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m0nsterqzzz · 2 months

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The Three Times Natasha Proposed to You and the One Time You Said Yes

pairing: Natasha Romanoff x reader

summary: your girlfriend has a habit of proposing, and you have a habit of saying no.

a/n: I was gonna do this with katniss but decided it worked better with my favorite spy and also its been way to long since I wrote for herrrrrr ahhhh anyway, I LOVE HER YOUR HONOR

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The first time Natasha proposed to you, you had only known her for 18 hours.

You were new to the team. So new in fact that you only knew three people’s names at a table with eight people since the other five were too busy all day to introduce themselves. Dinner was awkward, for you at least, as everyone else was busy chatting about their days with each other. They’re laughing, the bond they all share clear as joy feels the air.

You don’t feel that joy.

It’s not like you’re not happy to be here; you’re insanely grateful that Fury was willing to see past your history and allow you to join forces such as the incredible ones around you, but you just don’t feel very welcomed.

You don’t blame the team. After all, it’s only the first day, and Fury already told you about the fact that most of the people on that team aren’t very warm and friendly. It does kind of bug you though, how now the people you’re not familiar with even seem to notice your presence in the group.

It’s just the first day. Things will get better. You repeat for the 100th time, eyes trained on the table as you spoon some more of the food that was in the kitchen when Jarvis called for you into your mouth. It’s chicken over rice, a simple recipe, but the chicken is covered in some type of delicious sauce that you can’t get enough of.

“Is the food okay? It’s my family's recipe.” A girl with brunette hair and jade colored eyes sitting across from you speaks, nervously smiling as she pushes her fork around the food on her plate. She’s young, younger than everyone else on the team, and it makes you feel a bit better about being new as you remember what Fury said about her only joining about half a year ago.

You give a hesitant smile, answering honestly; “Oh…yeah. I love it. It’s delicious.”

The girl smiles brighter, reaching across the table to hold out her hand for you to shake. “It’s nice to officially meet you. Fury’s told me alot about you. I’m Wanda.”

“All good things I hope.” You giggle before introducing yourself, and she laughs along with you before you both go back to eating. The rest of the team slowly introduces themselves, and out of the corner of your eye you go see the way Wanda cringes when they only do it after she gave an example.

Even if they only did it once the girl made them realize, you still feel a bit more comfortable here then you did a while ago.

You notice Wanda eyeing your rings as you guys continue to eat, so you put your hand on the table in between you too. Her eyes shoot up to you in surprise, clearly not knowing that you noticed it. “Sorry for the staring. I just…I really like your rings. I love wearing them myself and I’ve never seen any like that. They’re beautiful.”

That’s how you guys start up in a conversation about rings, and then a few minutes later you’re sliding off one of your rings to give to her. She seems like the nicest person here, and you can already tell you’re going to be great friends. When you get it off, it accidently flies out of your hand, bouncing on the table before it falls off and lands somewhere on the floor. You turn red in embarrassment at the way everyone falls silent, staring at you in amusement before a redheaded woman slides out of her seat and kneels down on one knee to search for the item.

You met her earlier when you went to the gym to train, and she even helped you learn a few awesome fighting moves before she left to let you do your own thing. You can’t deny that Natasha is beautiful.

The woman smiles when she finds it, grasping the metal in her hand before she turns to face you, still on one knee as she holds it out for you to take as if she’s proposing.

If she notices the way it looks, she doesn’t say anything until Tony, the man you met when he blew up a lab earlier, laughs and mumbles under his breath, “I’m not paying for that wedding.”

You giggle, watching as Natasha stands up and turns to glare at him before facing you once again and putting it on the table near your plate. “Shut up Tony.” She mumbles before sitting back down in her own seat, and you say before shoving food into your mouth when the embarrassment sets in, “I’m not ready to settle down. Sorry Nat.”

Everyone just chuckles, and you are left with a small smile and new found happiness.

The second time she’d done it, she’d almost had you fooled that it was real.

You and her had been dating for three months, and you guys were absolutely inseparable. You’ve learned a lot about her in the year you’ve been an Avenger, and she sometimes opens up about her past. Her little sister, the red room, Dreykov.

Anyway, Fury had sent you on a mission with her, your best friend Wanda, and Steve Rogers to go and steal a flash drive from a destroyed hydra base then find some place quickly to look at what's on it. He said to find the nearest place as people would already be on the search for us, so that's why you got Nat to pull over at a mall. Not for clothes or a new pair of shoes, but to go into one of the electronic stores and use one of their computers to read what's on the file.

It was easy until Natasha noticed one of the workers looking at Steve in suspicion as they see him inserting the drive into one of the computers, and you’re about to abort the mission before your girlfriend grabs your hands and tugs you to the middle of the store, dropping into one knee and glancing at Wanda. The witch seems to get the hint even though you don’t understand what's happening, but you do when the young girl uses her magic to make a ring appear in Natashas hand. It’s beautiful, but you can tell it’s just an illusion to fool the people around you as small red whisps surround your best friend's hands.

“I’ve loved you since the day I met you.” The redhead starts, loud enough to attract the attention of everyone in the store but too loud as to not seem unusual. “I know you’re having my brother's baby,” She continues with that most serious face you’ve ever seen, and you have to try your hardest not to burst out laughing. “But I can treat you better than he ever could.”

The whole crowd of people in the store are now focused on you, even the workers which gives Steve the time he needs to enter the hard drive into one of the computers and read what's on it.

“So what do you say hottie? You wanna do this or not? Marry me?” You stare at her for a few minutes, eyes glancing at the blonde haired man who silently laughs at the scene in front of him before sending you a thumbs up to show he’s done and you guys can go.

“No!” Everyone quietly gasps, all looking away as Natasha fakes offense. “No! What the fuck? What kind of proposal is this? I’m just trying to buy a new phone, Stacy! And you’ve got a huge barbecue stain on that sweater. This is truly the best you could do?”

You're having way too much fun with it as you scoff before gently slapping her, trying your hardest not to laugh at the way everyone gasps even louder while you storm out.

Your friends and girlfriend quickly catch up with you, and you all finally burst out laughing by the time you’re getting in the car and driving away from the mall right as some scary looking military vehicle pulls up to the building. “Did you have to slap me?” Natasha laughs out, the ring box Wanda had magically created is now gone as she sits next to you in the back seat. “I feel like you enjoyed that way too much.”

“I did enjoy it. I’m also just practicing for the day you do propose to me.” She lets out a fake annoyed groan, slinging an arm over your shoulder as she pulls you to lay against her side.

Despite the playful mood, you can’t help but feel a fluttery feeling in your chest and a warm blush coating your face at the thought of being married to this girl. Little did you know, she was feeling the exact same.

When she did it a third time, it almost seemed like it was second nature for her to pull out a ring box and propose to you.

You had just got back to the Avengers tower after a lunch date, and she froze on the doorstep when she realized you were no longer beside her. She turns in circles, panic filling her when she doesn’t see you. She’s a spy for fuck sakes, how could she have not noticed something happening to you.

Her panic fades when you pop out from behind a thick tree, a snowball made from the small amount of snow on the grass in hand as you send her a mischievous smile. She doesn’t have any time to move before you’re launching it in her direction, practically falling over with laughter as it hits her forehead and then breaks into pieces.

The redhead still seems a bit shocked, but she quickly gets over it as she groans with a grin and runs over to harshly tackle you to the ground. It knocks the wind out of you, but you’re both still laughing so hard your stomach hurts as she grabs some snow from beside your head and then lets it fall onto you. “You wanna play that fucking game? Oh we can play that game honey.”

You shake your head, but the bright smile on your face tells her that you’re not actually scared. “No. I’m sorry Tasha. We can talk this out.” When she makes a, “tsk…tsk” noise with her mouth, you use all your strength to push her off of you, sprinting towards your home even though you can hear the sound of Natasha’s boots hastily crunching the snow beneath them as she runs after you.

She wraps her arms around your waist, easily picking you up off the ground and spinning you around. As cringy as it is, your laugh makes her laugh, and the moment is so perfect as she slowly lets you down so she can look you in the eyes.

“Wait a second.” Natasha mumbles, before grabbing something from her pocket, telling you to turn around for a minute while she makes you a surprise. You draw shapes in the snow in the meantime, your fingers practically numb but by the time you’re done, every planet is drawn into the frozen canvas. “Alright. Turn around.” She speaks again, and your smile grows- if possible- at the sight.

She’s messily formed a ring with the wrapper from a straw at dinner, and now she’s balanced on one knee in the icy snow as she grins up at you. “Will you marry me, and be mine forever?”

You pretend to think about it for a moment, finally holding at your left hand for her to put the ring on as you yell out, “Of course I’ll marry you!”

The russian girl laughs, once again picking you up to twirl you around before she sets you down to kiss you easier.

From a window high up in the Avengers tour, Wanda watches the interaction while drinking her tea and then closing her curtains. “When is she gonna do it for real?” She whispers to herself, already so done with the fact that Natasha has proposed to you three times, and yet she hasn’t been able to wear a pretty bridesmaid dress in her whole live.

The day Natasha proposed in the privacy of the cabin Tony’s letting you borrow for a weekend, twinkling lights dressing the living room and the dining table decorated with candles, rose petals and fancy wine that’s probably from Pepper, was the time you know she wasn't kidding.

As the sun sets behind the clouds, you and Natasha sit across from each other with your free hands hooked together beside your plates. The setting sun casts gentle rays upon your face from the window, illuminating your features with a golden light. You two share a quiet, comfortable silence for a moment before she looks up from her plate to you, a smile gracing her lips. You look at Natasha, heart beating softly in your chest from the soft, gentle atmosphere of the moment. She lets go of her fork to use that hand to grab ahold of your other hand, your fingertips intertwined gently. Your eyes meet across the table, and for a second it’s just you guys in the world.

The girl then speaks, her words sincere and clear, as she makes her proposal. "I want to spend the rest of my life with you; I’ve wanted to since the first date we went on. I was scared though…..scared of finding someone I love in a world that could take it away so easily. But now….now I realize. It doesn’t matter. As long as I get to be with you for what time we have left, it’s worth it. So," she says softly, tilting her head to the side and smiling as she grabs a ring box from her pocket and opening it so you can see the diamond ring inside before standing up from her seat so she can get down on one knee next to the table.

"Will you marry me?"

The question hangs in the air as you gaze into the girl's eyes and processes the words. Your mind reels from the unexpectedness of it all, but you also can't help the surge of joy welling in her chest.

“Yes. Yes of course I will!” Her grin brightens, and she’s still kneeled as she wraps her arms around your waist to hug you as tight as she can. You join her on your knees so you’re on her level, grabbing her face with both hands and pulling her into a passionate kiss. You would’ve married her the first time she asked, but you’re somehow glad you waited until now to say yes. This is perfect.

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#natasha romanoff x you #marvel x reader #natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff x reader #marvel #marvel x you

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srjlvr · 5 months

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[ LET’S GET MARRIED ! ] — lhs <3

PAIRING. lee heeseung!student X femreader!student !

SYN. the uni is giving away free dorms! under one condition, in order to save your desperate broke ass student’s life, you’d have to get married. and who’d be the lucky person to marry you if not your childhood friend? no feelings involved of course!…..right?

GENRE. he fell first but she fell harder, basically being in denial for feelings at first, childhood friends to a married couple, fluff fluff fluff !

WARNINGS. mentions of getting married(obv), rest of enha and lesserafim’s yunjin & chaewon are in it too, mentions on having kids(no, there will be no kids here its nothing serious!!), mentions of food, being broke because of uni student life. (pls do lmk if i missed something!) || NOT PROOFREAD AND VERY POORLY WRITTEN!!

WORD-COUNT. 5.1k+ (damn!)

NOTE. this is me being extremely sorry for not continuing my heeseung smau by releasing a heeseung oneshot yay!! i actually got the inspiration from HAPPINESS (one of my fav kdramas!) please leave some feedbacks!! i really wanna know what you thought about it<3

when you were younger, you’ve made a wishing list to you in the future, as soon as you turn an adult.

three important wishes were ;

first, never go broke while being a uni student.

second, never get married before the age of 25.

third, never ever fall in love with your best friend since childhood, aka lee heeseung.

first one is already being a huge failure. younger you would be definitely disappointed in uni student you, not that you care that much, but being a broke student sucks.

“my parents are literally about to kick me out, i get that, i’m a 22 years old uni student who’s still living up their asses, they probably want some peaceful and quiet life” you smacked your head over the lunch table, both of your friends looking at you concerned.

“maybe it’s time for you to pay for the dor-“

“never! yunjin, tell her how broke i am”

“she has like 1 dollar in her bank account, she’s still taking loans from her parents” yunjin nodded and you rolled your eyes.

“you didn’t have to go that far”

“oh i did”

“oh i know! what if you just start working?” chaewon raised her voice a bit.

“i have no time!”

“excuses excuses blah blah blah” she mocked you.

“look at heeseung for example, he works in a part time job at the convenience store right next to uni” yunjin pointed out.

you searched through the lunch hall and found the one person you’ve been looking for, lee heeseung.

you’ve been stuck to him ever since childhood, with your mothers being the biggest best friends you’ve ever seen, it was pretty hard to not see him every day in your young days.

both of your mothers even got pregnant at the same time, and gave birth around the same time, you’re two days younger than him.

your photo album is full with pictures of you and him, and so are the hanged photos on your house wall.

your mother and his mother were your biggest shippers, forcing you both to hug each other and even wear matching clothes.

your elementary school memories are filled with heeseung next to you and the whole class shipping you two.

highschool days weren’t better either, guys who wanted to try a move on you were always so scared of heeseung, they were so sure you and him are dating, with the amount of glares they got from him it was really hard to think otherwise.

your highschool crushes rejected you, always giving the excuse of not wanting to be in a relationship, hiding the fact that heeseung warned them that if they’ll say yes he’ll make sure they never see a daylight again.

he was joking, really. he’s not the violent type, and he couldn’t really explain why was he feeling so jealous whenever he saw you confessing to a guy who isn’t him.

heeseung got used to watching you from afar and protecting you, and you got used to search him everywhere you go even in crowded places and having his company ever since childhood.

“hee!” you called and waved at him, he waved at you back with a smile on his face.

“i swear if i didn’t know both of you were childhood friends i would’ve think you’re a married couple or something” chaewon rolled her eyes and you scoffed.

heeseung continued his way to his usual table with his friends.

“thinking about ways to confess your love to her?” jake smirked and heeseung shook away his thoughts.

“hm? who?” he asked.

“it’s obvious who! don’t play dumb come on!” sunghoon playfully pushed the older one.

“we’re talking about Y/N! everyone in uni are talking about you, even those who know nothing about the two of you” jay remarked.

“there’s nothing between us, we’re just friends” heeseung shrugged.

“and i’m queen elizabeth” sunoo tsked.

heeseung rolled his eyes and began to eat, “you know, even if i did have a crush on her, why would she even accept my confession?”

“ohhhh~” his friends teased.

“it’s kind of obvious she likes you, we’ve watched her ever since we became friends with you, and the way she looks at you is just different” jungwon shrugged and ni-ki nodded.

“she’s always searching you in a crowded room, as if you’re her guardian angel and she only needs you in her life in order for it to be perfect” ni-ki then stole a few bites of heeseung’s meal.

“hey! not cool” heeseung scoffed and ni-ki giggled.

“it’s not bad to have a crush on your childhood friend, you know?” jake smiled, “sometimes all you need is a miracle” jay added.

“hey, let’s go on a work search for yo-“

“no no no yunjin not you too!!” you sobbed, “i have no time to work and i need to search for the cheapest dorm, a one i can actually afford as soon as possible”

“why don’t you just go and ask heeseung for help” chaewon shrugged.

“it’s not that easy, i don’t want him to worry about it too much, he works hard for his money too” you pout and they nodded.

“by the way! how’s the money for the uni dorms is going?” jake asked heeseung who was busy fighting with ni-ki over his food.

“i’m just a few shifts away from getting enough money, i’ll ask y/n to become my roommate as soon as— what?” he noticed his friends looking at him.

“y/n and you? being roommates?” sunoo teased.

“hey, me and y/n spent all our childhood together, my house is her house and her house is mine, it has been like that for a while” heeseung sighed and they all nodded hesitatly.

“still, you said y/n’s parents told you about her not being able to pay for the uni dorms, are you really willing to pay it all?” jungwon asked.

heeseung shrugged and took a bite from his food again, “it’s either that or she’ll get kicked out by her parents”

“you really are her guardian angel” ni-ki whispered.

“good morning! you have afternoon classes today right?” your mother woke you up with a smile smeared all over her face.

“mhhm” you hummed, still trying to adjust the bright sunlight that hit your face.

“i need you to bring some medicine for ms lee! she’s been sick and i bought her some things” your mother helped you to get up and shoved you a bag, “here”

“can you please just let me get—“

“you can get ready at theirs! quickly quickly go!” she pushed you outside of your house. damn, she really does hope you’d get out as soon as possible.

she was right though, heeseung’s house is your house, and your house is his. you have a few clothes and even a toothbrush at his house and he has the same at yours, getting ready there was never a problem to you.

a walk to their house is even less than 5 minutes so you weren’t worried about someone from your neighborhood getting a jumpscare and thinking you’re some kind of a zombie.

you took out the keys and opened the door, heeseung was sitting in the kitchen and eating his breakfast.

