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thelunaticghost · 6 months

Text

xvn fic recs !!

i have been meaning to do this for a while : mostly because fic recs are fun to compile and also thee seems to be a BIG shortage of any fic rec posts!! so here are some fics i have enjoyed over the years!! ofc this list is non exhaustive please note the ratings of each fic and heed the tags before reading! sorry, that i am putting in the shorter summary

anyway!! feel free to put in more fic recs too!! :D

End OTW Racism | over the edge of all our knowings by merthurlin [ G, 10,146 words , 1/1 ]

Years down the line, after the whole business with Lumine and her brother has been concluded, Venti decides to go on a world tour. He sends Xiao letters.

merthurlin got me into xiaoven so ofc my list starts with her fic! this is just so so sweet and even if its not necessarily fluffy there is a warmth to the writing it is a comfort read for me! i recommend every work by her (regardless of fandom). though in xvn End OTW racism | never dreamed of nobody like you is another excellent fic!

nocturne by yanrans [ T, 34,540 words, 4/4 ]

In which Venti sells magical music boxes, Xiao is his unwitting customer, and there is absolutely, definitely nothing more to it at all.

modern au where venti is - a scammer? - i mean a music box seller and xiao is just a regular guy and and. its funny and delightful and absolutely breath taking. i wouldnt elaborate more so as not to spoil anything further but the fic has many unexpected surprises in it! yanrans is another writer i definitely recommend to check out more! their writing style is very flamboyant and poetic.

what hides in neon shadow by morii_tea [ T, 7,547 words, 1/1 ]

In which Xiao is a cyborg, Venti is a thief, and the glittering city of Teyvat hides more secrets than they’re prepared to find out.

its so rare to see morally grey venti is potrayed (even though he isnt v morally grey but still. xiao having to remembering that venti isnt as honourable as he appears is yesssss wohoo). this fic has some thrilling action and a v fun cyberpunk world!! i wish it was longer but it is v exciting nevertheless

every morning in the dark by magicites [ M, 77,124 words, 34/34 ]

Stuck in a time loop where he succumbs to his karmic debt, Xiao struggles to see the point in moving forward. Venti struggles to save him.

READ THE TAGS!!! character death and suicidal thoughts are two major warnings. but DAMN this fic it's just so. SO FULL of everything WRONG with xiao!! and venti too but such a GREAT angst fic!! it gets everything so Right. magicites also happened to have written one of my most favourite genshin fic too :] and if you havent read her other works!! you are missing out!!

the half-life of the yaksha is absolute by GStK [ G, 1,000 words, 1/1 ]

Venti digs his thumbs in to keep open the wound but it is too late His gaze snaps over to the teal essence dancing over Xiao’s fingers. Now all those words will belong to him And Venti will belong to him, only.

READ THE TAGS!! now that i have went into the time loop fic ofc i have to mention the beautiful corrupt xiao prose. the imagery is flowery and grotesque!

foreigner's god by smallghosts [ T, 3,818 words, 1/1 ]

Lord Barbatos falls asleep for a few hundred years. Xiao copes with his absence in strange ways.

a pre-canon fic where xiao becomes - in a way - a worshipper? it's SO GOOD. its about the yearning!!!!!!!!! SCREAMS i dont think i have to explain further

love me like you do by Limerancy [ T, 3,000 words, 1/1 ]

They aren’t the kind of friends that touch.

TOUCH STARVED AND TOUCH AVERSE XIAO!!!!!! this fic makes me a lil bit feral. a little unhinged. i absolutely enjoy reading about the yearning , the desire JUST!!!! AAAA. this writer also writes v fluffy modern au one shots!!! so be sure to check them out too :)

The Kissing Tree by Princeliest [ G, 7,581 words, 2/2 ]

Venti kisses Xiao, and Xiao does not understand why.

VENTI COMMITMENT ISSUES!!!!! as much as i adore reading xiao angst, venti angst is still something i love seeking out and its a tragedy that its not explored enough in this ship :c but anyway!!! such amazing characterization and exploration!! princeliest is one of fav genshin writers and this fic delivers!

wishing on dandelions all of the time by OedipusOctopus [ T, 8,270 words, 1/1 ]

When Venti first catches sight of the swords artfully hung on the wall of his new roommate's bedroom, he regrets putting up the sublease on Craigslist. Firmly believing this guy is a total weirdo, Venti is more surprised than anyone when he realizes the total weirdo is actually adorable. It's not against some invisible Roommate Code to dream about kissing your roommate, right?

ofc there is a classic roommate au fic!! this was one of my most favourite fic from last years xvn week: its hilarious and silly and just a perfect relaxing read!! the characterization and their banter is so entertaining i admit i have read this multiple times!

Where Words Fail by kavvueh [ T, 27,926 words, 11/12 ]

"You're Barbatos," Xiao repeats breathlessly. The young man in front of him nods. "Yep." "But..." Xiao cuts himself off and tries again. "You're the God of songs and poetry." The Anemo Archon nods his head sagely. "More or less." Xiao fixes Lord Barbatos with the most incredulous look he can manage. "... You're failing Music Theory."

this fic is such a delight!! it has some light background lore, some silly shenanigans, miscommunications, pinning - a truly fun mixture! the fic is v light hearted but written with a lot of tenderness. i am v excited to see its conclusion!

what queer sins stain thy soul by Anonymous [ M, 3,232 words, 1/1 ]

In which Xiao, long-established asexual, learns that identity is not as stable as he’d like to believe.

there is some explicit things in it (in non explicit way) i believe religious guilt is one of the best flavouring to xvn. it is an under-explored area in this ship imo and this fic not only has that but also!!! asexuality !!!!!! this fic so so personal and its exploration of desire that gets to me a lot

unholy virtues by morphasia [ E, 17,065 words, 6/6 ]

In exchange for his body in more ways than one, Venti summons a demon to reclaim something that has been stolen from him. It's a just contract. That's all it's supposed to be. That's all it was ever supposed to be.

READ THE TAGS!!! this fic truly went creature/creature. this au is just so fascinating and funny in a twisted way (but not bad). this fic isnt for everyone though but it is definitely worth the shot.

#luna rambles #genshin impact #xiaoven #venxiao #thats all i think ?#anyway this made me realize that i forget to bookmark so many fics.....#whoops #and also that i tend to like fics on how much i like venti's characterization. hehe #but yeah this is non exhaustive list! if someone wants to add they can ofc! sorry for my over commentary #and even though i repeat it in the post itself 13804 times: check out other works by the writers!!!#i wanted to include more but. but the post is so long already you know? like i couldve done a shorter format BUT AAAAAA #i could idk it's just not. the same #making such posts is just a destress activity to me tbh

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thatdeadaquarius · 1 year

Note

OP your addtion about the Harbinger's reaction? Sent me wheezing to the moon 🤣🤣💀

I dont have any additions to Teyvat language yet (other anons have a more in depth explanations while mine is just shitposts wheEZE--) but I did have an idea for a Genshin AU.

I'm pretty sure everybody has heard about the blue alien people Avatar. Tribal people from another planet. (Also I just stumbled upon the forests of Sumeru while going through Chasm quests. The one that has giant mushrooms).

Imagine Genshin in the Avatar Au. Sumeru can be based on the first movie (It fits cause from what I can explore of Sumeru reminds me of the time I watched Avatar of the first time. Pure awe and wonder..) While the Water nation can be based on the 2nd movie, Hoyoverse hasnt released the name of the Water Country yet so we're just waiting. Mondstadt can be based on the upcoming 3rd (4th or 5th? Idk they had it lined up) movie that involves being high above the clouds. Kind of like the Jade palace or the Floating Abode in the serenitea pot.

Its all I could base for now since the other movies dont have that much info yet to be paired with Genshin's countries.

Bonus idea that randomnly popped into my head:

Still going with this Au but its sagau themed. Creator!Reader arrives to Teyvat and is considered as Eywa

NOW THIS

THIS IS AN ✨️IDEA✨️

I just want u to know i feel b l e s s e d that u put this in MY ask box , when this coulda been a whole post of ur own 💖💖🙏🙏

WARNING: So i havent seen the new movie, just the og Avatar one, and i totally loved that concept about Eywa and how their world works so ill refresh myself but if theres any new lore from the 2nd movie i aint got it yet 💁 srry babs

🎵 FROM THE DAY WE ARRIVED ON THE PLANEETTT

AND STEPPED OUT BLINKING INTO THE SUN

AND THE SUN ROSE HIGH IN A SAPPHIRE SKY

ITS THE CIRRRRCCCLLLEEE OF LIFFFFEEEE 🎵

^ except ur like the life itself bc ur god now

Thats why i put that there

This AU radiates that energy

♤

BRO I TOTALLY FORGOT ABT U MENTIONIMG THE COOL CHASM STUFF AND PICKED THAT GIF ALL ON MY OWN

BC I THOUGHT IF ANYTHING LOOKS LIKE EYWA TREE IN GENSHIN ITS THAT BEAUTIFUL MUSHROOM GOD

ANYWAYS-

So I accidentally posted this too early so keep refreshing or coming back bc if theres no "♡the beloveds♡" im still updating this then LMAO

SRRY GUYS

So anon's a genius and i could listen to u talk about this all day

I fucking love combining world building or lore together

Esp like making one the AU or just the setting like u said with Avatar worlds as settings and same characters-

EEEEEE U ARE EYWA- YESSSSS YESSSSSS I AM YOUR GOD BITCHES!!! SUCK ON MY BIG FAT MAN TIDDIES BITCHES RAHHHHH /REF

♧

So they deffo use "Eywa" as a term for you instead of your name

Honestly, before when u were a mysterious af planet creature thing (lets say u get isekaied there i mean)

Nobody rlly knew if u even could take a mortal form or even thought of that as a concept

I feel like the younger generations immortals and Teyvat's current countries kinda think of you Eywa as more of a passive entity life force thing

Rather than the older immortals and creatures that had seen thru eons or over the course of a couple thousand years

That u were very aware and intelligent

Not that ur energy or aura didnt tell them that alone

◇

So a little deeper into the Teyvat lore here but i dont see anybody else talking about it so I will

Originally, it was the Seven Sovriegns and you, and eventually Phanes and their Four Shades,

And they literally all quickly came to realize u literally made this planet and began to start the first traditions of worshipping you!

Like putting gifts or hand made goods at the base

(Ppl have also gotten a tradition from Morax/Rex Lapis and Guizhong and other adepti to leave birthday letters to offer you, which ties into what i say below⬇️)

Ya know,

Eywa the tree could even be a sort of source to the eyes of Teyvat of what you look like while u were playing the game

Like how Eywa's little jellyfish reach ppl in the forest and shit? I think?

So like i would imagine that whatever u make certain vessels or acolytes do most often, is what they think they should offer u :0

◇

Claymore users give u gemstones and ores

Bow users give u hunted game like fowl, or the treasure from puzzles that required arrows (like those bursting blue balloons?)

Catalysts and Polearms give u all kinda of crazy shit lmao

Bc they can be used for a vareity of things

◇

Bc of ur player status and abilities, people of Teyvat attribute a gain in power or talents or whatnot to you, Eywa

So say u actually physically there now, and u just wake up under the coolest sickest tree youve ever seen in ur life

Omg could u imagine????

Seeing Teyvat irl? But AVATAR WORLD IRL???!!!

You would stand there lookin around like a drunk fuck for like 20 minutes, maybe longer lmao

Its just so ✨️pretty✨️ here

Also the tree itself just feels like, the equivalent to ur bedroom basically but like specifically if it was hella comfy and like just the way u want it (all the decor is up, the floor is clean, u got like hot choco on ur desk, theres a candle burning, etc.)

♤

Oh so since ur like weirdly connected to the land, like u know how theres a voice line abt walking in that glowing aranara part of Sumeru and ur steps light up?

I saw that too in the OG avatar movie

So i feel like u would have a map with ALLLLL the peoples on it and little icons

U can focus on just vision users or bosses or big nature things like Dragonspine

◇

Oh so Eywa can control all animals and whatnot and so u as a mortal person can too

So anytime theres a threat u can deadass just become a pokemon trainer LMAO

Ok but think how badass it would be to just like,

Get the Primo Geovishap or Giant Bird Jadeplume Terror thingy to just leave their territory and wipeout some mfs

(coughunknowngodasomodaycough)

It would be fucking amazing

♧

Unrelated to above bc im just spitting out ideas srry guys

but like

I feel like if u were a lifeforce sort of ancient eldritch god for the entire goddamn continent of Teyvat let alone the whole planet-

You would have to maintain said continent/planet

Like, make sure the Irminsul is growing okay, protect from mfs like Dottore,

Stop diasters if ur Eywa too, esp bc u can hear prayers now, and would hear ppl crying out to help them geez

while the prayers of the many kinda just glob together to form the major "feeling" of the prayer for most creatures,

Vision users, gods, ancient creatures u can get their exact sentences

Basically more magic = better heard to connect with u

◇

Oh u know, i could even see it being even more manual or personal labor bc ur not like a tree connected to ur roots thruout the world technically

Like if volcanoes erupt in Natlan, the archon and gods there help and u r also wanted/needed in person for it to work

U would still be powerful, but yeah like say the tree was u just playing genshin before,

The game automatically regulated diasters and stuff other than what was supposed to happen in game

◇

So kinda bouncing off that I read smwhere that the Na'vi dont actually view Eywa as like omnipotent or omniscient

(like the God™️ from the Christian bible for a example of what your not)

And also! Dont blame/attribute natural diasters, plagues, or other bad stuff on Eywa

So good for you whew 💦

Ur actually supposed to kinda just be the collective lifeforce or Teyvat/world and nature, and a defender and guide of life :0

Which kinda fits with the whole "upgrading characters" thing actually

◇

Okay but I saw somewhere in SAGAU tag someone did another name instead of Creator to spice it up and its "All-Mother"

And interestingly, Eywa in Avatar is also called that and "Great Mother"!!

How fun :0

Also, the reason Eywa still got people with free-will is bc they kinda described the relationship to Eywa being something like a mother or parent

Maybe where name/titles came from ig?

Either way, ppl be calling u all types of nicknames u aint heard before lmao

I mean ur sacred, they dont just say ur name,

Nobody knows ur real name or what u call yourself

Just what they call u

Bc they couldnt communicate with u super well before, (the bday letters were the closest they got verbally, and even then they had to be addressed somewhat to ur first vessel the traveler to get thru/be seen)

Otherwise yeah u operating them lets say before on Earth you rlly felt like an eldritch nature deity 💀

Cause u guide them in battles, strengthen their talents and skills and bodies, and feed them food

If they were in battle like needing healing food, u help them heal by consuming it for them so they dont have to take a snack break in battle and

Let me tell u, these denizens of Teyvat who have to constantly deal with magic and monsters and abyss stuff, so a stroll outside ur house gets u in a fight...

...They are very grateful for that needless to say.

