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imalwaystiredzzz · 3 years

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C2: Sisyphus happy. Yan Zhongli x Reader

Warning: Yandere behavior, unhealthy relationships

< Sisyphus happy. chapters >

“Perhaps you would fear if you saw me, and love is all I ask. There is a necessity that keeps me hidden now. Only believe.” - Cupid and Psyche ══════════════════════════════════

You have a dream; heavy and looming as you carry a boulder on your fragile back. It dares to crush you under its weight, while you trudge up a steep path towards the peak of this mountain. The sun glares with its heat like a guard set to watch your endless labor, sweat trickles down like rain on your skin as you pray for water.

The relief comes in the form of waking from this endless dream.

Breath. Breath. Breath. You breath as if your lungs were crushed and you had drowned in earth, wondering why the familiar pain of doing so was gone. “Slowly,” smooth like velvet and deep that it reverberates to your being, your dear husband hushes next to you observing for any hint - even a twitch - that you might need help.

“I felt like I had a really long dream,” you say, sitting up from the warm sheets of your shared bed.

“Care to tell me what it is about?” He is the epitome of patience practiced and perfected, waiting for your reply; though try as you might to remember what it was, the dream had long slipped from your mind like sand held between cupped hands, flowing and flowing until nothing is left.

“Have I been asleep long?” Voice groggy and eyes a bit blinded by the light, small hands felt the sheets on his side, the warmth and ghost of his form long gone, your dutiful husband, always awake and dressed before you even rouse from slumber.

Zhongli leans toward you, his gloved fingers graze your cheeks with tenderness only to tuck a strand behind your ear and it is warm as the morning sun that rises on your window. “It’s alright, I know that you need rest after our move.”

You blush, heart soaring like a pure maiden in love with her suitor even though it is none other than your husband who gives you his full attention. It’s supposed to be endearing. It is endearing. Yet there is an ache at the back of your head, that something is amiss.

His fingers, barely touching your skin, made you think of claws, long and sharp, shining with polish. You brush it aside, under the bed long forgotten in the dark, while you would begin your routine.

You could say that a day does not begin when you wake, rather it is when you make his tea.

He once told you that brewing is an art no less than painting or writing, it is not a matter of simply sprinkling leaves on a clay pot. It is a meditation and a ceremony practiced to bring forth a harmony of earth and water.

You take his words to heart. You take almost all his words to heart and memorize them the way he recites poems to you before bed. You command air to bring forth an aroma that allures the butterflies and with practiced elegance, you hold the Yixing teapot to pour him his cup while Zhongli is nothing but a spectator to this show.

There are no words exchanged before he sips. It is a little game between you and him, a show of trust you would like to think. Even the heavens could not imagine Zhongli take abhorrent food, not even for his wife.

He is nothing but an expert, listing the leaves you secretly used and the flavor in full detail like a practiced line from a play. You’d wager that had he been blessed to borne out of better parents, had he been blessed with a better standing rather than a son of a merchant who had a herbalist like you for a wife, he would have stood as the finest in a world of history and art with those deft amber eyes that miss nothing.

Not even the way you look as he leaves through that door with a kiss.

A kiss of parting as you wave him goodbye, the wind whispering that this is not your simple husband, who goes down the mountain to sell herbs and trade merchandise in the city. He is your foreign husband, who disappears from your presence and hides a secret deeper than the mines the humans could hope to till.

But who is to listen to the wind? Zhongli tells you that it is nothing but your active imagination and you are nothing but (Y/n) (l/n), a herbalist, who belongs to the soil.

This thought repeats in your head like a broken record and rings in your ear.

It is spring now, you remember looking up and thanking the clouds and the lush leaves of the tree that hide the harsh glare of the afternoon sun. The grass was evergreen and the wind smell of the oncoming summer heat, fragrant with flowers that bloom in the wild.

In spring, he tells you that a gardener is happy for the harvest is abundant and the lands teems with life. In spring, you should be happy.

The plants are alive and they grow easy, they are not shriveled by the summer heat nor do they hide under the ground because of the winter. The flowers and herbs bloom, almost too perfectly as if the little pots were visited by the dendro archcon themselves in your sleep.

You are (Y/n) (l/n). In spring, you should be alive.