“don’t ask, been a rough morning, where’s mom by the way?” you asked him and he pointed at her room. you got used to call his mom your mom too.

you saw her sleeping so you left the bag and the medicine next to her, leaving a note saying good morning and instructions of how to take the medicine, as if she doesn’t know all of that.

“you have afternoon classes too?” you asked heeseung while getting ready. he was in his room, lying on his bed while playing some games on his phone.

“not really, i don’t have any class today” he chuckled.

“since when don’t you have any classes today?”

“ever since i decided that im too tired to go to uni”

you rolled your eyes and threw one of the pillows at him, “don’t be stupid! get up and get ready to go!”

he giggled and shook his head, “i’m joking, i took evening classes for today”

you pressed your lips together and nodded, you don’t know why but hearing him giggling always made your heart skip a beat, but you don’t have any feelings for him, like, at all. right?

afternoon classes started and before you knew it, it was already lunch time.

“y/n! you won’t believe it!!” chaewon shout.

“what is it?” you shout at her back even though you were sitting right in front of her.

“i found you a solution! you can get a free dorm!” she shout back.

“what!” you shout.

“can you stop shouting! for god’s sake you’re literally a 1 cm away from each other” yunjin, who was covering her ears yelled.

you and chaewon shared an eye contact and froze. yunjin is so scary when she’s angry.

“continue please” she coughed and let chaewon continue what she had to say.

“it might seem crazy what i’m about to say,” chaewon sighed, “the uni is giving away free dorms—“

“no way omg omg omg please tell me i’m dreaming this is not happening right now right this is not real righ—“

“under one condition!” she cut you off and took her phone out of her pocket to read the terms.

“in order to get a free dorm, you have to have at least one option applied ;

one, you’re younger than 18. two, you’ve been scoring A+ on ALL of your exams and three, you’re between the ages 18-25 and got married, or engaged” she finished reading and turned off her phone.

“but chaewon, i’m not younger than eighteen” you complained and rest your head on your arm who was lying on the table.

“nor scoring A+ on ALL of your exams” yunjin added.

“thanks yunjin, i needed that”

“always here to help”

“then you know what’s left” chaewon smirked and you sat up, looking at her with innocent eyes.

“no” you let out.

“oh yes”

“i have no one to marry to” you argued.

“yes you do!” yunjin replied.

“i do not!”

chaewon and yunjin raised a brow and crossed their arms, “you don’t?”

as heeseung entered the uni entrance, you ran towards his direction and stopped in front of him.

“y/n why are you still here—“

“let’s get married” you said it out loud in front of everyone who was around.

your surroundings suddenly became quiet and everyone was staring at you two, starting to whisper and waiting for heeseung’s answer.

instead of answering he grabbed your wrist and dragged you out of the entrance into a place in the garden next to the uni.

the walk there was making you so nervous and anxious, what if you were a bit too much? asking your childhood friend to marry you just to get a free dorm? are you that desperate?

when he finally stopped, he let go of your wrist and cupped your cheeks, looking straight into your eyes.

“what did you say?” he asked, his eyes looking for any sign or answer from you.

“i said, let’s get married”

heeseung could’ve swore his heart skipped a beat because he for real felt like he died at that spot.

“let me explain!” you said before he could respond.

“the uni are giving out free dorms to anyone who’s between the ages of 18-25 and is married or engaged” you sighed.

heeseung let go of his hold and sighed, looking down and closing his eyes.

you really didn’t mean that genuinely, did you? something in him really hoped you did.

“hee?” you asked, biting your lower lips, suddenly feeling more anxious than before

“sure, let’s get married” he chuckled.

you broke your second main wish on your list.

heeseung was just a few shifts away from getting enough money to get the both of you a place to live in, he could have told you that too, but he chose not to.

only crazy people would agree to this idea, you were so desperate that you actually just asked him to marry you, and he guessed he was one of those crazy people, because he had no idea why he said yes.

he had other way, without marrying you, but something about the idea of marrying you made him feel excited.

“i knew it i knew it! only crazy people would agr— wait what” you blinked a few times after you realized his answer.

“i said sure, let’s get married” he smiled softly and you were about to faint.

“no feelings are involved….right?” you hesitantly asked him, hoping he wouldn’t agree with you.

instead, he nodded slowly and hesitantly, “no feelings involved”

you regretted that sentence so bad because the day after, when he kneeled on one knee and held a ring out for you in front of everyone and proposed to you, your couldn’t lie to yourself anymore, you actually broke your third wish on your list a few years ago, you were in love with lee heeseung for years.

“y/l/n y/n, i have loved you ever since i can remember, i watched you grow up and grew up with you as well, i got used to being with you 24/7, i can’t see the rest of my life without you in it, will you make me the happiest man alive and agree to marry me?”

even though it was an act(according to you), it felt so real to the point where you cried and sobbed so badly, while putting on the ring he bought for you less than 24 hours ago.

it wasnt planned. the proposal wasn’t planned at all.

the plan was that you and heeseung will go to the uni secretariat and request an application for the free dorm since both of you are engaged now.

heeseung had no reason to put on this whole show and show everyone that you’re now engaged. you have no idea why he did it, and instead of getting angry at him, you fell in love with him even more.

it felt wrong, it felt not right.

but you didn’t care, you always knew your feelings for heeseung were somewhere deep inside your heart. you tried to push them away all the time, because there was no way your childhood friend, the popular boy in your highschool, the kid who grew up with you, had feelings for you.

you tried to deny your feelings but now you realized thrre was no use anymore, so you let yourself love him as much as you can.

it wasn’t the desperation that lead you to ask him to marry you, because then you’d ask literally any other guy, it was your pure love to him, to the guy who was always there for you when you needed him.

“heeseung! explain what was that!” his six other friends gathered in a circle, surrounding him and not letting him go.

“what was wha—“

“you and y/n? married?” jungwon shout.

“have you gone crazy?” jake added.

“and she said yes! something is not right” jay joined.

“yesterday you told us you have no feelings for her!” sunoo remarked.

“you didn’t even believe us when we told you she’s obviously in love with you” sunghoon tsked.

“something isn’t sitting right to me” ni-ki gasped.

“explain now!” they all said at the same time.

“calm down!” heeseung coughed, “i’ll explain to you everything later”

by later he meant after classes, at his house, together with you and your friends yunjin and chaewon.

“yunjin, chaewon” heeseung nodded at your friends.

“lee heeseung” they glared at him.

“come on! both of you knew about it even before” you pleaded.

“doesn’t change the fact that he’ll be stealing you from us now” they rolled their eyes.

“i’m still so confused” ni-ki tried to quicken everyone and get to the point.

“me and y/n are getting married—“

“yeah no shit sherlock” sunghoon cute him off and heeseung glared at him.

“anyway, y/n would you like the explain why?” he turned to you and smiled.

“the uni is giving away free dorms to married couples between 18-25 so—“

“you decided to get married to get a free dorm” jay finished your sentence.

“have you gone mad? heeseung worked his ass to get enough money to get the dorms for the bo— mhhhhmmm!!!” sunoo roamed but jake covered his mouth before he could continue.

“sunoo!!” jake coughed and turned to you with a smile, “don’t mind him he’s been stressed from work and uni lately”

the rest of you giggled awkwardly and tried to ease the atmosphere.

after you yunjin and chaewon left, the boys stayed with heeseung, looking at him with concern.

“what?” heeseung looked at them back with his bambi eyes.

“i don’t know hee, it feels like….she’s kind of using you” sunghoon spoke, jay slapped his arm and he whined.

“he’s right though, marrying you only to get a dorm is quite crazy” jungwon nodded.

“he’s even crazier for actually agreeing to all of this” ni-ki said and jake shushed him.

“ni-ki is right, i am crazy, i have no idea why i said yes but she wasn’t forcing anything on me” heeseung shrugged, “besides, i’ve liked her for so many years so—“

“ah ha!! we knew it!” they all said at the same time and heeseung sighed. what have he got himself into?

after everyone left, heeseung texted you, asking you to meet him in your usual spot.

you got ready and for the first time, you took a while to do so.

you stared at yourself in the mirror a few times and even checked different outfits. this has never happened to you ever before, especially not when you knew that you’re going to see heeseung.

heeseung saw you at your worst, why are you dressing up for him now then?

“i must be crazy, crazy crazy!” you shook away your thoughts and got out to meet your soon-to-be-husband.

“hee!” you saw his back facing you and as soon as he turned around you froze.

did he dress up for you too? why does he look so breathtaking suddenly? his bambi eyes match the rest of his beautiful features on his face so much, you’ve seen this man grow up, you know every detail about his face and you couldn’t explain why it was so sudden that you got caught by surprise because of his beauties.

shaking away your thoughts, you walked closer to him and smiled.

“hey hubby” you grinned.

“hubby?” he asked.

“a new nickname for my soon-to-be-husband” you chuckled and he nodded.

“i actually thought about something,” he turned to you, “our parents will figure it out sooner or later, should we tell them the truth or—“

“no, let them believe we’re getting married without any reason other than being in love”

you have no idea why you just said that. but you hid your face as soon as you realized what just came out of your mouth.

heeseung felt too flattered and suddenly didn’t know what to say. you keep on making him speechless.

“ahem,” he cleared his throat, “you do know that they’ll probably rush out things and even take the wedding plan to their own hands“

i don’t care, i’d like to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you as soon as i can. is what you wanted to say, but you couldn’t bring yourself to do so.

“y/n?” he asked. he noticed you were too deep in thoughts and waited for you to come back to sense.

“i’m aware” you nodded, “i’ve also got a text from the uni, we’ll be getting our dorm in the next week, so we should start preparing”

heeseung nodded and looked at you. you were suddenly feeling so nervous and shy to share an eye contact with him, so you broke it as he just kept staring at you and taking in your beauty.

“hey y/n” he said, “hm?”

“i don’t mind marrying you and spending the rest of my life being married to you”

you looked over him and he had the genuinest smile you’ve ever seen.

it felt like the world had froze, and the snow that was falling suddenly stopped, it felt like it was just the two of you in this whole world.

“YOU’RE GETTING WHAT?” your mother yelled.

you and heeseung planned a dinner with both of your parents, to announce the big news.

things became quite awkward between the two of you, ever since your last encounter with him you could barely face him.

his sudden confession freaked you out and the only thing that came out of your mouth was “oh, okay” in the most dry way ever.

you wanted to tell him you feel the same, you wanted to tell him that you’ve been in love with him ever since forever. but one moment that caught you off guard ruined your chance.

you were stupid, stupid and idiot. heeseung probably thinks you hate his guts now.

heeseung in the meantime felt like he was breaking apart slowly. oh, okay?? that’s all you had to answer?

he felt dumb, he felt hopeless. the confession was completely out of the blue and unplanned, your beauty hypnotized him and he was so mesmerized by you that the words just came out of his mouth naturally.

what if you hate his guts now? what if he made you uncomfortable? what if you’ll regret it the last minute because you weren’t feeling the same about him?

all of those questions were eating him alive, and you didn’t help either. each time he came up to you, you were suddenly in rush and told him you have to go, it was breaking him inside slowly.

the dinner was one chance to finally talk with you again.

“married, mom. we’re getting married” you repeat what you already said a few seconds ago.

“when? where? how?” heeseung’s mother asked.

heeseung looked at you and smiled warmly, “it just happened, we’ve been together ever since childhood, it already felt like being in a relationship for so long, so we decided to marry each other” he chuckled and held your hand tightly, “to belong to each other until the day we die”

your parents looked at the both of you. you were sharing eye contact for so long, with heeseung smiling at you, looking deep into your eyes, and with you looking at him with nothing but pure love in your eyes that was making everyone in the room feel so jealous of you two.

“now kiss!” your mother said.

you and heeseung broke the eye contact and blinked a few times.

“what?” you asked.

“kiss then! i want to picture it and keep it in my photo gallery forever!” his mother added.

you were about to speak up until heeseung held your cheek to turn you to face him and it was only a matter of seconds until you felt his lips on yours.

it was your first kiss ever, your first time kissing someone, and it was his as well, but he lead you on so good that it made it look less awkward.

you were his first kiss. you, his childhood friend, stole his first kiss.

“we knew that it’ll happen one day!!” your mothers cheered, “we even have a whole wedding plan ready!!”

you and heeseung broke the kiss and shared an eye contact again.

you didn’t need to hear him say to know how much love he holds for you, and how he cherishes you so much.

and your eyes told him everything, they held the answers to all of the questions that bothered him. you love him as much as he loves you.

“i can’t believe you’re getting married, my little angels” your parents cried altogether which made heeseung let go of his hold on you and grab some tissues to wipe their tears.

“i love that ring by the way! heeseung you did a great job” your mother gave him thumbs up and he chuckled.

if only she knew that it was a ring he bought you in less than 24 hours and even rushed your friends to come with him and help him pick it only because he wanted his whole life to properly propose you.

it was a moving day already and your parents helped you pack every last thing, they even cried through the way, how could their princess leave them so fast?

“you can visit our house anytime!” you tried to comfort them.

“we’ll update you before that, we don’t want to catch you while doing the thing you know” your mother winked and you rolled your eyes, “mom!”

“i see you’re all packed and ready” heeseung came in to check on you.

“she is! take her away already!” your mother complained.

“not before you take this with you!” she went away for a few seconds and came back with a huge wrapped photo frame.

“don’t open it yet!! only when you get into your new house and get everything in place!!” she excitedly hugged the both of you and you nodded.

moving in was quite rough, you had a lot of boxes to unpack and organized, and you and heeseung never felt more awkward after the first kiss you shared.

you’ve barely spoke with each other and your friends were starting to get concerned.

“he told me he doesn’t mind marrying me and spending the rest of his life with me” you pout.

yunjin and chaewon shout and giggled, “girl! he’s more than in love with you!! he’s lovesick!!” they both said.

“what did you answer then?” yunjin asked.

“i told him okay” you smacked your head on the table.

“no way” chaewon gasped.

“yes way” you whined.

“you’re stupid!!” they both smacked you.

“then!!” you shout, “we had our first kiss on dinner in front of our parents” you whispered that part.

“what did you say? couldn’t hear you” chaewon said.

“oh she said that they shared their first kiss on dinner with their— YOU HAD YOUR FIRST KISS WITH HEESEUNG??” yunjin’s eyes widened.

“what happened after that?” chaewon asked curiously.

“we just finished dinner, and now we barely even talk” you sighed, “each time i see him i’m just blushing and running away, i can’t face him!”

“you have to!! you’re moving in soon!!” yunjin argued and chaewon nodded.

“it’ll be the death of me” you sobbed and they chuckled.

you were right at first, but slowly and surely heeseung made a joke and both of you got back to normal in no time, as if nothing happened between you two.

you even helped him organizing his closet and his room, and he did the same.

after a long day you and heeseung finally laid down on your now shared sofa.

“it’s been a rough day” you sighed.

“should we order something?” he suggested and you nodded immediately. you ended up ordering your favorite food.

“let’s open up the picture!!” you said and grabbed the picture your mom gave you earlier today.

you and heeseung both unwrapped it together and revealed an old picture of you and heeseung hugging each other with a huge smile on your faces.

“look at us then and look at us now” he giggled.

both of you hanged the picture right above your sofa and kept staring at it for a while.

“hey hee,” you spoke, “yeah?”

“i wouldn’t mind marrying you and spending the rest of my days with you too” you turned to him, “until the day i die”

“is that your way of telling me you love me too?” heeseung froze for a second. you caught him off guard for the countless time already.

although he understood very clearly your feelings after you shared your first kiss, hearing your words made his heart beat fast.

it was a confirmation for him that all of his feelings for you were actually mutual all this time.

instead of answering his questions you grabbed his shirt and kissed him.

he put his hands around your waist and pushed you closer to him, holding you tightly as if he’s too scared to let you go.

breaking off the kiss was hard, but the lack of oxygen was kicking in, you pressed your foreheads together, still with your eyes closed.

“does that answer your question?” you giggled and you felt him smiling.

“i don’t think so, i need a bit more of it to feel certain” he teased and you tsked.

“i don’t need to be in a relationship with you to feel certain about my feelings and my willingness to marry you, i want to spend my life with you, i love you” you said and pecked his lips.

“i love you too, y/n” he pecked your lips again and it suddenly got into a fight between you two about who pecks the other more, until it ended up in a long, deep kiss.

“so let me get this straight. you and heeseung had been in denial for many many years and manipulated yourself into thinking that you don’t like each other at all at all, then when y/n’s desperate and broke ass heard of a chance to get a free dorm by getting married, she went up to you, heeseung, and asked her to marry you, you agreed to the proposal because at one point you stopped lying to yourself and realized you’re actually lovesick, and the rest is history” ni-ki finally breathed out after almost rapping this whole story.

“by history i mean y/n waking up from her denial and realizing her feelings to you” he added.

