that Geralt even wanted it. Luckily Geralt still had his wits about him. A rough calloused finger stroked Jaskier’s cheek and then they were kissing.

It was magical. He felt everything, and more. Geralt’s lips on his, Geralt’s love in his heart and his own love weaving into the fabric of Geralt’s soul. It felt so strange, after all this time to actually be here. If the emotions weren’t quite so intense then he’d almost think he was dreaming.

‘I love you’ one of them sighed happily as their lips moved together, breaths mingling, souls completely entangled.

I love you, I miss you, I want you, I love you…. The thoughts never stopped as they clung to each other in the middle of a shitty airport terminal.

It was the end of Jaskier’s life as he knew it, and the beginning of a new life with Geralt by his side.

#the witcher #geraskier #soulmates au #soulmates #geralt of rivia #jaskier pankratz #wolfie's witcher writing

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pascalpanic · 3 years

Text

Blood, Sweat, and Tears (Javier Peña x f!Reader)- Chapter One

Summary: You live in Bogotá in the ‘90s, and work odd hours. No, you’re not a DEA agent, but a nurse. These odd hours prompt odd habits, like working out at 2:03 A.M. after a shift. Odd hours attract odd people, and you have a chance encounter with one DEA agent by the name of Javier Peña. Warnings: language, blood and violence (both graphic), descriptions of death and gun violence Chapter 1 W/C: 2.3K A/N: you guys! I am so in love with this fic. I already have quite a bit more written and can’t wait for you to read it! I hope you love it as much as I do! Javi deserves some softness... but not too much. this can’t all be fluff when you’re Javier Peña. Okay, this is not super canon-fitting of Narcos, I’m just gonna be honest with y’all. This is between the time of Escobar’s escape from La Catedral and his final capture and death, but also… Connie’s still in Colombia. Additionally, I don’t really have a year in mind, it’s just somewhere in that period. Please note that this is not a very lighthearted story- it begins with a death, though not of a significant character. Javier and reader both have some trauma, so please check the warnings of each chapter before you start reading. If you’re continuing on, I hope you like it! For the most part, if I use italics here when someone is speaking, it’s indicating that it’s in Spanish. I’m okay at the language, but I don’t want to butcher anything, so… just imagine it. Otherwise, it’s just the way anyone would use italics I guess.

next chapter

Chapter One

You watched a woman you didn’t know die in your arms tonight.

She was beautiful, all dressed up to go out and party, her makeup running down her face with tears. Her lips were the painted the color of the blood that trickled from the side of them, eyes glazing over as she coughed and coughed and ruined the beautiful dress she wore. The nurses had asked what happened, and she had told them, through gurgles of blood: she had slept with one of Escobar’s men. She got too close, learned too much, and they tracked her down.

She flatlined not long after telling the nurses around you. You had stood in the corner, paralyzed at first. You were an experienced ER nurse, nothing was new. You had seen patients die, but something about her was different. Maybe it was the way she reached out to you right before her body went limp. You didn’t make it to her bedside in time to calm her, the panic holding you down, but you finally took her hand right as she took her last breath.

After she passed, you threw up in the bathroom, shaking and clutching the toilet. The night air had grown unbearably hot and humid, causing your scrubs to cling to your skin, and the sweat from the heaving of your stomach didn’t make things easier on you. Lorena, a fellow nurse and your best friend at work, had found you and comforted you, rubbing your back and bringing you water. It didn’t matter. It couldn’t reverse what had happened.

Now, you sit on a bench in the staff’s locker room, redoing the ponytail holding your hair from your damp face. Your shift ended a few minutes ago, but you don’t know what to do now. You don’t feel like drinking; that would only make the visions swimming in your head worse. You know you can’t go home, can’t attempt to find sleep tonight. You look up and spot a bag with tennis shoes and spare clothing and settle your mind on at least one thing: the gym could do you some good. You change into the clothes and put the blood-spattered scrubs in the laundry pile.

As you leave, you give Lorena a little wave goodbye and exit the building. You’re hyper-aware of your surroundings tonight, and you groan as you look at your watch and notice that it’s precisely 2:09 A.M. here in Bogotá. The walk to your fitness club is short, but your step is slightly extra hurried and your hand is on your pepper spray the entire time, extra vigilant to the fact that a hit went down somewhere around here just a few hours earlier. Surprisingly enough, no one catcalls or bugs you tonight.

The little gym is run-down and dilapidated, and there’s no working air conditioning, but it’s the only one near you. You paid the small monthly membership fee to gain access, and you were going to use it to get in shape, you’d decided. As you swipe in and enter, the tiny fitness center looks more depressing in the fluorescent lights, no daylight to sugarcoat the atrocities of the center. There are two of every machine, a punching bag and a speed bag, two weightlifting racks, and a couple of benches.

It’s nice that you get to work out alone tonight, you tell yourself. Even better is the fact that you now get to control the music. Desperate for a taste of home, you flip the large boombox in the corner on and begin scanning the airwaves with the dial. There’s a station in town that plays American music, and you need it more than anything tonight. You listen carefully and nearly start sobbing again as you hear Billy Joel’s voice through the speakers. With a sigh of relief, you lock your bag in the rusty lockers in the corner and head to the treadmill. It’s a beat up old thing, but this is the one you always use. It provides a little bit of comfort tonight, the familiarity of it. You turn it on low and start walking. A few moments later, you up it to a jog, mouthing along to the words of the familiar song.

As the song ends, you push the buttons enough to enter a running speed. Your feet slam into the treadmill harder than normal tonight, feeling as overwhelmed as when you left the hospital. Your body finally works up a sweat, the physical stress overwhelming the mental stress.

As the events of tonight replay in your head to some other song from the late 80’s, your eyes start to water. Everything was so overwhelming, and your mind is just starting to process it. You finally allow the tears to fall, mixing with the sweat coating your cheeks. It’s hard to tell which is causing more of the mess, but you let yourself cry it out as you run for the next few minutes.

The next song that comes on is Venus by Bananarama. You almost chuckle at the fact that it’s a few years old by now, but the song is comforting. It reminds you of home, of a time before you had issues like these. You slow down the treadmill a little, singing to the words aloud once you catch your breath enough. Daring to do a little spin on the rolling surface, you groove along to the music, chuckling a little

After the first chorus, you hear a creaking noise and whip around to find a man standing in the doorway. “Jesus fucking Christ!” You shout before you can stop yourself, hopping off the treadmill and onto the non-moving one before you get flung off. Your heart is pounding from the running, only intensifying the adrenaline rush from the scare.

The man chuckles a little, but the smile on his face doesn’t reach his eyes. He’s tired- of course he is, it’s now 2:30 in the morning. “Lo siento,” you offer in Spanish, cringing at yourself and your reaction just now. “I wasn’t expecting anyone else to be here this late,” you stutter, still panting from the running. He shakes his head lightly. “You’re American,” he says simply. In English, in a beautifully American accented voice.

Your sweaty brow furrows, a glimmer of hope sparking inside your chest as you notice that he speaks like an American himself. “So are you.”

He nods at that. “That I am,” he says as he puts his things in a locker, snapping it shut behind him. He looks at you for a moment. You’re not working at the Embassy, or he’d know you. It was rare to find an American down here that wasn’t working for the government somehow. He shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair, looking at how tired he appears in the big mirrored wall. He’s curious, but he’s exhausted.

You look at him for a moment. “You going to explain anything, like, tell me about yourself? Or do I have to go first?” You ask, hands on your waist as you hop back on the slowly moving treadmill, back into moving. He doesn’t respond. “Fine. I know you’re government. I’m not an idiot.”

He chuckles and tugs on his t-shirt, moving to the treadmill next to you and getting on. It’s been ages since you’ve held a conversation in English, and you missed this, missed how easily your first language flows from your mouth. “And you’re not.”

“Correct,” you nod, turning up the speed a little on the machine until you’re at a light jog. “My bigger concern was going to be why you’re here at 2-fucking-30, but I’m guessing I know the answer. You get called in around here for the hit?” He nods, starting the treadmill up and walking on it.

“You don’t have to be so guarded, Jesus. I fucking hate Escobar, I’m on your side,” you scoff before turning up the machine until you’re running once more.

Javier shrugs. “Makes sense. How did you know-”

“She died,” you say quickly and firmly, keeping your eyes straight ahead and looking at the room around you. “Add that to your file.”

He nods, understanding a little more now. You knew her somehow. He doesn’t say a word either, cranking up the machine and heading into a jog too.

A few more minutes pass of the two of you silently running next to each other, the American music still playing throughout the gym. It’s a comfort to Javier too. Tonight was shit for the DEA- they had known Escobar’s men would be around here. They had the intel, they had everything ready, but the men somehow had escaped and left a victim in their wake.

The frustration of everything, of the man being something close to home for you yet being a brick wall, threatens your eyes with welling tears again. “I just wanted to talk with an American,” you sigh and cross your arms, moving back into the walking stage of a treadmill.

The man next to you gives a similar sigh, stopping his treadmill completely and offering you a hand. “Javier Peña.” You take it reluctantly, feeling the sweat of both of your hands mix, and tell him your name before retracting it and stopping the treadmill too. “So, what brings you to the gym at 2:30?” He asks, crossing his arms and leaning against the center part of the treadmill.

“I’m a nurse. I work the graveyard shift. Bad night, a patient died because she got fucking shot for having a boyfriend and not knowing he was a narco, I need to get something out, I come here,” you shrug, unconsciously mimicking him by folding your arms as well.

He nods at that. “I’m here for the same. Shitty stakeout, I’m pissed off, I come here.” He leaves out the part about his favorite call girl being taken, and how he needed another way to get the rage inside of him out. He walks off of the treadmill and to the weight rack, pulling a bench beneath the bar.

You turn again and turn the machine back on, slowly jogging. “I see. Odd hours to be here, that’s why I asked,” you say simply. “And to see another American at such a time. I haven’t interacted with one since I came here.”

Javier nods, adjusting the weights on the bar. “Yeah. Weird,” he nods. “And that you’re an American who isn’t working for the government and you’re down here. What, you got a husband who works for us?”

You shake your head, swallowing hard for a moment. “No, don’t have a husband in the first place,” you admit, adjusting the ponytail holding your hair up. “It’s a long story.”

“We got time,” he shrugs as he gets on the bench beneath the rack, looking at you in the mirrored wall. Even with the sweat and the stress of working out, he notices that you’re gorgeous. You have a nice body, and even your face is pretty while you’re working out.

You shake your head. “Fine, if you really want to hear it.”

“Might as well. It’s that or more of this fucking Wham! music, and I’m sick of George Michael.”

“First of all, first person here gets the music, so mind your manners.” This finally earns a chuckle from the man, and you want to smile but it just can’t come. “I came down here with a man. He’s a citizen here. We were going to get married, but he left me. That was a couple of months ago now,” you admit, the tears beading in the corner of your eye again. “My work visa was still valid, and I renewed it so I can keep working at the hospital. I don’t really have anyone down here except the girls I work with, but I like helping out. They need me.” He nods a little as he listens, breaking his focus as he starts his reps with the bar.

“And you’re government, so that explains everything I need to know about you,” you continue to babble. “One of the girls I work with has a husband who’s at the Embassy. Murphy,” you say offhandedly.

Javier’s attention is caught, and he sets the bar on the rack. “Murphy?” He asks, and you turn your head to look at him and give him a nod. “No shit. That’s my partner.”