Yet cannot help but notice the absence of the worms nor ants that you once complained about. Once upon a time, you would be maneuvering them all throughout the day away from the lush green leaves and bountiful earth. And sometimes your imagination would play tricks and whispers of their avoidance.

“What cruel little pest,” you tell the soil while planting new seeds until the sun goes down and hides from the skies, when you light the lamps in the house, but most especially by the door, red and glowing like a star against the vast darkness of this lonely mountain.

Hoping, praying that this simple light will lead him back, if he might ever be lost in the shadows in the road.

Even before he walks through the door, your ears are listening to the whispers of the air that carries his footsteps as it taps the ground so when he opens the door, you are there with a warm welcoming smile and a kiss to his cheeks, heart calm as you know he is safe and he is here. He is home.

You should laugh, really. Your husband who has mapped this mountain like the back of his hand would never be lost but the anxiousness of it never fades. A perpetual worrier, he would call you with eyes lost, staring at yet never really seeing. You know that he has his moments, he doesn’t mean to show, it is fleeting as it comes and no more than a blink of an eye hence you blink and pretend that you don’t see and lead him by the hand to the table neatly set and filled with warm food.

You dine as he talks about the people he has met and worked with in the city, how the land has begun to thrive and the mora flowing. He tells you of a harbor, where boats are ever growing in size as the days go by and the merchants travelling to do business within it. As far as you can remember, there was never dinner where Zhongli does not talk endlessly about the city - always proud yet humble like a poem, you would think that he talks about it like a child of his own.

“I wonder when will I see the lights of the city from here.” You don’t know what compelled you to say this, maybe it was the stories that he never ceased to tell, maybe it was the lantern that still hung lit outside and darkness that encloses it like a sky with a single star. He pauses, struck and still as a statue, he looks at you in a way that you have never seen before.

This smile is is not warm as the morning sun when you wake; it is not tight and constricted when he leaves; nor is it practiced the way it would fall so easily on his visage like a mask; rather this smile dims the glow in his amber eyes and wrinkles the skin akin to sadness and guilt held back.

He reaches for your hand on the other side of the table and kisses it, tenderly, gently as if you are glass that would break with a tap and this is his silent promise that you feel would never come to fruition, “Maybe one day when you are feeling better.”

The routine ends when your dear husband leads you to bed, the fire closed and you are both in the dark. Tonight he kisses you with unhinged passion, holding unto your small form against him like you were about to disappear into thin air and he is a stone cage.

“Is it so selfish of me to keep you by my side and never want to let go?”

He asked barely a whisper above your skin, like a prayer to a god that never answers while the only thing on your heart was pity for your dear husband’s deep sadness, who was an embodiment tragedy that could make you cry.

Had you been born with a stronger body, maybe then you could promise him tomorrow and the rest of your days yet you are nothing but ephemeral so you don’t speak; simply hold his arms, firm and hard under your touch briefly wondering why you thought of scales, mighty and solid as the unblemished core lapis from deep underneath. Under your fingertips he is foreign yet familiar, in every wrong and right way possible. “You have enraptured me, body and soul. I will always love you, even after I have long passed”

“Is that what it means to love”

“That is what it means to be human.”

You fall asleep, long before he does. He holds your hand, tightly.

Step by step by step. An endless walk as you contemplate: why? What sin so great that you have committed for this to be an equal torture. And yet even as millennium of wondering have passed you don’t know, rather you’ve forgotten, memories and thoughts lost in the pain that seeps into the bone, desert in your throat and the eyes that cannot see the peak of this mountain you climb.

#TiredZ Sisyphus happy #yandere zhongli #zhongli x reader #zhongli x you #zhongli x y/n #yandere genshin x reader #yandere genshin impact #genshin imagines #geshin impact #yandere zhongli x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #genshin x you

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witchinghouracademy · 2 years

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Rᴏɴᴅᴏ ᴏғ Fᴏʀᴇsᴛ ❆ [ Silvia & Jade ]

The music becomes light and playful, inciting playful twirls and fun steps that stay graceful by the virtue of it’s dancers.

— My my~ you’ve gotten the hang of it so fast! You’re a natural Jade~

— Thank you for the compliment, miss Silvia. Although I’m afraid I’m still no match for my brother.

