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starry-bi-sky · 3 months

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There are two things that Damian knows that he knows Father doesn’t.

He has an older brother

He was dead

(And a secret third thing: Damian was glad he was dead. They did not get along.)

Well. No, correction, they were two things that Damian knew that Father didn't. Past tense. Strange magic swirled through the air and created a mirage before his eyes, and immediately a scowl forms across his face.

The mirage shifts and shimmers like the light hitting a slowly turning prism, and then it settles into a memory. One that Damian does not recall. Like looking into a tv screen, it shows, faintly, a room, with most of the magic going into the image of a crib.

His mother was standing on one side, and next to her, standing on his tiptoes was a small five year old boy looking up at her. With dark hair and skin that was only few shades lighter brown than Damian's, the little boy's resemblance to Damian was undeniable.

However, his eyes were blue. Not green. Damian's scowl deepens, and he sinks back. "Danyal." He mutters, and feels eyes turn on to him.

Danyal Al Ghul. Damian's older brother. A prodigal swordsman like Damian, and five years his senior. He'd be fifteen if he was still alive. His memory of the last time he saw his brother was still clear in his mind.

(A sword to Danyal's neck. Stars were glittering through his window. Damian was five, Danyal ten. He is not sure why Danyal had snuck into his room, all he remembers is hearing a sound and on instinct reaching for his sword.)

(His brother had intercepted easily. But had not shoved the sword away. Moonlight hit his blue eyes, and Damian remembers seeing the pupils shrink to let the light in. His eyes looked almost silver.)

(His brother bares his teeth at him. Damian wants to slice his neck more than anything, and he bares his teeth back. "Good." Danyal says, his voice low in a hiss, "Your reflexes are good, little brother.")

("Of course they are," Damian remembers snarling, and presses the sword closer. But it does not budge. "I am an Al Ghul.")

(Something unrecognizable passes through his brother's eyes, and his mouth twists into something like a smile. "I know." He says, and tilts his head downwards at him. "And you will be great.")

(His brother shoves the sword back, causing Damian to stumble. And like the wind, he is gone.)

(The next morning, he goes on a mission with mother and a few others. Mother is the only one to return with Danyal's sword, and a red-eyed look in her eyes. Damian does not mourn. Now there's only one of them.)

"Momma." The little Danyal-mirage speaks, a furrow between his childlike brows as mother lowers a bundle into the crib. His blue eyes watch her, and lifts onto his toes to peer into the crib as she sets the baby down. "Who is this?"

Their mother's hand comes to rest along his back. "This is Damian, my son." She murmurs, voice low. "He is your little brother. Protect him well."

Damian scoffs internally -- not likely. He remembers every spar he ever had with Danyal, every harsh word and insult. His pushing, pushing, pushing for Damian to get up. To try again. Do it again. The only kindness he ever showed him was when his fingers bled. And even that was harsh, firm. Rolling gauze around his wrist and scolding him, telling him how to wield his weapon better.

(It was the same as everyone else, but somehow it hurt worse coming from his own brother.)

But he watches his older brother's youngest self tilt his head to the side, and then reach his chubby hand through the crib's bars. He runs small, blunt fingers over the baby's arm, and the baby jerks. Through the crib's bars, Damian sees himself grab Danyal's fingers.

And he scowls even deeper.

And Danyal's eyes... widen. He lets out a little gasp, and a small smile Damian's never seen him wear tilts at the corner of his mouth as he looks up at their mother. "Mother," he whispers, "he grabbed me!"

Damian... his scowl falters, for a moment.

He doesn't wait for a response, he looks back to the baby with sparking eyes. His expression melts like sugar as he bounces the finger being gripped tight by the small hand. "Hello, little brother." His brother says, voice its of usual firmness, but there's more fondness underlying it than Damian's ever heard. "My name is Danyal."

The mirage shifts before Damian can comprehend his older brother's voice. It shows the crib again, appearing as if a few days had passed. There is night lilting through the nearby window, and a creek of the door. The baby doesn't stir.

Danyal sneaks in, still wearing his training clothes and a sword strapped to his side. Damian's scowl returns, watching him creep over to the crib. Of course -- the last night he saw his brother wasn't the only time he'd snuck into his room.

Would he go so low as to attack an infant? Damian wonders, watching his brother cross the room to his crib. But while his fingers rest against the hilt, they never curl to unsheathe.

His brother peers into the crib again, and there it is again, that smile wider in the corner of his mouth. It's not a full one, but its as uninhibited as it gets. Dripping honey-sweet with awe. "You are so tiny." Danyal whispers, and pokes a finger back through the crib. It wriggles, then pokes Damian's cheek gently. "Was I as small as you when mother gave birth to me?"

There is no response from the baby. Not a coherent one anyways, the little thing snuffles and turns his head, mouth open to latch. Danyal stills, his eyes grow ever wider again.

Danyal says nothing else, just rests his cheek against the crib and watches the baby sleep in silence. The affection never leaves his young face.

Damian feels unsettled. Off-foot. This Danyal is foreign to him... He wonders what happened to have changed his brother's mind on him.

There's a scuffle, quiet, but there. Danyal picks up on it just as Damian does, and his head pricks up like a deer, head already turning away from the crib. The affection leaves his face, falling away like water into something serious. His blade is already slightly unsheathed.

Two assassins, belonging to grandfather, burst out of the shadows. Their swords swinging into the air and ready to strike.

Danyal kills them both, his back to the crib. It's not without struggle, and when the two assassins lay dead on the floor, the baby is wailing at the top of his lungs. Danyal has a laceration cleaving down diagonal of his cheek. It's close to his eye, just barely missed blinding him.

Damian never knew how he got that scar. He does now. (He doesn't know how to feel about it.)

His brother clutches his bleeding face, sheathing his sword as tears well up onto his face. But he turns towards the crib, and hurries over. "You're okay, you're okay, you're okay." He hushes rapidly, the League-drilled seriousness fallen away to reveal a panic-stricken five year old. He sticks one hand into the crib, the one not clutching anything, and grabs little Damian's hand.

Their mother comes bursting in that moment, and Danyal turns his head towards her. "Mother." He says, his voice cracks un-wantingly. Their mother steps over the bodies of the assassins easily. "They tried to kill Damian."

"But they did not." Talias says, kneeling down next to the crib to inspect Danyal's face and Damian's well-being. When she finds nothing of concern beyond the injury, she continues. "You killed them before they could, Danyal. Well done."

The mirage of his brother nods, his eyes teary and red.

Damian... is discomfited. he never thought Danyal would kill assassins for him. He would have thought his brother would sooner look the other way. The mirage shifts again, and it quickly shows time passing.

Danyal sits in Damian's nursery every night, after that. He lays at the foot of the crib with his sword, a pillow and a blanket with him. Some nights there is nothing but peace -- or as close to peace as a baby could achieve -- and some days assassins break in.

Danyal kills each one.

The mirage shifts again, and it shows more memories of Danyal interacting with Damian during his youth too young for him to remember. His first steps, his first words.

"Danya." The small toddler of Damian says, arms reaching for Danyal.

A frown curls across Danyal's face, and pulls Damian into his lap. "No, no, little brother." He scolds, voice firm but.. softer. "It is Danyal, Damian. Danyal."

"Danya!"

Damian's brother sighs, but there is that same-small tilt at the corner of his mouth. A glimmer in his eyes. A glimmer... that Damian is finding he recognizes.

(He always thought his brother got that look in his eyes when he was mocking him. Was he wrong?)

The mirage shifts again, and this time it shows only mother and Danyal, alone. Danyal is older, taller. Seven, if Damian had to guess. Mother has a stern look on her face, her hands tight on his shoulders. "Damian will be starting training soon, my son."

Ah, then close to eight then. Training starts, always, at three years old. He watches Danyal nod, his expression mimicking their mother's. His arms are folded, always folded, behind his back, always neat.

"You can no longer have the relationship with your brother as you did before." Mother says.

Danyal's expression... falters. It shifts, it fluctuates. He looks surprised, thrown off. Like he isn't quite sure he heard what mother just said. His brows furrow. "What... do you mean, mother?"

"I mean what I said, Danyal." Mother says, stern, "Ra's will be keeping a closer eye on Damian now that he is of age to begin his training. He will not like if he sees you both getting along."

"I am sorry, my child. But your relationship with Damian ends here. You are rivals now, not brothers." In a cruel form a gentleness, mother raises her hand and tucks a stray curl out of Danyal's face.

Of course. Damian never had a relationship with his brother because of Grandfather. Of course. No, he's not feeling a little bitter. No. There's not an inner child that still, like a candleflame, wishes that he'd had a bond with his only flesh and blood.

Danyal is dead now. So it's not like it matters. He's happy about this.

Danyal frowns, and he steps back. He looks lost in thought. "We are still brothers, mother," he says, argues, and looks up to meet mother's eyes. "Let me train him, I will make sure he gets the skill he needs. If we must be rivals, then I will teach him how to defeat me. If he can defeat me, he can defeat anybody."

Their mother, and Damian, both blink in unison. Then mother smiles something sharp, calculated. She folds her hands behind her back. "Then do it. But you will make him hate you."

"...So be it."

Damian.... Damian is silent. His world axis has been tilted on its head. He is sliding, and sliding, and sliding down. Spinning. Many things click into place at once.

More memories from the mirage show. It shows Danyal training Damian. It shows their arguing, their bickering. It shows Danyal going to their mother to praise Damian and his skills, how fast he is picking up on the sword. How one day he will surpass even him.