Plus i like to think u make fighting easier on them bc ur "guiding" their bodies

◇

Anyway thats a long winded way to say, help me think of all the names Teyvat's given you lmao:

Eywa

All-Mother / Great Mother

All-Father / Great Father

All-Parent? / Great Parent

Creator

Their Grace

Great Puppeteer

The Puppeteer

Soul of Teyvat

Greatest Soul

☆

She aint long bc im not that creative and this idea has sm potential too😔

I would love to be Eywa sounds fun and powerful af and i dont get expected to be Jesus and they know i dont cause the natural diasters, like that sounds nice

Aight im no genius and this writing feels like im just rambling like a drunk guy sittin on the sidewalk mumbling to myself, i had to stop writing 💀

Like that energy specifically-

So lmk if yall got any other cool titles or names :0

I couldn't think of anymore :/

Also srry about the updating this post and making u check back in if u already read this before i put the taglist

(Me putting the taglist means im done editing/writing this dw if u seein this)

Cheers,

🌒🌧🌊Aquarius♒️🌌🌘

♡my beloveds♡

@karmawonders / @0rah-s / @randomnatics / @glxssynarvi / @nexylaza / @genshin-impacts-me / @wholesomey-artist

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lizzie-is-here · 1 year

Note

Can I request a Christmas Peter parkerX female reader with prompt 44

christmas event!

character: peter parker x fem! reader

prompt: “keep doing that, and you’ll end up on the naughty list”

warnings: cussing, bucky threatening sam, uh a little spicy 😳, it’s just making out but like 😳😳😳

a/n: akskkddk yesssss this is such a cute idea i love it sm 🥺 thank u for requesting it 🫶 if anyone wants to request, see the event rules here! hope u all enjoy and happy holidays!!!

Being in a relationship with Peter was everything you could want.

He was polite but not uptight, kind but not one of those “nice guys”. He got you flowers every week or so, accompanied by a sweet, handwritten letter. He helped you study, opened doors, and blushed every time you gave him even the most chaste of kisses in the hallway.

You and him started dating sophomore year, and now that you were seniors, you’d cemented yourselves as the longest-lasting couple at Midtown Tech.

This is your third Christmas together, and the last one you’ll have in high school. You’re pondering all this as you walk to his apartment, shivering every now and then in the Manhattan cold.

It’s been a little over a week since you last saw him. The beginning of break was hectic, and then he had a training camp up at the Avengers’ Compound.

Today is his first day back, and you’re more than willing to brave the cold walk.

When you finally make it up the endless stairs and knock on the door, you’re greeted by May. She’s opened the door with her foot, evidently, In each hand is a tray of cookies, and the warm smells of baking waft around you.

“Oh, hey, (Y/N).” She smiles, welcoming you in. “How’ve you been?”

“Pretty good, just glad that finals are over and done with. You?”

May gestures to the kitchen. It’s messy in the best way. Plates of baked goods are scattered around, and flour dusts the counter in odd spots. “Been busy.” She nods back further into the apartment with a wink. “Peter’s in his room.”

He doesn’t hear you come in, to your surprise. His Bluetooth speaker is blasting Christmas music so loud it might be damaging his phone, and he’s awkwardly shuffling around the room in what could be a dance. You’re not sure.

You watch for a bit, grinning as your boyfriend obliviously mouths along to Mariah Carey’s whistle tones.

“Hey, babe,” you finally say. Peter jumps and trips over himself a bit before catching his balance. He turns down his music before opening his arms wide for you.

You oblige the invitation for a hug, burying your face in his shoulder. The smell of vanilla lingers on his sweatshirt, and… is that peppermint?

“I thought you hated peppermint,” you mumble into his neck. “It’s like, a spider thing, right?”

Peter shrugs. “Yeah, but May needed help with crushing the candy canes. I couldn’t leave her hanging.”

“Aww,” you coo. “You’re so sweet.”

He hums and his grin widens a bit. “Speaking of sweet things-” He gently pulls you in for a kiss, and you can taste the remnants of cookies. No doubt May made him her personal taste-tester for the day.

Peter breaks the kiss for air. “So-”

Before he can say anything else, you tug him back in, backing up a bit to gently kick the door shut. The music from the kitchen is loud, but you’ll take the precaution. He chuckles into your mouth.

“I’m guessing you missed me?” he asks. You swat at his shoulder before pressing your lips to his jaw, tracing the defined line.

“Of course, I did, dumbass,” you whisper, trailing more kisses down his neck. “‘M gonna have to start taking up Tony’s offer to come with you for training camps.”

Your boyfriend exhales through his nose, trying to ignore the fact that your very cold hands are toying with the edge of his sweatshirt.

“Y’know, it’s not fair that you can call him Tony. I can’t manage to call him anything but ‘Mr. Stark’,” he grumbles. Despite his pouting, his own hands start running up and down your back.

His hands are a warm welcome from the chill still clinging to you. But you still shiver when his fingers graze over your ribs.

Whining, you furrow further into his arms as if it’ll make you less cold. Or less flustered.

Peter continues, kissing the top of your head innocently as he starts to lift your top.

“Keep doing that, and you’ll end up on the naughty list,” you chuckle breathlessly. He laughs back.

“Was that supposed to be snarky or hot?” he asks. You shrug.

“Whichever you prefer.”

The two of you stare directly at each other for about 12 seconds before breaking out into laughter. He kisses you again before tripping on his backpack and sending you both tumbling onto his bed.

You lay in silence for a bit, enjoying the closeness and the way the snow flurries outside the window.

Then Peter starts kissing along your neck. You’re just about to yank his shirt off right then and there when the door bursts open.

“Hey, Underoos.The team’s all here and- HOLY SHIT.”

It’s Tony fucking Stark himself, dressed in the fugliest Christmas sweater you’ve ever seen.

It’s clearly from Walmart, evidenced by the tag still attached. A jagged hole is cut in the center to make the arc reactor in his chest the star atop the offending, bright-green tree.

You fling Peter off so quickly he flies off the bed, yanking down your shirt from where it rode up.

“Uh, hi, Mr. Stark,” Peter greets sheepishly. Before the billionaire can respond, more people appear.

“How’s the kid-“ Sam Wilson begins, and when he freezes in the doorway at the scene before him, is knocked over by a certain super-soldier that didn’t see him stop.

Sam catches himself before eating shit on the hard floor, elbowing Bucky with a smirk.

“Hey, how does it feel knowing that a teenage nerd has more game than you?” he asks.

“I’m going to kill you with a Christmas ornament.”

#marvel #marvel x reader #x reader #avengers #avengers x reader #peter parker #peter parker x reader #peter x reader #peter parker x fem!reader #spiderman #christmas event #lizzie’s christmas event #request #event

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petewentzisblack1312 · 5 months

Note

what are some of your favorite fob lyrics?

cannot answer this in a universally true manner so heres fob lyrics im thinking about right now

'tip your glass to no direction' fellowship of the nerd. very elegant and clever word play. tip your glass to no particular direction, or tip your glass to the concept of being labelled as having no direction. falls into the same category

'spent most of last night dragging this lake for the corpses of all my past mistakes' my heart is the worst kind of weapon. i didnt know what dragging a lake was until a few years ago (because saint lucia does not have any lakes) and the stark and dark imagery really makes this song a top 10 teen angst bullshit bop

'stood on my roof and tried to see you forgetting about me. hide the details i dont want to know a thing' the pros and cons of breathing. toxic homoerotic girl best friend bops for the ages. either you cut yourself off from an abusive relationship that you never really got any closure from or were otherwise inextricably linked to someone who was poisonous to your soul or you just wont get it. i could write an essay about this song. perhaps i will.

'i know, i know, i've made mistakes. i know, i know, but at least they were mine to make.' so good right now. manic song of all time. do not tell any song on mania i said that

'i will never ask you of anything except to dream sweet of me. tell me when the party ends, will you still love who i am?' heaven, iowa. never not thinking of this line. i have explained my thoughts on this.

'i got your love letters, corrected the grammar, and sent them back. its true romance is dead, i shot it in the chest and then the head' the music of the misery. i liked this lyric so much i drafted up an enamel pin design about it. hopefully coming this valentines. do not quote me on that.

'i am gods gift, but why would he bless me with such wit without a conscience equipped' fame<infamy. yesssss king you werk those clang associations. the cadence and rhythm and rhyme of this line is like a pinnacle of lyricism. on top of that i mentioned in fall out boy is for niggas that pete often used braggadocio but with a self deprecation as a spin on it. this song as a whole is a good example of that and i think i cited a different line in that essay but this is another really good one.

'spiritual revolt from the waist down' bishops knife trick. yeah yeah gay above the waist i dont care. this is a reference to 1984 and i like that. 'youre only a revolutionary from the waist down' like you only seek spiritual change so long as it brings you pleasure. feels like it fits with the theme of mania.

ran out of steam. take my list- please!

#dils declares #ive had this in my inbox for weeks now. weeks.#sorry to the person who asked this </3 #dils dissects #also ruminating on a pros and cons analysis

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heliads · 6 months

Note

Your fics are amazing!! I especially love the Unwind ones! :) Can I request an angsty what-if fic where Connor doesn't go deliver his letter and is there when Nelson finds the antique shop? I don't know how specific you want me to be in my request, but a fight scene between Connor and Nelson would be cool (Nelson deserves to be punched). Thank you!

yes...YESSSSS

'guess that's growing up' - connor lassiter

masterlist

warnings: blood, violence, death

Five years ago, if you had asked Connor Lassiter where he thought he’d end up in life, he wouldn’t have said the basement of an antique shop. He certainly wouldn’t have expected to be in that same basement twice in the span of a few years. Life has a way of throwing you a few curveballs. It isn’t Connor’s fault if he can’t help but follow their winding paths until he ends up exactly where he started.

It isn’t like he’s back to square one. It can’t be, after all the friends he’s made and lost. Still, it’s hard to shake the feeling that he keeps getting dragged back home. As a kid, he’d always dreamed of running away and making it big, and then he’d actually had to run away when he found out he was going to be unwound. Now he’s back in Ohio, and although Connor finally has a hope for the end of unwinding thanks to the Rheinschild organ printer, he knows as surely as anyone that if this doesn’t work, the last of his luck might finally have run out. He was born here almost eighteen years ago, and he might just die here too.

Connor tries to keep his emotions light, but it’s hard, especially after being stuck in Sonia’s basement for far too many days. It took forever for them to leave the first time, and now he’s wondering how long they’ll spend trapped inside the lightless cellar now. Maybe someone will come down here decades in the future and find his old, brittle bones propped up in a corner someplace, the Akron AWOL reduced to a skeleton with a white, wiry beard like in the cartoons he used to watch as a kid.

So no, he’s not exactly doing a great job of staying optimistic, but it’s hard to get up the energy to converse with the other scared unwinds down here when he knows how this is going to end. It’s not his first rodeo. Nothing gets better before it gets worse again. Why take the time to memorize everyone’s name and favorite color if they’re just going to get ripped apart again in a matter of months? Connor might as well spare himself the heartache. If they do get unwound after all, some future client would probably appreciate it if Connor’s heartstrings were tugged as little as possible.

It’s not a funny thing to think about, but Connor’s sense of humor has gotten increasingly jagged and sarcastic as of late, if it wasn’t already bitter in the first place. When he tries to be funny, he just ends up cutting to the bone. He’s not Hayden. He’s never been good at making the jokes land when he needs them the most.

Hell, maybe that’s what’s unsettling him the most about being back here. If it weren’t enough to see the same familiar shadowy walls and low ceiling (look, there’s the place he gouged his initials in the corner two years ago), Connor has to do all of it not only with new faces but with the ghosts of the former ones.

Thinking about who had been here with him before makes his stomach roil with guilt and regret. Roland is unwound now; Connor has his arm and is starting to understand his surly temperament, his gut reaction to snap at everything around him instead of smiling. Mai became a clapper and blew up Happy Jack; Lev was there with her, chemicals in his veins, but saved himself when she didn’t. Hayden is still alive, hopefully, although Connor hasn’t seen him in ages; he misses Hayden’s sense of humor most of all.

The only repeated characters in the basement are Risa and himself, but even they are so fundamentally transformed from who they’d been at the start that they could be different people entirely. Connor isn’t sure that he’s at all recognizable as Connor Lassiter anymore. He has the same skin, or most of it, but that’s the end of the similarities. Connor is left wondering how everything changed so drastically over two years, which leaves him in a state of hazy dread.

And then, of course– well, there’s the letter, and that blows everything else out of the water.

Sonia still has his letter, the one she’d had him write to his parents when he first showed up at her antique store. All of the notes from past unwinds she’s harbored are still here. The thought unsettles him more than Connor would care to admit. Even if the kids who wrote them are long since stripped of their parts, dead and gone or maybe somehow still alive, their writing is still here. He wonders if his handwriting has changed since he wrote it last. If Connor saw a few sentences of his letter, could he recognize it as his own, or is even that last hallmark of the boy he’d been gone from him forever?

Connor can’t help but obsess over every detail. It’s hard not to when Sonia keeps bringing it up. He’s not sure if she thinks he’s dramatically different from the boy he’d been, but she must want him to return to that former version of himself somehow, because she’s offered for him to hand deliver the letter to his parents. In fact, she seems rather put off by the fact that he hasn’t leapt at the chance.

It’s not the first time in his life that Connor doesn’t have the right answer, and just like every other impossible choice, Connor isn’t even sure that there is a right way to go about this. He can take his letter to his parents, the people who had him unwound in the first place. He can be the bigger person and forgive them for wanting him clinically dismembered. Maybe, after time, they’ll even be able to move on from it and grow back together again.

Or, far more tempting still, Connor can let his resentment stand as firm and impenetrable as a fortress. This is the choice that calls to him the most. Why should he forgive them? It’s up to his parents to reach out to them first, even if they have no idea if he’s still alive nor how to contact them. Connor is not the one who wanted his own flesh and blood unwound. There’s no reason for the responsibility of breaching the immovable gap between himself and his family to fall on his shoulders.

Still, the Objective Right Thing to do is to give them the letter. Connor knows this, in a shifting, sinking feeling in his stomach, like when you tell your first big lie as a kid even though you know it’s wrong. Connor should meet his parents again. Probably.

Problem is, he doesn’t want to. The anger may not be as white-hot as it had been when Connor first found out he was going to be unwound, but it’s still there, simmering beneath his skin like a stovetop that wasn’t turned off properly. He isn’t going to burn down the house, not yet, but the possibility is there.

Risa would support him in this, Connor knows that. She immediately advocated against it, citing the immense risk posed by leaving their hiding place in Sonia’s basement. She doesn’t know the conflict in Connor’s heart quite as well as the terror of getting caught by the Juvenile Authority, though. She never had a family to love and loathe like this, and although Connor hates to say it, this will be the one time her advice won’t be as picture perfect as usual.

Sonia can sense this hesitation, and she’s been even pushier than usual in an attempt to convince him to visit his parents. At one point earlier today, Connor was helping her bring down some groceries when she asked him again when he was planning on leaving.

“I’m not going,” Connor had complained angrily, and immediately felt like a kid throwing a temper tantrum because his favorite shirt was in the wash or something stupid like that. So many unwinds here would kill for a chance to see their parents again, and here he is practically frothing at the mouth at the thought of it.

Sonia had raised her eyebrows at that, but said nothing, for once. Connor had lugged the last of the bags down and sat in silence, fuming, until he finally cooled off again. He feels bad for snapping at Sonia like that, especially when she’s risking her life for him by harboring unwinds right underneath her shop, but not bad enough to deliver the letter.

Sonia doesn’t usually check up on them during the day, electing to preserve her ruse by manning the counter of the antique shop, so Connor assumes he’ll have all day to practice an apology before she checks up on them after closing time. Maybe he’ll write her a letter. He could both thank her for shoving him in her basement for so many weeks and also say he’s sorry for being an ass. He probably owes a lot of people similar letters. He’s been an ass many times.

