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antheshewro · 2 months

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Una mattina - Chapter 5. (final)

It took a cup of tea and a stop on a local café to make Levi learn how Hange, his partner perhaps for life, hid something big from him. Something as big as another person, and a baby, involved. Perhaps going out that day had been a mistake.

✩ Last chapter as promised (and announced)!! Thank you everyoe for liking the story or even just reading it :( it had been months since i wanted to post it and it's my little treasure... my own child almost. the end is very bittersweet, considering what happened during the entire story, but i figured out i wanted something not to sweet and not too sad/sour. be free to write me what you think about it ♡ NDA and even tmi again: this made me bawl my eyes out

After quietly eating her dinner, she sat on the couch and looked out of the big window of her living room. The sun had already settled in the sky, tiny stars timidly appearing around the place. Was Arthur looking at the nightly scenery just like she did? Would he enjoy it? Just the thought of Arthur looking at the stars made Lawrence want to tear up. If she got the opportunity, she would love to show him the nighttime sky during a clear day, maybe sitting on a rock by the shore with Arthur in her arms so she could feel him resting his head on her shoulder. The small, intimate family that she always wanted was all she could think of. She would give anything to be a mom to Arthur and see him grow up, watch him become an amazing human being.

Several minutes later, the feeling of staying alone in that house was suffocating. Lawrence grabbed her coat, wearing it over her long nightgown, and slipped some loafers in. The neighborhood was quiet, besides a group of kids playing around the street. The moment she closed the door of her house, that sound made her stomach drop. Her therapist would say walks would help her to clear her mind. There was nothing to "clear", since everything felt empty. The children laughing made her heart suffer a little less, yet reminded her she didn't know how Arthur's laugh sounded like. Lawrence didn't even know what her own son looked like. Nothing could soothe that pain. Lawrence walked away from her own place, not even greeting any of the neighbors she encountered on her way to the park. She just wanted to be alone, to think and have some time to process her thoughts, her feelings of emptiness after seeing Sam and his dad. Arthur was probably happy without her. Levi was probably a better dad. Lawrence always believed she was a good mother, yet she wasn’t given the chance to prove it. It was too late and her heart would forever be aching with sadness and regret of not getting to cherish Arthur the way she planned to do. As she sat on a bench inside the park, Lawrence brought her knees up against her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. It was nice to see how parents would still bring their kids there, even after dinner time. Some of them even had an ice cream cone in their tiny hands. For the very first time in her entire life, as her eyes closed and took a breath, she prayed. She had never been a religious person, but felt a despair no words could ever explain. Lawrence prayed whoever was able to listen to her, asking for just a chance to see Arthur, to talk to him, to hold her own son in her arms. Asking for the possibility to be a mother.

Her pain and desperation were too much for anyone to bear. It was as if she was mourning Arthur, yet he was and well. She kept praying and praying, until her head began to spin and hurt, feeling nauseous. Maybe Arthur missed Lawrence, maybe he had always loved her and wanted to be with his mother. He would never get the chance of hearing her soft voice and feeling her warm embrace. But those thoughts were mere assumptions, and deep down, she knew they could never be the truth. Arthur didn't know who Lawrence was. He only got to know Levi, and probably was oblivious about thr fact she carried him for nine months and gave birth to him. She was just a stranger for Arthur, that was the harsh truth. Tears rolled down Lawrence’s cheeks as she kept begging for one final chance at motherhood. ____________________________________________________________

A week later after that one day, Lawrence had the time to ponder about what to do and how not to live her life miserably. There was no point in staying in Liberio if her son was never going to know about her existence. Living in that house, with that nursery, was hitting her more than she expected to. In a matter of days, she organised a trip to go back to her home country, in Britain, booked for the following week. To finally leave everything behind and grant herself a little bit of happiness. Lawrence couldn’t wait for the day she would fly away from that house, to escape the pain of knowing Arthur was so close to her yet so far. She thought about not say anything to Levi and just disappear, too, but what would he think? That she was abandoning Arthur? She would rather know he believed such a thing than to know the truth. That she was still mourning her son in a way that was making her sick, both physically and mentally. It felt weird to just fly away, leaving everything behind without a word. She felt like a coward for planning that. Event though Levi was the last person she wanted to see, Lawrence had to let him know about her departure to at least prevent some more accusations. She wouldn't hop on that ship and sail to the U.K. if it wasn't for that situation, yet staying in Liberio was beginning to make her mentally unstable. Not even meds were keeping up with her mental health. A rather chill Wednesday afternoon, she found herself at Levi's front door. Soft knocks echoed around his house as she waited for him to open. It had to be done. Levi opened the door and saw Lawrence waiting in front of it. His face was filled with curiosity, as he knew that Lawrence never visited him until that one day, since Arthur's birth. If she was there, it meant something serious had happened. Lawrence seemed paler than usual, and her face was a bit drawn too. She was either exhausted or depressed, or both. Levi couldn’t say for sure, not asking her about it and just inviting her to enter. “Hello, Lawrence.” Lawrence had to support herself on the wall next to the doorframe in order not to fall. She looked at the door opening but didn't step inside, she had no pleasure to be in a house where her own son, the same she was never going to meet, was living and probably playing in that same moment. Her gaze lifted up and met Levi's, speaking with a voice that was barely above a whisper. “I'll be quick,” She bluntly said, swallowing and letting her glance move from Levi to the ground, several times, before speaking up again. “I'm gonna move back to Britain. Permanently.” Levi didn’t like Lawrence’s tone, knowing it wasn’t a tone of someone who was announcing a simple departure. In fact, it sounded like she was about to cry. Lawrence was always so composed and quiet, yet Levi could tell that she was holding back some sobs.

After Lawrence spoke up, Levi felt a small pang in his heart. It all felt so sudden; first, she appeared at his front door out of the blue. Now, she said she was going to leave Marley forever. Despite everything that happened, something worried him. “You will come back, right?” He asked her, making his voice sound quiet and composed, yet it showed a hint of concern. The fact Levi was acting so clueless, after everything he did and said to her, made Lawrence irritated, as if it never happened and he actually cared about her wellbeing. The hand she had on the wall clenched into a fist, wiping some tears with the other one, trying to calm herself down before responding.

“Back to a city where my own son lives? The same son who doesn't know I'm his mother?” She almost hissed under her breath, tilting her head a little to the side as she uttered those words. “Is that what you mean?” Levi knew that Lawrence was right, that she had every right in the world to feel the way she felt towards Levi. She was right, but Levi didn’t know what to say, as Lawrence had her mind set in stone about her own decision. He couldn’t stand the guilt he felt, and it was making him sick. Her own son. Levi’s own son. They never met and Lawrence would never get back her moments with Arthur. “I’m sorry.” Was all Levi could say in a voice even softer than her own.

Lawrence quietly hit the wall with her fist, trying to calm herself down as she tapped the tip of her heel onto the marble steps of Levi's house. Yet, she had something inside of her that needed to come out. Everything she endured and suppressed in the past three years, everything Levi didn't see about her suffering. “Shove that being sorry up your ass,” She murmured softly, raising her eyebrows as tears spilled from her eyes and down to her cheeks. “Don't even try to act innocent.” Levi felt his heart breaking in front of him. Lawrence’s harsh words stung, even though her feelings were valid and she couldn’t blame her for that at all. He couldn’t help himself and felt anger boiling within him. His voice turned into a low growl; it was too much to hold inside himself.

“You act like I don’t hate myself for what I did. You don’t know how much I regret it every single day, how much I hate myself for taking him away from his own mother.” Lawrence slightly narrowed her eyes at those words, which widened right afterwards as she took notice of Levi's anger. He was the one getting mad over what he did? Over her being rightfully hurt by what he took away from her? Her quiet footsteps soon reached him, and hopping on one step of the front door, she spoke closely to Levi's face. “Don't even try to gaslight me,” She hissed again, feeling her breath fastening as annoyance began to flow through her veins. “You got what you wanted. You're not sorry.” Levi’s teeth grinded together as he saw rage on Lawrence’s face when she stood in front of him. He couldn’t say a word that would make her calm. “You know what? You’re right. I’m not sorry.” His voice was firm and the growl made him sound serious and mad about something Lawrence only knew. His eyes met her own. “And you know what? I’d do it again if it meant protecting Arthur.” Just like his jaw clenched, Lawrence's did the same. Her fist tightly closed until her nails were almost digging into the palm of her hand, and let him step closer as they spoke to each other. It was the aftermath of what they went through. What they've been lodging for three long years and never got said out loud.

“You mean stealing someone's baby, since Arthur is Hange's son?” She asked sternly, yet with a hint of sarcasm and mockery in her tone. “Or you want to impregnate me and steal that baby too?” Lawrence’s question was too much for his gut to handle in this moment, and Levi felt his face grow red with anger. His nostrils flared as he stared at Lawrence for a few seconds before he lost control and let out a growl with loud words. “Don’t you dare put such thoughts in my head!” He shouted, losing his cool at last. How could she ask something like that to him? His mind began to spiral out of control, sending him over the edge. Lawrence exhaled deeply and shook her head. Levi's outburst was everything she needed to know about him and the way he was convinced about being right about what he did. There was no point in arguing anymore, or keeping the conversation going. As she took a step back, her eyes were on Levi, yet their faces were still some inches away from each other. Lawrence's expression was showing nothing but resentment towards him, mixed up with pain and annoyance. That confrontation, however, was pretty much needed. Levi’s breathing started becoming heavier as he tried to calm himself down. His face was red from shouting, but he didn’t regret telling Lawrence how he felt. What needed to be said was said. “You’re leaving. And I’m glad.” Her words hit him like a bucket of freezing water, feeling hurt and angry. His eyes were full of resentment and disdain towards Lawrence as she took a step back. “Don’t come back. I never want to see your face again. Be gone already.” Lawrence kept her gaze locked with Levi's as she moved away from the front door, down until the iron gates to exit his property. As if a cruel coincidence just decided to manifest in front of her own eyes, a fly was bothering her and she waved her hand to make it go away, following it with her eyes. Then she froze. On the first floor of Levi's house, out on the balcony, a child with dark brown hair and curious brown eyes was intently looking at her. Lawrence felt her knees weak. It couldn't be. It was Arthur himself.

Levi, who was about to slam the door in Lawrence’s face, stayed still once he saw her reaction when she noticed Arthur in the balcony. Levi himself couldn’t believe his own eyes and felt like he was hallucinating. He had never let Arthur see her, yet there the kid was, staring straight at Lawrence. Arthur was looking at Lawrence, intrigued and curious, as he watched her closely. He had always wondered about her, who she was and why his father never let him meet her. Yet, he saw her now, and he wanted to approach her.

In that eye contact, Lawrence could see the creature she carried on for nine months inside her womb. She got to see him once, right after his birth, but those were indeed his eyes. It was her son, yet Arthur didn't know she was his mother. He looked at her as if he wanted to know who she was, as if she was a mere stranger. Tears filled her eyes, stinging and making them burn. Her prayers, in the most painful way, were heard. Lawrence finally got to see her own son, even if her heart felt like someone was stomping on it more and more. Levi didn’t know what to do. Seeing Arthur staring at Lawrence filled him with a new kind of anxiety. He had never let Arthur know who she was. Arthur just saw a woman who was staring lovingly back at him, as if the woman was his real mother. Lawrence seemed so overwhelmed that Levi didn’t dare to speak or move. The kid would wonder why she wasn’t his mother, or why she wasn’t with them. Levi could see why Lawrence always kept her heart closed. Arthur was looking right at her with love in his eyes.

It felt like the cruellest joke one could ever imagine. Her own son was just feet away from her but she couldn't interact to him. Arthur was staring at Lawrence like a kid would with everyone, with innocence and joy in his eyes. How could she even walk away knowing her own son was right in front of her. With the corner of her eyes, Levi's reaction was crystal clear. She didn't want him to shout in front of Arthur just to send her away. Lawrence took a step back and opened the gates, yet her eyes never stopped looking at her child and tearing up. Arthur’s eyes widened when he noticed that Lawrence was slowly moving away. He didn’t want to see her leave. He couldn’t. Arthur didn’t understand what was going on in reality, but in his mind he felt like her mother was trying to run away from him. “Mommy?” By the time Arthur uttered that single word, using that soft baby voice, Lawrence swore her heart stopped. Everything that happened afterwards was unrolling in front of her eyes without her getting a grasp of it. She felt her knees so weak to the point she dropped on her knees, and with her upper body lowered a little, loud sobs echoed around Levi's garden. Was it fate to play tricks on her? How could Arthur, who never saw her growing up nor knew who Lawrence really was, call her as his mother? Even though more and more questions plagued her mind, it felt so empty in the meantime. She never recalled crying that hard before, maybe once. Her chest would hurt at each whimper and sniffle she made, not carrying about being heard anymore. Arthur’s eyes went wide in shock when he realized that his mother was crying. As if that wasn’t enough, Arthur was even more confused and sad when Lawrence seemed to want to leave. Arthur, who was just a kid, felt a deep sense of abandonment that only adults could truly understand. Arthur called out to Lawrence again. “Mommy, come back! Don’t leave me alone!” He cried and ran to her, his little arms up in the air, desperate to have her close to him. Levi was shocked at Arthur’s reaction towards Lawrence. The moment Lawrence embraced Arthur in her arms, the deep sense of sorrow she felt in the previous three years vanished for a moment. His tiny arms wrapped around her neck and she hugged her son tightly, crying over his little romper as she sat in the pebbled ground, caressing his soft hair in the meantime. What he said to her was enough to make her feel even worse, how could Arthur even think she was gonna leave him? Yet, that hug made her feel at ease. Lawrence didn't know what was making her cry anymore, but it didn't matter anymore. Someone up there took care of her pain. Arthur was crying so hard as he hugged Lawrence and yelled for her to not leave him. He was too young to understand what was happening, as all he felt right now was the love for his mother. “Don’t leave me! I love you!” He whined, trying to reach higher to hug her better. Levi couldn’t move a single inch. He was shocked at Arthur’s behavior and at his words. How coul Arthur feel such affection for her, if she didn't even know her? That, to him, was impossible and yet, there was evidence of it right in front of him. If Lawrence had to respond to that question, she would've asked herself the same thing. Lawrence couldn't understand how Arthur immediately knew she was his mother, they never met before that moment. She heard how mothers have that unbreakable bond with their biological kids to the point they would recognise each other everywhere. Was it the case?

“I'm never gonna leave you,” She whispered against Arthur's ear, giving her son soft kisses on his soaked, red cheeks as she spoke. “Mommy loves you.”

Arthur was crying even harder as Lawrence embraced him and told him she wouldn’t leave. It was a sweet moment even though it was too much of a coincidence. The boy held his mother tight as he cried all his tears out. It was probably the first time he cried with no shame, feeling loved and at peace in her warm embrace. After what felt like hours, Lawrence got up from the ground, while still holding Arthur, and moved towards the front door, where Levi was still standing against the doorframe. She felt so much relief, after battling with her mental health, to the point where her heart couldn't almost bear it. Her free hand reached for Levi's, placing it on Arthur's back, and gave him a faint smile, with her tear stained face and her red eyes. Then, she spoke up. Lawrence could never separate her son to Levi. He grew up with him, he cared about his wellbeing. The child was his. Those words felt so weird as they came out of her mouth, after what happened in the past years. But they came from a dark corner of her heart, too dark for her to understand it, or how her mind worked, and they felt right. Genuine. “He's your son, too.” Levi finally broke the silence when he heard what Lawrence had to say to him and saw her grabbing his hand. He felt like the world had stopped. “I thought…” He began to say, with tears in his eyes. It was true. Arthur was his son too, maybe not biological, but he had raised the kid with his own hands and he was part of him. “He’s my son?” Levi asked. It was hard for him to come to terms with it. Lawrence nodded and pushed away Levi's hand from her son's back, just to held it tightly as she let her own words sink deep into his mind. Even though that entire ordeal between them was more than horrible and it all started with Arthur being Hange's son, Levi made sure the child was loved and nurtured. He was indeed his father. He would've died for him. “He grew up with you, and you provided him everything he needed,” She said gently, intertwining her fingers with Levi's as she spoke up. “You're rightfully his father.” Lawrence’s words were like a revelation to Levi. Arthur was his kid. Even though he hadn’t created him directly himself, he loved him and cared for him as if Arthur was his own. And now his mother was saying that Arthur was his son too. Levi had never felt more emotional in his life than at that moment.

“He’s… my son.” Levi repeated with a soft smile, his mind racing with thoughts. He was a father, he had a kid. During the past weeks, however, Lawrence came up with another thought she let linger in her mind for days, but always pushed away at some point. Everything started because of Hange's infidelity, and even if she was indeed the side chick, Hange played both Lawrence and Levi. Why still being on a war for someone else's behaviour? “Hange cheated on you and didn't care about me, either,” She pointed out firmly, taking a breath and exhaling through her nose. “We both got wronged. Arthur is our son.” What Lawrence said made Levi think back to the reason why Arthur was born in the first place. She was right. It all began with Hange cheating on him and Lawrence getting mixed in that mess. Levi was still trying to process the revelation that Arthur was his son, and everything that happened until that moment. A smile appeared on his face as he heard Lawrence speaking the truth. Silence fell on the two of them, both Lawrence and Levi finally taking a grasp of what had been under their noses their entire time. There was no point in fighting anymore, and she was tired of it. All she wanted was to be Arthur's mother, and for some twisted reason, she was willing to get over what he had done to her. A shared look made the two of them realize how tiredsome it had been to keep up. It was time to give Arthur the mother he deserved and the father that kept him safe all those years. Their lips curled up a bit, sharing much more complicity they were expecting to feel. “Our son.”

#attack on titan #aot #levi x reader #levi x hange #levihan #levi x oc #hange x oc #post war aot #levi x pregnant!reader #hange x pregnant!reader #aot x ooc #aot ooc #levi x pregnant!oc #pregnant oc #hange x pregnant!oc #snk #shingeki no kyojin

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autonomousbosch · 2 years

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Resolve

My older brother was in a motorcycle accident recently. We have a special relationship even outside of being brothers, as I’ve never met another man who truly understands what life is like as a miscreant, but for some reason our relationship always feels more important whenever one of us has been hurt. He got in an accident before I left the American southeast for New Jersey. Aside from the shock of a near fatal accident, it also caused a minor uproar with the town police as well as EMS workers. Just as if it were some black comedy, there was a second accident after his own which definitely did kill and maim. In fact, I cannot recall a moment in time more close to my own flesh were such baroque gore spiraled forth from a single accident. We have had our skulls split open, knees torn apart, lips lopped off, shoulders ripped from the socket, bodies thrown from windshields, life in general has been a very bloody affair at points in a way that we secretly find satisfying. I love my older brother because every time we talk, things seem to come back to how horrible it is when dying is truly difficult; how deranged life becomes when your pain is funny.

Not to sound too bleak or brooding, just to say that it is nice to have a comrade to share this with in a way that matters. They have him doing physical therapy and we are once again discussing pain, as well as our experience with it. Like two philosophers, we come to an agreement that the worst pain can possibly get is when you’re afraid of it. For him, it’s trying to maintain symmetry while strength training with nerve damage. For me, it was the pain of having wisdom teeth, long since broken in a mosh pit, finally become infected. He says that he’s never experienced pain before where he is crying. Not sobbing I say, recalling being doubled over in an emergency room bed with tears streaming from my eyes and drool pooling on the only mattress you envision an emergency room having. “Perfectly lucid, responsive, just endless tears.”

“That’s right,” he says. “I can think clearly, and i can feel clearly. It hurts so bad I’m finally afraid of pain.”

Then he goes on to talk about how sad it is that our friends are dying. They are dying indeed. I’m entering my mid thirties soon, he is nearing his forties. Eventually he moves on to a new woman he’s dating. Her name is Adrian, though I might be spelling it incorrectly. She’s a schoolteacher, an orphan from an adopted family. She refuses to date him at all until he’s divorced which we both agree is good, because my older brother is an odd kind of misogynist. Some of it justifiable, some of it not so justifiable because he’s a womanizer; if not the root of his material problems then a significant contributor to them. Though I fear for this relationship with a new woman the way I always fear for his relationship with new women–some for him and some for her, enough to go around to be clear–I do the brotherly thing to do and wish him well regardless. Of course I hope my brother finds love, and I’m pleased to hear that it seems like he might. Again.