You chuckle slightly and look back at him, stopping the treadmill. “So you know Connie?”

Javi nods. “Yeah, great gal. She could do better than Steve,” he says, sitting up.

You laugh softly at that. “From what I’ve heard of him, I agree. She’s a really great girl, you’re right,” you nod in agreement, looking back at him. “She’s never mentioned you. She says her husband’s in janitorial, but we all know that’s not true. What, you guys CIA? DEA?”

Javier nods again. “DEA.”

“I see,” you say, folding your arms and leaning against the machine. “Can’t make you many friends around here. I learned pretty quickly to keep my mouth shut about being a gringa. They can usually tell though.”

“You’re right,” he chuckles and cracks his back.

You bite your lip as you look at him, your voice watery when you can finally speak again, suddenly overwhelmed by emotion again. “It’s nice to talk to someone in English again,” you admit with a forced smile.

He can read your eyes easily. You’re a nurse, and you told him that the victim died. You saw it. “It is,” he nods, reading your pain and trying to show you he empathizes with it. Your eyes are beautiful, he notices as he looks into them. So much more hope and trust than anyone else he works with, but the pain in them is unbearable. He looks away, leaning back on the bench to lift again.

“So where you from in the States?” You finally ask when the silence is too long.

“Laredo, Texas,” he chuckles. “Yourself?”

#javier peña x reader #javi peña x reader #javier peña #javi peña #pedro pascal #pedro pascal x reader #jose pedro balmaceda pascal #pedro pascal fanfiction #pascalpanic #narcos #narcos fanfic #blood sweat and tears

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minor-solemnity · 3 years

Note

What's your favorite character from the golden trio era?

Oooh idk possibly this is an unpopular opinion - at least it was when I was like, properly in the fandom rather than where I am now which is firmly on the sidelines with my hands over my ears and ignoring everything that I don't like - but Cho Chang. This is probably in part because she got so much undeserved hatred (thank u fandom and author racism) and I am predisposed to like characters that people don't like.

I find her character so heartbreakingly real in a way that I think is entirely accidental on JKR's part. I don't think JK can write women. (Plz don't hate me for that, but like, it's true.) Everything interesting about the characters we are meant to like gets sanded down and ignored in the later books - Hermione's whole thing is like, book smart but not emotionally intelligent, she wants to be right and have people know she's right more than she cares about their feelings. She thinks rules are important until they apply to her. She is ruthless and vindictive and petty. These are interesting character traits that just get completely dropped in the later books. By the time book 6 ends and book 7 starts Hermione is 'wife' and 'mother' and it's kinda sad.

I digress.

Cho's boyfriend is murdered. Cho is understandably upset and heartbroken and sad af. She tries to find comfort in Harry because Harry was there, Harry must understand. Harry can help her process. Their ways of dealing with trauma are completely opposite to each other. Cho seeks emotional vulnerability and closeness from the boy who, of all people, will understand. Harry's way of processing trauma is to ignore it. It happened, it sucks, I will never speak of it again (until all my unprocessed emotions come spilling out and I end up lashing out and getting angry). Those two ways of dealing with trauma are not going to work well together. Harry is honestly a dick towards her - she's his fantasy. She's not a real person to him. When that fantasy comes crashing down he behaves pretty awfully towards her. And if you're reading critically, you come away thinking yeah, Cho's a whiny crybaby who doesn't get Harry at all. What a bitch. When in reality, it's more like - Cho is seriously fucked up and is trying to come to terms with her grief and seek comfort in someone who she thought would get it.

Imagine being like, 16 and being isolated and sad and so fundamentally misunderstood. Imagine being 18 and your friends are dead and the boy you liked is still dead and the other boy you thought you might like is a hero and the only thing you're really known for is the mess that is your grief. Imagine that the popular consensus is that your grief is something to be ridiculed.

I tend to pick and chose which parts of the extended canon I believe in, but I believe in Cho moving to America and getting hitched to an American muggle dude. (Moving to America is probably my own headcanon actually). What would motivate her to move across the world? Grief? Wonderlust? Anger? I imagine it's all three. Idk if this is a relatable feeling to a lot of people, but I get it. I have a constant itch under my skin that tells me to move on whenever a place starts to feel too much like home. To leave. To escape. Nowhere feels like home because home is a collection of broken things. It's a hall of funhouse mirrors - the wires in your brain get mixed up. Comfort and safety become synonymous with 'i will fuck this up' and 'i don't deserve this' and 'everyone will leave'.

I want so many things for Cho. I want her name to make sense. I want her to be seen as something other than 'pretty' and 'sad'. I want her in Boston slamming Sam Adams by Sam Adams grave because she finds it funny. I want her in Boston, learning to drive a car (stick-shift because the driving instructor had made a comment about how automatics are easier to learn and she is tired of people seeing her as something weak and unable). I want her road-raging and I want her to drive across the country because why the fuck not. I want her in New York and the city is so frantic and no one looks at her and she feels so small and the lights are so bright and she thinks maybe she could disappear here and no one would ever know. I want her to find a group of women rollerskating and maybe they invite her to their roller derby group. It isn't flying, but it's fast and aggressive and she's never allowed herself to be aggressive like this before. She's not allowed herself to be angry like this before. No one else has allowed her to be angry like this before.

I want her to go to California and to go to Angel Island and I want her to understand that there have been people like her before. That she is not alone in this feeling. I want her to meet a dude who's studying for an MBA - he doesn't know who she is. Doesn't know what she is. She's just this cute girl who drinks Sam Adams even tho that's a Boston thing and they're in San Diego. He's probably a frat boy. I want him to be a frat boy who takes his degree too seriously and wakes up at like 5 because he's also a gym rat. He takes her to his boxing class. She probably cries during and hey that's okay - she has a lot of shit to work through, he can tell. He doesn't ask about it. Just says her accent is cute. Maybe she starts taking night classes, maybe she doesn't. She's weirdly technologically illiterate - she sends him postcards even though they live in the same city. She says its because her school didn't let them have phones. She's never seen a Tarintino film and that's just like... not cool. They watch True Romance on his shitty box TV in his room in his frat house and she laughs (she laughs like the violence is cathartic) when Alabama completely destroys Virgil. He looks at her and she shrugs and says 'I get it.'

She says that's she's leaving soon - doesn't know where. Probably isn't coming back and again that's... not cool. She's weird about some stuff. Won't talk about home - won't say where she's from. He should be fine with it because like, it's not as if this is anything serious and his life is pretty clearly planned out. Get an MBA, work in some start-up tech company - the internet is a thing now and god, there's money to be made. He thinks maybe that she should like, stay but she also seems like the kind of person who doesn't know how to stop running. And look, he's doing an MBA. He rushed his frat. He goes to boxing every morning without fail. He's determined. He's not good at letting the things he wants go. But he lets her go because she doesn't want to stay. One night afterwards, his frat bro says, philosophical because they're crossfaded, that maybe she can't stay. Maybe she won't let herself stay. And that... That sounds about right.

So he waits. He waits and he gets postcards with no return address - in Seattle, she tries ice hockey. In Miami, she tries surfing. He almost gets on a plane to Cincinnati because she got into a fight with some dude who made his girlfriend cry in public. Apparently, she knocked him out with a punch just the way he showed her to. It feels weirdly romantic.

I want her to write a postcard to him when she's sitting in a bar in Las Vegas and I want her to include a return address. I want him on the first flight out, because fuck his classes? She included a return address. He asks her if she's ever going to go home and she looks at him and says, 'What? To San Diego?'

#cho chang #meta #oh god i wrote meta #this isn't even meta tbh - this is basically a fic #this very much got away from me #can u tell i have feelings about women being angry?#grief and anger taste the same #harry potter #asks #anon #she speaks

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tf2-hellhole · 4 years

Note

MERCS having nightmares and their s/o is just their for them because damnit they need love and support to-

I kind of imagined that this is the first time the mere had a nightmare while sharing a bed with their S/O

I kept in mind that you shouldn’t wake someone from a nightmare unless they’re moving so much they could hurt themselves.

Scout:

When he has nightmares, they’re usually about his childhood bullies coming for him and hurting him. They don’t happen very often.

He shifts a lot during a nightmare, and he sometimes mutters things like “Please…” or “Leave me alone…”. So they’re not super intense, and they’re not enough to wake up his S/O.

But he eventually does wake up on his own. He sits up with a whimper and tries to stop trembling, but he can’t. He doesn’t want to wake up his S/O, but eventually gives in and nudges them awake.

“Scout? What’s wrong?” they ask while looking up at him. He doesn’t answer, he just lies down against them, throws an arm over their stomach, and nuzzles into their neck with a sniffle. They can feel his hot tears against their skin. They cuddle him close and kiss his cheek. After a short while they can feel his shaking fade, and he falls asleep again soon after.

Soldier:

Soldier has PTSD from his time in Europe. It obviously doesn’t affect him in battle, but it sometimes has an effect on the domestic parts of his life. Obviously he wasn’t a part of the military but he was often in or near American bases and camps anyway. Around once every two weeks, he has vivid nightmares about seeing the dead American soldiers bodies being carried away, or soldiers on the edge of death crying out in pain as they lay in the dirt.

When in a nightmare, he usually just balls his fists and mutters softly, so it doesn’t wake up his S/O either.

But at some point, he’ll jolt upright with a loud yell, which startles his S/O awake too. He freezes up in terror until he feels his S/O’s hands on his shoulder and cheek, and hears their worried cries. He looks up at them for a moment before pulling them close. His S/O never forgets the look of fear in his eyes after a nightmare; it’s the only time he’s ever scared of anything.

They sit up for a while with the lights on to let him calm down, while his S/O comforts him and strokes his back. After 10-15 minutes, he slowly crawls back into bed and holds his S/O to his chest for comfort.

Pyro:

Pyro had some sort of traumatic experience with fire when they were young that scarred a lot of their skin. They never explain what the incident was or how they were hurt to their S/O, and they politely don’t push for Pyro to share. They have nightmares about it every once in a while.

They toss and turn a lot and accidentally wake up their S/O, but they’re not moving around enough for them to have to wake Pyro. It hurts to have to watch them writhe in the sheets and whimper softly.

The eventually wake up on their own. They sit up, and their S/O can hear them crying in their mask. Pyro turns to them, and the moment they realize their S/O is awake, they practically throw themselves on top of them and bury their head in their chest.

Pyro needs a lot of cuddles and kind words for them to calm them enough to even try to sleep again. They eventually do like an hour later, but they need their S/O wrapped around them to feel safe enough.

Demo:

Demo has nightmares about a lot of things, but most involve his family. He nightmares are often about his parents and the harsh way they would treat him. Sometimes they’re also about losing his S/O and his mother (despite the way his mother treats him, he still loves her dearly). And every once in a while, they’re about when he lost his eye as a kid.

He mutters a lot when he’s having a nightmare and squirms every once in a while, but it’s not enough to wake his S/O. Eventually he jolts awake with tears stinging his eyes. He reaches over to gently touch his S/O’s hand until they wake up.

He waits until they sit up to pull them into a tight hug and explains what happened. His voice is breaking when he explains what he saw. His S/O grabs him some tissue and sits with him until he finally calms down and gives them a weak but appreciative smile. He’ll probably try to calm his nerves with alcohol, but he doesn’t protest if his S/O stops him

He needs his S/O to spoon him for him to fall back asleep. If the dream was particularly bad he’s not going to be able to fall back asleep, so he asks his S/O if they can stay up to cuddle and watch TV until morning.