Connor is idly monitoring the sounds upstairs, waiting to tell when Sonia will come down again so he can have his statement ready, when he first hears the loud thump. Noise isn’t uncommon up above; customers buying large objects can be heard huffing and puffing as they drag their purchases to the door. However, this sounds wrong. The voices Connor makes out through the dusty floorboards don’t sound like people ogling antiques. One of them sounds cruel, and the other, Sonia, sounds distorted somehow, unlike herself. They’re too quiet for him to hear, but none of it can be good. Then Sonia lets out a cry of pain, and Connor knows for certain that something is wrong.

All of the other runaways in the basement perk up. Fight or flight senses are always amplified among AWOLs. Connor silently gestures for them to back away from the cellar entrance, holding a finger to his lips. This could be a Juvey-cop, so they can’t risk exposing Sonia through too many sounds. Risa picks up a wrench, testing its weight experimentally, and Connor and the others follow suit. Whatever’s going on up there, it can’t hurt to have a weapon.

They wait in tense, painful silence, and then there’s a softer thump from above as the rug is flipped off of the trapdoor and Sonia shouts down for Lev of all people to come up and help her with something. Lev isn’t here, he hasn’t been near Sonia’s shop at all. Sonia knows this, and she’s well aware that the kids know this, too.

Connor’s eyes widen as he puts it together. This is a trap, obviously. Risa, sensing the same thing, grabs a small, blond kid (Jack, maybe? Connor tried not to learn their names. Unfamiliarity makes it easier to lose them) and starts to push him up the stairs, promising that she’ll be right behind him. Connor moves to join her but Risa stops him with a single harsh look.

“Don’t you dare even poke your head out,” she urges in a terse whisper. “Whoever’s here is probably only looking for you. Don’t make a sound.”

Connor would like to argue with this, but he knows she’s right. Odds are somebody saw him through a storefront window or something after closing. It’s not right to let Risa fight his battles for him, but maybe the intruder will leave if they don’t see the Akron AWOL. It’s not lost on him that Risa and the blond boy might get taken away anyway all for the sake of covering for him, but Risa’s not taking no for an answer, and she’s gone within a moment.

Connor paces back and forth, unsuccessfully trying not to let his panic show. Beau, one of the latest wannabe top dog types, starts prying at a window in the back, which is good. Odds are, they’ll need a second way out of here than just the trapdoor. Connor is about to pitch in and help when he hears a gunshot up above, followed by an agonized cry by Risa, and then all bets are off. Risa’s plea for him to stay hidden is gone from his head. If his worst fears are true– if she was shot, if she was dead– nothing matters anymore.

Connor bounds up the stairs two at a time, emerging into utter chaos. The blond kid is crumpled on the ground, a mess of blood and gore coating his chest. A grungy man is standing over his body holding a real gun, not just a tranq. Risa is beating him with a wrench, but he throws her off of him the second Connor appears. The man’s face cracks into a leering grin, and Connor realizes that he knows this man. It’s Nelson, the cop he shot so long ago.

Worse than that, it’s not just Nelson. Half of his face has been replaced with unwound flesh. Connor discovers with a sickening lurch of his stomach that he knows the donor, too. That’s the good side of Argent Skinner’s face isn’t it? Come to think of it, Connor hasn’t seen Grace in a little while, too. He silently hopes she’s alright, then shuts off every part of his brain that isn’t wired to defend himself. Nelson looks crazy. He has to be ready for anything.

Nelson lets out a slow, cackling laugh. “Connor Lassiter. In the flesh.”

“Nelson. In somebody else’s flesh.” Connor mimics. “What did you do to Argent Skinner?”

Nelson rolls his eyes elaborately. “He got in the way. I think his fate is obvious, isn’t it? I needed new skin. He needed to learn his lesson. No one crosses me and gets away with it. You’ve been on the run for a long time, but I’ve caught up to you at last. I always catch my prey.”

To the side, Risa is slowly getting to her feet, but there’s a gash opening up on her temple. Behind her, Sonia is chained to a chair, obviously in pain. Only Connor can save them. Only Connor can save himself.

Nelson starts to glance over at Risa, following Connor’s line of sight, so Connor quickly speaks up again to distract him. “So what, are we going to fight again? Boring, but let’s get on with it. Do you want to get out your tranq gun for old time’s sake? Maybe I’ll shoot you again. They might give me a new nickname for that.”

Nelson actually growls in anger. “I’m not interested in tranq guns, Connor. A permanent solution is better for you.”

He’s still holding the gun he just used to kill the blond boy, and Connor realizes with a sinking lurch that Nelson is planning on utilizing it for a second kill. This time, Nelson isn’t leaving until the job is done. Sure, it would be good to collect the payout of grabbing the Akron AWOL, but this is personal. Nelson can make up any excuse he wants about why Connor forced his hand. In the end, this is about Connor repeatedly humiliating the guy, costing him his job, his life, his flesh and bone, everything. One of them is walking away from this, not both. Perhaps neither of them. Looking up at Nelson, Connor finally knows: this is where it all ends.

“That’s fine with me.” Connor tells him. “I’d like to get rid of you, too.”

He briefly considers going for the ‘nice socks’ distraction, but, afraid of having used it one too many times, Connor decides to ignore the pleasantries and just get going. There’s a table of antiques next to him; Connor grabs the closest heavy object, a brass candlestick, and lobs it at Nelson’s head. The former Juvey-cop manages to duck, but not entirely, and the metal clips him on the temple.

Nelson grunts in pain and angrily points the gun towards Connor, who frantically hurls himself to the floor. The shot misses, shattering a glass cabinet and sending the contents showering to the floor. Connor picks himself up and sprints away, hoping Nelson’s more interested in him than staying to finish off Risa and Sonia.

Luckily, the guy’s got blinders on for anything that isn’t his least favorite AWOL, and Nelson gives chase immediately. Unluckily, this means that more bullets are directed Connor’s way. He skids through a series of small displays, using the advantage of a few tight corners to remove himself from Nelson’s immediate line of vision, then ducks into a hiding space below a desk. There, he waits, one hand clamped over his mouth so Nelson can’t hear him breathing.

Nelson stalks slowly from room to room, Connor can hear the thud of his boots against the ground. “Come out, Connor,” Nelson calls, “Let’s settle this like men. You can’t hide forever.”

Maybe not, but he can certainly push off more fighting as long as he can. Nelson was a cop once, he’s got way more combat training than Connor. Connor’s only hope is to stay one step ahead and confuse him into letting down his guard. There’s no way he’s winning a direct fistfight, so Connor has to be as difficult as possible.

Something dense thuds on the ground, then the glug of liquid pouring out follows the sound. Connor has no idea what that could be, but there’s no mistaking the subsequent click of a lighter. “If you won’t come out on your own, I have no problem smoking you out. I hear that’s best when taking care of rats. You have to burn down their nest to kill the young.”

Connor does not know much about rats, nor the proper method of extermination, but at this moment he doesn’t like any of it. Nelson is just as stuck in here as Connor if the antiques shop goes up in flames, but Connor realizes with a sinking feeling that Nelson doesn’t care about getting out if Connor doesn’t either. As long as Connor dies first, Nelson is happy.

Connor, however, needs his friends to stay alive. He rolls out from under the desk to find Nelson crossing over the threshold of the room. The former Juvey-cop bares his teeth in a grin. “See, there you are. I knew you’d let your feelings get in the way of your own self preservation.”

He holds up the lighter triumphantly over a slick of what might be rubbing alcohol or gasoline. Connor tries to stay cool, but his hands twitch at his sides. “Easy, man. You don’t want to blow yourself up, too.”

“How considerate of you to think about me,” Nelson muses. “I won’t return the favor.”

With that, he drops the lighter. The liquid immediately erupts into flames, streaking out of the room and into the next with lightning speed. Connor shouts in despair, but it’s too late. He can only hope that Risa was able to get Sonia out, that the unwinds in the basement could get the window open. Hope is all he has left. That, and the undeniable anger coursing through his veins. Nelson wants to play with fire, does he? Connor is more than willing to follow suit.

He’s not stupid enough to start a fight in a burning house, so he runs for the back door, which opens up into a barren grassy patch hemmed in by a fence. Good; Connor doesn’t want Nelson running. If Connor is the only one that survives the fire, he will make sure Nelson pays for it.

Connor makes it out the door first, so he has enough time to pick up a rock and hurl it at Nelson’s head as the Juvey-cop chases him out. This time, Nelson doesn’t duck, and the man cries out in pain as the rock connects directly with his left eye. Whatever Unwind’s eyeball ended up in Nelson’s face, he hopes that they’re not aware of the injury. He wants only Nelson to feel the agony of the blood welling up in the ruined socket.

Nelson clutches the bloody wound, swearing at Connor. “Do you know how costly those things can get on the black market? I’ll have to replace it with yours to even things out.”

“Try it. See what happens,” Connor dares him, and lunges for the man.

Nelson’s sense of balance is still impacted by the blow to the head, so Connor manages to tackle him around the middle before Nelson is even aware that he’s attacking. They roll around on the ground for a little bit, exchanging punches back and forth, before Connor is able to force him onto his back. From there, it’s easy to keep him pinned and rain blows upon his face.

He used to get in fights a lot before the unwind order, it’s all coming back to him now. Nelson tries to shove the barrel of the gun towards Connor, but Connor knocks it out of his hand in an instant. The man’s face is almost unrecognizable by now, but Connor isn’t done yet. This man is responsible for so many teenagers being unwound, doesn’t he deserve this punishment? He, too, should be in pieces. Connor can arrange that.

Nelson tries to shout something, but the words come out garble and broken around his swollen tongue. It’s going to attract attention, if the inferno behind them hasn’t brought scrutiny already. To shut him up, Connor wraps his hands around Nelson’s throat and starts to squeeze. It’s easy at first, just a matter of applying pressure. One of his hands– the right one, Connor thinks, but he’s not entirely aware of the difference nor why it should matter– tries to back out, but Connor redoubles his efforts. Nelson is not getting away. Not this time. Not ever.

It takes Connor a long time to realize that the man is no longer moving. Longer still to realize why. Connor has never killed someone before. He didn’t think he could, but. Sometimes we learn things about ourselves later than we expect.

Connor falls to his knees, leaning back slightly as he stares at his handiwork. His heart beats an urgent, irregular beat, telling him what he has known for a while now but is certain of today: he is a terrible, terrible person. Lev wouldn’t blow up Happy Jack, even Roland couldn’t kill, but Connor could. There are no lines he would not cross, no boundaries he cannot push. He is, at last, well and truly feral. No wonder the world wants him in pieces.

People are starting to emerge from their houses, attracted by the glow of the fire and the jumbled shouts of the fight. Connor is sheltered by the fence and hedges for now, but soon they’ll come for him and find the bloodied corpse of the former Juvey-cop. There are very few people who would mourn for Jasper T. Nelson, if there are indeed any at all, but any witnesses will see a dead man and a living killer and know who is worse off at the moment. The dead rest. The living do not.

Risa finds him first. She skids over the ground to him, throwing her arms around his shoulders. Dimly, Connor is reminded of tackling Nelson to the ground, one rough arm against his throat, but this is Risa, this is different, this has to be different. Not everything in this world brings death. Still, it’s hard to remember now.

“It’s over,” Risa breathes against his ear, “It’s over. Let’s go home.”

Connor isn’t looking at her, though, he’s watching the flecks of burning paper float down around him like snow. In his head, he’s a kid again, bundled up in a parka and too-big snow boots. He’ll grow into them; so will his brother, in a few years. Now Lucas gets new clothes and Connor gets nothing at all. Lucas has had two winters now of being the first one to run out into the yard in the fresh snow, of sinking the first boot prints into the endless expanse of white, and Connor hopes to God he’s loved it.

Connor stretches out a shaking, blood-spattered hand and picks up one of the pieces. It’s an envelope, the contents either ripped away in the wind or already burnt to bits. Right now, the delivery address is damn near indistinguishable from the coarse ash rubbed against it, but Connor can pick out the words by heart:

Claire & Kirk Lassiter

3048 Rosenstock Road

Columbus, Ohio 43017

As he watches, the smoke from one corner of the envelope picks up into a spark, which turns into a flame that gnaws away the words one by one. Like unwinding, his mind whispers. Each letter ripped away to some new fate. Risa has to pluck the quickly burning paper out from between his fingers so Connor doesn’t scorch himself. He doesn’t even notice the flames are at his flesh until a dull, throbbing ache some time later.

Connor is still in Ohio. He’s within driving distance of his house, but there is something Connor has known from the moment he came back here, from the moment Sonia put that letter in his hands again, from the moment he throttled Nelson until the light left his eyes: he can never go back. That house is for the whole, and although Connor still has possession of all of his limbs, he cannot ever be described as such again. He is not his father’s son. He is not his mother’s boy. If there was ever a Connor who could return to the Lassiter family, he is not the one who just strangled a man to death. There is no place in Ohio that Connor can ever return to again.

“No,” Connor chokes out, half-gagging on the wet slurry of ash and blood in his mouth, “No. I have no home.”

Risa’s saying something soothing about how that’s not true, he’ll always have her, and they’ll find a way, they always have, but he’s not listening anymore. Instead, Connor’s face is tilted back, letting the sun wash over the gouges on his cheeks, his split lip, the bruises already flowering under his skin. He stares once into that blinding light, then snaps his eyes shut.

The elder Lassiter boy is dead. Only Connor remains.

requested by @bopeisdope, i hope you enjoy!

unwind tag list: @schroedingers-kater, @sirofreak, @locke-writes

all tags list: @wordsarelife

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im-a-matt-girl · 1 year

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matt says i love you for the first time and then can't stop saying it

yesssss ♡♡♡♡♡♡

There's something I need to tell you, but I don't know how.

I want you to know how much you mean to me, how much better my life has been with you in it. I want you to know how much I care about you, and how I always want you to be happy. I want you to know how glad I am that you even exist.

I think about texting you, but it seems too long and complicated to convey that way. I decide against it.

Should I write you a letter? At this point, it seems too impersonal. And my handwriting's the worst.

I could call you, but if you're busy and don't answer, then I'd have to leave a voicemail, and I don't wanna do that.

I sigh. I think there's only one way to tell you.

I drive to your house, and luckily, you're home. I can see your car in the driveway. I knock on your door, and a strange feeling overcomes me. Is it dread? Is it excitement?

You answer the door, and suddenly, there is only you and me. Every thought that I had in my head shatters to pieces. "Hey, Matt," you greet me with a soft smile.

"I love you," I answer.

"What?" you say, confused.

Yeah, what? I ask myself. "I love you. You're everything to me. I love everything about you. There's seriously not a single thing I would change. And I love the way I feel whenever I'm with you, too. I… I just… I love you."

You stare at me, probably thinking I'm a rambling idiot. But, to my surprise, you hug me instead. "I love you, too," you whisper.

The confession almost makes me cry. I'm unspeakably happy. I can only utter one thing: "I love you."

#matt sturniolo x reader #fic #op #ask #anonymous #pov: matt's #criticism from requester accepted ♡

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frodo-with-glasses · 2 years

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💖💖💖💖!!!! Frodo and Elanor!!!

3, 4, and 10!

HECK YESSSSS I’ve been looking forward to doing this one for SO LONG!! We’re gonna go with my Magnolia AU for this (the one where Frodo stays in the Shire long enough to meet all of Sam’s kids), since that’s the more interesting version of their relationship.