It shows Danyal sitting outside Damian's bedroom door every night, listening in for anyone who dares to break in. His knees drawn to his chest, his sword at his side. Sometimes he sneaks in, sword drawn, when he hears a sound.

Some nights, Damian wakes up. He remembers those nights. Danyal standing over his bed with his sword unsheathed and tight at his side. He remembers the instant terror as he immediately reached for his own weapon.

His brother always scolded him for his lack of vigilance. That had he been anyone else, Damian would have had his neck cut. He would've been dead already. It only made Damian's hatred of him grow.

But he understands now. Because there were assassins in the room that Damian, four years old, three, did not notice. Not until later. He always assumed the attacks on him after Danyal's death had been because now there was a new heir to target.

It had been the only lesson he'd been even somewhat grateful for.

Then finally the mirage shimmers, and it shows Danyal, ten years old, in one of the training rooms, mid-spar with Mother. It's fast, sharp, impressive and like a blur. Damian is unsure if at ten which one of them was the better swordsman. Some of the assassins who have never met Danyal said Damian was, but the ones who had said it was Danyal. He'll never know.

In a lull in the fight, when their swords are crossed, mother speaks. "Ra's wants you and Damian to fight." She says, teeth grit into a deep scowl. The cross breaks and Danyal jumps back, he frowns.

"We have fought, mother." He says, and dives in first, swinging for mother's feet. Mother dodges, and slices at his arm. He swerves out of the way, twisting on his feet like a dance. "We are always fighting, doesn't he see our spars?"

"Not a spar like that, my son." Mother says, a snarl in her voice. She lunges, and Danyal blocks her blade. "A fight to the death. Father has grown tired of having two heirs."

That gets Danyal's attention -- or, more accurately, it distracts it. His eyes widen, and his sword lowers for a single moment. A mistake. "What?" Is all he gets out before mother has him on his back, her blade pressed to his throat.

He freezes. As does Damian. Danyal's brows furrow, then unfurrow, only to knot up again. "Mother, what do you mean a fight to the death?" He flips to his feet when mother removes the sword. She walks over to grab her water.

"Must I repeat myself, Danyal?" Mother snaps, rubbing her forehead before swigging from her canteen. "Father wants to find out which one of you is the stronger heir, and so you will fight to the death after your training in a few days."

Danyal's tan face loses a shade of color, he looks ashy. "There must be some mistake!" He exclaims, his arms gesturing out as he peers around mother. "There is a five year disparity between us, Damian has only just started training two years ago. It would be an unfair fight!"

"Do you think me unaware?" Mother whirls on him, and there is a grief-stricken look on her face. Like she is already mourning Damian's death. Damian feels ill. "Your skill is far beyond what Damian can accomplish right now, and there is nothing that I say that can convince Father otherwise."

Danyal wears an expression like he is scrambling for answers. A white knuckle grip on his weapon. There is a long silence, and his lower lip curls up. His throat bobs, he swallows. "Is there really nothing we can do?"

Mother makes a frustrated sound, pushing her loose hairs out of her face. "Not unless Father changes his mind, or I send one of you away. But Father would surely send someone to look for you or Damian."

"What if one of us faked our death?"

Mother stills. As does Damian. No, he thinks, stiff as a rod, no way. These mirages were lying, nothing but figments of an imagination. Of some quiet what-if that Damian had not yet stomped out.

Mother's expression shifts, and then turns contemplative. Danyal notices, and keeps pushing, he looks as hopeful as he could get beyond his usual unwavering, stone-like expression. "One of us could go to father--"

"No." Mother cuts off, voice sharp. Danyal wilts, confusion flittering across his face. Damian, from the corner of his eye, sees Father tense as stone. His white-slit eyes have not left the mirage. Nobody's has.

"Father will undoubtedly check there first, it would not be a good idea. You or Damian will have to go somewhere where he would not think to look. Someone unaffiliated with the League."

Danyal's face falls, shutters, and then closes up again into stone. Mother begins to pace, and Danyal's blue eyes follow her. "So a stranger?" He asks, and there is disgust lilting into his voice.

Mother nods, and she looks just as offput as Danyal.

The mirage of Damian's brother rolls his shoulders back. "Then I will do it, mother." He says, voice unwavering. There is a stubborn note behind it all, one that Damian recognizes. "I will fake my death, and Damian will stay here."

Mother's eyes turn sharp on him, and she stops in her spot. She pivots. "Are you sure?" She asks, eyebrow raising, "There is a chance you will never meet your Father if you leave. Nor will you see I or Damian again, if you do this."

Something like fear flickers across Danyal's face, eyes widening momentarily -- as if that very thought had not crossed his mind. But then it smooths over to sharp determination. He nods. "It would be the same for Damian if it was him instead. I will do it, Mother."

Damian feels ill again. Father has a strong set in his jaw, his teeth grinding.

Mother stares at Danyal, and then her expression softens. And like before, it is grieving. "In a few days time, I and another member of the League will be going on a mission to the American States. I will tell Father that you will accompany me, once there we will dispose of the other member and then orchestrate your death."

The American States. Danyal was here, in the country. He was out there somewhere -- but no this was fake. It had to be. Danyal was dead. A fool who got himself killed on a mission with mother and left the title of Heir to Damian.

Or maybe it had been his plan all along. His and mother's both.

...Was mother ever going to tell him?

The mirage of Danyal nods, sharp. Understanding. There is a gleam in his eyes that is not pride, it is tears. And when Mother leaves the room and leaves him alone, the stone-like expression on his face crumbles and falls.

His brother, ten years old, curls up his lip in an ugly way. It wobbles as the tears in his eyes do, and he brings up his hand to slam it over his mouth. And sinks to his knees, a yell-like sob muffled behind the skin.

His brother, ten years old, looks smaller than Damian remembers him being, and cries.

Damian has never seen Danyal cry. Not once in the mirage of memories, nor in his own.

The memory holds for a minute, and then disappears. And no new one shows up. The magic is gone, and it leaves a silence in its wake. Heavy, staticky, and full of revelations.

So there are two things that Damian knows that his Father now knows too.

He has an older brother

His older brother is alive.

(And a new secret third thing: Damian wasn't sure how to feel about it.)

#dpxdc #dp x dc #dp x dc crossover #danny fenton is not the ghost king #dp x dc prompt #dpxdc prompt #i promise this is a prompt #it just got very long #danyal al ghul au #my take on a danyal al ghul au #older brother danny #dpdc #dpxdc crossover #i know the usual gist is that danyal al ghul is a better knife thrower than he is a swordsman but hey #consider: phantom has a sword when he fights ghosts. how sick is that?#his ghost form having allusions to the LoA. its not obvious but its there #did i make danny brown skinned? yeah. because him being white or not is irrelevant to me and i wanted to make him darker skinned #thinking about the angst of bruce seeing his firstborn son going “i could stay with father!” and then said child being visibly crushed #when told no. and that he may never see his father ever. actually. if he fakes his death. and still doing it anyways for damian's sake #danny loves his little brother he just shows it in an unorthodox way. some of it is not his fault #also danny being an absolute grump in amity park is very funny to me. he's an arrogant little assassin child in AP who is only here for #his little brother's sake and safety. he loves his brother but that doesnt stop him from being an arrogant little brat #gremlin assassin child danny is so funny #i know this is very ironic for me to post after posting my thoughts on danyal al ghul aus and their missed potential #but actually this prompt is what spurred that post into creation in the first place actually.#because i was thinking about this au and then went “oh hey you know whats funny--” and then i #thought about it too much to the point where i had to make a post talking about it #tried to find a balance between danny being mature for his age and also still being a kid #like yeah he’s a trained assassin and has killed but also he’s a 10yo boy about to be separated - Assumingly permanently- from his family

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kayzean · 4 months

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RIGHT SO UHM. Sorry my thoughts are really scattered right now but. Ok so Shadow was a LOT more reserved in those last two episodes. Which thinking about it makes a LOT of sense going off of how he usually is in other medias. I think I just forgot that that's how he usually is when he's around people because Prime really spoiled us with a much more open and emotive Shadow. and then it fucking HIT ME. LIKE. A. TRAIN. He was more open and emotive when Sonic was the only one there. He openly showed his frustration, his feelings, his competitiveness etc. He just... He was so much more open. and it was ONLY around Sonic. And that really makes that scene just after Sonic had the prism energy removed. His mask fell for just a second! You could see how hard he was trying to hold onto his stoicness. And even after that! He was trying so hard not to show his real emotions. Until all the plans failed to get Sonic back to green hill. The way first braced Sonic up and then when away from the Roses' he switched to carrying Sonic. "I didn't know you were such a hugger." I would have dropped him right there lmfao. And his stoic demeanour crumbling the closer they got. The desperation in that "hang on Sonic!" THE THREE SONICBOOMS. Just. UUUUUUUUUUUHGGGGG. This is actually making me fucking insane. Idk man just something about Shadow only being comfortable to be open around Sonic does things to me guys. what the fuck

#prime really fucking SPOILED us with a more open shadow #like i actually forgot thats not how he usually is around other people #sonic prime #sonic prime spoilers #sonic prime s3 #sonic prime season 3 #sonic the hedgehog #shadow the hedgehog #sonadow #sth #sonic #i am mentally ill about this

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forlix · 4 months

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‧ ❆ ˚ 𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐲 𝐦𝐲 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝・h.j.

