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#one day the world will be a kinder place
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Happy 4th December - No, we are not there yet
Sorry in advance, this is a bit of rant, which is not something I usually post. But it's a wet Monday morning and I've had a really frustrating weekend, and today, on this anniversary of maybe the biggest piece of gaylor lore, the pictures and headlines I'm seeing just tipped me over the edge into a rant.
So, on this 4th December 2023 it is 9 years to the day that the world woke up to grainy pictures and videos of Taylor Swift, the world's most famous popstar and America's ultimate good girl, allegedly kissing a woman at a 1975 concert. And the tabloids and social media went crazy over it. And not in a good way. I remember the way I felt, so very nauseated about reading words like 'lesbian affair', 'shocking' and 'fling', not just on Taylor and Karlie's behalf, but the way it made me feel about myself, too. I was brutally reminded that 'lesbian' in 2014 was still seen as a dirty word and society's default was to see sapphic relationships as something scandalous and a fall from grace, rather than something beautiful. To this day I look at this photo and can't help but feel awed by the love and intimacy that their body language exudes, but the world didn't see it that way, they were just obsessing over whether they kissed or not and how to spin that into a dirty story.
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That was almost a decade ago. So, have we made progress? Is it all fixed and every queer person (especially artists and celebrities) can live authentically and freely? Well, no, of course not, as was possibly proven again this weekend by Billie Eilish, who confirmed that she is gay (more or less unplanned) in an interview. Nobody should be surprised as she was never subtle about her queerness, yet it cost her over 100,000 social media followers in just 24 hours after explicitly coming out. Being gay, especially for women, is only acceptable when mainstream society don't have to see it. Don't talk about it and God forbid, don't kiss in public. Never mind that straight people do it all the time. The very same tabloid paper that printed kissgate pictures with the word 'shocking' next to them, put Taylor on the cover two years later and described her romance with Tom Hiddleston as 'exciting' and 'sexy'. And on the very morning I see the tweet about Billie, I find this message in my inbox:
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Why indeed...? And I was of course expecting Taylor to show up at another football game, but to see her looking somber in a Carol-esque red fur coat, while her partner and all her friends are having a lovely time in LA... it just makes me angry today. Yes, maybe we've made progress in same ways, but we are still so far from where we need to be for everyone to be able to come out without repercussion. In a better world, Taylor would have been in a gorgeous dress next to her wife, rather than sitting next to the girl who would have bullied us in High School.
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(And btw, not only was Rebel Wilson blackmailed into coming out by the Sydney Morning Herold, she has lost thousands of followers and has pretty much focused on film making rather than acting since coming out. Maybe this was always her plan, but also, maybe not. Interesting, that film making is also seemingly becoming Taylor's second career leg...)
So, anon who sent me the question above, take this as my answer. Why is the most famous popstar in the world not out in 2023? Most likely because it would cost her so much of what she's worked hard for over the last 17 years. Not withstanding that the answer may also be 🛴 and what he did in 2019 that prevented her from coming out then, the world is just not a very good place for a celebrity to be anything other than straight, white and cisgender. And after 10 years of activism in LGBTQ+ organisations, today I feel a bit deflated by that. But with every single person who feels brave enough to shout their truth from the rooftops, we break down the walls a little more each time. 🌈
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samcarter34 · 2 years
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You know, thinking about what Asmodeus said about the Pantheon being his siblings, and how mortals must have done something to the Prime Deities because why else would they have turned on their own family...
The Prime Deities probably loved the Betrayers once, maybe they even still do. And they turned on them, their kin, to save Exandria and its people. They loved Exandria and the peoples of it so much that they fought and exiled their own family that they’ve known since, permanently destroying any possibility of there ever being a reconciliation.
All for a world they loved. A world they once all loved.
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violet-snail-sfw · 2 months
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The first time I saw a trans woman was in porn. I was pretty young then, in early middle school I think. My first thoughts about trans women only existed in a sexual context, since that was the only place I saw us mentioned
The next time I saw trans people mentioned was a TV show presumably about trans people and transitioning. I didn't watch it, only saw the description because even as a kid I had already internalized the idea that it was taboo and I would get in trouble if my parents walked in and I was watching it
Eventually I saw enough TV and cop shows to see an episode with the dead trans hooker trope. It further reinforced the building idea that trans women were something else, separate from "normal" people and always on the outskirts of society
And then Caitlyn Jenner came out. At my Catholic middle school there were few kind things said about her and plenty of nasty comments, but this was the first time I saw trans people being publicly talked about
In high school my views on trans people started to fracture. On one hand, I was being pushed the idea that gender was about what's in your pants, that if you've got a dick your a man and there's nothing that can be done about it. On the other hand, early high school me had stumbled across some gender change erotica and quickly became obsessed with it. While it wasn't great representation, it was still pretty positive about transitioning. The people in those stories were always happier afterwards
I struggled to reconcile what parts of society were saying about trans people with my daydreaming about what I'd do if I woke up the next morning as a girl. Eventually I decided that it was just a fetish. I just thought it was hot, there was no way I could be trans because I was just a normal person. I wasn't weird or a spectacle for others to gawk at, I was just a person
Around that time I also met a trans person in passing for the first time. One of the trans guys at my high school was in one of the musicals that I went to because some of my friends were also in them. When I was talking to my friends about it after someone mentioned the trans guy and that he was trans. I wasn't really sure what to think so I kinda just didn't think about it. Thinking back, there were a few trans guys at my high school but I don't think there was a single out trans woman
Eventually in college I actually met some trans and nonbinary people. In some classes we introduced ourselves on the first day with names and pronouns which was my first exposure to people using pronouns other than just he/him and she/her. I had a few classes with trans and nonbinary people, including a survey of transgender studies class I took in my last semester. I had plenty of excuses for why I was taking it (I needed a few more credits to graduate. It still had room open. It fit with my other classes. It seemed interesting. I'm trying to be a good ally.)
Around this time as well I found some trans creators online like ContraPoints and Philosophy Tube (whom I had watched before she came out as trans). I was weirdly excited and interested when Odyssey Eurobeat came out as trans and I went to go listen to some of her music right after I heard. I was starting to have examples of trans people just being people. Not just porn stars or public spectacles, but people
Later I met and befriended a few trans women, one of whom was extremely open about her transness and happened to share a video which started the initial steps of my egg cracking and figuring out who I am now
If I had actually known any trans women, if the world had been kinder to trans people, if representation of trans women as people existed and was well known, I might have been able to realize who I was sooner. I would have been able to exist as myself for more than a tiny fragment of my life so far
Representation matters, both in media and in daily life. Trans people being out and open about who they are made it possible for me to realize that about myself. Please never stop being who you are
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chuluoyi · 7 months
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✎ protect
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- gojo satoru x reader
the word “protect” now means so much more to him
genre: soft and playful gojo, sugary dump fluff, pregnant!reader
note: anyone craving some soft gojo? :3 based on a suggestion by an anon who needs a soft gojo a while back, thank you!
a part of gojo's love entries
series masterlist | oneshot masterlist
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When he was 16, Gojo Satoru thought that protecting other people was a pain, and didn't take it seriously.
Later, when he realized that even non-sorcerers deserve to live their lives in peace, he dedicated himself to becoming stronger so that he would be capable to protect them more. However, even then, he didn't perceive their worth as significant.
But when you entered the picture, that measly, glorified word suddenly became so much more.
Usually people would only care about whether he had succeeded his mission or not. His formidable reputation as the epitome of strength means no one is genuinely interested in his wellbeing—no one after Suguru, to be exact—until you did.
After a whirlwind romance of attraction and banters, Satoru reached the conclusion that he wanted you, the only person left who actually made him feel like a human, to stay happy and safe. He would do it with his own hands, even if it meant reshaping this cruel world to be kinder for you with him as your shield.
And the word “protect” gained an entirely new meaning years later, when he rested his head on your swollen belly—the place where his new cherished treasure was growing.
“When will he come out~?” he asked in a whiny tone and a blissful smile, even though he clearly knew the answer.
You shook your head with playful resignation, unable to conceal your smile. "In three weeks. Now help me get comfortable, you dork."
He helped you turn over and fetched a pillow to place under your aching spine. Then, with a mischievous grin, he lightly poked your belly with two fingers, eliciting a yelp from you.
"Don't poke me! You're poking your child!"
To that, Satoru merely threw his head back and snickered like the dumbass he was. He then tenderly rested his hand on the taut skin of your belly, gently massaging it, smiling with ardent happiness.
"Can't really believe it," he sighed, brimming with the purest sense of contentment. "A mini Gojo, huh... You're really doing a honorable work."
A child of his and yours. He had always wondered how he would be after seeing him firsthand—would he laugh just like he had been doing now, or will it be the first instance that move him to the point of shedding tears? One of the reasons he eagerly anticipated his son's birth was just to discover how he would react.
Seeing the weight of his baby growing within you, making you rounder and fuller, stirred a deep well of warm emotions in him with each passing day though.
"I am," you retorted cheekily, rolling your eyes. "In fact, you should be revering and worshipping me for carrying your spawn."
He merely hummed in a childlike manner, feeling his baby move around under his touch. You were about to roast him again with something funny when he leaned down and planted a kiss on your tummy, whispering to it.
"Please come out already~ Papa wants to meet you!"
Your heart swelled with warmth at that moment. Gojo Satoru was many things, but he wasn't typically known for his softness—he was often seen as this all-perfect being, and so witnessing him acting purely on his human emotions brought you a sense of happiness.
“Who do you think he’ll take after?” you mused.
“Hmmm. Me, obviously. He'll be hot just like me!” he quipped proudly, and you playfully smacked him on the arm.
Satoru caught your hand and kissed it tenderly amidst his grin. "But I want him to have your personality. I'd hate to see him be a show-off."
"So you do realize that you're actually a menace."
He laughed out loud, patting the generous swell of your belly again with a smug look on his face.
"I know, but I'm your menace, and that's all that matters."
And when his adorable son was born less than three weeks later and you passed out due to sheer exhaustion, Satoru vowed by everything in the heavens and the earth that he wouldn't spare anything to protect you and his child from this curse-filled world.
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Epilogue - on the night of the birth -
“Satoru—” you panted, grimacing, head jerking back as your womb throbbed and pulsed in order to bring forth your child into the world. “I… feel like I’m going to faint…”
Worry etched his face as you leaned on him. “Hey, hey… Calm down sweetheart, relax and catch up on your breath, okay? Don’t worry, he’ll come out soon.”
Somehow his words rubbed you the wrong way.
“Hahh—this… is because of you! This happened because you shoved your stick into me! You horny bas—aahh!”
“Well, hey! Last I remembered, you begged me to put it into you! And I'm not—pfft—”
“Then what are you?!”
“Hmmm, nothing but a man who got you pregnant, sweetheart~”
“If I bleed out and die, it’s going to be your fault, you evil, wretched sorcerer!”
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writingouthere · 5 months
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neighbor!sukuna x singlemom!reader. Sukuna picks up your daughter from school, he makes quite the impression and we learn more about his background.
cw: None really here except I guess this is low key becoming a slow burn, idk.
You were stuck at work and didn't have anyone else who could go get your daughter so you had asked Sukuna. The tattoo shop was usually slow in the evening this far into winter anyway, and he couldn't imagine saying no to you even if he'd been fully booked.
It felt strange to be going outside when it was still light out but Sukuna took in the sights as other people walked around, other parents clearly in the process of picking up their children from school.
Not that Bug was his kid, at least not as far you knew. Yet.
Sukuna didn't do things halfway, just wasn't in his nature. He knew he was moving fast, he had put up with his little brother Yuji's nervous protests at dinner the week before when he had explained his new living situation, but he wasn't going to slow things down when they were going so well.
For a long time, it had just been him and Yuji. There had been other relatives, like Yuji's grandfather and his freak of a mother, but the two had mostly bounced around foster homes and made due until Sukuna was old enough to take care of them both. Yuji was graduating college in the spring and Sukuna had been alone since he left for the dorms and now he had an apartment with some friends from school. Sukuna was proud of his brother, he was one of the only people he really gave a fuck about. Their lives had been hard and that had made Sukuna even harder. Yuji had never been like that, he had come through even kinder than the average person and Sukuna could admire the strength that showed in it's own way.
The point was, Sukuna had paid his dues. He had done right by his brother even when the world had done them so wrong and now he was ready for his reward. You and the little girl he was about to go get.
The daycare was inside of a little beige building, decorated with those tacky outlines of children playing and some fucking mural with birds that always seemed to cover the walls of places like this. Parents, mostly moms, walked out with their children in tow, asking about their days and zipping up coats. Sukuna noticed the double takes as they took him in, the way the adults seemed to pull their little ones closer. That was fine by him, he didn't want any of these fucking rugrats near him except his own.
"Ryomen Sukuna, mom should have added me to the pick-up list," he told your daughter's teacher, showing her his ID. She didn't react to his tattoos or general aura with anything but a smile and he supposed that childcare workers must be aware more than most that they really do let anyone be a parent.
"Of course, I'll go get her while you sign here," she said handing over a clipboard with the names of all the kids in the center along with blue pen with a fuzzy pompom attached to it. While he was signing his name he heard a familiar squeal and looked to see your daughter running towards him as fast as her little legs could carry her.
"Sukuna!"
She tripped on some particularly tricky air and Sukuna moved forward to pick her up before she could face plant on the hard tile.
"Careful there bug, told mom I'd bring you home in one piece."
She ignored him and started babbling nonsense about her day that Sukuna could only really catch half of, but he nodded and hmmed as he finished signing her out and with a quick nod to the amused staff member, he headed out.
He shifted her on his hip so he could finish zipping up her coat. What was it with kids and their refusal to just zip up their damn coats? He remembered Yuji had been the same.
Bug continued to regale him with tales of her day until she eventually squirmed on his hip, the universal signal for "put me down until I get tired and whine for you to pick me up again" and Sukuna put her down on the sidewalk but took her backpack which he slung across his shoulder and then grabbed her hand with his. He could see people take second looks at the two of them and he supposed they cut quite the picture. The tall scary guy with tattoos carrying a pink princess backpack and the little girl pulling him down the sidewalk.
"We in a rush or something?"
Your daughter laughed and said something about being hungry for dinner with mommy which he could get behind. You both had only been living with him for a week but you already had a bit of a routine. He made breakfast in the morning while you got the kid ready but you always made dinner that was ready when he got home. It was nice, domestic. It felt like what he imagined life was like for people who had normal families when he had been a young kid. Holding a crying, hungry baby Yuji on his lap while they ate whatever he could scrounge up in whatever shithole they were in that week.
He remembered when Yuji had been the same age as your daughter and the idea of her ever living in the places they had, or going through the things they had made him pull her a little closer.
He wasn't going to lie to himself and say he was a good man or that he wanted you, the both of you, for some pure love nonsense but he knew he wanted you all the same. He had done terrible things and he would do them all over again if it led to this moment where he watched as your daughter cooed over the neighbor's dog. Said neighbor looking at him in confusion and fear as he told your daughter they needed to leave the fleabag alone and go home.
Later, when Sukuna was working on dinner and your daughter was sitting on the counter, "helping", he heard the sound of a key in the lock.
"I'm home," you called out and Sukuna called out that they were in the kitchen.
"Hey, thank you so much for getting her. I just wasn't going to make it in time," you said, picking up your daughter.
"No worries, we weren't busy at the shop today anyway." You hummed and smiled at him.
"Still."
"You can go ahead and change," he told you and you looked ready to protest when he went to grab your daughter from you but then Bug went willingly and he saw how you melted at the two of them. Good.
"Okay, but when I get back I'm taking over dinner."
Sukuna agreed and he watched as you walked away, admiring the way your clothes hugged your frame. He was glad the only witness to his hunger was a toddler who was more interested in poking his cheek than observing social cues.
The rest of the evening passed peacefully and Sukuna felt what he could only describe as content. When your daughter started to nod off on your shoulder, you got up from the couch to take her to bed, telling Sukuna he should stay and that you got it. With your daughter on one hip, you used your free hand to press against his shoulder and lean down to where he was still on the couch. He closed his eyes at the feeling of your lips pressing gently against his cheek and then with a quick goodnight, the two of you were in your room, the door closing with a quick 'click'.
The gesture had been so innocent and Sukuna would have mocked anyone he knew who got so flustered over a gesture as meaningless as a kiss on the cheek.
But how could any gesture be meaningless when it came from you?
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tinydeskwriter · 3 months
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Lando NorrisxWolff!reader
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words: 2825
requested: no
A/n: This is going to be a multi-chapters, most of the chapters won't be social midia or something. It is going to 'follow' the 2023 F1 season. Reader is Toto's eldest child by a fictitious ex- first wife. I just watched Break Point, with is another sport Netflix docuseries from the same producing company that makes DST, and since then I have this idea of a prodigy tennis player reader.
next part»
GQ 10 things Y/n Wolff can’t live without
“Hi GQ, I am Y/n Wolff and here are my essentials.” The young woman opens her arms looking at the objects displayed on the table, before looking up and smiling to the camera.