Lord have mercy, he is talking about butterflies in his stomach, giggling whenever she says and does things. Behaving as if ordered to by some divinity to be enslaved, perennially acting in service to the thought of another. I don’t know why I got this, it just reminded me of you. Lots of things remind me of you. I could be inside the pipe section of Home Depot and think, you know what she would love? Sharing some ice cream with me. It’s bittersweet to say but of course I know that feeling, I have a complicated relationship with it in that I either wish I had it again or had no knowledge of it at all. There’s bliss in being defiled, it’s hard to tell whether the tragedy is no longer having bliss or forever being defiled afterward. Of course there’s no need to say that to him, so I’ll just keep it to myself and wish him well.

Unfortunately, the longer I talk to him about it the more I feel a grave being upturned. The longer I think about it, the more I realize I less and less like to talk to Adam, my older brother, about the women in my life anywhere near as much as I enjoy him talking about the women in his. Maybe it’s because he’s an odd strain of misogynist that complications with women simply never arise; he’s either unpalatable outright or an intriguing specimen. I imagine some women have experience with this confusing judgment call to make, evidenced by his success. I find women endlessly complicating people. I hate how fiercely my heart responds to them when I admire them, I hate the feeling of being bewitched by something which exists outside the comprehension of my savage mind. I’m sick to death of subtext, of reading between lines. Sick of independently redeveloping academic ideas of psychology simply because I need them to make some kind of sense to me.

“How are ya’ll doing?” he asks. I don’t know what he means by “ya’ll,” because it’s her and I, not us. We’re thinking about starting a business. “That’s all?” Well Adam, it’s confusing but we’re pretty convinced about this part of things. “I mean I’m happy for ya’ll and I know ya’ll will do well.” I don’t know how to answer him because I’m sick of thinking about it.

I told him that eventually you just kind of learn to make peace with confusion. Sometimes famous people die and their letters are released posthumously, Julia and Paul Child come to mind. Sometimes people of no regard at all die and their letters wind up at post card conventions; corridors of anonymous hearts to wander through and consider that many people have wonderful handwriting, lots of people like to farm, correspondence has been a near sacred act of communication for millennia now. Sometimes a whole lot is said when a farmer puts his pen to paper and tells an odd woman, someone you could never possibly hope to understand, how hopeful he is for his yam harvest and how much their blushing orange flesh reminds him of her. They wrote back and forth quite a few times, all his postcards were beautiful hand-drawn pictures of wildlife. Do they intend to hide this all? Or is it that private language is just inherently obscure?

I talked to him about private language, about how we need to agree on what “cold” feels like because if it feels so cold you “die”, another thing it is very important for us collectively to agree about. Then I also told him that sometimes we don’t want everyone to agree, sometimes we want the right people to agree and no one else. Because of this, when communication is so psychologically sophisticated that someone actually does understand, it feels like a standard human feature that sometimes a nuclear bomb is dropped on your psychology in a way you couldn’t consent to, and thusly that you never would’ve asked for. In a situation like this, it’s going to be painfully confusing until it is either nothing at all or inseparable from who you are. It has not ended and will never end any other way.

Luckily he seemed to understand; confusion as a liminal space as everyone likes to call it. Purgatory between heaven and hell. It’s clear that we care about each other, I’m telling him. She has the flu while she’s starting a new job, so I make sure she has soup to come home to, decaffeinated tea to drink at night–lavender, good aroma to open up the chest I tell him–and then how I have it in my mind to make her a very red dinner with very red ingredients and a very red tablecloth with red wine. She knew I needed a winter coat, so she got one for me that fits perfectly. I told him I was going to build her a footstool that only she could use because she’s just so short, holistically so. To build something just for her, using the measurements of her hip width and gait.

But she’s in a relationship, maybe I should think about that stuff. Think about the things that I’m saying, because I’m sure she’d love them. I’d love to do them. There’d be a whole lot of love in the air. These are not the things you do for a taken woman.

Anyway, that evening I’m rifling through esoteric ingredients in New York City, on the lookout for esoteric black olives which have been cured and then soaked in oil. The idea is that we–and by that I mean her and I–are going to bake bread with a whole host of ingredients, a recipe we were reading about in a book that looked quite nice. I found tea for her there and put it into my satchel, hanging loosely from the winter coat that she gave me. Inside of that satchel are a handful of notebooks, a copy of short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Twice-Told Tales), and my phone which delivered me a message that a party was going to be taking place in New York City that evening, asking if I would come. I was not invited I say, they let me know I am invited now.

I hop on a train that connects to another train that connects to another train and manage to only get partially lost once while infants move about with an expert adeptness at navigating an impossibly sprawling city. I would feel ashamed if I didn’t enjoy getting lost so much here and there, if I didn’t enjoy riding trains even if they were stinky from time to time.

I get to this party and it’s thankfully not as bad as the others I’ve been to. Parties in New York City are diverse with the conspicuous exception of black people. Jews, second generation immigrants who think the American experience is having a drug problem, and Catholic converts. I’m telling our host that I’m also Jewish, a little bit of a lie, but at least a cute one–the theory being that when a Jewish girl offers you wine and prays for you, you no longer have a choice in the matter.

Anyway there’s another demographic. Effective Altruists, rationalists, call them whatever you like. I find them an odd bunch in that I don’t think rationalism is a compelling cognitive mode to move about life, but that they also respond very well to talking when they come across the right mix of good faith and disagreeableness. I think that, or would at least like to think, that the common man has in him a sophisticated ability to model others in a way that he might feel but can’t truly know. In that sense, some people are marvelous fencing partners, but sometimes one man uses a falchion and the other an epee. I meet someone I’ve seen around a few times, a nice fellow who stands in sharp contrast to me in a cartoonish manner that I enjoy. He’s a jazz pianist, I was a death metal bassist. He practices self care, I say men ought not engage in such things. Both of us enjoy synthesizing a common ground and laughing while we do it, good spirits are generally worth their weight in gold. There were a few things he said, protestations generally, that stuck with me.

He said that he’d been getting in touch with his feminine side, meanwhile I don’t think women can be understood such that a man’s “feminine side” can be known. I know what I’m attracted to, I enjoy it when an otherwise sweet girl is just a little creepy, the same way that a large pot of simmering bolognese has an undetectable dash of nutmeg sunken deep within beef, mirepoix, and wine (and milk but that’s for some other entry I’m sure). He asks me if I’m a masculinity guy, of course the answer is no. I told him I was just annoyed with how confused things are after such a large cultural focus on gender. I am in the process of understanding myself, part of that self is male–a man. I think the most charitable thing I could do for women, people I desire, is understand that they are people apart from me with interiority, darkness, compulsions, whole hosts of things I should get comfortable not understanding and certainly not trying to pry open, but rather letting them reveal it to me when they are want to do so.

People aren’t rational actors, I say. You can’t believe them! You can’t trust anyone to tell you who they are, they don’t know. It’s not because they’re liars, I say, but it’s more that the exact, high resolution contours of what they want hasn’t been revealed yet, meaning that they don’t have the language to describe it. He tells me that language can be useful and I agree, we have to have some agreement of what a door is to successfully make it home. When it comes to interiority, the value of truth changes. What we agree upon as a door no longer exists for us to leave the building, it exists as a symbol our minds are constantly repurposing for a meaning only the atomized individual can truly understand, and even that understanding is asymptotic. Imagine how much less anyone would know of themselves, I say, if they had to compromise what it meant with something as low resolution as language.

He tells me that’s cynical. I told him that I don’t think it is, it’s more likely to be projection. I didn’t tell him this, but when I was a child, my parents brought me to a speech therapist fearing some learning disability. It was because I didn’t talk. When the doctors brought me back to my crumbling family, they announced I was fine, I just didn’t like to talk. What would a toddler even have talked about?

I don’t think language can solve communication because I have never figured words to be the best way to communicate what it is that I feel. In a way, I pity the poet for not knowing what the postcard author does. The context that the latter’s sparse words exist in carry a romanticism that the former could never develop, his words are ultimately divorced from such a narrative. Indeed, the most effective poets would be known should they be treated like the Victorians treated a woman’s exposed ankles–public indecency, lurid perversion, the best it could possibly get for a poet.

I ask him if he’s ever written a letter by hand, and to my surprise he said that he had. His ex sent him one, and he felt compelled to respond in like kind. Why would he do such a thing when he could’ve emailed her, I asked. Because it wouldn’t have been as meaningful, he answers. Even though she wasn’t in the room, all three of us agreed about that. The words are important, sure, but they aren’t anywhere near as important as the context of being written by hand in a person’s manuscript form, marked with a stamp that was wet with the same tongue he used to taste, delivered to the post office box in a hand with touch slowly growing more alien to him as time goes on, delivered to his eyes which used to behold her, before finally residing in a mind that, at one point, behaved as if ordered by some divinity to be enslaved, perennially acting in service to the thought of another.

No one can suggest that rationalists are descriptively, objectively wrong, I tell him. That’s not my issue with them, and I would never try to state such a thing. What I will say that is that rationalists are tasteless in the worst way, in that they make no consideration for taste itself as the ultimate prejudice. We can accept that people exercise it when picking out the right lemon from the produce market for a lemon tart, but we don’t accept that cognitive modes are subject to value judgments as well, subject to prejudice. Yes, it is true that curing malaria is an unequivocal common good, yes I could donate tomorrow, but I’d rather donate my time and resources to precisely what is I am doing–I aim to impart all that I know and have to the world I have isolated through these very prejudices. I brought olives and tea from Manhattan to Queens with this very ideal in mind, and I’m confident in my heuristic. My world, anyone’s world, is ultimate the sum total of what they understand of it and what limited amount others in it understand of them. Malaria could be gone tomorrow and it ultimately would not be as meaningful as mine and her hands working over mini-boules until we get perfectly slipper-sized loaves of bread. Is this an objectively correct value judgment? No. Is it wrong? No.

We then talk about music as musicians are oft to do, and he tells me that lately he has been learning to lean in to the expressions he improvises on piano. I say I have the opposite problem, that I have picked up a neglected Fender Precision Bass after realizing one night at a club that I was the only person afraid of my hips, and could no longer suffer being a white boy with no rhythm. I told him that I picked the Spanish phrygian scale to practice, because it makes no sense without a flamenco rhythm, and that I practice alone, standing up, shaking my hips as I desire in time with the meter. He said that solving rhythm doesn’t seem like that big a deal, and I say that figuring out rhythm on a bass guitar is itself a revelation that I want to solve my fear of being in a place where I might avoid dancing with someone I like.

He said, “You seem to think of yourself as something to resolve.”

Of course I do. I’m willing to concede that when I say I suspect that I think people are largely nonverbal, I mean that I am largely nonverbal. There’s a broad chasm between music and noise. Music has structure, clearly defined articulation that, with enough study, everything makes sense. The world of noise is infinite, its breadth of expression is so vast as to be a paralyzing struggle to shape and control it, the stuff precision requires. I’d say that it’s absolutely appropriate to spend an incredible amount of time resolving exactly what it is I am trying to say.

At that point, people begin doing drugs and I get the urge to leave. As I make for the door, I meet my room-mates boyfriend. A perfectly nice man whom I have both shockingly little and surprisingly much in common with. I attempt to exchange pleasantries and he lets me know that they’ve broken up. I check my phone and it’s dead. I grab my new winter-coat and satchel full of olives, jot down the expression “M -> Marcy Street -> J -> Fulton”, and head for the subway. When I sit down on the train, for a bit of time I practice cursive hand after having been so touched at the postcard convention, thinking that the book I in which I write solely about love would be a lot more attractive, suitably so, were it in cursive. Then, I pull out Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Twice-Told Tales” and read “The Prophetic Pictures.”

A newlywed couple conscripts a painter who has the uncanny ability to extract onto canvas the soul of his subjects. It scares me, the idea that an observer could plainly see on my face how I felt about something, someone, someone in particular, before I had even said anything at all.

#Saturday

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youvebeenjegulused · 3 years

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Endgame Jegulus Head Canons

They kept it a secret, at first.

They get together in James's fifth year, and Regulus's fourth.

James calls Regulus not only Reggie, but baby just to piss him off.

Regulus gets the mark the summer before his sixth year.

Whenever Sirius and Regulus would fight in the hallways, James would never look Regulus in the eyes, he was always too afraid that he would let something loose.

The first time they exchanged 'I love you's' was a few days after James found out Regulus had been forced to take the dark mark. He kissed his arm and whispered sweet nothings to him.

After summer and winter breaks, Regulus would close himself off for a little while after. It hurt James at first, until he knew why.

After James became head boy, he and Regulus would sleep in his room, instead of various meet-up spots.

The rest of the mauraders found out in James's seventh year. Sirius had screamed at him, how could James do that to him? Remus and Peter had been upset as well, Remus albeit more because of his boyfriend.

Sirius didn't talk to him, or Regulus for two weeks after he found out. Eventually, he and James sat down and he threatened to kill him if he ever hurt his little brother.

James stopped liking Lily in his fourth year, after he finally gave up on her. Although, they did become close friends, but nothing more.

For their seventh year prank finale, James and Sirius hung up pride flags around the school, and Sirius kissed Remus in the great hall during breakfast.

On the day of James's graduation, he proposes to Regulus. Of course, Reg says yes.

James comes out to his parents that same day.

They have to keep their relationship secret, because of the war.

Regulus becomes a spy for the order.

They find out Peter is a traitor, and sadly, they have to kill him.

Their wedding is absolutely beautiful. Wolfstar, Dorlene, Lily and Minerva Mcgonagall are the only guests. It takes place in a field full of wild flowers and blue skies. It's the first time James sees Regulus cry.

Soon later though, James sees him cry for the second time, when he feels the kicking coming from James's stomach.

James decides he's never felt real fear before when he watches his husband almost drown.

He saves him, of course. But not all of him. His left arm and peaceful sleep will forever be gone.

They decide to name him Harry James Potter. He has messy brown hair, big grey eyes and skin like a doll.

Uncle Padfoot really loves Harry, he does. Just not when he's six months old and breaks Uncle Moony's favorite mug.

Voldemort still (somehow) finds them. It's too bad that Lily is visiting when he is.

James and Regulus attend her funeral with heavy hearts. Harry's forehead adorns a lightning bolt scar.

Raising Harry with one arm is quite the task, Regulus often ponders.

Sirius, Remus, Regulus and James have a bet on Harry's Hogwarts house.

James and Sirius owe Regulus five galleons each when Harry's letter comes back with the words Slytherin written within it.

They owe him five again, when Harry sends another letter talking all about Draco Malfoy, and how annoying his blonde hair is when it glows in the sunlight.

That's why their not surprised in fourth year, during the second task when Harry drags Draco out of the water with him.

Regulus has never willing killed anyone. But when Sirius dies, so does the nearest death eater in sight. He doesn't bother looking at their face.

James and Regulus hold their son as he cries about his boyfriend, who was forced to get the mark. Just like Regulus.

Together, they worry about Harry, Neville and Luna, who are alive, somewhere out in the world, trying to destroy horcruxes.

On nights where Regulus wakes up screaming about wet hands and dead sons, James holds him close, like he used to when they were teenagers.

James cries twice that day. Once, when he sees Harry after he escaped Malfoy Manor. The second time when he sees Luna. Her eyes are dull, and she has blood dripping from her mouth.

Regulus helps Harry bury Dobby.

Harry meets Teddy Lupin, a surprise baby that came from a one night hook up between Remus and Tonks. Remus had thrown up afterwards, and decided Tonks was better as a friend, without knowing of his son.

Regulus holds his wand to Voldemorts face when he brings out Harry's dead body. James is right next to him.

With the help of Neville, Regulus kills Nagini.

James almost starts sobbing when he sees his Harry alive and breathing, throwing spells with his wand.

Regulus Potter realises how much he loves his family when he sees his son staring down at the dead, mortal body of the dark lord.

Draco and Harry take in Teddy as their own, which is a relief to Andromeda.

At Harry's wedding, James gets flashbacks of Regulus walking down the isle as Draco does. They'd chosen the same spot as he and Regulus. It's bittersweet, with the two empty chairs for Sirius and Remus.

Regulus and James go to their first pride parade. Regulus magiks rainbows onto their cheeks, and together they yell and kiss and cheer.

James Sirius Potter is a beautiful baby.

They are old now, so very old. They have a small house that overlooks a sunny clearing in the woods. They have rocking chairs that they sit in and drink tea. They tell stories of love and pranks to their four grandchildren.

James Sirius, Al, Scor and Lily remind James of the mauraders. Regulus shakes his head in exasperation, that's full of grey curls.

When James dies, Regulus forgets how to feel again.

Slowly, things brighten, but Regulus will always remember. His everything, his happiness, his partner for infinity.

So it's not unsurprising when Regulus slips away from the world on a warm summer day, a few years after James. His hand is held by a crying Harry, Teddy behind him.

They're buried together, under a willow tree. The whole family visits, at first. But slowly they all trickle away, until it's only Harry and Scorpius who still come by.

James and Regulus loved each other, beyond words and everything else in the entire world. Harry vows to remember that.

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boop-le-snoot · 3 years

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marmalade taffy

Helmut Zemo smut & feels. Soft!Dom Zemo, non-superhero!AU, Zemo being the weird uncle of college!Maximoff twins. This was written on a whim so if someone signs up to beta-read, I will shower you with affection and reminders to drink water. The Reader is addressed as "you" and is not described - race/age/body type neutral. The language I used for Sokovian is actually Serbian. Word count 2,8k.

Fun fact: I have mild synesthesia. Emotions/feelings and some people have an assigned color (and sometimes smell) for me. That's how the name of the fic was born. This fic feels like the colors of marmalade and taffy, look them up. This fic is dedicated to my lovely @slothspaghettiwrites , the shining beacon in my misty, rocky beach. (You're a periwinkle for me, by the way. I thought you might ask.)

When you first see him all you do is raise an eyebrow. His sleek, well-maintained vintage car stands out almost grotesquely amongst the various sedans and mom vans on the campus and you can see the glint of his wristwatch even from afar. Wanda's and Pietro's sheepish smirk only makes the situation worse - the girl's attire obviously screams "liberal arts" and her twin brother doesn't seem to have anything better to wear than tracksuits.

The man behind the wheel is unfazed. He is calm and collected in that European way, not conceited, just waiting. For what? You don't know. His eyes trail over you but he doesn't smile, simply gives a tiny polite nod. If you hadn't had extensive conversations about cultural differences with Wanda, you'd say he was extremely rude.

Shy, quiet Wanda, who's eyes lit up seeing her favorite not-actually-uncle. In a surprising dash of energetic agility, she hopped right into the car, her numerous scarves a bright flash of saturation against the campus grayscale. You giggle and wave at the departing car, snorting when Wanda's hand reaches over to briefly honk the horn, causing the driver to swerve the tiniest bit, his eyes trained on you in the rearview mirror.

He comes and goes often. Almost always in a different perfectly restored vintage car, mostly with the same polite mask of bored contentment. You know he's royalty in his home country and can't help but wonder how frivolously the twins act around him - no, free. He gives all the appearance of a silent, strict man.

You're proven wrong rather quickly. Freshman year left behind you, you and Wanda decide to ditch the dorms for an apartment - she finds one rather quickly and it's just you two in it even though it is ridiculously huge and the rent amount she requests is equally ridiculously small. Not the one to look a gift horse in the mouth, you pretend nothing is out of the ordinary and buy yourself a new pair of shoes.

Helmut - Wanda finally formally had introduced you two - doesn't come by often, however the visits are always... Eventful. He's not at all what it seemed to be; in the quiet of your apartment, a witty, incredibly clever man resurfaces from under the stoic façade. The Slav in him easily lets him consume alarming quantities of alcohol together with Pietro, who opted to stay in the dorms with his idiotic football team, and - you couldn't believe your eyes at the time - dorkily dad-dance squat in the middle of your living room, unfazed by your and Wanda's cackling.