(Brace yourself, this is gonna get SadTM.)

3. “A random headcanon I have of them”

I haven’t settled in my mind when exactly Frodo sails to Valinor in the Magnolia AU (or whether he does at all). There MUST have been more elven ships that left in the years following the War of the Ring, so he could catch one of those, if he so wished; I assume that’s the way Sam got there in canon.

All of that to say, if/when Frodo ever left for Valinor—after doing all he could to find peace and happiness in Middle Earth, and managing to find some joy in the Gamgees, but never truly being completely healed—I think he left just about everything in his study to Elanor. Books, maps, scrolls, letters, half-scribbled attempts at poetry; anything he couldn’t fit into his pockets to take onto the ship, he left with her.

Elanor was his favorite of the Gamgee children. She was his brightest and most attentive student. She had the best of her father’s love for elves, and of her adopted uncle’s love for history and lore, and if any of Sam’s children could be found in Mr. Frodo’s study in their free time, it would have been her. All of the little Gamgees were distraught that Uncle Frodo had to leave, of course—and there were many tears and wailed “I don’t want you to go”s—but Elanor, being the oldest, and by then more of a young lady than a little girl, held herself together for the most part.

It was only when Frodo and Elanor got a little time alone in the study afterwards that she absolutely broke down crying. She knew he was in pain. She knew he was. She’d watched him suffer all her life. She’d learned to dread certain days on the calendar, because those were the days that her dear old uncle wouldn’t be himself, and it terrified her. But that didn’t change the fact that—selfishly, she called it, although he quickly and firmly assured her that it wasn’t selfish at all—she felt that she was losing her second father.

He held her until she stopped shaking, and brushed away her tears with his thumb, and whispered assurances through his own choked voice, and urged her, gently, wherever she missed him, to peel open these books again and imagine him there with her. He would miss her dearly. He would not do this if he felt he had any other choice. He feared if he stayed…he wouldn’t live to see another one of her birthdays, and he couldn’t do that to her family, not after they’d been so kind.

He urged her to take comfort, whenever she thought of him, in the knowledge that he was alive, he was healing, and likelier than not…he was thinking of her too.

He urged her to take comfort in the knowledge that he loved her.

Most of his books and parchments came with her in the move to the Tower Hills, but some days when she came to visit her mother and father in Hobbiton, she’d sit in the chair by the study window and watch the dust float lazily in the sunbeams, and think about her uncle’s voice.

When Frodo left for Valinor, he had in his pocket a “letter” from Elanor; one of the first things she’d ever written, back when she was a small lass just learning to hold a pen, and she’d scratched down in a child’s big, shaking scrawl, “DEar uncLe FRodo: I LOVE YOU! Sinseerlee, ELanoR”

4. “My favorite thing about them”

The best thing about the Magnolia AU is getting to watch Frodo pass on to the Gamgee children everything that Bilbo had given to him. Bilbo was the uncle who adopted Frodo; Frodo is the uncle who (unofficially, but undeniably) adopted Elanor. He gets to see what that relationship is like from the other side.

And just, I dunno…Frodo being a father figure, man. It just gets me. He’s not a conventional father figure by any means—how could he, when he didn’t have a conventional father figure himself??—but he’s a loving one, in spite of all his pain and mental issues, and there’s just something about kids and having someone small and innocent to love that I think would’ve been really good for him.

(Am I projecting a little bit?? Do I have at least one parental figure who struggles with mental health stuff and yet whom I love with everything I’ve got??? Would I give anything in the world to see that hypothetical parent finally be healed??? Maybe!! 8-D Maybe that just means I know what I’m taking about.)

10. “A song that reminds me of them”

I’ll go with my go-to song for when I want to be in PainTM over how it feels to love someone with mental illness: “Medicine”, by Daughter.

FRIENDSHIP ASK GAME!

#ask game #frodo baggins #elanor gamgee #lord of the rings #lotr #my writing #magnolia au #i dunno if it's just 2:30 in the morning but writing this.....literally put a physical pain in my chest #i think that means i'm doing the SadTM right

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calderskillday · 2 years

Text

A COURT OF FEY & FLOWERS EPISODE 8 liveblog!!!!!!!

it's catchup time babeyyyy let's go

frog-binx

HORNY GRANDFATHERS

emily's giggle is the most adorable thing

DEV PATEL AND MICHAEL B JORDAN

i LOVE that emily is so in on the green hunter hahaha this is so fun

"the ventriloquist dummy is doing a bit about it"

oh my god lou's rumour and the way he has squak start it 😭😭😭

every single lords of the wing aside is just SO GOOD

"I WANT A BOX OFFICE HIT I DONT WANT A FUCKING OSCAR"

lmao grabalba 😭😭

"can i knock one out cause it's insane" oh lou what do you have up your sleeve

OH MY GOD EMILY CRYING THROUGH THIS IS SO FUCKING FUNNY

ABSOLUTELY UNHINGED

you're tired?? i'm the one who's dying!!

LOU TRYING NOT TO SPIT OUT HIS MOUTHFUL LMAO

THE PIXIE OFFICE BOXXXXX

i am obsessed with the way the letters spawn scenes gahhh

ohhhhh this could get interesting..... the flash to omar and back to surena when chirp mentions the unseelie court......

"spectacularly deceptive and slippery"

how do you lie without becoming sleepy 🥺🥺🥺🥺

waaaahhhh chirp and binx talking about magic on the mortal plane 🥺

BEING AROUND HIM IS LIKE BEING IN A SHOWER THATS THE PERFECT TEMPERATURE 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

literally squealing over the invisible wedding ring 😭😭😭

SHE DIDNT DELIVER IT

emily saying that chirp's gonna come back to find wuvvy in 40 years when her wife dies hahahaha so true

I AM YEELLLLINNGGGGG

I WANT TO KNOW YOU LIKE NO ONE ELSE LOVES YOU

KNICKOLAS PNACKLESS

lou's moan as aabria says the letter was ripped up 😭😭😭

"but for you, yes" OH MY RUEWUVVY HEART

NOOOOOOOO THIS MAKES ME SHIP THEM HARDER

BOMB. DROPPED.

gahhhh the lords of the wing are so fucking unhinged <3

lmao squak mad-libbing his letter to apollo

omg rue being offered a spot in the chorus???

SURENA'S REACTION TO THEM MENTIONING WUVVY SKFKKGG

emily and lou LOSING it over the potential of being offered the job of MC hahahahaha

BANISH THE THOUGHT OF COURTS

YEEEEAHHHHHH RUE TELL EM

omg the table's reactions yesssss

god suntar's whole vibe is so hot

oh my god the editing??? seeing everybody's heads turn when suntar says strawberries.....???? hoooo boy

TWENTY NINE????

"come on, grabalba!!"

oh hob 🥺🥺

YEAH WORKING WITH ANDHERA IN AN OFFICIAL CAPACITY

what matters the amenability of a soldier 😭😭😭

MY BUSINESS IS MY OWN 🤭🤭🤭

literally screaming

HOB AND BINX SOBBING TO EACH OTHER SIFJGKGISIGLSLF

brennan and surena are COMEDIC GENIUS

i am literally holding my breath oh my god

LETS GO ANDHERAAA

OOOOHHH SNAAAAPPPPP

PILLAR BOY, WHERE

god emily and lou are truly some of the best improvisers just...ever

LMAO THEYRE GETTING EVICTED BY GRANDFATHER, ABSOLUTELY SAVAGE

WHAT A LOVELY DAY TO WALK YOUR SUITCASE

ANDHERA CAST LOCATE OBJECT ON THE LETTER SKFUSKGI HE IS THE ONLY ONE WHO KNOWS WHO AIRRY PEARRY IS

i am cRYYINNGGG

"my mind just got dressed down" "mmhmm, mmhmm, mmhmm" "ah yes ventriloquist dummy" WHY ARE THEY LIKE THIS

oh my GODDDDD NOT LOU ROLLING A NAT 20 INSIGHT AND OSCAR ROLLING A NAT 1 THIS COULD NOT BE MORE PERFECT

andhera's "what the FUCK" HAHAHAHA

HHHHHHHHH WE'RE NEARING ENDGAME FUCK

PHEWWWWWW

#oh my god what an episode #shit IS getting real #dimension 20 #d20 acofaf #a court of fey and flowers #tl lb

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trashlie · 1 year

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Hi! Don't worry I know it's hard working full time... I'm in the same boat as you 🥲

It was a super intense chapter and I still can't believe it's real. I'm still shocked and I don't even know what will happen next?? Will the witch appear? Will Shin ae and the others find out about what happened that same night?? I can't wait!

I think, SO MUCH, about how much more I'd be able to do if I only worked 32 hours a week, if we could just survive without having to spend this much time working, aaahhhhh ;______; I've been trying to balance my life, get some exercise going, cook more, study Korean a little more intensely, and it turns out there is NOT enough time in a week for all of this, but I'm trying lmao. I wish I could just transfer my thoughts into posts (I once debated if I thought I could do a podcast just dedicated to talking about the episodes and my 800 million thoughts but idk if I could actually bring myself to do it LMAOOOOO)

Anyway YESSSSS god it was SO intense and I feel like I'm still reeling from it? It feels like so much happened in that episode, because of how much it gave us. I can't get over how emotional it was?

I'm gonna place a little read more here, so I can get into some of my spoiler-y thoughts!

I am, frankly, horrified by the idea of Yui appearing and I hope she doesn't, but also I feel like if Rand took off to bring clothes to Kousuke, she might not be far behind, right? Something I forgot to mention in the big thought dump post I just posted is Kousuke's reaction to reading that letter from Nessa in the Bible - and how dark his expression looked. It's rough enough that he's facing one of his fears - disappointing Rand, again lol - and Rand's out here calling "my son" to Nol and pulling out all the paternal care that he's never shown Kousuke before, but god that letter from Nessa is full of so much warmth and love. Reading that will absolutely bring awareness to him that Nol wasn't so much a mistake, that Nessa wasn't the result of skirt-chasing as much as someone Rand loved, and cared about, and showed that love to, something Kousuke has never seen from Rand towards himself or even Yui. I think he's spent his whole life thinking that Nessa destroyed the sense of family, but for him to find out that Rand had kept that this whole time, that it had, at some point, been passed to Nol? How does he recover from that? How does he deal with the realization that it was true: that Rand was far too busy for his own family, but still found time to start another family, with someone he truly loved.

How do you deal with that?!

Genuinely, honestly cannot even predict if Shinae and everyone will find out about this. Maybe Kousuke will storm back to the house to get Hansuke, Yujing, and Meg and get the fuck out of there? Maybe someone will come outside to check on them? Maybe they'll go back to the party to get a phone? Or, well, Rand probably has his on him and there's the car, anyway, so maybe he'll take Nol and rush off to a hospital, but I can imagine Kousuke getting left behind, or not wanting to go because, well? Would you? lmao that would be the most awkward car ride and chances are Rand is furious and anguished.

It would be really interesting to see how everyone else will react, though. Shinae is so good at trying to remain neutral and see things from both sides, and considering she was there to witness Nol egging Kousuke into punching him, she knows HOW things went down, but would her opinion change if she knew that Nol was more injured than he let on? Or would she focus more on herself and blame herself for letting him leave and not insisting he stay and get looked over? I know this could be a pivotal event that changes her thoughts on Kousuke, but again, because she was actually there and bore witness to how it played out, does that give her more room to see him in a different light than Rand might?

More than any of that, I think they'd probably all feel a lot of horror - and maybe, again, guilt for not insisting he stay, but also, isn't that complicated? Because they already know who Nol is, what he's like, it's not the first time he peaced out on them like this, so how much could they have actually changed his mind?

One thing is for sure, that was NOT a good first impression on Minhyuk lmaooooooooo

I do think a part of me wants to with or hope that somehow Nol's friends could go see him in the hospital - because he's clearly going to have to be treated before he serves his time, he's going to have to heal before that - and maybe let it be a last demonstration at "you don't have to do this alone you have friends and we care about you even if you're stupid and reckless and too selfless for your own good" so that he can get sent off with that warmth but idk if that's just TOO hopeful for what we're playing at.

I think we are right on the cusp of the first timeskip, though. I don't know if I think it will be this episode - I think there's a lot of loose ends that need to tie up, first, right? - or within a few episodes, but I feel like this has really set the stage for the bigger timeskip when we get there. I think the part that remains the biggest mystery to me right now is: how is all of this going to affect Kousuke? Will he retreat further into his fabricated reality, or will this be one of the first threads snipped to free him?

SO excited to see tonight's episode, aaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!!!

#I Love Yoo #ILY FP #ILY Spoilers #ILY Brainrot #WHAT WAS MY ASK TAG i'm gonna clean up my tumblr one day #Nolan Oliver T. Lochlainn #Nol #Kousuke Hirahara #Shinae Yoo

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dancingtotuyo · 10 days

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Great chapter! It’s so conflicting!!

I definitely love Bonnie and Joel together so much, they’re so cute together and work so well together. But obviously they’re in a shitty and complicated situation and it sucks that they have to get through the shitty stuff to eventually get to the good!

I honestly have such trouble truly feeling bad for Tommy. I know he has his problems but he’s an adult and father and it’s his responsibility to take care of his problems. But he just never did and ended up in jail and became even worse then. His wife is at home with his son, taking care of him and everything else and he can’t even be bothered to be the slightest bit present or thankful. (I probably would’ve send him some divorce papers at some point during these 2 years tbh.)

He says in the letter that he wishes he could be better for them but he could! He could be better but he chose not to be. He went to jail yeah, but he never took responsibility for all of his actions. I’m actually dreading him getting out because I can only imagine how terrible it’s going to be…

Is there going to be any cheating from Tommy in this story? Because right now I can definitely see him getting drunk and not giving a shit lol (if you want to share! If not just ignore this question hahaha)

And Nathan calling Joel Daddy 🥺 my freaking heart. That poor little boy. Just for him, I wish the reader would be a bit tougher with Tommy and not let him get away with being such an asshole. I can understand that he doesn’t want his son to see him in jail (shouldn’t have fucked up so bad then… lmao) and everything but he’s had absolutely no interest in his life??? He can’t even be bothered to properly talk to him on the phone. And that little boy deserves so much more than that and I’m glad he has Joel in his life for that 🥺 Joel as a boy dad has my entire heart actually. (Can we just imagine Nathan with a little toy tool belt and hardhat? wanting to help Joel with stuff around the house and he follows him around everywhere and copies Joels hands-on-hips stance?? Ugh yes please.)

I’m so curious to see what’s gonna happen next and I really hope reader and Joel get to be happy together at the end 🥺 I’m sure there’s gonna be plenty of angst first haha! Reader, pls don’t let Tommy suck you in again. He’s been nothing but terrible to you and you deserve so much more 🥺

Can’t wait to read more 💕💕

Hello dear anon!

I have read through this so many times because it fills my heart with joy to know that people care about this story so much to send PARAGRAPHS of their thoughts to me!

Yes, obviously Bonnie and Joel are in a shitty situation. This isn’t the first time they’ve had to partner up but it is the first time in dealing with Tommy being a dick. It’s the first time Joel has really had to pick up the pieces (though he’s been doing that for 2 1/2 years now).

I do think reader has been tougher with Tommy in the past, but I think she’s tired of fighting for it. Tommy isn’t even fighting her. How exhausting it is to fight when the other person won’t even do that. He’s gone apathetic and she doesn’t know what else to do but hope he snap out of it. But obviously, it’s taking its toll.