— Well well~ dancing isn’t a competition. But, sometimes there are dancing competitions. Oh, have you gotten taller?

— Miss Silvia, you’ll undo my hair if you keep patting my head.

— Eh? It’s fine it’s fine~ What a serious a kid.

An easy smile, and an easy step, there’s an aura of airy elegance around the pair as they move around in short steps, the swaying of Silvia’s dress making it alike water flowing through a clear stream. The reflection adds a gleam to Jade’s formal suit, perfectly ironed and buttoned, proper of a gentleman. The muted green trees and white snow around can’t take anything from the picture of fineness they present.

— You’ve grown tall all of a sudden like a mushroom~ They say you are what you eat, fufu~

— I really haven’t grown that much since last time, miss Silvia. But, speaking of mushrooms...

— ...Ah. That was what I forgot.

Silvia’s head cocks to the side with an apologetic smile, and Jade only chuckles as he keeps following her lead.

— I’ll go grab the mushroom seeds quick after this dance! Ah, I got a new one that’s very pretty~ It glows a really pretty lime green at night. I added it to the ones you asked for, I hope you don’t mind?

— Not at all. Thank you for accepting my request. I’m looking forward to cultivate plants from the Hondonada of Fades.

— Fufu~ I wonder how well they’ll mix with the others? It’s wonderful, isn’t it? That plants from human lands, mermaid lands, and fairy lands can grow together and form new things! Please send me photos when they grow, okay?

The smile on Jade is small, relaxed after being influenced by Silvia’s pace. The music fades out, and as a closing move, Jade lifts Silvia up in a final twirl. The fairy can’t contain her laughter, clapping for the orchestra and then towards Jade

— You’re so strong too~ You’re eating well then, I’m glad~ Ah, those mushrooms can be eaten too! They’re good in stews specially. That way you can share with your brother~

— It’s sweet you thought of that miss Silvia. I will get him to try them, then.

There’s a shiver running down said eel, a few meters away, unnaware of the threat.

— I will wait here for the seeds then. Please don’t feel forced to rush, I know you can’t fly now.

— My my~ Were did you learn that?

— Of course, I’ve been reading about fairy lands to prepare the terrariums. It was mentioned in passing that during the cold, you guard your wings to avoid them freezing and breaking.

— That’s right~ We’re warm thanks to that spell, but if something happened... Yes, I rather not risk it. You really are a sweet kid Jade~ And smart~

Once again Silvia tries to pet Jade’s head, the eel allowing only a couple pats before standing out of reach, neither his or her smile breaking.

— You should talk with everyone though~ Tonight is a chance to make new friends! I won’t take long... hopefully.

There’s a small wave as Silvia speed-walks to the portal to the school, Jade slightly raising his arm in reply. Making new friends... what a sweet sentiment. Beautiful things can grow from mixing different backgrounds, that is true.

A sweet, helpful man... Jade can't help but smirk at that idea of himself. Now then, perhaps he should find people to "help" while waiting.

#twst oc #twisted wonderland oc #witching winter ball #silvia albadew

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goldentournesol · 4 years

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The Receptionist and the Profiler (One)

Chapter One: Wins and Losses

(Spencer Reid x f!Reader)

Series Masterlist

General Masterlist

If you’d have told high school senior Y/N that she’d be working at the FBI after graduating college, she would have never believed you. Not only did she have zero interest in law enforcement, she also seemed to lack any athletic skills to back her up. She was nothing like her fiancé, who’d had his heart set on joining the bureau since middle school. She and Grant Anderson were friends in high school and ended up getting together during their junior year. Anderson proposed to Y/N during her second year of college. She’d graduated almost two years ago now, but the wedding date was unknown. They’d been dating for four years and engaged for another four years with the wedding nowhere to be seen. He’d been the first and only boy–and man, to ever pay her half a mind. To her, that was good enough. Hell, she’d been with him for eight years, if she’d wanted to leave him, she’d have left long ago. Right?