The way Helmut is absolutely unbothered by the audience and the laughter, pale face flushed from the wine and a little smirk stretching his thin lips into expression almost catlike. The maroon turtleneck stretches nicely across his chest, as thinly as your lip that you worry between your teeth.

Pietro raises an eyebrow. You shrug.

"Got something in your eye, no?" He teases playfully and you shrug again, taking another swig of your nice, European beer.

There are more gatherings, more parties and quite a few rides in his car, when the wind blows your hair in all directions possible and intermingles it with Wanda's as you giggle and squeal in the back seat. Helmut always indulges you two; the word 'no' simply does not exist in that man's vocabulary. He insists politely but firmly on a dinner with all three of them on your birthday and the gifts he brings make your eyes pop out and your face heat.

"A woman like you makes any sensible man want to shower you with the finest gifts," Helmut's voice is quiet and his accent is thick and somehow, it makes it all that harder to refuse. He smiles like usual - tiny and a little secretive, as he pecks your cheek, filling the air around you with the smell of his cologne. It makes your mouth water and your fingers clench helplessly around the half a dozen of silk paper-wrapped boxes.

The summer rolls in and it's hot and humid and finally you don't have to worry about waking up at the crack of dawn or classes or the annoying boys who can barely take a no for an answer. The invitation to Helmut's villa doesn't come as a surprise; Wanda had been riled up over it since early May and Pietro and his whole damn football team were equally as thrilled.

You pack flowy dresses, daisy dukes and swimsuits. The expensive jewelry and handbag Helmut had gifted you, too, since the villa is surrounded by a whole neighborhood meant solely for the rich and famous. Wanda is absolutely unbothered by her own bohemian chic and you quietly envy her; the longer you get to know her, the more you realise of how much actually she does not give a fuck about anything besides her paintings and sculptures.

It's admirable, really, because she is talented. And Helmut knows it, too, having had collected and kept every single work Wanda had made, showing it off in the various rooms of his two-story mansion. The abstract fits in well and is a great conversation topic for him and his equally important friends. There's an endless stream of them in the first days and Wanda isn't overtly happy, choosing to run away to laze around the pool with you more often than not.

Helmut's friends stop at the glass wall between the inner side of the house and the pool to stare at you two, too, causing something dark and tense flash across his features. There always had been a sort of tangy obscurity in him, you've noticed, but not nearly enough for you to grow concerned. It added the bittersweetness, the flavour and consistency to the modest man.

Although calling him modest might have been a mistake. The moment you can't shake off one of his friends after a polite chit-chat seems to never end, Wanda nowhere in sight, dread and unease digging their sharp, spindly fingers in the soft flesh behind your rib cage, Helmut is suddenly there, arm wrapped almost possessively around your waist.

"Draga mea, Wanda is looking for you. She says it's urgent," He stares the man down with the eyes of a vulture. "I believe we haven't been properly introduced," Helmut seems to not realize he's still clutching you in a grasp of steel as the man opposite you rumbles out his name, few syllables you'd forgotten seconds after he spoke them for the first time.

"Baron Helmut Zemo," the fingers brush and squeeze once, gently, over the valley of your waist before letting go. You miss the rest of their peacocking, walking away with a fight and fire inside of your hammering heart. Anxiety and longing and confusion mix and blend, combining into a cocktail that has you beelining for the bar like a woman parched.

The next day you're sleeping off the hangover, first in your bed and then by the pool - Wanda had run off into town for one thing or another, and knowing her, she'd be back home at the crack of dawn. It was blissful peace, the soothing balm for your troubled heart and your aching head.

"Hungover?" Helmut's voice was quiet and a little bit teasing. None of the Eastern Europeans had ever showed the signs of having any ill effects from the alcohol they drunk, unlike you.

You stretched, too blissed out to care about the skimpy strings and straps of your bikini, basking in the gentle morning sun. "Mmm, not anymore," a swim in the cold pool had done wonders.

Your soft pink float rocked as Helmut's footsteps quieted, giving way to a short splash and the sound of his breathing somewhere in your space. Just as you cracked open your eyes, he reached out a hand to steady himself next to you. "I wanted to apologize for the situation yesterday. That man was stepping out of line. He is not welcome in my home anymore."

You stare at him and then you snort. The blunt was he usually speaks is so easy, it flows oh so effortlessly. No mind games, just honesty. You want to pay him back in kind. "Don't worry, Helmut. I just had a bit too much to drink," that was the truth. Any other time and you wouldn't have hesitated to unapologetically steer clear of any creep. Heat and bubbly don't mix and that was your own mistake.

"No, printsesa," the man in front of you let loose some of the delicious darkness, eyes growing stormy, hand gently resting over yours. "Some men are fools, they are nothing but animals. You deserve to feel safe, especially in my home." His lips stretched into a smile, water dripping down his jaw and making tiny circles form in the azure of the pool.

"I can't argue with that," you replied, catching the stray liquid and following the trails it made with your eyes. His forehead, dripping down over his eyes, making Helmut blink the stray drops away until they landed on his lips, trickling down his chin.

You swallowed, opting to dip your toes into the cool pool water before you could make a fool of yourself. The water splashed towards him, making a mischievous grin grace his usually serious face, as me made a half-hearted attempt to splash back weakly, making the water sizzle on your sun-kissed skin. Never the one to back down from a challenge, you knitted your eyebrows in mock offense, eagerly letting the water wash over you as you abandoned the float in favour of creating waves with your whole body.

The temperature contrast was delicious and Helmut's laugh even more so as it echoed in between the high walls of the building surrounding the pool. The sun was nearly at its peak, shining over your head in a beacon of heat that almost matched the one inside of you, the one that had blossomed there months ago and finally grew into a steady smolder, shooting sparks whenever you were around the baron.

It was hot and wet, the same feeling chasing you two when you finally kissed. His hand firmly planted on the side of your neck, his nose softly brushing against the underside of your jaw, Helmut was in no rush to taste you, to savour every millimeter of your sun-kissed skin. The man left you with your fingertips trembling and heart scrambling for purchase somewhere in the deepest pits of your belly.

"What are you so hungry for, mmm?" Helmut's voice rumbled next to the shell of your ear; you could barely focus, skin singing underwater, where he held onto you like a lifeline. "You have hungry eyes, ljubavi, tell me what it is and I'll give it to you," your bodies pressed flush against each other, his eyelashes flittering against your cheek.

"You," the maximum capacity for your brain was one-syllable words and you used it sparingly, failing to suppress a gasp when Helmut's mouth latched around a particularly sensitive spot right under your jawline.

Teeth scraped over it before he soothed the sting with his tongue. "All the things in the world, I could give them to you. And yet..." He sounded almost disappointed. Perplexed, just as you were at the strange admission. "A woman like you would have men fighting for your attention yet you give it to me so freely," he murmured softly, capturing your lips in a slow, fluid kiss once more. "I will make sure you have everything you could ever want."

Helmut's touch grew bolder as he steered the two of you towards the shallow end of the pool. The taste of him was intoxicating, like the sweetest, most alluring poison you'd ever tasted: you knew that once you had one small bit, you'd be addicted, drawn to him like a moth to a flame. His words were clever and his mouth even more, making the short stumble upstairs last hours.

A wall, baroque tapestry, marked with the wetness of the pool water, where you allowed yourself to be pressed against as he leaned into you with the entirety of his broad frame, domineering the kiss effortlessly.

You panted as your back hit the soft, million-thread count, unmade sheets of the baron's bed, staring up into his eyes and finding your own reflection in his pupils, blown wide with lust. The tiny smirk was back but now his unexpressive face was marred by a gleem, accentuating his moist, puffy lips you'd licked into and bitten in a heated frenzy.

"Beautiful, printsesa," he stated with quiet firmness, leaning over into you to unclasp and toss away the upper part of the bikini. The bottoms followed suit, flung carelessly somewhere. His hands ran over your as it sang, every tiniest nerve hypersensitive, coming alive with a fervor borne of months of longing, complimented by the summer heat and cool waters.

"Helmut," your voice wavered, flowed on the syllables as his clever, clever mouth trailed hot down your chest, briefly submerging each nipple into the sear of it. Goosebumps rose over your exposed body, highlighting a trail for him, a trail he followed eagerly. Kisses were candy sweet and marshmallow soft.

Hot breath at the apex of your thighs had you mewling and arching into it, having abandoned all shame, and Helmut found it amusing. The petite chuckle made an appearance, his fingertips ghosting over the part of your lower lips; he was as amused by your impatience as he was enthralled by the youthfulness of the gesture. "Shh, ljubavi, I will make it feel better," his accent as thick as clover honey and just as saccharine.

The first movements were tentative, brief and so light, the demanding moan slipped out of your mouth along with a growl of frustration. You felt continuous chuckling, slight stubble rasping along the sides your thighs; you felt him pick up pace and steady his hot hands on your hips as you attempted to trash against the overwhelming stimulation your pussy was receiving.

His moans, loud and wet, drove you closer to the edge like a drunk drove a Ferrari; Helmut's skill was unparalleled but it lacked precision as he lost himself in the moment just as much as you.

"Fuck, fuck, I'm- I'm so close," you managed to grunt out before the crescendo hit, eyes rolling back into your skull as the influx of more, more, more hit every nerve ending in your body. You could do little more than rest your legs on his shoulders as the noble man, the quiet storm lapped up every drop of your release.

He made the inside of you weak.

In seconds, Helmut was back on top of you, grinding his arousal into you desperately, almost begging for it and all you could do was let your body respond, mimic your lover, clench around nothing just as you felt him twitch.

"Tell me you're mine," he demanded hooking one of your legs over his hip, eyes boring into yours with everything in them plain on display. It was a terrifying thing: as if your heart had suddenly grown legs, stood up and walked out into the bare, wide world, open for all to see. "Ti moa, skaži eto," his native tongue made his voice even more hoarse, you couldn't resist anymore.

"I'm yours, I'm yours, I'm yours," you chanted the words like a prayer, hoping he'd be merciful - and he is. No, there's only a hidden tenderness in his hands as he drives into your with increasing force that shakes you and makes your core quiver, igniting your flesh once again like the color red; it's messy and it's sloppy and you're barely aware of Helmut muttering something into the crook of your neck as you feel yourself clench down on him with a choked moan.

"Fuck," hearing him, the polite composed man, bite the end of his own orgasm into a curse made a wave of magenta hot rush travel through your body at lightning speed, his cock pulsating and coating you, claiming you from inside out so sweetly you couldn't resist a shallow gasp into his cheek, a gasp he mirrored as his own oversensitive flesh was once more assaulted by your combined lust.

The tide of his breathing was high; both of you spent yet still drunk on the newfound sense of togetherness. It was clear as a summer's day that in your arms laid a man who'd once lost something important and you - you were a someone who's never had anything of significance and perhaps, this time each other's arms would let you both keep whatever it was that you missed.

#helmut zemo x y/n #helmut zemo x you #helmut zemo x reader #helmut zemo smut #baron zemo x reader #baron zemo smut #baron zemo x you #baron zemo x y/n #zemo smut #zemo x reader #zemo x you #bun writes #baron zemo #zemo #i am KNEELING

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eclipsedpascal · 3 years

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You Deserve This

Andy Dolan x Female Reader

GIF by @kissxmedeadly !!

“The reader asking Andy about his kiddo (let's pretend is a lil boy 🤣) and him being very emotional about it and the reader who truly loves him conforts him 😭❤️” - anon

Please read the warnings!!

Warnings: use of drugs (weed), smut, oral (female receiving), slight public sex, slight angst, mentions of rehab, mentions of suicidal thoughts, a lil bit of crying and VERY slight Eden spoilers, but thats only if you don't want to know anything AT ALL, so basically none? idk lmao:)

Notes: hi! So this is my first Andy fic, I wrote it very quickly last night after a sudden burst of inspiration and it doesn't make too much sense, also it’s kinda cheesy? I don't think I've ever written anything this angsty or soft before, but i’m trying to be more in touch w my emotions nd this is my way of doing that, so hopefully i'll do more things like this soon:) also if you’re interested, the title is one of my favourite songs by Men I Trust that I just thought fit Andy well.

Word count: 1.8k

●●●●●●●●

The warm, dancing breeze washed over your skin, plucking up your many goosebumps and blowing the rainbow coloured sea of petals that decorated the large garden from left to right. The bittersweet mix of their fragrances and Andy’s blunt rushed to you and filled your scrunched up, wrinkled nose as you let out a loud laugh. The vibrant expanse of fluffy grass felt close to a mattress underneath you, cradling your form whilst you laid amongst the greenery and watched Andy ghost a deep inhale of the blunt he had balanced precariously between two fingers. He flopped his arm across the gap between you and offered you another toke, the dopey smile spread over his features making you laugh even more.

“What’s so funny? Hmm?” He questioned you jokingly, rolling onto his forearms and bringing his face to hover just above yours as you brought the blunt to your lips. You couldn't hold in your laughter, your drug hazed state and the breeze that pushed his brown curls to tickle your blushing skin only exaggerating your amusement further as you choked out clouds of smoke.

“What??” He joined in laughing, finding humour in his own confusion and finding your laugh infectious. His lips found your own in a sudden yet gentle kiss which you gladly embraced, still not managing to fully compose yourself as you giggled into his open mouth.

You did your best to pull back from the kiss, but were reminded you didn't really have anywhere to go when you felt a blade of grass flutter against your ear. “It’s just.. your smile.” You rested your blunt carrying hand on his cheek as you spoke, feeling your heart swell when he pulled an overdramatic expression of insult at your reply.

“What’s so wrong with my smile?!” He half faked offence, not understanding what you could possibly find so amusing about it as you giggled more and more. “What’s wrong with it?- is it my lips? ‘They not good enough for you baby?” His thick accent aided his voice, making him sound even more attractive than he already was as he joked with you.

“Noo! it definitely wasn’t your lips, cause I love those.” You gripped his locks a little firmer, biting your lip as his stare changed from one of curiosity to one of want.

“Oh yeah?” He leaned back down and kissed you again, but this time rougher, the weed made you feel as if his lips were slowly melting into your own as it sent strong signals of lust through your body. He put all his weight on one arm, lifting the other and groping your waist with it whilst simultaneously moving to trail wet kisses down your neck.

His touches were deep, yet executed so delicately it convinced you if he was any rougher, you might just break. He opened the buttons of the flowing shirt you wore; one you had stolen out of his wardrobe that morning. He moved his head further down your chest to your stomach, mouth racing in slow motion to reach you were he wanted to most.

Forgetting to explain why you found his smile so funny in the first place, your high carried your thoughts closer towards how incredible his mouth felt on your skin, making you lean into his touch and let out a few small mewls.

As he reached your panty line, he tapped your hip, signalling for you to lift them so he could take your shorts off. He slid them off your legs in a quick, smooth motion that had them landing on a nearby lavender bush. The garden had quite a large variety of blossoming shrubbery and many clusters of beautiful flowers, it was probably down to the bi-weekly gardeners Andy had hired. You had known they were expensive and after spending so much time like this, lazing around, surrounded by the expensive home’s nature, you were beginning to understand why he had hired them.

You returned your gaze from the dangling shorts, back to the man nestled between your bare thighs. His beard was scratching at your skin in the best way possible as he laid small kisses over the thin fabric that covered your cunt. His hot breathe felt like fire as you wriggled and squirmed below him, just wanting some kind of contact from him.

He used two fingers to peel your panties to the side, groaning at the site of your glistening folds before kissing your clit gently. His tongue started swiping across your cunt slowly, taking all the time in the world to make you feel as good as he knew he could. You moaned loudly, grabbing at his hair once more as he sucked on you deeply.

“Mr Dolan?” You were interrupted by a throat clearing before hearing a man speak; one of Andy’s many servants you guessed. They had never seemed to leave the two of you alone whilst you had been staying there. No matter how big his home was, you always seemed to find another at every corner.

Andy looked up to the man with question and annoyance, raising an eyebrow at him as he wished for him to just hurry up and leave so the two of you could continue with your escapades. “It’s the phone for you Mr Dolan. Your son.”

Andy quickly rose from his place below you, his mind abandoning all thought of the act he was just partaking in as he jogged past the glass doors of his home, wanting only to speak to the young boy.

You sat up slightly, doing up a few buttons of your shirt and laying your crossed legs to the side of you as you held yourself up with your arm. You watched him as he scrambled into the house after his servant, little red marks from where he had been lying in the grass next to you were noticeably imprinted on the skin of his left arm, the one he had been leaning on, and his open shirt was flowing behind him with the speed he was moving.

You looked down to the flowers on front of you, picking a single daisy that bore tinted, pink tips on the end of each slim, white petal, twirling the stem around between two of your fingers as you listened to the breeze pick up. You could feel the mood of the air change as he left, the wind feeling more cold an irritating than once before as you pondered the call Andy was having.

You knew how desperate he had been to speak to his son again. It had been months since he had spoken to him without his ex-wife being the messenger. He missed him more than he knew to describe.

His recent divorce had been what had fuelled him to return home to Eden; hoping to find solace in the paradise he knew so well after feeling as if he had lost himself entirely. Spending too many years constantly playing other people had taken more of a toll on him than he had realised, that was until he was sent to rehab. After getting out, he felt as if staying in Eden was the only way for him to climb out of the dark hole he had managed to find himself in. Unfortunately, this journey of finding himself had meant making the decision to leave his son behind in Los Angles. Something he didn't like to speak on much.

When you had first met him in rehab however, he had been extremely open about his life, telling you how anger was the only emotion he could really feel anymore. Explaining that if he wasn’t at least the slightest amount intoxicated, he didn't think he couldn't go on with living; especially after the recent downfall of his career being showcased for the entire world to see. It was dark stuff, but you understood each other. That’s a big part of what made you grow so close.

You picked off petal after petal from the daisy, watching its beauty fade with each pluck and letting each one slowly blow into the breeze, creating a tragic stream as they blew away from you and down to the not so far off shoreline. As you plucked the last petal, you admired the daisy, still glowing with pollen and beaming in the sunlight despite have lost so many important parts of it. You stuck it into your shirt pocket and fell back down to lay on the grass as you waited for Andy to finish his call.

It had been maybe ten minutes you were lying with your eyes closed, enjoying the heat that beamed down from the clear, Australian sky when you finally heard the slow footsteps that you knew to be Andy’s, pattering along the grass. You shot up from where you lay to see the dopey-smiled man who had left you in the garden just fifteen minutes before, only to be faced with a red-eyed, teary one.

“Andy what happened? Are you okay?” He fell down onto the grass besides you, staring at you but completely wordless. You felt as if you could see into his soul. He was feeling so many emotions he hadn’t even been able to grasp at in so long. It was overwhelming him and you knew it. You reached out to stroke is cheek, concern running through you for the man that you had grown to love so dearly over the past few months.

He looked up “She’s gonna let me see him. T-They’re coming over next month.” A tear fell from his face as he smiled harder than you had ever seen him smile before. He was finally going to see his son after all these long months and you couldn’t have been any happier for him.

“Really?! That’s amazing, oh my god!” You moved forwards, wrapping your arms over his large shoulders and squeezing him in a hug so full of love it was palpable. “You really got to speak to him this time?” You questioned him once more before pulling away from his grasp, thinking back to the many times his ex-wife had promised he could speak with the boy but decided at the last minute he wouldn’t get to.

“Yeah!.. he uhh,” He took in a shaky breath, chuckling with joy as he recalled hearing the young boy’s voice so filled with excitement and energy over the phone. “He said he couldn't wait to meet you! You know, when I told him about you.” He stumbled over his words, running a hand through his hair as he shook with nerves, doing his best to calm himself.

In that moment, you felt your love for him soar higher than it ever had before. You were so proud of the progress he had made, and you knew his son would be too. “And I cant wait to meet him either.” You rested your forehead against his, the two of you enjoying a stand still and bathing in the happiness you both felt in the beautiful moment. The sound of the ever present breeze occupied your ears as the laughter emitting from two of you joined it, echoing a song throughout the garden that wouldn’t be forgotten any time soon.