# Sugar
“My trainer may not agree. My coaches may not agree. My performance coach may not agree. My parents definitely don’t agree.” She points out, “But I need sugar.” The young woman brings to the centre of the table a small pile of sweets, a tall cup of caffeinated drink and a can of Red Bull, “I live of sugar and… sugary things…”
“My day starts with this lovely peppermint iced mocha sweetened with vanilla sugar… a ton of vanilla sugar.” Y/n laughs taking a sip of her drink “I am weirdly obsessed with mint and chocolate combinations…” She comments looking at the camera, “I drink perhaps two or three of those per day,” The young woman then places her hand over the top of the Red Bull can, most people who follow her already know that she is an athlete sponsored by Red Bull, “sugar-free Red Bull, which ironically is sweeter than the regular one.” She puts her hand on the pile of chocolates, “Milk-chocolate, I am not going to lie and say that I eat the healthy stuff, I don’t, I have the taste buds of a child,” the tennis player smiles mischievously at the camera, “right now I am really into this Finnish chocolate, Geisha and the blue Fazer, daddy always keep those in his offices for me.” She wrinkles her nose a little, giving the camera a lovely—childish—smile.
“Aero Mint bar, Chocolate Orange, Maltesers, Bounty, Kinder, truffles…I'm honestly starting to wonder how we managed to get through customs.” She laughs looking at her entourage behind the cameras. “This is like… a fraction of what I usually travel with, this is more like what I have in my bag for the day.”
#Photos
Y/n played a little with a golden square object in her hand.
“I travel a lot, I am on the road from January to November playing at tournaments around the world, so I can’t always be surrounded or in touch with the people that I love,” she says in a slightly more serious tone, taking the golden case in her hands and pressing the button to open, showing pile of polaroid photos, “those are mini Polaroids, so I can bring them with me wherever I go, I keep them inside this vintage cigarette case that belonged to my maternal grandmother, she was a absolute rockstar and I miss her very much.”  The camera takes a close-up on the golden case with rope motif and small colourful stones. “As I don’t smoke, I had to find another use for it.”
The first photo she shows is five adults together, smiling around a table, in what appears to be a ski resort.
“I have a very patchwork family, and somehow the adults in my life made it work…which I am very grateful for, not everyone is lucky to have so many amazing parents…so here I have my mum and my two other mothers, Stephanie and Susie, papa and my other father, Phillippe,” the second photo is her with a boy not much younger than her, two teenage girls and a small child in front of a Christmas tree, “my siblings, I have four, I am the eldest whatever way you go, huge flex,” the photo is followed by one of a pyjama party with several girls in matching pyjamas, and another of the tennis player with a blonde in front of the Eiffel Tower, “My gurls! This is my best friend, she is also my PA… so amazing to have someone I trust so much with me all the time…” a golden cocker spaniel with a crystal necklace, silk bows in its ears and a Gucci sweater appears on the screen, “this is Éclair Wolff, my emotional support dog aka my child, she actually goes with me mostly everywhere, but sometimes I leave her with my mum so she won’t be stressed by the long flights.”
She points to the next three photos, the first has the Mercedes drivers in Tommy Hilfinger, posing for the photo. “Lew and Georgie, the adopted older brothers I never asked for, but I love them.” The second photo has three other familiar faces making faces at the camera, “C2, my Ferrari boys, feat Pear, there is something wholesome about good looking men looking so silly, I love those guys and I love this picture, it is very on brand with them.”  The tennis player smiles at the camera. “Sharls, Carlitos and Pear are three of the nicest guys I have ever met, it is truly a blessing be able to call them friends and having them in my life.”
McLaren driver Lando Norris, in his third or fourth season, apparently not even realizing he was having his photo taken, it's a spontaneous photo, the soft sunlight highlighting the driver's profile as he smiles.
“Because of karting, I’ve known Lando since I was a head taller than him, he was my first crush…he was so shy, so adorable, so babygirl coded.” Y/n blushed a little as she shows the photo.
“I think most of the current grid is in here…oh, look, it’s Lance! Friends from life, from tennis…” She quickly changes showing another photo. “I think I easily have about sixty photos here..."
#Camera
“I don’t have a specific camera I like more than the others, but as a rule, I prefer vintage cameras just for the beauty of the final result, I inherited a few, I bought a few, I usually develop the photos when I'm at home for longer periods of time, edit the videos, digitalize a few…” She points to the cameras in front of her, a Bolex, a Digital Bolex, a very iconic Rolleiflex and a Super 8, “It is a very nostalgic experience to just go through a year worth of memories…” She says resting her face in her hand, “I have a hundred boxes with pictures and film rolls.”
“I love going through old pictures with my mom and Cass, my younger sister, from when we were babies, my parents in the 90’s, my mom when she was young, the wonderful life my grandparents lived, and is such a lovely moment to share with my mom.” Y/n has a soft smile on her lips. “One day, when I have my own kids, I want to have those moments with them, and not just scrolling through a phone or an iPad.”
#Journals
“I keep journals since I was a child, I get a new one every year,” She holds up the leather hardcover notebook, a deep indigo blue, a little worn around the edges, “after I turned thirteen years old, I started to get it in this specific shade of blue, with my initials in gold,” The girl opens the journal, leafing through it briefly, “I am never going to write an auto-biography, it’s kind of a little bit too egocentric to my taste,” She knocks it closed, but keeps it up, looking at the camera as she speaks , “but if someone ever write about me, fifty years from now… the facts will be straight, at least from my point of view… but even if no one ever writes about me… when I am old and grey and memory starts to fail me, I will be able to come back to the thoughts of twenty years old me…”
There is a moment of silence.
“That was kind of dark.” Y/n laughs to break the tension.
#Art Supplies
“I love to draw and paint, it eases the anxieties of life,” The tennis player shows the large sketchbook, a small aluminium case with the watercolours, and the rolling leather case with pencils and brushes, “I always bring a watercolour travel kit with my sketchbook wherever I go.”
She displays for the internet some of the landscapes she painted during her travels around the world.
#Hoodies
“I like to be comfortable after a match,” she spreads her arms across the perfectly folded hoodies on the table, “and nothing is more comfortable than a hoodie, feels a little bit like home.”
“I have my collection of hoodies with Adidas, they always provide me with new cool colours to try out and see if I want to add to the next collection,” Y/n opens sage green hoodie, running her hand over her initials and the Adidas logo. “Enchanté by Dani Ric, I have a bunch of those, Daniel is always kind enough to drop them at my house in Monaco, VIP treatment baby.” She points to the white hoodie. “Quadrant hoodies, Lando’s merch, ridiculously comfy, I would really like them in pastel colours or dusty rose… just putting out to the universe…” Y/n smiles and winks at the camera. “Valtteri, MV1… those all came with me for the US Open.”
#Skincare
“This is part of my daily routine.” The girl opens the toiletry bag, taking out the products inside, “I am always in different countries and different hotel rooms, so is nice to have this little sense of routine.”
She lines the pearlescent bottles with opaque round lids on top of the table.
“I launched Muse when I was seventeen years old, it is my skincare brand, and it is very me. I wanted it to be un-complicated and complete,” The young woman explains passionately looking at the camera, “skin is the body’s largest organ, and it is not only your face.” It affects the hair on your face, tucking it behind your ear before going back to the product bottles. “The line goes from body wash to suncream to night-time routine.”  
#Travel Pillow
“If I mess up my neck and shoulder, I am f***ed, my match is over and possibly the tournament.” She holds up a medium-sized pillow to the camera, the pillowcase light pink silk with red buttonholes around the edges and her initials in the corner. “So, this baby goes with me everywhere, it is a memory foam pillow with a silk pillowcase. Best sleep, best hair.”
#Sport Gear
“I generalized here, sport gear, I travel heavy, always,” she points to the array of equipment on the table, “this is my racket, I go to each tournament with around ten of those, just in case I wreak one on the ground,” Y/n passes her hand over the racket, “those are custom Yonex Ezone 98, they made it in Mountbatten pink with some cool pattern and my initials,” she smiles as she pulls the helmet close to her chest, “my helmet, also custom Mountbatten pink, with my initials in rose, I love to try new karting tracks, most people don’t know I used to race karts when I was younger, won a couple of trophies, went as far as F3 before I choose to go pro with tennis, car racing is a huge thing in my family…my dad used to race, my stepmom was a driver, my little brother probably going to be a F1 driver,” she recounts with a smile, “I joked once with my dad that we are at a window that if I have a kid in the next year or two, in twenty years we can have a Wolff’s drivers line-up for Mercedes.” The young woman smirks to the camera. “My dad almost passed out, and now I am not allowed to date until I am thirty.”
#Headphones
“Those are custom made for me, again, they are Mountbatten pink and rose with my logo, super comfortable on the ears, I usually have problems with headphones due to the piercings and earrings, but these didn't give me any problems, they fit well, and I can spend the whole day wearing them." She takes the gadget out of the case, showing the details. “It's not wireless, because I always forget to charge it, so it has a wire, they made this lovely, thick cord that is durable and super resistant,” Y/n wraps the rope around her fingers, “it is noise cancelling and it is always with me before every match as an essential part of my pre-match rituals.”
“The right music kind of puts you in the right mood, I usually go with Eminem in 80% of my matches, I feel like it unleashes my inner fighter, these are matches where I'm not really worried about my opponent, it is just raw and a little bit thoughtless, I just play,” she comments, “when I know that my opponent is going to be hard on the mind games, which is not an uncommon move in tennis, I tend to listen to calmer and more melancholic music, piano, it keeps me in a more peaceful zone, I don’t get pumped up and full of adrenaline, my game tends to be far more calculated…”
 #
“That’s it. Those were my ten essentials,” the young woman smiles, “thank you, GQ, for allowing me to share my essentials, much appreciated, and thank you guys for taking the time to watch it! Much love and see you next time!” The athlete says, blowing a kiss and winking to the camera as the credits shows up.
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2,109,963 views   Aug 29, 2022
978 Comments
 userone
i was todays yrs old when i found out that tennis superstar Y/n Wolff is the eldest child of THE Toto Wolff
            user1
            From what little she talks about her dad here, u just get the vibes that Merce boss Toto is a softie girl dad, he keeps her favourite candy in his offices and forbids her to date until she’s thirty, this is so sweet
haterone
a billionaire’s nepo baby, talking about her millionaire friends and her unrelatable lifestyle and things
usertwo
Y/n’s hair is probably the healthiest hair i ever seen i need her hair routine
userthree
I am so obsessed with her career! I want to see her continue to succeed and be one of the biggest tennis players of all times. She deserves it. Such a talented, humble kid.
userfour
i loved hearing her talk about her family and friends!!! it is so crazy that she is close friends with a bunch of F1 drivers.
            hatertwo
            Not so crazy since she’s literally a f1 nepo baby, her daddy is part owner of Mercedes.
userfive
She's like that one super popular chick in school who's actually a total sweetheart.
usersix
I totally relate to her being a sweet tooth
@userseven
I love that she was not talking to the camera. She was actually talking to the people there behind the scenes
usereight
i love how a lot of these items are usually a stereotype of being pretentious—a vintage cartier cigarette case, a film camera, a leather bound custom hermes journal, art supplies--but she talks about all of them with such genuine interest and attachment that it doesnt seem pretentious at all
usereighteen
U r the one name dropping the brands she uses…
usernine
Her nicknames for Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz Jr and Pierre Gasly… I died dead…
            user9
            The fact that she’s gushing about lando and being so sweet about her childhood crush on him oml
            user10
            Omg it is so cuuute!!! Like, she had a crush on little Lando and not McLaren glow up Lando Norris
            user11
            I used to be so conflicted shipping her with the drivers, because she dates that tennis player, but her insta has a bunch of her and Charles and her and Pierre and her and Lance and it is so cute and kind of gives such soft vibes, those boys look half in love with her in most pictures, also ...the chemistry. but seeing the way she talks about Lando… they r my new diehard ship…
userten  
Are we going to ignore that she confessed that Lando Norizz was her first crush???
            user1
            They would be so cute together… and they ate both single now… at the same time… we can dream…
            user12
            i went ten steps further and in my head, they are already getting married and having cute future Mercedes world drivers’ champions…
user13
 Can we already dream of Lando at Mercedes???
usereleven
Ok… but didn’t Lando once commented like, very briefly, in a McLaren video, that he used to have a crush on a girl that used to go karting with him??? The girl who wore red ribbons in her hair… do you guys know who uses red ribbons in heir hair since she was an actual baby?? Y/n! There is a pic in her insta of her in a karting track with her dad, and she has red bows in her hair…
            user11
            Not gonna lie… It would be kinda of cute if they actually had a mutual childhood crush and then eventually end up together as adults…
next part»
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beggars-opera · 6 months
Text
Hey, so we don't talk enough about A Christmas Carol as being at least a little bit about not continuing a cycle of abuse and neglect, both against others and yourself.
In the book little Scrooge is left languishing over the holidays in a boarding school for some never-explained reason, but it is made very clear that this is miserable and unfair, and that his father is doing this on purpose. His sister specifically comes to tell him that "father is so much kinder now than he used to be, that home's like heaven." This also reflects a bit of Dickens's own childhood when his father went into debtor's prison and little Charlie was forced to support his family working full time in a shoe-blacking factory at the age of 12 (which is also why so many of his books seem to have a moral of "hey, kids are people too and maybe we shouldn't make them work in the mines.")
Whatever family reunion happened after didn't work out, because Scrooge continues believing that no one is coming to save him and pulling himself up by his bootstraps at the detriment of all other social relationships is the only way forward. And the more he lives by that philosophy, the more miserable he gets, because obviously he pushes away anyone who has that hope that he lost. They threaten to break down the walls he's built and teach him that a big pile of money doesn't have to be the only thing that he can rely on, if he'd just let himself be vulnerable and have a relationship with people who care about him, because they're out there even if he's ignoring them.
There is a certain type of person still very much out there who thinks this way. "I've never been happy in my life, so no one else has a right to be either. I was abused in my childhood so it's only fair that everyone else suffer as well." We see this in parents who still try to use corporal punishment, and in wealthy people who ignore the social factors keeping others down and scream that everyone else is just entitled, that only those who suffer and scrape deserve happiness. And they especially hate the people like Fred who represent the past that could have been, who have maintained hope for the future, and seem to be rubbing their optimism in your face, when in reality they're just maintaining hope because it's the only way you can survive.
It's so important for Scrooge to actually see the impact this thinking has on both himself and multiple generations. Rich people have this weird hangup about this story because they think Scrooge is bad because he's rich. He's not, he's bad because he's a horrible person and a miser - he doesn't use his money to better anything, including himself. Salting the earth, everyone suffers here, including him. And he learns that he's going to die old and alone without ever having spent or enjoyed his money, and that his family feels sorry for him, and that the nameless masses of poor people out there that he decries so much are in fact living, breathing people, including tiny disabled kids who don't deserve to suffer just because you decided life isn't fair.
In the end he takes responsibility for actually uplifting the people in the next generation who are trying to make the world a better place and no longer punching down, because it doesn't have to be this way. So many people out there just give up hope because things are hard and they think trying to improve things is a pointless exercise that makes them look dumb. How dare you grow a year older and not an hour richer! How dare you marry for love! That's the only thing more ridiculous than a Merry Christmas! When in reality, there are plenty of people who would love to see them happy if they just had a chance.
It's really sad that, while the language used to describe it has changed, these problems still persist. That people feel so wronged and isolated that they spend their days ensuring everyone else will be as well. That they fail to see their fellow humans as fellow humans who are just as deserving of love and kindness and a roof over their heads. I don't care what time of year it is, we should all be lifting each other up rather than tearing each other down.
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undercoverpena · 8 hours
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when his eyes open
joel miller x f!reader | masterlist
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summary: joel wakes and admires you and the morning.
wordcount: <600 warnings: joeticness, a little angst, a little twisty. an: dedicated to @joelscruff, who told me this was one of her favourite gifs when i asked for inspo for my first ever giflet. for info on giflet's, see @morallyinept's list here. gif credit to the wonderful, amazing @perotovar.
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Before, the routine had been to simply make it through.
To survive another day in a place where crimson clings to clotted wounds, where weeds choke signs as rot consumes all that once lived. 
There are names that linger on his lips. Indelibly stained, carved deep inside him. Never forgotten, each a raw wound with grief around them that throbbed incessantly. Each woven into the very fabric of his soul.
When his eyes close, a horror movie plays on repeat. Blood-soaked shirts and the crack in his voice when he shouts. The snarl in his throat when skulls shatter and bodies break. In these brutal moments, he found himself living again, in a way that's both savage and necessary, the violence a perverse affirmation of his existence.
Plagued—tormented.
Then he wakes, and the truth crashes down—it’s not a movie, but his life. A routine he trudged through for so long until he found this place. A place where sunrise doesn’t mean pack up and move. Where golden light caresses the room he’s been given, kisses the guitar that has built callouses instead of his gun. Light falls softly on things he’s crafted with his hands, hands that once only knew how to take and destroy.
Joel wakes in a room, inside of a home, that’s now his.
A younger him might have given more for the kindness shown to him. The sacrifices he made would have felt meaningful, the blood spilt a necessary price. But now, the weight of his sins, the lives he’s shattered, and the innocence long lost have left him hollow. Acts of kindness feel like a cruel jest, an echo from a life he can barely remember, a life he feels he no longer deserves. In this quiet dawn, amidst the gentle light, he is haunted by the shadows of what he’s become.
But he's tired, worn. The face that greets him in the mirror is now aged, beaten down, and scorched by the relentless elements. Not that you seem to care.
You, who, as his lashes lift and focus, he finds reading for the second time this week. Twisted away from him, the book tilted to catch the sunlight so you don’t strain your eyes. You’d traded for it, your thumb lifting the corner of the page before dragging it to the opposite side—so loud in the quiet.
Joel doesn’t need to steal a moment, but he does all the same. He’s so used to taking, after all. 