Imagine her surprise when he’d told her that his new boss, Aaron Hotchner, was looking for a receptionist for the BAU. Fresh out of college, landing a secure job? That was a miracle, and she really did have to thank her fiancé for it. But everyone around her was so cool and she was just…there. Her job was basically to sort through files, organize Hotch’s meetings, among other things like making reservations at the hotels the agents stayed at on their cases.

The Agents of the BAU.

They were essentially the coolest people she knew.

First comes Agent Gideon, one of the founders of the BAU. His ability to read people scares her sometimes. How can one man’s beady little eyes have the ability to read people like they were some kind of book stowed away on a dusty shelf? A shelf only he can reach.

Then, comes Agent Hotchner, the unit chief. A stoic man with an even more stoic face. He’s a man who, to put it lightly, takes his job very seriously. On more than one occasion has she met his wife, Haley. They made a beautiful couple in her eyes and they’d just had their child, Jack Hotchner. She never knew how a baby’s face could be so wrinkly–yet so cute. Haley and Aaron were high school sweethearts, much like she and Grant. But that seemed to be the only aspect they shared. Despite his suffocatingly hard shell, Aaron was a loving man. That much was obvious. She wondered if Grant had ever looked at her the way Aaron looked at Haley.

Agent Derek Morgan, where to begin? He was tall, dark, and every bit handsome. His charming nature made all the ladies of the sixth (and fifth, and seventh, and eighth and–) floor swoon over him anytime he walked by. He is one of the bravest men she’d ever known. His ability to put himself in the place of the unsub was something she’d only heard stories about–but it gave her chills every time.

Next comes Agent Elle Greenaway, one of the most headstrong women Y/N has ever met. Her bluntness can come across as harsh, but she knew a woman in law enforcement had to stand her ground to be treated with as equal respect as her male counterparts. She admired her strength.

Agent Jennifer Jareau, or as Y/N knew her, JJ, was a kind hearted, compassionate woman who’s way with words absolutely blew Y/N away. The way JJ handled the media with such finesse was simply astonishing. She knew she could never string together the right words like JJ seemed to, up on those podiums, in front of all those nosy reporters. It was mind blowing to watch her in her element.

Penelope Garcia, or otherwise known as literal sunshine embodied in a technical analyst. She was the best at what she did, hacking, searching, filtering. It was a science, and Penelope Garcia made it look easy. She and Y/N had grown close since both of them stayed at the office while the other agents flew around the country, solving cases. They’d often spend endless lunches together in Garcia’s ‘batcave’ as she called it and was practically hellbent on teaching Y/N how to use Photoshop every chance she got.

And last but certainly not least, Dr. Spencer Reid. She’d never met a man with a more brilliant brain. He was known as the resident genius, the expert on well–everything. The man had an eidetic memory and the ability to read 20,000 words per minute. Is that not the most impressive thing on the planet? Nope, he just has to have three PhDs in three of the most complicated fields of study: mathematics, physics, and engineering, achieving all three before reaching 22 years of age.

He had joined the bureau about a year after Y/N had started there. She could remember their first interaction like it was yesterday.

He had been in and out of meetings before spotting Y/N at her desk, where she usually stayed during her lunch break, at least for the first year she was there. She was halfway through a cup of mixed berry yogurt when Spencer came up to her desk to ask where the breakroom was. Y/N directed him to the room and followed his gaze to the yogurt container in her hands before he left.

“Did you know that the origins of yogurt are pretty much unknown, although historians agree that there was no mention of it before 5000 BC? It’s thought to have been invented by the Mesopotamians.” He said as he pursed his lips and raised his brows, as if realizing he made a mistake too late.

“No, I didn’t know that! That’s super cool. You must be Dr. Spencer Reid, right?” She said, giving him her full attention, which made him slightly more nervous than he had been previously. He nodded, a shy smile on his face.

“And you’re…” he looked for her name holder, “Y/N Y/L/N.”

She giggled and the sound activated some kind of blood rushing mechanism right up into his cheeks, “Yup! I’m the BAU’s receptionist slash Agent Hotchner’s assistant, you know, nothing fancy but I like to think I’m pretty good at sorting through files.” She raised a brow and gave him an adorable smile and suddenly Spencer wasn’t so nervous to talk to her.