●●●●●●●●

Thank you sm for reading!!🥺💗

Tags: @celestialrequiem @ntxoza @dark-mei-rose @sojournmichael @blakescoven @ritualmichael @ghostangels @fernfiction @ferndolan @brattylovee @7-wonders @angelicmichael @melodylangdon @brooklinn13 @kitty4860 @lavenderahs @michaellangdonstanaccount @9layerdevilfoodcake @chicaluna2410 @plymptxn-reborn I've just tagged anyone who I thought might be interested as per usual, but if you would to be removed feel free to let me know!! you can also lemme know if you would like to be added to the tag list too:)

#Andy Dolan #Andy Dolan x female reader #Andy Dolan x reader #dad!Andy Dolan #dad!Andy Dolan x female reader #dad!Andy Dolan x reader #Andy Dolan fic #Andy Dolan smut #Andy Dolan imagine #cody fern #Cody Fern fic #eden fic #my writing

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characteroulette · 3 years

Text

well all rightie then, it’s time to analyse how DGS1 handles grief really well in my opinion

(once again, spoilers for all of DGS1)

(also some spoilers for the original trilogy games) (and a little of DGS2)

okay So my thesis statement here is that Asougi’s character in DGS1 is the vessel through which Ryuunosuke and Susato’s grief is explained. Everything about how they relate to Asougi is their dealing with their grief in a simple message: Loss hits hard, but you have to continue to live and love. Life Goes On, shaping that grief into yourself if you allow it.

We start off with Case 1 as our baseline. The set-up. It’s a routine to show what life is like for Ryuunosuke before tragedy. (Fitting for an AA protagonist to have their baseline of normal being accused of murder.) This case does a really, really good job of setting up Asougi as our friend, our partner, whom we might spend the rest of the game with.

(I mean, the death flag’s kinda obvious if you’re genre-savvy; the mentor must die so that the student may grow into their own. But Asougi’s so likeable! He’s confident, genuine with Ryuunosuke, comfortably teasing, and looks at you with the same eyes as Klavier. What’s not to love? Also that small hint of something deeper is so tantalising that for it to go unresolved is pretty unthinkable.)

It’s important for us to see how much Asougi means to Ryuunosuke, how much the two really are best friends. This set-up is pivotal to what happens next in Case 2: the drop.

The way Ryuunosuke reacts to learning about Asougi’s death is real. He tries to deny it at first, can’t bring himself to believe it. Especially since he’s been accused of the crime! But the moment he sees that photo of Asougi that Sherlock took, that’s where the truth of it hits and he can’t run from it anymore. All he can do is try to push past that biting grief to at least solve his friend’s murder and set things right.

Susato’s own grief is portrayed really well here, too. She’s so angered and clouded by it that she totally ignores the fact that Asougi and Ryuunosuke are best friends and believes Ryuunosuke to be the murderer. Really, she just blames Ryuunosuke because it’s easier that way, since the wound cuts just as deep for her.

What really strikes me, though, is how the whole case isn’t just a one-note misery. Like real life, the two slip into sadness when they remember their dear friend, but they’re still able to joke around. They still get upset or sarcastic or excited. Because, though their grief affects them immensely, the message is that life continues. It can’t just stop for them like it did for their friend; life goes on. Not out of malice, but out of necessity.

Also, the way Sherlock acknowledges their grief is pretty great. That felt hugely validating to me, how he tells them that their mourning is important and how his jovial, joking tone was never properly taking that into account. The way he continues breaking in at the end to lighten the mood, too, is his own genuine way of trying to help, exhausting though he may be. It’s appreciated, at the least, to keep us the players from breaking down into tears as the conclusion rolls with no real satisfaction at the mystery being solved.

That final conversation between Susato and Ryuunosuke, at least, is hugely cathartic to make up for that. It sounds like it should feel rushed, honestly, dealing with the majority of the grieving process in just Case 2, but it doesn’t at all. It seems properly healthy, like the two are doing their best by confiding and taking comfort in one another in order to celebrate Asougi’s goals, to keep going where he can’t. Ryuunosuke and Susato both form their resolve here to continue to live, not just for Asougi, but for themselves as well. For life’s sake.

Because, again, life goes on.

(A brief tangent: Seeing the contrast of this story versus the original trilogy is also a really neat sort of view into Shu Takumi’s growth as a writer. Or the AA series’ growth as a whole. How Edgeworth handled his grief by never really acknowledging it in AA1, how he basically ran away from it by refusing to live as a sort of punishment against himself, is really sad. Then Phoenix handling his grief in JFA by turning to anger and resentment is just as heartbreaking. Phoenix disavows himself from it, trying to spare himself the pain by denying it, which only hurt him more and he had to have everyone around him break him out of that awful mindset. Then in T&T it’s Godot’s grief which drives the plot, as he turns his anger on Phoenix unjustly. He blames Phoenix for Mia’s death and lashes out at everyone instead of allowing himself the time to properly grieve.

And then DGS1 comes along to say that maybe the answer is just that life goes on and we have healthier ways to reconcile with our grief and it’s just real neat to see!)

In Case 3 and 4, we can see through Ryuunosuke’s discussion with Lord Vortex (/Stronghart) the continuation of his handling this grief. It’s a burden, one Ryuunosuke doesn’t fully understand, but he fervently takes upon himself because we want to live for those we’ve lost. (It is the Wright way, the Naruhodou way, to take on the aspirations of the friends you’ve lost. To mimic their mannerisms, their ambitions, in order to keep them close to your heart.)

(That’s a whole other can of worms I could dive into, honestly, how their decision to give Ryuunosuke all of Phoenix’s poses for the whole ancestor vibe while ALSO making it clear that Ryuunosuke took them from Asougi to begin with, it’s just. It’s good, it’s perfect, it’s the same brand of gay the series is known for and I’m love it.)

You also see, as the trial of Case 3 progresses, how Ryuunosuke is basically just living off of ‘what would Asougi do?’ as Susato coaches him along and it’s fun and bittersweet all the way through. Case 4 is where he gains more confidence in himself, but he still defaults to thinking of Asougi’s unwavering trust in him to help him and every time it’s handled with tenderness and shows just how much Ryuunosuke loved his friend.

And, if you’re like me and take every opportunity to examine Asougi’s badge and present it to Susato (/others), you see how they continue to grow with their grief. It starts off with both of them being unable to say much, still weighed down heavily by Asougi’s loss. Though they are continuing and life goes on, it’s still a wound too fresh to approach and hard for them to properly explain.

By Case 5, though, the two of them are more conversational. They’ve found their words, they’ve mended that wound as much as possible so that life won’t leave without them. It still hurts, of course, but it’s easier to think about. It’s easier to reconcile when they’ve been working hard and making friends and continuing to live. It’s small, but the progression is there and I really appreciate it.

Speaking of Case 5, though, everything about this one, in regards to Asougi, is pure catharsis. It really is like they’re looking their grief right in the face and accepting it as a part of themselves. Ryuunosuke looks back on his friend not just with fondness, but with gratefulness that Asougi could make such a big impact on his life.

(This is similar to the whole Phoenix and Mia thing, I feel, since Phoenix often thought of his mentor with the same sort of tone. At least, I think so. Remarkable how Phoenix’s grief can mirror the finalised version of Ryuunosuke’s with the help of spirit channeling! /joke)

Ryuunosuke and Susato have etched Asougi into their hearts and their persons and it’s just really, very good I like it a lot.

(okay time for a few paragraphs on DGS2 and Asougi)

Case 1 one DGS2 is a neat look into Susato’s mind and thought process. You can definitely tell she’s still just a 16-year-old with the mistakes she makes and how she tries to handle her own arguments, which is very cute. We also get to see her actually talking to Asougi’s grave and then see how her own relationship with Asougi has influenced her style (/poses) and aspirations. (Ryuunosuke, too. It’s cute to see how she’s ended up a mixture of both of them.) And it’s a great rug pull moment for the player, since the way that the grief is handled in DGS1 is so good and (almost) final that hearing Asougi might not actually be dead is a bit like digging up old wounds. I mean, we went the entirety of the first game coming to terms with his death, what do you mean his body went missing??

(Case 2 serves as a reminder. Like haha remember how Susato and Ryuunosuke both love Asougi and are sad about his death? Here’s the baseline again, get ready to have it wrecked!)

And Case 3 is phenomenal, too. The way Van Zieks is so understanding in his response to showing him Asougi’s badge is just. It’s perfect, he’s so gentle and empathetic that it shocks Ryuunosuke (even though Ryuunosuke did the same understanding and concern for Van Ziek’s situation Ryuunosuke please). Then the way that Ryuunosuke sees Asougi, disguised in a cloak and mask, and immediately recognises him. To me, that really shows how much he loved his friend. He knew Asougi for about a year and it’s been about nine months since Asougi’s death, yet Ryuunosuke recognises him just by the way he carries himself.

But, to him, Asougi is dead. He’s made peace with that. So, even if it plays on his mind, he can’t allow himself to think that. He puts it out of his mind completely and doesn’t think on it again.

At least, until Susato (who reacted very realistically by shutting down the possibility that Asougi might still be alive because that means Sherlock lied and she couldn’t take having that hope break her worse than before) sees the exact same thing just as immediately and shouts after him. The fact that they both see this disguised man and know it can be no one besides Asougi is insane. It’s love. It makes me cry, I wish they could’ve hugged him during the big reveal (though I know Japanese culture’s just not like that).

Anyway, DGS2 diatribe over. Back to the conclusion.

The whole of DGS1 is just a masterful example of how grief doesn’t have to destroy you, of how life can go on and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing, and how channeling that grief into motivation to keep their memories alive can be powerful. That it’s okay to still feel grief even as you heal, that it’s okay to have fun and keep living even as you mourn. Life is a mixture of levity and tragedy and, to me, DGS1 nails that mixture with perfection.

Absolutely legendary. Join me next time when I dive into the main theme of DGS2, which is literally ‘the dead will come back to life to haunt you’ thanks for coming to my essay talk

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lebrookestore · 3 years

Text

tape 5: play

Pairing: Zhong Chenle x reader

Themes: angst, ex! au, college-ish au, small town au. It goes back and forth a lot

Warnings: heavy angst, bittersweet ending, swearing, its very sad, chenle is a jerk

Wc: 6k

Playlist: 2 kids by Taemin, Gone by Rosé, Instagram by Dean, I still do by Why Don’t We, Believed by Lauv

Taglist: @danishmiilk @channoticedmeuwu @chicksung @1-800-seo @blueprint-han @jenosslut @cupidluvstarrz @kkakkdugi @sweetlyjaem @vera-liscious @leetaeyonglover @kunrengui @unknown5tar @kisshim @intokook @mrkcore @coco-riki

Summary: A year after your boyfriend moved away, you find yourself sitting in your room with five tapes, earphones, a cassette player and what you hoped, and feared, was closure.

Authors Note: hello! this fic was supposed to be a small blurb but then i got inspired and lo and behold its a full fledged fic! I can’t believe I wrote this in two days sdfjfjkfjk. Feedback would be very much appreciated for this, since I’ve never written anything like this before ;-;

Midtown, almost got a place out of midtown, Instead I took a plane out of this town, And missed out on us

It was a sunny Saturday morning, as you pulled into your driveway, coming back from the store.

Parking the car and getting the bags, you walked up to the door, knocking it and waiting. You were met with your mother’s smiling face as she took one of the bags of groceries from you.

You lived in a small sleepy town, and attended the college there as well, which meant you still stayed with your parents. You were fine with that, you liked living there, and you could forgo the stress and anxiety of having to re adjust to a new place.

This was your home. It always had been.

Of course, you had been on holidays to other places, you had visited the other town, but when it came to it, you had always found yourself back where you started. There was no other place for you, there never would be.

It was the truth, but it held something bitter.

Then again, you had enough going on already, with being in your freshman year, straight out of high school, college life was very different. You had been to a total of two parties so far, courtesy of your best friend— Lia— dragging you with her.

You had enjoyed them, but it wasn’t something you would voluntarily participate in again.

The workload was something that had definitely changed, bogged down with mandatory lectures and assignments, tests popping up like a bad smell, you had more than enough to occupy you.

“Something has arrived for you!” Your mother said, almost excitedly, “It’s on the table.”

You helped her put away the groceries, walking to your living room, eyes falling on the package sitting on the table. It was somewhat shabbily wrapped, with tape haphazardly stuck on it to keep it together, and a tag pasted on the top.

Picking it up, you pass it from your right hand to your left, feeling its weight, reading the little tag. It held your address, your name and another name you hadn’t seen in almost a year.

Your mind ran at a hundred miles per minute, wondering why it was here, why his name was on it. It made no sense to you.

“Darling? Are you okay?”

Your mothers voice snapped out of your reverie, nodding slowly, “I’ll be in my room, finishing off a project”, you said carefully, trying not to show any sort of emotion as you climbed up the stairs of your house, two at a time, making sure not to drop the package.

Closing the door, you place it on your bed, reading over the tag again, a bitter taste filling your mouth. A name you hadn’t thought of in a year coming back now. It was so random, so absolutely unnecessary.

You curled your fingers around the messy brown paper, tearing it open as your mind reeled. The crackling sound filled the silence as the contents of it make itself known to you.

A shoebox.

It’s dusty, a dark blue colour with a line of red running at its side. There were two holes on either end, lined with metal piping and you could just about make out the nike symbol on the top. You brushed your hand over it, the dust coming off easily and sticking to your fingers.

Why would he send you this?

His name sticks out on the tag like a sore thumb, reminding you of what you lost, mocking you. Always content with where you are, hmm? His voice comes back, as clear as day. It’s as if he’s standing there, giving you his chesire cat grin as he spoke the words.

Zhong Chenle.

Lifting the lid off the box, you’re thrown into confusion. A cassette player, a pair of earphones, and five tapes. Picking up the player, you smile briefly at the dramatic set up. He could’ve called you, or sent a message, so why did he take the pains of sending you something as old and unnecessary as this?

Then again, it had been a year since he stopped picking up your calls, since you stopped trying to call him. A year since all contact had been cut off, as if he had never existed in the first place.

Sometimes you wondered if Chenle had been a hallucination. An imaginary friend.

Friend.

The questions filter in. Why? It had been a year, so why had he sent you this now? You had finally told yourself you were over it, that you didn’t need an answer, but somehow as soon as you did that, you found yourself sitting in your room on your bed with what could be it.

The tapes were numbered in permanent marker in his messy handwriting, from one to five, indicating the order in which they were to be listened to in. You picked up the first, slotting it in the player and waiting.

You didn’t know what you were waiting for.

You pressed play. There was crackling, but only for a moment, until it went silent. Maybe this was all a mistake, maybe this wasn’t even happening. Maybe-

i] tape 1: you deserve to hate me

Hey

His voice cut through your spiraling thoughts as you froze in place. He sounded the same as you last heard him, a little muffled due to the recording but the same. At the same time he sounded like a stranger. There was silence for a moment again, before he spoke up.

This is stupid isn’t it?

You felt the urge to answer, but your mouth went dry. It had been so, so long, and even though you had adequate time to get over him, it suddenly felt as if you were treading unfamiliar territory once again.

I-I don’t know why I’m doing this. I think it’s because I feel so horrible, I need an outlet. I guess speaking it into existence and recording it makes is my outlet. Making it all real.

But that’s fucking terrifying.

You don’t think you’re following, confused once again.

Y/n

You hear him take a deep breath right after your name, and it sends a chill down your spine, hearing him say your name once again. You had almost forgotten how it sounded.

I don’t know if you’ll ever hear this, or listen to it. If you don’t I’ll actually be glad. You don’t deserve to, I’ve been a jerk to you. I’m sorry. I hope you hate me, I definitely deserve it.

I’m moving in two months.

The realization hits you, this had been recorded a year ago as well, two months before he left without a word or warning. It was old, he was here when he recorded it.

You didn’t quiet know how you felt, not yet anyways.

And you won’t know until I’m gone.

I’m moving to Korea, and I refuse to tell you, even if it makes me the bad guy, even if it feels worse, because that’s my dream.

I got signed by a record label after sending them that demo I did —remember it? We both went to the studio together, you listening outside as I sang. You were right by my side, all the time.

Except now when I record this, except when I leave.

I refuse to tell you, because the moment I do I know it’ll be real, realer than it is now as I say it. I don’t want to see the look on your face when I say I’m going, I know it’ll make me want to stay, but I don’t want to stay.

You knew exactly what he was talking about, you could recollect that day clearly. There was a small studio a little outside the town. That day, he had booked it for two hours to record a demo, his singing mentor with him and you tagging along.

It had always been like that, the two of you against the world, until, of course he left.

I physically can’t stay, I hate it here Y/n. It’s not for me, I want to get out, that had always been the plan. I want to get out and be free, I want to achieve my dreams. Maybe it’s selfish, maybe I don’t deserve a minute more of your time, but I want it all.

That’s why I’m not going to tell you —so I can have it all, at least until I don’t have you.

But you, you don’t deserve this, do you? Of course you don’t, but I suppose you’re the one with the shitty luck, you’re the one who ended up with me and now I’m going to hurt you.

He laughs a dry, breathy laugh. It was half hearted, as if he was trying to get himself to believe the situation was funny.

It’s not your fault I-fuck I’m sorry.

You heard a click and the tape died off, he had stopped recording there. The first tape was finished, and honestly, you didn’t know how to react. One part of you wanted to feel nothing, you wanted to put the player and the five tapes back into the box and send them away, or lock them in your closet to never find them again.

But the other part of you wanted to know more. You wanted to know how he felt, what went through his mind during that time. You wanted to know just how you lost Chenle, the first boy you ever loved.

Suddenly you felt overwhelmed, vulnerable almost. It was as if someone had opened up an old wound and left it open.

You got to your feet abruptly, pulling the earphones from your ears and dropping them on your bed, taking a step away and blinking rapidly. You couldn’t get caught up in the past, you couldn’t put yourself through that again.

But it was hard when the past was in your present.

Wasted, and all of my regret, I can taste it, If I had a time-machine, I would take it, And make it back to us

That night you couldn’t sleep.

The box sat on your desk, right next to your laptop, staring at you. You turned around on your bed, looking the other way, only to be met with the white of the walls.

You never liked the colour white.

It was too plain, too open for interpretation. It never had a solid answer. You liked stability, you wanted something permanent. You were the type of person that needed that reassurance.

Perhaps that’s why you were happy where you were, you didn’t find the appeal in starting over, because that meant nothing was certain. You stayed where you were because everything was already laid out for you.

It was like a colouring book in your little town, the lines all set out, everything drawn for you. Change meant you had to sketch everything from scratch. What if you messed up?

Needless to say, it was a good thing you weren’t an art major.

“This is ridiculous”, you whispered to yourself, sighing at the fact that you were now talking to yourself. You rolled over so that you were lying on your back, staring at the ceiling. The glow in the dark stars shone with their dull green light. You remember the day you had put them up, with Chenle.

You shared a lot of memories with him.

“Fucking hell”, you hissed, sitting up, swinging your legs off the edge of your bed and walking to your desk, sitting on the chair. Rubbing the sleep from your eyes, you picked up the second tape, inserting it in the player and putting the earphones on, waiting for it to begin.

ii] tape 2: milk before cereal

I know I’m making some terrible decisions, I really do, but if there’s one thing I stand by, its the fact that milk definitely goes before the cereal.

Why am I talking about this?

Well, because today you came over, Y/n, you came over and the two of us were watching a movie, and in the middle of it, you decided you wanted to have cereal, specifically frosted flakes.

So what do we do? We have cereal because I can’t say no to you. You’re welcome by the way, honestly, I deserve the boyfriend of the year award.

A moment of silence.

No I don’t. I really don’t.

You bit your lower lip, shutting your eyes. It was the way he switched, the way his demeanor changes so suddenly that made you want to scream. Sometimes it felt like he was telling a story, one you knew and loved.

Only for the next moment to bring you down to reality, reminding you that all stories don't have happy endings.

Anyways, we got the cereal and you objected when I put the milk first, saying that it was wrong, but how? In what way? Here me out Y/n, I shall tell you why I’m right, even If I’m not actually talking to you.

You couldn’t help but scoff at this, shaking your head at Chenle. He had always had a flair for being dramatic in the littlest ways possible. It was endearing.

Putting the cereal first means it sits in the milk for longer! If you put the cereal last, you can have it crunchy! Isn’t that ten times better? Unless you’re one of the devils spawn and like soggy cereal. If so I’m hypothetically breaking up with you right here right now.