“yes, exactly” heeseung nodded and you chuckled.

you were sitting together with your friends on one table, yunjin and chaewon who were already aware of the story added a few notes here and there as ni-ki summarized your whole story.

“this is a story to tell your children” jay smiled and the rest nodded.

“we’re not planning to get pregnant anytime soon, we didn’t even have a wedding yet” you sighed.

“you never know y/n, you never know!” sunoo slowly nodded.

“why did you say that as if you went through something familiar” jungwon teased.

“you never know y/n, you never know!” sunghoon mocked sunoo.

“that was a good one!” jake laughed with him.

“children, literal children who found themselves in uni somehow” you sighed.

“at this point we won’t even need to have any children when we have them” heeseung agreed with you.

“it doesn’t matter, as long as i’m with you” you smiled and pecked his lips.

“get a room you two will you!”

PERM TAG-LIST ; @sungwhoonz @ohdudehesflirting @unlikelysublimekryptonite @deobiis @manooffline @miumiuoi @in-somnias-world @lovelovelovebts @filmofhybe @wonbinsnovia @daegutowns @aurumiee @soobywon @dhriti-stories @ariadores @firstclassjaylee @watamotee33 @moons-v (bold means cannot be tagged)

#enhypen imagines #enhypen drabbles #enhypen #enhypen reactions #enhypen scenarios #enhypen fluff #heeseung imagines #heeseung x reader #heeseung scenarios #heeseung fluff #enhypen heeseung #heeseung angst #lee heeseung x reader

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celestialtarot11 · 1 month

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Astrology Observations 🧎‍♂️‼️

Hi friends! Today we’re just doing a general post for the astrological signs 🤭✨ Please enjoy and share! Your feedback is always appreciated.

Earth sign energy is heavy and dark, not negative, but they are very connected to their roots, ancestors and past lives. They carry lots of baggage from the past to heal in this lifetime, and thus may feel they lived through many timelines and cycles. They can feel similarly to Scorpio that experienced tons of transformations.

Libra moons can be indecisive in relationships, not because they have a bad sign placement but because they care a lot about people’s feelings. Sometimes too much to their detriment. They’d rather keep the peace than to rock the boat, but that’s what causes tension. Libra moons just need more confidence and security in their choices, and focus on themselves 🧘

Cancer Venus from a young age experienced misunderstandings from the people around them. Cancer venus wants a close community and people who understand their emotions, but in an emotionally unavailable society they can feel neglected and lonely. Its why cancer venus develops walls to protect their heart. They still care, but it takes them a long time to open up.

Virgos remember little details of everyone and hope they can do the same for them. They essentially give what they need and Virgos need attention and someone who creates quality time.

Gemini venus crave communication and mental stimulation in their connections. They love to learn and interact with people. Gemini Venus can also experience lots of isolation or periods of alone time because they aren’t finding the right people to connect to. They’d rather be alone than to have surface level interaction and filler conversations.

Leo + Aquarius pairing in a chart can indicate the native is truly unique and unforgettable. They strive so much to be themselves that it inspires others to do so. Some may even idolize the native, and others can get jealous because the native has qualities they wish they had. The native basically inspires others to get a personality 💅🏻

Mercury 8h can be so funny. We can get picky about what personal info to leave in the outside world. Even the idea of leaving behind our birthday info can irk us 😭 why? I think being in the spotlight or being perceived can be difficult for us.

Adding onto that, mercury 8h can channel spirits, occult knowledge, spirit guides, etc. when they tap in, they TAP in. They did not come to play 😍 All they need is a good meditation sesh and they’re good to go 🧘 all powered up.

Jupiter 8h can go through so many endings and terrible situations and still somehow come out stronger and better. They take their healing and growth seriously, and I think Jupiter 8h people have big hearts, so they always reconnect with that energy which is what carries them 😤

Cancer + Leo in a chart makes someone mystical, ethereal, private, yet somehow well known. There will always be an aspect to these natives to hide to protect themselves, and yet their Leo side will try to guide them out their comfort zone.

Aries rising females always knew who they were since birth 🤭 they could’ve photographed a lot, dressed up a lot, and it’s iconic. Since birth they knew! Aries rising females can be human rights activists too, because they have strong opinions, perspectives and believe in empowerment. Aries rising females may also be into modeling, because since a young age they were surrounded by cameras and people who thought they were beautiful ❤️

Aquarius rising children always look upset in their pictures or they have that thousand mild yard stare 😭 help #me

Sagittarius rising children always had that mischievous look on their face in every picture, or they looked incredibly angry. They had no issue letting their true selves out 😤

Pisces women tend to move far from their home town or childhood home. Lots of them have dreams of living far away from their roots. I think its to discover who they are and rebuild themselves after going through a lot. They physically need to disconnect from toxic environments to heal.

Gemini sun women are like teachers in many ways. Especially when they’ve healed a lot. They can be a teacher to the siblings around them or people. Many turn out to be motivational speakers because they have so much wisdom to share.

Thank ya’ll so much for reading 💗☮️ feel free to like comment and reblog to support the blog 🧘✨ Have a great one!

Paid Readings ✨

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writingoddess1125 · 7 months

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Ive Fallen

The moment they fell in love with you~

Luffy, Zoro, Sanji, Buggy, Shanks, Mihawk x GN Reader

Please support me on Ko-Fi I'd like to pay rent 👍🏽

Luffy

It was the moment you had made him his favorite meal and said the magic words-

"Hey Luffy welcome back!" You say cheerfully as you set down a plate for a customer. Your regular Luffy coming in for his normal mountain of food-

"Hey (Y/N)!" He said cheerfully as he set himself on his normal bench. You already having his glass of milk poured as you set it before him and got his plate consisting of his favorite items you had already made ahead of time.

"I saw you were getting your boat ready to set sail"

"I got to get everything going for when im pirate king!" He said loudly, taking a hefty bite of his food. You smiled, always loving his optimistic ways.

"Well, I believe in you Luffy. If there is anyone who will become king of the pirates its you" You say cheerfully and give him a smile.

Luffy felt his heart beating like a drum and warmth developed his body. Like your words had kicked his heart into action-

"Oop let me go refill Mr. Yamos drinks" You say cheerfully as you go to continue your work, Luffys eyes following you.

Had you always looked this pretty?

Zoro

When he saw you training

Zoro was.. well lost- He had needed to use the restroom when the ship made port and it was like he made one turn and suddently his was in a deep forest.

Fuck-

So Zoro went to make his way back, unknowingly getting himself more and more lost.

Stumbling through a clearing he stopped when he saw you- standing there practicing formation and swings with your sword- So beautiful and powerful, he couldn't help but be mesmerized.

Standing there watching from the trees he couldn't help but feel some warmth come to his cheeks, finally working the will to approach.

"Need a sparing partner?" He offered as he stepped forward.

Sanji

When he saw you baking and trying the food some kids had made for you

They had made port to restock supplies, in his case get more groceries since Luffy ate enough for 5 men. Walking through the streets of the village he smelled the sweets before he saw you- in the window letting out trays of freshly baked treats with a smile on your lips.

Your smile drew him to stop midstep and watch. A few young children running past him to the shop as they held up their treats to you-

He saw the pastry even from here he could see it was burned and most likely raw in the center, the thick layer of flower on the bottom no better then cement. Any person with a pallet wouldn't be able to swallow it- not even Luffy. However you smiled and took a big bite of the pastry and swallowed.

Smiling at the child and praising them on doing so well- Sanji felt his chest tughten and warmth unlike his normal attraction bubble in his system, his feet moving faster then his mind as he approached your bakery.

Buggy

When he saw you perform for the first time

Buggy had stopped by a village during a festival, Normally he would have just raided the place but he had a soft spot for festivals like this- So for now the village was spared.

Especially since they had one hell of a hot dog stand which he gladly took part in. While standing there eating his treat he turned to see the grand bonfire that was being set up as music started to be played, everyone starting to gather and dance- And then he saw you.

Singing and dancing along to the music as you stole the show, twirling around the fire with others as your clothes seemed to highly glow next to the light of the bonfire making you look like a living star.

Buggy felt Hypnotized as he watched you, The way you sang, dance and your overall grace.

He had never wanted to see another person perform so badly in his life, a warmth Flooding his face and chest as he watched you laugh and walk away to get a drink. Standing up to follow and work up the nerve to speak with you.

Shanks

When he heard you singing while gardening

Ah to he back at his favorite bar

He stepped out to get some fresh air, the warmth of the sun hitting his skin and making him feel energized. His train of thought was broken however as he heard singjng?- this wasn't a area that had a choir or anything like that so it caught his interest following the song to behind the bar.

Turning around the corner he spotted you, on your knees in the herb garden thay grew next to the restaurant gathering things needed for drunks and food.

He couldn't tear his eyes away from you as your voice washed through him- you looked so damn cute, paired with your singing it just made his chest squeeze at the sight.

"You have a beautiful voice" He said softly before giving you a sly smile, seeing you turn back to him and blush at being caught.

Mihawk

When you were sitting by the fireplace reading

Mihawk had arrived in a sleepy village, going to the nearest inn for the night to rest. Typically he would have just camped outside but the flash flood pouring over the village said otherwise-

Entering he spotted you right away, seated infront of the fire with a book. Normally he wouldn't bother glancing at such a sight but in truth he couldn't turn away.

You just looked so elegant? Seated so perfectly infront of that grand fireplace in comforble warm clothes, a cup of tea next to you and eyes focused only on the written word.

"Sir would you like a room?" The old women snapping him from his thoughts as he quickly nodded and paid for the room. Deciding it was best to just approach.

"What are you reading?" He asked, watching your eyes travel up to meet his and giving him a gentle smile as you tell him about the book series you were reading and offering him to read the first edition since you'd already completed it.

He accepts and sits at the chair across from you- A comforble relaxes feeling washing through him at this and he couldn't help but let his eyes fall in you.

Lovely

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dognonsense · 10 months

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help tiktok kids want to try come at you with a seam ripper at shows for wearing an anti swastika patch.

[video description: begins with a tiktok of a young person holding a seam ripper. video transcription: why would i need to bring a seam ripper to a concert? So that if you see someone with a crossed out swastika on their jacket, you can rip it off. video description: Then a stitch video of a new speaker who is using a filter that makes them look like a face on a lemon. Video transcription: TikTok is the only place that I've seen anyone saying that they don't want Anti-Swas on the scene. I have only seen this on TikTok. The majority of the people I see sharing the sentiment are young, or, they are people who are clearly not in the punk scene. Sorry! Gonna have to call you out a little bit, but you know what? Calling people out? Especially posers? Is a time-honored tradition in our community, so, get used to it!

Anti-Swas is not as commonly misunderstood to be something that came into the scene to show Jewish punks that they're safe. It came into the scene to show white "mm" (representing redaction of supremacist) and Neo-"mm" (Nazis) that they are not safe in that crowd, in that group, in that event. That is why it's worn. And the people who wear that symbology, in my scene, historically, they wear it because they are about that. Meaning that they are going to enforce. That those individuals are not welcome.

I am a punk of Jewish heritage, I wear the symbols. The Anti-Swas. I have a shirt with a huge one on the front, I love wearing it. Patches, buttons, I love it. It makes me feel proud and happy. So let me tell you if you come at me and you rip a patch off of me, or a button off of me, with that symbology I am immediately going to assume that you are a white "mm" or a Neo-"mm" and I'm gonna hand your butt to you. Very quickly. And as hard as possible. I am going to focus all of my rage on that entire subgroup onto your face. So im gonna have to break it to you to break it to you! And also if you do it with a seam ripper which is like, the fuck? A seam ripper? Don't come to a scene with a seam ripper, that is so bizarre, you can't even rip a patch off with your bare hands? And you bring a seam ripper- (laughing). But anyways, when I realize it's a seam ripper and not a small weapon, I'm going to mock you mercilessly as I beat you.

White "mm" and Neo-"mm" would like nothing more than for us to get rid of that symbology. 'Cause then they blend in better. And then they can say that they're welcome. Or they can argue that. And we don't like leaving room for them to argue. Not in my scene. Also, getting rid of the Anti-Swas symbology is a little ableist, don't you think? A lot of white "mm" and Neo-"mm" can't read. End video transcription]

i understand why people dont agree or feel comfortable with anti swastika patches, but i want to allow this jewish person to say their opinion on the matter. They personally like it and think its effective at keeping nazi fucks out of the scene and are very proud to wear it out

just the mental image of a small lil tiktok kid approaching a guy in the pit like uwu lemme seam rip off ur patch for u

#this is just too funny #like i understand the politics BUT A SEAM RIPPER #punk #diy #patches #diy patches #crust punk #got it captioned at peoples accessibility discord #abelism #classism

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i-cant-sing · 5 months

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Just thinking about Yandere Todoroki clan and reader's random moments.

Reader coming home after a particularly bad day, but poor girl cant even cry or complain without everyone immediately overreacting and pulling you out of school/college or even keeping you from going out at all. So now, reader has to either cry in self pity before she enters her home, wipe her tears and fix herself just enough to show that she hadnt just bawled her eyes out moments ago. That, or do the more risky thing and go home, go to your room and cry under the covers, but then theres always the chance of Rei or the others walking in on you any moment.

Also thinking about baby/toddler reader being sick, just a common cold or flu, nothing major. But with reader whining and being so young, the family's infantalisation goes through the roof and theyd treat you as if you were immunocompromised. I wont lie, but I think Rei is almost kinda... glad when you get sick? She enjoys you being dependant on her for the most things, even when you grow up and are able to handle a cold, she still deludes herself into thinking that you need mommy to come and help you.

I think the one person who is most affected by reader getting sick, no matter what age, is Enji. The man just cant help but view you as a fragile, starving Victorian child the moment you fall ill. In his eyes, even a harsh blow of air is too much for a fragile thing like you, let alone something as bad as the flu. He just- he's holding toddler reader in his arms, who snuggles into his warm body, your tiny nose pink and he cant get the image of you crying and vomiting and being oh so feverish- thats just way too much for your small body. Oh how he almost cried when he took you to the doctor for a shot and you clung to him, trying to bury yourself into him as you begged him to make you feel better, cried to him that you didnt want to get the "big scary needle!" He just had to hold you there in his firm grip as you writhed, had to look away when you looked at him and he saw the feeling of betrayal in your eyes, had to keep himself from not strangling the fucking doctor for not being careful, had to walk out of the clinic and hand you to Rei because he couldnt hear you cry anymore, had to have Rei console both you and Enji (assuring him that "no, Enji. Y/n doesnt resent you for making her get a shot.") and he couldnt even sleep a wink that night because he was standing by your bed, holding your tiny hand with his pinky as a tear finally slipped out of his eye.

ALSO thinking about adult reader going out of the house to meet up with friends, except shes meeting up with them at a club instead of at their house like she told Enji and Rei, and now shes standing outside, abandoned by said friends, and shes now running because a group of pervy men are chasing her and she doesnt know who to call, so she just speed dials Shotou, except someone just changed all your speed dials to one number, and you think youre doomed when Shotou doesnt say a word to you and just hangs up when within minutes, someone comes in front of you-

"Dabi?" He tells you to cover your ears and look away, and you know well by know what that means, so you obey, feeling a bit regretful as those men begin to scream in agony. You dont know how long its been until Dabi pulls your hands away and examines your wounds. He lets you crash into his chest as you sob, and this time, Dabi simply decides to take you home quietly without a lecture.

Hmmm, also thinking about Natsuo who is usually cool as a cucumber, the most normal being in the family, except for his very rare episodes of unbridled rage where he suddenly becomes the Hulk. Good thing for you is that this anger is never directed towards you, rather towards people who actively threaten your life (except Rei cause she gets to play "Im your mom who became mentally unstable because of your abusive dad") The only time NAtsuo is stern with you is when it comes to your health. He's just looking at you with those strict eyes when you refuse to take your multivitamins, or dont want to get a flu shot, or try to make up an excuse so that he cant check your vitals. And when he just grabs your wrist and pulls you to sit down so that he can do his checkup, its in those moments that you realise just how strong your brother is... and how easy it may be for him to overpower you and sedate you if he ever followed through Rei's threats.

#yandere bnha #bnha headcanons #yandere mha #bnha imagines #yandere dabi #yandere todoroki clan #yandere endeavor #yandere natsuo todoroki #yandere enji todoroki #yandere rei todoroki

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augustinewrites · 6 months

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cw: suggestive content, fem!reader

“come for a stroll with me.”

“i can’t right now,” wriothesley tells you, glaring down at the mess of papers atop his desk.

it was not in your nature to be petulant, but the over dramatic sigh that falls from your lips has him believing otherwise.

though he wanted nothing more than to abandon the day's duties and join you on the surface for an afternoon stroll, the lord of the fortress of meropide was a very busy man. he had a prison to run.

“fine,” you say, though your exasperated tone indicates that his refusal was anything but.

“you’re the head doctor,” he reminds you, gesturing to the stacks of paper on his desk. “you know how it is.”

“actually i don’t, because i don’t do all my work at the last minute.”

“you have sigewinne, who does more than half of it for you.”