She seemed way more interactive and easygoing than just about 98% of the people in the building. He wondered if it was because she wasn’t an agent. Spencer also wondered if gaining a title like ‘Supervisory Special Agent’ would make him cold like the others, but then he remembered he has three doctorates and already introduced himself with the honorific.

She picked up on his silence, “You know, you have nothing to worry about, I overheard Agent Gideon talking about you landing the job with Agent Morgan.” She nodded her head towards a tall, muscular man, who Spencer gathered must be Morgan. Spencer smiled back at her, her words easing even more of the tension he collected in his shoulders.

“I wouldn’t be so sure, you should see the massive list of exceptions they have to make to let me into the field.” He said with a ghost of a smile on his face. She had to physically repress a laugh. And right then and there, the seed of a beautiful friendship was planted.

Fast forward to two years after that interaction, Spencer and Y/N became pretty much attached at the hip whenever he was actually in the office and not flying around the country catching serial killers. Their desks were quite far from each other, hers right near the glass doors of the BAU and his across the room right near the railing that had Hotch and Gideon’s offices as well as the conference room. It gave them both perfect views of each other, which they used to send each other encouraging smiles throughout the day, maybe a funny face or two. He always had a way of making her smile, she hadn’t felt the fuzzy feeling of friendship in years. Besides Garcia, Spencer was the only person who had made an effort to get to know Y/N. In the past two years, she’d say Spencer knew her better than anyone else, possibly even Anderson, but that was surely because he was a talented genius profiler…

Budget meetings at the FBI were definitely the most boring types of meetings in the world. She had to be there because she was the one making all the reservations at the hotels, but once they began talking about the jet and fuel consumption–Y/N totally spaced out. Spencer enjoyed the meetings, though. It definitely had nothing to do with the fact that Y/N would sometimes space out and let her head fall against his shoulder. The weight of her head brought him inexplicable comfort and joy. He hates it when people come near him, when did it become so endearing to him for her to trust him enough with such a simple gesture? He found himself attending the meetings and sitting next to her whenever he got the chance, hoping that one day, maybe, just maybe she’ll allow her head to rest upon his shoulder again. Perhaps it was pathetic, but he found himself feeling overjoyed at the thought of budget meetings, they became the only thing he’d look forward to.

He wondered if this was how Anderson felt when she rested her head on his shoulder, but then his knee would start bouncing and he’d practically feel the envious monster growing in the pit of his stomach, so he’d stop. It certainly didn’t make it any easier to stop when it was so easy to look over and find Anderson leaning against her desk and flirting with her. Technically, he has every right to flirt with his fiancée, but that didn’t stop jealousy from coursing through Spencer’s veins violently.

The team had just landed last night, they were coming back from a case revolving around the famous actress, Lila Archer. Apparently, she’d had a stalker. Y/N couldn’t wait to hear the details of the case, she had watched almost all of Lila’s movies. She eagerly awaited Spencer’s arrival. Just then, she heard the ding of the elevator and saw a very sheepish -and flushed- Spencer with a very playful Morgan hot on his tail.

“Morning, pretty girl!” Derek halted his seemingly incessant teasing to greet her as they walked towards her. Spencer was oddly quiet as he tried to pass by, offering her a small, awkward wave instead of his usual smiley ‘good morning!’, but Derek grabbed him by the strap of his messenger bag. He made it his mission to embarrass Spencer as much as humanly possible when he woke up this morning. What Derek didn’t know was that Spencer wanted Y/N to be the absolute last person to know of what happened. Spencer shifted uncomfortably and was positive he was sweating more than he ever had in his 24 years of life.

“Morning, Derek! So, tell me all about it! Did you meet her? Of course, you met her, duh! What was she like? Was she a stuck up diva like her character in Wins and Losses or was she more down to earth?” Y/N questioned curiously with a hint of excitement.

“Oh, I think pretty boy here has all the answers you could ever wish for. After all, it wasn’t me who made out with a hot movie star in her own pool.” Derek laughed, eyes squinting as he clapped Spencer on the shoulder proudly. Neither of the two men caught the way Y/N’s face dropped. Spencer was too focused on looking anywhere but at her and Derek was too triumphant to look anywhere but at Spencer’s -alarmingly- red face. He attempted to clear his throat when the few seconds of stunned silence became much too suffocating. Derek turned back to Y/N just in time to see her collect her jaw from off the desk and morph it into a smile.