Heavy:

Out of all of the mercs, he’s definitely one of the guys that is most prone to nightmares. He has nightmares about his father’s death. He didn’t actually see his father’s execution, so he dreams about what his last hours must have been like. He also has nightmares about losing the people he cares about. It’s canon that he has nightmares about losing Medic, but he also sees the loss of his S/O, his sisters, or his mother. He has nightmares fairly often.

One wouldn’t be able to tell he’s having a nightmare unless they’re looking really closely. He furrows his brow and might mutter softly from time to time, but that’s it. Obviously this doesn’t wake his S/O.

He wakes up on his own. He’s not crying or anything, but he’s very shaken up. He carefully and slowly gets up while trying not to wake his S/O, but lifting his weight off the bed wakes them up anyway. If they get up to see what’s wrong he’ll try to gently push them back down but they refuse to.

They’ll sit up with him and ask him if he needs anything. He says no but pulls them into a hug. They can feel that he’s shaking a little.

He knows he’s not going to go to sleep again that night so he makes himself a sandwich (his S/O offers to do it but he insists on making it himself) and stays up reading with his S/O cuddled to his side.

Engie:

Engie doesn’t have regular nightmares due to any trauma but he does sometimes have random nightmares as a result of stress. They don’t happen very often.

During a nightmare he generally moves vary little, but he might lash out. He’s not gonna pull force punch what’s in front of him, but he’s probably gonna whack his S/O’s arm in his sleep, which wakes them up. His S/O sits up to make sure he doesn’t whack anything hard and hurt his hand.

He wakes up on his own with a little jolt and a shaky gasp. He looks up at his S/O and apologizes a ton when he realizes that he’d woken them. They tell him he doesn’t need to apologize and pull him close. He sniffles softly as he leans into the comforting hug and wraps his arms around his S/O’s waist.

The nightmares never shake him up too badly, so he can fall back asleep easier than the other mercs, but he does need contact with his S/O to be comfortable enough to fall asleep. He probably spoons them (or gets spooned) or pulls them to his chest with their face against his chest.

Medic:

You wouldn’t think Medic gets nightmares, but he does on rare occasions. They are caused by a combination of stress and childhood trauma. Like I’ve mentioned in the past, I headcanon that Medic’s parents were aristocrats who were very neglectful of him. To them, he was their annoying little heir and nothing else. He sometimes has nightmares about how cruelly his parents would treat him; They never beat him but they would often withhold food or his belongings and berate him if he misbehaved.

Medic talks a lot during nightmares. It quickly wakes his S/O and they hear his side of the conversation with his parents. He is pleading with his parents for food or his belongings, all in German. Even if his S/O doesn’t speak it, they can tell what’s going on by the tone of his voice.

They can tell he’s woken up when he goes quiet and they hear a sniffle from his curled up form. They lean over him and softly call his name. He doesn’t move or say anything, so his S/O just lays back down and rubs his arm to comfort him.

He eventually flips over to face them and softly whispers, “Liebling?” to see if they’re still awake. When they look up at him, he just scoots closer and wraps them in his arms. He apologizes for ignoring them, he was just shaken up and had needed a moment. He doesn’t fall asleep that night, he just cuddles his S/O.

Sniper:

Sniper, like Heavy, is very prone to nightmares. They vary wildly in what they’re about. Sometimes he has nightmares about being caught by a Spy, or the death of his parents, or being shot in New Zealand, or losing the only person he has left, his S/O. On rare occasions they’re also about the children who would bully and beat him in school. He’s one of the mercs who’s had the most emotional trauma, so that plus stress gives him nightmares very often, sometimes a few times a week.

Sniper trembles a lot when he’s having a nightmare, but it’s not enough to wake his S/O up yet. After a while the nightmare wakes him, and it shook him up so badly that he has to sit up and rub his face while trying to slow his breathing. He tries to sit up slowly but the movement of the mattress wakes his S/O anyways. They sit up and ask what’s wrong. He only says, “Just a nightmare, nothing to worry about.” If they ask if he wants to talk about it, he shakes his head.

He’s pretty shaken, so he has to sit up for a while. His S/O just sits with him quietly, rubbing his back with one hand and holding his hand with the other. He knows he’s not going to be able to go back to sleep, but he still lays down and pull his S/O onto his chest to cuddle them until they fall asleep. Even though he won’t sleep, feeling their warm body on top of his still makes him feel a lot better.

Spy:

Spy would never ever admit it but he has nightmares every once in a while. They’re sometimes about his early years as an assassin, but they’re often about losing the people he loves. They’re often about his enemies finding out about his S/O, Scout, and Scout’s ma (he is no longer attracted to Scout’s ma but he still cares deeply for her) and taking them to torture or kill them.

He doesn’t move or anything during a nightmare, but after a while he jolts awake. He immediately rolls over to check if his S/O is next to him, and lets out a sigh of relief when he sees them curled up in the blanket. He slowly gets up and leaves the bedroom to have a smoke; He growls in frustration when he notices how much his hands are shaking when he tries to light the cigarette.

But after a minute, his S/O walks out of the bedroom, rubbing their eyes and yawning. They had been slowly woken up by Spy rolling over to check on them, slow enough that he didn’t realize they were waking up. Spy tells them to go back to bed, but they approach him to ask what’s wrong only for him to turn towards them and coldly repeat himself. He immediately regrets what he’s done when he sees the offended look on their face, but doesn’t say anything when they hiss “Fine,” in response and go back into the bedroom.

He feels bad about being rude, but he doesn’t go back to apologize until that morning. He spends the rest of the night reading and smoking to get his mind off the nightmare.

#tf2 #teamfortress2 #tf2 scout #tf2 soldier #tf2 pyro #tf2 demoman #tf2 heavy #tf2 engineer #tf2 medic #tf2 sniper #tf2 spy #tf2 headcanons #tf2 imagines #tf2 x reader #tf2 x s/o #tf2 x y/n

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sayuricorner · 3 years

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Miraculous Ladybug salt x Jojo’s bizarre adventure: “Biodad!Jonathan Joestar” AU

Headcanons part 1

Warning: English is not my first language so sorry if it’s confusing.

Warning 2: This AU content salt don’t like don’t read!

Warning 3: For the Jojo character’s palettes colors I use the anime palette colors as reference.

If you want to use this AU you can! just credite and tag me in return please! :)

----------------------------

So, in many ML biodad AUs Marinette’s bio dad is most of the time someone like Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark, but how about:

Biodad! Jonathan Joestar AU

I mean when you think about it both Marinette and Jonathan are alike in looks and personnality!

Appearance:

-Both got blue hair

-Both got light blue eyes

Personnality:

-Both are kind souls

-Both are selfless and think about others before themself most of the time

-Both got a strong sense of justice

-Both are very smart

-Both are combative when needed

-Both don’t hesitate to put themself in danger to protect others

-Both can over-react when they’re carried away by their emotions

And just imagine the story possibilities with this AU!

“But Sayuri! Jonathan Joestar is from the Victorian aera and Marinette is born in the french modern aera how Jonathan would be Marinette’s bio dad in this AU?”

Well the same way which make Giorno, Donatello, Ungalo and Rikiel Jonathan’s kids:

Yep! In this AU Marinette is another child born from Dio’s one night stands!

Now I know that make Marinette Dio’s daughter too and I know Giorno, Donatello, Ungalo and Rikiel are mostly know as Dio’s children but to be honest I consider them more as Jonathan’s kids than as Dio’s because honnestly outside of the head the rest of the body is Jonathan’s.

How Marinette’s conception happen then? Well here’s how:

Years before Marinette’s birth, a young adult Sabine Cheng was on a trip in Egypt, she meet Dio in a bar one night, he seduced her and they got a one night stand, with Dio having the intention to suck Sabine’s blood after, but at one Dio got a brutal crisis.

Normally anyone would get afraid and run away but instead Sabine, being the kind person she was, had done all she can to calm down Dio with all the tenderness she can give. And without being aware of it this actually saved her life.

After helping Dio to calm down both fall asleep, Dio woke up later in night while Sabine was still asleep.

Remembering the warm and familiar kind feeling he experienced during his “episode”, a feeling he didn’t feel for a very long time, he decided to spare Sabine under the pretext he wasn’t in the mood to suck her blood anymore before living to go back to his mansion.

In the morning Sabine wake up only to notice Dio left and never see him again after that night, she go on with her trip and when she go back to France she found out she was pregnant.

She decided to keep the baby, times later she meet and fall in love with Tom Dupain, both end up marrying to each other and Tom adopt Marinette and became legally her father.

The Dupain-Cheng couple also decided to give her a middle name “Joanne” in memory of one of Tom’s aunts with who he was close, making her full name “Marinette Joanne Dupain-Cheng”

Does that mean Marinette in this AU had the Joestar birthmark? Yep, she does! And she also got the Joestar genes when it’s come to body shape: as a kid she look like a shrimp but when she will be older she will get rather tall and will got more muscules to her peers’s surprise.

Did she had a stand in this AU? Yes!

Her stand is called [Viva la vida], a reference to the Coldplay’s song, this stand had the power to create miracles like making plants grow, healing illness and bad injures or being a big source of luck she also had a big affinity with plants and animals. But her powers had limits for example while her miracles allow her to bring back someone to life it’s only possible if the dead person isn’t dead for a too long time and make a powerfull miracle drain Marinette energy and she end up knocked out for a time.

When Marinette is Ladybug, [Viva la vida]’s miracles powers are stronger.

[Viva la vida] isn’t a stand know for her strengh but she’s very fast which allow her to make a lot of punches and kicks at the same time.

Stand’s appearance: [Viva la vida] is an humanoid stand with beetle features, her color schemes are black white and pink, she had beetle wings, big rond blue non-reflective eyes and her head is rond with two anthenas and is a head smaller than Marinette.

But if [Viva la vida] is a cute stand when Marinette is a civil, when the young girl took her Ladybug form, her stand took a more imposing and majesting appearance, she became taller, more muscular, her eyes smaller and almond shaped, her whole body get more armors features and her colors scheme change to black and red with black dots and she emit a rather intimidating aura.

Stand’s behavior: [Viva la vida] is a very expressive stand and very sentient and is a friendly and playfull stand. She’s very curious by nature and had the habit to examin in curiosity when Marinette meet new people or stands. Her being very sentient allow her to sometimes act as a conscience to Marinette.

She also love to eat cookies baked by Marinette.

When Marinette is Ladybug, [Viva la vida] is more serious and a more combative behavior.

Stand’s cry: “Mira!” a reference to “miraculous” and to the word miracle.

AU additional details:

-Class salt

-Bustier salt/bad teacher Bustier

-Adrien salt or Adrien sugar(it’s up to whoever use this AU)

-Lila salt

-Chloe redemption

-Class redemption, a part having a redemption or none of them having a redemption(you choose)

-Permanent miraculous user Luka

-Permanent miraculous user Kagami

-Stand user Luka

-Not everyone die AU/temporary death AU: if some Jojo characters like the Pillarmen, Caesar, Kakoyin, Avdol and Iggy are alive but others like Buccellatti, Abbacchio, Narancia and La Squadra are still dead but will not stay dead(You’ll see).