Ah...bad wording. I keep forgetting I have to break up with you. I don’t want to, is that selfish?

You deserve the truth, if only I was strong enough to give it to you. Staying silent is so much easier.

It’s not lying, not completely anyways. I’m not lying if I don’t tell you at all. I suppose it’s a half truth then, with the truth hidden in plain sight.

*click*

Lying. That’s what he did, even though he spent the last few minutes of the tape trying to justify it, he lied. He trampled all over your heart without a single warning.

You had trusted Chenle, having known him since you were thirteen. He had completely destroyed that trust. Something like that couldn’t be fixed so easily, not even if he had sent you these tapes.

Then again, you didn’t know why he sent them.

You retreated to your bed, turning away from the tapes, the words and memories they held, facing white once again.

You had met Chenle when the two of you were thirteen, in eight grade math. The boy was failing the class, and one day you found him sitting early morning in class, with his head in his hands as he groaned over some sort of equation.

You had offered to help, and the smile he gave was the brightest one you had ever seen, he was practically grinning from ear to ear. That was the beginning of your friendship, and the two of you were inseperable.

Ninth grade it was confirmed that the two of you were best friends, sitting together, complaining about teachers together, going places together so your parents didn’t need to tag along.

In your last year of high school the two of you started dating, and when you had told your parents, they were ecstatic, confessing they had always thought the two of you would end up together.

He was always there for you, every time you needed him. You could give him a call and he would be outside your door. If you were feeling insecure or scared, he was always there to hype you up.

You had been best friends before, you were lovers then, and it was amazing. You loved everything about being with Chenle. You loved everything about him, from his toothy grin to his obnoxiously loud laugh.

You loved the way his eyes sparkled when he had an idea (which, for the most part, were absolutely terrible. Needless to say the two of you got in trouble a lot), when he sang for you when you stayed over, the way he would always make sure you were never cold.

You loved him.

It was written in the stars, you were meant to be, it was the perfect combination. Chenle was the right person for you- the perfect person.

A year later you woke up with him gone, no texts, no warnings. He had just gone, leaving you alone.

Right person, wrong time.

Monday came around sooner than you thought it would, the weekend passing in a blur as you walked out of your first class, spotting Lia leaning against the wall outside your class, scrolling through something on her phone.

She was an exchange student, not originally from your town, but had fit right in. Sometimes you wished you could be like that.

“Oh! You’re out! Listen, there’s a party on Friday and you’re coming with me”, she stated. It wasn’t a request, it was a fact, you were to go with her. In her own words, ‘if I didn’t exist you’d probably have no social life.’

To be fair, she wasn’t wrong.

You nodded defeatedly, walking with her down the hallway, “I assume you want to go because of the cute new guy?”

She glared, but didn’t refute your accusation, “His name is Mark”, she said, “And that is none of your business.”

You snickered, “Oh it so is, you like him don’t you? Is this going to be another one of your crushes?”

Lia was notorious for having a new crush almost every week, being a very flighty person, her mind changed before you could even say her name. This was a bit of a problem, considering you went to her for advice a lot.

Her indecisive nature was not the best for that.

She rolled her eyes at this, “He’s cute, why not? Wonder if I can get him to dance with me at the party. You’re going to be my hype woman-”

“And the sober buddy?”

Lia ignored that.

“Also there’s this new singer”, she said, handing you one of her earbuds, “apparently he came from here!”

Taking one of the earbuds, you were hit with a familiar voice. It sounded amazing honestly, catchy, everything a song needed, but it was the voice that hit you. You didn’t even need to ask Lia for the singer, swallowing the lump in your throat and glancing at her phone, which confirmed your suspicions.

Filling with some sort of dread, your hands immediately went to hold your hand, specifically the bottom where the cassette player and the tapes were. You had been carrying them around with you, as if scared they would disappear if you left them alone.

“Isn’t he good?”

You nodded, not daring to answer as you bit your lower lip, “Hey Lili, I need to use the washroom so see ya later”, you said, handing her the earbud and taking off in the other direction, pushing open the doors to the washroom and getting into one of the stalls.

You had stalled listening to the next tape all Sunday, you didn’t even know why, but hearing him sing, that fact that he had actually made it, it struck something in you. You wanted to feel proud of him, but all you felt was bitter.

Was it a coincidence that this new singer had come out- Chenle himself- right when you received the tapes?

Pushing the top of the toilet down, you took a seat, taking the player out and plugging in, you pressed play for the third tape, waiting for it to begin playing.

tape iii] ill miss our dates

Remember when we went for that field trip? Ninth grade? We sat in the back of the bus together avoiding the stares of our teachers when they told us to sit down?

Then they pulled us apart? Yeah, mean fuckers.

Anyways, that’s not what I wanted to talk about, I just felt like reminiscing for a sec there, but today we went of a date! Well, I mean we got ice cream and then went to the park, but hey, it was fun.

You smiled. He had always jumped from one topic to another without any meaning to either. Sometimes it was a frustrating habit, (you had been on the receiving end of these useless conversations several times, which ended with you glaring at him exasperatedly), but for the most part, extremely comical.

I’m going to miss that. I’m going to miss you. Your little smile — have I ever told you just how pretty your smile is? Your eyes light up and crinkle at the sides and its something I don’t think I’ll ever forget, even when I’m gone.

You clutched the cassette player, marveling at the irony. He was talking about your smile, but why did you want to cry?

It’s a month left now, and I want to make the most of it. Tomorrow I’m taking you to the amusement part and then next week I’m surprising you with dinner. I guess doing things for you —for us — makes me feel better, like I’m compensating.

You deserve the world Y/n, and I want to see that world while you’re happy where you are.

You don’t deserve having to deal with me.

*click*

Your eyes burned, because you remembered each of those events. You had been so happy, so overjoyed at them. They burned with tears because there it was again, that reminder that you were destined to be stuck right where you were, because you were that idiot who was content.

But if someone, anyone, asked you at that very moment if you were happy, the answer would’ve been an outright no.

1 YEAR AGO

“Hey Chenle?”

“Hmm?”

“Why do you want to leave?”

The boy thought about this for a second, before smiling wistfully, “Don’t you want to know how it is outside home?”

“But everything I need is here.”

Your eyes held a question, you were genuinely baffled by his reasoning, the way he was so stuck of getting out. You studied your bewildered expression, shaking his head. “You’re lucky”, he said finally, “You know exactly what you want.”

“Of course I don’t, but I know what I need Chenle, and that’s all around me.”

He shook away his other thoughts, “Hey maybe we’ll go exploring the world together some day.

You blinked, “You want me there with you?”

He nodded, grinning widely, “I want to take you along, Imagine, it’ll be fucking awesome, and hey this time there will be no teachers to separate us. We can even stand in the bus-if we’re taking a bus, that it.”

You laughed, “Maybe”, you mused, looking back down at your phone, “While I don’t exactly see the appeal, it would be fun to be with you.”

Chenle’s smile faltered, but he didn’t let it fall completely, wrapping his arms around you and sighing, closing his eyes and whispering something just loud enough for you to hear.

“Maybe.”

Why did it feel this way?

Chenle was right- you didn’t deserve this, you didn’t deserve to feel this way at all. It had been a year, so why did it affect you?

Why was it all happening at once?

You clicked your tongue, eyeing the player with contempt. You felt pathetic for being curious, for still feeling so attached to old news. It wasn’t as if it was going to change anything, so why?

Why did you still want to know?

Curiosity killed the cat. You wondered if knowing would somehow kill you.

No one was at home currently, so you sat in the living room on your couch. The items you were trying so hard to ignore were sitting on the small table in front of the couch, as if waiting for you to pick them up once again.

You wondered if you should tell Lia and ask her opinion about the situation. She may not be that helpful, but hell, she could help you burn the tapes if worse came to worse.

Sometimes you wished you had never met Chenle, that your history with him could be erased from your memories. You wished it never existed because fuck, it still hurt.

Taking a deep breath, you steeled yourself and pressed play.

tape iv] firsts with you

Do you remember our first kiss?

We were eighteen, in my room, playing Jenga. That was a year ago, oh god, I can’t even imagine, how has it been a year? You were wearing one of my shirts and jeans, your hair was in a ponytail. The two of us were sitting on the carpet on my floor.

You had successfully gotten one of the wooden pieces out of a risky area of the tower, but then it was my turn, it feel to the ground, destroyed.

I blamed you, and you laughed, and our banter continued. We argued and at one point I started tickling you to get you to shut up, because honestly-Jesus Christ Y/n you’re fucking stubborn.

Anyways I ended up on top of you and the two of us were laughing. You looked so pretty, hair messily scattered around your face as you attempted to get out of my hold.

I leaned down and kissed you.

Your throat closed up as he spoke. Your eyes stung and you raked your hand through your hair, biting down on your lower lip. The way he was speaking about it, as if he would do anything to go back, it struck something in you.

Because if you had the chance, you would go back as well.

You tasted like that strawberry chapstick you liked to wear. I could tell you were surprised, because you didn’t kiss me back for a good two seconds —which, by the way sent me into a panic for a moment there.

But then you kissed me, and fuck, it was like everything had stopped. I couldn’t think for a second, it was like the world had started spinning around me, and the only thing that was keeping me grounded, was you.

Was it supposed to hurt like this?

You sucked in a sharp breath, fingers fisted the material of your shirt as you tried keeping your composure. You didn’t want to cry, but he was making it so, so hard for you.

You remembered how it felt when he kissed you, you were legitimately so confused, was he really kissing you? Your best friend, the boy you had loved quietly for so long, kissing you?

Chenle was your first kiss, and it was the most perfect first kiss you could have ever asked for, even if you were on the floor, with random Jenga blocks scattered around the two of you.

The smile you gave me after I pulled away, I wish I could remember it forever. It was goofy as you burst into giggles, and asked me, “What was that for?”

I blinked in surprise, wondering how you seemed so normal, when for me everything had changed. I had kissed my best friend, the one girl I care the most about.

I must have looked like a tomato oh god.

Instead of waiting for my to answer, you sat up, pulling me into another kiss. This time it was me who was unprepared. The kiss was messy, it had no structure or plan, but I realized in that moment, that I really liked kissing you, and I wanted to do it more often.

You became my girlfriend.

The wistful tone he was using was starting to affect you. You had loved Chenle, almost too much. You could almost feel that nostalgic happiness you felt that day when he kissed you for the first time, the disbelief and joy that wrapped around the two of you.

A wave of sadness followed that nostalgia.

Our first date was so fucking awkward. We were at that little cafe you loved, you ordered a cheesecake and I got a smoothie, and then we sat in silence for a good five minutes.

It really shouldn’t have been that painful, considering we knew everything about each other already, then again that might be why it was awkward, I had nothing to ask you about.

So naturally I brought up school and that started it, the two of us complaining about the amount of assignments we had, and Mrs. Choi’s annoying squeaky voice- I swear to god that woman took a second for each word.

But I digress.

Slowly our conversation felt normal again, it was just us, eating cheesecake and drinking smoothies, together.

That wave of sadness crashed down upon you like a tsunami, trying to snuff you out. It felt like you couldn’t breathe, you were struggling to keep yourself together. You were struggling to stay afloat, you had lost any leverage you had that was holding you up.

You couldn’t fight the waves.

My flight is in two hours. It’s four in the morning and we’re about to walk through the door and get to the airport, but I wanted to talk to you once again, even if we’re not really talking.

I’m pathetic.

You’re sleeping, in your bed at your home, you don’t know I’m going because I’m the coward that refused to tell you the truth. I’ll be gone by the time you wake up and then you’ll know.

You’ll know how much of a waste of time I was.

And then you were angry.

You were angry because he had no right to just come back into your life like this, no fucking right to make you cry. He wasn’t even here, but somehow he had managed to make you fall apart just with his words, with his voice.

He had no right to tear your world apart, the little composure you had standing. You had finally accepted the fact that he was gone, you had moved on, and even tried to forget.

But here he was, making sure you could never forget.

You hated how selfish he was, how absolutely fucking oblivious. He had no clue, not even one as to how you felt when he just disappeared from your life, as if he never existed. He had broken you and here he was, breaking you again.

With trembling hands, you stopped the tape from playing any further, angry tears making their way down your face as you flung the player across the room. You had no intention of listening any further, you didn’t want to, you didn’t care.

Closure hurt more than him leaving.

You buried your head in your hands, letting yourself fall apart, but just this once.

tape iv] continued [unheard]

I’m sorry Y/n. I’m so fucking sorry.

You don’t have to believe me, because I’m leaving anyways, so I suppose that cancels out my apologies huh? I’m the worst person you ever met. I’m not stopping, I’m not going to leave you a text.

Because I don’t want to hurt you anymore.

I’ll be gone before we could ever be.

Should’ve believed in us, while we existed, cuz now the whole things fucked, and just a figment of my imagination

Time heals all hurt, and reminders bring them back, cutting through your skin like a knife, making you bleed.

A week later, you found yourself sitting in your favorite cafe, the same cafe Chenle talked about in the last tape. You ordered a cheesecake and a smoothie, inserting the fifth and final tape into the player.

The last time you did this, you were left hurt and distraught, promising yourself you would never go back to listen to him again. You had put the shoebox in your closet, hiding it behind your clothes that hung from the rack.

Yet here you were.

You didn’t bother finishing the fourth tape, you didn’t see the need to.

This tape, you observed, was newer looking, with less scratches on the plastic, even the marker on the side looked more recent, a little rushed if you went into detail.

The cheesecake and drink arrived, and you took a bite, pressing play.

tape v] play

Hey.

He sounded a little different too, older perhaps. His voice was smoother, but he sounded unsure of himself. It sounded as if he was trying to figure out how to approach the topic. He was being cautious.

It’s been a while. I...I don’t know why I’m doing this. There’s no point- you’re not even here. I found these stupid tapes yesterday in my dorm when I was cleaning out and gave them a listen.

Silence.

I envy you, Y/n. I wish I was like you, happy wherever I was. But I’m not, and I probably caused you great unhappiness while trying to search for my own- but I was happy with you, so happy it was ridiculous.

I sabotaged that.

You sighed, realizing you felt nothing. You were tired of crying over Chenle, you were done doing that. Instead you felt empty, like you had been tired out, like it didn’t matter anymore. At this point you were to get it over with, to finish it off on clean ending note.

My song comes out next week, and it’ll be done. I’ve made it Y/n, I’ve gotten to where I wanted to be, the place I had worked so hard to get to. I’ve sacrificed so much for this and it’s all been worth it- except one thing.

I don’t expect you to listen to my song, I just wanted to tell you. I..I hope you’re proud of me. Even if I was a jerk, I hope you can be proud, at least a little bit, because then I’ll have finally made it.

I miss you.

The same words are at the tip of your tongue, I miss you, I miss you so fucking much, but they never came out. They didn’t have to, it would be useless. He would never hear them.

Instead, you swallowed them back down.

And even though I made fun of you for staying home, I hope you’re happy like I am, I hope we’ll meet again one day. If we do I challenge you to a game of Jenga, loser buys the winner ice cream.

I-fuck this is the hardest part- but I hope you’ve moved on. One of us has to.

*click*

You don’t take the tape out of the player, you don’t touch it at all. You feel oddly calm as you take another bite of your cheesecake, savoring the strawberry reserve that it came with it. You could almost imagine yourself at eighteen again sitting opposite your new boyfriend.

You missed it, the memories that came along with it. That was it, you missed the feelings you had.

But you were okay. You would be okay right where you were, because that’s where you belonged. It hurt, yeah, but it had hurt back then as well. Now it was just a dull ache, all that was left was regret.

Regret that it didn’t work out, regret over unspoken words and unnecessary pain.

A familiar song filled the cafe as you smiled somewhat sadly, leaning back in your seat and closing your eyes.

“I’m proud of you Chenle”, you whispered, “Because you did what I couldn’t”

You left the cafe a little later, with the cassettes in your bag, an empty plate and the smoothie sitting on the table, untouched. After all, that smoothie wasn’t for you.

There was nothing to wait for anymore. You had loved and you had lost, Chenle was a stranger with your secrets and a familiar voice and that was it.

You had forgiven him a long time ago, even without him being deserving of it. Now with all the loose ends being tied up, it felt like you could finally let go of him, you could finally move on.

And forget.

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comfortwriting · 3 years

Text

Call Out My Name - F.W.

Fred Weasley X Reader imagine inspired by the song ‘Call Out My Name’ by The Weeknd.

Part 2 , Part 3

A/N: Your Feedback will be greatly appreciated!

About: Fred is constantly in a ‘on and off’ toxic relationship and he uses the reader when he is lonely, overtime she falls in love with him but because she isn’t Fred’s girl - she has no choice but to walk away.

Themes: Heartbreak, unrequited love, sadness, longing.

Warnings: indication of smut, raw feelings of worthlessness, depression and anger.

Staring out of the train window trying to think of something to doodle in your notebook you couldn’t help but feel over the moon that you were going home for the summer, you had never felt like this before and you hated that you did - but after years of being strung along by someone and not being able to stay away from them - this feeling was bittersweet, hell, everything you had gone through was now nothing but bittersweet memories you just wanted to forget, almost like it never happened.

You fell in love with Fred slowly but the more time you spent with him you fell head over heels for him. This whole fiasco - whatever it was you had with Fred started three years ago, your first time spending the summer at The Burrow. Fred’s on and off girlfriend split up with him for the first time, Fred became withdrawn, not wanting to take part in his usual pranks or plan any new inventions with his brother George. At first, you believed that Fred wanted you around because he valued your friendship (a budding romance) and because you made him happy, but overtime you realised that this wasn’t the case at all - unfortunately you were just a stepping stone for him, someone to use when he couldn’t get what he wanted from the ‘love of his life’.

You put your head in your hands and sighed deeply, the tears slowly pricking at your eyes, slouching in your seat you covered your house scarf (the one that Fred bought you) over your eyes, the memories flashing back to you like they happened yesterday.

We found each other I helped you out of a broken place You gave me comfort But falling for you was my mistake

Fred sat in his bed, his eyes red and puffy from all of the crying “I don’t know what to do, she doesn’t want me anymore” seeing him in such a state made your heartache, you had never seen him like this before - you were used to him bouncing around, always laughing and getting up to no good, not crying in bed too sad to be himself.

You sat on his bed and stroked his short hair that had been cut a few weeks ago “It’s going to be okay” you smiled at him softly “I know it might be too much to ask but why don’t we go for a walk? Get away from all the noise in this house, just this once.” you encouraged him.

Fred contemplated your offer for a moment and then nodded “I can do that” he smiled, slowly getting out of bed. What started off as ‘just this once’ turned into routine - you and Fred going for stupidly long walks every morning you were at the burrow.

Remembering the first time your hands brushed up against one another used to make the butterflies in your stomach soar but now all it does is hurt worse than before - rain now pattering down on the window.

Within months you and Fred did everything together, morning walks, quidditch in the afternoon basking in the warmth and orange glow of the sun, and then in the evenings you two would sneak downstairs whilst everyone lay asleep in bed.

“Hey Y/N” Fred whispered through the crack in the door, trying not to wake everyone up “fancy popping on one of those muggle horror movies you keep telling dad about?”

You turned over, the landing light shining in your eyes and smirked at Fred, mirroring him “go on then.”

Clutching your chest you could feel the pain of this memory hit you like a tonne of bricks, taking deep breaths you tried so hard to bring yourself back into the present moment... on the way home... leaving Hogwarts...but it didn’t work, like a leaf in the wind you were pushed back in relieving what you just wanted to forget.

The old and scratchy patchwork blanket sat over you and Fred, out of the corner of your eye you caught Fred glancing at you and smiling to himself. Turning to face him you asked what was so funny “nothing” he replied, yet he leaned in closer, his nose almost touching yours. Giving in, the two of you shared your first kiss and you could’ve sworn you felt sparks igniting within you.

You brushed your fingers over your soft lonely lips reminiscing more of the memories that popped into your head as if they were being played on film.

A few evenings later you and Fred were on the same sofa, covered by the same scratchy old patchwork blanket in the dead of night, yet this time instead this kiss lead to something much more, instead of sparks simply just igniting, burst into the biggest and most beautiful firework as you and Fred shared such an intimate moment together.