IF Tommy cheats. It won’t be because he doesn’t care. I know it may not seem like it- but none of this stems from Tommy not caring. Dude’s got trauma from the war (and prison) that he doesn’t know what to do with. He doesn’t know how to talk about it or process it. (Let’s remember it’s the 90’s too. Mental health care and support groups weren’t huge). To me, Tommy’s issue is that he doesn’t feel worthy and when he doesn’t feel worthy, he ends up pushing reader away.

THAT PICTURE YOU PAINTED OF NATHANIEL! Yesssss. Ugh! And a big yellow hard hat that’s too big for him. Picture him telling everyone he’s “uncle Joel” at Halloween 😭😭😭

You’re welcome in the inbox any time

Thank you! 💕

#em’s asks #high infidelity (joel miller)

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borahaejenn · 1 year

Text

✨🌼Dear Bangtan and ARMY🌼✨

Hello. Although I’ve been saying this every day lol hi. It’s Wednesday night. I was supposed to do my strength training but I decided to do my third day on Thursday lol I got into this Swedish film my sister recommended to me and I could not stop watching it and I have to say that this film is by far one of the saddest romantic films I have ever watched with just slice of life added in there. It is just beautiful and I was crying throughout and it just gets so serious and I love it. My sister really knows good films lol I blame her for the tears but it made me feel some type of way tonight and it just made me think about the things and people I love and if I really love them. Life is precious but so sad. -__- I feel like I need to cleanse my heart. Like damn. The film is called “A Man Called Ove” it’s just so good but there are many strong themes of self-harm in it so please do not watch if you can’t watch with that theme in mind and also if you don’t mind subtitles. But, I do recommend watching it if you can. It hits so much and you just collectively follow Ove through his life as he slowly opens up his heart to his neighbors after the passing of his wife, Sonja. The ending is just beautiful and I could not. It’s just reminiscent of the first time he encountered his wife and it’s like he reached heaven with her and it’s just beautiful the way Ove smiles at her. But, Ove and Sonja’s relationship is just so sweet, like this man literally built a ramp for his wife after she got into an accident and had to be in a wheelchair and they kept denying her to teach anywhere because there was no wheelchair accessibility. He fought tooth and nail for his wife to teach because she studied to be a teacher and the accident impeded it a bit. But, Ove stood by her and did everything to make her life normal even to the point of renovating an entire kitchen for her. It’s insane and just beautiful. I also loved how in the beginning there was this flashback when they both moved into the neighborhood and Sonja had a ton of books and Ove just built bookshelves for her without hesitation. 😭 Like y’all come on! That’s a love language to me lol Build me a bookshelf for my books and manga like YESSSSS!!! Lol 😆 But beyond this, the backstory is just deep. I love how Sonja treated Ove even though he didn’t read much and only mostly knew about engines. She treated him as her equal regardless and didn’t treat him less. I love that. It’s a lovely film. I literally cried so much when Ove was outside the school and just building Sonja that ramp in the rain. He went against the law and did it because he wanted to support Sonja’s dream to teach and he would not give up.😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭That is love. But, I put a post with some quotes with scenes I related to from the film. 🎬

To get back to the letter lol I just have one question first, Kook, honey, what kind of detox were you on? I just want to ask because I am just wondering. I am not aware of many detoxes and only knew of juicing and slight fasting and even ones with lemon water but I have not known of those that extend for a while. I saw you said your detox failed lol I thought you finished it already because I thought maybe you were doing a detox for one day when you spoke about it that one time in your past live. Lol I’m not aware, please do give me some intel as I am not aware. But, this is why I don’t do diets or detoxes as I could never go through it enough as I am indebted to food and I can’t give it up. Hehe This short body of mines requires the fuel of a Lion. I have too much energy and food feeds it. 😂 Food is life and I only ever turn it away when I feel really sick and nauseated and that happens every few so times but not frequently. I forget to drink my water sometimes but I am doing better lol😁 I hope you enjoy your food these days. I encourage you to do so like me and Jin lol I heard that Jin has been eating really well lately and I am happy. Foooooooood🤤 Also, I was cracking up when Taehyung randomly joined the convo with Jimin saying he just had a nice nap. Lmao I could never third wheel in a conversation like that because of my introverted tendencies. When my friends did that I was always the one with the three dots and never answered back lmaoo “…” it would be crickets until someone asked me something.😂But, I was eating and came back to that whole convo and your recipe and I was laughing so hard. I love y’all. My afternoon was cheery today. 🤣🤣🤣👏

For this week I watched most of Yoongi, Joonie, and Hobi’s lives up to the military announcement from Hobi. Let’s get into it. 😇

-I love how Yoongi came for VDAY and Jin came for White Day.🥰 So NICE. Lol but, yes!!! Min Yoongi you are right with this: CHOCOLATE IS HONESTLY TASTIER THAN CANDY.😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 BELGIAN CHOCOLATES ENTERED THIS CHAT. Lol I love it!!!!

-I think those 17 years of holding it down with Slam Dunk is worth it Yoongi. Lol I was also surprised when out of nowhere I kept seeing people posting about it lol 😂 I was like, “people finally appreciating anime so openly” lol I remember when I use to get mocked for even being into Kuroko No Basuke lol I remember when someone was once like, “You just love a bunch of pretty 2D boys” and I was like “At least they got more bars than you and can score, homie” lol I joked like that in high school. 😂 miss me with those pretty boy comments lol Aomine Daiki would end people. I love that blue-haired 2d boy. lmao His energy is sometimes cocky at first and very intense, but he is cool later in the manga and when you see his walls go down he is a softie. lol I love my manga and I will defend my fictional characters to the ends of the world. Lmaoo And Yes!!! Yoongi the manga is always more fun compared to most anime movies. The manga always has more story and depth than any 1 hour or 2 can ever try to fill in. It’s cool to see but it’s not the whole vibe. Lol let’s be real here. As an avid manga reader for almost a decade, I can say this with confidence. I remember people would talk about anime films and I read more than watched and I would always spoil backstories for them because they didn’t know haha 😂

-I related when you talked about how far into the plays Slam Dunk went with the manga and I thought of Kuroko No Basuke and how with the anime, each season was insane because they were just like one to two plays happening each season and it was just milked so much that you would have to wait for the next season to see who won and it’s intense lol each season would end dramatically. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 It’s like one whole season is just one gameplay and it’s just pure filler and flashbacks leading up to it and you just want to know who wins lol 😂 The manga just rips the band aid and goes straight for the plot twists. I love reading finished mangas because of that. I hate waiting but some stories are too good.

-Yoongi, your favorite character is Hisashi Mitsui in Slam Dunk, well my favorite character from Kuroko No Basuke is between Aomine Daiki, Midorima Shintaro, and Kiyoshi Teppei. Hehe I notice you went for a shooting guard character hehe lol I see you Yoongi. I love power forward, center, and also shooting guard. I made this decision after observing those three characters through the anime and manga lol 😆Also, Yoongi it’s okay if you talk a lot about Slam Dunk lol I got you with Kuroko No Basuke haha if any ARMY out there enjoyed that manga too, HELLO! Join my club. Hehe 🏀

-Yoongi since you didn’t get any chocolate, here is some from me to you lol ✨🍫💝🍫✨ Remember, imagination goes a long way. Lolllllll🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

-With the NBA finals, I don’t follow basketball in real life lol but with your predictions for the East and West, I wonder if they will go through. Hehe You said Suns, Memphis, and Milwaukee as possibilities, let’s see. Hehe It’s fun to follow sports. This is me with soccer from time to time but not fully. Lol Like you said, sometimes it’s fun to be a fan of something. I think this is one of those cases.

-I am happy that you enjoyed your vast time in Paris also as Valentino’s ambassador. I think that’s awesome to do new things and also expand. I see some of the members are going for different brands that suit their personalities and energy and I dig it.👍 Fighting, Yoongi!

-lol the 7 tattoo. I can only assume it’s on your chest or anterior area. Lol since Jin did it behind him, I was thinking, you and Jin are alike in some ways and I thought as a guess that you did the opposite of Jin and did it frontal instead of backward lol but it may just be somewhere simple like your arms or inner arms. I am just overthinking. Haha 😆 Also, I wonder why Jin decided to do his tattoo on his back? I wish to ask him. That is an interesting placement. I always found it hard to add one on my back and could not decide as easily as my anterior tattoos. They say back tattoos are more personal because it is not as shown and I think that is why it's hard for me. In the front people can see but behind me it's more hidden and something about it feels sacred compared to tattoos I can show. lol I give props to Jin and anyone who has back tattoos, especially well-hidden ones like Jin's 7. lol

-“But since I was young, I walked pretty quickly…It’s not a place that I’m using on my own. There are many people there. And there’s quite a number of people who get hurt…but I feel that I need to hurry and leave in order to make it less disruptive to the other passengers. I think about that quote a lot…I’m thankful for everyone who comes, but people run into doors and fall…” This right here.💕 I always wondered if you walked fast because of anxiety as I do when I want to leave a place with a lot of people walking everywhere. I do it when I go to the mall or any place with a huge amount of people. But, I finally see. And this is very considerate and kind of you Yoongi. Thank you for saying this and also truly caring about your surroundings. I dig this. 🙏

-When you talked about your wrinkles as your doubled eyelid lol I was thinking about my crow's feet on my eyes because I love to smile more these days and I think it’s cute.☺️ Maybe your double eyelid came about from eye smiling so much over the years. Hehe 😉 Let's flex those smile wrinkles hehe it shows at some point we were given a reason to be happy in this life. I like to think of it that way.🥰

-“Challenges are always welcome.” Yes, Min Yoongi. Lol I’m doing one right now and I am welcoming it well. Hehe🔥🔥🔥 LET’S GO!!!

-I have not watched THE GLORY but I heard of it and it’s not for those with a light heart. Lol I was laughing when you said “very provocative” I enjoy being provocative when I feel comfortable around people but it’s mostly with dark humor or my unending sarcastic cynical views of life lol 😂

-Your live reminded me, Yoongi. To all ARMY who are hitting those midterms and mid-projects before the summer comes as we are still waiting for spring and June seems close, do your best. If you are graduating or even just finishing up another year of school or even an internship or job. FIGHTING, HONEY! You can do it! Remember, no guts, no glory. You are almost there. 💪✨ I wish you all the best! This stuff ain't easy but the universe and Homie Jesus lol, did not bring you things they didn't think you could get through and accomplish. If they believe only you are capable of doing what you are doing, believe in your capability, baby.💜

-Yoongi, I was glad I got your age right lol 😂 My mom thinks I’m turning 28 lol And when I go to order a sandwich from time to time these days, people think I’m still 18 lol I go with a hoodie out a lot so no one can see my tattoos😂 I live youthfully as Jin says to do and I feel youthful. Lmao However, when I go out in shorts and people see my tattoos I don’t get carded for medications. Lmaooo

-“The company has screenings.” Whattttt????? Y’all lucky lol I would be in that room every day with my pizza and snickers lol 😂 BTS CREW lucky but it’s well deserved. I wonder, do y'all got a huge theater, or is it like just a giant seminar room with a big screen?lol

-“The notice went up.” Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh when you said this, I was thinking that beyond coming for VDAY lol you came to celebrate the release of your tour dates with ARMY and that is so sweet.😭😭😭😭😭💜

-Let’s meet offline, Yoongi. 🙏😌 I can’t wait for the tour to start. Joonie told us all to be strong with you and for you and I send all my support too! You can do it! 💪 If we think with a vision of prosperity and victory, that is what will be our reality. Let’s not doubt and carry on together well! May the Agust D Tour go well. ✨

-Joonie my family has that issue too with gray hair growing at an early age. I don’t have it but my sister does. It is common to also get gray hair at a young age. It’s not that rare but I think many people may think it is lol it can be caused to heavy onset stress as well as hormonal changes. I think it’s cool though. So many people try to bleach their heads to get gray tones as well, these days so I think it’s cool to even get them naturally lol it’s a vibe when you embrace it well. Hehe

-I am happy you are calm these days. I am just chaos with a hint of peace lol 😂

-“And I think I’m off the ‘Indigo’ mode. I think I’m on the next stage already.” I think it’s natural to feel this way. When you let it all out, a certain space gets left and you can fill it with new things. I like that sentiment. Fighting, Joonie!

-“We work to play and play to work. We have to have fun in life.” It’s kind of like the saying, we work to live not live to work. It’s contradicting but it’s true. This also reminded me that fun is what we make or define as fun. I feel like sometimes people see fun as linear and fun can be anything just depends on what reality you wish to create for yourself. The question at the end of the day in choosing what to do is: is what you are doing today adding to the life you wish to always work for?

-About your workout injuries lol I read about them but I will just say about your shins just in case lol, I hope you do mobility warmups so you don't get shin splints in the future as I did. They are a pain and require a lot of recovery time depending on how severe they get but if you prevent them, you will be fine. hehe I have been strengthening my knees like crazy and it is like a solid foundation for movement in my shins too and I feel so good. lol I just have issues overworking the back part of my legs.

-HOBIIIIIIIIIIIII *FOR THE THUMBNAIL* got me on the floor! So CUTEEEEEEE. ✌️😜✌️ lol 😭😭😭

-LEGOLAS HOPE!!!!!!! YESSSSSS!!!!!!! Lol I love that you said that you put your all into those photos because they are TOP-TIER shots!!!!! ✨✨✨✨✨✨ CHO GI-SEOK has a golden eye! 👏👏👏👏👏I have to admit still that the flower photos were IT!!!! The creative eye to those is just chef’s kiss. 👌

-“I do think that these are the kind of images that only I can do in that specific time.” I love how you really appreciate the power of a moment. This adds to the idea of the many videos and photos you have captured through the years with Bangtan. You know that once a moment and opportunity is there it can be gone and never be done again. That’s precious. I love you Hobi.😭💕

-Your TMI is so pure lol 20 minutes to pick clothes. You really think hard for ARMY. 😭

-Lmao ARMY dating Bangtan for a couple of minutes is the new “Yoongi Marry Me” trend 😂😂😂😂😂😂 I love how you said “I enjoyed it. Thank you” Lmaoo

-I’m crying at your wish here, “I guess to finish off everything that I’m doing right now well?” And I think you did thus far, especially with ON THE STREET. 🙏✨ You are proof that you can tell people your wish and it can happen still lol but in all seriousness, I am glad you have been doing things well the way you wanted to, honey.🥰 Also, thank you for trusting us to listen to you for all these years too.

-“The problem is that I’m way too healthy.” It’s not a problem lol to me that is world peace. 🙌 When my people eat well I love to hear it and I want them to. 😁

-“I’m good at wearing what I wore already, huh?” Lol This just proves you are versatile. ✨You can do something with the same things and make it look new and different than the last time. I love this. It’s an Aquarius thing I think.✨ Y’all turn anything into an art form.

-I was laughing about this “he’d beg me to get rid of some clothes.” Lol that sounds like Jimin. If he saw my closet he would tell me to get more clothes lol 😂 I am in my hermit era so I just got essentials and athletic wear. I donated so many of my clothes because I wanted to downsize and be minimal this year to try it lol

-HOBI!!!!!! Did you do a SUCHWITA episode??????????? Lol is this why you drank a bit lol

-“When j-hope moves, there are no useless movements.” 👍 TRUE. Not just in dancing but also in your work. You do power moves and look at all the things you chose thus far as well as with collaborations. 😌🙌Juts gains upon gains. That's wasssup!!!!