He admires how the years have been a little kinder to you than they have to him. How you are a rare sweetness in a world that knows only bitterness. A thing that would have been coveted before and is now more than cherished. He appreciates you when his body doesn’t betray him, when age doesn’t force his eyes closed as his spine meets the bed. But when he can, when he’s able, he leaves marks that’ll last for days—a prickly burn on your inner thighs as you weave your fingers into the hair he’s not allowed to cut. When he holds you so tightly atop him, he knows you can trace the bruises he’s left.
You leave your own marks too. One of them from simply looking at him, showing him that smile—the one that could stop a younger man's heart.
He waits for another page to turn, eyes closing and reopening before he slides his palm over your knee.
Morning, you say.
Morning, he replies.
A new routine, one he doesn’t hate, yet it haunts him with its simplicity and its promise of a fragile peace.
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midnightarsenal · 6 months
Text
𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐞
Summary: Some old tweets come out and it puts you between a rock and a hard place.
Warning: Internalized Homophobia
Word Count: 2.6k
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Arsenal Training Centre, St. Albans
///
You could sense the tension in the air before you'd even stepped through the doors.
...
The past few days had made you a bit of a nervous wreck. The result of some Sam Kerr fan account on Instagram posting a collection of old tweets you'd made nine years ago, back when you were 13.
Old, profoundly homophobic tweets.
And while some fans, mostly those already partial to you, had taken that substantial amount of time and your youth into account, many others had not. Instead, they hurled abuse alongside calls for the club to drop you at the earliest possible opportunity. You'd even tried disabling comments on your most recent social media posts before quickly realizing that the comments would simply move to older ones. Despite how bad some of them had become, you still found yourself not quite willing to disable the comments on every post you had ever made.
It was your own fault anyway. You had been signed by Arsenal a few months ago, having spent the years before that going from one mediocre team to the next until your international performance in Australia had seemingly caught the attention of several larger clubs, the Gunners included. You'd been positively over the moon when your management agency had called to give you the good news. It should have been your big break, and for a period of time, it was, but a position in such a prestigious club came with a level of increased publicity that you hadn't been fully prepared for.
You knew that you should have purged your Twitter before the contract had even been made public, but you'd long forgotten about those posts, those awful comments, and bigoted 'jokes' that your massively insecure thirteen-year-old self had felt the need to put out into the world to try and convince everyone that you were certifiably straight. To convince yourself in some deluded way that you did not frequently lose sleep over the increasingly intrusive and borderline distressing thoughts that plagued you every time you were around some of your friends at school and the teammates at your youth football academy.
Those thoughts just hadn't been you, of course. Because you were straight.
Or, at least that's what thirteen-year-old you had wanted to think at the time.
In the teenage years that followed those tweets, you had eventually been able to come to terms with your sexuality. It had been a slow, long, and painfully drawn-out process, but while the influence of your conservative family had worked to reinforce the close-minded worldview you had been raised with, being around so many openly gay women in your football career had ultimately proven to be a much stronger force in your life. To see that contrary to what you had been told, these supposedly evil and degenerate people were in fact perfectly ordinary and typically far kinder than the 'just' and 'moral' types you had been surrounded by in your childhood.
But, while you had gradually been deprogrammed from the more outwardly hostile and bigoted elements of how you'd been brought up, you had never quite gotten around to being proud of who you were, to being able to let yourself embrace what you felt and to let yourself be happy. Even today, all these years later, you still struggled to imagine yourself feeling the warmth of another woman, a woman you could love as more than just a friend, and a woman who you could feel comfortable telling the world about.
So, you had simply tried to ignore your feelings. Even as you went from teenager to adult and semi-professional to professional, you resigned yourself to a world in which love was an impossibility, where every teasing question from a friend about your romantic endeavors was expertly deflected with a non-committal answer and a change of topic.
You had learned to be happy for the women in your life who were openly gay and celebrated their relationships sincerely like a good friend would, but you could never deny yourself the reality that every time a close friend announced their new partner, you would feel a twinge of remorse, pain that was sourced from fleeting, quickly suppressed thoughts of a life not lived, an opportunity not taken, and a romance denied its potential. It was a sad way to live, but as sad as it was, the thought of telling the world that you were gay was even worse. It had always been worse.
...
And so now, as the sliding doors of the training centre's lobby parted, you found it a difficult task to keep your nerves from becoming overwhelming.
Management had already spoken to you about the tweets and the response on social media to them. Fortunately, no proper news outlet had put out an article on the 'situation' yet, but the club's PR people had seemed pretty nervous that eventually, one of them would. You'd told them that you hadchanged since you were thirteen and that you'd be more than willing to put out an apology. But, ultimately, their advice had been for you to simply stay quiet and hope it all went away on its own. Something that you had been less than thrilled to hear, as if you were ever confronted by a scenario in which it didn't just go away on its own, and eventually you were told to put out an apology, it would likely be too late by the time that you did.
"Morning, Y/N." you were taken away from your thoughts by the young woman at the front desk, Catherine. She was smiling, but you could tell it was a bit of a sympathetic smile, like the woman was trying to show that she was on your side. You appreciated the sentiment, of course, but being treated differently at all because of this was only making your nerves worse.
"Heya." you tried to greet back casually with a smile of your own, and despite your best efforts, it came across as an 'I know' type of smile, a visual confirmation that you acknowledged what had been happening on the Internet these past few days, and her small attempt to make you feel better.
You had almost passed her, ready to head deeper into the large facility when you abruptly stopped and asked, "Any of the other girls here before me?" To which the shorter woman behind the desk nodded, her demeanour steady in its sympathy towards you, knowing why you would be asking. After all, you were on a team with two gay relationships within it, let alone the number of players who just swung that way in general. And aside from the occasional joke or tease (the latter of which often hurt you to an extent that none of your new friends could possibly know), you were pretty certain that none of them actually thought you were a part of that category.
None of the girls had messaged you in the past twenty-four hours, which, while a little uncommon, wasn't an immediate tell that you had been made a pariah. The last message you'd gotten had been from Steph asking if you were available for a coffee date on Saturday, and that had been just over a day ago. Late enough to have been after that stupid account had posted those screenshots, but early enough to have been before many people knew about it.
Fuck, this was really getting to you.
You continued your way down the corridors of the training centre, each heartbeat feeling a little heavier than the last as you drew closer to the locker room. Knowing that at least a few of the girls would be there this early in the morning, getting changed or having a shower or just socializing as they waited for others to arrive. You wondered if they were talking about you, and if they were, what they were saying. You were wondering if they had already agreed to shun you, or even speak to Jonas about getting rid of you. Fuck, this was fucking getting to you.
You gripped the handle of the bag slung over your shoulder a little tighter as you approached the locker room and took a breath before opening the door, a hundred different scenarios having crossed your mind from the time you'd left the lobby to now.
Stepping into the locker room, the atmosphere was a stark contrast to what you had braced yourself for. It was business as usual—some of the girls were chatting casually, others were prepping their gear. For a fleeting moment, you allowed yourself the hope that perhaps they hadn't seen those tweets or had chosen to ignore them.
But as you made your way to your locker, you could feel eyes on you. Some were quick glances, laced with uncertainty or curiosity, while others held longer, more contemplative stares. No one said anything directly, but the air was thick with unspoken questions and possible conclusions. It was hard to tell.
You kept your head down, focusing on getting ready. The sound of your locker door clanging shut seemed to echo louder than usual, and as you changed into your training gear, you pondered over your next steps. Ignoring the issue didn't feel right, but neither did addressing it without a plan.
"Hey," just then, your attention was taken by the sound of a voice that you quickly recognized as Katie's, her Dublin twang thick as always. The defender's expression was hard to read as she approached, and she sat down next to you, continuing after you replied, "Morning." Your voice was small, and your throat tightened a little, Katie was one of the closer friends you'd made in your somewhat limited time at the club, and her opinion mattered to you.
"Listen, I heard about the tweets," she started, and while you braced yourself for what might come next, you couldn't help but notice her tone being somewhat gentler than you'd expected, but still straightforward. "And, I wanted to say..." she continued, and you felt your heart beat a little bit faster. But, then she stopped, if only for a few seconds, and frowned slightly, though seemingly more to herself than to you. She looked like she was thinking about something, something about you, perhaps.
"Well, I don't know what I wanted to say exactly... but I'm here if you want to talk, or if you need anything, really."
Wait.
What?
You must have had a look on your face because the Irishwoman spoke up again. "Like, if you have anything you wanna get off your chest. I'm here for you, all of the girls are." She remained gentle, but you could tell that heart-to-hearts weren't exactly Katie's style (not that this surprised you) from the way she looked a little awkward, but her sincerity remained all the same.
Breathing just the slightest bit faster, it took you another second or two before you replied, "A lot of the girls?" One of your brows lifting curiously. Was... she implying what you were beginning to think she was implying?
Did Katie know think you were gay?
"Yeah. We care about ya, dummy. And unless you really are some horrible bigot, nothing you say is gonna change that." Katie smiled at that remark and you couldn't help but reflect her, shaking your head lightly in response. "I'm not," you confirmed, your eyes connecting with Katie's. "I was just... different then... I was—" You went to continue, but cut yourself off, your breath almost hitching as you caught yourself at the last moment from finishing that sentence.
I was afraid.
You could virtually see the defender's gaze softening on you in real time and you couldn't bear the sight of it anymore, glancing away and turning your attention to your shoes. The locker room around the pair of you was beginning to fade into the backdrop, although you got the feeling that it hadn't just been Katie's eyes on you. Even as you observed the details of your trainers, you could practically feel the woman next to you's gaze wandering off every few moments to the others in the room, maybe looking for assistance, or trying to convey her unspoken suspicion.
"You were what?" You heard, and this time it wasn't Katie who spoke. It was Beth, who was standing a short distance away by her own cubby. Immediately proving that your heart-to-heart with Arsenal's number 15 hadn't been quite so exclusive, and the locker room's sudden silence ironically brought it right back to the forefront of your attention. Everyone was listening, and many of them staring as well. Was this what they had been talking about before you'd shown up? Had they been in here putting together dots you hadn't known existed? A longing gaze you hadn't suppressed or one too many comments about the eyes or legs of another woman that you'd thought would simply slip under the radar as casual observation? Were those tweets the final confirmation they needed?
Was this the supposed 'gaydar' you had heard about?
"Nothing." you retorted swiftly, shaking your head again as you reached into your locker to resume getting dressed. You hadn't really paid attention to the fact you'd stopped when Katie had come over to talk to you, but the girls didn't seem intent on letting this moment slip away, and you could see Beth approach from your peripheral vision even as you tried to focus on getting changed. You were beginning to almost feel trapped, though you were certain that the culprit behind that particular feeling was more likely to be yourself than your teammates.
"Y/N, we're your friends." Beth said, kneeling down to eye level, while Katie still sat beside you, staring into the side of your head with an expression that was unusually gentle and almost unnervingly so. You still couldn't look at her without feeling your throat close up.
"Trust me... none of us are going to react like how that silly little brain of yours thinks we might." she continued softly and with a warm smile, and now you knew. You knew that they knew.
Your head tilted slightly up to look at Beth, who was now squatted a small distance from you, hands clasped together and blue eyes looking right into your own. You could still sense the looks of the other girls on you too, only now you didn't feel that they were judging, far from it actually. Your leg bounced up and down nervously, and you didn't even have it in you to try to stop it. You felt like you wanted to cry. Why was this so hard? Even now, when it was clear that everyone in the room knew. You just couldn't say it.
Your eyes started to glisten as the first tears threatened to push their way out, and you gave Beth a small, sad smile. Your throat began to hurt in the way that only a sob—or an imminent one—could provoke.
"I think you know already." you finally managed to get out, your voice as small as your presence in that room, and Beth only nodded. You could see some of the other girls nod too, but you were distracted by the feeling of Katie's hand taking your own and clutching it safely. A breath escaped you and it was shaky, uncertain, afraid.
"Yeah, I think we do, pet." the forward replied, closing the gap between you and pulling you in for a hug, her arms finding themselves at home wrapped around your torso. It was as if she'd given you permission to cry, the tears finally beginning to flow, as you buried your head into the other woman's shoulder, quietly sobbing into the fabric of her Arsenal jacket. Katie's hand tightened around your own, and you heard the sound of cleats and shoes closing in around you. You weren't sure how you were going to deal with this new reality moving forward, this world in which people other than yourself knew of your sexuality, but at least you wouldn't be alone.
///
End Notes: Hope you liked this one, guys! I promise not all of my fics will be angsty! I'm also in the process of writing an OC for a self-contained multi-part storyline. But, with how busy I've been with uni, who knows whether I'll actually finish it or not. Thanks for reading!
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weskie · 19 days
Text
A New Dawn (Albert Wesker x gn!Reader)
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descriptions of injuries, descriptions of violence, tentacle murder, tentacle affection, yeah that's a thing, shared shower, wesker lives au | Fic Directory
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You found him by sheer luck.
That rock he’d crawled onto could’ve simply crumbled.  The volatile lava could’ve risen higher and submerged him completely.  Despite the odds being stacked so incredibly high against any hope of recovering Wesker, you managed to pull his legs from the impossibly hot liquid with the help of a small rescue team and loaded his charred body into a helicopter for what was arguably the worst moment of your life.
All you can do is stare at what he’s become– at the autonomous slithering of tentacles that, by some miracle, contained themselves to their host and did not spread to your shaking hands.  His lower body is marred entirely with burns and blisters so severe that you’re unsure if taking him out of there was even humane.  If, perhaps, letting him be swallowed by the earth would’ve been kinder than putting him through whatever is to come next.
Once he’s placed in a containment room, you call in every favor you’ve ever known him to be owed.  But it’s all for nothing.
The first attempt to prick his skin with an IV catheter results in bloodshed.  The entire team of medics stood stock still as the head doctor was impaled and dangled overhead by a mass of black, oozing tentacles emerging from Wesker’s body.  It happened so fast that you only realized it once the blood hit the observation glass.
Such would be the result of any attempts to address his injuries.  Not even a blanket was able to be laid over his bare form without retaliation. It was like the mass of tendrils had a mind of their own, geared only toward protecting their host– though it raises the question of why the initial recovery of his body hadn’t produced the same response.  Regardless, you wager they’re the only reason that Wesker is still alive.
For that, you’re thankful.
You talk to him through the intercom regularly.  You tell him about the BSAA’s seizure of Tricell and its assets, of how you’ve turned one of his hidden facilities into something livable for when he wakes.  That you’ll be there when he does, and how excited you are for the day.  That you hope he can hear you but feel none of the pain.
You pray he doesn’t.
At the end of the first week, you come to the realization that the tendrils are slowly engulfing his body.  Every day, more seem to appear until his legs are cocooned.
You take notes and photos of everything as best as you can, just as you know he’d want you to.  After all, this is his creation in action. The seed for his perfect world that was now seemingly consuming yours whole.
By the fourth week, they’ve risen as high as his clavicle. 
By the fifth, you feel as if you’re losing your sanity.  Alone in a massive underground facility, having not seen the sun for weeks on end, eating only MREs and having what little sleep you get plagued by stress and worst case scenario nightmares… 
You crack.
“I don’t know how to make it better, Al…”  You whisper brokenly, forehead pressed to the glass. “I can’t– I don’t know how to help you.”
Any assistance you could have possibly had turned their backs the moment the danger far outweighed the payment– which had been the case from the very start.  Though you can’t find it in yourself to fault them.  If it wasn’t for the fact your heart was lying on that table, you’d have probably followed. The threat of death can be very convincing. 
When the tendrils creep onto his face, you break containment.  And why not?  Why shouldn’t you go in?  You helped make this mess.  You helped create the organism consuming him.  For years, you worked alongside him to perfect the cure to humanity’s wretches– to cull the species destroying this planet and dragging the rest down.
Perhaps you deserved the same fate for sharing in his endeavors– for even having goals so similar and selfish.  But was it really?  Was it so selfish to want better for humanity? 
You drag your swivel chair behind you as you tread over dried blood smears and dehydrated viscera. 
“You always did like making me do things the hard way,” you jest as you approach him.  But you’re not in there to take notes or vitals.
You set foot inside to relieve your madness.
Your hand quakes as it hovers above his forehead.  You’re unsure if you should even touch him due to the blistering and ripplings of infection marring his skin.  The burns have healed a tad since bringing him in, but not nearly as much as they should’ve.  Then again, it’s been weeks since he’s had a dose of suppressant to keep his strength balanced.
You lower the back of your hand toward his nose, relieved to feel the faintest tickling of air.
“Thank god,” you whisper tightly.  “I really miss you...”
Which was the honest truth.  You miss your mundane nights with him, sitting near as you both worked independently. Stacks of paper, the clicking of keyboards, endless hours in the laboratories spent refining mere dreams into reality.  You miss his cold affections and strange ways of expressing that he, too, had been infected with that parasite known as love.
You let your hand rest shakily over a section of his hair that hadn’t been burnt down to the scalp.  You hold your breath and wait.
And wait.
And wait.
You are not added to the stains of violence on the walls, nor are you impaled in the blink of an eye.
But you are greeted with a much thinner tendril creeping up over his brow and forehead to inspect you.  It nudges your thumb and your whole body goes tense, veins chilling as if your blood had turned to ice.  It slithers over the bumps of your knuckles, leaving a thin layer of ooze over every inch of skin it touches as it trails to wrap around your wrist.  For a brief second, you’re petrified of it taking hold of you like that.  Would it try to bind with you?  What if it did to you what it had done to your precious Albert? What if it rejected you?
And if it did, how would you continue to try to help him? 
But it doesn’t.  It does nothing of the sort, just simply continues snaking up the length of your arm.  The tip rests atop your shoulder in a strangely… docile manner. You cease petting Wesker’s hair for but a moment to calm yourself, and then you feel it do something odd.