— stars flare brightest in the absence of light, and you see his clearer than day.

words・6.4k

pairing・han jisung x female reader

genres・college!au, friends with benefits to lovers, snowed in trope, smut, MINORS AND AGELESS BLOGS THAT INTERACT WILL BE BLOCKED, angst, ANGST, you have been warned, hurt/comfort, i can't write normal fluff to save my life, happy ending!!!, semi-slow burn

warnings・depictions of insomnia, recurring nightmares, graphic violence, character death (in the nightmare), fears of abandonment and falling in love, alcohol consumption, humans helping each other heal. smut warnings under the cut

playlist・stay - acoustic by jonah baker・all of me by big gigantic・babydoll (speed) by ari abdul・oasis by exo・volcano by han

a/n・hi, here's my second installment of winter falls. writing this was immensely challenging and twice as meaningful, so feedback would be greatly appreciated. thank you to my may for being so fucking instrumental in piecing together this rollercoaster—this one is for you, i love you. thanks to my sahar for everything, always and forever. and thanks to all of you for being here. happy new year ♡

smut warnings・spitplay, unprotected piv, please practice safe sex!!!, car sex, dirty talk, jisung's dick game is kinda crazy, squirting, lots of aftercare

Every time Jisung closes his eyes, he sees somebody’s back.

It’s leaving. Traipsing somewhere he can’t follow. He tries to chase it—he always does, he never learns—but the premise doesn’t so much as surface before the ghosts circling around his ankles go for his throat instead. They snare him by the shoulders, force him to his knees, slam his forehead into the permafrost hard enough to break bone. They make sure the next time he tries to move will be the last.

So he remains, keeled over in the cold, until tearwater clings to his lower lashes in small icicles. Until bloodstained snow coats his lips like the manifestation of a curse. Until the back has disappeared.

Who does it belong to? He’s left to wonder. Where is it going?

Why can’t I follow?

Then he wakes up.

No longer does he lay awake for hours afterwards, scouring the dream’s every frame for his answers.

Now, he tosses and turns in clammy sheets until his exhaustion wins.

Now, he welcomes sleep like a miracle granted by some pitying god.

You see him.

Through a living room packed with red-faced partygoers and dissected by oscillating strobe lights, albeit, but you see him anyways.

Jisung can barely make out the rest of your face—he blames the lighting, or the soju, or both—but your eyes alone turn him to glass. Not a fancy vase through which the world distorts, but a simple pane that puts him and his ghosts on full display.

He hopes you like horror movies.

Felix knows you, because of course he does, and Jisung has never been happier to call the extroverted Australian his friend than when you come over to say hi. You stumble out of the crowd all smudged makeup and sweaty skin, your figure hugged by a short black dress with two diamond-shaped openings just above your hips, your glossy lips curved in a drunken smile. Jisung immediately wants it against his mouth.

Instead, it disappears behind his friend as you pull him into a quick hug. A few wisps of your hair dust over Jisung’s arm, momentarily replacing the smells of grease and vodka with cherry blossoms and vanilla.

“Lix, hey!”

“Darling, it’s good to see you! Feels like it’s been ages.”

“I know, right? How are you? How is everything?”

“Good, thank you. Just happy the semester’s over.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Then you go to lift your drink and discover thin air in its place. “Or I won’t. Whoops.”

This prompts Jisung’s first contribution to the conversation—and his first effortless laugh in a long while.

“Eventful night, huh?”

He meets your gaze from all of two feet away this time, and his knees buckle under him. That gaze, fuck. So clear and true, like a prism of glass refracting light into a rainbow. He would let you refract him a thousand times over if he had any light to give.

“Maybe,” you giggle. “Seems I’m a little too happy the semester’s over.”

“Wanna not get a drink to celebrate?”

Your expression flickers. Not in a bad way, more like you hadn’t expected him to ask so soon—or for yourself to have your answer so quickly.

A strobe light catches right under your eye and refracts the color in your blushing face. A rainbow.

“I’d like that.”

He tilts his head towards the kitchen. You give Felix’s elbow a light squeeze before moving past him; he gives Felix a glimpse of his growing smile before falling into step behind you. The blonde shakes his head, throws back the rest of his beer, then swivels at the sound of someone calling his name from across the foyer.

Felix will get drunk enough to forget the sight of you leading Jisung up the stairs, two bottles of pink lemonade tucked under your arm. Nothing stronger, as promised.

Jisung asks his question an entire minute after he intends to. “Where are we going, by the way?”

“Somewhere I can see your pretty face without having to squint,” you reply, and his stomach tumbles like a schoolboy with a valentine.

You don’t stop at the second floor. Instead, you nudge open a door Jisung swears just materialized to his left and emerge into the night air.

It’s warm for December, but he’s still met with chilly winds licking down the sides of his neck. That’s not the only reason he shudders, though. Below his feet, he finds a metal platform akin to that of a fire escape. Above his head, a staircase that looks one forceful step away from dropping off the side of the building.

You turn towards it.

In a hurry, he sputters, “I’m, uh—I’m not sure about this.”

A beat passes. Your hold on his wrist loosens, not to let go, just to trace wordless reassurance down the back of his hand. Your fingers feel perfect sliding into the spaces between his, like drops of honey in the craters of soufflé pancakes.

“It’s safer than it looks, I promise.”

Jisung heaves a sigh. It seems saying no to you is an impossible task.

You’re right, though. The iron rungs are surprisingly rigid beneath his feet, and the two of you make it to the roof with no trouble. He does stumble when you pull him up onto the gravel, but it’s intentional, a purposeful blunder to have you closer. To snag another glimpse of that blush, another trace of that floral vanilla.

“Sorry,” he whispers almost directly upon your lips. And that earns him all three.

The next hour evades him for the most part, and Jisung is pissed about it. He’s with the woman of his dreams under a sky so clear it’s almost lustrous and he’s too shitfaced to recollect when he gave you his hoodie to wear; what you said that made his lungs capsize with how hard he laughed; how you ended up so close to each other, your legs strewn over his lap, his hands tracing over your thighs.

Thankfully, he remembers a few things. He remembers how frighteningly easy you are to talk to; he remembers your habit of smacking his stomach when you get flustered; he remembers you getting flustered a lot. He remembers the timbres of your different laughs and how your stunning features crinkle with each. He remembers feeling like a pane of glass in front of you, just like he had downstairs, and he remembers liking it, somehow. Liking the way you see through him, the way you allow him to just exist as he is. Liking the way you acknowledge his ghosts with such nonchalance, inviting them over for tea and biscuits.

He wants to remember everything about you.

It’s not often he wants to remember anything.

Eventually, your conversation comes to a natural close. In its absence, Jisung notices that the alcoholic sludge in his brain has largely diffused; with it, the rumbling bass of the party below. The full moon hangs at its highest point, blanketing the two of you with anticipatory silence, nudging you towards the only topic you’ve yet to breach.

He meets your gaze again, from all of two inches away this time, and his insides twist.

“You’re still drunk, aren’t you?”

You blink at him, not following. Then he leans his forehead against yours, lets his eyes flicker to your mouth with such unbridled want that you’re instantly dizzy—and no longer confused.

Regret pools in your eyes moments before they close. “Yes, I think so.”

Your lips are so, so close that he can feel the air shift between you when they move, can feel the soft warmth emanating from them. Jisung pulls away before he does anything stupid.

You do the stupid thing for him.

You push his shoulders to the plaster behind him, push yourself onto his lap with a swing of your body and a slotting of your legs on either side of him.

The plush of your thighs hugging his hips, the curves of your breasts pressed against his chest, Jisung tries to stare up at you, perplexed, aroused. But you’re so close that he can’t, so he settles with whispering upon the underside of your chin, “what are you—”

“Gimme your lemonade.”

The authoritative words come out in a slurred haze, and he all but hastens to oblige.

You pluck the plastic bottle from his wavering grasp. His empty hand hovers as if uncertain where to go. But matters as trivial as hand placement drop off his mind’s precipice as he watches you unscrew the cap, the slope of your neck illuminated by spindly moonlight, and without thinking he pushes his hands beneath the hem of your—his—hoodie.

The skin of your waist is warm and smooth where his fingertips are cold and calloused, the juxtaposition unimportant in your reciprocal desires to touch and be touched.

“Open,” you murmur.

His jaw goes slack, firstly from pure disbelief. Then, obedience. The dark locks that obstruct his vision of you fall away as his head meets the brick half-wall behind him, as if the midnight breeze itself mandated their removal.

You pour some of the pink liquid past Jisung’s parted lips. Stray rivulets slip down his cheek and vanish beneath his neckline. You break eye contact to follow their path with dilated pupils and fluttering lashes. With unadulterated desire.

He swallows, gently, and feels the sweet substance surround his tonsils.

He swallows, forcefully, when you wrap your lips around the bottle, the plastic still slathered in his spit.

The swig you take is long, deep. Your throat bobs and your eyes close as if you’re savoring a finely-aged nectar. Then your lips are popping off the opening with a soft thwock, leaving a thick strand of saliva to suspend, suspend, suspend until the very second it’s about to drop, which is when you collect the residue with a deft swipe of your tongue.

“A placeholder,” you breathe, and Jisung’s head careens. A shared bottle. An indirect kiss.

“You’re a monster,” he croaks.

You giggle and lean down, curling a hand around his cheek, pressing a wet kiss to his Adam’s apple.

“Tomorrow, if we’re both sober…”

One, two, three pecks up the length of his jaw.

“...and you still remember my address…”

A suckle to the lobe of his ear.

“...you can kiss me, for real.”

A trembling breath.

“And then some.”

Jisung moans, loudly.

Thankfully, he remembers a few things.

He shows up at your place shortly after sunset the next day. You swing open the door, your face already alight with your world-ending smile.

“Hi.”

“Hey.”

Then he’s kissing you like a man famished.

Jisung learns to love your back, that night. He loves its dips and curves, loves its rise and fall. Loves how it arches into him, how it looks drenched in his cum. It’s the back of his dreams.