“sigewinne likes paperwork,” you argue, settling yourself atop the corner of his desk. “you could have a whole team of people to help you with these things, but you’re too picky to let them.”

“they don’t do it right,” he huffs, pen scratching a quick signature across the bottom of the topmost report before shuffling it aside. “i know this place better than any accountant whose only concern is balancing a book.”

“fair enough,” you shrug, picking up and thumbing through his reviewed missives with about as much interest as one watching paint dry. he looks down just as a sneaky smile appears on your lips. “i heard it’s quite nice outside.”

“too warm,” he mutters distractedly, too lost in the process of estate management to chit-chat about the weather.

“perhaps i should shed a few layers before heading out,” you hum thoughtfully, fanning yourself lightly with his papers.

wriothesley looks up, about to scold you, but the words dry up before they pass the tip of his tongue.

you certainly hadn’t outfitted yourself as a future duchess might, forgoing a frilly, structured gown for one of his own loose white button downs that’s tucked into closely tailored trousers.

it’s with great intrigue that he watched your free hand undo the top two buttons of your (his) shirt, revealing the delicate swatch of skin over your neck and teasing him with a peak at your cleavage.

you catch him staring as you set his papers down, eyes flashing with delight. like a predator that’s successfully cornered its prey. wriothesley - in a last ditch escape attempt - quickly looks away, clearing his throat and staring hard at the report in front of him.

he could not get distracted today. not with so much work to do.

but you, oh you. you hop off his desk, walking around it to drape your arms around his shoulders, pressing a light kiss to his cheek. “i suppose i’ll see you later then.”

he mumbles a reluctant goodbye but your lips linger, brushing dangerously close to that sweet spot behind his ear.

do not give in, his brain instructs, even though it’s getting harder and harder to process the words in front of him with every slide of your hands.

schooling his features into a calm mask, wriothesley draws a deep, steadying breath. it hardly manages to settle him because archons, you were going to be the death of him. he’s always considered himself a steadfast person with an immense focus that’d been built up from a young age. when he set his mind to a task, he was a difficult man to distract.

you and your wiles have always been proof of otherwise.

“just be back before our audience with neuvillette this afternoon.” he tells you, doing his best to ignore the heat rising to his face.

finance reviews, surveillance reports, correspondence. finance reviews, surveillance reports, correspondence. finance reviews, surveillance reports, cor–

“stop it,” he demands when your fingertips glide across his chest, fiddling with the knot of his tie.

“why?” you ask, voice cloyingly innocent. “am i distracting you, your grace?”

“no.”

you clearly do not believe him in the slightest.

“care for a wager then? because i bet i can distract you by the end of the day.”

wriothesley knows that betting, wagering, or gambling against a former member of the house of the hearth is never a good idea. it’s a dangerous one.

he leans back, arms crossed over his chest as he attempts to salvage what’s left of his dignity. “what are the stakes?”

_____

you know your boyfriend. it isn’t hard for you to wind him up and get him right where you want.

which was on top of you.

or underneath you. it depends on the day.

there were no real intricacies in seducing the mighty and fearsome duke. it wasn’t even that hard to fluster him, because a simple brush of your fingers against his was enough to make his cheeks flush with colour.

you just needed to draw him out a little. you’re on the offense, and you know all the right moves required to force him to engage with you.

in an effort to avoid you and (attempt to) win the bet, wriothesley had locked himself in his office for most of the day. it worked out well for you, because you’d been able to sneak into his quarters holding a shopping bag from chioriya boutique.

your plan is put into motion when you hear the duke stomp up the stairs to get ready for the meeting with neuvillette.

“get back behind that screen,” he instructs when you poke your head out from behind the divider. he’s even slapped a hand over his eyes, intent on staying focused on the task at hand.

wriothesley huffs when you laugh, turning his back to you as he rummages through the dresser.

he’s murmuring the little rhyme he uses to knot his tie, so focused on the task that he doesn’t notice the crinkling of the tissue paper as you pull your new…outfit out of its bag.

“hey,” he asks. “are you almost ready?”

“i just need you to lace me up,” you call back, shrugging the shoulders of your gown down a touch before stepping out from behind the divider.

you turn to show him the undone laces of your gown, watching his reflection in the mirror. he’s regaled in the fineries of the duke, having swapped out his shirt for a clean black one and fastened a fine fur coat over his shoulders. you appreciate his appearance greatly, but even more so when he finds your little surprise.

“is this…new?” he asks quietly, gloved fingers brushing undone laces aside to get a better look at what hides underneath your dress.

it was new. a custom set, in fact. your duke likes you in dark lace and sculpted pieces.

he inhales sharply when you take his wrist, gently guiding his hand to one of the slits in the side of your skirt.

wriothesley breathes your name softly when his hand drifts up your dress and settles on your hip, meeting nothing but skin.

a smug, satisfied grin threatens to break out on your face when you feel his lips brush against your shoulder. you had him on the ropes now. he’s just so easy–

his sweet movements cease suddenly and he pushes you away gently.

“you almost got me,” he laughs, quickly removing his hands from underneath your dress. he grips the laces, deft fingers making quick work doing it up and pulling it taut and tight to hide the tempting lace of your brassiere.

“but–”

“go put your underwear back on,” he demands, delivering a firm smack to your rear.

defeated but not the slightest bit deterred, you reluctantly reach for the abandoned garment as your boyfriend glares at the opposite wall. but losing the battle doesn’t mean losing the war.

“should i put on the garter belt too?”

_____

downstairs, neuvillette sighs, cursing his better-than-average hearing.

at least you’d had the sense to leave out some good tea.

#wriothesley x reader #genshin x reader #genshin fluff #wriothesley x you #genshin impact fluff

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otakuworks · 1 year

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❛ 𝐒𝐄𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐑. reborn au

feat. Zhongli x Reincarnated!GN!Reader | PART I | wc. 4.6K

Based on 'See You In My 19th Life' | overview. this webtoon follows the story of a woman who can somehow remember all her past lives.

sum. after a sweet hello, your lips never found its way to say the bittersweet goodbye. because you knew you would always find your way back to him even if he won't recognize you in your renewable lives.

note. some scenes are purposely inaccurate to the canon lore

main.mlist genshin.mlist | xiao ver.

You first met him as Morax, a little child dragon you grew up discreetly meeting at a very convenient time of your day, never knowing what's stored for the two of you.

He first met you as Y/N who resides at the countryside near Mt. Tianheng in hopes to find new things to discover across the vast lands of Teyvat. And he did. He found you.

Young Morax found you crouched under an oak tree, the wind flowing with your otherworldly voice, enrapturing him in blissful comfort.

Perched in the tree branch, he listens intently and let himself melt in your grace. It wasn't the first time he finds you warbling a melodic tune, and each time he comes back to hear more from you, it's always a different song and it wouldn't cease to amaze him how much ditty you know.

He lost count on how often he'd fall asleep with your voice lulling him and wakes up feeling empty as the epilogue of his day is always spent without your presence.

Sometimes he wonders if you know he has been watching you, and if you do, why aren't you approaching him? No matter, young Morax doesn't intend to befriend with you.

But then one day...

"Hello! You must be the boy who likes to hear me sing by the tree."

He was caught red handed, perhaps he became distracted that he didn't realize he's been shamelessly stalking you. He couldn't stop his curiosity to follow you in your way home.

Not only he's been spying on you, now he sounds like a stalker. But you didn't suspect, there wasn't anything to be suspicious of anyway.

"H-Huh? H-How did you know?" He gotta commend you for your keen senses. He's the Dragon between the two of you, which means he's supposed to be the one who has sharper senses.

"You must be good at anything but hiding. I have known you've been following me, but I never get to see you up close, you're really majestic looking, by the way." You chuckled as his poor attempt of masking his flushed face at your compliment.

"I don't mind your company, in fact, I want to be friends with you."

Friends. What a foreign concept for young Morax.

He has heard of that term, it's common among mortals, but he's not a mortal. Does this 'friend' term stretches to immortals like him as well? If so, then he has no reason to refuse.

Says the person who one minute ago thought of every alternative ways to stay out of your way.

He was skeptical at your optimism, most mortals would be astounded at his appearance and try to persuade him to spill whatever secrets he has, but as he got to know you better, he was a bit guilty to categorize you as one of them.

His horns and inhumane features? Young Morax found out you're only fascinated by his unique physical looks. And never doubted it.

"Cool! You have horns just like our boars, where did you get those? Can I touch them?"

"Did you just compare my horns to a pig? Pigs don't even have horns! How disgraceful!"

The sparkle in your eyes quickly died down as it came, and the young Morax feels tight in his chest just seeing your smile turns into a frown. You insulted his pride though!

You mumbled a meek apology but still kept your sheepish smile, a glimmer of hope that one day he'd let you do it.

The next days were spent by you sneaking out your house every midnight to meet up with the dragon, Morax. He's slightly skittish, oddly resembling him that of a cat, which is cute.

You probably shouldn't be calling a literal Dragon cute, legends depicted them as tyrannical creatures who seek treasures.

Ah! Classic children's story to scare the kids away at night, it did affect you in some way.

But you can't help it when he would eagerly look at you whenever he asks you to sing him a song.

You'd sit side by side under the tree, you have to admit he'd either falls asleep amidst your song or asks you for the lyrics so he can sing it to himself too.

You even dedicated a song that lets a certain flower bloom.

"Glaze Lily? What's that?" Young Morax asked with tilted head.

A smile outstretched your lips, "Beautiful, right? It transforms the memories of the land into its fragrance during florescence."

"Really?! Is that why you're always out in the dark?" You chuckled sheepishly, feigning ignorance, "Don't know what you're talking."

You got to know each other, held hands like innocent children, share what little knowledge your pea sized brain can, hug whenever one seeks comfort, eat under the glistening sun.

Morax is... a sensitive individual, albeit rough around the edges, but he's young and still learning, and you're unbelievably patient with his attitude— a quirk from you that he greatly appreciates.

From that, young Morax grew fond of you and it isn't one sided.

He flies by the same tree and gives you random things he finds magnificent, whether it could be a rock he found by the lake or a rare item that no one has ever discovered before.

Well, the legend wasn't lying about Dragons and treasure, for sure

You'd laugh at the strangest things he discovers but accepted them nonetheless. Every object he gives you is worth something.

This has been part of your routine for days, weeks, months, even years maybe. You don't know how much time has gone by whenever you're with him and you never bothered to count.

Before you know it, the two of you are almost in young adulthood, he grew up to be a fine man, much unlike you were expecting. Nothing changed from your friendship, until now.

You were taken by surprise when he suddenly blurted out one day

"I want to show you what I see from up there one day, Y/N."

He gazes at you much differently when he looks at you when you were younger. There's a glint of promise in his eyes that you can't pinpoint, it sent shivers all over your nerves.

"You can just fly me up there, Morax. I'm sure I'm not heavy." You muster a smile in an attempt to ease your quickening heartbeats.

He never gave a reply, he only stared at you so intensely that it feels like he's poking your deepest and innermost thoughts.

The way he stares at you never fails to summon the tickling butterflies in your stomach and the blood on your cheeks. You merely regarded that as your hormones, anyone would be flustered if someone they're close to stare at them like that.

You should've known better that nothing in your world stays permanent. The only thing you remember after that day was his twisted look of desperation to keep you alive and tear stained amber dyes trying to get the last image of you in his memories.

"N-No... Y/N please stay with me. D-Don't leave m-me just yet." It hurts you more than the numbing pain in your abdomen to see him broke down like a cornered prey. So helpless and vulnerable.

"I-I'll always be w-with you, Morax..."

So cruel, just when you've begun to realize the burgeoning feelings you have for the Dragon, fate took you away before you have the chance to confess.

Should you be selfish to confess your feelings to him? If you do, it seems like you'll be punishing him an endless torture ahead, and you would never wish Morax to suffer for eternity.

You only smiled and caressed his horns, even in your deathbed you're glad you died in the arms of the man you ever loved.

At the last moment, you heard the anguished wail erupts from his throat as he clutches your form closer, begging and crying for you to come back, to not leave him like this, that he needed you, that he loves you. His pleas fell on deaf ears, for you weren’t there to hear him anymore.

But it became clear to you that he reciprocated your love.

It came a shocking twist when you opened your eyes you can hear multiple cooing sounds from around you. Didn't I die in his arms? Where am I? Turns out, you were reborn. But not as Y/N anymore and you were given a surname.

Unfortunately, the Celestia isn't so forgiving. You were suffering from an unknown illness that took away your second life at such a young age.

You trained hard and learned martial arts in your third life as you were born from a family whose tradition is to produce well-trained warriors in the future.

Fourth to eight life came by like a blur, there were times when you get to lived as an innocent child only for it to be ripped away a few years later with your past memories resurfacing.

You stopped counting after it hits a dozen, born in different class, society and unnamed nation. There's no point of it.

All you want is to look for Morax, but will he remember you? Will he even recognize you as Y/N? You're no longer the kid he grew fond of. No, you're much different than before.

What about him? Decades have past, does he still know of your name? You could've been a fragment of his childhood that he dare not talk about with his new friends.

Will I make your life more difficult by trying to reconnect with you, Morax?

Those thoughts haunted you for nights, often occuring in your dreams.

But what can you do, you're so far away from Mt. Tianheng, you don't even know if the village you lived in still exists nor do you know if Morax still visits the tree you first met.

Even if you did meet him in your new life, you ought to stay as acquaintances.

Aiding him in the shadows and lessening his burdens within your power.

In your hundredth life, all of your training in your third life is proven useful at the moment. You're known as the infamous warrior with no name that took down the monsters around Teyvat, you were revered to the people in the Guili Assembly.

War is threatening to wage amongst Gods and mortals alike.

When it came, no one is safe in and out of the battlefield. To survive they must fight tooth and nail, paint the lands in sea of red and play the game of thrones.

It was gratuitously morbid, gruesome and unjust. A macabre of series of deaths surrounded your every wake, your hundredth life is the epitome of a living nightmare. Horrifyingly memorable.

You were at the sidelines, watching as the war unfold, keeping tabs on Morax's allies and eradicating whatever threat they face.

That's when you came across the stunning Goddess Guizhong, the Ruler of Clouds, Goddess of Dust. A very close companion of Morax whom he met at the Guili Assembly along with the others.

She's capable and quick-witted, a type of peculiar person Morax wouldn't hesitate to be friends with.

As of the moment, a claymore is alarmingly closing its gap towards her, ready to slice her open.

Then you heard him scream, a cry of a man who's about to lose everything he has gained of.

That cry sent flashbacks of his tear-stained cheeks. No, you don't want to see him like that again! You'd do anything to chase away that vulnerable image of Morax, he deserves happiness and love.

Your feet went autopilot and swept away the Goddess out of the way, severing your lower limbs in the process and instantly killing you. Your eyes opened and you have started your new life.

Was Morax relieve that Guizhong lived? Did he wonder why a stranger would save her? Did he ever ask who you were? Did he... recognize you at the very least?

Your new parents panicked as they tried to appease the crying infant in their arms. Unbeknownst to your pained heart.

You saw for a brief moment before your demise how Guizhong's plausible absence will affect him. He will mourn her death as much as he lamented yours. For decades or centuries, you know he has been scarred by your passing.

You don't want him to go through that again. It's a different pain you feel when you see him tearing up, you rather get minced by a claymore than to watch him break down.

He garnered the reputation of a tyrant— but you knew better that Morax grew up with compassionate heart, he appreciates anyone no matter how insignificant they think they are.

Which is why you hold yourself from meeting him. He may not remember you, but he will certainly get attached to you once you had your way to his heart.

And a dragon who can outlive you in any lives will only suffer more from your death.

You dedicated your lives in living peacefully, learning history and new things as humanity evolves.

You vow to never fall in love if it isn't Morax you'll spend your mortal life with.

Even if he has someone he can fall in love with.

"Have you heard about the land Lord Morax and Lady Guizhong are building in Mt. Tianheng?" Gossips are everywhere about the infamous partners who survived the Archon War, there's no mouth that has not utter their names, and you're no exception.

A grin spreads over your lips as you sip your tea with elegance, "I've heard, I haven't seen them in person but the rumors about them guaranteed they're ambitious people with good hearts."

This has been a hobby you never knew; praising Morax to elate people's opinion about him. It's your small contribution to his flourishing nation.

You want people to love and respect Morax dearly just as you loved him in your childhood.

You prayed to the new Archons for Morax to find someone he can love and lean on. Someone that can be his source of strength to keep living. Someone much better than leaving him with death.

Now that he found someone he can be with, your goal in your next lives is to protect Liyue's history.

From the names of ancient relics and objects, war waged by the Gods, Nations that were built underneath the once blood soaked lands, fallen heroes who are forgotten— you know all of them. You're openly willing to offer tutelage to the inquisitive.

You sighed at the thought, it certainly will be lonely in your part. Immortal gods can still die— a death in which they'd leave their memories behind and start anew. Morax will eventually cease to existence with lovable Nation and Guizhong to remember him.

And you? Countless past lives yet you never found true happiness, and none of them was worth to remember for anyone.