The head of the tendril lifts itself and plops back down on your shoulder, stroking backward little more than an inch before repeating the process.  You watch with wide eyes, both fascinated and terrified.
It’s mimicking you.
You pet Wesker’s hair once more and it ceases its movements.
You stop; it begins again.
Was Uroboros itself doing such an act?  Could it?
A flicker of hope flashes in your mind and tears prick at your eyes.  It’s so fucking unlikely– nearly impossible even.  And yet–
“Is that you?”  You ask softly, inching just a little closer to him.  You can see the way his eyes dart around beneath his eyelids– an entirely new development.  Was he dreaming? 
The tendril wraps the slightest bit tighter around your arm. 
“Can you hear me?”
The head of it lifts and falls against you once more.
It couldn’t be… but, at the same time, it had to be.   The tears you’ve fought against so hard fall and you grin from ear to ear.  All of that fear fades away, the desperation, the depression and hopelessness– it’s all gone.
You lean forward and press a kiss to his brow, suppressing your silent cries as you revel in the joy that your love is still in there.  This is no mere corpse kept alive by the resilience of a virus. The tendril wraps tighter the second your lips brush his skin, and you know in your heart that it’s how he’s able to reciprocate.
“We're going to figure this out,” you promise him. “I love you.”
Two weeks pass before his flesh starts to peek from between those slithering lengths.  You’d almost lost hope again.
It’s his lower body that starts to emerge first, bit by bit, starting from the feet up.  Flesh that was once marred an angry red, blistered and scorched beyond recognition, was now a scarred pink.  Amazingly, some patches seemed to have healed flawlessly, as if he’d never submerged in the fires of the earth to begin with.
Notes and photos.  Tests where possible.  Anything you could do to make sure Albert had every scrap of information possible about his otherworldly creation.  
Uroboros works.
Not only that, but it can bring its host back from the brink of death– if not perform a complete resurrection. 
Day by day, more of him is revealed until the pink line at his waist shows you just how deep he’d been submerged.  There are splatter patterns elsewhere, you notice.  Tiny specks of scarring from where lava had touched him long enough to burn through the dermal layers.
You decide to finally attempt to cover his body again.  A simple blanket, but hopefully one that’s warmth would not go unappreciated in the chill of the sterile room. 
When his hands are freed, you hold and press countless kisses to them.  You rest your cheek in his palm, telling him about your findings– that he’s almost healed and that you’re so goddamn excited.
“Uroboros is a success, my love.  You’re proof of it.”
The most fascinating of all, though, is the amber-like formation embedded in his chest.  From what you can tell, it is from this that the tentacles on his body are emerging.
You dare not touch it. Not yet, anyway.
Six days later, you find yourself kicking around in the barren kitchen of the complex.  There’s nothing but crumbs, and you’re miserable.  You haven’t left since arriving, and these compounds of his were never meant to be more than a brief hideaway.
You drag your feet as you make your way back to the bedroom.  Seems there’s little more to do than throw yourself in the shower to start your day, so you do exactly that.  Though not with any degree of enthusiasm.  Instead you sit on the ground and hug your knees, eyes shut as you ignore the complaints of your stomach.
You’ll have to find transportation to and from the nearest town– if there even was one.  It’d be lucky if you spoke the language or could even find the currency, but you’ll figure it out.  You have no choice.
In the absence of your awareness, coupled with the white noise of the shower, you fail to hear the door creak open.  Not even the disoriented shuffling against the tile floor rouses you.
Suddenly, the shower curtain is ripped open, and you startle– damn near knocking your head off the floor as you slip around like a fool.  But you clamber to your knees in an instant, arms flinging around the intruder who had fallen to your level.
You can’t help but weep.
“Al?!  Oh my god!” you exclaim through the tightness of your throat. Your hand strokes at the nape of his neck.  “I’m so sorry… I’m so sorry.”
You should’ve been there when he woke up.  You should’ve fucking been there.
He shouldn’t have had to find you.
You move back and cup his face in your hands, pressing a smiling kiss to his lips despite the torrent of emotion rocking you to your core.  You pull away and find that he looks exhausted.  Completely and utterly drained.  His eyes are hooded, but the blue irises peeking out from under his lashes confirm that he is, in fact, exactly that. The formerly bright formation on his chest is dimmed nearly black.  All of his energy had gone into merely surviving.  Your poor, sweet love looked death in the eye for a second time and emerged victorious.
You help him get under the stream of water where you sit and hold him close.  You’ve never seen him like this before.  Vulnerable was an understatement.
He’s quieter than ever, staring straight ahead at the wall.  Shame, you surmise.  Humiliation.  He was defeated again– maybe even flat out killed.  His pride has always been its own Tower of Babel, built high enough to reach heaven and godhood.  But now it was truly shattered.  Crumbled to bits and buried in the sands of his failure.
There are no words to say.  Not yet, anyway.  He’s already heard them all.  Instead, there is shampoo to massage into his scalp and soap to trail over his body.  You may not be able to fix his pain, but you can wash away the remnants of volcanic ash and ooze tarnishing him.  The burden of grime is at least gone by the time the water runs cold.
You dry him with a towel, taking note of how his hands shake and how he balls them into fists to hide it.  You wonder if he still hurts, but you know he’d never admit to it even if he was truly in pain. Even wincing was out of the question, so you pretend not to hear it when he does.  You pretend like he doesn’t lean on you for support as you walk him to the bed, like he doesn’t need your help to lift his legs high enough to settle in.
He lets you hold him while he sleeps, something so out of the ordinary it leaves you blinking in confusion the second his head lays upon your chest.  Nevertheless, you do it anyway.  You pet through his hair, even occasionally running your fingertips over the healed sections of his scalp.  Normally he would stir if you so much as shifted, but he doesn’t even groan in his slumber.  
You hold him as though he's made of ceramic, basking in the tenderness of hope until your own eyelids grow heavy.  The world can wait.  Rebuilding can wait. Hell, even revenge can wait.  All that matters is this– is him. Your precious Albert, safe and very much alive in your arms, is more than you could ever ask for.
For the first time in weeks, your eyes flutter shut without fear of tomorrow.
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loose followup fic here
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writingoddess1125 · 8 months
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hello!! ⭐, I saw that your order section was open and yesterday I read your story of buggy with the Roger effect and Jessica Rabit and I loved it, and I would like to know if you could do a one shot or something shorter if you prefer showing how they met and they decided to get married I love your stories and I think that, like your buggy, he is my favorite character. If you don't like this request or you think it's not good to do it, you can just ignore it, it won't be a bad thing 😸 thank you and have a good day!! 💗✨ (pd. English is not my first language so sorry if something is not written well😔)
Deal! I love this little idea
Buggy x FemReader
Small angst + Fluff
Heart on my Sleeve
Prequel Of Roger and Jessica Rabbit Effect
Wanna Buy me a Ko-Fi ☕️
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• Your village was one of the poorest villages in the East Blue, the taxes from the World Goverment crippling your home to be a starving wasteland.
• Mainly to the wealthy Governor who lived above your town.
• You owned a fabric shop but the fabrics you owned were old and starting to rot from the lack of buissness. The moths having more use put of your fabrics then you did-
• The newest pirate on the scene Buggy the Clown shows up to your village ready to pillage it, in his early 20s with a fresh faced crew. However they did not expect the village to look worse then before they arrived.
• "I thought you said this place had money?" Buggy asked as he looked at the place. Lowering his blades as it looked like this place- it was in shambles. Like it had been pillaged to time then a pirate
• You had walked out of your shop, seeing if maybe the baker had just enough flour so you could feed yourself. Turning to see the group of pirates that seemed better off then you and your people.
• Buggy stared hard at you and matched forward, seeing that you were quite pretty in his eyes as he stood before you.
• "You! Tell me what the hell is wrong with this place! We heard it was rich here!" He said angrily, clearly upset at not getting to a small village that at least had a few Berries.
• You looked up at the pirate, noting the far too big of clothes for his frame and his painted face- Not liking he was putting such an unflattering green around his watercolor eyes. His face twisting up in anger as he caught you staring at his face.
• "What are you staring at!? You looking at my nose!" He yelled angrily, his fingers going to the inner part of your coat where you assumed some weapon would be.
• "No your shirts too big for your frame and that shade of green doesn't compliment your eyes well" You said truthfully, At this point a knife or bullet being a kinder death then starving anyway-
•"U-Uh- What?" He said confused, Unsure how to answer. You reaching forward and putting your arms around his frame to pull back the shirt. Taking a pin from your pocket and pinning the shirt back so it fit properly.
• "See- Your shirt is too big. It looks better fitted like that" You pointed out, His faze looking down at the pinned back shirt. His face red at how close you got to him, or that you'd touched him at all.
• "As for money we have non. The governor has the taxes so hide no one here can even feed themselves" You said truthfully, The young clown blinking at you in surprise.
• "Er- Y-Youre making fun of me somehow right? Like my Nose" He tried to yell again grabbing the front of your dirty shirt- clearly not used to someone trying to give him kind useful advice without some sort of motive.
• "I would never make fun of your nose, it looks fine to me anyways" You snap back and slap his hand away calmly. He blinked at you surprised and released your hand- His eyes going up the hill of the village and seeing the grand governors house hidden in some trees.
• He huffed and shoved you hard, you falling into the mud as him and his crew marched past up to the Governors home.
• However what did surprise you was the next Morning the Captian and his Crew stood in the village square and announced he now owned the village. Saying he was Buggy the Clown- and that he was now in charge.
• Before starting to hand out some stolen treasure??? Giving some supplies he had 'liberated' from the Governors house.
• You also noticed how his eyes lingered on you as he did this.
• It had been a few months like this, he would stop by randomly pay for the village. He wasn't taking taxes but instead paying things- it was improving greatly, the cracks of the pavements on the streets getting repaired, new paint on the building and new businesses flourishing-
• But you noticed how he would pay extra attention to your shop- Getting all his things from you. How you got extra rolls of fabric delivered to your door or how he would pay for all these extra accessories to his costumes.
• "You seamstress I want another coat!" He yelled as he invaded your shop.
• Buggy was there again, asking for another ridiculous costume. You couldn't help but notice how often he was coming by- claiming he wanted new costumes by you and wanting to be measured everytime he came in.
• How he would blush when you measured around his chest. "You know, I noticed you always come through here and stop specifically at my shop for new outfits when you wear the same coat" You tease, watching him blush at you pointing this out.
• "So what!" He yelled out, his face as red as a cherry. You look at him and raise a brow at him, Not even having to say a word as Buggy deflated.
• "...I uh wanted to take you on a date" He grumbled, finally admitting what his plans were. You smiled at this, Setting the tape aside.
• "Now please do tell me, Why should I accept your offer for someone who not only yelled in my face but pushed me in mud-" You point out, even though you knew he most likely made up for it by him saving your village.
• "..I am sorry about that.." He forced out, you could tell he wasn't used to apologizing and was trying his hardest.
• "I forgive you, But that doesn't mean I'll forget" You say calmly. Smiling softly as you saw him looking ready to flip put at the rejection but you held a hand to him-
• "I know- So why don't we make a deal. Since I can tell you're really sorry why don't we agree to dinner and go from there? Its not a date per say but its a start" You said with a smile, his eyes lit up at hearing this at the prospect of getting to win you over.
• "Really!?" He says excitedly, Jumping up and down like a school boy as he blushed and giggled into his gloved hands like a kid. You couldn't help but find it adorable-
• For the next year Buggy would send gifts, love letters, help rebuild the village. Do everything to get in your good graces and ask for a official date every time he visited.
• Buggy would essentially own the Village at the point, 30% of his money went to the village to get it on its feet and keep it a small strip of paradise the very limited taxes he implimented later affer the village was florishing acted as a small form of secondary income. Mainly making sure people knew the place was protected by him as his reputation grew through time.
• Him even showing his unique Devil fruit abilties- Which you often abused for him to float up and grab the more expensive rolls of fabric or hang up finished cloths.
• The village also being a popular tourist destination for the friendly locals and nice scenery. So for Buggy it was worth the investment since originally put in.
• After that 'probation' year you would finally agree to officially date him and he was over the damn moon.
• While he would be secretive about you, his love language was strong. He is both physically and verbally affectionate- While he still throws his fits you know how to handle him well. Loving him both for his strengths and flaws.
• It would be 1 years of dating before Buggy would start planning how to pop the question.
- You were closing up shop for the day, humming along to a made up tune when you heard the back door of your shop being unlocked. You didn't have to look to know who it was, only one other person had the key to it.
"Hey Buggy Boo" You call out, smiling as you heard Buggy grumble and peel off his boots to leave them by the front door.
"That is still such a bad nickname" He grumbled before walking behind you and kissing your cheek and wrapping his arms around you. He smelled like the sea, clearly having just gotten off his shop to visit you. He had been taking more time out to see, wanting to get his bounty higher. Currently proud of his 5,000,000 berry bounty which for a early 20s pirate was fairly good he claimed.
"Ah you love it" You giggle which earned a adorable chuckle from the man.
"You know (Y/N)- I uh really like you and Want to spend my.."
"So I wanted us to have dinner tonight- I know you like that place down the street and want us to go there" He said, his voice very soft- Much softer then normal.
Smiling you turn around and kiss him on the lips.
"I'd love to" You say cheerfully, earning a crooked smile from him as he held you close.
As promised, that night Buggy took you to your favorite restaurant. Having gotten a private table in the back, you two spending hours just talking and sharing a meal together.
Buggy even pulling out a box of your favorite candies he had gotten out from his last adventure.
After dinner he lead you away to the more scenic parts of your Village a small meadow pass that had the most beautiful blue and white flowers, under the moonlight it looked so magical. You saw Buggy reach in his pockets and turn to face you, nervousness painted on his face as he shuffled his feet. Clearly prepared to get on one knee-
"You stole my Thunder!!" He cried in faux anger, you laughing hard as he ranted about how you knew so quickly, happy tears running down your cheeks as you smiled and his face turned deep red.
"Yes I will!" You said with a wide smile, your excitement getting the best of you as you slapped your hands over your own mouth. His jaw dropping in shock.
"I've been planning this for 4 months!!" He whined, face so red his nose was glowing as he stared at you.
"Im so sorry Baby, You just- You talk in your sleep my Love." You reveal with a smile, His face twisting up as he realized you'd known the whole time and let him try to have his moment anyway. You had just got too excited and answering too quickly-
As this sunk in he smiled widely and started to laugh, he couldn't help it! You were just too perfect for him! Despite everything you still let him have the spotlight. He kissed your lips eagerly and held you close, rocking the two of you side to side in pure joy.
"I.. I love you (Y/N)..So much- I cant wait for you to be my wife.." He said as he pressed his face into your neck- You could feel the warmth of tears hitting your skin exposed. Your arms wrapped tightly around him as you hug him close and cried against him in joy.
Pulling the both of you to the ground with a loud laugh as you two laid in the flowers- Laughs leaving you both as tears stilled from both of your eyes.
"I love you too Buggy Boo"
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jaketsparrow · 3 months
Text
SOMETHING... | JTK
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Pairing: Jake Kiszka x f! Reader
Word Count: 10.6K
Summary: When you have to say goodbye to your professor and mentor, a cocky young professor steps in, Jacob Kiskza. Literature used to be your safe place, but now you feel him getting involved in every corner; it doesn’t help that you’re his TA. You deny yourself every opportunity to fall for him until…
A/N: Hi guys :) I know it’s been forever since I’ve put something together and I apologize about that, but this is life. This one has been on my mind since the Grammy U interview and I finally had the idea to put it all together. I hope you enjoy :) 
Playlist
*Also I'm so sorry I lost my tag list so if you want to be tagged here's a new form* Taglist
MINORS DNI
MENTIONS OF/ TW: Sexual content (of course), talks about death/grief, angst, swearing, Dom! Jake, restraints, possible orgasm denial, choking, alcohol use, fingering (f receiving), dirty talk, ~some~ degrading, praise kink!, I’m sorry if I missed anything, but, etc, it’s filth. 
The classroom was cold in the early months of the year. You had gotten in the habit of wearing your coat through the 3-hour seminar. You were lucky that this class only ran once a week, but you often had to stay longer than the students, working with the professor for a few hours afterward. He was always elusive. Always eager to get things done as fast as possible; efficient and snappy. 
There was much to admire about him, but his personality often left you rolling your eyes. He always seemed a bit too sure about himself, always being the tough grader, pushing students further than they were willing to go. He cared a lot, especially about the subject matter. He still had that gusto in him to do things right, to be stern. 
He was new to the program; and before this, only about a year into teaching. You studied under his predecessor. She was a kinder old woman who cared deeply for you, like your mother away from home. She taught you everything- and even got you to change majors during your sophomore year. She supplemented your reading supplies, nurtured your abilities, and was always willing to sit in deep conversation with you. Discussing the classics, introducing modern pieces, talking about life, talking about it all. 
Professor Kiszka on the other hand… 
When he took over for Professor Meelo, he took very little time to rip the bandaid off. When you had originally been promised a TA position in the literature department, you were expected to be under your mentor, not a cocky white man. 
You spent weeks crying during winter break after first meeting him. The day you met him didn’t go exactly as you hoped. It was the week of finals when you found out Meelo was sick, and that she was stepping away from teaching. As if finals week wasn’t stressful enough, you had to come to terms with the fact that the woman who taught you everything was going to be leaving this world sooner than you would’ve thought. It was even more of a punch in the gut to walk into your introduction meeting to see… him. 