-“‘j-hope is a multitalented artist.’ And who made that kind of j-hope? ARMY did.” 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭HOBIIIIIIII😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭Nah. We don’t deserve you. I see what you mean but also this is just so sweet. 😊💖

-I get what you mean by saying that you don’t see yourself as a vocalist but also, I think you can sing. Singing to me is beyond just sounding a certain way but also being in love with the action of doing it. Plus, I don’t think ARMY can forget about the DNA demo lol HOBI, come on lol That is pure proof of another side of your voice. 🙂 I think I contemplated life after hearing that demo over and over again. lol ARMYs comments tell me the same lol

-Mickey doing well is happiness to me. I’m glad that since that last time, Mickey's health is doing better. 😊 I’m glad. Furry children are precious. 😭

-Rosalía x Hobi 🤝 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 I love how you be out here enjoying a lot of Latin music Hobi. Lol you really are our Jose lol 😂 But I dig it. I still remember when ARMY would nickname you that Spanish name lmao But, I listen to HIGHEST IN THE ROOM a lot, DESPECHÁ because of my parents lol they enjoy her music too, and I also like to chill to COMO UN G. Hehe 🔥🔥

-I need to catch up to RUN BTS lol I most likely will later down the line hehe but, from what I saw from ARMYs posts lol Namjoon is one to look out for this season because I saw how chaotic it went down with him and how he kept scoring and taking the ball. Lol now that I heard you pulled a Mbappé ceremony I must watch it!!!! Lol

-Jimin going all out dancing for you lol 😂 the moment he put his head back I was out of my seat. Jimin was serving unintentionally lmaooo 👏👏👏🤣🤣

-Jimin you are funny lol y’all really be out here joking about Jin as if you didn’t just call him a few minutes ago lmaoo this: “Times probably not passing for Jin though, right?”😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂I love you Jimin. Haha

-“He just misses people.” 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 We miss him too. JINNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

-“So, we can beat the Sand Castle Wars.” 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 An inside joke that ARMY gets because y’all been about building sand castles in weverse for a while lol I love this.

-“It’s only been 3 weeks.” Thank you for working hard on your English, Jimin lol 😂 You are almost at a whole month. 💪I love how Hobi just spilled it out of nowhere but it’s nice that y’all have been talking with each other still that you can be like this. Lol

-“There’s a reason for everything.” 🙃 will we ever know why your phone case got dirty? Maybe? Maybe not? Lol 😂

-“I’m constantly getting mad at myself, and then overcoming it. As you do that, you grow. I must grow!” I love the passion here but I laughed when Hobi told you to say this in English and said ‘I’m not baby!’ 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I drowned in tears there a little. Y’all so unserious. I love it.

-WORDS FOR ARMY IF ARMY NEEDS A REMINDER brought to you by Hobi: “ARMY, YOU ARE THE STANDARD, A GIVEN.” 💜🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌 When you forget who you are and what power you hold, don’t forget you are the freaking standard.👏💜 Hobi called it. Thank you, Hobi. I gained strength from your words today. I am that JENN. I get stuff done. I go above and beyond. I am powerful. I don’t need to be at someone’s table when I am more than capable of making my own table lol 😂 that’s wassup!!! That’s the energy I am talking about!!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥I love this. When people support me like this, it adds to my passion. lol

-I think it was nice that Jin called you as soon as the military announcement came out. I see Jin be getting the weverse notifications lol he’s an ARMY just like all of us too.🤣

-Hobi, at least we know that the second person we get back is you after Jin and that is exciting. 2SEOK is coming back first. Lol I can’t wait. 😆👏👏👏👏 I think it’s cool y’all have been preparing small gifts and videos for us. It feels like Jin is still here as he comments here and there and his videos add to it. I feel at ease a little bit. Lol I will appreciate your gifts too. I wonder what you will be gifting us in the future, but for now, I will enjoy the present with you.☺️I love you j-hobi! 🌈

-“I was always a true ARMY, everyone!” Haha I know especially because you have reposted past ARMY posts and videos and I guess you get some of the inside jokes within ARMY, Hobi. lol 😂 We all know you have been observing ARMY on socials lol

-And Hobi I just wanted to say this before I end this letter and if you did even a small video or live with your shaved head my spirit will leave my body lol I could not handle the hotness.🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I think people look awesome with semi-bald heads. Lol it has that hardcore edge that can’t be created with regular hair lol something about it is lit. 🔥🔥🔥 But that’s just me. Haha Plus look at Jin, he has this new wholesome glow to him. Lol I love it. Thank you for coming for your birthday and even after the announcement Hobi. I enjoyed your lives a lot lol With Jimin, y’all know how to joke around. Y'all are my kind of people. Lol 😂

I know that SET ME FREE PT.2 Is coming as well! Before I go and it releases, I wish to say FIGHTING, OUR JIMINIE!!!!!!! LET’S GO!!! Phase 1 of FACE IS HERE LOL ✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨I’m on Jimin lockdown now haha I just wanted to ask, but I wonder how that track came to be because I wonder with Yoongi’s mixtape. The track Set Me Free. I don’t know what to expect and I wish the best. I can’t wait to see it and hear it.😇 🔥🔥🎶🔥🔥 SET ME FREAKING FREEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! Lol 😂ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!! We focus on Jimin tonight!

I shall go now. I must go eat dinner and catch up on errands hehe I am posting this early and I hope y’all have a nice day. Please eat something delicious today! I love you. Please take care and remember just in case that even if you fail at something today, It’s okay. The people we become are made up of all the little moments we have chosen to quit something and then get back up to do things differently. Acknowledge defeat and then get up and move differently you don’t always have to do things the same way. Do it the way it feels best for you. Hehe 👍 Bye bye! 🤗 Also, I hope you enjoyed you ramen Kook. lol

With love,

Your Jennifer✨ 🤟🐰✨

0 notes

cartoonsaint · 2 years

Note

Hanahaki for Gordon/Benrey? ( I saw a post for Hanahaki earlier and I cannot stop rotating it in my head

anon, this isn't your fault, but here's 4500 goddamn words about it >:|

[ i edited some bits from the fanlore page to make hanahaki work for this. while benrey wouldn't know the flowers he's chokin on i thought it'd be nice if they meant something.]

Frenrey but Tommy's in it a bunch and Coomer too for a minute and Bubby gets a cameo, rated T, contains bl0od n body horr0r related to plants growing inside a person and a dude who can respawn abusin this ability thru, uh, well, makin himself dead but i PROMISE he's not angsty about it. also unwise decisions, stupid idiots in love, and irony. pre-canon. originally written out of order and technically a WIP (and wip it will remain, sorry lol)

“—couldn’t remember the word, so i—”

“You couldn’t remember— it’s two letters, dude, an I and a D, how could you not—?”

“SO,” Benrey says loudly, and Gordon rolls his eyes and picks up his forgotten cafeteria pizza again but he’s smiling, still listening, so Benrey swallows down some delighted sweet voice and waits for his friend to take a bite before he continues. “so i ask him if he has his passport.”

Just like Benrey planned, Gordon tries to laugh and chokes on his pizza. He erupts into a coughing, laughing fit, his face turning red and eyes watering enough to make the green in them glitter. Smug and trying very hard not to let on, Benrey graciously hands over the napkin he was holding onto for this very occasion.

Gordon snatches it from him to cough into, still giggling breathlessly. “You— passport?? That's not even close— so what the fuck did he even say, what'd he do?”

Benrey shrugs oh-so-casually like this was an everyday occurrence, even though it’d made him laugh all week thinking about telling Gordon. “he gave it to me.”

“He… what,” Gordon says, muffled into the napkin, bushy eyebrows high.

“he gave me his passport.”

“He—!? …Benrey.” Gordon carefully folds his napkin and sets it aside. He focuses all his attention on Benrey, incredulous and still obviously just a nudge away from bursting into laughter again. “You’re telling me that some random old dude you’ve never seen before came up to you in the Biohazard Department— the fucking!! Biohazard Department!!! At three in the morning, totally naked and covered in, fucking, slime? And then you couldn't remember the word "ID" so you— sorry, actually, what the fuck are you even supposed to do in that situation? Do they cover that in training? What did you do?”

Benrey leans back, hands behind his head, trying his hardest not to laugh. “i let him go.”

Gordon makes a noise somewhere between a snort and a whimper. He covers his face, but his disbelieving smile is still clear as day. It takes enormous effort for Benrey not to start wiggling in glee. Fuck, this is going so much better than he'd even imagined.

“You let him go. The random naked senior citizen in the middle of one of Black Mesa’s most dangerous departments. You just—”

“he had his passport. what was i supposed to do?” Benrey says, and to his immense pleasure the dam breaks.

Gordon throws his head back, his goofy lil laugh hiccuping out of him, and Benrey lets himself smirk. Victory. Game won. Match set. Yesssss.

It's taken a long fucking time to get here— to be able to sit with Gordon and make him laugh. To be friends. But Benrey's proud to say that he's friends with everybody who's nice, and even though Gordon had started off mean to him he'd just known he wasn't, not really. He was just weird, and didn't really do what other people did, and was always so sure people weren't gonna like him so he had to be mean first.

But Benrey's also weird and doesn't do what other people do, and he'd been determined, and hey, what's a year or two spent slowly getting to know someone who acts like he hates you when you're not really human and have all eternity before you and also just really, really want it?

Moments like this, where Gordon can't stop laughing and grabbing his arm across the table to shake him, where the months of poking and prodding at this rude weird guy to find his soft spots and be nice about them pay off— god, is it worth it. This moment is so fucking awesome Benrey kinda wants to stay here forever, watching Gordon crack up over something that Benrey's spent all week crafting specifically for this purpose, his pretty face all red and teary-eyed.

Early on Benrey'd had to cut back on some of the more obviously not-human shit with Gordon, but by now he's mostly acclimated to it. So when Benrey feels a bout of sweet voice coming on— totally natural, he's having fun with his friend, anyone would be feeling this way— he's all ready to let it out, but—

It catches in his throat.

Benrey's eyebrows crease; that's never happened before. He clears his throat to see if that'll help, but instead that makes something flutter in the back of his throat that nearly makes him gag (stupid human reflexes). He has to cough into his hand a few times, then a few more, and it's actually not helping at all— it feels almost like there's something stuck back there, something other than sweet voice or mucus or whatever other goop his human body is made out of.

"Woah, bud, you okay?"

bud!!! best buds!! "yeah man," Benrey tries to say, but instead the coughing gets worse. Gordon's laughter is gone and he's leaning forward, worried, which is not what Benrey wanted at all; with some effort and a little multi-dimensional cheating, Benrey pushes it off til later. He's fine right now. He's cool. Everything's fine.

"Oh wait hang on, I have— here," Gordon says, and takes out a whole fistful of cough drops from his labcoat pocket. He deposits them in a little pile beside Benrey's water. What a weirdo, why's he got all these cough drops? Benrey likes him a lot. "Hey, man, feel better, okay? I gotta run, but I'll catch you next week, yeah?"

"huh? oh yeah." Disappointment blooms in Benrey's chest but he plays it off, acting really casual as he soaks in this last little bit of time with Gordon, watching the long line of the guy's throat as he swallows one of his nerd pills and finishes off his soda. Gordon aims a grin at him and waves, striding off back into Black Mesa.

"seeya," Benrey murmurs, and as soon as Gordon's disappeared around a corner Benrey's cheat wears off and he practically hacks up a fucking lung, what the fuck?? He hasn't had a cough this bad in ages, especially not one that kinda makes it feel like he's almost being strangled from the inside.

It takes him over a minute but at last he gets whatever's blocking his throat out, coughing something wet and unpleasantly solid into his hand— gross— and he's admittedly curious and maybe a little baffled by the taste of iron in his mouth so he looks at it and—

What the fuck. Is that a fucking flower petal?

***

Benrey's seen shit like this before, in some movies and video game cutscenes. He's pretty sure it's not good, but the characters who get sick with this kinda flower-coughing shit always stay quiet about it so he does too. Unfortunately that doesn't help— over the course of the week it gets worse, with coughing attacks featuring more and more fully-formed petals until it's eventually full flowers accompanied by more blood than he likes.

By Friday Benrey’s forced to call in sick for work, his first time using a sick day for its actual purpose. He just stays in bed, trying to sleep around bouts of coughing up whole flowers, zinnia and yellow lily and heliotrope, feeling miserable and light-headed and kinda pissed off because what the hell, he was supposed to meet Gordon for lunch today—

And then he wakes up and feels completely fine.

He blinks at his ceiling. Experimentally, he tries to take in a deep breath. Though it definitely still smells like flowers and blood in here, he can fill his lungs with no problem. His headache and fatigue are gone; he feels fresh and brand new and honestly kinda hungry.

So he goes to swing his legs over the side of the bed to head into his shitty little dorm room kitchen, except he’s not on the edge of the bed like he’s supposed to be. He’s been pushed towards the wall because in the spot in bed he always sleeps in is a fully grown human being.

For a second his brain is just a series of !!!???!?!!??!??!? before he realizes that the person beside him is cold and totally limp and absolutely dead. He lets out a sigh of relief, except… wait a minute, random dead person in his bed is ALSO bad, how the fuck did they get here? Benrey's pretty sure he locked the door, and he hasn't killed anyone in ages and NEVER in his sleep, so what the fuck??

His mind races as much as it can, trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, until a mental lightbulb finally goes off and he thinks to brush away the bloody flowers covering the body’s face to find—

Himself.

Flowers grow from his eyes, his nose, and most of all his mouth, a riot of petals and stamens and pollen and blood. He’d been in a lot of pain, he remembers, but then he had also sort of drifted off. The flesh under his dead body's fingernails is blue. He must have suffocated.

Benrey’s never died outside of work before. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to do in this situation.

So he calls Tommy.

***

Tommy goes quiet the moment he sees the body. Benrey sticks his hands in his pockets and chews on a hoodie string while Tommy takes his time examining every inch of Benrey’s corpse, from toe to tulip.

Finally he asks for Benrey's help loading the body in his car. He's quiet on the drive to Black Mesa, and he lets Benrey take the lead in chatting with the on-duty guards and occasional scientist as they lug the body to the skull-grinding facility. After dropping it off Benrey assumes they're heading home, but Tommy turns down an unexpected hallway and Benrey gets his first inklings that maybe he might be in some kind of trouble.

Tommy pokes his head into a few late-night labs and fluorescent-lit breakrooms before they find one of the clone doctors. He’s meticulously loosening the screws that keep the breakroom tables together. Tommy sits opposite him and officially introduces Benrey to Doctor Coomer.

“Dr. Coomer, do you think you could tell Benrey here about Hanahaki Disease?"

"Of course!" Coomer says with a bright smile and begins to recite. "Hanahaki Disease is a disease characterized by the coughing up of buds, petals, and in late stages whole flowers. Without treatment, victims choke on their own blood and petals and inevitably die. It can be contracted when an individual suffers from romantic love they believe to be one-sided. Hanahaki Disease can be cured naturally if the affected's beloved honestly returns their feelings and confesses as such. It can also be temporarily treated through medication and cured completely through surgical removal; however, surgical removal of the infection also necessitates removal of both the victim's romantic feelings for and their memories of their beloved."

"cool," Benrey acknowledges. Kinda hardcore for squishy humans.