-Good father Jotaro

-Marinette's closed friends/loved ones calling her "Jojo" in reference to her middle name "Joanne"

-Donatello, Ungalo and Rikiel adopted by the Dupain-Cheng

-Protective siblings Donatello, Giorno, Rikiel and Ungalo

-Marinette being the baby sister of all Jonathan’s and Dio’s kids

-[Viva la vida] being a cute stand

-Marinette, Giorno, Donatello, Ungalo and Rikiel not acknowledging Dio as their dad

-Protective Joestar family

-Jonadad

-Good parents Sabine and Tom Dupain-Cheng

-Permanent miraculous users Donatello, Ungalo and Rikiel

-Badass Marinette

-Scientist Gina Dupain at Speedwagon Foundation

-Diavolo and Doppio getting differents boddies

-Akumatised Marinette with her stand being corrupted and turned into a sentimonster.(You’ll see! ;) )

-Temporary Ladybug!Giorno (You’ll see! ;) )

-Diavolo still stuck in the death loop(’cause it’s only canon if Diavolo die!)

-The Pillarmen knowing about the miraculous

-Shipping:You decide the ship you want just not Adrinette please

Arcs for this AU:

The bizarre origins arc:

This arc is about the origins of Marinette’s birth, her growing up and getting a stand, becoming Ladybug and learning to accomplish her duties as Ladybug while learning to control and use her stand and meeting others stand users.(ex: Luka)

The bizarre USA adventures arc:

Take place times after Lila’s return, the liar keep her word and little by little Marinette’s friends turned their back on her and the fights against the akumas are always very hard to not say harder especially ever since she became the guardian.

Seeing their daughter’s moral so down Sabine and Tom decide to send Marinette to Gina to the USA for summer break. After making sure to had Kaalki with her to teleport back to Paris when an akuma attack, Marinette go on a trip to the USA with her grandmother.

But what should have been a normal vacation trip will take a bizarre turn when Marinette will learn about Gina’s job at the mysterious Speedwagon Foundation which will lead to a meeting with four ancients Aztec gods of fitness, getting informations about stands and her mysterious lineage and a meeting with three american unknow brothers.

(In this AU the Pillarmen aren’t dead after Battle Tendency but they’re detained by the Speedwagon Foundation)

The bizarre mass resurection mystery arc:

A lot of things happened in Marinette’s life, things she didn’t expected whatever in good or bad.

Finding out about her grandmother’s job at the Speedwagon Foundation, learning more about her stand, finding about the existence of three brothers and having said newfound brothers being adopted by her parents, her friends isolating her thank to Lila and learning she by Bustier she and Chloe were banned from the class field trip...

So she decided with to create with other classmates from the school a trip club and after some successful fundraisers the club get a trip to Italy.

And since Hawkmoth seemed to not have attacked for a time there isn’t any problems to go on that trip.

In Italy, on Giorno’s side the part 5 events happen just like in canon while on Marinette’s side she and the trip club get a good time in Italy until a particuliary violent stand user akuma attack the country. He was akumatised by Hawkmoth ‘cause Gabriel Agreste was on a business trip in Italy and thought creating a akuma in the country would attract Ladybug and Chat Noir and give him an advantage since the akuma attack in a unfamiliar place.

The fight was very hard but in the end Marinette and her allies were able to beat the akuma and with her miraculous powers combined with her stand powers she revert any damage... it’s even worked for damage/injuries/death by stands leaving Marinette knocked out for a time since she use a lot of energy while using her stand’s miracle powers.

On Giorno’s side after he beat Diavolo and became the boss it was noticed that Buccelatti, Narancia, Abbacchio, the whole La Squadra were bring back to life.

Even Doppio was back but in a boddy of his own.

Everyone thought at first this was the work of [Gold experience requiem] but it was reveiled later this was the work of another stand which will put Giorno, his gang and even Jotaro with the SWF on a big infestigation which will lead them to the stand user resposible for this mystery and unknowly to them and to Marinette to one big bizarre family reunion.

The bizarre family arc:

With everything which happened in Italy, Marinette not only had to deal with Lila, Hawkmoth, the akumas and her guardian duties but also with the discovery of an extended families and horrible and disturbing informations about “one of her bio fathers”.

And one day Lila took things too far leading Marinette to unleash all her frustration, stress and anger making her akumatised and it will be up to Giorno as a temporary Ladybug holder, her true friends and her family to saved her from herself and from Hawkmoth’s influence.

But the task will be hard with not only Marinette being akumatised but also with her stand [Viva la vida] having being unconsciously corrupted by Mayura while trying to corrupt Marinette turning her into a sentimonster.

The bizarre final showdown arc:

A alliance between Hawkmoth and a mysterious priest will lead the miraculous villain to his ultimate plan by helping the priest to resurect a powerful man, a man infamous for being a curse to the Joestar family and to the world, with the promise to achieve Heaven and to gain a power which will allow Hawkmoth to do all he want.

It will be up to Marinette, her friends, allies and her new found family to put an end to Hawkmoth once for all and to beat this priest before the worst happen with the resurection of the infamous Dio.

But bizarre chains of events will lead to another resurection, the resurection of a man very well know by the Joestar family and who’s tightly connected to Marinette, Giorno, Donatello, Ungalo and Rikiel.

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franniebanana · 3 years

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CQL Rewatch - Ep 23

Seriously, how useless are these two right now? The puppets all dropped dead around them, yet none of them run up to help Wei Wuxian. I think we saw Lan Wangji running, but he just had dramatic close-up shots for the first few minutes as well. Like, stop looking dumbfounded and stop just providing facial reactions to things, and get up there! Act like you're in a war, gdi! They're reacting to seeing Wen Ruohan stabbed, which I chose not to cap for obvious reasons.

So even though I knew the story from the book, I still think this moment is pretty cool when they reveal that it's Jin Guangyao who has stabbed Wen Ruohan literally and figuratively in the back. The last time we saw him, poor Nie Mingjue was getting the crap beat out of him by Jin Guangyao, so seeing this here--like, ooh! Double-double-cross! Triple-cross!! It's fun to see a twist that doesn't make you groan! Because, of course, you want to root for Jin Guangyao because he's a bastard and has always been looked down on everyone. Now you see that he was not a villain at all, and he was actually helping the good guys by double-crossing Wen Ruohan! Of course, we know he really is a villain and all, but most of that really doesn't come until later in the story haha.

I do enjoy the light parallels here between Lan Xichen and his brother. We see both of them willing to give their best friends the benefit of the doubt and protect them from those who are less willing, let's say. And both of them are even willing to stand up to other people they know and trust. Nie Mingjue is one of Lan Xichen's closest friends, and we see Lan Wangji stand up to his own uncle. If you're looking at CQL without the romance angle (which, why would you?), this parallel is a bit more striking. You basically have two sets of bosom friends. Obviously one set crumbles at the end, but there are definitely a lot of parallels and comparisons to make. And sorry, for a show that couldn't have any gay characters, they sure made it seem like Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao had a thing for each other (even though neither of them is gay in the book, mind you). A weird sort of change--I don't even ship them, but their early scenes seemed very shippy. Maybe it's my American lens, I don't know.

But speaking of weird changes, allow me to go on a tangent. Wen Qing's role expansion doesn't bother me, not really. I kind of say it does, but it's not really the expansion that gets to me. It's the fact that she was going to be a love interest for Wei Wuxian that bothers me. Wei Wuxian is gay. He's gay. Lan Wangji is also gay--if not gayer. Her being a love interest for either one of them means they are no longer gay. Bi, maybe, but what that would have done was erase their canon sexuality. It would have also turned their relationship into that horribly tropey brothers-in-arms or whatever name you want to give it--basically JUST FRIENDS who want to defend each other's honor. You can certainly read CQL that way, but if you are, I don't think you're paying attention to Wang Yibo's performance at all. And if you're not paying attention to the second lead, then why are you watching this show at all? So, changing their sexuality changes the whole show (which already is so tropey, from what I understand) into something so derivative, I wouldn't even want to bother watching it. One of the things I think you take away from CQL is Lan Wangji's, frankly, undying love for Wei Wuxian. If he goes and has a fling with Wen Qing at any point, that cheapens his character dramatically in my opinion. Lots of people can say this better than me, and probably have, but I'm very grateful to those passionate fans (and to Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo) for helping to change the script from the original drafts, which were frankly no better than a junky harlequin romance, having Wen Qing passed around like a piece of meat, which is so far from her character in the novel, and definitely a disservice to her.

Not gonna lie, it's adorable to think that Jiang Yanli and Lan Wangji have been talking over the past few days, maybe having tea together, while Wei Wuxian is in a coma. I feel Lan Wangji was a very calming presence for Jiang Yanli, because she was probably very worried and fretful over Wei Wuxian. I like the idea of him playing the guqin for Wei Wuxian, and then having tea and a quiet chat with Jiang Yanli before leaving. Also very cute that Wei Wuxian is half-heartedly trying to badmouth Lan Wangji, by calling him boring and uninteresting, but he can't even get through the sentence without smiling to himself. Obviously he's loving the idea that Lan Wangji has been at his side every day, worrying over him and slowly doing his part to nurse him back to health.

I love his expression here: shock and relief and joy, all mixed together upon seeing that Wei Wuxian has woken up. Obviously he knew he'd wake up eventually, but he didn't expect it so soon and I don't think he expected his heart to be in his throat and to be so indescribably happy to see Wei Wuxian awake.

Wei Wuxian, of course, can't really meet his eyes, and Jiang Yanli makes a swift exit (she knows what's up--these boys need to talk). And Lan Wangji just has love in his eyes: Heart-guang Jun. I mean, imagine how he must be feeling right now. He had just gotten Wei Wuxian back from what seemed like certain death, finally reconciled, and then Wei Wuxian is in a coma! He must have been terrified of losing him again. It's probably all he can do right now to not hug Wei Wuxian.

I seriously love everything about this scene. I love the colors, the cinematography, the longing glances Wei Wuxian gives Lan Wangji, the way Lan Wangji quietly scolds him while still playing the guqin because he's a professional. But really, I just find this scene very pretty and moving and emotional. I enjoy seeing Lan Wangji getting to take care of him and even more that Wei Wuxian lets him and puts up with it. I think most of us are quick to retort a good old, "I'm fine" when asked how we are, but in this case, Wei Wuxian is not fine, and he has no ground to stand on if he's trying to prove that. It's hard for Wei Wuxian at this point, though, to really lean on anyone, even Lan Wangji who is his best friend. He certainly can't lean on Jiang Cheng for reasons I don't think I need to go into again. He kind of leans on Yanli, but at the same time, he can't (and doesn't wish to) burdon her either. Lan Wangji is really the one person he should be able to lean on and seek comfort from, but he feels awkward and uncomfortable, because of the dark spiritual energy and giving up the sword, and Lan Wangji's crusade to help him.

"Who is good and who is evil?" Wei Wuxian is struggling with a moral dilemma: is it right to round up the Wens and kill them/hold them captive? The Wens did horrible things, after all, and this is the reality of war. Of course, we've just seen Lan Xichen struggling with it as well. Why capture the women and children and elderly, who have nothing to do with the war? He's only met with the fact that it's not just the male cultivators who are dangerous. Still, his mind is only placated by the lie that the people will just be interrogated and sent to a labor camp--then cut to the blood on the floor. So Wei Wuxian is not only struggling with what the Jin Clan and other clans are doing, but he's also thinking about his own deeds--how many people did he kill? How many did he brutally murder in the name of revenge? Because of the things he's done, is he good or evil? Is good and evil so black and white? Does it just depend on whose lens you're viewing it through?