3 Months Ago
The walk across campus felt heavier than usual. The winter had been harsher than it usually was in early December. The wind whipped across your bare rosy cheeks, causing freezing tears to slowly fall out of the corners of your eyes. Almost like a bad omen, the weather continued to get worse as you sludged your way across the quad. 
The parking lot was nearly a mile away from campus, which was nice during the warmer months; the trees would sway across the crosswalk, blessing the sidewalk with fallen flowers and leaves. The grass was green and lively, a welcome mat onto a wonderful learning home. Between the cracks of the stone walkways, little dandelions would grow. You never understood the people who thought them to be unnecessary weeds. They were bright and yellow lively plants, and when the time of beauty passed, they passed their good wishes onto you. Blowing what once were vibrant petals into the wind. Who knew you’d miss the weeds on your walks?
Instead, now the stones were smeared with remnants of snowy footprints, broken earth that had been cracked through with the force of shovels, and the remnants of the dead earth.
Meelo called you just last week. You begged to go see her in the hospital, but she didn’t want you to worry too much. She agreed to call you every other day, just like your usual coffee arrangements. She loved them just as much as you did. She never had a husband or any children. Her students were her children, her soul was fed enough through changing lives that she didn’t want to take away that love from her students or prevent any child from feeling all of it. You were not the first to bear their soul in her office, but you might be one of the last. 
Meelo begged you to go meet the new professor. You had tried to rescind your TA position, but she blocked you at every chance she got. Even while in hospice she still managed to look out for you…
“Please, sweetheart. I know it’s not easy. But he’s young, he’s smart, I think you’ll have a lot in common with him,” She pleaded through the phone. 
“But he’s not you. I just, I thought… I thought I’d have more time…” Your voice trailed off. 
You tried to hold the phone away from your face, trying not to distress her more with the sounds of your whimpers and tears. 
Her voice started again, “You never know what you will learn from him. You have more time with me, but there comes a time when a teacher must share her students for them to learn more. If we stayed in our echo chamber together my dear I’m afraid you wouldn’t learn everything you need to know. Jacob is going to be a great professor, and I know you will learn a lot from him. His research and analysis work is quite extensive. The school and I hired him for a reason. Please. Just give it a try. For me.”
“Just for you.” 
And here you were trudging through, feeling every bone in your body telling you to turn around, to go home. But you were doing this not for you, you reminded yourself. For Meelo. She was right, you latched on to her from your early years in college and favored her over all of your other professors. They were kind and nice as well, but it didn’t matter to you in the end, if they weren’t Meelo, they were never going to compare. 
The building seemed colder than usual. The large glass windows were covered by their shades; no one wanted to see the gross state of life outside of the classroom. That’s hardly motivating to any student, the fluorescents would give more life than the grey state of the weather. 
You pull the door open, walk through the entryway, and follow your usual path down the hallway to Meelo’s room. 
The thing about old colleges, everywhere you turn is a little piece of history. Each room has housed many professors and many students. The building had life, had ghosts of its own hidden in each brick, in each stone. You felt the comfort of this presence moving through the hallway. 
You stop right before Meelo’s room, catching your breath before you enter. Trying to have an open mind. Kiszka could be something, or he could just be another man throwing words at you. Not that all men were the same, but a majority of the male professors here were lackluster, favoring the male students and the athletes who needed the better grades to stay in the school. And if they favored the women… You always felt a cold chill thinking about that. Thinking about why…
One last deep breath before you enter the classroom. You grab tight onto the handle of your tote bag and strut confidently into the room. 
It was empty. 
The beautiful artwork and posters that Meelo had filling the room were stripped. Revealing the natural state of the architecture. It was beautiful in its own way but didn’t feel like the educational home you once felt so blessed to be in. The desks were all shoved to one side of the classroom. The previous welcoming U-shape was demolished, instead providing a cluttered destruction of Meelo’s work. 
You stood awestruck in the shape of the room. There was no time wasted between Meelo leaving and Kiszka starting to make his mark on the room. The bookshelves that used to be filled in the back of the room had been emptied and their contents sat on the floor in boxes.
You walk over to the boxes, kneeling to gently sift through the carelessly placed books. This was Meelo’s library that she had collected for the classroom. Take a book, leave a book, borrow a book, bring it back. You loved visiting this wall every week, seeing what books your peers were interested in, and which books made their way into the library. Some new, and some returning after long months away. 
Sitting on top of the box was the classic “Brave New World”. Aldous Huxley. 1932. Not an original copy, but a new binding. It was like the universe was sending you signs. This would be a brave new world. A world where you might have to come to terms with the fact that Meelo would not be in your life forever.  A world where you might have to figure out everything with a new mentor. A world where you thought you would have years to work on your pieces with a woman who understood you, but now you would turn over your heartfelt pieces to a man. One who may not understand you the same as someone else does.
“A favorite of yours?” A voice perks up from the doorway. 
You turn to see him. Your eyes work your way up his figure. He’s wearing Chelsea boots, black thick linen pants, a white loose shirt with a black vest, and a dress coat over it. His chestnut hair lays over the shoulders of the coat, and his eyes are covered by circular gold-rimmed sunglasses. He oozes mystery. His arms crossed, surveying your crouched body by the boxes. You hate to admit it, but he may be one of the most handsome men you’ve ever seen. 
You hold up the book towards him, displaying the cover. 
“Not particularly. I don’t like thinking about the takeover of technology. It feels too real right now.” You respond. 
He wanders over to you, taking his time, each step creating the most annoying echo in the emptied classroom. He reaches his hand out to yours, asking silently for the book. You hand it over to him and stand to match his level. 
He passes the book between his hands, admiring the binds, “Ah, yes, but perhaps something can be learned from the book if more understood its warning… if only more read it…”
“If only…” You let the conversation trail off. Your eyes wander back to the pile of desks on the opposite wall. You feel yourself zoning out, focused only on the change of the room, not on the man in front of you. 
“-Your favorite?” He asks. 
You snap back to the conversation, trying to recall the beginning of his question, “I’m sorry? 
“If this is not your favorite, can I ask which is?” He waves you to walk with him. 
You follow him into the office at the back of the classroom. He sits in Meelo’s chair, and you sit in the chair that had held you so many times. You wouldn’t be surprised if the cushion had a you-shaped imprint in it at this point. 
He asks a third time, “You don’t seem like the Jane Eyre or Louisa May student, so what is it?” 
You let your bag fall off your shoulder and you try to sit up in the chair, asserting some sort of professionalism. Your answer will hold some sort of judgment for him. Although you want to be offended by his comment about the female author’s classics, he’s right. They were never your favorite. 
“Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Meelo gave it to me as my first assignment.” You respond, confident in your answer. 
He nods in approval, “Lovely choice, very telling. Meelo said you were very bright–one for the classics.” 
He leans back in his chair, stroking his chin. His hand reaches up to the gold-rims and pulls them off, clattering onto the desk. He pulls himself towards the desk, resting his elbows on the table. 
“Are you going to ask me mine?” He asks, almost presumptuously. 
You fight back the urge to roll your eyes. Of course, he has to find a way to be important here. You adjust yourself in your seat, crossing your arms in the process. 
“If you want me to know, why don’t you just say it?” You retort. 
He chuckles to himself, “Lord of the Rings.” 
Your mouth falls so far open that you’re afraid a fly might buzz its way in. You lift your hand to your mouth and try to hide your disapproval.
“That’s a classic for sure.” You reply, “Not one I would’ve expected from a college literature professor, but a classic nonetheless.”
He pushes himself off the desk, running his hands through his long locks before they make their way onto the arms of the seat. 
“You don’t approve?” He scoffs. 
“I didn’t say that, I just said it’s not one that I would expect.” 
“I believe there is a difference between a personal and professional favorite. A favorite you could read over and over again, and you could enjoy without having to think too much about what it all means. it’s an adventure, its heroes and legends, it’s a call for relaxation and enjoyment. I’d rather have my favorite be a well-known classic than a deep thought-provoking story about purity.”
You fight every urge in you to slap the man sitting before you for disgracing such a beautiful novel. But you think about Meelo. You think about stepping outside of the echo chamber. 
“I think we may have different opinions on favorites, Professor Kiszka.” You say shortly. 
You feel the tension grow between you already. This would be a difficult semester. Even more difficult because as you felt your dislike for him grow, you couldn’t stop staring at the beautiful man sitting in front of you. His brown eyes stared deep into you, trying to assess his new assistant. You tried not to let him in too far. You were not fawning for him, at least you weren’t trying to. You wanted to fight off the growing warmth crying to spread through you. It was like seeing a handsome stranger in the bar; you knew the danger, but almost didn’t want to let yourself protect your heart. 
He was by far the youngest professor here, and the most eligible. No ring was on his finger. 
“Please, call me Jacob.” 
You stood up from your seat, throwing your bag over your shoulder. You try to compose yourself enough not to let any distaste escape from your lips. 
“Sorry, Professor Kiszka, I have finals I need to finish, it was a pleasure to meet you. I look forward to working with you in January. If you need anything from me before then, I believe the dean gave you my information.”
You reach your hand out awkwardly, trying to invite a handshake. He cautiously reaches his hand back, pulling you into a firm, but still gentle handshake. 
His eyes meet yours. The deep brown staring into you. Although you should have the power from your standing position, you knew he held all the cards from his seat. The handshake lingered longer than you had expected, both of you locked deep into staring each other down. He finally releases his hand. 
“It was a pleasure.” You start to leave the office, but he makes one last remark, “Oh, one last thing…” 
You turn to face him, “Yes professor?”
 He reaches into the desk and pulls out a cloth-bound book, handing it to you. You slowly return to the desk, taking the book from his hand—the Lord of the Rings. 
“Try it for me? You do have a whole winter break…”
You rub your hands over the cover, smiling at his request. You place the book back in his hand.
“I used to read it as a child. No need to give it a try when you’ve read it four times already.” You smile at him. 
Even if it wasn’t your favorite, didn’t mean it wasn’t a favorite. 
Present
In some ways, your relationship with him felt like a love-lost marriage. Just moving through the motions. You sat in on the classes and took note of who engaged, and who didn’t. You graded assignments, tests, and papers, with him always double-checking and doubting your work. You didn’t sit in on long conversations with him like Meelo. Perhaps some of that was your fault, always quick to get to work. He adjusted to you quickly, understanding how you needed to work, and letting you grieve. 
Meelo passed quickly into the semester. You cried once in front of him when the news broke. You nearly snapped his head off when he asked if he could help you. From that moment on he took on this cold persona, but you don’t blame him at all. You knew in your heart that you would not have the same connection with him as Meelo, so it was easier to never try. 
Through everything, your work never faltered, and your school work remained the priority. Perhaps it was a way to hide through all the pain but the calculated steps it took to grade provided a soothing rhythm amongst the distress. 
You never failed to notice all the times you caught him catching glances at you. You were silly to think that it meant anything more than just a quick look, but still maybe somewhere in your heart, you had hoped that maybe he was thinking of you more than his assistant. For weeks you watched him stroll into class, always wearing a disheveled but somehow put-together outfit. You loved seeing how he would piece together different clothes from his collection. Never repeating an exact outfit, but always finding new ways to repurpose the same items. 
One day he walked in with a new addition to his look, a cluster of pendants on a necklace. They looked older, more worn in than any new silver. You asked him about it briefly, trying not to engage in a further conversation. 
“They’re coins, Spanish coins, designed after ones from the 1600s. I think the jeweler lied to me when he said they were originals, but they still look okay… Do you think so? 
“You look like a pirate.” You responded. 
A sexy pirate. You shoved that thought deep into the back of your mind. Holding on to it, because you didn’t want to forget how good he looked. 
His Thursday classes were always one of the better ones. This was one that you had to take yourself for your graduate program. There was no TA’ing involved as that would be a huge conflict of interest if you got to grade your papers. You chose to sit in the back corner of the class by the window, in hopes that when spring rolls around you could watch the foliage return. The unfortunate thing about this choice was the waiting. February was colder than you had expected and the windows provided no warmth. 
When you were TA’ing you got to sit at the edge of the office and the classroom. Kiszka brought a space heater for you to place at the doorway. He joked he didn’t need his assistant ‘freezing to death’, because then ‘who would grade the papers’.
You tried your hardest to not let him favor you, but you knew he was someone who would be kind no matter how much you asked him to stop. He would leave books on the edge of his desk for you to read and when you tried to return them he declined and told you he already had a copy in his collection. You doubted that and always protested in fear that you thought you might lead him on. But in the end, it was always you walking out with a new book in your bag. 
He was trying his hardest to get along with you. Some days it was easier and you would entertain his questions, but other days it was easier to be quick and move along. This relationship was not going to be a fairytale. You had already found your soulmate once, and you lost her. In your mind, there was no more room in your heart to let someone in. And why should you prepare space for someone if you truly don’t know if they want to be there? 
This class although interesting became boring as the weeks went on. The class had fallen into a seasonal depression of sorts. Many like you had expected to have Meelo for the semester when you had booked your classes, so when Kiszka showed up and tried to shake things up… It wasn’t easy. He was skilled and smart, sure… But not the same. He craved involvement and wanted the class to join in with him, but often would push people further than they were willing to go. A room full of mid-20-year-olds was truly a space of burnout. Many of these students had already passed four, sometimes five years of school before they stepped into this class. They no longer have that lively interest in reading and analyzing literature but want to create their own.
“-And what was this author trying to convey through his use of metaphors?...” He asked from his commanding space at the front of the class, “No one?... No one picked up on this…? Or are you too scared to be wrong?”
Your attempts at fighting off eye-rolls also subsided the longer this course went on, and this roll came on hard. You’ve heard this line countless times through multiple classes. He wasn’t wrong, but he could at least find different ways to say the statement. 
“Y/N? Care to enlighten everyone?” He calls to you, in need of saving the class who had lost attention nearly an hour ago. 
“Sure. It’s a metaphor for how women are treated in society.” You answer.
He grits his teeth and sighs, “Not quite, but you’re close…” 
You lift yourself from your slump, “No, that’s right. She is clearly trying to convey the expectations of women in society and how we are treated. As a female author, she leaves these metaphors to be very simple for female readers to understand. For males, it’s harder to grasp that the severity of these situations could imply the treatment of women, but that’s what she’s trying to explain.”
He clasps his hands together giving them a brief shake, “That class, that is how you analyze. Literature can be read in different ways by different readers. The author may have a clear intention of what they are trying to write, but others may be able to relate it to other aspects of their life. I have my own interpretation, and you all may have others. That is how this should be working. There is nothing wrong, with how you analyze, just that you have the knowledge to back it up…”
Every time you tried to make him out to be the bad guy, he ended up being in the right. You hated how smart he was. You hated how much you wanted to watch him while he stood up there. You hated how he wasn’t her. But you knew you didn’t want him to leave. 
“So with that,” He continues, “Finish up the last few chapters and please come prepared with statements next week about your findings. I want you to dig deep; feel the author. I’ll see you next week.” 
The class starts their shuffle for the door, while you meander to your usual spot at the doorway of the office. The next class wouldn’t be in for 20 minutes, but you would at least have time to warm up. 
You click on the heater and walk over to Kiszka’s rolling desk chair. You take your coat off and rest it over the seat, pushing it over to the door. Kiszka finds his seat at the front of the classroom, pulling out his book of the week. He usually would try to follow you, asking you what you were reading, then the next day showing up to class with an identical copy. It was annoying and endearing how much he wanted to learn from you. You wondered if it upset him that you weren’t as keen on learning from him. 
He confided in you that Meelo was an idol of his as well, and although he didn’t get to learn from her, he was going to try to through you. 
You pull your copy of Anna Karenina from your bag and join him. Your chapters ahead of him, but you enjoy being one step in front of him. 
You peep up from the back of the room, “I didn’t ask, but please tell me this isn’t your first time reading this.” 
He lifts his head from the book slightly, eyes still skimming the page, “Third.” 
You sigh in relief. That would’ve been embarrassing; for him. 
You return to the book. You’re finding it harder to dive in today than usual, something is different… You see out of the corner of your eye that Kiszka has put down the book altogether, and you can sense him staring. This lasts a few moments, but you try to remain focused on the words, but catching yourself having to re-read the paragraphs; not processing the sentences you’ve already read.
A minute goes by and he hasn’t returned to his pages. Instead, you hear the squeak of his chair rolling over to his computer. A few clicks and a frenzy of taps on the keyboard. 
“Hey.” He prods. 
You look up again from the book. He peers at you over the edge of his computer and then closes it so he can see you better. He grasps his jaw lightly, stroking it in his hands. 
“Yes?” You asked, trying not to seem annoyed by the interruption. 
“Let’s go over your manuscript. I want to see it.” He continues. 
No. It’s not time yet. You’ve been meticulously editing it for months now. He wasn’t supposed to read it until midterms, you were supposed to have more time…
You drop the book into your lap, “It’s not ready…” You close the book, “Also we have class in twenty minutes, you won’t be able to read it all by then.” 
He stands up from his seat, straightening his vest out, “I canceled class. Pull it out.” 
Two Hours Later
Some time had passed. You both sat in his office now. Him at… his… desk, and you still positioned by the heater at the door. At this point you were warm enough to finally take your sweater off, stripping down to a simple black t-shirt. You saw him staring through the pages when you pulled the sweater off. If he had looked any harder you think he might burn a hole through the book.
The office was silent except for the occasional click and clack of the heater, and the flickering of the candle on his desk. He flipped through the lightly bound pages while you continued through your reading. Every couple of minutes you could hear the stroke of his red pen hit the pages. The words or corrections will wait for you later. You could sit and scoff at them later in your apartment. The man said his favorite book was Lord of the Rings, how could you possibly trust his editorial judgment?