"So," Tommy says, steepling his long fingers together like he's some kinda businessman or something, "Benrey, who are you in love with?"

Benrey blinks. He turns to squint at Tommy, who is extremely tense and staring him down with dark eyes that flicker yellow. He puts the dots together.

"oh, s— s'not you," he says quickly.

"Really?"

Benrey makes eye contact for Tommy, letting all his feelings and shit show on his face as plainly as he can. "yea bro s'not you. really."

"Oh," Tommy says, and bursts into tears. Dr. Coomer, alarmed, hands over a napkin. Tommy blows his nose into it. "Thank god! Thank god, I'm really glad 'cause, because you know I can't—"

"yeah i know man you're fine," Benrey says, patting his back very gently. Tommy explained the whole "aromantic" thing to him ages ago, way back before Benrey was even thinking about being human himself, or else he woulda made about a hundred passes at him by now. "uhh but also. are you, uh. suuuure that’s what this is…?”

“Yeah,” Tommy says, and Benrey leans back in his chair to sing a big, long note of well-fuck-me yellow. If Tommy says it, it must be true.

“i don’t even know who it is,” Benrey says honestly. "n’ i feel fine. maybe dying fixed it?"

Turns out there's no books or articles about how respawning affects hanawhatever disease. Tommy makes him spend the rest of the weekend at his place just in case, where he determinedly distracts him from all thoughts of romance with video games, food not from a microwave, and Sunkist. Only late at night, after Tommy's been knocked out by his strict sleep schedule, does Benrey's mind wander.

He's never been in love before. He didn't even know that was something that could happen to him. How's he supposed to tell who it is? Will it make things weird if he has to get surgery or whatever? Is… is it maybe even possible that whoever it is could love him back?

He still feels fine on Monday so he goes to work, where things are the same as ever. He fixes a blown fuse, checks whitecoats' IDs, patrols the hallways that house the freaky shit that won't stop screaming, and uses his every spare second to chat with all his friends. He doesn't feel any different, no hints of coughing or floral taste or anything, so he's kinda feeling like he's in the clear. Hell yeah, being not really human.

He's in the middle of trying to reset one of the stupid physics puzzles in an empty hallway when he notices the sound of shoes slapping on linoleum coming from the hall over. He looks up just in time to see Gordon, frantic, sweaty, his ponytail in disarray, come sliding around the corner.

The second he sees Benrey, his face splits in a relieved grin. Benrey’s grinning back before he’s even processed the fact that Gordon’s been running in the halls (against the rules).

“Benrey!” He’s breathless, eyes sparkling as he pushes his hair back out of his face. “Hey, d’you think you could—”

“FREEMAN!!” someone roars from the direction Gordon came from. Gordon whips his head round in a panic, then turns back to Benrey with his hands clasped and big, desperate puppy dog eyes, like Sunkist’s but way cuter.

“Please hide me,” he whimpers and aw, what is Benrey supposed to say to that? He swipes his card to open the nearest door, gesturing Gordon in— “Thank you!!” he mouths, and then, unexpectedly, grabs Benrey himself to drag them both into the tiny unlit glorified janitor’s closet together.

“wh,” Benrey starts, but in the darkness Gordon's fingers find his face and cover his mouth. They're long and warm.

“Sh!!”

Together in the darkness they listen as someone storms towards their little closet… and then past it. They stay utterly still as whoever it is strides away grumbling to himself until they can't hear him at all. After a long moment of silence, Gordon sighs and drops his hand to Benrey’s shoulder.

“Thanks. Kinda thought he might kill me this time.” His voice is still quiet.

“what’d you do?” Benrey whispers. He blinks in the darkness, wishing his stupid human eyes would hurry up and adjust already. “steal his passport?”

Gordon snickers. “No, I just— look, every fuckin’ day for lunch this guy brings in some new, fucking, concoction of beans and mushrooms and, like, farts or something because it always smells terrible—”

“you stole his farts?”

"No, listen!! He, he’s got these casseroles and they take forever to heat up and there’s only one microwave and— okay, so today I actually remembered to bring lunch, right? But my burrito was still frozen and I’m not gonna eat a raw, frozen burrito just because Professor Magnethead needs the whole fuckin’ lunch hour to make his perfect, precious three-veggie mess—”

From the noise, to Benrey's delight, the picture emerges. “hang on— you stole his microwave?” In the darkness, Gordon makes a cute little guilty kinda sound. Holy shit?? “while he was using it? bro—”

“Nooo, you— you have to— you don’t know how hungry I was, man!! And I was only gonna need three and a half minutes if he had just waited, I tried to explain—”

“stealer? you stole??” Benrey says loudly. Gordon makes a really great giggly-protesting noise and puts his whole hand on Benrey’s face, which Benrey graciously allows because lol. “uhhh think i’m gonna have to bring you in, charges of stealing microwaves—”

Gordon sputters but against all odds manages to pull himself out of it. “Yeah? Corrections officer?” The sudden challenge in his voice sends an unexpected thrill through Benrey, from the fingers on his lips throughout his whole body. “How’re you gonna bring me in if you can't catch me?”

Benrey means to give him an incredulous look— they are crammed together in a tiny room, Gordon’s about as caught as can be without Benrey bringing out the handcuffs— but the door opens with a click!! and Gordon steps out into the blinding light of the hallway. Benrey blinks as Gordon grins at him over his shoulder, mischief in his pretty green eyes as he sprints a few steps away to bounce in place, waiting, inviting.

Benrey's eyebrows raise as he processes: Gordon expects him to chase him down, through their professional science-y workplace, over a joke?

Whatever the fuck is wrong with this guy, Benrey honestly kinda loves it.

He sets a foot back and prepares to dash after his weirdo friend—

But the breath catches in his lungs, something sticks in the back of his throat, and a sudden, painful cough wracks his body. Awkwardly Benrey aborts his forward momentum, sort of banging into the doorframe instead and leaning on it as he hacks into his elbow.

“Oh shit,” Gordon says, abandoning the game immediately to dart to Benrey’s side with concern in his eyes. That triggers another bout of coughing, one that tastes green but not sweet voice green, green like spinach or grass clippings or…

oh, Benrey thinks, realization rocketing through him. fuck.

“You still have that cough? I didn’t see you Friday; it really took you out, huh,” Gordon says, worried and totally oblivious as Benrey shies farther into the dark closet to try to hide the fact that he’s coughing up fucking petals, oh fuck, oh FUCK. “Here, I still have cough drops, here—”

“thanks,” Benrey says hoarsely. He tries to surreptitiously scatter the collected petals behind him as Gordon unwraps candy for him like he cares or something— shit, Benrey thinks as he feels another attack of hanafuckyou disease coming on, don’t think about that, idiot, don’t—

He manages to clear his throat enough that the flower bud stuck there ends up beneath his teeth, where he crushes it to gratifying little pieces alongside the cough drop Gordon gave him. Gordon wheezes.

“No, you— you’re not supposed to chew it, you’re supposed to suck it,” Gordon says, popping a cough drop of his own into his mouth. “Look, like this— you suck on it, see? Have you never had a cough drop before? Jesus.”

“you’d know a lot about sucking, huh,” Benrey says but he’s mostly on autopilot because he’s connecting the lines, thinking it through, the warmth and the excitement and how much he looks forward to seeing Gordon and how long it took them to get to this point and how he’s still not sure what did it, what finally convinced Gordon to give Benrey a chance, and if things get messed up Benrey doesn’t know how to even begin to try to get them back to the fucking awesome perfect new normal between them…

Gordon sputters, his cheeks flushing high and pretty. “I don’t know anything about sucking!” he exclaims, then snickers and buries his face in his hands. “Well— okay, I know the normal amount about sucking, the same as literally everybody, not— like this, I mean!” To Benrey’s dismay, he points to himself as he makes the stupidest face in the world, like he’s sucking on a lemon instead of a cherry-flavored cough drop, and Benrey can feel his lung capacity shrinking as the roots inside grow deeper. “Not like what you mean, whatever it is you mean—”

Benrey is in love with Gordon Freeman. And he can never, ever let on, no matter how many times it’ll kill him.

***

Benrey gets it down to a science.

Well, Tommy says that he does, anyways, so apparently science is a lot messier and more uncomfortable than Benrey realized. Like, he knew science sometimes killed shit, but he didn’t know it happened at minimum once a week.

Benrey chooses Fridays, even though that means he has to get up and drag himself into work early. He goes right to the skull-grinding facility (or the acid pools, or the shark tanks, or the “pita-cutting room,” or wherever a body is most needed), wastes a bullet, and then by the time he’s respawned he can officially clock in. Later he meets Gordon for lunch and gets reinfected with the stupid flower-lung-parasite thing because it’s easy as hell to fall in love with Gordon Freeman, even when he knows he should be trying not to. He spends the rest of the weekend trying not to think about Gordon and failing (especially once he convinces Gordon to play some TF2 and they get to spend a night or two together over voice chat after the guy’s kid has gone to bed), and as the workweek starts and he catches spare, precious minutes with Gordon between security guard shit, the infection worsens. By Thursday he's lucky if he manages to make it through the night without choking on huge, ostentatious blooms and thorny stems.

It gets… pretty bad.

“Benrey, this is— it’s pretty bad,” Tommy says to him. It’s a Tuesday evening and it’s starting to look like Benrey’s not gonna make it to Friday this week— he’s practically coughing up whole daffodils already and this time the plants' roots seem to have found a major artery or something because there’s way more blood. “I know the, the medications make you feel… weird, but you, you’re not supposed to be dying this much. It’s not good for you.”

“meuh mneuh mneuh,” Benrey says, then regrets it immediately when that practically wipes out all the energy he’s got. He has to spend a whole minute face-down, not moving, taking shallow little baby breaths til the world stops spinning. “s’fine.”

“...I want you to consider the surgery,” Tommy says firmly. Even though it’s probably more taxing on his body than is healthy, Benrey twists his head to glare at him so Tommy can see the betrayal. Uncharacteristically, Tommy glares right back. “I— I don’t like seeing you like this! I don’t want to. You’re my friend, and it hurts me to see you like this over a, a, a guy you won’t even talk to about it.”

That melts Benrey a bit. He doesn’t want to hurt Tommy. He loves Gordon, loves what they have together, really really doesn't want things to change, but…

He doesn’t quite have the strength for words right now, so he sweet voices a plain green bubble and forces his hand to cooperate into making a thumb's up. It’s worth it for the way Tommy’s face brightens.

or maybe s’not worth it, Benrey thinks as he jitters his foot, waiting for Gordon that Friday. He ended up suffocating again early Wednesday morning and wasn’t even lucky enough to be out of it this time. He shudders— slowly choking to death while thoroughly conscious is now officially one of his least favorite ways to go. Now he’s a little further into the disease than he usually is by his weekly Gordon lunch; he keeps having to remind himself not to breathe too deeply so he won’t start hacking up more fucking flowers in the middle of work. He definitely wants to avoid doing so in front of Gordon, even if he is gonna try to talk to him today.

Not that he's gonna get a chance to if Gordon doesn't turn up soon— he's already twenty minutes late. What the hell is taking him so long, s'not like he's the one with severely reduced lung capacity because he keeps falling in love with a stupid idiot. Benrey scowls, toeing the smear of blood he already accidentally hacked up on the sandy rock of the open-air cafeteria he and Gordon always meet at.

He waits and waits til finally, ten minutes til his break is up, his phone buzzes. He fumbles for it when he sees the name.

GORDON: hey sorry family emergency

Benrey’s pulse quickens.

benrey: your kid ok?

GORDON: yea joshie’s fine but i just found out BM’s transferring me

what? Benrey’s trying to figure out what to type when another text comes in.

GORDON: won’t be able to talk much with the new job, sorry, please don’t take it personally

benrey: ?

Gordon never answers. Benrey doesn’t see him at all that next week and he doesn’t show up at lunch on Friday. Calls go unanswered, and after a while Benrey figures out that he’s been blocked (what the fuck? what the fuck??) on just about everything, even TF2. For all intents and purposes, Gordon’s just gone.

But the hanahaki disease isn’t. Benrey’s still in love with him, but now it’s worse— he has no idea what happened, no idea what he did wrong, no way to even see Gordon and try to figure out if he should just give up or what. The deaths start coming quicker; even freshly respawned, Benrey’s coughing petals all over the place.

“Found him,” Tommy says tersely.

“huh?” Benrey says. He’s half-asleep face-first into Sunkist’s fur; Tommy has him stay over more nights than not nowadays.

“Mr. Freeman.”

Benrey bolts upright, loses two or three minutes to gagging on aloe and pink camelia, and finally manages to take a look at Tommy’s laptop without spraying blood all over it. He’s obviously hacked into something he’s not supposed to (against the rules, but awesome because it’s Tommy); it contains a schedule and locations under the file Gordon Freeman.

“bro,” Benrey says hoarsely. Tommy shrugs, a quick jerk of his shoulders.

“I want you to— if you talk to him and he turns you down, can you please consider getting the surgery? I, I can’t…” Tommy sighs. “I can’t keep cleaning bloodstains out of my bedsheets anymore.”

For the chance to talk to Gordon? Benrey owes Tommy. He agrees.

Which is how Benrey finds himself in an unfamiliar corridor he’s not technically supposed to be in, trying to breathe shallowly and look less anxiously, hopelessly heartsick than he really is, when for the first time in weeks he sees Gordon Freeman.

Whatever plans Benrey had flew out of his head the second he lays eyes on Gordon. His hair is a little longer, and he looks tired, and he’s distracted and looks kinda pissed and he’s beautiful. Benrey ought to step into his path and say something clever, get his attention and keep it again, but he finds himself frozen in place, tasting honeysuckle and tarragon, when Gordon turns those leaf-green eyes on him and…

“Howdy,” Gordon says, and walks right on by.

Benrey stares after him, mind not processing for a long moment because what. the fuck??

“hey,” Benrey calls, hurrying after his friend and maybe a little hurt and thus a little pissed. “hey, can i uh— uh…”

“Huh?” Gordon says, turning, and it takes Benrey a long second but between the sound of Gordon saying unfriendly, unfamiliar things he registers two facts.

First: there’s absolutely zero recognition in Gordon Freeman’s eyes. It’s like Benrey never spent all those months slowly figuring out how best to be nice to him, like they were never friends, like Benrey didn’t die to keep their friendship alive over and over and over again.

And second: beneath the padded collar of the ugly HEV suit is a large white bandage that covers up most of Gordon’s neck, the kind one might need when recovering from major surgery.

[you can find more of my writing here!]

#hlvrai #hlvrbtaiisa #frenrey #saint writes #hanahaki

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biggest-stupidhead · 3 years

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Hello! I usually don’t request much so I hope Im doing this right. I absolutely loved the fic where the reader accidentally breaks Levi’s nose and saw that you would be willing to write a 3rd part! So if someone hasn’t already asked, may I request a part where Levi and the reader slowly fall in love. ( Maybe a little flirting along the way from the reader 😗) Eventually one of them confesses and Levi is all flustered and shy ( I heard that he stutters around his crush but I don’t know if that’s confirmed! I just thought that it was adorable🥺)

I found your blog recently and loved your writing so I couldn’t resist requesting! Sorry if this seems a little vague. Feel free to do whatever! Thank you~

yesssss!!! thank u so much for the support anon 🥺 and this was a perfect request thank u for sending it in!

Summary: Late night paper work and early afternoon naps.