“Spencer Reid, you did what?!” She attempted to laugh in order to lighten the mood, hoping the two profilers wouldn’t pick up on her dis-ingenuousness.

They hadn’t, thankfully.

Spencer’s shy eyes met her curious ones as he tried to imitate Derek’s proud smile,and he could have sworn he saw a sort of unfamiliar heaviness in her gaze, but it disappeared as soon as it came.

Could it be? Was she feeling jealous? There’s no way, she thought. But what else could be behind the not so subtle burning feeling in her chest?

“Um, yeah. She kind of pulled me into the pool with her…” he recounted with a small voice, scratching the back of his head nervously.

“And?” Derek said in anticipation, despite already knowing.

“Alright! We kissed a few times, what’s the big deal?” He huffed, turning to look at Derek and resisting the urge to punch him in the face for embarrassing him in front of Y/N.

Garcia suddenly appeared next to them, catching the looks between the two agents and Y/N’s shocked expression, “Oh! Are we talking about boy wonder locking lips with miss Lila Archer in her pool?”

Spencer’s face dropped, “How do you know about that?!” he all but screeched.

“I’ve got eyes and ears everywhere.” Garcia wiggled her eyebrows at Spencer before sharing a knowing look with Derek which led to a prompt punch to Derek’s arm from him which then led to an over exaggerated yelp of pain.

“I’ve also got photos!” Garcia said, quickly pulling out her PDA and showing Y/N.

“Garcia! How?!” Spencer exclaimed, but it was too late. Y/N was already scrolling through the photos, laughing.

“Spencer, you sly dog!” She laughed, though the situation awoke an unprecedented, seemingly underlying feeling of envy. Spencer rolled his eyes in embarrassment and stormed off in the direction of his desk, leaving the three of them behind.

The rest of the day went by smoothly, although Y/N had to keep fighting against the way her chest felt tight every time she remembered those photos. She had a feeling she was never going to watch Wins and Losses ever again.

next chapter

feedback is always appreciated!!

#spencer reid #spencer x reader #spencer reid fic #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid angst #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid x reader #dr spencer reid #criminal minds #criminal minds fic #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds fanfiction #spencer reid masterlist #the receptionist and the profiler #goldentournesol #mgg #the office

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carpsurprise · 3 years

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sam stans i come.. bearing a gift.. sooo..

plot: the farmer teaches sam how to plant flowers, despite his clumsy nature

word count: 1.9k

notes: once again, gn!farmer. this is.. way more than i usually write but i felt particularly inspired... and we all know i love sam, put under a read more bc it is a little long. i’m also posting this on ao3! don’t be surprised if another sam writing comes up soon...

A quiet sigh left the farmer’s mouth, their eyes focusing on Sam’s clumsy, gloved hands handling the delicate flowers. He tipped the young flowers from their nursery containers with care, mindful of the placement of his fingers against the dirt and the positions of the leaves. The empty nursery container was thrown haphazardly on the ground, making the farmer’s eyebrow quirk for just a moment before returning their attention back to Sam. With the young flower held in both of his hands, he shot the farmer a nervous glance.

“Heh,” he chuckled, heat starting to creep up the back of his neck, “thought you bought seeds from Pierre? I didn’t think you’d plant already blooming flowers.”

The farmer shrugged. “They’re still nice. Besides, those are more for decoration than anything— and you asked me to teach you to plant flowers, didn’t you? Teaching you to plant a seed would take a moment.”

“I guess so,” he muttered, still nervously holding the formed potting soil. “Now what do I do, stick it in the ground?”

“You could, or,” the farmer held Sam’s hands gently, allowing him to hear his own heartbeat in his head. The farmer helped support the stem of the plant, gently kneading their thumb and the inside of their pointer finger along the potting soil. The roots of the plant had finally appeared in a jumbled mess. “See, you want to spread out the roots a little so it can get water easier.”

Sam nodded with a dry swallow, watching the farmer’s eyes focus intently on the roots of the flower. They continued, “You want to be super careful, though, they’re very delicate. Just a gentle little touch will be good to separate them out.”