Lan Wangji looks at Wei Wuxian with all of this knowledge and doesn't know what to think. He's afraid of what Wei Wuxian has become, afraid he'll end up like Wen Ruohan--he's afraid of losing him entirely. But the situation is not black and white, and good and evil is not so easily defined. You can only know once you know that person's heart, and Wei Wuxian isn't really letting Lan Wangji in anymore. He's trying to convince him with his words, but that is simply not good enough.

I think if Lan Wangji hadn't stopped him here, Wei Wuxian would have played that flute and tried to end all of the Jin "hunting party" (sorry, that was a little dark). His emotions were already high after the conversation with Lan Wangji on the cliff, and we've already seen him feeling disturbed by how the Wens are being chased and rounded up. I, for one, wouldn't have complained if Jin Zixuan's cousin bit the dust earlier. I think his name is Jin Zixun. Is that it? See, even I don't remember him.

I love how even though they are far apart, this scene still feels very intimate. It's very moving, and the music and the cinematography help to cultivate that feeling. I like how Wei Wuxian perks up when he hears Lan Wangji pluck the first few notes, and Lan Wangji does the same when he hears the sound of Wei Wuxian's flute. I feel like they are spiritually connected here as they play this haunting duet. And I think it's a connection they haven't felt for a long time. There has been so much tension between them for so long, and this scene feels like a big sigh from both of them. While I still feel like there is tension present, there is a bit of a release here--at least, that's how I feel as a viewer.

Ah, yes, the awkward period where Jiang Cheng has become leader of the Yunmeng Jiang Sect, wants to control Wei Wuxian, but doesn't know how. He's new at this, so I can't blame him for being a bit awkward as he figures out what he's supposed to be doing. As a young man, he basically nagged Wei Wuxian for doing inappropriate things, but now when Wei Wuxian misbehaves, Jiang Cheng is in part responsible for that behavior. At some point or another, the two of them grew up. Wei Wuxian's misbehavior isn't precocious anymore--it's serious and it has consequences, and just as in Gusu, Jiang Cheng sees that those actions are a reflection of the Jiang Clan. Only now, they aren't just a reflection of the clan, they're also a reflection of Jiang Cheng, himself, and his leadership (or lack thereof).

And speaking of awkward...Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji have some...unresolved...stuff to deal with. But God forbid they actually talk right now. How can they? They're at this stuffy banquet that neither one of them want to be at. I feel for them both. Wei Wuxian is hurt because he thinks Lan Wangji doesn't trust him. Lan Wangji feels terrible because he wants to help Wei Wuxian, but the latter won't really let him in and allow him to do so. I feel myself just on pins and needles during these scenes with all these glances, but at the same time, I love it because DRAMA and ANGST! And they're just so in love lolol.

Nie Mingjue has to be that guy that always wants a certain table. The waiter leads him over and says, "Is this table okay?" expecting the answer to be yes, but nope--not Nie Mingjue. He'll request a different table. XD

I love this little conversation--it's like they're both measuring each other up. I think they each have a healthy distrust of the other. Although Wei Wuxian has always been kind to Jin Guangyao, I don't think that discounts the whole demonic cultivation thing in his mind. He knows Wei Wuxian is smart and clever and, most importantly, capable. And as for Wei Wuxian, I don't think the ease in which Jin Guangyao manipulated Wen Ruohan is lost on him.Essentially the downfall of this great cultivator and enemy of all the other clans was due to one man: Jin Guangyao. I think Wei Wuxian is thinking the same thing I am: he's extremely clever, devious, and potentially dangerous if you get on his bad side. His rise to power within the Jin Clan is kind of amazing. His estranged father admits to Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen that Jin Guangyao is his son, his station has improved drastically in a short amount of time. He sure as hell is dangerous.

Jiang Yanli can hardly contain her excitement when Jin Guangshan brings up her former engagement to his son. Just kidding, of course. I'm kind of horrified for her that he's bringing this up now in front of all these people. It feels very much like he's pressuring not only her, but also his son to get engaged again. First of all, Jiang Fengmian and Jin Guangshan agreed at the time to let the children decide whether they wanted to get married or not. Second, if you're going to talk about this, at least do it in private! Third, this is not letting the kids decide. God, this would be humiliating! And I also totally expected Jiang Cheng to speak for his sister here, so I'm glad he didn't do that. It's really none of his business either.

Lol! The weird cutoff here! Who's speaking??? I don't know!!! I mean, obviously, it's Wei Wuxian, but it's like they don't expect us to recognize his voice hahahahaha.

Other episodes: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | Or just check out the #CQL Rewatch hashtag

#wangxian #wei wuxian #lan wangji #theuntameddaily #cql #the untamed #jiang cheng #jiang yanli #wen qing #jin guangyao #lan xichen #ep 23 #cql rewatch

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hellpotter · 3 years

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17 and 31 from the prompts list plz<3

this is not your fault, okay? i promise and i don’t deserve to be loved | percabeth

warnings: might contain triggers (mentions to war, death and ptsd)

Annabeth is still in that post-sex daze when Percy rolls to his side and curls up besides her, throwing one arm over her waist.

The feeling pulls her back to full consciousness and her body stiffens instantly with the realization that he’s probably almost half asleep. She straightens up quickly and notices his eyes widening and his body waking up with the movement.

“Hm, I-,” she mutters while searching for her underwear between the sheets. She realizes she has already used all of her good excuses for leaving him previously. It had been getting harder and harder to come up with a reasonable justification for her to go, and she accepts that today it is going to be ridiculous.

“Looking for this?” His voice is hoarse and low, and he holds her cotton panties between his fingers. When she tries to snatch them, though, he yanks them away from her reach.

Guess he isn’t as sleepy as she’d thought before.

“Percy,” she scowls. “That’s not funny.”

“No?,” he says, as he pulls her panties further when she tries to reach them one more time. “I disagree.”

“Please, stop it. I really should go, I... Uh, I-,” he raises his eyebrows when she mumbles, trying to figure out what to say next. “I have to work early tomorrow, I need to rest,” she makes up.

He sighs and hands her her underwear, but what he says next makes her paralyze.

“No, you don’t.”

“What?“

“Tomorrow’s Sunday, Annabeth. I know you’ve been making excuses not to sleep with me.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, for instance, the fact that we never go back to your place after a date, and the one time we did, you basically kicked me out as soon as you could,” he leans on his elbow, lifting his upper body. “Or that you say things like ‘I need to work’ on a Saturday night, or that your mom has ‘come to visit’ at least 5 times in the past 3 weeks.”

There’s an uncomfortable silence and Annabeth tries to think of something decent to say, but she can’t. So Percy goes on, the dim light making it hard for her to read his expression.

“Look, I-,” he sighs and sits up, putting one hand on her thigh. “I know you don’t owe me anything and it’s okay if you don’t want to... stay the night. But we’ve been seeing each other for, what, more than a month now? I was really hoping we could move forward with this, but I can tell there’s something going on, so...” he clears his throat and trails off.

Annabeth takes a deep breath, considering how she’ll handle this. She’s not sure if she’s ready to tell him the truth.

“Percy, this is not your fault, okay? I promise.”

He nods and waits for her to say something else. She realizes that maybe the truth is her best way out of this now.

“Ok. Maybe we should talk,” she whispers, avoiding to look in his eyes.

She can tell he’s surprised when she gets up to put on her panties and then searches for the shirt he’d been wearing before, pulling it over her head.

“Can you make me some tea?” She asks.

“Okay.”

They stay in silence until the moment he hands her a cup of tea and sits in front of her by the kitchen table. He looks at her expectantly and she stares down at her tea, breathing in.

“So. Remember I told you about when I volunteered to serve in Afghanistan?”

“Yeah. I remember.”

“Well, I-,” she finally looks up and finds his concerned eyes. “I have been diagnosed with PTSD. It’s, um, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

He reaches out and takes her hand on the table. “Oh. Yeah, I... I know what it is.”

She nods. “So, I-,” Annabeth’s not sure why, but she suddenly feels like sharing the whole story with him. “I didn’t really want to go. I mean, it wasn’t exactly my idea. I, um, I had this girlfriend. Reyna.”

She stops talking and takes his expression in. She hadn’t told him about her sexuality before, and she wasn’t sure how he would take it. She notices his eyebrows raise slightly for a second, but he doesn’t say anything, and his eyes hold the same concern. So she continues.

“Reyna and I went to college together and we, um, we were good together and she understood me like anyone else. But she was, like, a natural warrior. Really, I know it sounds stupid, but she was. It wasn’t really a surprise when she volunteered right after we graduated, not at all. I’m not the greatest supporter of American military action, so what really surprised me was when I started to consider going with her. I was so terrified of being alone and of losing her that the idea of going started to feel better than staying. And I could use the money, so it sounded like a win-win.”

She pauses and takes a sip from her tea. She hadn’t talked about this with anyone, except for her therapist, and it was a lot for her.

“Do you regret it?” Percy asks softly. “Going, I mean.”

“I-,” she wasn’t expecting that. “I don’t, actually. But I wouldn’t go back or do something like that again.”

He nods and caresses her hand with his thumb, and they enjoy the silence for a while.

“Anyway. So we went, together. And it was fine, most of the time. We had a lot of quiet days and we got to spend a lot of time together and we met some incredible people. But the bad days... They were really bad,” memories start flashing through her head and she notices there are tears coming down her face when Percy reaches out to wipe them away with his thumb. “So there was this one day. We had a huge fight, me and Reyna. Our time there was ending and she wanted to stay for another year. And I didn’t, I just wanted to come back and start building our life together. A normal life, without guns and tanks and bombs and training.”

The tears are rolling down her eyes uncontrollably now, but she can’t control herself.

“She had to leave before we could even end the discussion. And there was- There was a, um... There was a bombing a few hours later,” she stops and stares at the wall, trying to even her breathe. “And she... I couldn’t even say goodbye.”

Percy gets up and knees down besides her, holding her close while she shakes violently.

“Hey... It’s okay,” he whispers carefully. “You don’t have to say anything else. I’m sorry.”

She tries to remember her therapist words not to feel ashamed of crying, but it’s hard when she’s basically spilling her heart out to... Well, the guy she’s sleeping with, ‘cause she can’t even call him her boyfriend. Or can she? That’s probably something for them to talk about later.

“I’m sorry about that,” she whispers when she can breathe normally again.

“Don’t be,” Percy leans back just enough to look at her face and pulls some curls behind her ear. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”

She answers him with half a smile and takes a deep breath. “After that I came back and... Well, I guess a part of me never did. I blamed myself for it, I felt like I should’ve done something to protect her, and a part of me still does,” he opens his mouth to say something but she goes on. “So most nights I have nightmares, and I wake up screaming or- Well, I can get aggressive sometimes. Or if it takes too long for someone to wake up in the morning I start wondering if maybe something happened to them and I... I lose my mind,” she looks at him, intensely. “It’s hard to... deal with it. For me and for... whomever is nearby. And when something bad happens I feel like... I feel like I don’t deserve to be loved.”

He holds her face in his hands and sustains her gaze. “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. But I won’t let you believe that, okay? It’s not truth, and it’s not fair to yourself. This isn’t your fault, and it doesn’t make you less good or less worthy of love. You do know that, don’t you?”