Part of you feels happy for Morax finally moving on from your death eons ago, but you're still human so you're susceptible to those horrible impulses of bitterness at a basic level.

But you don't want to be a person who looks at Guizhong with jaundiced eyes just because you couldn't have Morax, so you suck it up and move on the fact Morax is in love with another.

At least my sacrifice isn't a total waste.

"Aren't they? I've met Lady Guizhong, she's such a beautiful and soft spoken woman. She and the Lord of Geo are a perfect match. I wish the two of them eternal blessings."

A tug at your heart left an unpleasant feeling, your brain tried to reason that at least he's with someone that'll love him more than you did. That can appease your bitter aching heart a bit.

How ironic. You built a nation where you first met me.

And showed her what you can see up there like you promised me.

Is that how you honor my death, Morax?

"Wow! You sure do know many things, Y/N!" The floating emergency food expressed her awe in your display of knowledge and the traveller couldn't agree more with her, "She's right, you never cease to surprise us."

Their exclaims were followed by your enchanting laugh, "I'm glad I can be at your service, Honory Knight."

You were simply ethereal to look at, you maybe a mortal like the traveller but the Blondie thinks otherwise.

Paimon and her travelling buddy met you by the Starnach Cliff when they were attempting to subdue Dvalin. Jean and Diluc already know you're part of the Adventurer's Guild as you often visit Mondstadt from time to time.

They didn't expect you to join them in their excursion in Stormterror's Lair, it turns out you're a great addition to the team.

You befriended with the traveller after the whole Stormterror fiasco and catch up with Kaeya.

You don't stand out the most in the crowd, you can blend in with everyone and no one would acknowledge your existence. But the traveller can sense the weight of the wisdom you withhold.

It almost feels like you're one of the Seven...

"Is there something else I can help you with, Traveller?"

"Huh?! Oh... I— Uhh... You've been telling us stories and fun facts about Mondstadt. If you don't mind, can you tell us about Liyue?"

For an ephemeral moment, the traveller saw your facade crumbles and slowly morphed into a nostalgic expression.

"Hmm. I'll tell you a quick introduction. Liyue is built in Mt. Tianheng after the Lord of Geo attained one of seven seats, unlike the Anemo Archon who's known to not show himself, he descends down once a year to give blessings to the people of Liyue."

"Exactly how Venti told us, but more detailed."

"He sounds a lot more of a decent God than Tone-Deaf Bard."

Her statement elicited a quiet snicker from you, "I'll be off then, I'll see you around soon." Paimon's expression deflated, "You're not coming with us?"

You shake your head, "I'll visit you when I can, until then I hope for your safe travels."

You forced a smile and took a different path from the traveller, as their figures disappear in the horizon, you felt your smile slip up as the sun whisks past the mountains turning to dusk.

Solitude in the dark has been part of your daily routine, you come and go whenever you feel like it, not knowing when to return.

The excuse you told to Paimon isn't entirely a lie, you couldn't bring yourself to go in Liyue when there's active Fatui agents scattered around the vicinity.

Let's just say you're not in good terms with the Fatui. Who isn't?

Nevertheless, whatever curse you have continued to persist in your thousandth life. You roamed around Teyvat and tell stories that even historians don't know.

Repeated lives were lived by just you traversing in each corners of Teyvat that even Archons never knew it existed.

Along the way, you've come terms with your feelings and settled it down like a dormant volcano. Morax is your first love, you enjoyed reminiscing the memories you made with him, you keep those memories locked up in the depths of your mind and often recount them in particular leisure time of the day.

You still love him, and you'll always be by his side whenever he needs a helping hand, but enough is enough, you've suffered enough to your own idiocy and fears. It's time to move on.

Morax continued to strive forward because he has changed, for the better of course. If you want to continue living the next lives of yours then you need to change too.

You met new friends and companions that you begin to trust and have fun with, the traveller and the emergency food included. It wasn't lonely as you thought it would be.

Sometimes you wonder why do you have such curse bestowed upon you. Did the Celestia punish you for a crime? Did you touch a forbidden relic in your first life? Is there a way to get rid of it?

You stopped in your tracks and you gaze up in the sky.

Am I the only one with such curse?

Damn, you really need to get your priorities straight when you have so many unanswered questions.

Basking the remnants of the ever glowing star, you turn around to walk the path that leads you to the Land of Eternity.

A new journey awaits you as you skid through the mycelium path.

Rex Lapis has died.

What a year starting with the news of a tragic death of an Archon.

Fret not Liyue citizens, Rex Lapis assumed the form of Zhongli as a consultant in the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor. In all honesty, he thinks you would facepalm on how poorly delivered that news was.

Zhongli now blends in with the mortals, often strolling to acknowledge the accomplishments he has done as an Archon.

There were too many sacrifices he made just to achieve such title and godly powers. It's uncountable.

Whenever he strolls down the streets of Liyue, there's never a day that he is not reminded of the fact Mt. Tianheng is the very foundation of Liyue. It serves as a reminder that you are his pillar when intrusive thoughts start to linger in his mind.

Oftentimes, your face is only a blur in his memory, no matter what he does he can't seem to remember your face, but your name has been engraved on his mind for eons.

He misses hearing the sound of your name leaving his lips. He misses how ignorant you both were to the world's suffering. He misses your mesmerizing voice that lulls him to sleep.

Whoever fellow Archon listening to his complex thoughts must have heard him and granted his not-so-impossible wish.

"Hey look. Doesn't that sound like a story Y/N has told us before?" A child(e)— no, a floating fae pointed at the storyteller.

But Zhongli couldn't care less about whoever she was pointing. Did he hear her right? Was it just his ears deceiving him?

Y/N... that's your name.

That's the name he longed to hear again.

Why in the seven nations of Teyvat would they mention your name? Is it just a coincidence that someone has the same name as you? No, that couldn't be it.

Something flared inside him, it's been awhile since he felt this excitement, it's not far fetched when he became your friend.

With no recollection, he became friends with the traveller and the emergency food floating companion.

When he asks them about you, an array of hope filled his entire being and he swore his Dragon feature almost burst into existence

Y/N L/N, a member of the Adventurer's Guild, he's certain you've been in Liyue if you know about its rich culture.

But where are you? He wants to go find you. Hug you like when you were kids. Sing him songs. Bring you random things he can find. Speak the words that were left unspoken when you died.

So many questions brooding his mind; are you really Y/N? If so, were you reincarnated? Does that mean you don't remember him?

The elation he felt dropped. Right... he shouldn't be disappointed if it turns out his hunch is wrong. Even if you're not the Y/N he was expecting, he wants to know you as who you are and not compare the similarities and differences you have with the Y/N he knows.

"Oh yeah, Y/N mentioned they'll be visiting Liyue soon, Mr. Zhongli." The Traveler quipped, assessing the abrupt change of emotions on the consultant's face at the mention of your name.

Paimon and her travelling buddy can't help to wonder if you two are acquaintances, or perhaps something more than that. Zhongli seems to be expecting your arrival from now on.

"Is that so? Thank you for informing me, Traveler. I shall see to it that their stay will be comfortable." He smiled.

Stay in what? In the Funeral Parlor? The Traveler sweat drop while Paimon is tempted to point out that's Verr Goldet's job. Good thing their companion put a hand on her mouth and excuse themselves

There's no time to stall! He thought.

He's determined to check it himself, it can go two ways and Zhongli won't be petulant of the result.

Archons forbid if he ever finds you, because he will not let you go.

>> PART 2

©OTAKUWORKS | 2022

#zhongli #genshin impact #genshin zhongli #genshin angst #zhongli x reader #zhongli angst #morax #see you in my 19th life #webtoon #crossover #genshin crossover #zhongli fic #genshin impact angst #reborn au

5K notes · View notes

emoangel44 · 3 months

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The thing I've always loved most about aa4 is how much darker the tone is than the rest of the series in a way that isn't just edgy for the sake of it, but subverts your expectations from the original 3 games in a really interesting way. The trilogy was built upon the trust Phoenix had in others, and it was something we as players could almost always feel certain in. AA4 flips this on its head and makes it so Apollo effectively can't trust anyone but himself.

Your mentor, who the in the trilogy was a paragon of wisdom you could always turn to no matter what, gets revealed to be the culprit and sent to jail in the first trial and by the end of the game his list of crimes has stacked high but you still have so few answers on why he did any of it.

Your boss, the goofy protagonist of the trilogy, is now inexplicably a washed-up, disgraced, cheating poker player with an implied drinking problem who seemingly found a new hobby in evidence forgery and jury rigging.

He has a codependent relationship with his daughter, your assistant, who usually is a completely innocent and hapless victim of circumstance. She sees herself as the provider for the house and will help her father cheat at poker, or forge evidence, or guilt trip the poor attorney they knowingly screwed of out of a job into working for them for dirt cheap.

The detective, the only other returning main character, a previous assistant, is completely changed since we last saw her. In the trilogy she was chipper and bright despite the hardships she faced, and now she's unfriendly and burned out, turned bitter by the world. The scene we're first properly introduced to her in Apollo genuinely spends several minutes thinking his boss is making him bribe her with cocaine.

Every single defendant is a criminal guilty of something other than what they're charged for. Each case centers around an underground black-market poker ring, a mafia family and medical malpractice, a smuggling ring, and a family of forgers and an incredibly shady troupe of magicians. The one thing all of these people have in common is that none of them will tell you literally anything about what's happening, half of them clearly reveling in being as big of cryptic assholes as possible.

The only person who doesn't fit this description is, for once, the prosecutor. Usually your biggest obstacle and the most morally corrupt of the main cast, he's the only person who's both 100% on the side of truth and on the same page as you for the entire game. He's just as clueless as you, being used nothing more than a chess piece just like you are.

But the truly masterful thing about AA4 is how morally grey it is. These characters aren't just one note villains. They're not even villains at all. Most of them aren't even malicious.

Your boss, for all the low levels he stoops to, is underneath it all the same guy he's always been, doing everything he can to bring a criminal to justice and protect his family. Your assistant is a sweet girl who truly cares about you, she's just prioritizing herself and her fathers safety before anything else. The detective is the same passionate and kind woman under everything else. The rest of the defendants are genuinely well-meaning young people who got involved in shady stuff they didn't fully understand.

The game is filled with good people trying to make the best of bad circumstances. The game has just as many fun moments as the original trilogy. For all it's rough appearance, the game has a similar heart. For every unanswered question or unrighted wrong, there's a smile or a hope for a better future. For every bad action, there's usually someone trying their best behind it. The game is melancholic and dark, but isn't afraid to let good shine through. It knows there's no shadows without the light.

#ace attorney #ace attorney apollo justice #aa4 #ajaa #post rescued from my drafts

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centrally-unplanned · 6 months

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The thing about morality is that it only matters when it's real. Discussions of rules or norms for what is right or wrong are almost always, at some level, illusions, approximating reality and guiding decisions in an uncertain world - which does not make them useless, just contextual. Profaning god in your bedroom can never be “wrong” - there is no one to hear you, no one to be hurt by it. You can only show something is really wrong from the intentions of the actions and their results.

So with that out of the way, lets talk about Knives Chau - and specifically, how the comic vs the anime handled that part of the story.

Scott Pilgrim vs The Reification of Dating a High Schooler

There is an extremely pervasive meme in Scott Pilgrim discourse that our titular Scott is a scumbag. Our returning whipping boy the Kotaku article loves this idea, describing Scott’s “detestable behavior” and wondering “was it too subtle the first time about Scott being an absolute shitbag?”. There is this viral headline screenshot from an interview floating around right now riding that same line:

Which is, of course, pretty much false. Its up to you in the end, “shitbag” is a subjective description, but the story just isn’t about events that would be described that way. Its the story of a guy getting over an awful ex, hurting some people, then meeting a new person, and realizing step-by-step what it takes to be their partner and levelling up as a person each time he does. He starts off broken, and Ramona of course is just as broken - getting better is their mutual arc. And its fundamentally about relationship drama - those stakes don’t make you a scumbag lol, just clueless, unless you are terminally online and don’t know what real stakes are.

I will let O’Malley get the last word in with his quote the writer of that interview is hilariously trying to torture into his headline:

There's a bit of, like, young people see Scott Pilgrim a certain way, and, you know, there's a lot of, like, 18-19-year-old fans that are really judgmental of the character. They're like, "Oh, he's a bad person. I would never do that." But I always tell them, like, get back to me when you're 25 or 30, tell me how your 20s went. Were you a bad person? Everyone has to make choices and do things in life that maybe they're not going to be proud of later.

Scott is a scumbag the way everyone is - you yourself will likely commit similar sins; that at least seems to be the authorial intent, and I agree with it.

So how does dating Knives Chau slot into this?

Despite the memes, age, in fact, is just a number - two consenting people dating does not a sin make. The reason dating underage people is bad is because of its consequences, not the categorical imperative. So what are the consequences of dating Knives Chau in the comic?

Knives is, as a consequence of dating a guy who is simply via his age able to appear so much cooler than her peers to her, absolutely obsessed with Scott. She worships his band:

She starts aping his taste in music and interests; she slots herself into his circle of friends, who don’t relate to her, even after their breakup (often drinking her way through it):

She totally spirals after he cheats on her and leaves her, blaming everyone but him; she is wounded and hurt for months, a year, over a relationship that lasted weeks:

Knives Chau is a literal poster child for why you should not date a high schooler. She is, at every turn, emotionally not ready to date someone who is not at her own level of social development, and is deeply affected by it. It is, sometimes, played for laughs - that is the nature of the comic, everything is played for laughs, but I would have given it a bit more dramatic space myself - but over the course of the story Scott himself realizes how much of an ass he was to her, and how he didn’t take what happened seriously.

The reason I view this with charity is what Scott did to lead to this - he met a cute girl on the bus! He was deeply hurt and kind of numb in life, and found someone who was safe and easy to talk to. He never attempts to kiss her (she starts trying to kiss him which he repeatedly rejects) they don’t even hold hands, and it lasted a few weeks. He knew deep down, pretty much immediately, it was fake:

Then he met an actual person he liked, and with some browbeating from Wallace agreed to break up with her, but chickened out for a day. Then the next day he decides to break up with her, and she drops the L bomb before he can, so he instantly ends it. It is really awkward for everyone involved.

Pushing off an awkward and uncomfortable conversation resulting from a dumb decision you made on a whim for a week - god I relate to that, that’s everyone! If you think it isn’t you I think you're lying. Its why this relationship is so interesting in the comic - Scott is always one step removed from it, putting it at abeyance, and the fact that something so minor to him is so destructive to her is a really good portrait of how these kinds of things happen. Its so easy to hurt someone when you don’t even know what the stakes are, and when its coming not from malice, but from weakness. Its a very good portrayal of a bad relationship because its bad in a relatable way, even if as a story is a bit more dramatic than is typical. And its a great portrayal of how fraught age gaps can be - this bad relationship is part of what makes the comic a good story.

But its 2023, we don’t give a shit about any of that anymore!

O’Malley in the same interview discusses the cultural shift around these kind of relationships:

I felt like in this day and age, I had to provide clarity on that [relationship]. Because when I wrote the first books, I took it for granted that people would understand that dating a high schooler was a bad thing. But on the internet, in this day and age, people are like, "He's dating a high schooler. That's terrible!" Like, that's pretty much what I say on page 1 of the book. But I try to spell it out a little bit more this time.

He isn’t telling the full story though - it was bad in 2004, but not bad the way it is today. Its dubiousness was mitigated by its frequency; people were doing this kind of shit all the time. Scott Pilgrim is a bass guitarist in an indie band; fucking groupies is like built into the cover charge. Half the problem Scott has in dating Knives is that she is the wrong kind of 17-year-old - had Scott met her at 1 am in the aftermath of a Born Ruffian’s concert at the Whippet Lounge knocking down shots off the back of her fake ID, no one would have even noticed. Hell, no one does notice; there is someone who actually makes out with a drunk 17-year-old Knives Chau in the comic Scott Pilgrim, and isn’t Scott Pilgrim:

No one cares about Kim’s inebriated petting session here; that is 10% because she is a Girl and Girls Can’t Be Predators, 40% because she isn’t the main character, and 50% because Kim Pine’s dating history is not a useful proxy battleground for GamerGate-adjacent nerd culture wars in ~2014; but that is road that goes directly to hell, so let's veer back.

The point, of course, is that in 2004 this is a crime flecked with normality, something your friend would do and you would maybe just cock an eyebrow at:

Its not that in discourse today - it is radically more condemned. It is not a contextual sin, but an original sin. It underwent a process I am calling reification - where it goes from being just a shifting descriptor of reality, to a thing in itself, with a defined (reified) meaning. And to be clear, that is in a lot ways on net a good thing? The reality is that, despite everyone’s protestations, there are today thousands of 17-year-olds taking the L line out to a gig at the Brooklyn Steel and going down on a 25-year-old guy they just met in a back alley off Frost St who swears he’s a “drummer in a sick new band” that played here “just last week”, he promises, and she is having a great time, bragging to her friends about how hot his tattoo was, and then shipping herself off to Cornell next year to start on her pre-med track with barely a memory. But for every dozen of those, there is at least one person who is deeply, deeply hurt, a Knives Chau who never deserved this. The rest can have a slightly worse time, its probably worth it.