The back in his dreams keeps walking.

Jisung has never liked winter.

He has never liked its winds, whispering woefully as if mourning something unnamed and unseen. He has never liked its palette, whitewashing the world as if refracting a rainbow in reverse.

He has never liked cracking open his eyes and seeing the scenery of his nightmare outside his window. Nor does he like trudging over the sleet as if weighed down by the same ghosts that break him time and time again in his dreamscape. They love winter.

And this winter, he swears, is the bitterest yet. On the nights when he’s allowed to sleep, the nightmare comes in such sharp relief that he thinks he’d rather anything else, the ghosts meaner, the blood redder, the silhouette slower. It’s an act of mercy when he’s still awake by the time bleached sunlight perforates the curtains, resting upon his salted cheeks and balled fists.

This winter, it is not just dislike that he feels towards the gray winds—it’s hatred. A maelstrom of loathing so large and dark that Jisung no longer knows where it’s headed or what it’s directed to. Or who.

When winter break comes to an end, he’s probably the only person who’s happy about it.

His friends certainly aren’t, looking like a line of angry nutcrackers with their folded arms and thunderous faces standing outside Greem Cafe.

Jisung calls out a greeting as he jogs towards them, and cue the grumbling.

“What is there to smile about? Enlighten us.” That’s Hyunjin. “I have to deal with four finals and three essays in the next five days and this guy is smiling.”

“He’s accepted his fate, I reckon.” That’s Felix. “We should do the same, boys. Let ourselves down easy, y’know?”

“No, no, he’s smiling because he remembered to bring me his chem notes.” That’s Jeongin. “You did, right? Please say you did.”

Jisung is stunned into silence. “Can I not be happy to see my friends?”

“No,” Hyunjin and Felix reply in unison.

“My bad,” he sighs.

“My notes,” Jeongin repeats.

“I have them, dude. Let’s sit down first.”

The younger boy shouts an impassioned “THANK YOU” at the sky like the clouds just saved his GPA. Jisung reaches for the door to the café, then stops at the sound of Felix’s voice.

“We’re waiting on one more person.”

He turns towards the blonde with puzzled eyes. He’d been under the impression the study session would comprise just them four.

“Who?”

Felix’s response falters on his tongue when he catches sight of something in the distance, and his face changes in a way Jisung’s seen before.

“Look behind you.” Felix shuffles past him, raising his voice to shout, “yo!”

Jisung glances away from the newcomer as quickly as he sees her. It’s not until his eyes pivot to the fire hydrant across the street that he processes her identity.

In one second flat, his mind clutters full. He thinks back to that party, when all it took was the sight of your smile for him to theorize you were the most exquisite thing ever made. He thinks back to the next evening, when he kissed you and verified his hypothesis. He thinks back to what followed and would continue to follow in the few days that remained before break: entwined tongues and emblazoned hickeys, whitened knuckles and whiny praise, snapping hips and shaking bedframes.

This winter, Jisung swears, is the bitterest yet.

But seeing you, the scarf wound multiple times around your neck doing nothing to hide your gorgeous smile, feels like catching a fragment of summer in his frozen hands.

“Thank god,” Felix groans before embracing you. Collapsing on you, more like. “I’m saved.”

You reach around to pat the boy on the back, your eyes brimming with laughter. “Lower your expectations, please. I did well on one exam.”

“You aced the midterm. That automatically makes you a rocket scientist,” Felix corrects, his voice muffled into the shoulder of your coat. A few beats of silence pass. Then, “this is comfy.”

“Okay, okay, let’s go get some caffeine in you,” you giggle. “We have a lot of ground to cover today.”

Felix straightens up sleepily. And sadly. “Superb.”

Jisung hangs back as you introduce yourself to Hyunjin and Jeongin. He doesn’t even notice his growing smile until you’re standing directly in front of him and for the first time in three weeks there’s the smell of cherry blossoms in the air and a rainbow shining on his face again.

“Hi,” he offers.

“Hey,” you reply.

Hyunjin is the one to shatter the prolonged silence that follows. “Are you guys betrothed?”

Felix and Jeongin stalk into the café snickering. You and Jisung trail behind with flaming cheeks.

It takes Jisung two and a half hours to talk to you again. At that point in the afternoon, Felix is napping on the second practice test you’ve given him; Hyunjin has downed three shots of pure espresso and is currently viewing his screen with concerning intensity; Jeongin is at another table on a quiet Zoom call with his chemistry T.A., Jisung’s notes clutched to his chest like a life vest. And you’re leaning back against your seat opposite to him, scrolling through your phone in what he presumes to be a well-deserved study break. As good a time as any.

He opens up his texts with you. His fingers fly across the keyboard.

Jisung: do you have plans after this?

Your eyes stutter to the top of your screen, linger there for a moment, and lock onto Jisung’s from across the table.

He presses his lips into a thin line to suppress his smile. You let yours spill over in full form, and with it comes a soft giggle that would be worth getting his number fucking blocked just to hear one more time.

Three gray dots appear before elongating into a prompt response.

Y/N: I was gonna ask you the same thing…

He’s the one who laughs this time. Fuck, you’re cute. You’re so cute.

Jisung: can i take you to dinner? Y/N: Yes, I’d love that :) Y/N: When should we leave? Jisung: 9? Y/N: Sounds good~ Jisung: cool Jisung: it’s a date Y/N: It’s a date! Y/N: Excited 💛

With that, you put your phone face down and return to work, though your lips remain privately upturned. Jisung wants to kiss them again.

He also wants to turn you into a mess on his cock again.

Or both.

He doesn’t get much studying done after that thought surfaces.

Jisung: me too <3

When nine o’clock rolls around, you and Jisung begin cleaning up your work stations in near-perfect simultaneity. There’s confusion written all over Hyunjin’s and Jeongin’s faces as they watch you swing your backpacks over your shoulders—but Felix’s expression is a blank slate as he sips from his macchiato. Your ingenuity isn’t the only reason he invited you today.

As you make your way out of the café, your shoulders brush once, twice, and then Jisung drops his hand into the space between the two of you without uttering a word. You scoop it up in your own without missing a beat.

He steps into the freezing night feeling warm all over.

“You know what I realized?” You say as you walk towards his SUV.

“What did you realize?”

“We’ve never had a sober conversation before. Can we change that tonight?”

Jisung has broken hearts before.

There’s no euphemistic way to describe his tendency to abuse the sensitive organs, to wring them out and throw them away like irrelevant trash. To juggle and drop them with a sheepish laugh like they’re nothing more than props in a circus act.

He doesn’t do it to save himself or his partners from getting hurt or any self-ingratiating bullshit like that. It’s for himself, all for himself. All to unload his balls and his mind for fifteen blissful seconds.

There’s blood on his hands. He never cared to wash it off.

Except you are the one asking for his heart this time around, a dash of hope in your smile as you do so, and he thinks it would be his life’s greatest honor to be discarded by you.

“Sure,” he answers.

He doesn’t even last until he’s inside the car.

Your back meets the door to the passenger’s seat, guided there by his hands on your hips. From millimeters away he watches your surprise morph into understanding, then darken into lust.

“I like when we don’t talk, though.”

It’s the most annoying thing in the world to remove so many layers in such a cramped space.

Combined, your clothing forms a tower high enough to block out the driver’s window completely. An unnecessary blockade.

The glass fogs up anyways.

“Fuck, Ji, yes, right there, oh my god.”

You have your legs spread open and the back of your neck digging into the cupholder on the door. It’s not comfortable. You’re too busy getting fucked open to care.

Jisung detaches his lips from your neck to ask, “here, baby?”

The head of his cock hits that gummy spot again, harder, sweeter. You convulse, your hand scrambling for purchase in his raven locks.

“Yes, yes, yes, don’t stop, please.”

Please. The word plays over in his fuzzy mind.

It seems saying no to you is an impossible task.

His cock slips out of you and you lament the loss of contact with a high wail.

“W-why’d—where’d you go?”

He can’t help but chuckle at how incoherent you’ve become. He cradles the back of your head with a tender hand and lowers your upper body onto the leather seat, adjusting himself to your new elevation.

“Right here, beautiful. Didn’t go anywhere—promise—”

He expels the final word through gritted teeth as he slams into you again, and the new angle is glorious. Your bodies keen in flawless harmony. Profanities tumble from his lips in a steady stream before they turn back into syllables.

“Would never go anywhere. Would never leave without making this pretty pussy cream like it deserves—holy fucking shit, baby.”

You clench around him at his words and then he’s setting a new, relentless rhythm, rocking the whole vehicle with every hearty smack of his hips against yours, your wet walls squeezing him so dreamily he thinks he sees nirvana with every thrust.

You’re enjoying it just as much, if the bubbles of spit in the corner of your mouth are any indication, and Jisung is viciously proud to be the cause. Unbelievably lucky to feel your breasts jiggling under his chest and your nails digging into the back of his neck.

“Good?” He whispers, and you nod blissfully.

“So—good, Ji, so fucking good. Your cock is perfect, fuck, I can’t even—can’t even think.”

“You’re the perfect one. Can’t believe how well your cunt takes me, shit. It’s like it was fucking made for this.”

“It was,” you breathe, and he nearly shoots his load into you at this alone. “It was, it was—oh, god, I think—think I’m gonna come—”

“Do it,” he rasps. “Come for me. Come on this cock and it’s yours.”

“R-really?”

“Really.”