Annabeth looks down for a moment, his gaze and his words too intense for her to absorb. Rationally, she’s known all of this for a while, and therapy had been helping her cope with all of these feelings well. But the way he looks at her makes her feel actually loved for the first time in years, and that’s a new feeling.

“Hey, listen to me,” he continues, softly. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. And I completely understand if you don’t feel comfortable sleeping with me. It’s your choice, and I’m here to support you nonetheless. Trust me, I can handle messed up and complicated and difficult. But I- I really like you, Annabeth Chase. And well, if you’re up to it, I hope I get to spend a lot of nights with you,” he drops a soft kiss of her lips. “And mornings,” another kiss on her cheeks. “And afternoons,” he whispers close to her ear before kissing the crook of her neck, making her giggle.

She pulls away softly to look at him, her eyes filled with appreciation. “Okay,” she mutters. “I guess I am up for it, after all.”

He kisses her slowly, and, in that moment, she knows she’s starting to fall in love with him. And it scares the hell out of her, but it also makes her heart feel so warm, she’s afraid it might burn.

She can’t tell exactly what it is that they’re starting there, but she knows it feels like something good. And she’s pretty sure they’re off to a good start.

#prompts list #pjo fic #percabeth #percy jackson #annabeth chase #mortal au #living with ptsd #post war trauma #mentioned reyna ramirez-arellano #previous reynabeth #this is way out of my comfort zone #like really idek where this came from #angst #i hope you like it #but idk

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be11atrixthestrange · 3 years

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Waking Up In Vegas Chapter 15

After a night of debauchery, Ron and Hermione wake up in Vegas... married.

Muggle!AU. Romcom!Romione. Slow burning, smutty, angst-fest.

Rated M.

Ao3 | FFN

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*Six Weeks Later*

[Ron]

The flat is small but well-arranged. Bookshelves line the walls from floor to ceiling, maximizing the vertical space that only one of its residents can fully use. The kitchen is sparkling clean, save for two empty red wine-stained glasses in the sink. Usually, the dishes would be washed and stacked away before the clock strikes bedtime, but last night other, more fun activities got in the way.

The apartment's decor is simple — it has to balance the strikingly orange accent wall behind the television. The only other thing commanding attention is the large painting of a cityscape hanging on the wall across from the entry. It's an artistic rendering of a well-known skyline, characterized by neon lights, a replica of the Eiffel Tower, and a series of flashy hotels. Although the portrait might be recognizable to many, it's meaningful to only a few.

As the morning light peeks through the windows, the bedroom's blinds give up on filtering it out. The sun casts a ray across the pillows, illuminating the two sleeping figures entangled together in bed. Gentle and mild, the light is easier to ignore than an intense desert beam, and it takes a few moments for the tall, red-haired man to open his eyes.

When he does, he turns onto his side to bury his face into his pillow. The bed is warm and comfortable — the satin sheets were a worthwhile investment. Same for the pillow, which somehow maintains the perfect combination of cold and cozy. Ever since they bought a new, albeit expensive mattress, his back problems have become a thing of the past.

He smiles at the mountain of fluffy blankets beside him, topped with spirals of bushy brown locks. There's so much goddamn hair. It looks like a plush volcano of cushions is erupting with curly brown hair. He can't decide what he loves more: the explosion of brunette, the bright orange Chudley Cannons t-shirt, the black mens' boxers that have a little too much fabric for a woman, or the person it all belongs to.

Well, technically, the Cannons t-shirt and boxers are his, or at least, were his. But marriage is about sharing.

"Morning, wifey."

Hermione groans and covers her face with a pillow. "Too early."

Ron slips an arm around his wife, encouraging her to turn toward him. She obliges and snuggles up into the crook of his arm, where she fits perfectly. He presses a kiss to her forehead and nuzzles his head into her hair.

It would be easy to stay like this forever, ignoring real-life responsibilities. In a way, their bed has become an escape from reality, an oasis built upon the lessons they learned in Las Vegas. Defined by frequent 'I love you's, reprieves from work, and late-night explorations fueled by a glass of wine and the need to destress, it's the place that keeps them anchored to the magic. Who wouldn't want to stay forever?

But alas, they can't, as they have Maid of Honor and Best Man duties to attend to. Today is Harry and Ginny's wedding, and within a few hours, they need to transition from the carefree vacationers they became in Vegas to the highly organized planners helping to orchestrate the festivities.

Ron groans. Although their friends know they're together — they put on quite a show back in Las Vegas, after all — they haven't revealed the extent of their relationship, and the worst part about being in public together is pretending that Hermione's just his girlfriend.

"We should just tell everyone," murmurs Ron into Hermione's hair.

She chuckles and snuggles closer. "After the wedding. Let's not steal their thunder."

Steal their thunder. To be honest, Ron has frequently fantasized about stealing Harry and Ginny's thunder. A small part of him is jealous of their hen and stag weekend in Las Vegas and their elaborate wedding. Ron wants everyone to celebrate him and Hermione, and as time passes, he grows more desperate for them all to know.

"I want to steal their thunder."

"I know." Hermione gently pushes him over on his back and slides on top of him. The movement is swift and natural, and as always, she fits like a glove.

"Hmmm, hi," he says right before their lips meet. The kiss lingers; Hermione's teeth lightly latch to his bottom lip, driving him wild. Without breaking their kiss, Hermione shifts some of her weight onto her hips. She knows exactly what she's doing, and if Ron doesn't stop this train, they'll be late.

"Er-my-nee," he groans, pulling away. She pouts at him with her wide chocolate brown eyes, and it's all he can do to resist tangling himself back up in her arms. "Can I ask you a question?"

"What?"

"Do you wish we had more thunder?"

Hermione brushes a tuft of hair from Ron's forehead. "Sometimes. But I still wouldn't change a thing."

Ron smiles as she leans down for another kiss. Her fingers thread into her wild curls, prompting him to flip her over and land on top. He groans when she wraps her legs around his waist.

"You know we don't have time for this," he says between kisses. "We should get rea—"

"Shhhhh." She pulls him into her embrace and tightens her leg lock around his hips. "There's always time."

"Hey!" he teases, then leaning down toward her ear to whisper, "I take offense to that."

Ron doesn't give her time to respond before connecting his mouth to hers for another kiss. He can smell his cologne from the night before on her skin, yet it still tastes like Hermione when his lips travel from her mouth to the nape of her neck. A soft moan escapes her lips and sends him into a tizzy that leaves nothing else to do but get lost in her.

Six weeks in, and he's still convinced he'll never get sick of snogging Hermione Granger.

Plus, she's right — there's always time.

Harry and Ginny's wedding is just as elaborate as their weekend of partying in Las Vegas, but of course, classy. The venue is a converted warehouse, which initially horrified Molly, Ron and Ginny's mum, but it's unrecognizable after a few hours of decorating. They tie the knot underneath a trellis of climbing vines and twinkling lights illuminating the exposed brick wall behind them. Cafe lights drape from the ceiling beams, filtering the room's color just enough that everyone appears to glow. Each row of seats is marked by a simple bouquet and a periwinkle ribbon that matches the color of the bridesmaids' dresses, and the aisle appears to have been assaulted by flower petals, courtesy of Victoire, Ron and Ginny's niece, who recently discovered the true strength of her throwing arm.

Ginny has insisted that she and Harry walk down the aisle together as equals. Although originally disgruntled at the pushback on tradition, their father, Arthur, chokes up when he watches the pair approach the altar. Ginny's eyes sparkle with rare tears, and Harry can't keep his gaze off her radiant smile.

They're a couple in love, and there's not a doubt in the room.

Ginny's dress is simple — Hermione had said something about satin, but Ron doesn't remember the details. It's one of those dresses that doesn't dare pull focus from the woman wearing it, not that any dress could. Ron's always resented the Weasleys' fiery red hair and the way it sticks out like a sore thumb, but Ginny makes him think that maybe it isn't so bad after all.

While everyone watches the couple, Ron chances a glance at Hermione across the altar. He can hardly stand seeing her in her periwinkle bridesmaid dress, and he hopes to heaven his gawking isn't too noticeable. When he shifts his eyes in her direction, she turns her head back toward the bride and groom.

She was checking him out, too.

He doesn't have to keep his eyes on her for his imagination to run wild. That periwinkle dress turns white, and suddenly it's Hermione walking down the aisle. Her hair is tucked up into a spiral on top of her head, a few wisps escaping to frame her face.

Since it's his sister's wedding, Ron forces the image out of his mind, but he can't stop a wistful smile from forming on his lips and staying there throughout the ceremony.

When Harry and Ginny arrive at the altar, the music slows to a stop, and the officiant steps out from behind a curtain.

"Well, hello, folks!" says the blonde-haired man in a thick, mumbling American accent.

The wedding guests stare in silence at the man, who's dressed in white from head to toe, a greasy black wig barely covering his blonde locks.

Harry and Ginny burst into laughter, which breaks the seal for everyone else to follow suit.

"Yes! You got an Elvis impersonator!" shouts Fred, Ron and Ginny's brother, from the front row. "Someone check Mum's pulse."

With that, Ron snaps his head toward his mum, whose face has collapsed into her hands. Her body is heaving with what can only be sobs, or…

Laughter. Ron grins when he realizes that his mother's laughing hysterically.

At Molly's outburst, the tension and stuffiness of a formal event dissipate, and the ceremony continues flawlessly, having now been marked by Harry and Ginny's personalities. Elvis speaks to their bond, and even though he doesn't know the couple, he manages to capture how they approach life, always wearing their hearts on their sleeves and marching to their own beat. They've written heartfelt but humorous vows, expertly eliciting laughs and tears from their guests while they read them with shaky hands. They share their first kiss as a married couple to a round of applause and a standing ovation. Emboldened by the support, Harry picks up Ginny and drapes her over his shoulder as he skips back down the aisle to a chorus of cheers and whistles.

The wedding party follows the happy couple back down the aisle, starting with Ron and Hermione. They link arms and lock eyes, sharing a small, knowing smile. Ron wonders if she's also imagining the roles reversed, everyone clapping and celebrating for them as they traipse down the aisle after tying the knot.

What would the pseudo-Elvis have said about them if this were their ceremony, not Harry and Ginny's? Would he have spoken to how they disliked each other when they first met, and the utter disbelief they felt when they woke up next to one another in bed? Maybe he'd have talked about their strong determination to get a divorce and straighten everything out, followed by the looming 'what ifs' that kept knocking. What if they gave it a chance? What if they opened their hearts and it worked out? What if it was meant to be?

Maybe Elvis would have told a white lie at their request, saving their families the heartache of learning that they missed the original wedding, even though Ron and Hermione kind of missed it too.

That would be best wouldn't it? They could hire an Elvis to spin a new love story for their family, so they could keep the real one to themselves—not due to shame, but the simple fact that it's theirs.

Ron can't help but wonder.

Rather than a formal sit-down dinner, the ceremony transitions straight into a party. The delicate set-up of chairs and flowers clears into a dance floor. The doors to the warehouse open to an outdoor deck complete with a buffet and a dessert table, and a crowd forms at the bar.

Tugged away by Ginny, Hermione disappears into the crowd, and Ron becomes absorbed by friends and relatives. He'd rather stick with Hermione, but before he can locate her again, he's trapped in a conversation with long-lost family members. Old cousin Barny, Auntie Muriel and her flavor of the week — a scruffy looking man who introduces himself as Argus, and a neighbor who used to babysit when he was a toddler — he smiles through it all.

"Anyone special in your life, Ron?"