You had made it about a hundred or so pages through your book, which was slower than you would’ve liked. You still couldn’t breach the interferences. You thought the silence would help, but hearing his hums, his pen strokes, the occasional sip of scotch… It was all a distraction. 
You couldn’t stop looking up from the book to watch him slyly admire your work. You knew your writing was good; Meelo had seen the early stages of it all. She heard the direction and loved every word… A complete sadness rushed over you thinking of how she would never see the final product. 
Kiszka would adjust himself every few minutes; switching positions in his seat. You wanted to trust yourself enough not to look every time he shifted his hips, but those linen pants he loved so much left little to wonder about him. You had a closeness to him that you didn’t want to admit. As many differences as there were between you, there were just as many similarities. He was an outsider here; you could see that clearly. The other professors didn’t trust him because of his age- the students tried to walk all over him because of that too. 
Even though you wanted to hate how pretentious he seemed, deep down you knew it was a facade to seem more studious to others. You saw the real him in glimpses. The kindness he offered to you that many others most likely wouldn’t have. Your youth and love for literature matched his perfectly, although you couldn’t always find the way to express it correctly. Your loyalty to Meelo prevented that at every chance. 
Letting him read this manuscript was a big step that you didn’t fully even realize until he had reached the halfway point. You wanted to go and rip the pages out of his hand, throw them out the window, prevent him from seeing you too deeply… But something inside you needed to know what he thought of it. 
Frustrated by your lack of progress, you lowered the book into your lap. You took this time to look around the room. It had changed so much since you had seen it back in December. Kiszka’s library had taken up the room, along with his record collection. When you would come by early in the morning to drop off the graded work, you would hear him playing some of it. Blues, rock, the classics. You never disturbed him during these times, it felt too intimate to interrupt. Instead, you would place the binder of essays on his classroom desk and scurry away before he could come to say hello. 
You place your bookmark into the page opening. You calmly stand and place the book where you once sat. Quietly, you make your way over to his collection.  
You see him peer up through the pages. Curious about your movements, watching you silently behind the manuscript. 
You lower yourself to the floor, sifting through the jackets of the vinyls. Alphabetical. Of course. You make your way quickly through the a’s and land through the b’s. As cliche as it seems, you truly love Abbey Road, and of course, there it is front and center with the other Beatles albums. You pull it out from the shelf, removing the jacket carefully from the sleeve. You lift the vinyl out and place it on the record player. It’s a modern one, which feels very out of character for Kiszka. He always seemed like the type to randomly have every item of his be nothing newer than 20 years old. 
You press play and lower the needle onto the music. 
Come Together plays softly through the speakers. You turn to look back at him, seeing if there is any protest. Instead, he has the red pen out, slashing across the paper. You grit your teeth and try not to engage. You return to his collection, running your fingers along the remainder of the vinyl. The plastic tickles through your fingers, creating a click, click sound as each jacket releases from your hold. 
Although you did want Kiszka to keep reading, you felt it was necessary to distract him, to try and persuade him to step away…
You continue from the vinyl collection, traipsing through the room. It’s like a library out of a movie, truly. You admired his office deeply and loved to gaze at it while he was lecturing. Sometimes when he was deep in his philosophy of literature speeches, you would lean back in the chair and try to read the book titles from afar. Your eyesight was good, but not good enough to make out the exact names of all of them. You never dared to peruse like this before, but this moment presented the perfect opportunity. 
You were his captive for the remainder of his reading. Well… In all reality, you didn’t have to be here, but you didn’t dare leave that manuscript alone. It had been stored with you in your tote for the past month. You tried to take chunks of edits at a time, working through it yourself when you had time but didn’t want to share it with anyone until you felt that it was complete. 
You tried to fight Kiszka off, but the notion of him canceling class meant that he found taking the time to do this very important… 
The books that were displayed on these shelves were not the type of books that you would find at your local bookstore. They were older, worn in, some of them originals, even some you haven’t read yet. Maybe he did have some things that he could show you…
 You make your way to the last set of bookshelves, rounding the back corner of the office. The last edge of the wall had his makeshift bar. 
The liquor was all dark, amber-colored. Very manly, you thought to yourself. Bottles of whiskey and scotch lined the makeshift bar. Jack Daniels, Sazerac Rye, Macallan Double Cask… You recognized some of the labels. 
Kiszka crept up behind you, “If you wanted a glass, you could’ve asked.” 
He reaches down below you to fetch a rocks glass from the bar. He grabs the Macallan Double Cask and pours a finger for you. The alcohol flows effortlessly out of the bottle, barely splashing into the glass.  He hands the glass to you, your hand brushing his. His touch is warm… Kind. He takes his other hand and grabs your shoulder, in a comforting way. You want to seem completely normal, but feel your cheeks getting rosy from the touch. You suck on your bottom lip and try to hide your face. 
You take a large swig of the scotch, trying to be mindful of not wasting such a good drink. He looks at you, shocked at your ability to take it so easily. 
“Wow. Good.” Is the only words he can mutter. 
You smile meekly. The praise makes you feel undoubtedly shyer than you had just before. 
“Are these originals?” You ask, pointing to the corner section of his library, “I couldn’t tell, and didn’t want to touch them if they were.”
“Many of them, yes,” He responds, “I trust that you would be gentle with them, please, which one were you curious about?” 
You make your way over to the shelf, placing your drink down on the small table near the corner. You reach up to fold out the red bound book. Its title was completely faded from the binding, but we’re curious as to which one it was. He follows closely behind you, close enough to almost be on you. 
He laughs, “Funny you should grab that..” 
You open the cover to find Lord of the Rings printed in big black letters. 
“Oh, dear god.” You sigh. 
“It is an original if that makes you feel any better about it. I know you hate this book, but still-”
“No, no,” You protest, “I never said I hated it, I just said it wasn’t my favorite. Remember we have different opinions on that professor.” 
He scoffs and takes the book from your hand. Rubbing the cloth binding with his thumbs.
“Want to know something funny?” He questions. 
You did. You really did. You wanted the connection at this moment… For whatever cosmic reason it finally felt okay to banter with him. You nod your head, approving him to continue. 
“I saw the movies before I read the books.” He laughs, “My brothers and I loved it, we were practically obsessed, but I was younger then and a stupid boy who didn’t read like I do now. Not the fairytale way most people find their favorite but it reminds me of childhood…”
You wanted to laugh, you wanted to make fun of him for it. But you knew that this was a special moment for him. A look into his past, a presentation for more. He places the book carefully back on the shelf, tucking it back into its spot. 
“Well, I guess that makes more sense now. But, as a graduate professor, you ought to just say you like the pretentious shit. No one’s going to take you seriously.” 
He turns from the shelf, “Who said I was worried about that? If I lie then I am a fraud. I don’t care if anyone says that.” 
Oh fuck. His confidence is so intoxicating. He’s right. Why should he care? 
“I just- I meant… I thought that the other professors-” 
“You thought that they don’t take me seriously? Right. They don’t. In schools like this, you have to earn respect. I’m not an alumnus, I didn’t go to Harvard, but I do a damn good job at what I do. As much as you may protest some of my teaching, I know what I’m doing.”
He breezes past you and strolls back over to the bar to pour himself another drink. You reach back for yours and hold it between your hands, trying to collect yourself. You hope that you didn’t hurt him. 
“Did I offend you?” You ask.
“‘Course not,” He takes a swig, “I just wish you would realize that it doesn’t matter what standards others hold you to. You are not someone else. You are you.” 
“I know that.” You respond dryly. Your answer didn’t sound as confident as you wanted it to be. It came out unsure and desperate. 
“Then why has your whole academic career been based on your relationship with one woman? Why must everything you do be for her?...” 
You stand there silently. Completely struck with emotions. Anger, sadness, discouragement.
“She… She made me who I am,” You pipe, “She’s the reason I am in this program.” 
He strolls back over to you, locking your eyes with his. It’s intimidating, this look he has on his face. He’s studying you, seeing how lost you feel. Truly for the first time you couldn’t even try to put up any walls. He had broken you down. 
He places his hand on your shoulder again, “Can I show you something?” He asks. 
Before you have time to even object to him, his hand moves from your shoulder to your waist, guiding you back towards his desk. You feel butterflies growing inside you. 
No. You can’t. You shouldn’t. He is your advisor. He is not someone you should feel this way about. He’s trying to help you, he’s not interested in you. 
The vinyl finishes its song and moves on to Something. He guides you into his seat. You place the glass down on the desk and wipe the condensation from your hands onto your thighs. He reaches over the desk and twirls the manuscript back in front of you. The pages sit open about two-thirds of the way through. He stands behind you, practically leaning on your back. His chest rests against your shoulder, pointing at the beginning of the page. 
“See this paragraph here?” He questions. 
You strain so hard to not melt at his touch. His hair is grazing your cheek. It smells wonderful, but you can’t admit that. He has this gentle but clean musk about him. He smells like a perfectly cared-for bookstore. A soft smell of tobacco and oak. The chains with pendants are draping over his neck, sparkling in the moonlight of the night, softly clanking together with his movement 
You need to focus. 
You respond, afraid that you waited too long, “Yes?” Your voice wavers, the lack of confidence creeping back through, “Is there something wrong with it?” 
He turns to face you, “Yes. I have a big problem with it.” 
You feel your heart sink. What could be wrong with it? The back half of the book is the best part, it is the part you feel most confident with. You feel confused. All of those walls and confidence you felt once in his presence were lost. 
“What…? What problem?” 
You look back at the pages, disregarding his closeness to you, pulling the bundle of paper back towards you, and flipping through to the previous pages. He puts his hand on yours, stopping you from searching. He lowers himself next to the seat, squatting to be at your eye level. His thumb wanders back and forth over your wrist. 
He smiles a crooked and cunning smile, “It’s some of the best writing I’ve seen in years, and the author was too scared to even share it with anyone. She lost someone and had to do this all on her own. That’s terrifying, but it’s still her work. ” 
You look at the hand holding yours. It’s strong but has a softness to it. It has a few rings sitting on them, but none a wedding band. You lower your head and release your wrist, grabbing it with your other hand. You sigh heavily and grasp your hands in front of the pages. Your hands travel up to hide your face, which presents a melancholic smile that you can’t let go of. You can’t tell if it’s the liquor or his presence, but you feel a glow coming from inside. 
You rush your hands past your face and through your hair, resting your hands on the back of your neck. Scoffing, you turn to look at him. His amused smile is irresistible. 
“You,” He starts, “Are an amazing writer.” His hand lifts from the pages and reaches up towards your cheek, holding your face in his palm, “And no matter who your teacher is, you can still do it on your own.”
Your hand finds its way up to his arm, holding him back. Staring longingly at each other. Both deep down knowing that this was about to lead down a path you couldn’t return from. 
“Professor-” You initiate.
“Jacob.” He replies. 
“Fine… Jacob. This- I… I don’t think.” 
He quickly removes his hand from your face and comes to his senses. “Oh, dear, um… I’m so sorry y/n… I…”
You let yourself slump in the seat. How could you? How could you squander that moment? After years of wishing to find a man who was at least half as interested in literature as you… Here you are throwing it away. But you could be right to do so. He was your professor, you were his assistant, the moral implications of this all… 
Jacob stands and leans back onto the desk, stroking his chin, concerned. Thinking about it all. You can see the nerves climbing through him. He feels embarrassed.
You reach your hand up to your face again, burying your emotions into your skin. 
“I just thought- I, fuck.” He continues, “I thought we were turning a corner, I was looking and I thought I saw you-” 
“You did.” You respond, “...I was looking.”
You lower your hand from your face to stare back at him. You put the manuscript back on the desk and stand. 
“You… You were?” He searches for the answer. 
“Jacob… For months I have looked. I didn’t want to like you. I didn’t want to admit that to myself. My mentor was my heart and soul, she was everything to me. I didn’t want to give you any chances because I didn’t want to lose someone like that again… I can’t handle that heartbreak. But…” You trail off. 
“But?” He inquires. 
You reach for the scotch glass and swirl the liquid around. Staring deep into the stormy amber. 
“Fuck it.” You take the last of the scotch into your mouth and turn back to Jacob, “You… You are what I’ve wanted. I can’t deny the way I feel when it’s just us. When I see you deep in thought, when you push me to go further; when you challenge me. When we’re alone, and I see you for the man you are. When I see how genuinely fucking amazing you are. And I’m so mad at myself for not opening myself to you.” 
Jacob peels himself off the desk and stances himself in front of you. He grabs your hands and holds them tenderly in his. You drop your head, your hair falling over your frustrated expression. 
“You were grieving, you wouldn’t have been ready for this.” He reaches his hand up to tuck your hair behind your ear. 
You look up to him with doe eyes. He was the older man, coming in for the prey. You wanted to be his. You wanted to have him. You wanted it. You denied it for months. You denied it from the moment you saw him. You denied yourself to knowing him in fear that this exact moment would happen. But here you were. Unveiling yourself to him in the very place you felt the first attraction. 
“I want to be ready. No, I am ready. I want this. I can’t deny myself happiness because of everything that happened,” You said. 
“Are you sure?” He asked. Trying to test you. 
You nod your head in approval, trying once again to keep the emotions bottled in. 
“I don’t want you to feel any pressure because-”
“Please don’t say it. I know. I know this is all morally fucked up, but I’m an adult, you’re an adult. Just treat me like one.”
He smiles, admiring your maturity, “If you want to do this, there are some things we have to settle first.” 
You look up at him confused, “Things? What things?” 
“More like rules,” He answers, titling his head playfully, “I need to know what you’re comfortable with. I don’t want to scare you even more than you already seem.” 
He returns his hand to hold your face, just like he previously had only moments before.
“I’m not scared Jacob. What rules?”
“As much as I like to be gentle with women, I also enjoy being rough.” He says through a velvety tone
You jolt back, at first fearful of his words, but relax quickly, reminding yourself you don’t need to be scared. 
“How rough are we talking…” You prod. 
The cunning smile returns across his face, “Don’t worry, I don’t leave marks, at least too bad of marks… And only rough enough that you’ll still be wanting more by the time we’re done.” 
You bite your lip at the thought. You’re no virgin at this point in your life, but you’ve never been able to explore this type of intimacy. Every man in college is practically an amateur at pleasuring women and even more so when it comes to exploration in sex. You’ve read plenty of books to know about the type of sex he was talking about. As much as you enjoyed the classics and the light-hearted romance, you still found yourself picking up a steamier romance book in private. 
You wanted that. Had practically dreamed about it before… 
Being here with this man, who was only a few years your senior, felt like you could practice this fantasy safely. He knew what he was doing, he could show you pleasures you didn’t even know you could enjoy. Even if you felt like you couldn’t learn more from your education with him, perhaps there were other things he could teach you. It was all becoming a bit too exciting. 
His hand moves slowly down from your cheek to your waist. His palms gently grazed your spine until they locked in on your love handles. 
“So,” He continues, “Are you going to be my good girl? Can you be good for me? Do you think you can take it?”
You reach out to his chest, moving aside his shirt which had barely been buttoned. With one swipe down his sternum, you unlatched all of them revealing his smooth golden skin. He watched you intently, seeing you explore his skin like never before. You traced your fingers along the opening, feeling your need to reach more grow. With each second that passed you felt the insatiable thirst to be close to him; to feel him. His grip on your waist tightened with each pass you made over his chest. 
His other hand joined him on your opposite side. You feared that your hips may break with his excited hold. You looked up at him, biting your lip, trying to remain coy. That soft smile appeared on his lips; you had answered with your body language. 
He pushes his hands further into you and lifts you onto the desk, your ass barely resting on the edge of the wood. 
“Words,” He said, pulling himself closer into you, resting perfectly between your legs, “Nothing’s going to happen until you tell me you want it to. This isn’t going to work sweetheart unless you use your words.”
“Jacob-” Are the only breathy words that you can mutter. 
You can feel him growing, feel the linen pants barely holding back his excitement. You feel your heartbeat travel from your chest, down into your stomach, into your… 
His hand moves up to your jaw, holding it firmly in his grip, “Y/N, follow the instructions. Words. I’m not going to wait much longer.” 
“Yes-”
Before you can even finish he’s pulling you into an embrace. Your lips meet his. The soft taste of scotch remaining on both of you created an intoxicating addicting feeling. It was complete passion, complete neediness to be one. His tongue introduces itself into your mouth… Soft, wet. Beckoning. The noises you both are making sound feral, completely unusual for the both of you. What once was a prim and proper relationship between you became a fervent desperation to touch… To fuck. 
His hands traveled down your body, first reaching your chest, grasping you completely in his hand. Rolling his palms over the front of your breasts, driving you completely mad. You wished the barriers of clothing had been completely stripped away, but he was too hungry to even keep you waiting for long. His hands reached under your shirt, plowing underneath the wire of your bra to find your naked breasts. A soft relieving moan escaped your lips through the breaths of the kissing. 
You reached your hands out to find the remainder of the buttons of his vest closing you off to his body. You made quick work of unbuttoning them, reaching your hands across his midsection; climbing to his back. Reaching up towards his shoulders, feeling the softness of his skin across the pads of your fingers. God, he was perfect. 
His fingers traveled to your nipples, running his thumb and forefinger over the bud of your nipples. Before you could even realize what you were doing, your nails dragged down his back, raking into his skin. He paused the kissing for a moment to let out a moaning growl. He slid his hands out from your bra, slipping down to the edges of your shirt, attempting to tug it off as fast as he could. You snatched your hands out of his shirt to raise them over your head, giving him complete access to strip you. 