That does not make it a categorical imperative, though - the reification has masked that truth. The crime comes from the context - those other girls aren’t victims, they would laugh at you for suggesting they were. But in 2023, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is no longer concerned with context. It is telling you, right to your face, that Scott is a bad dude. Over and over and over - jokes from the Evil League about “wow, I thought we were evil”, its not subtle.

Yet meanwhile, Knives Chau is, like, fine? She dates Scott, is totally into him, and then literally in the middle of his funeral forgets about him for Envy crashing it:

Picks up the bass and has yuri-inflected playtime with Kim the literal next day:

And less than a week later is pitching an off-broadway musical adaption of Scott’s life to a billionaire Matthew Patel - I can’t explain that okay, I’m as confused as you are.

She is mad at Scott, sure, but she is over it in a matter of days. Hell, notice how she was already a fan of the Clash at Demonhead now? There is no scene of Scott introducing her to his kind of music. He didn’t change her. By the end she is a member of his band and they are totally chill:

This is, again, about a week or two later.

Knives is not an important character in this show, way less than in the original, this is no grand sin. But I still find it very interesting: O’Malley is wrong. He “spells it out” way less in this version when it comes to the actual consequences of Scott’s actions. Everyone’s verbal condemnations are substitutes to replace the real damage his actions dealt in the comic. Scott is a better person this time, in a world that has universally agreed he is worse (still not a good move ofc). Even Scott’s moment of apology to Knives about their dating is so tepid its almost Straussian:

Its ‘frowned upon’…which is not the same thing as saying it was wrong! I don’t think this is intentional, its just funny, but its a nice capstone nevertheless.

And it had to be this way, not just for media in general, but for Scott Pilgrim in particular. Not only are sexual crimes far more reified today, but Scott Pilgrim’s sin of dating a high schooler is reified as well - its the first piece of discourse everyone encounters about it. Its the ur-debate of the franchise. The idea of actively engaging on this point, and digging deeper into it…its too hot, too controversial. Way better to shy away from it, disown it. The discourse wrote this part of the script over the course of a decade; its not something the creatives had any say in.

Honestly they should have just gone all the way - just make Knives 19. Then how tepid it is wouldn’t be a distraction anymore. Scott can just be an asshole for cheating on her, that would work fine. If you aren’t going to commit to the reality of these things, you shouldn’t bother with it at all.

#scott pilgrim #essay

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radiance1 · 5 months

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A castle mysteriously appears in Gotham one night.

Nobody who noticed it knows where it came from, nor how it got there as it seemingly appeared overnight. It wasn't anything big, as far as castle's were concerned, it seemed to be on the smaller side of things.

However, no one could truly estimate it's actual size. For there seemed to be an ever-present fog that never seemed to stray past the castle's gates.

Just like the fog, you always seemed to hear the cawing of crows and the flapping of bats whenever you step close enough. Yet their visibility was kept hidden in the fog.

Appearances aside, there did seem to be something... off, about the castle and not just because it appeared from thin air, no. It seemed to have a distinct aura of something... other.

No one knew how to explain it, but they could tell there was nothing natural about it. There was something fundamentally wrong with the castle, it wasn't the way it appeared out of nowhere, nor it's appearance.

===

When Sam finally became an adult, she didn't have to think twice about moving out. It was a bit difficult, with her parents not wanting to let her go just yet, but her grandmother managed to persuade them, thankfully.

When she was younger, Sam had always dreamed of owning a castle. Though its appearance did change in her mind when she grew older, from pretty and pink to one of darker colors and crows, which is why she never got one when she was younger, she realized.

But now that she was an adult, what was stopping her?

Nothing, that's what.

So, Sam buys one that matches her tastes and moves in. There was a lot of space, far more than she really ever thought about and now had to find a use for.

Magic.

Was something that enthralled Sam ever since she was young, that and the occult as a whole. So, for a few months after moving did she try and get her hands on things like magical tomes, items, scripts and learn it.

Surprisingly, she was strongly successful in her attempts of learning magic. It was surprising to be sure, but now that she compares it to the portal to the afterlife, having a half dead friend and having hunted down ghosts, she realizes that magic wouldn't be that much farfetched in the equation.

A fair bit of her time now was spent covering her castle in wards, sigils, and runes, ones that would strengthen themselves over time, various protection wards and multiple others that she found useful. Most of them were ones that she found through text, though others were ones she personally made.

After she finished the entirety of the castle, she studied thoroughly to gain more knowledge and power for herself, she even made a few spells of her own along with various potions. Unfortunately, she was interrupted in her studies by various other witches, because apparently having such a powerful fledgling witch on her lonesome was too tempting of an offer to pass up for the nearby covens.

So she had to... move, before they tried to force her to join them. As for how, well, she moved her entire castle! What better way to refuse, really?

Unfortunately, it was her first time using such large-scale teleportation magic and she messed it up. Not that her calculations on where the castle was supposed to be were wrong, but while in the midst of moving through space she was... thrown off kilter.

She didn't even know how or what caused her to mess up. But her castle both was and wasn't where she wanted it to be. Her original destination was coordinates near Amity Park, and while they were on said coordinates.

This wasn't Amity Park.

To say she worried was an understatement. She scrambled to find something about where she ended up, and realized not only was she thrown off kilter, but she was also thrown off so badly that she ended up in an entirely different dimension. Luckily, she managed to make the philosopher's stone.

To say making it was easy would be wrong, for even she didn't know how she created it. It was by accident and for a while she didn't even know she had made it, when she had and tried to do something with it the stone had, uh, well.

It fused into her skin.

It had placed itself right over her face, on her chest, and it granted her immortality it seemed. Though that wasn't the effect she was currently thankful for no, the effect of making gold would be valuable to her, she wouldn't have the Manson wealth, but she could at the very least sustain herself.

For now, though, she did have her studies to get back to.

#dc x dp #dp x dc #dpxdc #dp x dc crossover #dcxdp #dc x dp crossover #I remembered about my old au somewhere in the Batpham discord #I think it was called Hecate's castle or something?#But that had a hand in this post #Sam is a powerful witch and that attracted the gazes of various covens #So she just took her castle and left #Unfortunately something through off what was otherwise a successful large scale teleportation #And Sam ended up in the DC universe in Gotham #She also made the philosopher's stone but that one was more on accident than anything purposeful #Like she cannot replicate what she did to make it at all #If I see ghost king Danny in this post I will riot.#This is Sam-centric #We don't need that ghost twink in here #Sorry that was mean ily Danny #Not when your ghost king tho downgrade to a prince or non royalty and then we'll talk #AHEM #Anyways #I was thinking of how Sam could be called Hecate here but ahhhh #We'll see about that in the future lol #Wow this is a lot of tags #Anyways I shall stop now

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most-datable-datable-bracket · 27 days

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ROUND 5 MATCH 6

Claude propaganda:

"To say Claude has trust issues is an understatement—you have to spend half the game earning his. (Claude isn't even his real name!) Once you have it, though, he's absolutely ride or die for you until the stars go out. He is so full of heart and ambition: He wants both sides of his heritage to get along, he wants to open borders and eliminate xenophobia and promote equality between commonfolk, and deep down, I think he craves a partner to stand with him at that new dawn, or an equal who sees his vision for the future and will fight for it just as hard. Nobody believed in him when he was a kid, but if you put your faith in him, he'll return it tenfold. Some people don't like that he's calculating, or has to leave the player character at the end of the game to go back to his homeland, but both are necessary elements for his goals to change things. He will always come back, and everyone who bets against him and his love for his companions is wrong with a big fat W. #KhalidForMostDatablePrez"

"Claude is a fun little onion of facades. He calls himself the embodiment of distrust, he acts like he's carefree and without worries, an unscrupulous schemer--and so many in universe buy into that hook line and sinker. He's used to others viewing him with suspicion and uses it as armor to obscure his not-so-dark truth: that he cares immensely, that he values minimizing the loss of life, and that above all he has so much hope that people will fundamentally choose to do better given the choice.

His front guards a center that his conflict filled world would be happy to tear apart. As the child of people from two nations in constant conflict--one of which is explicitly isolationist and dehumanizes those outside its church's reach--he hasn't really had a place where he can be without his facade. As a child he thought he could run, but when confronted with the fact that this hatred existed no matter where he ran, he chose to instead try to create a more just and kind world.

His inability to let others in beyond his facade at first may lead to a sense of distance, but isn't it then all the more satisfying when you're allowed in? All he wants is a little trust, a little faith, and--like what he wants to give everyone--a chance to be better.

And like that you got a charming young lad with a fun personality that your grandma would be thrilled to have stay forever."

Josephine propaganda:

“you get to have a full Disney princess style romance with her, she is the most precious, the most sweet, I love her so much 🥺”

“Josephine's one of the "behind the scenes" companion for the protagonist and she advises them on diplomacy-related matters.

Her personal quest and romance is fairy-tale worthy: she gets threatened with assassination, you help her restore her family's fortune, you get threatened by her best friend to not break her heart, she doesn't dare to hope you mean anything serious when flirting until you spell it out for her, after which Josie agrees to a deeper relationship... And immediately after that she finds out her family has engaged her to a random noble without her knowledge!! You publicly challenge the suitor to a one-on-one duel to win her hand, she finds out and interrupts the duel because she's worried of the Inquisitor throwing literally the entire plot away and risk life in combat for her... To which of course you can confess that they're doing it because they love Josephine, and they get the cutest cutscene with Josie jumping in the Inquisitor's arms and them spinning her around before kissing each other <3 The betrothed steps away because he sees true love between the two. She and the Inquisitor stay together through the end game and after it, gaining a "second home" with her and her family.

She really believes in the Inquisitor's cause and from the very first conversations with her, she asks questions about your background and tries to make you feel welcomed (especially appreciated if the Inquisitor isn't human since people are less trusting of them). She's politically smart but dislikes violence, overall very sweet but still strong... Josie tends to overwork herself (she's a perfectionist) and at first she tries to keep a professional air at all times but if you encourage her, she will rant to you and spill all the tea about nobles lol.”

#claude von riegan #Fire Emblem #Fire Emblem: Three Houses #FE:3H #josephine montilyet #Dragon Age #dragon age inquisition #Round 5 #MDDC 2

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cheralith · 3 months

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to a heart's content — 「 single father!miguel o'hara x reader (part iii) 」

content warnings ; fem!reader, implied fem bodied!reader, use of she/her pronouns, reader wears dresses and makeup, mild violence mention

contains ; single father!miguel o'hara, boss!miguel o'hara, assistant!reader, angst, angst with some comfort, unedited/not beta read as of 2/24

word count ; 8.5k

notes ; we're so back. am i severely late to posting this? very. did i at least get it done after too many months? also yes. i also apologize in advance to those i tagged that are no longer interested in the series, as i merely tagged people that had commented regardless of time. lmk if you no longer want to be tagged in the last part, i promise i won't take offense at all!

parts ; one two three four (tba)

THREE YEARS AGO

“My name is (Y/N) (L/N), it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. O’Hara. Please let me assist you at any need possible.”

Miguel peered at you through his reading glasses, averting his attention from his laptop to fully examine the stranger that stood in his office. Dark hazelnut eyes scan the appearance of a young woman dressed in black slacks and an ironed white blouse standing stiffly next to his superiors that eyed him with more eagerness than he liked. He could already tell that you were a shy one, a person that wasn’t too accustomed to the outside world and its people; you stood with stiff posture; it was one that exemplified nerve rather than confidence from the way that you almost seem paralyzed in your place.

Caldworth, one of the superiors that stood by your side, placed a wrinkly and veiny hand on your shoulder and showed you off to him as if you were a painting up for bidding. “We choose a sharp one for you. (Y/N) here is rather attentive, so don’t be shy about letting her get to know you better, Miguel.”

Miguel stayed quiet, still skeptical about this sudden new arrangement for him that was brought up at the last minute. He lacked a certain sort of anticipation that would usually behold anyone else in his position—a new person entering their work life would usually be an exciting, rousing meeting seeing as how it would be a new addition to what the higher-ups would refer to as “family.” A loose term, Miguel often thought… very loose, even. To even have the courage to compare coworkers to something as intimate as family was something that didn’t sit well with Miguel. Blame it on the certain circumstances on his own familial life, but even anyone else that had their brain in the somewhat of the right spot would understand that mere coworkers were nothing compared to family.

At least in his case.

“I’ve greatly admired your work in the past,” you said almost robotically, “so I hope I can be of any help in your future accomplishments—no matter how big or small.”

Miguel cocked his head. He fought the urge to raise an eyebrow at what he began to concur was something scripted via his superiors. Something about your tone of voice seemed… flat; devoid of any actual enthusiasm.

Caldworth and his partner began to see themselves out, leaving him to babysit you. “Well, you two have at it! Maybe go out for a cup of coffee to familiarize yourselves, get to know each other better since you both are essentially going to be around each other all the time,” Caldworth stated, making Miguel twitch from the last part.

Just before they left, Caldworth offered the glint of his eye over his shoulder, the peek of a tight-lipped grin ever so slightly visible.

“And don’t forget, we’re all family here!” he cheered before the slam of a door shut you and Miguel in.

Immediately, Miugel noticed that your shoulders caved inward, indicating that you were finally able to breathe properly without the surveillance of people that were essentially in charge of your life. He eyed you again from the top of his glasses before he took them off and rested them in between his fingers, letting them dangle lazily.

“Did they tell you to say that?”

You jolted in your spot. Nerves seemingly reshocked with the same anxiety from before, you turned yourself to face your new boss again with a much more paled, yet evident expression—wide-eyed, pursed-lipped, gritted jaw—and swallowed thickly. Almost in a shameful manner, you silently nodded your head.

“W-was…” you started, “was it that obvious?”

“Somewhat,” Miguel murmured simply and closed his laptop. “Don’t listen to what they say, just make yourself as comfortable as possible. I’m sure neither of us want to be that comfortable with each other.”

Your lips pressed themselves into a tight line, hitching a sharp breath before it’s replaced with another stiff nod. There was no user’s manual of sorts that was given to you by your superiors. They merely told you to do exactly what Miguel needed, so if this is what he wanted—for you two to maintain distance—then so be it. If anything, it’s easier to breathe this way for both parties.

And it was like that for a rather long time; the both of you never came too close to the other person. It was strictly a professional workplace relationship, one that didn’t issue any room for intimacy because it wasn’t needed. There were no lunch or dinner get-togethers outside work hours, there was barely any small talk between you both, and you and he didn’t even bother getting each others’ personal numbers despite being consistently around the other like air—both parties thought the work phones were more than enough. There was no need for you to learn about his likes, his dislikes, his favorite foods, and Miguel couldn’t certainly be bothered with your own slices of life. To each their own, if you minded your business about him, he’d do the same to you.

It was a fair trade and a sufficient barter that satisfied you and him; there need not be any excess of the unnecessary.

That was, until a certain day that Miguel was held back during his usual hours to continue working on lab reports—work that didn’t allow him freedom from this hell of a company to see his own salvation.

“If it’s an urgent matter, Mr. O’Hara, I don’t mind taking on some of the workload,” you had said softly as you placed the last stack of packets on his desk that needed proper annotation. “I’m your assistant, after all. It’s my job to help you out.”

Miguel rubbed his forehead out of exhaustion and shook his head, “You’re my assistant from 9 to 5 only. I’m not gonna be like those shocking pricks and work you longer than needed,” he muttered and stretched out his neck, joints crackling. “Go clock out, (Y/N). I’m sure there’s someone waiting for you at home that needs attending to.”

Suddenly, the atmosphere had gone awkwardly quiet. The tension was only broken by the scritching of your shuffling feet before you coughed.

“Um, there’s no one in particular like that for me, unfortunately,” you whispered through a forced laugh that quickly dissolved. “So again, I don’t mind staying late…”

Miguel stiffened in his seat and mumbled an apology for his blatant inconsideration. Right… you were still rather young and didn’t seem the type to have a family yet. “No boyfriend? Or girlfriend… I’m not one to judge.”

“No, Mr. O’Hara.”

“No parents?”

“I moved out, so no.”

“Not even pets?”

“None.”

“... perhaps friends of sorts?”

“...”

Another sigh heaves itself from his aching lungs. What he’d do for a cigarette right now to kill this awkward tension. You were a rather shy person that isolated herself from most people, but Miguel didn’t think you’d detach yourself this much from the crowd.

You proposed your assistance once more, as third times always a charm. “Please let me assist you, Mr. O’Hara. I truly do not mind staying overtime if needed.”

Miguel, at first, thought you might be kissing his ass for a possible raise, but the thought quickly disappears when you genuinely appear concerned for his well-being given the fact he looked ultimately much more disgruntled than usual. Despite your timidity, you could be a stubborn one, so Miguel gave in before he tired himself even more with mild arguments that he was sure would drain whatever life he had left in him.

He inhales sharply and fiddles with his bag for a bit before he pulls out an array of keys, gently detaching a pair of them. One of them is his car key. The other—his house key.