“Then, I will. I’ll come on your cock—make it mine. Need it so fucking bad, I’m so fucking close, oh—please—”

He anchors himself in place with a hand against the windowsill and the other travels down your body to rub fast, tight circles into your clit. You let out a wanton, prolonged moan, tilt your head back to expose him to your fluttering throat. And then you’re pulling his lips onto yours again, and the following kiss is sloppy beyond belief, the kind that can only antedate the happiest of endings.

“My cock,” you sigh into his mouth. “Mine.”

“Forever,” is the breathy response he doesn’t know if he means, the response he gives you anyways.

And then you curl your fingers in his hair. Clamp your teeth around his lower lip. Clench your thighs around his waist. There’s liquid everywhere. Tearwater spilling down the sides of your face. Release gushing all over his dick and pelvis and backseat.

He catches up the moment he realizes what’s just happened. Pulls out of you. Presses his head against the roof of his car. Spits on his hand. Pumps his pulsating cock. Sends himself over the edge you’ve just finished tripping over.

Eventually, he regains feeling in his limbs.

He opens his eyes, surveys the damage, and grins.

Your stomach is covered in ropes of white, your expression hidden behind your hands. You start shaking your head in profuse embarrassment the moment you feel his eyes on you.

“You squirted,” he says.

“I know,” you almost yell, and his grin erupts into a laugh.

He lowers himself back over you, takes your wrists, and removes them from your blushing face. He doesn’t think he’s seen you so flustered before and it has him palpitating in ways he never thought feasible.

Maybe he did mean the damn thing after all.

He pushes off the strands of hair clinging to your damp forehead and replaces them with a gentle kiss. “It was sexy as fuck and you’re everything.”

There’s a certain softness in your eyes when he pulls away. He hopes, for your sake, it’s all in his head.

His car is in need of aftercare most of all. You shrug on your clothes with considerable effort and get to work, all while sharing comfortable chatter and easy laughter.

Those things persist during your dinner date at a nearby Chinese restaurant and the drive back to your place, which Jisung knows well enough to no longer need his GPS. Those things persist until he kisses you goodbye on your doorstep, because he would have to be fucking crazy not to after you gave him the best night he’s had in so long.

After you reminded him that he’s still capable of comfort and ease, in spite of it all.

Snow comes a few weeks into the new year.

This winter, it falls late, and it falls hard, like a gust of breath expelled from drawn lungs at the very last minute. Held there as if lying in wait for something unnamed and unseen.

The gust of breath is too quiet to be heard over the one Jisung lets out against the shell of your ear. “Wait here.”

He goes to roll off you. You don’t let him just yet, darting your hand around his wrist and bringing his face back within centimeters of yours.

Han Jisung is beautiful. You knew it for the first time at that houseparty and you’ve known it every hour of every day since. But it’s always clearest to you in the afterglow, when his bare skin is golden and sticky and his delicate lips bitten to bright fuchsia.

When his irises have gone black and you see stars, flaring in the absence of light.

You close the distance that remains between you. Your lips part with a content sigh. Your hands drift over the slant of his neck; his find home in the dips above your waist.

He breaks away once you’re both out of breath, and the pad of his thumb wipes lightly at your lower lip.

“Everything okay?”

“Yes,” you reply shyly. “I couldn’t help myself.”

The smile this brings to his face reminds you of a candle’s flame. Soft on the eyes and scalding to the touch when he presses it back against your lips. Once, twice.

“Can you wipe your cum off me now?” You whisper, and he laughs straight into your mouth.

The mattress lifts. His footsteps grow quieter. You shiver in his absence.

Only then do you notice the blizzard.

You stumble off the bed to throw your curtains aside. Snow descends from the sky like spools of unraveling yarn. The streetlights have been reduced to foggy specks, the parked cars to blurry heaps. Every sidewalk and rooftop in sight has already been slathered in ivory.

Jisung announces his return with a disbelieving whistle.

“Am I dreaming?” You murmur.

“When did that happen?”

“I have no idea.”

You don’t even notice the wild smile on your face until you turn to him and catch his reaction to it. He looks like he’s asking himself the same question.

“C’mere,” he hums, and you oblige.

He laves the warm towel over your breasts and stomach, as well as the places his release has trickled since you flung yourself to your feet. All while supporting the small of your back with a touch fatally careful, an expression wholly adoring. All evidence of just how blurry the line between sexual escapade and lover has become in two short months.

Your ribcage fucking throbs.

“You don’t seem excited,” you say.

He finishes cleaning you off. You give him a distracted thank you, noticing the sudden shadow draped over his face like a netted veil.

“I’m not,” he answers, not unkindly.

“You don’t like snow?”

“Not really.”

“Why?”

He circles around the bed to get dressed. You bend to pick up the clothes tossed aside earlier and drop them into your hamper, then slip into a clean pair of underwear and sweatpants.

“It’s a long story.”

Just as you reach for a top, a bundle of cloth travels in an arc across your bedroom and hooks itself around the crook of your arm. His T-shirt.

You glance at Jisung. He’s already looking elsewhere, but his private smile makes its way onto your face as you slip it on.

“Well, I have time.” You sink into your mattress, now surrounded by his muted musk, his papyrus and petrichor. “We’ll be stuck here a while, after all.”

“Stuck?” Jisung repeats, the lanyard of his car keys dangling from the pocket of his hoodie, his feet turned towards the door.

A pregnant pause commences. His intentions dawn, and you gape.

“You’re not driving right now.”

He breaks eye contact.

“Right?”

That was the plan, you read in his expression.

You know better than trying to reverse a river’s current by kicking up rocks. You know better than trying to curtail the flight of an albatross by clipping its wings.

You know better than asking someone who thinks he was made to leave to stay.

And you won’t.

“I have somewhere to be early tomorrow morning,” he stammers, the lines terribly rehearsed. “The snow’s not heavy, I’ll be—”

“Stay.”

You’re not asking.

Jisung looks at you, startled, as you glide across the bed. You place your feet on the hardwood and circle your arms around his waist. Lace your fingers upon the hollow of his back. His pulse goes uneven at your abrupt proximity.

Akin to the drag of a feather, you mouth at his cheek, then the side of his neck.

“You can stay, Jisung.”

He shudders at your words, and you’ve got him.

It’s oddly normal, the sight of him clambering into your bed in your clothing—a pair of old sweatpants and your favorite crewneck—like this isn’t the first time you’re sleeping together in your two months of sleeping together.

In fact, the only indication of anything unordinary is the floaty feeling in your stomach when your head hits the pillow and discover Jisung’s face only inches away. He drapes an arm over your waist, gathering you close. You nuzzle into the crook of his neck.

The inevitable question follows.

“Can I save the story for another time?”

“Sure,” you return, keeping your voice small. He doesn’t hear your disappointment this way. “Should we go to sleep, then?”

“We should.”

Your foreheads touch. Your noses bump together. Your eyes cross, watching the adoration pull at his. You dimly register your hand threading in his fluffy locks, his thumb running over your cheekbone. Your lashes narrowly miss the surface of his eyes, and then he tips your face up by millimeters.

You don’t remember when you fall asleep. You only recall the hour beforehand that you spend with Jisung’s lips traversing yours, like you are the ocean and he’s uncovering new waters with every bruise he prints against your throat, every suckle he leaves around your tongue.

In your dream, the roles reverse and you are the one exploring him, mapping out his constellations with wide-eyed wonder.

You wake to a black hole.

For the first five seconds, you see nothing. You hear nothing. You feel nothing. You only blink in the darkness, your mind kicking into groggy gear to ask the very good question of why you’re conscious again.

Instinct moves your hand across the mattress. Empty space greets you where Jisung should be. Unfounded dread shoves your back off the bed. You gasp, the sound seeming to echo in the cavernous silence.

Your eyes adjust enough to discern light in the crack beneath your door, and you’re wide awake.

The following events go by in a blur. You stumble out of bed and into your closet, fastening your fingers around the thickest piece of fabric you find. You fly into the living room, where the lamp by the couch is left on and the pair of worn black Converse on your doormat have gone missing.

The front door is cracked open, and through the narrow inches you spot someone hunched on the stairs outside, his dark hair dyed platinum by the awning light’s fluorescence.

Your heart stills in relief, then quickens with anxiety.

You’ve tried wearing this crewneck in January enough times to know you can’t. In fact, you suspect that it somehow soaks up the temperature, lets it seep in between its every seam until it becomes one with the bitter winds.

But he isn’t shivering, you notice as you take a seat next to him, draping the puffer over both of your shoulders on your way down. He’s simply staring off into the bleak storm, snowflakes sitting atop his head like a coating of ash, their color matching that of his frozen skin. He’s becoming one with the bitter winds.

At first, you don’t recognize the man in front of you.

You’re well familiar with those ring-laden hands and the whetted jawline thrown into shadow, those remnants of cologne clinging to his frame. But you have never seen that gaze before, bloodshot and bleak and belonging to somebody new. Somebody who isn’t completely here, straddling the partition between the realms of people and phantoms.

Then he lifts his eyes and you see stars, flaring in the absence of light. Your stars.

And you recognize him for the first time ever.

You drop your hand to your hip, and his fingers feel stiff and cold and perfect, sliding into the spaces between yours.

“Why don’t you like snow?” You ask.

Jisung’s eyes return to the swirling sleet, but he moves your interlocked hands to rest on his thigh, and you know that he’s with you.

He’s been having this nightmare.

It takes place in a small clearing. It’s winter, and everything is covered in snow. Not the gentle kind that you can catch on your tongue, but the unyielding kind that’s hard and dense and covered in cracks, like a lake newly frozen over.