He placed his hand between your breasts and forced you down onto the desk, your head falling onto the manuscript below you. He shook off his vest and was quick to pull his shirt off. 
“Seems like I’m not the only one who likes it rough, huh?” He asked. 
You lifted your head from the desk, “No, definitely not.” You responded. Unsure where this untamed version of you had even come from. 
“No, sir” He stated, pushing you back down. 
“What?” You asked, skeptical of what he meant.    
He mounted himself once again between your legs, grinding himself into you. He traced his finger down your neck, to the waistline of your pants.
“Sir… That’s what my good girls going to call me, okay?” 
You rolled your eyes, unaware that you were even doing so, “Call me Jacob,” you mock, “Call me sir.”
He reached back up to your jaw, pushing his thumb into your cheek, “If you’re going to be a brat we’re going to need to set some more rules. Good girls don’t get punished, but you’re already testing me.”
Completely stunned, you look back at him trying to emulate a softness, an apology. You had to admit though, you weren’t scared of him… If anything you were more turned on by the thought of his punishments. 
“And how would you punish me, sir?” You ask in your best sultry voice. 
He let out a low grumbling laugh. He studied your body, not even acknowledging your question, just thinking… Thinking of what he would do to you. He grabbed onto your hips and pulled you hard into his cock. There was no wondering anymore. You could feel how large he was, how excited he was. If your own body wasn’t blocking it you could probably see it entirely. 
“Maybe,” He starts, “Maybe you’re not going to be my good girl,” His hands dig deeper into your waist, “Maybe, you’re going to be my little slut.” 
The word echoed through the room. It sent a shiver down your spine, but not the feeling of being displeased, it was a feeling of being right. Being here with him, being under his control, felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off your shoulders. He could see you in a way that someone hasn’t seen you for months. He was learning every inch of you and would learn even more as the night went on. 
He leaned down from his high position to plant gentle kisses along your neck. Gingerly leaving behind little reminders of passion. 
“-And if you’re going to be my slut,” He whines through breathy kisses, “you need to know the safe words.” 
You run your hands up to his hair, feeling the soft strands between your fingers. Tracing his scalp over your fingertips. You don’t want to go this slow, the breaks are killing you. You just want to feel him. You want to feel him on you, in you, taking you completely as his own. 
His kisses finally reach the band of your jeans, but that doesnt stop him from exploring further. He pulls down on the jeans to reveal more of your stomach, delivering gentle almost tickling kisses. 
“Green,” He whispers, “Means you like it… You don’t want me to stop.”
His hand travels over to the button of your jeans, popping the metal away from the denim. Your eyes follow him, watching his hair fall over your stomach, the metal of his necklace chilling your bare skin. His shoulders look strong here, masculine, powerful. Watching him focus so intently on you is killing you. This is a man unlike any other that you’ve been with, he’s focused on treating you first, even if there were some other pleasures in it for him. 
“Yellow,” The zipper slowly starts to unravel as he pulls your pants further down, “Means you need me to slow down… If you need a break…” 
Your pants steadily fall off of your legs, finally being exposed to him entirely until they fall onto the floor. The only thing separating you from him now is your thong. Which you are now praising yourself for wearing today. He resumes his consuming kisses across your midsection, joining back down where he had left off. His hands slip underneath him to grab the edges of the lace, sliding off the thong with ease. 
His kisses start to graze you closer to your… 
He stops and lifts himself. His hand leads up to your mouth, putting his pointer and middle finger into your mouth. You accept them, excited for what it means. 
“Red.” His voice develops a more serious tone, “Means stop.” 
He removes his now slick fingers from your mouth, returning them down below. His fingers reach your cunt, and you welcome him with excitement of your own. Your body is in shambles waiting, wanting to know what it feels like. His fingers dance across your aching clit, his thumb padding the bundle of nerves, sending shockwaves through your deprived body. A loud distressed moan escapes you, you can’t help but express your enthusiasm. 
“Don’t worry sir,” You shudder through achy moans, “I don’t think I’ll need to use that one.”
“Good girl.”
Without any hesitation his fingers breach you, filling you up. He stands over you, watching you grow with the agony of pleasure. Your breath hitches with each pump, your back arching with each lift of his fingers. His thumb traces back over your clit, stimulating every inch of you. 
Every attempt at communicating the feeling faulters, except for, “Oh fuck-” 
Your body is shaking with each movement. He’s painting the perfect picture of an orgasm with just one hand. The power he holds, the knowledge he has. He knew how to please you better than you knew how to. 
His free hand makes its way around your neck, gripping it, holding you in place so he can work harder at you. You’ve never been choked before, it’s a completely new sensation. The gasps for air were something you thought you’d fear, but instead, you were wishing he’d hold on harder. 
“Green?” He asks, looking for permission. 
You nodded your head ferociously  
You feel yourself completely letting go under his control, something you feared once to let him have all the power. But here, now, held down to his desk… You never wanted it to stop. 
“Words.” He barked. 
Your hand reaches up to hold his wrist, “Yes, yes…” 
“Yes, what?” He asks again, his fingers slowing their movement. Clearly, he wouldn’t be letting you get away with anything. You had to be obedient and do as he told you.
“Yes… Please, Sir,” You beg. 
The words were getting harder to communicate. If he could finger you into oblivion, you might let him if it meant you could feel this good again. 
He smiled in approval and resumed his previous pace. Steadily building faster, and faster. Harder and harder. You could feel how wet you were becoming, it really didn’t take much for him to draw the excitement out of you. The swirls of his fingers and the vigor of his motions were precise… Calculated, trying to accomplish only one mission; and he was close to succeeding. 
Your moaning only got more frequent and louder, you couldn’t hold back. The pleasure was far too great to stay quiet. He almost let you be loud too, only for a few moments before reminding you of your location. He lifted his hand off your neck to lift a single finger to his lips and then pointed around the room. 
“If my good girl can’t stay quiet, I’ll have to make her. We don’t want anyone spoiling all the fun.”
You nod your head, remembering you were still in his office. Your surroundings had escaped you completely; only thinking of him and you. 
His thumb started to apply more pressure, practically begging for you for more. A softer moan forced its way out, helpless to be silenced. His hand plasters itself over your mouth, holding you silent. The pads of his fingers resting deep into your cheeks. 
“I know baby, it’s so hard… You’re gonna be so good and come for me now, okay?” 
Finally being relieved of speaking, you nod your head, ready for the climax. His fingers dive upward, grazing the sweet spot buried inside of you. The pressure, the sensation it’s all too much. You feel your belly tighten, your back arching. He’s trying to hold you steady as you writhe in pleasure. There’s no stopping anything now. 
“Do it baby, come on… Be a good little slut for me…”
Your eyes roll deep back into your head. You feel the sweet sensation of release wash over you. Like a wave of ecstasy, traveling from your toes, past your aching clit, through your belly, all the way to your head. Stifled moans slip through the cracks of his fingers. His fingers stay at their steady pace, pushing past your orgasm. You feel yourself dripping around him. You’ve never come this hard in your life, you’ve never felt the devotion to make you feel this good. Your body is quivering around him, unable to shake the overstimulation. You’re squeezing onto his wrist, trying to come down easy, but everything he’s doing is making the sensations crash into you. 
He takes his hand away from your mouth and you immediately gasp for air, trying to find serenity. 
“Oh god,” You moan, “How did you-”
He shuts you up by taking his mouth to your soaked cunt, sliding his tongue through the mess he made. You place your hands beside you to sit up slightly. This was a sight you did not want to miss. You take his hair in your hands and tuck it aside. Each stripe of his tongue makes you wince, you want him to stop, but you can’t let him. It feels too good. It’s too much but just the right amount all at once. 
He was consuming you, desperate to explore every inch of you. Wildly eating you up, trying to capture every last drop of his work. You were spilling into him, it was never-ending.  It was like you weren’t even there; everything except your pusy. This was a high that you never wanted to come down from. He was devoted to keeping you there as long as he could, but you couldn’t hold on for more. 
You fell back onto the desk, squirming through it all. He had you right where he wanted you. You let yourself fall into him, trying to take it all. Your hands reach over the desk, trying to find somewhere to hang onto, but instead knocking the scotch glass off the desk. Shattering loudly beneath you. 
Jacob didn’t stop though, he was completely distracted, locked in. You couldn’t take it anymore. 
“Yellow.. Yellow..” You begged, completely overstimulated and shocked. How could you even ask for that?... But it was impossible to withstand any more sensation. 
He stopped slowly, easing you out of the enjoyment. His hands reached up over your thighs and rested on your hips, slowly petting them with his thumbs. He looked up at you through glazed-over eyes, completely drunk on your arousal. He didn’t want it to end. 
Slowly raising himself back to a standing position, you could see how hard he had gotten. He felt just as much pleasure as you did. He was completely lost, coming back to reality. Chin dripping with your wetness… 
He leaned back over you and kissed you sloppily. The passion was more fiery than before. You did something to him and he did even more to you. It was strange to taste yourself on his lips, but exciting nonetheless. You were caught up together. Complete and one at that moment. And then it all stopped… 
Footsteps approached outside the classroom. You both stopped. He removed himself from your lips and raised his head to listen. 
A knock at the classroom door. 
“Hello?” Someone called out. 
There was no mistaking that someone was in this office, between the music, the glass breaking… They knew. 
“Everything okay in here Kiszka?” 
“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath. He stands and reaches for his shirt, buttoning it with no haste. He grabs your shirt and pants and kicks them under the desk, “Go, get underneath the desk,” He whispers, “Now.”
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prismatic-bell · 1 month
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I’ve been thinking about something at my job—not difficult, honestly, my job leaves lots of thinking time—and I have something I want to share with the folks who object to the label “culturally Christian.” I hope it may help you make more sense of the label and, perhaps, not be so angry about it, if you’ll indulge me for just two minutes.
I was born as a white gentile. While I later found out this wasn’t entirely true—I have Jewish ancestry and there is a small-but-non-zero chance I’m partly Black through my great-grandmother, which is a story too long to get into here—I am, for all visual intents and purposes, white, and count myself as such.
And the first time I heard myself included in the phrase “white supremacy,” I WAS SO FUCKING UNCOMFORTABLE. Couldn’t we call it anything else? Why are you including me in this? I didn’t ask to be born white. I don’t run around in a pointy hood burning crosses. I’m not even racist. Black people can do anything white people can do! I am NOT a white supremacist!
….except. I kinda am. And it is not a choice I made, it is a choice that was made for me 400 and 160 and 120 and 80 and 50 and 35 years ago. Slavery and deliberately-botched emancipation and “separate but equal” and killing of Black leaders and the simple fact both my parents were white. Textbooks that hold up Eli Whitney as a hero and promote the lie of The Great Empty Wilderness and never ask us to wrestle with what it means when the majority of a population is counted as only three-fifths of a human being. Redlining and even the fucking freeway system—I didn’t design any of this, but I live in the world where it exists.
G-d willing, I will not be a white supremacist until the day I die: G-d willing, the systems we are struggling against will have been replaced with better, kinder, more equitable systems. But I don’t get to opt out by saying “I’m not racist!” Yes, I’ve put in a ton of work to unlearn harmful racist behaviors and attitudes. But as long as a Black woman in my position with my experience makes less money than me, I’m benefiting from white supremacy. As long as I get the job, the car, the loan, the opportunity because someone else had locs and I “looked professional,” I’m benefiting from white supremacy. And yes—as long as people aren’t deliberately stupid about my name because they associate it with white cultures, I’m benefiting from white supremacy. The fact I’m white is morally neutral. What I choose to do with that fact is what matters.
And so: we come back to cultural Christianity.
The law of probability says if you’re on this site, you’re probably from a culture with a Christian hegemony. That’s going to cover the Americas, Europe, and to a lesser extent, portions of central and south Africa (both the creatively-named country and the continent). Even if your country mostly considers itself secular, if your answer to “what year is it” is automatically “2024” without having to ask “on which calendar,” you’re probably from a country with a Christian background.
THIS IS A MORALLY NEUTRAL THING. You do not choose which country you’re born in or what its centuries-old culture is. And that’s fine! And it doesn’t mean anything about your personal beliefs. You can be an atheist born to atheists, you can be Buddhist, it is literally whatever.
BUT, to an extent, the place you grew up will absolutely have an impact on your thoughts and morals, because it’s all you’ve ever known. Because the choice to be culturally Christian is not one you made—it was made for you 2000 and 1800 and 1700 and 1200 and 1000 and 800 and 400 and 200 and 50 years ago. Taboos, laws, unspoken rules you’ve never thought twice about, this is not stuff you pick. It’s baked into the world around you. And if you want to unlearn that, you can’t just say “well I’m not Christian so I don’t have Christian morals or values!” and leave it at that. It’d be a beautiful thing if we could, but that’s not the way brains work.
Which means—even if you’re satisfied with what you believe—you should ASK YOURSELF why you believe it, and HOW. One of the biggest things I hear mentioned by other Jews in relation to cultural Christianity is people being black-and-white absolutists. This is true, so that is a lie. That is wrong, so this is right. There is no space given to the idea that maybe everyone is telling the truth as they see it, or that something is right for some times/people/places but wrong for others. And this gets into the harmful territory of “it’s true so I believe it and because I believe it, it’s true.”
So ask yourself why. Start deconstructing your beliefs and learning about new things—and yes, make world religions part of those new things, because religions are major cultural shapers, and also you’d be stunned how many of us 1) do not proselytize and 2) encourage actual study and questioning over blind faith and obedience (hint: it’s most of us. These two things that are taken as universal constants by a lot of atheists ARE EXPLICITLY CHRISTIAN), and there is no harm in learning about our cultures. (You know who’d say there is? Say it with me, kids: evangelical Christians.)
I’m still uncomfortable with being referred to in the context of white supremacy. But part of unlearning racism and, yes, white supremacy, was learning to recognize that is not a discussion I get to steer, because it’s not about me. It’s about people of color explaining, quantifying, and discussing their experiences. So I will be uncomfortable if need be, because that’s a me problem, for me to work on. That is part of what being a good ally and a good neighbor means.
Please give Jews that same grace. Yes, it can be uncomfortable to realize that yeah, you WERE affected by this thing you want to separate yourself from, especially if you have religious trauma. (Side note: if you do, I genuinely and strongly encourage you to seek therapy for it. As an evangelical cult escapee I can tell you it’s helped me a lot.) But you owe it to yourself, and if you genuinely want to dismantle that hegemony, you also owe it to others. While you’re yelling about how you don’t like the words we have created to describe our experiences, we’re working to fix the hegemony you claim to hate.
So: stop focusing on the word. Your discomfort with it is a you problem. Focus on WHAT IT’S TALKING ABOUT, because truly coming to a level playing ground and rebuilding will require you to have allies—not burned bridges all around.
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childotkw · 3 months
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I’d love to read a dark Harry fic (but like a good one). Would you ever consider writing a dark Harry? Like riddle persuades Harry to join his dark side? Maybe they went to school together or something… or just any other hp/tr fics tbh I love your work sm xx
I might pinch the beginning of Dig Two Graves for this one, but I was thinking -
Harry and Tom attended Hogwarts together, and their rivalry was the stuff of legends. They pushed each other to new heights, nipping at the other’s heels in each class, and the teachers despaired as much as they celebrated the wonders it did for the boys’ grades.
Both mistreated orphans, both from old, respected families (though it takes time for Tom to find his), both powerful halfbloods.
Their differences only just outshone their similarities.
Everyone agreed - quietly, of course, because heaven forbid one of them hears - that if fate had been kinder, Harry Potter and Tom Riddle would have been the best of friends.
And the funny thing? They actually were.
In between their sniping and duels and mean smiles, these two boys succumbed to the draw they felt to each other. Orbiting, never quite colliding but still basking in the presence of the only other one in the world that seemed to see them.
They kept it hidden. Something special, private. A friendship they treasured but were unwilling to share with the world because it was theirs.
Late nights studying in the library turned to idle plans of their future. The places they would travel to, the magics they would learn.
Harry doodled maps and routes they would follow on the backs of his parchment. Tom daydreamed of the power he would wield and the Harry-shaped shadow that was forever at his side.
But they were young, and stupid, and good things never lasted for people like them.
Myrtle Warren died in an accident, and Tom panicked.
He then made a mistake that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Harry was sent to Azkaban for murder, and Tom was the one who put him there.
Across the channel, Gellert Grindelwald awakened from the most vivid prophetic dream he had ever experienced. He’d laid there gasping, still blinking away the spots in his vision from the duel with Albus that he lost -
And filled with the bone-deep certainty that he needed to find a boy called Harry Potter.
With the future still ringing in his ears, with the whispers and warnings from Death - not the concept, not the idea, but the being itself - coiling through his mind, Gellert accepted what he must do.
At the very least, he mused, dropping back into his bed and waiting for the pounding of his heart to settle, Albus would never anticipate this.
-
Three months later, Harry Potter vanished from his cell in Azkaban.
Two years later, Gellert Grindelwald was defeated in battle, clutching his first, original wand.
Ten years later, Tom Riddle returned to Britain, ready to seize the power he had always dreamed of.
And two days after that, the remnants of Grindelwald’s Acolytes, long thought to be disbanded and destroyed, launched an attack on the British Ministry of Magic.
Led by Grindelwald’s apprentice.
And he had waited over a decade to submit his complaint to the Wizengamot.
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tainbocuailnge · 4 months
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Another thing that's... kinda odd about the English translation is in the DRK quests, Myste says "A reckoning will not be postponed indefinitely", which is a big line in basically a secret route of the browser game Fallen London. and yeah, it is a cool line and neat to hear it in FF14... it also doesn't really work for Myste? In it's original context, it's about the remains of a dead demi-god-like being, which was cast into a well, seeking a reckoning and leading the player down a route which will irreversibly destroy their character in pursuit of dark secrets.