“Take these,” he said and gestured them to you. “I’ve trusted you enough to drive my car on multiple occasions, so now I’m entrusting you to my daughter.”

Your eyes widened briefly, brows raising to new heights. Blinking in the alikeness of an owl, you repeated, “Your… your daughter?”

Miguel supposes this is what succumbs to him after not revealing even the most personal, yet basic parts of himself to a coworker. He hasn’t even revealed his birthday to you, let alone his family, so he can’t say he’s too surprised at your reaction.

“Yes, my daughter,” he repeats and starts scribbling on a post-it. “Her name is Gabriella, she just turned five and is in kindergarten. I’m gonna call up the daycare and tell them that you’ll be picking her up from school. After that, drop her off at the house and just… just kind of stay there until I come home. There should be leftovers in the fridge if she gets hungry. I’ll take a cab home… I dunno.”

Miguel sticks out the post-it note containing both the address of the daycare and his apartment number. With caution, you take and examine them closely with a mild surprise still on your face of the new information about your boss that you thought you should’ve learned a while ago. You begin to see yourself out of his office with an evident nervousness in your being before Miguel spontaneously gets up and grabs your wrist tightly, forcing you to look at him.

A chill goes down your spine when you see a menacing and unusual red glint in those pools of mahogany. His once-drained face is suddenly stony and rugged with his teeth bitten back to avoid any unnecessary threats. The physical contact makes your nerves go cold and paralyzes you into place to force you to stare into those eyes that you’re not sure aren’t even human, a sort of malicious crimson tint gleaming over brown hues.

“Do not… let anything happen to her,” he hisses under his breath, his tone jaggedly sharp, “Not a single scratch, yes?”

It takes a while for air to breathe itself back into your lungs, yet only a partial amount of it revives your body because all you can reply is a choked out,

“Yes.”

Miguel lets go of your wrist like it’s a heated iron rod, the burn of it stinging his hand with the aftertaste of your skin still damped on his palm. You quickly leave after that, leaving him to sigh and stare into nothing before clutching the picture frame of his daughter that sits on his desk—praying that you’ll live up to his expectations and arrive home to an unscathed Gabriella.

And throughout the duration of the three years you and Miguel have spent side by side, with each repeated question he’d contritely ask again and again, he did each and every single time you had to take care of her. The hours became longer, more strenuous, and created a blockage between Miguel and Gabriella that only you were able to bridge between. Gabriella—whose particular shyness reminded Miguel of a certain someone—eventually warmed up to you and began to treat you much more familiarly as time passed, growing accustomed to wrapping her body around your legs when she saw you during pick up and always asking what was for dinner that evening as if you’ve been there since her birth.

Gabriella grew very fond of you, Miguel noticed. There was some sort of mimicry in her actions at times that mirrored your own habits like how she’d tilt her head and purse her lips to the left when she was confused like you did or she’d randomly walk briskly in the same fashion you marched. She’d slip in a mention of your name during small discussions here and there, a praise never failing to tail her words.

“Miss. (Y/N) bought this headband for me! Isn’t it pretty?”

“Oh, Miss. (Y/N) taught me how to solve that problem yesterday.”

“Can you make cookies like how Miss. (Y/N) does? Yours taste weird.”

While you weren’t always present around the O’Haras, Gabriella made sure it seemed like you were.

There was a particular time that Miguel was helping her on some homework assigned over the weekend. The assignment had discussed different careers that children might be interested in the future and when Miguel had asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, Gabriella, who couldn’t have been more than six or seven around the time, replied all too simply,

“I want to be like Miss. (Y/N).”

Miguel was astonished. He had expected an answer like a professional soccer player due to her love of the sport or a scientist like her father, but to aspire to be someone that seemingly was just an occasional companion? To him, it didn’t make sense.

“Like, do you wanna work for Daddy when you’re older?” Miguel asked, attempting to clarify what she meant since she knew enough to understand you were associated with her father.

Gabriella shook her head and mindlessly continued to draw what seemed to be a portrait of you in… a pink dress? “Nuh uh. I wanna be a princess like her.”

Through furrowed brows, Miguel chuckled a little aimlessly. Of course she’d still believe fantasy and magical things—she was just seven after all. Initially, he wanted to merely correct his daughter, but was a little curious as to what sort of silly information you had been feeding her. “Miss. (Y/N) is a princess?”

“Yep, she told me herself!” Gabriella exclaimed, her hand fisting a yellow marker that scribbled on a crown on the drawing. “She said she used to be a princess, but she ran away ‘cause a giant, fire-breathing lizard tried to kidnap her!”

“I think it might’ve been a dragon, mijita,” Miguel corrected gently, trying to go along with the usual trope fairy tales portrayed.

“Nuh uh, it was a big and creepy lizard, she said!” she retaliated stubbornly.

“Well,” he started again, attempting to choose his words a little more carefully this time around. “How come you don’t wanna be like Ariel? Or Tiana? They’re princesses, too, right?”

She shrugged. “I like them. But they’re not Miss. (Y/N).”

Something unnatural began to seep into Miguel’s chest. He knew that Gabriella liked you quite so, but he didn’t expect for her to almost admire you in such a fashion that inspired her to be like you. In his eyes, you were nothing but the assistant that loyally stood by his side and abided by his every word—to him, it seemed like you were more of a butler or servant than a princess.

But in his daughter’s eyes…

“Why? What’s so special about (Y/N)?” Miguel inquired with a growing curiosity to try and see you in the same light as Gabriella.

She shook her head, displeased with the informality given to you by her father. “You gotta say Princess (Y/N). I don’t have to ‘cause she said it’s okay.”

He sighed, “Okay, fine. What’s so special about Princess (Y/N)?”

Gabriella set her marker down carefully and thought for a little while. Her eyes suddenly lit up with delight, an affirmative grin set on her lips.

“Well, she’s really pretty… like reallyyy pretty. I wanna be just as beautiful as her one day,” she praised, making Miguel’s brows rise at the sudden compliment. “She’s really nice, too. She never shouts at me like the teachers or coaches do… and she always lets me have extra dessert when I do a good job on my homework.”

Miguel fell silent. Perhaps it was more than mere admiration, but idolization for Gabriella. She viewed you in a way that Miguel hadn’t even thought of because he only viewed you as his coworker. But in Gabriella’s eyes, you were more than just her babysitter—you were literal royalty to her. He shouldn’t be one to complain though—he’d take his daughter following in your footsteps over some others that might lead her astray. You were… sufficient enough, he supposes, even if Gabriella didn’t think so.

“She’s super smart too—like you, Papá! Maybe even smarter,” she retorts, making Miguel twitch. “And I like her voice a lot. I really like it when she reads me a story because her voice is pretty. Sometimes she sings this song to me to help me sleep.”

“Oh?” Miguel questioned, “¿Y, qué canción es esa?”

“I keep forgetting the name and words of it…” Gabriella pouted after a moment of attempted concentration. “But it went somethin’ like…”

She began humming an off-tune melody that struck a dissonant, yet familiar chord within Miguel, but it was impossible for him to find why it was so eerily familiar to him. Was it perhaps from an old song? Or a film he’d seen before? It was a calming song, one that was perfectly suited for a child’s lullaby, but something about it seemed almost so customary to him.

“Ya gotta marry her,” his daughter said plainly and began to resume her artistry, ignoring the sudden startle she gave her father. “So that way, I can become a princess, too.”

Miguel helped himself to the nearby cup of water to soothe his choked throat after the scare she gave him. “Sweetheart, I’m not a prince, though.”

“Yeah, I know,” his daughter replied without missing a beat. “But you know what you are, though?”

Dare he say that Gabriella had grown akin to you the same way she had with her father. Something about her praise and regard for you seemed to mirror the way that reflected alike to her father, yet Miguel couldn’t tell if she had managed to draw a line between the images of you and him. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if Gabriella could even define a difference in her adulation between you and him besides the fact one was her parent.

But when the thought of Gabriella potentially viewing you as sharing the same title as him—a parent—something seeds inside Miguel. He doesn’t know what it is or what it will grow into, but there’s one thing he knows for sure.

The seed of you in his life and hers is here to stay, whether he likes it or not.

Gabriella’s smile grew wide before she happily announced,

“You’re her knight in shining armor!"

PRESENT

If he squinted properly and took a closer look, perhaps Miguel could make himself hallucinate enough to try and visualize the golden chandelier above your head as your haloing tiara. It was the main light source nearly the entirety of the venue, but something about the way the light glistened around you made you seem almost holy, like you were a divinity gracing your presence on the wretchedness they called Earth.

Blame it on the wine, but Miguel couldn’t help but notice that you looked more celestial tonight; a unique sort of ethereal that he’s only seen in the finest of paintings. The banquet hall is covered in layers of silkened gold, only emphasizing your best features in the spotlights of reflecting amber.

You’re talking idly (per usual, unfortunately) with a coworker from Human Resources that he’s seen you often have mild conversations with on the weekly, a rare familiarity that he only knows he’s been graced with in full; so it’s truly no surprise that there’s a placid stir of envy growing within Miguel as you’ve decided to not give your semi-cold shoulder a break even tonight, even with the rarity of a compliment given by him. At least there’s been somewhat of an improvement—you’re actually holding miniscule conversations with him every now and then as you both chatter with the crowd as long as there’s a third party.

Yet he still hasn’t been granted mercy of having a proper one-on-one with you, yet.

But beggars can’t be choosers, so Miguel must make do with what he’s offered.

The coworker, finally, is called by one of his project managers and politely excuses himself, leaving you to Miguel’s devices at long last. Like a flower’s petals given little to no care, your smiling face wilts into the solemn countenance that Miguel has grown accustomed to seeing for the past week when you turn your gaze back towards the table, a sliver of Miguel caught in the corner of your eye. In time, he just barely catches a glimpse of your eyes flickering toward his figure before they return to stare at the nearly empty plate of food with a slight dismal.

A choice of what words to say jumble in his mouth. They toss and jump about while not giving him full comprehension of what they mean and Miguel grows frustrated at his lack of intelligibleness because it wasn’t every day that his resolve could be so cowardly in front of someone. Usually he was the one that made egos shrink, but upon your grace, his own could only grow so small.

You can tell there’s an awkward silence amongst you both despite the audible chatter throughout the banquet hall and the idle conversations among your tablemates, so you break it first but stiffly shuffling out your phone and dialing Gabriella’s babysitter for tonight—a blue moon occasion since neither you nor Miguel could be present. Gabriel is out of town and because there were only so many people in the world that Miguel could trust with his beloved, the elderly next-door-neighbor was the last resort.

“I should probably check up on how Mrs. Darcie is doing,” you splutter with a dry mouth. “I forgot to teach her how the TV remote works and I’m sure she must be bored out of her—”

Unconsciously, Miguel gently pries the phone out of your shaking hands, the connection between skin and skin electrifying his nerves more than he liked. He takes notice of the size difference between your hand and his own and eyes carefully at how easily your fingers would be able to slip into the gaps of his all too easily; like two connecting puzzle pieces.

He places it face down on the table to avoid further distractions. “I’m sure Mrs. Darcie is alright,” he attempts to soothe as he places his hand over your own, nearly caging it between his fingers. Miguel struggles with fighting the urge to squeeze it delicately—he doesn’t know if he’s earned that privilege, or if he ever did. “Gabi is most likely preparing for bed, we shouldn’t distract her.”

Eyes flickering toward your covered hand, the warmth that envelopes it from Miguel’s makes you swallow thickly.

“Ah,” you murmur and timidly pull back your hand to place back on your lap to Miguel’s disappointment. “Right… Never mind then.”

And suddenly, he’s back to square one. Silence plagues the air again between you and him, only this time, it’s thicker and grimier almost. Perhaps it was the oddity that was the physical contact that added to the musk of it; Miguel prays that you didn’t find it uncomfortable.

A fork is plucked between your fingers and you go to idly poke at your food to fidget with something other than your hands. “I hope she’s okay. Gabi, I mean. I-It feels a little odd leaving her with someone other than you.

Rays of hope and enthrallment embellish Miguel’s being from the fact that finally… finally you’re the one attempting a conversation with him after much too long. And not only that, you’re beginning with something bold, even if you don’t realize it. Despite the fact you’re rather unconscious of what you’re saying, something within Miguel perks up at the fact that you’re worried about Gabriella in the same sense… that he is.

That a parent is.

He fights the urge to physically shake his head to brush the thought off. Miguel hums, a semi-sorry attempt at being suede and casual. “Mrs. Darcie has had eight children in her lifetime, I’m sure that she’s definitely had her experience of taking care of kids,” he says seemingly nonchalantly. “Gabi, if anything, is lightwork to her.”

A soft delight pings in his chest again when you reply almost instantaneously, “She is indeed a good girl, very well-behaved.”

“She has her moments,” Miguel snorts, fondly remembering a few of younger Gabriella’s temper tantrums and outbursts of tears.

Something golden, something bright blossoms within him when he hears you let out a soft chuckle at his reply. It’s abrupt, but it’s short and sweet enough that he feels accomplished, enough for him to savor the taste of it. “All children do from time to time. But she’s definitely one of the better apples of the bunch.”

Miguel thinks you’re right; it wasn’t often that parents, new ones especially, were granted with the privilege of having obedient children, so he’s one of the lucky ones. Perhaps Gabriella being a good kid was the universe giving him mercy as a single parent, as society often thinks it takes two to tango when it comes to childcare most of the time.

But that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Even if Miguel wasn’t aware of it, some of the responsibility was lifted off his shoulders when you entered the picture, as the duties of nurturing a young child were now in your favor the moment you had signed your work contract. For that, he harbors guilt from time to time when he thinks that you never exactly signed up to be a babysitter, let alone a parent figure to his kin that you were still unaware of.

And then it hits him.

It comes all of a sudden—his senses downpouring from the cloud of his daydreams and thoughts.

It’s not a good realization by far. If anything, it’s the very opposite, one that’s one the other end of the spectrum. It’s a deathly epiphany and one that he doesn’t like to acknowledge but is forced to.

Miguel stares blankly at the tablecloth, eyes droning into the satin folds of it as they mimicked the waves of a crashing ocean. A sort of paleness infects his face, the color of it draining slowly and he goes still when he feels his heartbeat thundering in his ears.

You’re quick to take notice of your boss’s current disposition, growing wary of his wide, blank eyes and gritted jaw, along with his knuckles growing white as they fist his slacks. A shallow breath is echoed from him; you furrow your brows.

“Mr. O’Hara?” you murmur, leaning toward his figure.

Miguel’s mind stirs. If Gabriella views you as a parent-figure, what exactly would you think of it? You’re not much younger than Miguel is, only falling behind a mere four or five years, but you’re still significantly young that you’ve got your whole life ahead of you that you’d need to experience by yourself. The remnants of youth are still planted onto you despite being well-adjusted to the adult world, so to put the responsibility of a child on your shoulders? Miguel feels contrition flood into him.

What if you didn’t even want children?

It’s a fact that you care for Gabriella, but do you harbor the same type of love for her that she has for you? Does she even understand what your role is in her life and that there’s a strict boundary between you and Miguel and Gabriella? He knows he can’t just shackle you onto a weighing responsibility, but when Gabriella is a part of this dilemma, the complication increases tenfold.

Your boss seems to be frozen in time, seeing as how not a muscle in his limbs nor his face were moving, but his eyes were wide open, almost glazed with fear. A feathery hand goes to place itself over his tightened fist before you ask again, “Mr. O’Hara, are you okay?”

The worst case scenario infects Miguel’s thoughts—you standing in the same shadow of his ex, exiting through the same door she had walked through just a few days after his daughter’s birth and breaking his entire being into little pathetic pieces.

This time, however? He wouldn’t be the only one with a shattered heart.

A thick swallow goes down your throat. You gently shake his hand with your own to attempt to break him out of his frigid state, a worry beginning to settle itself in your stomach. “Mr. O’Hara? Can you hear me?” you declare a little louder than the first two times.

Your voice makes him blink and he clears his throat, feeling his cheeks warm at the sudden loss of composure. “Yes, I-I’m fine…” he mutters as he tugs at the tight collar of his dress shirt.

You nod with visible skepticism. Miguel turns away from your gaze to avoid further questioning, since he knows you’ve been at his side long enough to know his behaviors. “Are you sure?”

He nods and stifles a sigh, nodding. The flurry of what had just occurred in his mind lingers almost painfully and it takes him a while to remember where he is and why. Right… the annual celebration gala… with you… to make up for the date that never happened.

His mind is a mess. It’s an incoherent tornado of everything and anything, with images of all kinds flashing throughout his mind—young Gabriella’s drawing of you and her as princesses that she insisted on framing, your face of disappointment that you gave him when he ditched out on the date, a flashback of his ex slamming his old apartment door on him as an infant Gabriella screamed and wailed in her crib, you hugging his daughter after her winning goal, Miguel’s frazzled self as he showed up too late to his daughter’s first Parents Day with a teary-eyed Gabriella, him finding you quietly reading a sleepy Gabi a bedtime story after a long shift at work, you making baked goods in the kitchen with her.. you tucking in her into bed… you suddenly with a suitcase in hand, a sobbing Gabriella in the back as Miguel begged you to stay before you slammed the door behind you and leaving them—

Miguel stands up abruptly, making you jump. The collar and tie around his neck suddenly seem too tight and his throat runs dry. The air grows hotter and his vision starts to blur.