Somebody is in front of him, walking away. He can only see their back. He wants to chase after them. He doesn’t want to be left behind. But there are ghosts nearby, and they’ll split his skull open on the permafrost and tie his windpipe into a pretty bow if he so much as dreams of pursuit. He always does. He doesn’t know how not to.

Normally, the back leaves, and he can do nothing but remain. He can direct his loathing only to the snow into which he bleeds.

Normally, he waits for the dream to end with something bordering on boredom. He’s seen this movie too many times. He fucking hates how it ends.

This time, though, the snow tastes like something.

After the flavors deliquesce upon his tongue, his head shoots up, his eyes blowing wide as they latch onto the retreating figure. He knows who it is.

His feet scrabbles against the ice with his attempts to rise to them. He lunges forward with frenzied resolve, and that is when the ghosts snap his neck.

He wakes up.

“Cherry blossoms and vanilla.”

You blink, tearwater streaking from your eyes in silent, steaming trails.

“That’s—”

My shampoo.

A broken sob escapes you in lieu of the rest of your sentence, and Jisung laughs, a flimsy facade that crumbles when he lifts his hand to dab at your moistened cheeks and it’s trembling.

“Silly,” he murmurs. “I’m used to it now.”

“I don’t want you to be.”

“I don’t want you to cry for me.”

“You died.”

“And I would do it again.”

This response comes without an shred of hesitation.

You first realized you had something to confess, that night in the the back of Jisung’s SUV. You’ve kept it locked away for your sake and his, even moreso. You see how fear clings to him like an unshakeable wraith, and you refuse to feed the parasite.

Now, your confession explodes from its fortress in the center of your soul and rises up your larynx. You panic like an inept security guard letting their only prisoner bolt free. Is it really the right time? Do you know what to say? Have you really thought this through?

Too late. It’s rushing to the point of your tongue already. You suppose you’ll find out.

He saves you the trouble.

“Honestly?”

Your confession stills.

“I don’t know if I’m okay, and I won’t try to convince you otherwise. You’d call my bluff. You’re good at that.

“But everything feels okay when I’m with you. You see me. You allow me just to exist as I am. You make me feel human again—you make me want to feel human again. You empty my mind.”

You feel as if you’ve been ejected into space naked, griping for air where there is none.

“I never believed in having somebody to lose,” he utters, gently leaning his forehead against yours. “But I would rather disappear than watch you go.”

You cradle his jaw with shaking fingers, trying and failing to quell the violence of your emotion.

“Don’t go,” he exhales.

You kiss him.

It should feel the same as before. You reach for the slant of his neck, him the dips above your waist. You sigh into him, parting your lips, and he moves into you deeper, harder, dipping into your mouth with his tongue’s pliant swipe. But there’s something new in the way you hold each other, in the seal of your mouth against his.

The line between sexual escapade and lover vanishes as if swept off the sand and into the sea. His stars come out of hiding at last and they bathe you in their residue, light your heart aglow.

Your confession resurfaces. It wants to stargaze also.

“I love you too,” you breathe.

The night comes and goes.

The two of you spend it entangling, sweating, your lips glued the expanse of his neck and the arcs of his shoulders, writing over the ghosts’ injuries with bruises of your making.

Only when the winds have faltered outside do you attempt to rest again. You are curled up in balmy bliss, utterly depleted. Jisung’s arms around your middle and legs threaded among yours bring you that much closer to slumber’s cusp.

You attribute it to your exhaustion when he mumbles something against you, and you have no idea what it means: “Thank you for refracting me.”

Your confusion is palpable in your silence. His laugh hits the nape of your neck with a gentle puff, and he kisses the spot just beneath your ear. “Never mind.”

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the-valiant-valkyrie · 2 months

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not over the fact this quote implies that: 1) robutler is at least vaguely aware of the events of the death engine 2) he believes that these events were not only cool, but pivotal to the role of a 'cool agent' 3) he considers phoenix a cool agent not for neutralizing a deadly supervirus, stopping nuclear armageddon, or surviving death twice over, but destroying the same space laser that they nearly died in. or, at the very least, those other achievements pale in comparison to the whole space laser thing 4) he presumably wants to do this himself

#ieytd #robutler #ACTUALLY using this tag for robutler this time #i could use this quote to go on a huge rant about schell once again going out of their way to demonstrate the fact that-#-solaris and her sacrifice was the pivotal moment of the phoenix's career and life that turned them into what they are today #but i won't. not right now.#and i'll instead say...... robutler don't say that 🙁#i do think solaris vibing with prism post 3 has a tragic lack of the two of them comedically struggling to get along #but i also think it has a tragic lack of. solaris not knowing how to engage with this little robot #who canonically thinks phoenix is like the second coolest thing ever #little robot don't say that.......

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noxtivagus · 1 year

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LOOKING THROUGH MY CRATE RN N OH MY GOD I NEVER SAW THIS

#🌙.rambles #[ gbf. ]#HE LOVES ME !!!! 🥺#i'm lucky enough to have two of him now then wtf #WAIT NO. NOW WITH ^#BRUH WHAT I HAVE HIM THRICE UNCAPPED #just need mats to uncap him for the last time holy fuck #animas from each of the four primarchs & supreme merits bcs i ran out :')#oh my god that was a surprise i certainly was not expecting #wait i've been busy multitasking several stuff for the past two hours hfjkadsjkf #i'm just autoing stories on jpsekai #afk in ffxiv rn #doing this problem set due on friday bcs i don't feel like working on the letter for perdev due tmmrw T_T i'll work on it later #i'm taking a break from just idk full autoing in gbf bcs i want to just. Breathe for a while #i was listening to some of mili's songs on repeat earlier but now i'm listening to eve ><#i'm gna stand up for a bit oh my god wait #i am v happy to be back to playing to gbf but #I AM BACK TO THE HELL /specifically/ 😭😭#yesterday i was multitasking auto on nier reincarnation to get enough crystals for some pulls & i was farming rainbow prisms for tien #after i got tien at like 6:50 am yes i laid down beside my phone on the bed n closed my eyes farming for more in nier #i only slept bcs. i think i accidentally dozed off oh my god #tho tbf it's nearly monday n the break is nearly over so i'm in a sort of. idk maybe a bit too obssessive to do as much 'productivity' as i #can before the break ends even at the cost of my own health 😭#i didn't mean to ramble here oh my god i will push the pain out of my head (& stomach literally bcs ouch this headache n stomach ache is 🥹)#I WILL STOP RAMBLING i will let myself rest by 10 pm

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meanbossart · 1 month

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ooh here’s a question. so companions can leave your party forever if their approval drops too low; you get two warnings and then they leave. the leaving dialogue is also different based on if you romanced them or not. (it’s pretty hard to get this in normal gameplay unless you attack and kill them over and over again lol)

so my question is what would DU drow’s low approval leaving dialogue be? and if you haven’t said this before, are there any other conditions under which he’d leave the party forever?

[Companion] first warning: "I'd like to heed you a quick word of warning - Not a threat, just a warning. You are starting to get on my nerves. Shape up. And do it quickly. Or I might just do something about it." [Lover] first warning: "You've had a penchant for pushing my boundaries lately, haven't you? I admire the gall, but I don't appreciate it. Shape up. Quickly. Or I might just do something about it."

[Companion & Lover] second warning: "Do you forget our little talk from last time, or do you just wish to see what happens? Well, I'll have you know that you are well on your way to finding out. Please, don't make me do something I might regret."

[Companion] attack dialogue: "You've made yourself clear in your intentions - You don't plan on seeing this through with me, do you? I'll be taking that prism now, as well as your life. It didn't have to come to this, you know?" [Lover] attack dialogue: "I am so sick of this. It's not worth it. Not worth it at all - and that's fine! I've never cared much for you, anyway, and it will make what comes next much easier to carry out. I'll be taking that prism now, as well as your life. It didn't have to come to this, you know?"

Listen, it's The Dark Urge. He ain't leaving just to die as soon as he's outside the mile radius of the artifact LOL

Likewise, I can't think of a single event that would prompt him to leave. I think it's more than appropriate that the only way you can get rid of this guy is by killing him.

However, if you kill Orin without him (leaving him at camp), basically dooming him to succumb to his urges without ever knowing if he could have been rid of them (or, alternatively, robbing him from the opportunity of proving himself as Bhaal's chosen) he will betray you at the end of the game and take over the brain (he just appears even if you leave him at camp too so there's no getting away from it).

#don't mind me using these to practice my coloring #ask #companion DU drow #bg3 spoilers #art

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roosterforme · 2 months

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The Younger Kind Part 51 | Rooster x Reader

Summary: Bradley is waiting for an answer to Noah's question while you blurt out the first thing on your mind. While they await your response, you start to realize nothing is going to change too much. And that's a very good thing, because being with your family just the way you have been is exactly what you want.

Warnings: Swearing, angst, fluff, smut, pregnancy topics, and age gap (18+)

Length: 4400 words

Pairing: Single dad!Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x babysitter!female reader

Check out my masterlist for more! The Younger Kind masterlist.

"Mommy, will you marry Daddy?"

You looked down into Noah's soft, brown eyes as he held out the most beautiful thing you'd ever seen in your life. Colorful prisms painted his hand as the midday sunlight shone through the enormous diamond that Bradley had trusted him to hold. Tears filled your eyes as you brought your hand up to your lips as your fingers shook, and when you met Bradley's gaze, you said, "I'm pregnant."

You hadn't meant to tell him that when he was on his knee in front of you, but you really had no expectation that your day would include a positive pregnancy test let alone a marriage proposal. Tears slid down your cheeks as Bradley stared back up at you silently. You thought this was what he wanted, but he hadn't said anything. Then you realized that you didn't respond to Noah's question yet either as more tears fell.