Which is not what the Myste sections of DRK were about at all, lol.
oh I could rant for hours about dark knight translations. that questline is actually why I first went to scope out the german script, because I heard drk wildly differs between english and japanese and that german generally stays closer to japanese than english does. I translated some of the fray parts here actually, though you'll note I'm a lot more forgiving of the english script in that one because i hadn't reached sidurgu's parts yet löl
german fray and myste are just completely different characters from english. german myste is upbeat and energetic. he loves people who help others and feels a strong urge to help them in turn. he spawned from the dark knight crystal in response to the loneliness of countless dark knights stored within it so he could console them and be their friend, he's basically the will of the soul crystal itself. he tries to alleviate that loneliness by facilitating reunions with lost loved ones but grows frustrated that this only leads to more partings, so he tries to expand his powers to maintain his illusions forever, because more than anything he just doesn't want to leave his dear friends the dark knights alone. he represents the childish wish at the core of every dark knight for a world where nobody has to lose anyone again.
in the part of the quests where you take myste to the sea of clouds there's this bit where in english he talks about his guilt complex and lets slip that this is also your guilt. in german he tells you that he was always with these people who fight hard for others, watching from the sides, until one day he heard a cry of loneliness and since then he's been trying his best to help people too. that's the moment that for me really hammered it in that these languages fundamentally disagree on what it even means to be a dark knight.
in english myste is desperate to atone for everything he's ever done and fray is your self preservation instinct who is kinda mad that you let it get this far, but they have to forgive him because you're all you have as you walk this lonely and bloody path that you have to believe is right. in german myste is your ideal, the desire to comfort those who have no-one else, crying that maybe it's better to forget altogether if partings can't be avoided and fray is your human heart who agrees that parting will always hurt but that is exactly where you find the strength to continue the fight, because it is worthwhile even if it never ends, and the path may be lonely but you will never walk it alone when there are people who came before you and who will come after you who all share this same dream of a kinder world. of course you won't have to leave us, you're our ideal, you're what we do it all for, as long as we remain dark knights you'll be with us. this all flows very naturally into drk-as-shadowbringers-class and ardbert's deal too but since I haven't reached shb in german yet I don't want to say anything extensive about it yet
i still think english drk was cooking with even your repressed feelings being repressed + the part of yourself that wants to protect itself obviously trying to protect itself and thus not wanting to show vulnerability so en fray postures as the stronger one who will protect you instead, and that fray writing in the journal (and only being able to be honest in a place where you're unlikely to look unless you don't know where to go) is incredibly clever. but in the context of how english treats sidurgu and just the way they handle the entire rest of the game really i also don't think that they were intentionally going for this kind of subtlety, it feels to me more like they just thought sincerity is cringe like usual and decided to make everyone cool and edgy (and thus needlessly mean to each other) instead.
and yeah english fucking loves to just yoink lines from other media whether it's appropriate or not. they turned zenos' final words to wol into a hamilton reference in english, "my first friend, my enemy" is a hamilton line, he doesn't ever call you his enemy in any other language (in german he calls you his hunter though which yes is incredibly horny of him). I'll admit I'm not in a good position to judge whatever epic references the german script makes because I'm unfamiliar with german language popular media so I won't spot them unless someone else points them out but I do know that when german fray quotes fight club it just enhances their characterisation as trying to sound cool and intimidating but failing because they're really kind of lame and awkward and can't hide how stoked they are to hang out with you.
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nolita-fairytale · 11 months
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burn your life down | chef luca x fem!reader | chapter two
summary: you decided to meet luca, taking him up on his offer to return the favor, and it gives the both of you the opportunity to get to know each other better.
warnings: fluff, eventual smut, eventual angst not use of y/n, second person pov, swearing, danish inaccuracies, very little connection to the world of the bear.
word count: 2777
a/n: for an america's indepedence day, have a hot brit and a love story that takes place in denmark lmao. okay so now we're all caught up with what i wrote for the headcanon and boy do i have some surprises in store for you next. thank you so much for all of the reactions to chapter one and the headcanon. this story has weaseled its way into my heart and has taken over my brain. i'm writing it for me but it's nice to hear others are enjoying it too. anyways, let me know if you'd like to be added or removed from the taglist!
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chapter one | masterlist | chapter three
“You have to go!” Jesper insists with the kind of conviction of a damn good lawyer. 
“I don’t have to anything,” you reply, making sure to emphasize the word ‘have.’
“No, you have to go,” Mathilde chimes in, a little softer, a little kinder than her brother’s earlier encouragement. 
After your post-shift meeting, everyone had gone home, save for the three of you – the Mikkelson twins cornering you about Luca’s thank-you-card proposition.
“Well, since you both keep harping on it, why don’t you come with me?” you suggest, in an attempt to shift the focus off of you. 
Your eyes scan their faces, trying to get a read on the both of them as Jesper and Mathilde exchange a pointed look, having the kind of non-verbal exchange that only comes from having shared every moment of their lives together.
“What?” you ask, looking back and forth from Mathilde to Jesper again.
“It wasn’t addressed to us,” Mathilde points out with a shrug, a sly look on her face. “It was only addressed to you.”
“Looks like someone has a crush,” Jesper adds with a smirk. 
“He doesn’t have a crush!” you protest without hesitation, your heart seizing for a moment. 
“A talent crush,” Mathilde reasons, knowing that anything more than a talent-crush would talk you out of going entirely. 
“Would it be the worst thing in the world if he did?” Jesper continues, much to both you and Mathilde’s chagrin. “I mean, when was the last time you got-, ow!”
Sharply cut off by an elbow to the rib, Jesper glares at his sister before returning his attention to you. 
“I’m just saying! He’s sexy. He’s a chef at one of the best restaurants in the world. You could do worse for yourself,” Jesper clarifies, earning another glare from his sister. 
He has a point, but you ignore it, because you’re not really sure if you’re ready to go there just yet. You think it over, and after giving it another moment, you open your mouth to speak again. 
“Alright, I’ll go,” you sigh in resignation, earning a few celebratory comments and gasps from the twins. “Are you both happy now?”
And that’s how – after at least an hour of stressing out about what to wear to a place like this – you find yourself standing in front of a closed restaurant on a day where almost everything is closed in Denmark. You’d settled on a pair of wide leg denim pants, a square toed boot appropriate for navigating the Copenhagen cobblestone, and a white and black striped sweater, slightly tucked into the front of your jeans that hangs loosely from your frame. 
Classic. Put-together enough for a two-starred Michelin restaurant on closed day. Certainly not a date kind of outfit.
Luca proves once again to be punctual as ever as he greets you at the front door, right on time. He wears a blue t-shirt that seems to emphasize his already intense blue eyes with a navy-colored apron layered over top of it. 
“You came,” are the first words he says to you, a wide smile spreading across his lips as soon as he sees you.
“Yeah I uh-, thank you. For inviting me,” you stammer, nervously searching for the right words. 
“Thank you for coming. Well, c’mon then!” he encourages, nodding towards the inside as he holds the door open for you. 
“Did you find the place alright?” Luca asks you, as you follow him. 
He leads you into the vaulted basement – the space that makes up the Danish-style, fine dining restaurant that’s been a leader in innovation. You follow Luca through the closed dining room, back into the kitchen, and then into the pastry room as you answer his question, mentioning that it wasn’t too long of a walk and that you found the place just fine.
As soon as you see what he’s been working on, it renders you near-speechless. You can see that he’s been hard at work – on his day off, no less – almost as if he knew you would come. 
“Would you like to have a seat?” he offers, gesturing towards the pastry bench. 
“Uh.. yeah. That’d be great. I-, um… thank you… again, for inviting me,” you answer, watching as he brings a stool over to it, setting up a little space for you. 
“Oh, it’s my pleasure. It’s really the least I can do. Think after this we’re uh… what 5 to 1?” he replies casually, in reference to the fact that he’ll only have fed you once in comparison to the amount of times he’s come to the restaurant. 
You chuckle, returning with a playful, “Well, I don’t think anyone’s keeping score.”
He sends a crooked smile your way, one that you know you’ll be thinking about for the rest of the week, before exchanging a laugh with you. 
“Just think of it as a thank you. For the great meals. For the hospitality,” he continues, as you watch him plate his gelee-focused dish. First the chocolate, then yellow, white, and green. A carefully tweezed wafer on top. 
“This is a shiso gelee with a chocolate mint ganache, finished with a thin slice of marzipan, and a caramel cracker. It’s from our current menu,” Luca introduces, walking you through the dish like you walked him through your crispy rice and trumpet mushroom dish. 
He pushes the plate-that-looks-more-like-a-pedestal towards you for you to try, his eyes meeting yours. Luca studies you carefully as you pick up the fork he’s set out for you, cutting through the gelee for your first bite. He watches as you scoop up a little of the ganache, making sure to get a bit of the cracker as well. 
You’re creating a perfect bite – one with a little bit of everything – just like he’d done with the first dish of yours he had a month or so ago. 
As you raise the fork to your lips, taking your first bite, the vibrant flavors hit your tongue with surprise and brilliance that you weren’t expecting. It’s somehow new, innovative, yet nostalgic all at once. 
“Oh my god,” you say with a sigh of pure bliss. You savor each and every flavor, taking your time with your first bite before continuing with: “It’s almost like-.”
“A minty snickers bar?” he offers up with a quirk of an eyebrow. 
“That’s exactly it!” you cry out with joy. 
He smiles proudly, “Yeah, it’s a nice dish.”
“So how long have you been doing this? Cooking…? Or have you done Pastry the whole time?” you ask, digging into the rest of the gelee. 
“About fourteen years… give or take. Started when I was a kid… just washing dishes… was a bit of a rebel…. The kitchen gave me a place to land,” he shares with an ease and charm that makes you feel like you could tell him all of your secrets. 
“Yeah, no I-, I get that,” you agree, enjoying your second bite of Luca’s shiso dish. 
“Gave my mum a little peace of mind. That’s for sure. Don’t think I was an easy kid to raise,” he continues as you listen. 
“Didn’t start pastry till about three years ago or so. Went mostly the fine dining route… worked my way up to sous position at a really great place, but wasn’t interested in moving up the ranks in that regard. Decided it was time to try something different.”
You nod with respect for his decision for change. 
“Where’d you grow up?” you ask curiously, watching him wipe down the pastry bench with a clean towel as he begins to prepare for a second dish.
“London,” he answers. 
“Oh! I uh, lived there for a few years, actually,” you say, sharing a familiar smile with him. 
“What about you? Where’d you grow up? And how long have you been cooking for?” he asks, shifting the focus of the conversation to you. 
“Boston,” you reply. 
He hums in response, “I’ve never been. What was that like?”
“Boston is great. Good weather, great food, interesting people. ‘S actually where I learned how to cook. My mom’s a single parent so… I spent a lot of time at our neighbor’s house… and their restaurant. They still own this Italian restaurant that’s like… been in the family for a hundred or so years and I practically grew up there,” you explain, sharing parts of yourself – of your story – in return. 
“Oh yeah?” he asks, an amused look on his face. 
“Yeah, we hung out there a lot when we were kids – me and my best friend. Then when I was old enough to work, I marched in one day after school and pitched myself for a job, demanding that I cook and that I’d accept nothing less” you reminisce trying your best to recreate the bold confidence of your fifteen year old self.
Luca chuckles in response, “That’s incredible,”
“I was a rather precocious child,” you add, laughing with a fondness for that previous version of you.
He smiles, “Yeah, I know the feeling well.”
Luca clears his throat, pulling out a clean bowl and beginning to plate something new. He explains that this one is a savory dish, starting with a fermented sourdough cracker as he walks you through the flavor profiles of each component, mentioning that it’s got to be one of his favorites on the menu so far. 
“I’m up for sharing if you are,” you suggest, in response to his last comment. 
“Yeah?” 
“Yeah.”
You watch as Luca picks up another fork, digging into the dish with you. There’s an intimacy that comes from sharing a meal with someone – eating off the same plate, enjoying the same sensory experience, quite literally breaking bread – that makes Luca feel less and less like a stranger to you with each bite. You still can’t believe that he’s done this for you – that you’re here – and while you’re not sure why, you lean into a softness, allowing yourself to enjoy it while it’s happening. 
“Did you go to culinary school?” you ask him, over your last few shared bites.
“No, what about you?” he replies quickly. 
“No, I actually majored in business,” you answer, earning a hum from him. 
“Huh…” he sounds, with a raise of both eyebrows in surprise. 
“I know…” you groan, with a playful eye roll more so directed at yourself. “My first career was in finance… account management. Then I did the whole investment thing for a while… it was uh… really sexy stuff, I know.”
“You don’t strike me as someone who would’ve been happy doing something like that,” Luca observes, only surprising you a little that he’d be able to pick up on something like that so quickly. 
“Oh no. I wasn’t. I was miserable,” you echo in agreement. You take a breath, and a beat, before explaining. “It was more of… a wish fulfillment thing, I think. For my mom. I mean, it wasn’t my dream, by any means. But having stability was important to me, to my mom…. To my partner at the time.”
“And now?”
You wait a beat before answering. 
“And now… I’m just… figuring it out as I go.”
Your eyes flicker over the ‘every second counts’ sign that hangs on the wall while Luca busses the table once again, sharing that he’s got one more dish he’d like for you to try. You settle into a quiet rhythm as you sit back and allow him to provide an experience unlike any other you’ve had. You watch him carefully as he moves around the kitchen prepping for his last dish, taking in each and every tattoo visible on his arms. 
“Every second counts,” you speak out loud, returning your attention to the sign. 
“Yeah,” he nods, turning his attention to where you’re looking. “It’s uh-, something an old head chef of mine used to say. Really stuck with me.”
You nod in agreement as he pulls out a final dessert plate. 
“‘S actually what brought me to you,” he continues, in reference to the sign. “An old friend of mine called me for a favor. He’s opening a new restaurant and wanted their patissier to come stage here for a bit.” 
Luca begins plating his final dish using a few pastry rings, a clean pair of tweezers, and berries left macerating in a deli container with a laser focus that you’d expect from a pastry chef at a two-starred Michelin restaurant.
“We got into… this whole conversation about inspiration. How to find it. Where to find it. I told him he’s gotta be open… to everything. To things out there. That that’s how you succeed in this industry – how you set yourself apart,” Luca adds, impressing you with his precision of plating while sharing something so personal. 
“It reminded me that… it’s been a while since I’ve opened myself up to… well… anything outside of this place.”
“No, yeah, I totally get it. It’s easy to get lost in it – it being the four walls of your restaurant. Running a restaurant is relentless. One minute you put your head down and the next…” you empathize with him. 
“It’s three weeks later.”
“Yeah.”
“Which leads me to why I asked you here,” Luca segways, as he finishes his final dish. “I ran into a little bit of writers’ block – or rather, chef’s block, if you will – working on our Summer menu.” 
He presents the dish towards you, earning a gasp from you as you take in the stunning creation.
“Knew I needed to get out of here for a beat. Get out of my head. Get some new perspectives.”
“Is this for your new menu?” you ask, your eyes devouring the cake-based dish first. 
“Maybe… just something I’ve been working on – something that’s been floating around in my head a while,” he shrugs, watching you carefully as he tries to search your face for any kind of reaction. 
You dig your fork into the spongey, tea-soaked, circular layered cake, raising it to your lips and immediately finding pure joy as you taste it. 
Yuzu. Earl Grey. The cake is almost like a lady finger – tiramisu-like in the way that it eats – filled with a yuzu curd in between each layer of cake, then finished with what you can only assume is a sort of black sesame dust that he’s sifted over top of the dish. 
“Woah,” is all that comes out of your mouth.
“Yeah?” Luca questions, unable to hide the smile that spreads across his lips. 
“Yeah uh… Why does this feel so familiar? It’s like… you’re reading my mind with this one,” you ask, your eyes wide savor each note. 
“Well, it should. Feel familiar, that is. It’s inspired by you,” Luca explains, treading carefully around the last few words. 
“What do you-?” you begin to ask, before the words leave you. 
You half expect him to tell you he’s joking, and you can’t tell whether or not it’s a blush running across his high cheekbones that you spot, as he turns his attention elsewhere. He begins moving around the kitchen, eager to begin cleaning up after himself to recover from the sheer vulnerability he feels from sharing this with you. 
Was this why he’d invited you here? 
“Luca,” you say, your words stopping him as he turns back to you. 
“What’s up?” he asks, so casually, as if he hadn’t just called you his muse. 
"All of this... you did all of this for me…. Why?" you muster up the courage to ask, the words falling out of your mouth with a weight you don’t expect. 
He takes a beat, afraid of coming on too strong, considering you’ve only just met, yet wanting nothing more than to tell you the truth.
Luca sighs, choosing the latter, before laying it all out on the table.
 "Your food is inspired and I don’t think I’ve had something this inspired in a long time,” he explains before pausing. “Your passion for Italian cuisine… weaving in the bits and pieces of yourself and approaching it from different culinary perspectives? You inspired me.” 
He takes another beat. 
“And as chefs, this is what we do. We feed each other." 
You’re speechless, but you can feel yourself nodding in agreement as you mumble out the most reverent ‘thank you’ that you can muster. You can feel it – that this is the beginning of, well, you're not quite sure what – but whatever it is, you're glad he walked into your restaurant however many weeks ago.
“Luca?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for sharing this with me.”
He nods, one corner of his mouth turning up into a smile. 
“Cheers.”
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