"I noticed the way you were looking at the brunette."

"Is it serious?"

"Should we be marking our calendars for another wedding?"

He deflects the expected questions — the ones that could draw attention away from the happy couple — with suggestive 'maybes' and 'we'll sees' although the truth, or at least a version of the truth, is evident on his face.

Yes, there is someone special. Yes, he was probably gawking at the beautiful brunette. Yes, it's serious enough that they live together.

"You're living together before you're married?" Auntie Muriel chimes in her most dismissive, judgemental tone.

Ron gives her a guilty look, a 'we're already married, you just don't know,' but to her, it's an admission of living together in sin.

"Well, I hope for your sake, she's the one."

"She definitely is," he says, nodding in a way he hopes ends the conversation.

Ron eventually negotiates an escape from small talk and heads to the bar for a slight reprieve. He slides into a seat and accepts a generous glass of champagne from the bartender. One sip reveals just how thirsty he is, and he lets out a satisfied sigh of relief before indulging in the rest of his glass.

"Another?" asks the bartender once he finishes.

"Erm, sure. Thanks."

While the bartender refills his glass, Ron takes a quick scan of the room. He's looking for Hermione, but she's nowhere to be found. His search doesn't last long as a certain someone slides into the barstool next to him and interrupts.

"Thank you for being here," says the dark-haired man beside him. "It means a lot."

"Ugh, not you," groans Ron, but his tone is laden with a touch of sarcasm only his best friend can decipher. "Should I say congratulations?"

"Yes, please," grins Harry. "Even though you've said it a million times."

"Well, you should soak it up because tomorrow, I'm done congratulating you," he says. "So needy."

"Cheers to you too," says Harry, clanking his champagne glass against Ron's.

"I've been meaning to ask you," says Ron, remembering Harry and Ginny's elaborate ceremony. "Why Elvis?"

Harry laughs. "Oh, Ludo? We met him at one of the casinos in Vegas."

"And you just asked him to officiate your wedding?"

"Well, he offered, and we didn't have anyone else," shrugged Harry. "To be honest, we were kind of drunk when we agreed, but Ginny wanted to bring some of Las Vegas into the wedding, so it worked out."

"Well, I liked him. I thought it was brilliant."

"I agree," grinned Harry. "So, will I get to congratulate you anytime soon?"

"Congratulate me for what?"

Harry rolls his eyes, aware that Ron is playing dumb. "Do you think you and Hermione will ever get married?"

"What makes you ask that?" Ron looks over at his best friend, and his expression that's full of excitement. Part of Ron loves that he and Hermione are the only people who know about their marriage. Another part of Ron just wishes he could share it all with his best friend. It doesn't feel right keeping him in the dark.

"You live together and seem pretty happy," continues Harry, oblivious to Ron's internal debate. "I'll admit, at first, I thought you two were moving fast, but you seem well suited for each other."

"After Hermione, you'll be the second person to know," says Ron, grinning at his friend.

"I'll take it!" says Harry. "Can I give you one piece of advice?"

"Sure, mate." Ron can't help but smirk — Harry's been married for barely two hours and is already touting marriage advice. Typical.

"If you know she's the one, don't overthink it. You'll just waste time."

Ron laughs softly. "I don't think that will be an issue for me."

"Good. I'm going to find my wife," says Harry, emphasizing the word like he's trying it on for size. "And you should go dance with your girlfriend. She looks like she could use a hand."

Harry motions across the room to where Hermione and Luna are alone at a cocktail table. There she is. Hermione's stiff body language is a stark contrast to Luna's eccentric gestures, and it appears that Hermione has become an unwilling audience for one of Luna's wild conspiracy theories.

"Happily," mutters Ron as Harry saunters off to find Ginny.

Ron meanders across the room to rescue Hermione from Luna's verbal clutches. Since she doesn't see him approach, he decides to surprise her by sneaking up behind her and looping his arms around her waist.

"Hi, girlfriend," he whispers into her ear.

"Hmmm." She seems to melt into his touch ."Hi, boyfriend."

"Sorry, Luna," says Ron, as he slides a hand down Hermione's arm and interlaces his fingers with hers. "I'm going to steal Hermione away for a dance."

"Of course! Have fun, you two," Luna says before turning around toward the crowd and skipping away, presumably in search of another unsuspecting guest to engage with.

"She's a lot, isn't she?" asks Ron.

"She's not too bad, once you get to know her. She's just talkative, that's all."

Ron tugs Hermione toward the dance floor where a smattering of couples intertwine, swaying to one of the rare slow songs in the D.J.'s repertoire. She wraps her arms around his neck, and he tightens his embrace, resting his chin on the top of her head.

"It's a little weird to call you my girlfriend."

"It sounds wrong," she says, her voice muffled by his dress shirt. "I was never your girlfriend. It's probably how people feel when they first start saying 'wife' or 'husband.'"

"I reckon you're right."

Ron reflects on the first time he called Hermione "wifey." It didn't feel weird at all, probably because it was a joke. Eventually, the joke just turned real.

"Hubby suits you better, anyway," says Hermione. She always seems to know what he's thinking, but he doesn't mind one bit.

"I agree, love." Even now, Hermione can still make his cheeks tinge red with a simple statement. "Are you enjoying the wedding?"

He can feel her nodding against his chest. "Yeah," she mumbles. "Although, it was a lot of work. Are you?"

Ron shrugs. "Ours was better, I think."

Hermione laughs. "I'm sure it was. Too bad we can't remember it."

Out of the corner of his eye, Ron can see Harry and Ginny embracing on the dance floor, surrounded by his grinning family. A spotlight shines on them, and at the sound of clinking glasses, they lock eyes and share a kiss. When they make contact, the bystanders whoop and whistle. "Maybe they should have gotten hitched in Vegas like us. This is a lot of commotion."

"Well, you know Harry and Ginny," says Hermione as she loosens her embrace to glance over at the couple. "They like their parties."

"They do," he says, tugging Hermione back into his arms. "What would you have done if this was your wedding?"

Ron expects Hermione to take some time for her answer, but surprisingly, she has one at the ready. "It would have been smaller. Maybe a live band instead of a D.J. And red velvet cake."

Ron smiles into her hair as she continues.

"I probably wouldn't have had a huge wedding party. Probably just a maid of honor. Intimate rooftop ceremony. I'd write my own vows. I even have photos of my dream dress."

Ron chuckles. "You have it all planned out."

"I never really planned it, I just knew." She's smiling when she pulls away and meets his eye, but her smile fades into a frown. "But seriously, I wouldn't change a thing."

She must have interpreted his pensive look as disappointment. "Hermione?"

"Yes?"

"Let's plan it."

"Plan what?"

"Our rooftop wedding," he says as the color pink creeps up his neck.

"Ron, we're already married." Despite her deadpan tone, there's a twinkle in her eye and a soft smirk hiding behind her lips.

"Then let's get married again."

She narrows her eyes at him, and Ron can almost see the gears turning inside her head. "You don't think that would be a waste of time and money?"

"No. Not at all. Plus, I couldn't stop picturing you walking down the aisle today, and I'd love to see you in your dream dress."

She leans back and stares at him for a few moments, clearly running questions through her mind. When she finally speaks, her eyes are glassy with held-back tears, and a smile lifts her words. "You're serious?"

"Hermione Granger," he states in his most serious tone. "Will you marry me again?"

Their feet stop moving, and she bores her gaze into his. Her answer is swimming in her eyes, but he waits for her to verbalize it. "Of course I will. I'd marry you every day."

Ron barely has time to smile before she's pressing her lips against his. He responds so enthusiastically that it could very well be their first or thousandth kiss, lifting her gently off her feet. They're probably drawing attention to themselves, but Ron doesn't mind. It's like she's the only person in the room.

That seems to happen a lot.

Ron sets her back down and slides his hands down her arms, landing at her unadorned fingers. He rubs a thumb across her left hand, desperately wishing he had brought the ring. He didn't think to bring it to the wedding.

The ring — a modest emerald-cut solitaire in yellow gold, is still safely stashed in his bedside drawer, hidden by a few football magazines. He had a whole plan that didn't include a quiet proposal at someone else's wedding, but sometimes the best things in life are accidents.

"I have a ring, you know."

"You do?" she asks, her eyebrows raised. "You planned this?"

Ron laughs. "Well, sort of. But I wasn't planning on asking you tonight. Didn't want to steal anyone's thunder."

"When were you going to ask?"

He had it all planned out. A surprise candlelight dinner at their flat. A homemade cocktail — his best attempt at Liquid Luck. Slow-dancing in a dimly lit living room, furniture pushed against the wall to make room. Dropping to one knee in the middle of a dance. Strawberries and whipped cream. It would have been perfect.

But this is perfect too.

"I was going to propose six months in. Since that's when you can finally divorce me if you want to—"

"Right. Divorce," she scoffs. "When did you buy the ring?"

Ron averts his gaze when he answers. He hasn't planned on telling her this part. "In Las Vegas."

"That early?" she asks, her tone suspicious.

He nods.

"You knew you wanted to stay with me?"

"Of course, I did. Didn't you know, too?"

She smiles and answers him with another kiss. This time it's slow and loving, taking its time. Their bodies seem to melt together into one.

"That would have been so sweet," she says when they eventually break free.

"We can stick to the original plan if you'd prefer that—"

"No!" Her eyes widen as if she's afraid he'll take it back. "When have we ever followed plans?"

Ron grins. There it is — that spontaneous Hermione that only he gets to see. "And you were worried 'Vegas Hermione' would disappear completely," he says, tucking a hair behind her ear.

"I guess she's here to stay," says Hermione as she nestles her head into the crook of Ron's neck where it fits so perfectly. "I love you so much, Ron."

"I love you more, fiance."

Ron can't help but wince at her new title. 'Fiance' sounds just as odd as 'girlfriend,' and it'll only be true for a small fraction of their lives together — not enough time to get used to it.

"I still like 'wifey' better," she says as though reading his mind.

He does too. "Then I guess we have another wedding to plan."

"I guess we do," she says. "And what about our real wedding? Do you want to tell people?"

"Should we?"

"No," she says before securing her arms around his neck. "That wedding can stay ours."

Ron smiles as his lips meet hers. The desire for everyone to know is still there, but less so. They'll get to celebrate a 'real' wedding together, their guests blissfully ignorant of Ron and Hermione's little secret. It's a perfect plan, really.

Someday they might reveal the truth. They might let it slip in conversation, or accidentally admit it to Harry and Ginny after a few cocktails, or decide to tell their future children.

But until then, their original wedding can just be theirs.

*THE END*

#be11a_vegas #Ron Weasley #ronweasley #Hermione Granger #hermionegranger #Ron and Hermione #ron x hermione #ROMIONE #romione fanfic #romione fanfiction #romionecom #hpromione #muggle AU

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vanillawhiskeyflavoredkisses · 3 years

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I just have to get this off my chest after seeing some very disturbing posts about 9/11 floating around on my dash as well as some truly crude commentary. A lot probably won't agree with my sentiments but I feel like this needs to be said.

I've seen a lot of things on Tumblr in the past that maybe I consider to be in poor taste or don't agree with but I usually just scroll past, sometimes block for curating sake, but today is the first time I truly was shell-shocked. To see the memes and blasé jokes people are making about this day are just absolutely horrific and appalling.