"Princess?" Bradley finally asked as he started to stand with Noah tucked against his body by his right arm. "You're pregnant?"

You nodded as he wrapped his left arm around you and pulled you close, his flight suit rough against your skin. "Yes. I just found out like two hours ago."

He looked surprised but not unhappy as his hand bunched up the fabric at the back of your dress until you were snug against his body. His lips hovered just inches above yours, but he didn't say anything else as Noah still tried to hand you the ring.

"Aren't you going to say anything else?" you whispered, fingers still shaking as you let your hands rest on his chest.

A smile teased at his lips. "Princess, you know I'm ready for a baby. I told you that so many times," he replied as he kissed your forehead. "I'm a little surprised it happened so quickly, but I guess I shouldn't be." His lips met yours in the softest kiss. "Now can you please let me know where you stand on this diamond ring before Noah drops it? I'm kind of dying here. Hoping you'll say yes."

You wrapped your arms around his neck and kissed him hard until you were breathless. "Yes," you whispered, your lips brushing his mustache. "Yes, Noah, I'll marry Daddy."

Bradley laughed and kissed you again before he said, "Okay, Bub. Give her the ring before it ends up in the grass or something." You tucked yourself in against him and kissed Noah's chubby cheek, finally taking the ring from his sticky hand and sliding it on your finger. The diamond was massive and looked like it was worth more than your car.

"I don't think you should have spent this much on a ring with a baby on the way," you said, and Bradley barked out another laugh.

"It's a princess cut for my Princess. Do you like it?" he asked.

"Of course!" you told him, curling your fingers like you were afraid he was going to take it away from you. "It's perfect."

"Then I didn't spend too much on my future wife." His words hit you square in the heart as you ran your fingers through Noah's soft curls, the crowds of people around you finally coming back into focus after several minutes of excitement. You were going to be Bradley's wife.

More tears found your eyes as you said, "Your wife. Oh my god, Bradley! I was so nervous about the pregnancy test, but yes, I absolutely want to be your wife."

You wrapped both of them up in a hug as he murmured in your ear. "There's my excited Princess. Were you really nervous to tell me you're pregnant, Baby?"

"Yes, because I was completely surprised and overwhelmed," you admitted, burying your face against his chest. "I'm also a bit relieved you technically proposed before I told you about it."

"Hey," he rasped, his voice a little harsher now as he set Noah down and tipped your chin up with his rough fingers. "I made my intentions very clear to you. I let you know I wanted a ring on your finger well before I flushed your birth control pills." He swiped your lips with his thumb before he let his hand trail down your body, his knuckles skimming the valley between your breasts before grazing your tummy. "And if I get all three things that I wanted in one day, then I'm the luckiest man alive."

"Three things?" you asked as an announcement about more jets taking the air boomed through the crowd.

He smiled as his palm flattened over your belly button. "Yeah. You agreed to marry me even though you could do a lot better. And you just told me I'm going to be a dad all over again."

"That's two things, Daddy. Is your memory slipping with age?"

He shook his head, that smile still firmly in place. "I've had adoption paperwork with your name and Noah's on it waiting at home for a long time."

You looked up at him in wonder. "I want those three things, too."

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Bradley wasn't too surprised you got a positive pregnancy test this morning. He'd been working hard to try to get that exact result. In fact, he'd been putting hours and hours each week toward this very goal. He could tell you were overwhelmed by everything that was going on, your eyes flitting from his face to your ring and then back to Noah over and over. But he'd been through this once before. Well, not the engagement part. And Meredith was actually nothing like you in the least. But he wasn't nervous. Not really. Especially not about the baby.

"Come here," he whispered, pulling you onto his lap where he sat on the huge beach blanket. "You looked overwhelmed."

You nodded as more announcements were made over the loudspeaker. "This has been a lot of new information for one day," you told him, looking like you might cry.

"I know," he said before kissing your lips. "But I love you. All three of you. And I'll take care of everything."

As a jet engine roared to life, you lunged off of his lap and reached for Noah's headphones, slipping them into place. "Don't want your ears to hurt," you told him as you kissed his forehead.

Bradley yanked you back onto his lap and kissed you as you moaned into his mouth. "God, Princess. That's why I've been so ready for everything with you. We have Noah and the house, and I just want all of it. I want the wife and the baby, too."

The engines were getting louder now as you ran your fingers through his hair. "Okay then. Let's just have it all. Think we should install a white picket fence at home while we're at it?" you asked with a little smirk.

"Might have to," he replied, tickling your belly until you laughed. "Gotta keep this little one safely in the yard someday."

You let your forehead rest against his as you said, "I can't wait to look at the adoption papers."

He kissed you and laughed as he said, "See that's how I planned on trapping you, Princess. You'll have to marry me before you can have that."

You groaned and pretended to remove your ring and hand it back to him. "A Princess falls in love with a Knight? Eww. Gross. I hate it. I don't want that at all." You made a disgusted face at him before you smiled and handed him a pair of earplugs. Then you stretched out on the blanket with your head in his lap, looking up at him with an open expression. "Everyone is going to think I was the one who purposely planned to get pregnant to trap you, Daddy."

Bradley looked down at you and ran his fingers along your flawless cheek while Noah dug in the cooler for a snack. "No. You're wrong. Everyone is going to look at us and see the age gap and think it's the other way around."

You kissed his palm. "They'll just assume you have a big cock," you told him plainly, and he covered your mouth with his hand while you laughed.

When it got louder, Bradley picked up the other pair of earplugs and handed them to you. He spent the next twenty minutes with his hand on your belly, watching his little family as you and Noah looked up at the airplanes. He'd seen it all already, and right now he'd rather focus on you as you examined your engagement ring. Somehow he went from two Bradshaws to four Bradshaws today. You looked up at him with a dreamy expression as he ran his fingers along the soft fabric of your dress. You toyed with your ring lazily and nibbled on your bottom lip while he thought about you playing with Noah and a baby at the same time.

"Fuck," he groaned. As soon as you removed your earplugs, Bradley asked, "Do you want to elope? Like tomorrow maybe?"

"Tomorrow?!"

He nodded. "You know, earlier this morning, I thought I'd be happy waiting a bit if that's what you wanted. But now I'm having a change of heart. I want to get married before the baby is born."

You laughed and said, "Daddy, I haven't even called my doctor for an appointment yet!"

"I know. But I've been working so hard to make sure I have everything in order for us. Make sure you'll be safe no matter what. I'd like to get married and start the adoption process before number two arrives."

You kissed his cheek and pressed your lips to his ear as you hummed. "We can get married soon. Before the baby arrives."

"That's all I want."

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You were exhausted as you drove home with Noah sound asleep in his car seat. The late afternoon sun was reflecting off of your ring as you wound your way along the roads that led you back into the city. Bradley was flying his jet back to North Island at this exact moment, and then he'd meet you back at home. You giggled, imagining a white fence around the house.

The whole day felt like a dream, and you weren't quite convinced it was real. How could you have such a beautiful ring on your finger? How could your heart skip a beat every time you thought about having a baby with Bradley? It was surreal. Even the sun dipping low in the sky ahead of you seemed a little too perfect.

You had to carry Noah inside as he was still sound asleep when you got there. The house was silent other than Skittles pawing at the back door to be let out, and you found yourself anxiously sitting on the front porch step as you waited to see that familiar blue Bronco come down the street.

But of course Bradley didn't disappoint you. He never did. Not anymore. You knew it was him by the sound of the engine before you saw it. Once he was parked in the driveway, he climbed out holding a huge bouquet of flowers and made a beeline for you as you stood.

"Hey," he said softly as he got closer, the biggest smile on his handsome face. "These are for my future wife."

Your laughter was muffled by his lips as the two of you awkwardly made your way inside the front door tangled up together. Bradley backed you up against the TV stand, and you took the flowers from his hand and let them fall softly to the floor. "I love you, Daddy," you whispered against his lips. "I was kind of afraid today was just a dream. Something too perfect that I made up."

You pushed your fingers through his messy hair, tugging a bit as you enjoyed the feel of his flight suit against your skin. Your lips parted on a gasp as he started to hike up your dress, and he tasted your tongue. He had one big hand wrapped around your thigh as he whispered, "Not a dream. It's real, Princess. Us and Noah and a baby. And I couldn't be happier."

"Mommy? Daddy?"

You turned and tried to wiggle out of Bradley's grasp when you saw those sweet brown eyes peering at you from the hallway. "Hey, Bub," Bradley rasped, letting your dress fall back into place and taking your left hand in his. Noah came trotting over to the flowers on the floor and picked them up. "I got those for Mommy from both of us."

He handed them to you just the same way he handed you the engagement ring earlier, and you bent to pick him up along with the flowers. As much as today had changed everything for you, it really changed nothing for Noah. He was still looking at you like he trusted you completely. You were still going to be his Mommy. He was still going to be loved the same way whether or not you were wearing a new piece of jewelry. He still needed to be fed dinner.

"Are you hungry?" you asked him as Bradley's hand found your back. He nodded and yawned, still looking very tired. "Then let's get your belly filled up with something delicious before you take a bath and get changed into your dinosaur pajamas, okay?"

While you dug around in the refrigerator and examined your ring, Bradley sat with Noah on his lap at the table. "I should have taken you out to celebrate with a nice meal. I could still try to call Amelia to come watch him?" he asked.

You glanced at him over your shoulder. "Absolutely not. I want all of us to eat together," you said.

"Is Amelia coming over? She's nice, but I liked when Mommy was my babysitter better," Noah said as he poked at Bradley's face.