George had to admit that although he felt left out, he couldn’t deny how much happier Fred became when you were around - he started being himself again; pranking Ron and annoying Percy like it was going out of fashion.

But you had no idea that whatever you had with Fred would turn into the most intense rollercoaster ride you had ever been on.

I put you on top, I put you on top I claimed you so proud and openly

For the first time in your life you put another person before you and you deemed such an act ‘worth it’ at the time because you made mistakes out of your pure love for Fred, but you realised all you were doing was burning yourself out to keep Fred alight. Instead of getting perfect grades, you found yourself in enough detentions for everyone in your house.

In your mind Fred was yours, your boyfriend and he made you feel on top of the world and all you wanted to do was share your feelings and relationship to the world. Every Saturday morning you would be sat waiting at the Quidditch pitch to cheer on Fred, regardless whether it was a match or just practice.

You would write to your family and friends, telling them all about the soft haired troublemaker who swept you off your feet. “Looks like you’ve got another letter” George mentioned one morning over breakfast, your owl swooping up ahead delivering a reply.

You smiled widely and nodded “Of course I do!” you giggled “My parents can’t wait to meet Fred this Christmas!”

George’s face dropped at your excitement, he cleared his throat awkwardly “I’m really sorry Y/N but did Fred tell you?” he asked, giving you a deep look of sympathy.

You scowled and shook your head wondering what would get in the way of your perfect plans “tell me what?”

George stayed silent for a moment but he tried his best to let you down gently “He’s back in contact with his ex, they’re working things out.”

And when times were rough, when times were rough I made sure I held you close to me

And for the second time, Fred came crying into your arms looking like he had been torn apart “She doesn’t think it’s going to work out, she said that it’s not the right time” you held him in your arms, cuddling on the sofa in the common room, rubbing his back with one hand and stroking his now long shoulder length hair with the other, you reassured him.

“It’s going to be okay Freddie, you got yourself back on track last time and you’re capable of going it again sweetheart” you reminded him “you’ve got me and George, remember.”

Within the months that came after, you two were inseparable once again, going to Hogsmeade on the weekends raiding Honeydukes and sharing a butterbeer or two in the Three Broomsticks but as always and like George predicted, once Fred’s girl came back into the picture, he dropped you again.

You managed to break from your flashbacks for a moment, removing the scarf from your face. Checking your watch you had another hour or so until you would be arriving at Kings Cross Station, you slumped back down in your seat and doodled broken hearts and tears onto your open love letters to Fred, now hidden in your notebook.

So call out my name (call out my name) Call out my name when I kiss you so gently I want you to stay (I want you to stay) I want you to stay, even though you don't want me

“Well from the sounds of things you’re not in a serious relationship” you mentioned to Fred, taking off your muddy robes. George shook his head at you almost telling you off but you were both getting frustrated, the only difference is that you didn’t want to keep quiet anymore.

“Not yet but I’m waiting for her” Fred said eagerly removing his robes too, George could feel the tension in the air and went to the common room.

“So what about us?” you asked bravely, your heart begging to hear what it wanted most.

Allowing the last of your confidence that Fred had wiped away overtime, you walked towards him and cupped his face, kissing him softly, trying to convince him that you were the one worth waiting for but no matter what, deep down in your heart you knew Fred was thinking about her.

Fred kissed back and chuckled “us?” he flashed you a confused look “we’re the same as we’ve ever been, as we’ll always be” you felt crushed, this wasn’t the answer you were hoping for (and you now owed George all of your exploding bonbons) but you accepted your fate and left to find George so you could cry in his arms.

“He never truly wanted me, did he?” You asked George, tears running down your cheeks.

George shook his head “It’s always been about her Y/N, I’m sorry” you hugged George and cried into his chest whilst he held you.

“why can’t I be Fred’s girl?”

Torturing yourself beyond repair you couldn’t stay away from Fred, no matter how hard you tried. You still found yourself supporting him at Quidditch, helping him study, you even engaged in conversation with him about his girl, how amazing she was and how happy she made him. You knew if he had the chance Fred would transform you into her if a single project came down to it.

Girl, why can't you wait? (Why can't you wait, baby?) Girl, why can't you wait 'til I fall out of love? Won't you call out my name? (Call out my name) Girl, call out my name, and I'll be on my way

Clutching your date and dancing lazily to the music you stared at Fred having the time of his life with the girl of his dreams on his arm, beaming up at him. You hoped this ball and your date would help you find a new spark and create new fireworks yet with every opportunity to do so all you did was wish for Fred, stare at him and act as if he were to realise you were the one with any coming moment - but it didn’t happen yet, it would never happen. You kept wishing over and over in your head for Fred to turn around, meet your gaze and to become blinded by your beauty when you had another admirer trying to break down your cold persona.

I said I didn't feel nothing baby, but I lied I almost cut a piece of myself for your life Guess I was just another pit stop 'Til you made up your mind You just wasted my time

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Fred asked, taking a bite out of his toast “Mum and dad are really keen to meet her and she’s never been able to visit over the summer before and with everyone else there we just wouldn’t have the room.”

The two of you continued to walk towards the castle, George following not far behind.

Fred was now inviting his girlfriend to stay with him at the burrow this summer, something you had always done up until this very moment - this was the moment you realised that everything had been a lie, Fred never cared, he never loved you, he had just used you each and every time the love of his life got bored, only to drop you as soon as she wanted him back.

“Yeah it’s fine, I understand completely” you lied, feeling anger, despair and insecure like you had never before “I’ll just see you at the shop once the ball gets rolling.” Earlier in the year Fred offered you a job to help out with him and George at the shop, placing your own career plan at the ministry on hold.

“Oh bugger” Fred stopped his tracks looking a bit stressed “that's another thing i forgot to mention, we won’t be needing you to help out anymore as-”

“she’s helping out instead” you cut Fred off, finally reaching your breaking point you ran away from Fred and went to your dorm, packing your trunk.

You're on top, I put you on top I claimed you so proud and openly, babe And when times were rough, when times were rough I made sure I held you close to me

“Are you seriously running back to him after what he did?”

“He isn’t like that! you don’t understand, you can’t judge him - you don’t even know him!”

So call out my name (call out my name, baby) So call out my name when I kiss you So gently, I want you to stay (I want you to stay) I want you to stay even though you don't want me Girl, why can't you wait? (Girl, why can't you wait 'til I) Girl, why can't you wait 'til I fall out of loving? Babe, call out my name (say call out my name, baby) Girl, call out my name, and I'll be on my way, girl I'll be on my

Jolting awake the train came to a stop, you had finally arrived at the station. Taking a deep breath you picked up your trunk and notebook, getting off the train your scarf slipped off but you were too busy trying to spot your parents to notice. This was it, no more Hogwarts, you didn’t want to look back.

Feeling faint you ran into the toilets, throwing up the last of your pumpkin juice from the ride home, you stared at yourself in the mirror, washing your hands and splashing your face.

“Why can’t I be Fred’s girl?” You asked yourself.

On my way, all the way On my way, all the way, ooh On my way, on my way, on my way On my way, on my way, on my way (On my)

Reaching the exit of the station you spotted The Weasleys, welcoming Fred’s new girlfriend into a tight hug with delighted expressions on their faces. You looked to George and he gave a sad smile, he wanted to say goodbye but even that would be too painful for you to handle; after all, you weren’t just losing Fred, you were losing George, Molly and the rest of the family you loved so much.

Before you could turn around and continue to look for your family, Fred noticed you, he stopped for a moment and waved, holding your scarf up in his hands and shaking it.

You wanted more than anything to run to Fred and collect it but instead you didn’t wave back or smile, you shook your head and spun on your heel, acting as if he were never there at all.

#fred weasley #fred weasley x reader #fred weasley fanfiction #fanfic #imagines #one shots #oneshot #HP #harry potter #harry potter fanfiction #weasley x reader #fred weasley x you #george weasley

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dilucids · 3 years

Text

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤSacrificial duties, Mondstadt ver.

would they sacrifice you or mondstadt?

includes: jean, lisa, kaeya, diluc, amber, albedo and venti.

( i'm too socially inept to request for someone to do this so i took matters into my own hands. )

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ〔 JEAN GUNNHILDR ━━ DANDELION KNIGHT 〕

━━ is this even a debate? jean would sacrifice you to save mondstadt.

━━ the question would tear her apart though, she'd spend so much time trying to find another way to save both her city and you that she'd neglect her health ( basic needs, like eating, sleeping )

━━ if it were a person or god who was demanding these terms, she'd try to negotiate anything to save both, even her own life, though if you were willing, she'd hesitantly ( literally beg you to not go through it and reassure she'll find another way ) let you go.

━━ no matter what she chooses, she'll still feel incompetent in the end, as if she isn't good enough to be the acting grandmaster and would probably overwork herself to try and focus on something.

"I'll do it," Jean looks back at you, horror flashing through her eyes though you didn't falter, still staring the entity in her eyes. The wind picks up as if feeling the ameno swordswoman's vivid emotions, she shakes her head, taking small steps towards you as she reaches out for your hand. You cringe when she fell to her knees, "no no no, please, you don't have to do this."

You don't look at her, knowing it would only make things worse for the both of you, you didn't want her to be the last thing you saw nor did you want your face to plague her dreams like a ghost. "I care about Mondstadt too, Jean." You hope she understands that you were also doing this for your city and doesn't blame herself, "it's my duty."

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ〔 LISA MINCI ━━ WITCH OF PURPLE ROSE 〕

━━ lisa is a bit more of a wild card.

━━ lisa only oversees the library of mondstadt but it's really unclear the extent of her care for the city itself.

━━ it's impossible for one to say if she would hold a lover priority over a city due to lack of background so that's why she's more of a wild card right now, because i could see her potentially doing either.

━━ though i'm leaning a little towards sacrificing you because of her closeness with jean and her involvement in the knights of farvonius, she knows it would be morally wrong to sacrifice an entire city for one person, lover or not.

"It's okay," you reassure her, smile still gracing your face albeit the heavyweight pressure of death for your city digging it's claws into your shoulders. "I'm sorry," she apologises for the nth time and you can do no more than squeeze her hand in affirmation, knowing a hug would be too much for the both of you right now.

You feel her fingers slip through yours and your hand is embraced by the winds of Mondstadt, a sudden change from the electricity that plagued her fingertips and passed onto yours. You take a shaky breath and leave her behind you, her eyes watching your back along the way until you were nothing more than a dot in the horizon━━ ready to become a star in the sky.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ〔 KAEYA ALBERICH ━━ FROSTWIND SWORDSMAN 〕

━━ another wildcard!

━━ unlike lisa, however, i'm leaning towards sacrificing monstadt.

━━ even with all his background knowledge, kaeya is still a character that holds a lot of secrets and it's canon that he's a mysterious figure, cavalry captain or not.

━━ don't get your hopes up though, because he still may sacrifice you ( after a talk with jean or diluc/j )

━━ kaeya lets anything happen as long as it falls into place of how he has expected to end, he really doesn't know what to do when an unknown entity shows up and demands the price of you for his city or vice versa.

━━ really hard to get a grasp on him.

━━ i could see him spending one last day with you after deciding he was going to give you up ( you obviously knew of this ) but after 24 hours with you, away from mondstadt, he might realise that, even if he regrets it for the rest of his life, he'll never be able to give you up.

━━ alternatively, if he didn't open up to you about this or went to jean or diluc, they would convince him to "do what's right" and give you up.

"No. I'm not doing it," his tone differed from the norm━━ he was never like this, not even on official knights' business. His eyes unnervingly determined, tone you were unable to refute, and words that scared you. "Kaeya, you have to," your fingers place themselves over his, which were barely touching your cheeks.

"I'm not doing it," he reaffirms, sounding as if he were trying to convince himself out of all people. "I'm━━ I'm not losing you to some city. I can rebuild a city, we can find a city elsewhere," he states, eyebrows furrowed and not taking a single breath between his words. You pry his fingers away from your cheek, holding them over your lap. "Kaeya, this isn't just 'some city', it's the city you love. The city we love." You coax, finally getting him to look into your eyes. "You're the person I love." He says, exasperated.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ〔 DILUC RAGNVINDR ━━ DARKNIGHT HERO 〕

━━ hate to be the bearer of bad news,, and as biased as i am to this man, he would give you up.

━━ wouldn't open up to anyone about it, he'll just drive himself insane pondering both options.

━━ and although it would literally make him insane even thinking about losing someone precious to him ( again ) but his loyalty lies within the city of freedom and the city alone.

━━ even after the dispute with the knights of farvonius ( in the webtoon ), he still remains as the protector of mondstadt and i don't think nor am i able to see it will ever change.

━━ unlike kaeya though, i don't think he'll be able to see you at all once he decides to sacrifice you, he'll just be reminded that he'll never be able to see you again and the terrible decision that he's going to go through with.

━━ will also throw himself into extensive work to get you off his mind afterwards.

"You okay there?" Your eyebrows furrow, leaning against the open door of Diluc's office, seeing his hair tied back into a bun, hands in his face as he gazed deeply at his wooden desk. His head flies up at the sound of your voice, clearing his throat, "when did you get here?"

You shrug, taking steps towards him as he leans back into his chair, "being a hero taking a toll on you?" You tease him, taking a seat on his desk next to him and placing your feet on the chair, leaning forward to cup his cheek. He turns away. You're no stranger to his austere ways so you merely lean back, balancing yourself with your hands against his desk, telling him about your day.

"━━and then he wrapped it up and sent it to me, which was awfully disturbing might I add."

"I'm sorry," your eyebrow quirks when he suddenly cuts into your storytelling. You push yourself forward, reaching out for him and redirecting his gaze ( which hadn't looked in your direction even once ) onto you. "What's wrong my dear?" He only grimaces at the nickname━━ wincing almost and still refused to look at you, gaze cast upon the floor behind his bangs. You couldn't even see his eyes.

"Your guilty act is making me ponder if you've had previous relations with someone else, Master Diluc," you frown a little, using your other hand to force him to peer at you. He leans forward, placing his forehead on yours and whispers, "never."

"I just wanted to apologise for the future," you smile a little and place a kiss on his forehead. "I will always forgive you."

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ〔 ALBEDO ━━ THE CHALK PRINCE 〕

━━ albedo's original creator hails from khaeri'ah and venti, archon of mondstadt, was one of the original seven who aided in the destruction of khaeri'ah; is that enough reason to destroy it for a lover? no.

━━ would he still do it? yes, yes, yes.

━━ we all know he considers himself a threat to mondstadt but i don't think he would've ever thought this was why he was a threat, to hold an entire city in his palms and be able to destroy it with a single word was quite a terrifying thought.

━━ it wouldn't stop him though, i really don't think albedo holds any sentimental attachment to mondstadt, he only works and lives there as of right now but he's currently heeding his creater's words and pursuing the truth of the world.

━━ he might grimace over losing a few people that he holds dear and end up rethinking his decision but in the end, will choose you.

━━ another reason i think he would destroy mondstadt is that, once albedo discovers something or the feeling of enlightenment that comes with studying something new disperses, he is quick to stop studying that and abandon it due to the "bittersweet truth" hitting him so if he grew tired of mondstadt,,,,,, rip to jean 🙏

Your eyes flicker from the sight of his back to the unknown entity, hovering just above the floor, her eyes uninterested in you as she gazed into Albedo's eyes, maybe trying to read his expressionless face. "Have you made a choice, Kreideprinz?"

Nothing is said. Nothing from Albedo nor you, you didn't seem to have a part in this private conversation but you also seemed to be an integral part of it due to the way Albedo kept looking back at you, squeezing your hand as if to remind himself that you existed. "I'm choosing them."

She peers at you now, her eyes boring into yours as she scans you for something, "are you sure about this decision?"

For some odd reason, you're not offended by her words, maybe because she didn't sound like she meant it in a rude way ( it also seemed out of her standoffish character ) but was genuine in her curiosity if Albedo would go back on his words. He squeezes your hand again, rubbing circles on the back of your hand━━ something he did to calm you but it seemed that this action was to ground him instead.

"Yes, I am."

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ〔 AMBER ━━ OUTRIDER 〕

━━ YOU.

━━ in the most heart breaking – heart warming way ever, she'd give you up.

━━ notice how more than half of these mondstadt fuckers would give you up? yeah 🙄

━━ on a serious note, a lot of them have devoted themselves fully to protecting the city and i don't see any one of them being able to give the command to destory the city, even if their s/o was being held with a knife to their throat right infront of them and amber is the very same.

━━ even though we don't know to much about her, she is seen as a perfect example of justice by kaeya, and is extremely devoted to her work, she's just below diluc and jean in the most to least likely to sacrifice you in my opinion. it's simply overlooked due to her lack of presence in the game.

━━ i think her compassionate and kind side will make it harder for her to come to a decision because she doesn't want to have to lose one thing to keep another but in the end, she will give you up.

Amber seemed extremely distressed, immediately running into Jean's office once arriving back at the Knight's base after finishing her usual trek of Mondstadt's surroundings. You had attempted to call out her as she ran through the halls but she didn't even look your way, which was peculiar to you but you could only guess something dangerous must've happened due to her eagerness of reaching Jean's office, slamming the door wide open.

You quirk an eyebrow and Kaeya, stood beside you, whistled briskly, hands on his hip. "Someone's in a hurry," you roll your eyes at his comment and simply grab his arm, dragging him over to Jean's office, "just shut up and come."

The minute you knock and open the door however, the room is quiet. Jean sat on her chair, elbows placed on the table and concern burrowed deeply within her furrowed eyebrows and Amber, who was shaking her leg up and down in anxiety, fiddling with her nails.

Kaeya seems a little amused by the situation, unlike you, who was extremely concerned by the little actions of anxieties Amber was exhibiting, striding over to her side in an instant. Placing your hand on her shoulder, she leans into you almost instantly and begins quietly sniffling into your shirt.

You mouth to Jean that you're taking her out and Jean nods, thanking you with a small smile on her face. You guide Amber into a quiet room in the headquarters, letting her silently cry as you attempt to soothe her. "Hey, hey, what's wrong?"

She shakes her head, only repeating a small, "I'm sorry."

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ〔 VENTI ━━ WINDBORNE BARD 〕

━━ venti is characterised as a free spirit, like the freedom that the city of mondstadt represents, he carries that within him but at the end of the day, he is still mondstadt's archon.

━━ so we all saw this coming but you 👫

━━ i don't really think there's a lot to explain, he's their archon and even if he loses everyone he's ever loved, his priority is mondstadt.

━━ he'll probably take you on that ride on dvalin he's been promising you for the past year with no explanation.

━━ you'll ask him why he's dragged you from work and he'll just say he's feeling nice or that the winds are good for a ride right now.

━━ you'll stare at him with that, 'don't–you–control–the–winds?' look and he'll wink at you, telling you to stop staring at him or he'll blush.

━━ will completely come undone when he seed you happily laughing on dvalin's back, arms spread open as your laugh echoes into the wind.

Your excited whooping is all he hears, previous nervousness abandoned with his hands placed on your waist as Dvalin pierced up above the clouds; the ground nothing more than a fleeting dream to you both. It's such a shame that young, immature Dendro Archon got his hands on you first, gifting you his gift of Earth's nature━━ if not for the God of Wisdom, Venti would've gifted you heaven's winds if he knew how simply being in the sky made you so ecstatic.

The adrenaline finally dies down when Dvalin arrives just above the clouds, wings creating new and dispersing the old. You lean into Venti who takes this as an invitation to push himself further into your side and begin playing with your fingers, allowing you time to simply relish in the situation. "You're awfully quiet today," you muse, staring at Venti with a small smile.

He hums, "it's quiet up here," in nothing less of a whisper. You nod along with his words, fighting the urge to jump into the clouds, knowing you'll pass right through them. Venti sinks into you further somehow, like you were a passing cloud; his shoulder pressed into the crack of your arm and torso, head leaning on your shoulder. "You'll be okay Venti," and you embrace him.