I get that a lot of people on this site now may not remember what happened that day and only learned second hand through school or media or other people telling them. I get that a lot occurred after this that wasn't right which we definitely should be learning from. I also get that there is a lot of anti-American and anti-white sentiments going around currently, especially on this site.

But here's the thing:

Not only Americans died that day. Not only white people died that day. That's the thing about terrorists and what these hijackers did: they don't care about your skin color, your culture, your religious preference, your sexual orientation, your gender orientation, your age, your economic status, your personality, whether you support them or not, your political persuasion, your job, or any of it. Everyone is fair game to them. For crying out loud, look at what the Afghani people are currently going through and how the Taliban are treating their own country's people, women especially. If you think this is bad (which it truly is), have you seen how things went under their rule before 9/11 even happened? Do you know their terrifyingly violent and brutal history? Women had acid thrown in their faces if they didn't wear a full hijab. People were mutilated or executed if they didn't fall in line with the law of the Taliban. And this doesn't even begin to go into Al-Qaeda or Isis. But I'm not here to talk about that or delve into that topic too much.

My point in mentioning all of this is that white Americans weren't the only ones that were killed that day. People of all faiths, of all colors, of different countries, died that day, too. And the unity that is consistently discussed every 9/11 anniversary is in regards to us being aware of that fact, us mourning all of their losses together, and the collective desire to come together and help once the planes hit and after the towers collapsed.

So when people say "why am I supposed to cry over white Americans getting killed that day" think about that. Not only white Americans died that day. And regardless of their color, their nationality, their culture, their religion, etc. anyone dying is always sad. Whether it be a jetliner being used as a weapon that crashed into their floor or someone dying of cancer or someone being killed in a mudslide or someone dying in a car accident -- it is always sad. And empathy should always be shown in response, even if it doesn't impact you personally. Let's not forget these people have loved ones that got left behind, that are still here.

So when people say "if something knocks into a cow and knocks it over, I'm not expected to care, but if something knocks into a building and knocks it over, suddenly I'm supposed to care?" think about that. People aren't grieving two large pieces of steel architecture. People aren't saying "always remember those two towers". The WTC Towers were a symbol (yes, for American wealth, I get it) but became so much more of a multi-faceted powerful symbol after 9/11. The towers represent a way of life before 9/11 happened, but more importantly they represent the people lost that day, who were in the towers when they collapsed. For all of the first responders who were stuck on those floors still trying to help evacuate people to safety when the buildings finally gave. The two footprints and two blue lights aren't a symbol of American wealth or a naivete and simpler way of life pre-9/11 - they are a symbol of memorialization for that day. The Freedom Tower was erected to show that despite the loss of that day, we stood united (even if there seems to be more and more division these days). It's a message to the world that yes, destruction and death happened that day in NYC, but so did rebuilding and life carrying on. It's a symbol of strength, resilience, and unity - something that was everywhere you looked days after this event occurred. The two towers (aka NYC) may have gotten knocked down but the city got back up. They weren't kept down - that's the point of the Freedom Tower.

When people say "I don't understand, what is it that I shouldn't be forgetting since I can't remember it anyway" here is what we all should be remembering despite our age or our connection (or lack thereof) with this event:

2,997 innocent civilians died that day. Among them were 343 firefighters, 37 police officers, 23 Port Authority police officers, 8 EMS workers, and 4 other first responders. Also among them were 246 people on the four planes that crashed.

The passengers of United Flight 93 made a choice to fight back against the hijackers and saved lives that day by sacrificing their own.

Many children lost parents. Many parents lost children. Many brothers lost sisters, and many sisters lost brothers. Many spouses lost their significant others. Many lost friends, family, and loved ones.

For those who want a better connection to this day who didn't experience it and/or don't remember it, and for those others who are seriously lacking in empathy: yes, it was a highly publicized event due to the hundreds of cameras (including media outlets) watching that day, but if the horrific images aren't enough to garner some of your empathy, then there are plenty of other resources at your disposal. Documentaries like 9/11 by James Hanlon and the Naudet brothers, 102 Minutes That Changed America (which shows you not only all of the first-hand eyewitness accounts that day but also lets you hear 911 calls, radio transmissions between firefighters, and people's reactions to the event and each other who were there), 9/11 Firefighters (on Discovery Plus) and even more recently, 9/11: The Turning Point (on Netflix) which provides a 360 degree view of the events that led up to 9/11, 9/11 itself, and what came after, displaying all different viewpoints. You can read the 9/11 Commission Report or there are several books and memoirs out there like Wake-Up Call by Kristen Breitweiser, or even historical accounts in books, newspaper articles, and online. But most importantly, listen to people's stories. The ones who were there, the ones who saw it happen, the ones who ran in to help, the ones who lost loved ones. That is the most important part and the most powerful. On Hulu, ABC News ran segments of 9/11 Twenty Years Later, "Women Of Resilience" being especially powerful. It's hard not to feel a human connection to these stories or any kind of empathy.

For those who are making these jokes and memes, if you like shows like 9-1-1 and Chicago Fire, etc, imagine those first responder characters rushing into those buildings to save lives and losing theirs in the process. If you don't remember 9/11 or feel any connection or empathy, imagine hundreds of Bucks or Eddies or Bobbys or Hens or Chimneys dying that day as they worked to save so many. Sorry to be so blunt because I love those characters too, but do you get a little bit of the connection now? Do you feel any empathy? I'm not trying to equate real life heroes and sheroes with fictional characters of course, but if it helps you to understand a little better in some way, well...I'm throwing it out there.

I myself lived in the Tri-State area at the time of the attacks. I remember seeing the second plane seconds before it crashed into the second building. I remember the devastation I felt watching the first tower collapse knowing that a loved one was most likely inside and how hard I cried thinking he was dead. (thankfully, he had been late to work that day and he got out of the area before the towers came down) I remember the relief and gratefulness we all felt hearing from him to assure us that he was alive when he finally was able to get to a phone, stating he was covered in dust and ash from the buildings. I remember the panic and fear we all felt, thinking the world was ending and we were all going to die, that this was it, this was World War III, after it was confirmed that the Pentagon had also been hit and there was also a downed plane in Pennsylvania. I remember the grief another loved one suffered because she lost her entire floor (she had been out sick that day) and every single one of her co-workers. I remember the race to pick up children from school and get them home as soon as possible. I remember the rage that coursed through us seeing the footage of some people in certain countries celebrating the attacks in the streets, enjoying the deaths of so many Americans, a couple of these countries who lost citizens themselves in these attacks. I remember the camping out in front of the televisions night after night for a week straight afterwards, watching the news 24/7, worrying that there might be more attacks. I remember the feeling of sheer terror anytime a plane was heard overhead or seen appearing low enough in the sky that you could practically make out which airline it was for months afterwards. I remember seeing the lights the first time they were lit from our home. I remember feeling pure fear not only for what happened that day but also what came afterwards (not yet understanding that these weren't practitioners of Islam that did this but radical extremists who had literally hijacked the religion). I remember seeing the devastation at Ground Zero through a tear in the fabric over a fence as we walked through the city months afterwards. I remember not wanting to fly for years. I remember the anger I felt that our government had failed us due to political bs between agencies and countless others (which we found out especially when the 9/11 Commission Report came out) and that because of this horrific and absurd failure, thousands of innocent people had died. I remember seeing the crushed ladder truck, and the toy of the little girl who was on one of the planes at the 9/11 Memorial Museum and all of the pictures in that room that just floored me. (I also remember being pissed off that many were treating it as a selfie op where they were allowed to take pictures, completely missing the point of the museum's existence) But most of all, I remember feeling that life would never be the same for any of us ever again, and that the feeling of safety we had naively enjoyed on September 10, 2001 would never return.

But I also remember the compassion and unity we saw rising in the country after those attacks. I remember the gratitude for all of our first responders, those we lost that day and those who were still with us, actively working to recover those lost and to clear Ground Zero. I remember the feeling of collectiveness, that we all shared grief and showed support to one another in those days afterwards. I remember the fallen heroes and sheroes who ran into those buildings, who were off duty but raced from wherever they were that day to come and help. I remember The Man In the Red Bandana aka Welles Crowther (and many like him who worked to save others) who has become another important symbol of that day. I remember hearing all of the stories of people helping one another before and after the towers collapsed. I remember the good that this day represents. That while we may have seen some of the worst of humanity that day in the form of violence, death, weaponized airplanes, and devastation, we also saw the very best of humanity in the form of our first responders and people helping one another.

Look, did Islamophobia happen? Yes. Was it right? No, absolutely not. As I stated above, I myself feared the idea of the religion until I was educated by a friend of mine about the difference between the religion and extremism. This form of hijacking ideology can be seen in examples like the Westboro Baptist Church or even Hitler. Terrorists do not represent the true spirit of Islam no matter what the former tries to force people to believe. Just as the WBC is not the true spirit of Christianity, and so on and so forth. But even during the time I had feared the religion before gaining understanding and clarity, I never confronted or mistreated any practicing Muslim or Arab-American. Ever. I never posted hate or spewed vitriol against them. Just like with the current pandemic, I still cannot believe there are people out there attack Asian-Americans as if this whole thing is their fault. That's still mind boggling to me and it is absolutely 100% WRONG. It should not be happening. Same with Islamophobia. And it breaks my heart to read that many Arab-Americans and practicing Muslims still worry when this anniversary comes around that they may be attacked. It might not mean much, but I just want to say I am truly sorry for that and you have my full support. Always.

Did we go to war and was it just? Yes we did go to war. Was it just? Afghanistan? I need more information in order to have a fully-formed opinion but there are plenty who say yes and plenty who say no. Plenty who say we made things better over there (before we exited and the Taliban advanced) and plenty who say we didn't and only made it worse. I truly cannot say which assertion is correct and I think it would be narrow-minded and completely moronic (and possibly arrogant and presumptuous?) of me to speak on a subject I know so little about, one way or the other. Iraq? No, I don't think it was just and I honestly wish we could go back and do things differently.

But coming back to 9/11 and what this day means for so many, the people who died, the people who rushed headfirst into danger, the people who lost their loved ones. We saw incredible bravery, selflessness, and compassion for your fellow human that day despite what happened. We saw the strength within ourselves despite the fear and anger. We saw resilience. That is what the anniversary is meant to be a reminder of. The sacrifices, the loss, the courage, and the strength. Black, White, Gay, Straight, Christian, Muslim, Man, Woman, Young, Old -- it didn't matter. We all came together.

So regardless of whether it's the cool thing to do right now on this site (or elsewhere) to hate on America or 9/11 or white Americans or the anniversary itself on the very anniversary of these attacks, I ask that you please consider when posting these hurtful (and frankly harmful) words of hatred and vitriol such as referenced above that there are people out there who lost their loved ones on 9/11, that yes some of them may be on this very site and going through the 9/11 tag, and that some of them may have even lost a loved one in either war and are again on this site reading your words. Regardless of what you think or feel, please consider them and tag appropriately if you're going to post. Please consider that some of these people are currently losing their loved ones due to 9/11-related illnesses because of the cleanup at Ground Zero. Please consider that there are children who lost a parent or loved one, or who were orphaned that day (yes, they exist, we had some in our school district) who are also on this site reading your words. Basically, please just consider and be considerate. Please stop spreading hatred on a day that happened due to hatred; please stop perpetuating that cycle.

Like Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."

TLDR: Love and light, my friends. Love and light. ✌️❤️

#9/11 #never forget #remember 9/11 #9/11 isnt a joke or a meme

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