“Mr. O’Hara,” you start as you also stand up, “Is everything alr—”

“I need some air,” Miguel barely chokes out before he leaves the banquet hall without another word. He can just barely hear you ask if there’s anything you could do before he turns a sharp right and leaves the entirety of the building altogether, choosing to remain in the back garden to breathe in fresh oxygen, a relieving chill to the air.

A hand goes to loosen his collar and tie and he can feel himself gain consciousness again. The sky is draped with an ink blue all over, speckles of the night stars scattering all around. The floral smell of many garden flowers fills his senses and Miguel grounds himself properly before he settles himself on a stone bench to balance in his mind.

He attempts to reason with himself.

Clearly, you don’t mind being with children, and obviously you don’t mind being with and taking care of Gabriella. She’s not simply a job to you that you’re forced to work with—you’ve said it yourself. Otherwise, you wouldn’t go to her games nor would you remember to bring her small gifts of her liking. You’ve done things for her out of your own initiative many times. Gabriella is your world, Miguel thinks, as much as your hers.

Now there’s the problem of you being with Miguel, if your feelings haven’t changed all too much. In all honesty, Miguel thinks if he’s with the right person, he’s sure to put in effort into stabilizing and nurturing a proper relationship. He hadn’t had the time to go around and look for love because of work and Gabriella, so serving as this sanctuary that came to him was basically a perfect fit into his life—don’t mind it took him three years to notice it. You’re worth putting that effort in.

Finally… there’s the possible chance that you reject Miguel’s proposal of being Gabriella’s secondary caretaker.

…

Miguel attempts to process it in a more… positive light. One that won’t send him spiraling.

But it’s nearly impossible.

How is it possible to settle a middle ground of happiness, or at the very least… satisfaction, between you and him and Gabriella? How do you imagine a happy ending to a dawning of Gabriella’s happiness? How can Miguel ever face you after asking such a thing?

His vision shakes again, another hurricane of impossible questions begins whirling in mind. The bile in his stomach churns uncomfortably and his hands grow clammy again. His feet feel like they’re sinking in the dirt. Somehow, even at a staggering height compared to most of his colleagues, Miguel feels small once more.

Would he be able to cope with such a—

A loud crash and multiple screams suddenly break Miguel out of his state and he whirls his head to see what was happening inside. The peek of something green slithers inside the massive hole in the glass ceiling indented in the building, and it doesn’t take Miguel long to know what’s happening.

He sprints back inside the building and into the banquet hall, the opposite way where everyone is headed and takes a swift peek inside to what was happening.

A horrifically large green lizard crawls on the floor, letting out an agonizing roar of sorts with its tail swishing about and knocking everything and everyone in its path over. Dr. Curtis Connors, the one foe Miguel had fought a few months ago and had just managed to escape his grasp, had come back for revenge in a newer, more improved, more terrifying form of his initial self-experiment. News of his identity had leaked out immediately the moment that he had defeated the mad doctor, and every work that was researched by him that was deemed irrelevant by Alchemax was unpublished and/or destroyed—that included raiding everything in his personal lab—an urgent executive order made by Tyler Stone himself.

Hungry for revenge for the destruction of his work, Miguel was certain he was back for revenge as back when he was still sane, the amount of research that Dr. Connors had put in was extensive and yielded long years in the making, spanning over nearly three decades of research that was wiped away in the matter of a single day thanks to Alchemax.

Miguel quickly turns a corner, hidden from the public eye, and commands his suit on before quickly re-entering the banquet hall. He swings up towards the domed ceiling and carefully analyzes the area.

There’s still a few people scattering from the room, shrieks echoing from the walls. His eyes go to search for where you are in desperation, praying you’re safe somewhere outside, but a flash of light pink catches the corner of his eye. He nearly snaps his neck when he finds you running in the opposite direction of where most people are headed—towards the garden.

“(Y/N)!” Miguel yells out without thinking and slaps a hand over his mouth. Thankfully, you don’t hear him due to the commotion inside the area as you swim against the current of people. You fight the urge to fall down with every person that bumps into you amidst the chaos before you thankfully make it near the exit.

He lunges down from his spot on the ceiling, lassoing a few people that nearly get crushed under Lizard’s humongous tail and bringing them to safety properly on the way, making his way towards your figure. Rubble from the many columns begin to collapse on themselves; clouds of dust and debris fog the first floor of the hall with the wreckage already trapping some people inside.

A large chunk from the wall creaks and begins to teeter over the south exit, where you’re headed. A certain distraction diverts you from noticing the large cement framework around the exit that’s about to topple on you to Miguel’s horror. In the nick of time, he just barely manages to snatch you by the waist from a thrusted sprint just before the framework collapses with a thunderous boom.

You and Miguel cough from the dust it created. It takes a good second for you to process what your fate might’ve become, and it takes just another second for you to regain your consciousness. A good part of the exit is now blocked, but that doesn’t stop you from taking off your heels and attempting to climb over it.

Miguel barks out and grabs your arm that’s now scathed with slight scratches. “The hell are you doing?!” he exclaims worriedly.

You turn back with a teary and troubled look on your face, much to his shock. Abruptly, you turn back towards the exit and attempt to tug back your arm from his firm grasp. “M-my boss… he’s inside the garden,” you croak miserably out as you try to pull yourself over the fallen column. “I need t-to know if he’s safe…”

Lizard lets out another mighty howl and patters toward the stage, his tail once again swinging haughtily and ignoring anything in its path. Miguel shouts at you to duck and pulls you down along with him. You prop back up and without his arm on yours, you use it to your advantage and grunt yourself forward onto the column.

Miguel wraps a large hand over your ankle and weighs you down from moving any further. “Hey, you need to get out, now. You can’t be here, no one should be,” he urges.

The shake of your head concerns him—right, you’re too stubborn for your own good. “I’ll be fine. P-please, just leave me be.”

“Not when you’re about to get killed,” he declares and juts your ankle more towards him. The motion makes you fall into his chest and Miguel uses one hand to properly secure you to himself, the other launching and swinging a web to the north entrance.

You squirm and fight against him, pleading desperately for him to drop you and leave you alone. A frame of tears threatens to fall from your eyes from frustration and despair when you get put down. Miguel has to physically stop you from running back into the banquet hall once again—you put up a fight though. You thrash against him, clawing and weakly punching at his stronger arms, imploring for him to let you back inside.

“You don’t understand—” you gasp as the remnants of the people inside flood out. Looking over his shoulder, you gaze at the exit solemnly. “Please… I need to know if he’s alright—he h-has a young daughter back at home and if anything happens t-to him—just please let me go!” you wail.

He grabs you by the shoulders forcefully and settles you down, the stream of tears falling from your eyes running his throat dry once again. Miguel has never seen you cry, or even come close to crying. Not when Gabriella forced you to watch what she considered “one of the saddest movies in existence”, not when an entire glass beaker had toppled and its shards pierced your skin, not even when Miguel had first scolded you about your many mistakes on the very first document you turned into him.

Glassy eyes meet concerned, masked ones. Your lip trembled violently, the words all jumbled in your mouth about to spill. “Just let me check if he’s alright,” you just barely whisper.

He bores his gaze into yours as his composure does its best to upkeep him as best as possible. Miguel, from the inside of his mask, bites his lip and sighs. “I promise you, I’ll make sure Miguel gets home safely.”

“What if you don’t?” you accuse with furrowed brows.

“I’ll bring him home safe and sound,” he says firmly. “You said he has a daughter, right? I won’t let her become an orphan. I swear on my life I won’t.”

Your gaze doesn’t falter, even when Miguel attempts to soothe you by chafing the chilled skin of your arms up and down in a calming manner. Unbeknownst to you, you and him share an image of Gabriella in your minds; it brings a sting of ache to your chests.

“How can I trust you?” you ask dryly.

“Because,” he goes to weave a string of webbing through the north entrance and takes you out into the safety of the outside. He settles you on the corner of two intersecting streets that sit nearby the building, with your tears still falling and hands trembling. A hand carefully holds your cheek and wipes away descending tears on your chalky face, Miguel ignoring the squeeze of his heart with each one that puddles on the sidewalk.

“... I’m your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.”

Spider-Man leaves you on the sidewalk idly with the blurry figures of your co-workers and other people in the company whizzing by you with no concern for anyone else other than themselves. It takes a moment for you to understand what just happened and with whom, suddenly hit with the pang of realization that you had just met the Spider-Man: the well-known vigilante protecting Nueva York from all corners, beloved by the public. Excitement can’t seem to conjure itself within you, however, your gaze still lingering on the building that Miguel was possibly in.

A hesitant step takes you forward back to the building, but your phone vibrates abruptly from a notification from Mrs. Darcie. Word must’ve gotten out so quickly that it reached the O'Hara's neighborhood, as her text was asking if you and Miguel were alright. Your thumbs shake as you try and type up a response to let her know that you were at least alive, but you know that Gabriella wanted you both home.

The least you could do is make sure half of that concern was eased. You were counting on Spider-Man to do the rest.

With an arm reaching out for a taxi, you rush into one and tell the driver to step on the gas, promising to tip extra. You’d be willing to give all the money you had with you if it meant that you could be with Gabriella for tonight.

You’ve underestimated the nightly rush hour this Friday night had brought upon, because there’s a sea of cars that are equally as stuck as you are amidst the road. Tangible fingers go to grip your hair frustratingly, and asking the driver to go any further was basically useless. Each minute you wasted on the same road you had been on for what was nearing twenty minutes made you more anxious by the minute.

“I-isn’t there some sort of shortcut?” you ask the driver hoarsely. “I don’t care what roads you have to take, just please get off this one. I’m begging you. I have a child that’s waiting for me.”

His eyes give you a quick glance in the mirror, and empathy embeds itself in his equally tired eyes. He must be a father himself, you think, as he gives you an affirmative nod and swings off the road onto a much more bumpy and gravelly, but visibly less dense one.

It’s nearly an agonizing hour later off the road—it would’ve most likely reached around two or even three if you stayed on the main road—but you thankfully make it to the O’Hara’s residence. Your body moves on its own, flying out the elevator and speeding down the floor of the apartment. You burst open the door, visible sweat misted on your forehead and an ache to your limbs but all that is ignored when Mrs. Darcie greets you with relief, with a sleeping Gabriella settled soundly on the couch as her favorite TV show buzzes in the background.

She grasps you tightly by the arms. “My goodness, thank heavens you’re alright,” she murmurs quietly. “That must’ve been quite a scare… are you alright?”

“I’m okay,” you gasp out tiredly. “But how is she? Gabi, I mean… d-does she—”

Mrs. Darcie shakes her head. “She fell asleep a while ago, she doesn’t know. I just managed to get informed thanks to my son who works near the building. But where is Miguel?”

Dread floods your face once more, remembering why you left the banquet in the first place. Somehow, however, your phone vibrates and receives a text from the one and only. A loud sigh escapes your lips and you crumple to the floor as the feeling returns to your numb legs as Miguel’s texts ease your worries.

Hey I’m alive and alright. I saw you leave earlier, hope you’re safe. I’m omw home.

You fight the urge to burst into tears from the relief as Mrs. Darcie helps you back up. “I’m assuming that’s him,” she says gently as she encourages you to take off your heels. “What a waste of night and beautiful dress. Shame that blasted giant iguana or something had to ruin it.”

A broken laugh leaves you from her gentle humor. You glance down at the dress that the mysterious Lyla had given you tonight and sigh sadly at the many tears of the tulle and fabric. The dress looked expensive and you planned on wearing it again for formal events, but alas, fate has decided to toy with you.

“That’s alright,” you mutter as you help Mrs. Darcie gather her stuff back up so she can finally leave. “I have plenty of others to use in the meantime.”

The elderly woman leaves you inside their apartment after bidding you a goodnight to tend to Gabriella, who’s still sound asleep and oblivious to what was happening to the world and people around her. That’s a good thing, at least, you think to yourself as you tidy up the living room around her quietly. Ignorance is bliss, sometimes.

She’s still small enough that you’re able to carry her to her room even at her age and it reminds you a lot of when she was younger, when she’d pretend to be asleep so you could carry her yourself to go back to her room. Nowadays, she knows her bedtime and does it by herself, but assuming she had been waiting for you or Miguel to come home, sleep had snuck onto her as she waited and waited.

You put her down gently, hoping not to get any of the leftover debris on your soiled clothes onto her freshly-washed body. The action just barely stirs her awake, her eyes slitting open at the slightest bit. Your blurry figure just barely makes it to her senses and she grins sleepily.

A titter escapes her lips. “You look like a…” Gabriella starts, her words faltering due to a fading consciousness.

“Like a…?” you whisper softly, a hand stroking her hair gently.

“Like a…” you can tell she’s trying to find the words in her very limited vocabulary currently, her brain threatening to shut off at any second now. “Like a princess, I think?”

You raise your brows at her description as Gabriella immediately falls back asleep. You suppose you do look much more dressed up from usual, but your cheeks tingle a hint of warmth at the comparison of literal royalty. You blame it on the drowsiness.

Your own tiredness begins to crawl up your spine as you stay by Gabriella’s side in her darkened bedroom, her quiet breaths soothing you like a lullaby. With heavy eyelids threatening to shut close at any minute, you fight the urge to give into the Sandman, insistent on Miguel’s return.

Miguel…

His name rings aloud in your mind for a moment.

Miguel…

“I promise you, I’ll make sure Miguel gets home safely.”

Spider-Man’s familiar voice suddenly jolts you awake. Your brows crunch together. How on earth did Spider-Man know Miguel’s name when you merely referred to him as your boss? Perhaps he saw Miguel in the garden beforehand? Maybe Miguel had an earlier oncoming with him from before and Spider-Man just knew him from that one incident? Or… he just happens to know the names of all the citizens of Nueva York because… that’s just how Spider-Man is?

Or, was Miguel actually Spid—you shake your head in the same second you think of such a stupid reasoning. That’s impossible…

… you know in your heart that it just is.

Any reason that you attempt to give, you think of it as either obnoxious or just simply impossible. Maybe you did let it slip that your boss’s name was Miguel… that just seems like the most plausible reason. After all, your adrenaline was at an all-time high and you could barely remember what had happened before the takeover, let alone the conversations you had.

Whatever it was, it was going to bring Miguel back home, and that’s what ultimately had mattered in the end. It probably wasn’t even your business to prod around.

At Gabriella’s visible sleeping state, you stand up and start to head towards the bathroom to fix yourself up, but the sound of the master bedroom’s window suddenly shuffling open makes your nerves electrify. Miguel’s bedroom sat just right next to Gabriella’s, and it was also the bedroom that was nearest to the complex’s fire escape, so a break-in at this time of night was highly plausible.

Grabbing one of the displayed metal baseball bats on the wall, you turn off Gabriella’s lights and lock the door behind, ensuring her safety first before yours. You’re careful to tiptoe around the more creaky parts of the floorboards, desperate to make yourself not seen by the intruder as you step closer and closer to Miguel’s bedroom. The door is just barely ajar, and the lights are on. A distinct shuffling, bed springs, and a masculine groan echo from the crack of the doorway and when all is silent from the other side of the door, you make your move and burst in, ready to swing at whoever threatens the O’Hara residence.

The bat is suddenly grabbed from your hands from a familiar neon orange webbing and thrusted to the side of the room, where it thunks against the wall and falls limply. You gasp aloud and with nothing to defend yourself with, you look up with fear in your eyes that suddenly turn to shock from the sight in front of you.

There, standing in the same blue and red vinyl suit you had crossed paths with earlier, without its mask completing the look… and thus, exposing the face of the man you had been waiting for to come back home to you.

a/n ; second to last part to this mini-series and once again, i apologize for this nearly six-month delay, last semester was rough for uni. almost made this into two parts, but i felt like they just belonged together and i quite like the blend of them together.

thanks for the patience for those who stuck around and have waited far too long for this, you deserve this! i'm glad to see you all again <3 thank you endlessly for reading and likes/comments/reblogs are always noticed and appreciated (づ ᴗ _ᴗ)づ♡

taglist ; @secretlyrexlapis @urbimom @p1nkliquor @julesclues @averagefloydlover @apurpletrashcan @raeisthebae @mvchmp @um-well @nintendh-e @eddieslooneymoonie @deputy-videogamer @xochyw @honeybeeznuts @aspens-cove @btszn @scaleniusrm @goldenpoison @the-pan-liquid (if you'd like to be either added or removed from the taglist, please lmk! i know it's been awhile, so hi again haha)

#spider man: across the spider verse #across the spider verse #miguel o'hara #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o'hara x you #miguel o'hara fluff #miguel o'hara smut #miguel x reader #miguel o'hara imagine #atsv miguel #across the spider verse x reader #miguel ohara x reader #miguel o'hara x fem!reader #fem!reader #fem!y/n

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