#genshin impact #genshin headcanons #genshin scenarios #genshin oneshot #genshin lisa #genshin jean #genshin kaeya #genshin amber #genshin albedo #genshin diluc #genshin venti #genshin x gender neutral reader #genshin x reader

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ddarker-dreams · 4 years

Note

A concept from a dream I had: Hisoka wants Chrollo's darling for himself and tries to steal her from him. Darling gets injured in the ensuing fight and has to get patched up afterwards by Machi. Then, a bit of fluff, darling seeks out Chrollo and hugs him for comfort because the whole thing has her a bit shaken. (Love your writing btw, it's super well written and captivating!)

Tunnel Vision. Yan Chrollo x Reader

Warnings: Implied amnesia. Word count: 2.2k. Note: thank you very much!! i made some minor changes, where darling is a member of the phantom troupe, and not yet aware of chrollo’s obsession. i hope you enjoy! i’ve had a lot of ideas for this specific darling with nen abilities and this idea seemed to fit her very well...

Sharp, pointed nails digging into your skin. The sickeningly sweet fragrance of bubblegum blended with metallic blood. Black dots obscuring your vision, the world growing further away with each miserable second. Through labored breathing, a tense dialogue is exchanged between both parties, the ringing from your ears making it impossible to know for sure what they’re saying. Falling in and out of consciousness, you pick up on a few phrases.

“Just admit it, you’re no worse than I am. Look what you did to the poor girl. ♥”

“Maybe so, but that’s inconsequential. Your judgment means nothing.”

...

“Ah… what… a shame, that I didn’t... get to play with her as much as you did--”

“Hmm… to think your voice has never bothered me this much until now. This should silence you permanently.”

“--So you shouldn’t move around much until it fully heals,” Machi instructs, her voice clear and direct. At your lack of immediate response, she frowns, snapping her fingers to pull you from your trance-like state. “Oi, [First]. Are you even listening?”

You blink, her voice cutting through your clouded mind like a knife. “My bad, I wasn’t paying attention.”

Machi sighs and places a hand on her hip. Sapphire eyes glance over your person, not even bothering to hide her intentions, stopping every time she reaches your healed wounds. Even though your inebriated state, you can tell she’s deep in thought. You doubt she’d tell you what’s on her mind if you asked. So you sit there in silence, politely waiting for her to repeat what you missed.

“I could tell. Just take it easy, you’re going to need a few days of rest.” Machi walks to her bag, rustling through its contents. She picks up a bottle of pills and places it on your nightstand. The same medicine that she had given you before treatment, to dull the pain. You fight back the urge to smile at the small gesture. Had you been any other customer of Machi’s, she would’ve left by now without a word, indifferent to your condition. Despite your best efforts, she catches onto your softened expression and clicks her tongue.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she deadpans, shooting you a glare. You give an apologetic smile. “Take one a day until it’s gone.”

“Thank you, Machi. I appreciate it.”

“As you should,” Machi throws her bag over her shoulder and goes to the door. Before she can turn the nob, she turns back at you. “I forgot to mention, but you have a visitor. The boss has been waiting here since he brought you in.”

An unknown emotion stirs in the depths of your soul. Any playful retaliation you had for Machi’s previous comment dies on your tongue, your eyebrows furrowing. Why do you feel troubled by this revelation? You fight back the anxiety that bubbles up in your stomach. There’s no time to linger on this newfound unease, as Chrollo enters the room after exchanging pleasantries with Machi. Despite your efforts to suppress your discomfort, your body does as it pleases, heart palpitating and throat feeling tight.

He shuts the door behind him quietly and leans against the wall.

Chrollo Lucilfer. You consider your relationship to be a strictly professional one -- maybe a touch of reverence on your behalf -- never feeling as friendly with him as with the other members. He stands before you now in casual attire. Jet black hair frames his face, loose and fine, proudly showcasing the unusual tattoo on his forehead. It’s strange to see him without his trademark leather coat. Instead, he wears jeans and a navy blue undershirt. Immediately, you pick up on the bloodstains on his shirt, assuming he had shed his coat before coming in.

He smiles at your staring, not commenting as you glance away. “How are you feeling?”

“The medicine hasn’t worn off, so not too bad,” you struggle to exhale, your breathing ragged. Why does it feel so warm in here all of a sudden? “Machi told me you, uh, carried me here. Thank you. I’m sorry about your shirt… I’ll buy you a replacement.”

Chrollo puts a hand up to stop you. “There’s no need.”

Being one on one with your mysterious boss is as awkward as you imagined it would be. You still don’t know why he’s here. In between jobs, Chrollo would disappear into thin air, untraceable until calling the Troupe back together. So him being the one to find you on the verge of death hasn’t made sense. Machi gave noncommittal answers whenever you brought this up or told you to ask him yourself. Which you intended to at the time, but now that you’re in his intimidating presence, the words die on your tongue before they can begin.

He pushes himself off the wall and sits on the edge of your bed. The proximity feels strangely intimate, your face flushing at how familiar the act seems to him. Chrollo’s close enough now where you can pick up on his rich cologne. Dry wood with hints of leather. The scent increases your heart rate, anxiety at a new peak. You bite your lip and ball your hands into a fist to try and cope with the all-encompassing unease. To appear weak in front of him would be an insult to your tattered pride.

“Machi informed me about your memory,” Chrollo leans forward as if to inspect you. Grey eyes bore deep into your soul, searching for something. “She said you thought it was July when you regained consciousness.”

You swallow thickly at his questioning. How humiliating is this? Whatever it was that had happened to injure you already felt degrading enough. your pride as a competent Nen user in shambles. The most plausible explanation is that Chrollo discovered you after you had lost a fight, but the remaining details are fuzzy at best. Theorizing is all you can do. The unexplained amnesia is frustrating, but it’s only a few months, so you figure it could’ve been worse.

“That’s correct.”

Chrollo closes his eyes, as if in deep reflection. “So that’s how it is. I’m sorry to disturb you while you’re trying to recover, but can I ask a few questions?”

“Ah, of course. I’m sorry if I’m forgetting something important…”

This catches his attention, his posture tensing ever so slightly. You notice how his jaw tightens and assume your guess was correct. Your desire for answers on these missing four months strengthens and you feel hopeful that Chrollo holds some of the answers. It’s frustrating how both Machi and Chrollo seem to know more than you do but are refusing to give solid answers. Maybe they’re being considerate of your health? You’re not so fragile that you need to be coddled by your fellow Troupe members.

Chrollo looks down at you through thick eyelashes. “Do you think that you are?”

“I… I think so, yes.”

He sits silently for a moment, running a hand through his hair and giving a bittersweet smile. “We’re in a relationship.”

Wait, what? This would explain why Chrollo was with you at a time when the Troupe wasn’t gathered and his casual demeanor. Your expression must not be as schooled as you intended, as he gives a humorless chuckle to your wide eyes and parted lips. You… were in a relationship with The Phantom Troupe’s boss? Your boss? When did that happen? How did that happen? Did the others know? Ah, the teasing that would come with that. It’s not that you don’t find him attractive, your eyes work just fine, but the revelation still takes you back. Cheeks burning, you break eye contact and play with your hair. Feeling overwhelmingly self-conscious, you pull your blanket up further to cover your bare shoulders.

“There’s no need to be so embarrassed, [First],” Chrollo chastises with a playful tilt of his head. “I’ve seen all of it many times before.”

He’s not making this easier on you. You’re desperate to move on from the subject and decide to bring up another troublesome topic. Though you have an idea of what the answer will be, you’d still prefer that he’d confirm it for peace of mind.

“I was wondering, boss--” you cut yourself off with an apologetic smile when he furrows his eyebrows, “--I mean, Chrollo, about my Hatsu. I can tell I don’t have it now. Are you ‘borrowing’ it?”

There’s no other plausible explanation. In what other scenarios would you lose a fight that horrendously? You can’t picture anything else, your abilities have been enough to earn you Chrollo’s recognition and subsequent invitation to the Troupe years ago. It’s not uncommon that your boss will ask to borrow other Troupe member’s abilities. Sometime during the months that you’ve forgotten, this must’ve happened, or so you assume.

Chrollo nods his head. “I am, yes. Why do you ask? Would you like it back?”

“It does feel like a part of me is missing,” you admit sheepishly, scratching your cheek. “So, if it isn’t too much trouble…”

“I had to delay the job I borrowed it for due to what happened to you. Is it alright if I hold onto it for just a bit longer?” He’s moving even closer to you now than before. The bed shifts underneath his weight, Chrollo delicately taking your face into his hands. Your mind has trouble scrounging together a comprehensible response. How can you focus when the pads of his thumbs rub soothing circles against your cheek, his deep eyes hypnotizing. You swallow thickly when his pointer finger drags slowly against your bottom lip. Chrollo told you that you’re together, you remind yourself, assuming he has just missed touching you. It’s impossible to not notice the hungry gleam in his eyes.

“Oh, well, in that case, it’s fine.” You only manage to relax when he pulls away from you, content with your response. This has been a draining series of events. Chrollo’s one-sided familiarity isn’t easy to keep up with, you still view him as your boss and he views you as a lover. Sensing your apprehension, he takes your hand in his and places it over your pounding heart.

“Do you feel this?” He hums, to which you nod, speechless at the bold action. “Even if you don’t remember your love for me, your body hasn’t forgotten a thing from our time together.”

Is that what this feeling is? Love? You want to trust him, to take his word for it, but something still doesn’t feel right. Chrollo’s presence has kept you on edge ever since he entered your room. Even now, your skin is covered in goosebumps, hair standing on the back of your neck. What else are you forgetting? This is the question that reverberates in your mind, threatening to consume you entirely. Softly, as not to offend him, you take his hand off you. Chrollo’s expression is unreadable as you do so.

“I’m sorry, Chrollo, I’m just not sure I’m ready for... this yet.” You admit in truth, guilt washing over you at how his flirtatious demeanor changes to a calculating one. This is the version of Chrollo that you’re most familiar with. Your mysterious boss, who coldly issues orders and relishes in thrill of thievery, someone not as personal as he’s been acting like. Chrollo moves back and you’re grateful for the room to gather your bearings.

“Of course,” his aloof tone sends shivers down your spine, a distant gleam in his eyes. “I hope you don’t mind, but I have every intention of watching over you until you recover. It wouldn’t sit well with me otherwise.”

Chrollo motions to your closet door, which is slightly ajar. Inside you recognize some of his clothes that are hanging next to yours. “And I do live here, but I’ll sleep on the couch for tonight. How does that sound?”

So the two of you were so close that you had invited him to move in? How fast was this relationship going, anyway? It doesn’t feel like you to get that intimate with someone else in such a short time. The way Chrollo phrased it makes it sound like you used to sleep in the same bed too, how embarrassing… God, his comments are going to be the end of you. You need time to think. To let all this information that’s been thrust onto you sink in.

“If it’s not too much for an inconvenience. I feel awful… about forgetting as much as I have. Machi said she didn’t see any notable head injuries, so I can only assume it was a Nen ability.”

“That could be it,” Chrollo responds more flippantly than you expected, standing from your bed. You thought he’d be eager to explore the avenues of returning your memory. Maybe it’s too painful to think about? “You haven’t eaten since this morning, so I’ll get us some dinner. Keep resting up.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry for all this trouble.”

Chrollo waves away your apology without concern. He does, however, acknowledge you before leaving your shared bedroom. There’s a smile on his face that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. You hope you’re imagining it.

“By the way, [First]... I want you to know this. I’ll have you fall in love with me again. That’s a promise.”

Then he’s gone without another word.

#chrollo x reader #chrollo imagine #chrollo lucilfer imagine #chrollo #chrollo lucilfer #yandere chrollo #yandere chrollo x reader #yandere chrollo lucilfer #yandere chrollo imagine #hxh #hxh x reader #yandere hxh x reader #elannia #yandere #yandere x reader #hxh imagines #my stuff #answered

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nerdzzone · 3 years

Text

Only For A Moment: December

Summary: A series of shorter one shots from Chris and Whitney’s life together throughout the pandemic. Some happy times, some harder times, some fluff and some things a little more sexy - they work through it all as they try to get settled in their new and blossoming relationship.

Chris Evans x OFC

18+

Part of the Once Bitten/More Hearts series

Only For A Moment: November [part two]

Note: This is the last part of this section of the series! Thank you to everyone who has read, liked, reblogged and commented so far, I really appreciate your support and love reading all your thoughts! There will be more, focusing on their lives as the world starts opening up again, but I’m not sure when it will be posted.

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December 2020

December was a somewhat bittersweet month.

There were quite a few positives as Christmas always brought plenty of joy - and it brought Scott back from L.A. which was a nice treat for everyone - and there was also the big announcement of an approved vaccine. The roll out wouldn't be immediate, of course, but there was hope on the horizon and a clear sense of relief.

However, there were some negatives as well. I still had my concerns about how well we'd adapt our relationship to the realities of real life and, as excited as I was about Christmas, the holiday season was making me miss my family more than ever.

Chris' family was a great substitute - especially as the case numbers were low enough that we were allowed to have small family gatherings which meant they could all to stay over at our house on Christmas Eve as they had the year before - but I hadn't seen any of my own family in over a year and I missed them terribly. It made me so sad to think of how much Grayson had grown since they last saw him and knowing that I had a little nephew that I'd never even met was starting to break my heart.

In an attempt to ease the ache caused by the distance, we had a video call on Christmas Eve since my family were all together too and I was relieved that our friendly, confident three year old had no problem making conversation with the grandparents and uncle that he could barely remember. It was heart-warming and refreshing to have that time with them even through a screen, but it wasn’t the same and it left me wanting more. I wanted to see them, to hug them, to help my mom make Christmas dinner and beat my brother at the card games we always used to play. I wanted to be less than three thousand miles away and it was starting to weigh on me.

I held it together pretty well, not wanting to put a damper on the happy festivities we were having, but later that evening, when I was alone with my thoughts as I finished tidying up the dishes from dinner, it was suddenly overwhelming. I leaned on the counter as my chin dropped to my chest and the tears finally came. I wasn’t going to let myself have more than a few minutes to wallow in my sadness, but almost as soon as the tears started, a voice from behind me interrupted.

"Whitney?" Lisa quietly announced her presence. "Are you okay?"

I sniffled and quickly wiped my eyes before turning around to see her standing in the doorway with Scott, concern on both of their faces.

"I'm fine," I smiled weakly, but Scott wasn't going to let it go that easy.

"What's wrong?" He asked. "Why are you crying?"

"I just miss my family. It's hard not getting to see them at Christmas," I admitted. "I know I didn't get to see them last year either, but it's been so long now since I've seen them at all. I guess that's just made it harder."

"Oh, honey, that's understandable," Lisa assured me. "I can't imagine how I'd feel if we hadn't been able to be together at all for as long as you've been away from your family."

"Usually I'm fine," I insisted. "I think just seeing them all together and not being there got to me a little bit."

"Well their loss is our gain," Scott informed me. "Because we're really happy to have you here. I know it's not the same, but you're part of our family too."

"I know and I'm so grateful that I have all of you," I rushed to assure them, not wanting anyone to think I wasn't happy to be spending the holidays with them. "It's been so amazing how you've all taken me in and let me be a part of your family. I know things were complicated with Chris and I, but you've always been so good to me."

"You've been a part of this family from the moment we found out about Grayson," Lisa said firmly. "Whatever happened between you and Chris never mattered to us. We're glad you've sorted yourselves out now, but we've always thought of you as family."

Scott nodded in agreement and their kind words brought more tears to my eyes.

"That really means a lot," I choked out, blinking frantically to stop myself from crying anymore. It took a moment to compose myself, but eventually I let out a laugh and wiped my eyes again. "Sorry, I'll stop blubbering soon. I don't think I realized how much I missed them until now and once I get all weepy, it's hard for me to stop."

Lisa crossed the kitchen quickly and pulled me into a hug.

"If you need to let it out, then you go right ahead."

I returned her hug and was about to inform her that it wasn't necessary when Chris - who had been upstairs putting Grayson to bed - appeared in the doorway and interrupted our little moment.

"What are we letting out? Why is Whitney crying?" he asked. "What did you two do to her?"

"We were just letting her know that none of us would judge her if she wants to dump your ass," Scott lied, a smirk on his face. "And now she's crying tears of joy."

"Scott!" Lisa scolded despite the laugh that fell from her lips as she let me slip out of her arms. "That's a horrible thing to say."

"It's not true," I assured Chris even though I was sure he'd figured that out. "I just had a little sad moment. I miss my family so your lovely family members were reassuring me that I'm part of yours."

"You absolutely are," he agreed, coming over and slipping his arm around my waist before pressing a kiss to the side of my head. "I'm sorry that you're sad, but do you remember what I told you last year?"

I'd spent a lot of time trying to block out the memory of last Christmas in the months after it happened and apparently I'd done a good enough job to not know what he was talking about.

"No," I shook my head. "What?"

"There's no time for worryin' at Christmas!" He reminded me. "Let's get you a drink and turn that frown around!"

"Alright, that sounds good," I laughed as I slid out of his grasp. "Lisa, can I get you another glass of wine?"

"Oh, yes, that's actually why we came in here," she smiled. "We were sent to get everyone another round."

"Perfect," Chris grinned as he opened the fridge and started pulling out supplies.

He poured drinks for everyone, but held me back as his brother and mother left the room with as many drinks as they could carry. He pulled me into his arms again before I could pick my drink up off the counter.

"Are you good?" He asked, rubbing his thumb on the exposed skin just above my jeans. "I'm sorry that you miss your family."

"I'm fine," I smiled up at him. "It was just hard seeing them all together tonight and not being there. I do miss them, but I'm okay. I'm happy to be here with you and your family."

"As soon as things get better, we can go and visit," he promised. "I think I'll have to head to L.A. in the near future anyway. Now there's a vaccine and things might start to improve, there's more talk of starting The Grey Man."

While the thought of a trip to L.A. was encouraging in theory, it made my stomach turn. Travelling while the pandemic was still around seemed very stressful - if Scott's journey home for the holidays was anything to go by - and the thought of Chris returning to work was something I wasn’t eager to think about. I knew he was trying to make me feel better though so I stretched up and placed a kiss on his lips.

"That would be nice," I smiled. "I'd like you to get to know my family a bit more."

"I'd like that too," he nodded. "As soon as we can, I promise."

As I slipped out of his grasp, I tried to focus on that hopeful promise and push any sad feelings from my mind.

The rest of that evening was pretty lowkey. We knew that the kids would be up at the crack of dawn as they were the year before and went to bed early in preparation for that. It was a decision that I was very grateful for at six thirty the next morning when Grayson woke us up by launching himself onto our bed.

“Merry Christmas!”

His little voice cut through the silence of the room, ruining any possibility that we might have been able to sleep a little longer.

“Merry Christmas, Gray,” I heard Chris answer as I rolled over. Just as I turned to face him, Chris dragged him down from where he was bouncing on the bed and pulled him against his chest. “Let’s go back to sleep. Okay, buddy?”

We all knew that wasn’t going to happen and Grayson proved it as he giggled and wiggled around, squealing loud enough to ensure that no one in the house could possibly still be asleep.

“Gray! Shhh,” I laughed, pulling him out of Chris’ arms and into my own. “Merry Christmas.”

I kissed the top of his head and he pulled back, grinning up at me.

“Santa came, Mama!”

“Did he?” I gasped. “That’s so exciting!”

“There’s so much presents!”

“Wow, I guess we should go see who they’re for!”

“Probably me,” Chris teased Gray. “I bet they’re all for me and maybe one for your mom.”

“And for me?”

The hope in Grayson’s voice had me interjecting before Chris could tease him any more.

“I’m sure there are some for you,” I assured him. “I bet there’s some for everyone.”

“Even Uncle Scott?”

That question earned a howl of laughter from Chris, but I nodded.

“Even Uncle Scott,” I smiled. “He’s been pretty good this year, hasn’t he?”

“No!” Grayson giggled. “He scared Daddy! And me!”

I laughed, thinking back to the incident he was referencing. Ever since Scott returned from L.A., he and Chris had created some kind of ‘scare war’ where they were competing to see who could scare the other in the best way. They posted the videos on Instagram and their fans loved it, but it had gotten a little out of hand. Scott caught Chris off guard when he came home from a walk with Dodger the day before and got an excellent reaction from him, but he didn’t realize that Grayson was with him too. The poor kid was terrified and cried for almost fifteen minutes afterwards. Scott had been incredibly apologetic and tried to make it up to him, but apparently Gray wasn’t feeling particularly forgiving.