"Not tonight. Maybe a different night she can come over and play with you again. But actually, Bub, there's something really cool that's going to happen soon," he replied, and a wave of excitement washed over you. "Mommy and Daddy are going to have a wedding and get married."

He just shrugged like you weren't wearing a massive rock on your left hand. "Yeah. I know."

Bradley chuckled as you set the carton of eggs on the kitchen counter. "And would you like to be a big brother someday? Like maybe next year?" he asked.

Noah shrugged again, and this time you were laughing as well. "That's fine," he replied. "I'm really hungry."

"His life isn't going to change very much," you said as you started to make scrambled eggs and toast, so used to cooking in this kitchen now. "At least not right away."

"It sure isn't," Bradley agreed. "Neither is mine. I'll still have the loves of my life with me. But now you'll be wearing your ring instead of me trying to hide it everywhere."

You felt warm inside. "How long have you had it?" you asked, and Bradley blushed.

"I started looking in June. I bought it the day Skittles got her cast off."

You tried to think back to how long ago it had been that he brought the dog home cast free with a bakery box in his other hand. "That was weeks ago!"

He nodded as you were drawn to him across the room. "I've been waiting for this weekend, thinking it would be perfect for some reason. And it was," he whispered as you bent to kiss him. "I asked you to marry me, and you told me I'm going to be a dad for a second time. Best weekend ever."

You kissed him again, letting your nose bump the side of his as you smiled. "I thought you just bought it! I didn't know you've been hiding it!"

"Badly," he replied. "Hiding it badly. You stepped on the box the first night when it was in my pants pocket on the floor, and when I moved it to my dress whites jacket, you put that on for... certain activities with me."

You gaped at him, shocked that you'd come so close to finding it but happy you hadn't.

Noah sighed. "Is my dinner ready?"

When you pulled your lips away from Bradley's, you rushed back to the stove as you groaned. "Oh, shoot."

"I'll eat the burnt food," he promised you. "It'll still taste better than anything I cook."

You scraped the slightly brown scrambled eggs from the pan to a plate and handed it to Bradley. "That's the absolute truth."

Once everyone was fed, you found that you didn't want to be away from either of them for too long, so you all headed to the bathroom for Noah's bathtime. You sat on Bradley's lap while you and Noah played with his toys, and Bradley's big hands found their way up underneath your dress to your bare thighs once again.

"Daddy," you whispered softly over your shoulder while he squeezed your leg. You could feel his lips and mustache skimming along the back of your neck, the sound of his breathing and soft chuckle giving you goosebumps. As you rinsed Noah's hair, you said, "It kind of just feels like a normal night."

He hummed softly as he nipped at your shoulder. "You're right. Things aren't going to change too much. But I'll be calling you my wife soon, and you'll have two kids calling you Mommy someday."

Every time he mentioned either of those, you looked at your ring as butterflies erupted in your belly. When you drained the water in the tub, you turned around so you could kiss him softly until it was time to get Noah out.

"I got him, Princess," he whispered, pulling the strap of your sundress down so it hung off your shoulder. "I still need a shower. You feel like warming it up for me?" He kissed along the same path the strap took, and you shivered as you nodded. "Perfect." He scooped Noah up with a towel and held him out to say goodnight.

"Night, sweet Noah," you told him, running your fingers along his damp cheek while he yawned. "I love you."

"I love you, Mommy."

Bradley leaned in closer and whispered, "Get that shower nice and steamy?"

You softly rolled your eyes but said, "Yes, Daddy." And then they were gone. You closed the door and stripped your dress off, turning the shower on for the two of you. He didn't immediately return, and you wondered briefly if you should have given him a hand with Noah. But you were distracted looking at your ring as the small room filled up with steam before you remembered to get in the actual shower.

You had yourself mostly soaped up by the time Bradley resurfaced, naked except for his underwear. Even though your view was obstructed, you could tell he was hard as he stripped them off and stood again, running his hands through his hair. "I'm really excited," he murmured, and you could barely hear him over the water.

"Then get in here."

He didn't hesitate another second before he was under the spray of water with you, backing you up against the wall with his cock pressed to your belly. His body was big and warm as you shivered against the tile, and you cupped his face in your hands as the faint smell of jet fuel met your nose.

"I'm excited too," you whispered. "And nervous."

His brow scrunched. "I didn't mean to put any pressure on a timeline for the wedding. We don't even need to have a wedding if you don't want one. I bet Tracy could draw something up if you'd prefer."

But you shook your head in response. "No. It's not that. You joked about getting married tomorrow, but I really would marry you tomorrow. And I do want a small wedding of some sort." You rubbed your fingertips against his stubble as you admitted, "I'm nervous about the baby."

The concern left his face and was replaced with a smile. "Well I can't do much about that timeline."

"Daddy!" you complained as you rolled your eyes harder this time, but you were laughing as his hand came to rest on your belly right next to his cock.

"We'll figure it all out. I'll take care of everything." Your eyes drifted closed as his lips grazed your ear and the warm water washed over you. "I'll take care of you and Noah and the baby."

"And Skittles."

"Of course," he crooned as you wrapped your hand around his length. "She's my best friend."

Your head tipped back against the tile, and you giggled as you slowly hooked your right leg up over his hip. You rubbed yourself against his balls as you stroked his precum across his tip, and Bradley's cheeks flushed pink. Maybe it was from you or maybe from the heat of the shower, but you bit your lip when he whispered, "Does my wife want me to fuck her?"

"Soon-to-be wife," you moaned loudly, letting him slide free from your grasp as he eased his hips away from you. And then he lined himself up with your pussy, coating himself up as his hair dripped onto your shoulder. When he thrust himself inside you, the force made your footing waver, and you clung to him.

"I got you," he promised, pinning you harder against the wall, thrusting up into you at this perfect angle.

"Oh my god," you whined, and you watched his face change from pure softness to something a little more feral.

He gripped your thigh against his hip as he grunted, "This is nice for you?" But nice was an understatement. He was hitting all the right spots and rubbing your clit, and you were wearing his ring and he called you his wife.

"Uh huh," you agreed. "Really nice, Bradley."

His grunts were guttural as he drove your hips back to the wall, over and over, giving you more of what you wanted. Your voices mingled and echoed around the shower enclosure, all short staccato gasps of his name while he called out yours. His hand tightened around your thigh as he thrust hard and kept himself there while you clenched around him.

"You're mine," he growled. "And I'm yours. And I love you."

You couldn't quite speak as your lips quivered and your limbs shook, and you came hard, clinging to the only man who would ever make you feel this good. The only one who would ever love you with his whole heart. The only one you ever wanted to be with. The one you were going to marry.

"I love you, too."

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Bradley had you wrapped up in a towel as he carried you into the bedroom, your cheek resting on his shoulder. He smiled when you gasped as you looked around.

Before joining you in the bathroom, he'd taken the time to put the flowers he bought on his way home in two vases on your nightstand, and he lit about a dozen candles. "I thought maybe I'd be able to wait for slightly more romantic sex with you, but I should have known the shower would be a bit of a problem for me. It always is with you."

You moaned softly, boneless and slightly fucked out in his arms as he set you on the bed. "This is perfect," you whispered. "The perfect spot for how I'm feeling right now."

He leaned down and kissed you before he got in bed beside you. "How are you feeling?"

You closed your eyes and giggled, arching your back slightly before kicking your feet. "So in love."

Bradley carefully unwrapped the towel so you were exposed to him, your skin looking flawless in the candlelight. He leaned over you and kissed your collarbone before each furled nipple as you gasped and giggled. Your skin was still a little damp as he kissed his way to your belly and smiled. You were giving him another child. You were going to let him be your husband.

"Fuck," he groaned stroking your sides with his fingers as he nuzzled you with his nose. "I can't even describe how happy I am, Baby."

Your fingers laced through his wet hair as you whispered, "Are you calling me Baby? Or are you talking to the actual baby?"

"Both. Definitely fucking both." He let his lips drift lower on your body, and he kissed along your slit before working his way back up. "Will you humor me?" he asked, voice raspy with a different kind of need as he looked at your face. "Will you look at the adoption papers?"

You nodded and tugged him closer by his hair until his lips were on yours. "Please," you whispered into his kisses. "I want to."

Bradley's heart was thudding, pounding out a rhythm it never knew before you. "Okay," he replied with excitement. "Okay." He forced himself out of bed so he could dig around in the closet for the folder that Tracy had prepared at his request. It was easy enough to find what he was looking for in the candlelight, and he set the remaining papers on the dresser before heading back to the bed.

You were sitting up now, your face eager as you smiled. "I love Noah."

Bradley nodded, feeling completely overwhelmed as he imagined his future. "I know. You love him like I do." He eased himself down against the headboard and let you sit in front of him so you could look at the pages in his hand together. "And I know you'll take care of both of them." He kissed the side of your neck as soon as you touched the first sheet of paper in reverence with shaking hands. "As soon as we get married, I want to make this legal in every way. You already saw my updated will. I trust you as much as I trust myself, and I want to know my kids are safe with you if anything happens to me."

You silenced him with your lips before you said, "Enough of that. I just want to be Noah's mom. One hundred percent. Because I love him. That's the only reason I need."

Bradley wouldn't force his concerns on you tonight. Especially not tonight. He watched as you traced your typed out name followed by NOAH BRADSHAW on that front page, your diamond ring glittering in the dimly lit room. "That's a good enough reason for me."

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Bless Daddy. The man can rest now. The ring is on her finger! The baby is in her belly! The love is in his heart! Should we visit Casey again? Thanks @mak-32 and @beyondthesefourwalls

PART 52

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