Word Count: 3.4K (I got a little carried away 🤭)

In the four years that you had been in the survey corps, this was by far the busiest. You had been working under Sis, until recently when Hange began the tedious process of transferring you onto her squad. Just when she was about finished, the whole Trost situation arose, putting your transfer on pause. And by the end of it, after Eren’s trial you had just kind of...settled into a vague routine of working with Levi and Hange squads. Bouncing between the two of them. But now as you sat in front of Erwin’s desk, Levi leaning casually against the desk, looking over Erwin’s shoulder as he signed off on some last minute details.

“Alright then... that settles it (Y/n)! Levi is under your care now!” He teased, earning a sharp jab in the ribs from Levi.

“I do hope that you are a night owl as well.” Erwin continued to relentlessly tease him, and your hand flew to your mouth to cover the smile and little giggle threatening to spill out.

“I think that we’ll manage just fine Commander.” You said, smirking at Levi who was glaring at the back of Erwin’s blonde head.

“Oh I know you will (Y/n).” Erwin picked up his stack of papers and tapped them against his desk before passing them over to you. You smiled up at him and stretched a hand across to shake, his warm hand closed over your own.

“Thank you sir.” You glanced at Levi who was now practically pouting as he stood impatiently by the door.

“Better get going, Levi isn’t the most patient.” Erwin whispered to you with a sly smirk and a wink. You let that laugh loose now as you stood from your chair and held the papers to your chest.

“I’ll see you around Commander.” You said with a little wave as you joined Levi at the door. He opened the door and basically stormed out into the corridor.

“Anxious to get to work Captain?” You teased as you matched his steps, which were brisk and surprisingly long despite his size.

“Don’t get cocky, I’m still your superior.” Levi reminded you, since this was a new unfamiliar side of you that he was unfamiliar with, he had no clue how to handle you. Maybe he could find a way to ask Hange about this foreign side of you without drawing too much attention to himself? No that was nearly impossible, damn four eyes was too keen on the little details.

“No need to worry Captain, I know how the chain of command works around here.” You said as you paused in front of his office, waiting for him to use his key and let you in. He just rolled his eyes, not sure if he was more interested in having this version around or more annoyed. He shook these thoughts off, it was far too late for him to double back on his request for you to become his assistant now. You settled into the chair across from him and began to flip through the paper work that Erwin had just given to you. Levi returned to writing the condolence letters that he had been working on before Erwin had called for the two of you. It was late afternoon, nearly dinner time. Levi usually only got a small portion of food and brought it back to his office to eat. He hadn’t expected you to do the same. But when he dismissed you for dinner you instead offered to bring his meal to him. A bit bashfully, he accepted your offer, and was even more surprised when you came in with two portions and a tray of tea.

You seemed unbothered with not sitting with your peers, Levi almost tricked himself into believing that you were choosing to spend time with him over the others. But he quickly dismissed those thoughts, knowing that it was most likely the paperwork that was keeping you here. He continued to sneak glances at you through out the evening, waiting for you to ask if you could be dismissed. But you remained silent and focused on the paper work before you. Levi realized that the two of you managed to finish work that usually took him all night to finish, well before midnight. He was unsure of what to do with this free time as he watched you stand and stretch.

“Same thing tomorrow Captain?” You said with a sleepy smile on your face. Levi’s eyes narrowed and he nodded, waving you off.

“See you first thing in the morning then.” You said over your shoulder as you left the office, closing his door softly behind you. Levi blinked dumbly after you, he felt so very...confused. He had never felt this flutter in his chest before, or the tightness in his stomach at seeing you leave. Levi stayed awake late into the night, mulling over the way that he had felt when he watched you leave, the excitement that had sparked inside of him at your promise to see him in the morning.

He even caught himself wondering what it would be like to have you with him all night. Not necessarily in a sexual way, but in a way in which he could see you right before he fell asleep, and again when he first opened his eyes. The thought brought those butterflies back into this stomach, fluttering around in the most annoying way.

The next few days continued in a similar pattern, you kept that same sass, often surprising him with your own crass jokes that rivaled his. It was a particularly sunny Sunday afternoon, the only day that soldiers had off out of the week. He had offered the day off for you but you had refused, and now you were looking like you regretted that decision. Your head was held precariously on the palm of your hand while your other hand flew across the paper as you wrote. Your eyes were closing every now and then, and Levi would pause when they did. Waiting to see if you had finally succumbed to sleep that had been chasing you all day seemingly.

“What?” You mumbled, eyes still closed, pen hanging limply from your fingers.

“Hm?” Levi hummed, eyes snapping back down onto his paper in a desperate attempt at looking innocent.

“Do I have ink on my face or something?” You asked as you set the pen down and rubbed your hands down the sides of your face.

“No... but you’re no help to me if you keep nodding off. Go take a nap and come back when you’re rested.” Levi said, waving you off, despite how badly he wanted you to stay.

“Mkay.” You sighed as you opened your eyes just a crack as you stood and grabbed your jacket off of the chair. Levi paused his work to watch you leave, but he was surprised when you only crossed the room and fell limply onto his love seat. He scoffed as you placed the jacket over your face and curled up into a fetal position. Levi tried in vain to refocus, but the sight of you napping made him surprisingly tired as well. He placed his pen down with a loud sigh and leaned back, closing his eyes as he enjoyed the warm sunlight streaming in from his window.

“Captain, come sit with me.” Your voice was gravely from sleep as you sat up and smiled at him. His heart did a backflip and then ran a mile around his chest at the sight of you in the sun, eyes half open as you looked at him a tad pleadingly.

“Move over.” He simply replied as he stood from the desk and crossed the room. He leaned down and moved your feet, sitting down where they once were. He sighed contently as he rested his arm over the back of the couch and stretched his legs out underneath the coffee table. He jumped when your feet fell onto his lap, his other hand reached instinctively to swat them off and you whimpered when he did so.

“Chill out Levi, it’s off the clock.” You mumbled as you sat up and shot him a playful smirk.

“Go back to sleep idiot.” He said, reaching up and shoving your head back down onto the sofa. You let out a strangled laugh at his actions and he felt his heart do another little flip at the sound. You sat up, hair mussed and eyes still foggy with sleep.

“Careful Levi, you wouldn’t want to get into another fight with me. We both remember how our last one turned out.” You teased, leaning forward and tapping the tip of his nose with your pointer finger. He scoffed in disbelief as you sat up and leaned back into the couch. He became hyper aware of how close you were now, your hand so close to his thigh that he could feel your pinky brushing the fabric of his pants.

“You got lucky. Next time I won’t underestimate you.” He said with another dramatic roll of his eyes.

“Ah so you admit that you would like a rematch?” You asked shuffling closer so your thigh pressed against his. He whipped his head to look away from you and hide his blush.

“E-Eventually.” He tried to cover his mild stutter by clearing his throat, if you had noticed, you didn’t comment on his flustered state.

“Just name the time and place, and I’ll be there.” You chuckled scooting away from him much to his disappointment.

After that afternoon Levi found himself almost desperately seeking your presence. Admittedly, he was hogging you, denying Hange from “borrowing” you for experiments, making up embarrassing excuses for you to stay later into the evenings. If you minded, you didn’t say anything. One particular evening Levi found that he had run out of excuses to keep you, and was about to dismiss you when you surprised him.

“Are you tired?” You asked, rather out of pocket as you leaned back on your heels from scrubbing his floor.

“Not one bit.” Levi said honestly, he knew that you were aware of his bad sleeping habits.

“Good, come with me.” You said, dropping the dirty rag in your hands back into the bucket. Levi was eager to follow you out of his office, which smelled of cleaning chemicals and lemons, as always. You led him through the empty corridors and out into the courtyard. You turned and started walking backwards so you could face him as you spoke.

“Up for a midnight ride?” You asked cheekily, Levi’s brow furrowed but he found the extra alone time with you all too enticing to pass up.

“I suppose...” He was abruptly cut off by your hand closing around his wrist, you dragged him the rest of the way to the stables. Levi went to get his tack, but you simply grabbed the reigns for your horse, you led the palomino out of her stall, Levi looked at you skeptically as he held his saddle and the blanket.

“No time for any of that, if we don’t hurry, we’ll miss it.” You said with a charming smile on your lips. Levi found himself foregoing the saddle like you had and just taking his reigns for his black mare. Once the two of you were ready you both spurred your horses into a light trot. Levi shifted uncomfortably, he had never ridden bareback, yet you looked more than natural in the uncomfortable position. You led the way, heading off into the woods behind HQ, the trail was narrow and a tad tedious, but it was a rather short ride. You stopped along the tree line, a wide field sprawling before you. The tall grass was glowing with fireflies, swaying in the summer breeze. A small creek was between the forest and the rest of the field.

“Shall we cross?” You asked, turning to him to gauge his reaction. He shrugged and shifted once more on his mare’s back.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” You giggled as you kicked your horse to move forward. Your own mare waded fearlessly into the water, crossing the stream in a few steps. Levi’s own mare was undaunted by the creek, Levi was another story, he pulled his feet up in an attempt to keep them dry as his mare splashed through the water. Once on the other side you dropped off of your horse and tied it to a nearby log. Levi followed your lead and tied up his horse as well. Once that was finished you beckoned for him to follow you once more. You led him through the tall grass, to a small clearing where the grass had been pressed down, clearly someone or something had been laying there.

“I come out here to think.” You explained as you fell onto your butt and patted the space beside you. The crickets and tree frogs sang in the background and Levi furrowed his brow but eventually sank down to sit next to you. Pleased with this, you laid the rest of the way back and looked up at the night sky.

“Seems a bit loud to be a thinking place.” Levi quipped as he leaned back on his hands and stretched his legs out.

“Hm maybe. Truthfully I don’t get much thinking done when I’m here. I just....sit.” You shrugged, eyes distant as you looked up at the stars.

“I see.” Levi wasn’t sure how to respond, but his head buzzed with thoughts, when did you come out here? Was it because he was overworking you? Why did you bring him out here? You rolled onto your side and reached out, gripping his wrist lightly, bringing his attention off of the sky and on to you.

“Hm?” He hummed wordlessly as he looked down at you with a raised brow.

“Lay with me?” You smiled a bit sheepishly and Levi felt his cheeks flare up at the sight of you bathed in moonlight, eyes wide and pleading, your mouth curled up into a knowing smile. He huffed, feigning frustration as he slumped the rest of the way into the grass and crossed his arms behind his head. He laid perfectly still, waiting to see what you would do next, he heard the sound of you shuffling closer, so that your head rested just below his arm, your side pressed against his own. It was clumsy and painfully awkward for a moment, as you waited for Levi to shuffle away or welcome you into his embrace. But he remained deathly still, and you knew that you would have to be the one to initiate the affection, not really a surprising discovery. You inhaled deeply as you steeled your nerves before you scooted up and rested your head on Levi’s bicep. You heard him suck in a deep breath as well. But he extended his arm and wrapped it around your shoulders after a tense moment. The frogs seemed to grow louder as you looked up at him, his head was craned down to look at you. His cheeks were flushed an adorable pink color, his brows furrowed still, his mouth was in a flat line as he looked down at you.

“What’s with the face?” you whispered, reaching a free hand up to gently tap his bruised nose.

“What face?” Levi grumbled, grabbing your wrist and holding it tightly in his grasp. You chuckled and opened your hand to rest it on his cheek, thumb grazing the soft skin on his face.

“That one.” You giggled as you shuffled impossibly closer and leaned up so that your breaths mingled. Levi lifted his chin a bit, he had never kissed someone before, something that he was very self conscious about. But you seemed to take this in stride as you propped yourself up on your elbow, his arm that you had been laying on quickly wrapped around your waist as you leaned over him. The stars disappeared behind your face as you smiled down at him, hair curtaining over him as you leaned in once more. This time he remained still, the warmth of your breath on his lips once more, His eyes abandoned yours in favor of looking at your lips, which were opened slightly as you tilted your head to the side. A soft chuckle escaped you as you hovered over his mouth with yours.

“I hope...that I’m not crossing any boundaries.” You were so close to him now that when you spoke, your lips grazed his. Levi had never wanted to kiss someone as badly as he wanted to kiss you in this moment.

“Shut up and-”

“And what captain? Kiss you?” You teased, and he blushed impossibly harder, you could tell he was flustered based off of the way his cheek burned under your open palm.

“Yes...” He mumbled after a moment of silence. You let out another airy laugh before leaning down and planting your lips on his. You gently took his bottom lip between your own and he timidly returned the kiss. You sighed at the feeling of his returned affections and Levi was sure that his heart was going to explode as you relaxed into him once more. After a moment you pulled away and smiled dazzlingly at him, the moonlight did wonders for your complexion, casting you in an ethereal glow. He knew now that he needed to see you in the first rays of light to confirm his theory: That no matter what time of day, you always looked impossibly beautiful.

“What are you thinking about?” You quizzed, leaning down and pecking a kiss to his lips before he could answer.

“I’m thinking-” another kiss, this time to the corner of his mouth.

“that it’s-” this time you placed a kiss just below his earlobe.

“C-Can you stop?” He stuttered as he turned and avoided you planting another kiss behind his ear.

“Mmm fine.” You pouted, but buried your face into his neck, waiting for him to finish his sentence from earlier.

“I said: I’m thinking that it’s almost daybreak.” He finished, pointing up at the sky, which was turning pink along the eastern side of the field. You groaned and nuzzled further into his neck.

“Then let’s ride back and go to sleep. It’s Sunday after all, we can sleep in.” you mumbled, placing an open mouthed kiss to his collar bone. His hand fell back onto your back, he could feel your muscles flex as you rolled the rest of the way on top of him, resting your full weight on his stomach.

“You’ll need to get off of me for that to happen.” He huffed as his other hand left your wrist to push you playfully off of his stomach. You moaned pitifully as you fell back onto the damp grass.

“So tragic.” You said as Levi stood and brushed the grass off of his plain clothes. You finally got to your feet and did the same, eager to ride back and go to bed.

The two of you made it back before sunrise, the sky turning pinker by the minute. After you had put your horses away you both hurried back up to his office, where his private quarters was attached. Levi kicked his boots off and you did as well, not wanting to dirty his floor that you both spent so much time cleaning. He lifted the covers for you and you dove beneath them, Levi laid down next to you and you cuddled up close, looking up with those soft eyes of yours. His nose was still purple and had a small bandage covering his cut. You leaned up and planted a gentle kiss to the tip of it before pulling away.

“Next time I won’t go easy on you.” You teased breath fanning over his lips once more. Levi huffed and angled his head impatiently seeking your mouth. You chuckled and met him halfway, closing your mouth over his with another satisfied sigh.

In the end, Levi got what he wanted. You fell asleep in his bed, bathed in the morning light, curled into his side as he felt sleep overcoming him. This was the first time that you stayed with him the entirety of the night, and Levi was determined to never spend a night alone again.

___

PLEASE. I’M SO VERY SOFT FOR LEVI RN.

I already read the manga and I can’t bring myself to watch the last two episodes, I’m not mentally stable enough for that right now. So this is how I cope. 💁‍♀️

#levi x y/n #levi x reader #levi reader insert #snk levi #levi ackerman #levi aot #levi fanfiction #levi ackerman fanfiction #soft levi #so fluffy #this was so sweet it gave me a cavity #levi fluff #aot #aot fanfiction #aot fandom #reader instert #fanfic #levi ackerman x reader #levi ackerman x you

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