“He did scare us and that wasn’t very nice,” Chris agreed. “He’s probably on the naughty list!”

“Yeah!” Grayson grinned at his dad. “Let’s go see!”

He scrambled off the bed almost as quickly as he’d climbed up in the first place. Once the sound of his heavy footsteps faded as he ran down the hall, Chris pulled me into his arms.

“Merry Christmas, Win.”

“Merry Christmas,” I smiled up at him. “Crazy to think that we woke up like this a year ago too.”

“Almost exactly like this,” Chris smirked. “Until you snuck out of bed as if I wouldn’t know we’d been cuddling all night.”

My jaw dropped slightly.

“You knew?”

“Of course, I knew!” Chris chuckled. “I’d been awake for almost half an hour before you woke up, but it felt so nice cuddlin’ you that I didn’t wanna move.”

“That’s so embarrassing,” I laughed, burying my head in his chest as he assured me that it wasn’t. “But it’s so strange to think that if there hadn’t been that snow storm and I hadn’t stayed over that night, maybe we wouldn’t even be here now.”

“Do you really think that?”

“It’s hard to say,” I admitted. “I think we would have ended up quarantining together, but if we hadn’t had that slip up at Christmas, we wouldn’t have had the same incentive to talk about things during lockdown.”

“But that slip up showed that the feelings were there,” Chris pointed out. “So, maybe it would have happened while we were locked in this big ol’ house anyway.”

“I like to think so,” I smiled. “Either way, I’m happy it did.”

“Me too,” Chris placed a kiss on the top of my head as the sounds of excited children floated down the hall towards us. “I guess we should get up before they come looking for us.”

I reluctantly agreed and we dragged ourselves out of bed to join the festivities.

Christmas morning was much the same as the year before. The kids were overwhelmed with excitement at all the gifts, but very grateful and appreciative of everything they received. Chris bought me some new cameras that I’d mentioned wanting to buy before my work picked up again, but it was my gift to him that I was really excited about.

I watched as he opened the box that I’d carefully wrapped and pulled out the photo album that I’d put inside.

“Wow,” Chris murmured as he flipped through the pages with a soft smile on his face. “Are these all of me and Gray?”

“There’s some of Dodger too, but yeah, mostly it’s you and Gray,” I informed him. “I just thought, it’s been such a crazy year and there’s been a lot of stress, but there were some good moments too and I wanted you to have some memories of those.”

“This is amazing…”

He flipped through the pages that I’d filled - in order by month - of all the pictures that I’d taken since the start of the pandemic. There were some of him helping Grayson ride his bike, some of them reading together and doing puzzles, some of them playing in the pool, some of them raking leaves in the fall, carving pumpkins at Halloween, cooking dinner together, curled up on the couch watching movies and pretty much every other day to day activity that they did together through the lockdown. I was amazed by how many pictures I’d taken when I started compiling them, but I knew it was a gift that he would appreciate.

“That’s one of my favourites,” I giggled, pointing to a picture of bath time one night when Chris had fashioned them both beards made out of bubbles.

“I love them all,” he smiled, looking up at me with glassy eyes. “Thank you, Winnie. Thank you so much.”

I leaned in to place a soft kiss on his lips as Lisa moved to stand behind her son and sneak a peek at the album.

“That’s such a wonderful gift, Whitney,” she gushed. “Those pictures are beautiful.”

“Thank you. If you look through it later and pick out your favourites, I can make you some copies.”

“That would be great!” She grinned. “I would love that, if you don’t mind.”

I assured her that it would be no trouble and made notes of a few that I thought she might want as Chris and I spent the next half an hour flipping through the album and reminiscing on the happy moments we shared as a family during a very dark year. It was a rather odd feeling that such a bleak time had also been such a happy one for us. I was beyond grateful that our families had been relatively untouched by the virus plaguing the world and was more than happy to join Scott in his toast to all our continued good health when he brought out the mimosas as soon as all the presents were unwrapped.

The rest of the day was filled with plenty of love and appreciation of our little family and the opportunity to be together. As we had the year before, we called all the relatives who lived too far away to join us before spending most of the day playing games, drinking fancy Christmas cocktails and eating delicious food. We had learned something from the previous years celebrations though and didn’t let ourselves get quite as intoxicated as we had back then.

All in all it was a lovely day and my heart was feeling very full by the time we said our goodnights and headed to our room that evening. I was refreshed by the opportunity for such prolonged socialization and had a little extra pep in my step as I pranced off to the ensuite bathroom to brush my teeth.

However, when I came back out, I was surprised to find Chris sitting on the edge of our bed. He glanced up when I walked in, a soft smile on his face, but there was an air of nervousness around him that immediately put me on edge.

"You okay?"

My question was simply met with a nod as he beckoned me over. He grabbed my hand as soon as I was close enough and kept me standing in front of him.

"I have one more present for you," he informed me after a moment of quiet. "But I want to preface it with an explanation so you don't freak out."

I laughed nervously at that statement, wondering what kind of gift could possibly make me freak out. A car? A new house? A puppy? My mind was instantly running wild.

"Okay..."

"I know you're still nervous about things going back to normal and how we'll handle it - I can see it on your face every time it gets mentioned," he started, his words so far offering no explanation. "I've been trying to think of something that I can do to reassure you, something to prove just how committed I am to you because I am all in here, Winnie. From the moment I met you, I knew you were something special and it sounds a little cheesy and over the top, but you really are the love of my life. It took a little soul-searching and some brainstorming, but I eventually came up with something I think might help us both..."

He paused then and reached behind his back, pulling out a little box that made my heart start pounding in my chest.

"Oh my god," I gasped out as he slid from the bed to kneel on one knee in front of me.

He opened the box and looked up at me with hope written all over his face.

"Will you marry me, Winnie?" He asked, the question bringing tears to my eyes. I was biting my lip to hold myself together and didn't realize that I hadn't answered until he launched into some further reassurances. "We don't have to get married right away - we can wait as long as you want - but taking this step, making this extra promise and commitment, I thought it might give us both some comfort."

I was still stunned, completely blindsided by his proposal, but I took in his words and appreciated his reasoning as a grin slid onto my face.

"Yes, Chris! Yes, I will marry you."

Chris visibly relaxed at my acceptance and, with noticeably shaky hands, he took the ring from the box and slid it on my finger. As soon as it was safely in place, he sprung to his feet and pulled me into a breathtaking kiss.

"Holy shit," he let out a deep breath, moments later when we finally parted. "That was terrifying. I thought for sure you were going to turn me down and tell me that I'm insane."

"You kinda are," I smiled. "And everyone else is definitely going to think we've lost our minds."

"Well, we've never done things the traditional way and it just makes sense, doesn't it?" It was a question, but he didn't wait for an answer. "It hit me when we were talking in New York and you made a joke about me proposing, that it wasn't a bad idea, that it was something I wanted to do. I know we've technically been together for less than a year, but I haven't wanted anyone else since the day I met you so what's the point in waiting? I'm not gonna make decisions based on what everyone else thinks we should do - that would be crazy."

I smiled at his anxious rambling and stretched up to place another kiss on his lips.

"That would be crazy," I agreed. "And I don't care what they think. I don't want to be with anyone else either."

He matched my smile as he squeezed me even closer.

"And I mean it, we don't have to rush into anything or start planning a wedding right away," he assured me. "But I thought this extra step might make you feel better about things changing. I'm in this one hundred percent and I'll do whatever it takes to make this work for us."

I didn't need a ring to know that Chris loved me and wanted to make this work and being engaged wouldn't make any of the challenges that were ahead of us any less difficult to face. But there was something about how fearless he was in making such a commitment to me and something about the way he was so determined to reassure me of just how invested he was in our relationship that did put me at ease and fill me with confidence.

The fact that despite all the things we'd been through and all the things we still needed to work on - including my own insecurities - Chris was willing to marry me and make that lifelong commitment had my heart about ready to burst in my chest.

"I'm willing to do whatever it takes too," I assured him. "I love you so much, Chris."

"I love you too," he grinned. "And god, I'm so relieved you said yes."

"Of course I'd say yes," I insisted. "You know I love you."

"I do, but I also know you're worried," he reminded me. "And I didn't want you to think I was using a proposal as a band-aid or something. I know that it won't always be easy and we'll have to work hard."

"We will," I agreed. "But now, at least when you're away, I'll have this pretty ring to remember you by."

I pulled my arm back from around his waist to look down at my finger. I was grateful that it wasn't a massive, showy ring, but it was beautiful and seemed fairly unique.

"It's alexandrite," he informed me. "It's one of the birthstones for June which I thought was fitting for both of us. I was gonna use Gray's birthstone, but apparently April is diamond and I wanted something different. There's diamonds on either side of the big stone though so he's in there too."

"It's beautiful," I smiled as he grinned proudly.

"I didn't think you'd want something too over the top, but I wanted it to be something nice."

"Well, you nailed it," I assured him. "I couldn't have picked a nicer ring myself."

He captured my lips in another kiss and I leaned into it, trying to wrap my head around what had just happened.

"Have you told anyone?" I asked once he pulled away. "Does my family know?"

"I told them last night," he nodded. "I called them back after I tucked Grayson in to let them know. And my whole family knows because I was stressed about the whole thing and couldn't keep it to myself. Oh, and Hannah because she scares me and I thought she'd be mad if she didn't know."

I laughed, letting my head rest against his chest.

"She would have been mad," I agreed. "But I can't believe she scares you, she's like a little chihuahua. She's all bark, no bite."

"She cried on the phone when I told her," he admitted, earning another bubble of laughter from me. "She assured me they were tears of joy, but swore me to secrecy about it so let's keep that between us."

"Oh, no way!" I giggled. "That is too good not to tease her about."

"Well, it'll be your loss if she kills me."

"Again, all bark and no bite," I reminded him. "Did your family know you were going to ask me tonight?"

"Yeah," he nodded, looking a bit sheepish. "I think they're all waiting in the living room to see what you said.”

“Then let’s go share the good news,” I smiled, moving to link my arm with his. “Then we can come back in here and celebrate properly.”

I shot him a wink to emphasize what I meant and he let out a low growl of approval before dragging me out of our bedroom.

Of course, his family were thrilled that I’d said yes, even though it didn’t seem like any of them were particularly surprised. I called my family and Hannah as well before sharing a celebratory drink with my soon to be in-laws.

But it wasn’t until we laid, curled up in bed after our more private celebrations that it really started to hit me.

Sure, some people would think we were moving a bit too fast and they might have been right, if we had any intention of actually getting married right away. But for us, it was just another layer of reassurance. The ring on my finger was like a little security blanket, a memento of support for when things got hard and our schedules grew busier. It was a reminder that we were determined to make this work no matter what happened and it had me feeling much more hopeful about the new year ahead of us.

Things would change, there was no doubt about that, but we could get through it and come out stronger in the end. I knew it wouldn’t always be easy and there would be times when we felt like giving up, but with a little love and perseverance, I knew our relationship - and eventually our marriage - would only benefit and grow from our efforts.

Tags: @maggotzombie @moonlacebeam @mizzzpink @zaylaugh @flowery-mess @flowerjewels @njrronaldo7 @hockeychick10 @partypoison00 @theladybiers @sidepieces @firoozehmoon @patzammit @sparkledfirecracker @mytbel0st @chvntelle-99 @mjey12

#chris evans #chris evans fanfiction #chris evans fic #chris evans fan fiction #chris evans fanfic #chris evans fluff #once bitten/more hearts #only for a moment

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moancores · 3 years

Text

𝙸 𝚆𝙰𝙽𝚃 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝙰𝙳𝙳𝙸𝙲𝚃𝙴𝙳 𝚃𝙾 𝙼𝙴

summary : laying with you i feel like moving clouds high in the sky

pairings : aki hayakawa x fem! reader

caution warnings : smoking (cigarettes), mentions of fingering, a fic without a plot

words : 1.6k

inspiration : cigarette (ft. Tablo, Miso) — offonoff

Aki is cautious, even on his days off, he’s still highly aware of his surroundings and refuses to put his guard down. Paranoia laced his bones like a second skin, flooding his sanity and bathed him in alamort—his colleagues taunting him with obscene mouthfuls, referring to his tension as volatile metallics. He reminds them that it’s always better safe than sorry at the end of a job, his eyes always glazed in wet, insomniac entrapment. Of course, nobody took him seriously until after they were dead.

So in these lunar gold moments, where evening arrived too early, he wandered inside a morphean building with shame and guilt. The inclescent sign that read ‘DECADENCE’ in English flashed against the ebony ink night sky; showing the dense population of Tokyo that they were willing to open their doors for the damned and beautiful. Even inside the crimson illuminated lobby, where only one man sat at the front desk, Aki still kept his guard as he unconsciously created half moon circles into his salt stain palm from the tip of his nails. He nodded his head to the man with cimmerian eyes, who in return smiled at his favorite patron as the man pointed to the ceiling.

See, boy of misfortune that’s laved in bittersweet sickness was rooted to this love hotel for two years now, his feet pierced in magnetic obsession that always had him crawling back. He was a regular, someone the staff knew by name, despite the hatred that calloused him of how easily they spoke his name. It rolled off their tongues like venom and they made it sound harsh—their tone the equivalent of choking of funeral soil. He hated the illusion of their voices and it could be the overwhelming shame that made him hate them, but he can’t shake the feeling that they could be dangerous.

He held his breath as he looked at the man, feeling the apprehension kissed his skin as he melted into a cold sweat, but he understood. That she was waiting for him in the same room that overlooked the same LED sign that promoted the same ramen stall on the same main street. Aki left the same lobby to take the same left turn to the same ricody staircase, climbing the same nine floors up as the warm light bathed him in hues of champagne drip. He ignored the same art pieces that made him feel uncomfortable throughout the years of visiting, traveling down the same narrow hallway where the same wooden floors tripped him up before sighing at the same wooden door. Aki has frequented this room so casually that the owner of the hotel molded an exact replica of the key to this room.

The scent of peonies enveloped him into a serene eumoiriety as a sheen moisture of humidity coaxing his face, the strands of his acantho hair clung to his skin. The room was bare with little to offer besides a bed that was displayed in the center, adorned with the same pale blue sheets that Aki had messied and soiled with his own multitarian elixirs. In the far end of the room, the balcony doors were open to allow the evening winds to consume the fragments of fornication as the sheer curtains swayed against the current of cool zephyrs. Between the alterations of fabric, you stood amidst the foundation of taboos as you leaned your body against the iron railing, looking outwards towards a malice devoured city with half dead people being the buildment of a devil’s desire. Aki blinked as he watched your wet hair sway against the gust clear currents or how the tips of your hair dribbled warm water and pooled beneath you.

Aki pulled out the pack of cigarettes he recently purchased, tapping the cardboard box against his open palm with thunderous shockwaves in the hopes to pack the cigarettes tight. He fumbled with the packaging but he managed to quickly peel away the thin plastic that encased around the box and threw it to the ground; grabbing a cigarette between his fingers that stained his skin in the scent of tobacco and fig before brushing the filter against his bottom lip. Between the billowy curtains and harsh winds, Aki witnessed a scintilla of mist that blew east from your lips and dissipate into the astral atmosphere—the smell of your cheap cigarettes that were laced with poison was pungent. Aki watched, observing how the ash from your cigarette gravitated downwards towards the concrete versus the cherry cola ashtray that was shaped in a heart. He witnessed how your toes curled as you leaned your body down more against the railing, watching you lean further and further downwards until you began to slip.

“Idiot!” Aki cried, his calloused hands gripping your waist as he pulled you down into the depths of your shared room, “You need to be more careful!”

“I was completely fine, Hayakawa-san.” You rolled your eyes, “No need to worry about me.”

Aki lit his cigarette as he inhaled the first cigarette from the last two hours. His lungs inflated with venom that bit his esophagus, the taste of tobacco flowers shoving down his throat in between the bursts of nicotine obsession. He blew the mist from his nose, feeling his airwaves clog in an arcane burn, “I worry about you like I do anyone else.”

“Aweh, you think that highly of me?” You teased, flicking the end of your cigarette off the balcony.

“Don’t push your ego, you’re not that important to me.” Aki argued, “but I refuse to see any more people die in front of me.”

The beige chair in the corner collected the dust and ash shared between them from purgatory evenings, and despite it’s broken appearance, Aki still sat gingerly in his favorite chair. He quickly dragged another puff of his cigarette before welcoming you into his lap and cradling you close into his arms that were strained with catastrophic dolent. He hissed as your body connected with a freshly blue bruise that blotched him in orchids blooming beneath his flesh—before you could apologize, Aki shook his head and told you not to worry about it. You notice how his body heat radiated with nuclear fission and how it burned like a thousand suns, clearly he was overworking himself and his body is unable to keep up with the demands of his mentality. You couldn’t say anything though, knowing that he’ll get upset and excuse his hard work for determination and becoming the savior of a saccharine generation, so instead you encouraged him to smoke. Maybe chain smoking fifteen cigarettes will keep him bound to you a moment longer, distracting his pulsating hate for devils with the taste of attraction.

You grabbed another cigarette from your carton, placing it sweetly between your lips as your head hung off from the arm of your chair. Your hair mimicking cascades of waterfalls as it fails with the downward spiral of gravity, ichor pooling in your head as Aki lit the cigarette dangling between your peach gloss lips with your butane lighter (shaped and molded to resemble a lock and heart) that he found ridiculous. You inhale deeply through your nose, collecting the smoke into your lungs before you allow it to bleed into the atmosphere.

Aki set aside your lighter before returning his hand to the inside of your thigh, knowing that after two packs, while your organs are festering and dying, his long fingers will slip between the hem of your panties and thrust between your love. Deep conversations will fall into malicious silence as the only thing Aki can clearly comprehend is your soft moans echoing into the sky. His fingers buried deep within you in rhythmic depths as he looks outwards into the skyline of his newly acquired city—wondering what devils wandered about in the far corners of Tokyo before questioning what Makima was doing in this very moment. Sometimes, he’ll look at you and picture Makima unraveling beneath him, lips agape with apricot blush dusting her skin.

In his mind, he knew you were beautiful but you’ll never compare to Makima. Honestly, he doesn’t know why he’s so enamored with her but he’s drawn to her like the sun is with supernovas. There’s always something alluring about the mysterious darkness that blanketed over her, making her feel archaic and silver. To Aki, you were the light, something that felt safe yet dangerous. You can melt him, burn him and you could just as easily cremate him like any other fire devil—you were a hindrance to him but he was addicted to you like every cigarette shared amongst you. You brought life into halcyon days, where flowers stretch their long necks to kiss your nectar.

Besides, those are sensations and thoughts for later. You placed the cigarette you’ve kissed between his lips, allowing to suck and nurture on the vile as his spine relaxed further into the beige chair. His thumb swaying small circles into your flesh as he exhaled the taste of rot from the cheap cigarettes you loved so much. His stress induced head felt a tad bit high from the smoke and your touch that the world around him began to circle slowly and sweetly. His heart thrumming in euphoria as he gladly took another drag of your cigarette, cherishing the feeling of light fingertips against his chapped lips as you held the cigarette for him.

Decadence was a hotel he was swore was the gate to hell from his mortal reality, and somehow you lingered in the corrupt realm of the ninth floor as a distraction from the vile and decay he bathed in. Blood and killings were a part of his life just like how breathing, starving and lust was. However, on the ninth floor of a man made hell, you became a calm addiction that Aki craved—numbing the deaths of his buddies, colleagues and friends after a cry, a funeral and sex. The cigarettes shared between you were the conversations of apprehension, loss, pleasure and possible happy endings. The smell of your pastel breathing places him in a corrosive mood and suddenly, he could devour the moon raw.

You placed your fingers against his lips, encouraging him to take another long hit as the tan filter was eaten from the saliva shared between hallowed bodies. “Smoke up a glimpse of heaven.”

#after;⛓;dark #chainsaw man #aki hayakawa #csm #my writing #chainsaw man x reader #csm x reader #aki hayakawa x reader #aki x reader #aki hayakawa x you

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