A few clumps of dirt had fallen from the plant, landing on Sam’s lap and rolling off his thighs back to the earth. The farmer didn’t seem to mind the dirt that covered their legs. He directed his focus back to the flowers in front of him, and off of the farmer’s legs. Sam mirrored the farmer’s actions with his own gloved thumb, trying to smooth out the roots as gently as his clumsy hands would allow. It was funny, he thought, that he could master guitar strings flawlessly, but at a moment of tender precision he seemed to become nervous.

“Mm, that’s good!” The farmer exclaimed, slowly retracting their hands from Sam’s. “Now gently place the flower into the hole we made,” they directed, holding the sides of the parted dirt as Sam lowered the new flower into its forever home. He let go of it with slow hands, helping the farmer pat the parted dirt into the open sides with one hand. Sam let out a breath, retracting himself from the planter box.

The farmer let out a breathy chuckle, moving their trowel to their side. “This is usually relaxing for people.”

“I know.”

“You said you wanted to learn how to plant stuff because of your mom, right?”

Sam groaned, feeling himself get caught up in his own lie. “Yeah. I think it’d make her happy to know I learned, for some reason. I’m afraid she doesn’t think what I do for myself is very… useful.”

“But you’re a wonderful guitar player,” the farmer cried, turning their body to him, “and a wonderful song writer. You’ve got more talent than most in the valley, especially when it comes to music,” they smiled, making Sam’s heart skip a beat.

This is why he came to the farmer in a full sweat, red face, and nervous hands asking them to teach him how to garden.

He grinned, instinctively moving his hand to scratch at the base of his neck. “Thanks, it means a lot—,” he interrupted himself with a startled gasp, feeling the remains of dirt on his gardening glove slip down his spine. He quickly pulled his hand from his neck, looking accusingly at the dirty, green and yellow gardening glove he had forgotten he was still wearing.

The farmer laughed at his mistake innocently, their shoulders shaking with them. It was charming for Sam, yet felt himself still chilled by the quick surprise of things running down his back. “I’ve forgotten I was wearing my gloves many, many times,” they laughed, “It sorta just feels like normal after a while.

Lifting their hands, also still gloved, they flipped them from the palm to the back of the hand. Sam admired the size of their hands, and the obvious wear and tear of the daily work they do written all over the gloves.

“Need to get a new pair,” they muttered.

Sam had lit up, splaying his dirty gloves across his jeans without thought. “Oh! Let me buy you a new pair then, you know,” he began to fluster again. He stuttered out his response, weary of making his affections known too soon, “to thank you for teaching me how to do this.”

“Sam, you don’t have to do that. I had a lot of fun! Besides, I needed to do this anyway.”

Sam shook his head, grabbing one of their gloved hands. “No, no, please let me, and then I can get a pair that matches!”

The farmer was silent.

“... If that’s alright with you?”

The farmer snapped out of their little daze from his words, nodding and then reassuring him. Accepting his offer of new gloves, they promised to stick with the pair they have now until Sam came to the farmhouse with his gift. “Oh, Sam, before you leave can you bring home a potted plant for your mother? I’d like to thank her for the fertilizers she’s been sending me.”

He nodded. “Yeah, totally. She’d love that.”

Jumping up from their position, the farmer ran over to the side of their house, sifting through gardening tools and empty containers. They pulled out a weathered, but nice small pot. Sam watched as they dragged their hose out, rinsing the dust and dirt off of it before bringing it back over. “Here! I have no clue where this came from, but it’s nice and pretty.”

Sam agreed, immediately taking the trowel and shoveling dirt into it. “Ah, remember, Sam! Not too much dirt yet, we don’t want the roots exposed,” they instructed, causing him to quickly shovel out a little bit of dirt. He pushed the dirt to the sides of the pot, looking at the farmer expectedly. The grin on their face had made him nervous.

“You do it, Sam. I need to make sure you know how to do this, and I think Jodi will like it a lot more if you potted it. It can be a gift from the both of us.”

His fear of failure had returned to the center of his chest. Without another word he began to focus on the steadiness of his hands, removing the next flower from the container and carefully holding it with one hand. The plant had seemed bigger when next to the others, but in his large hand it was evident it was still growing. His thumb and forefinger gently massaged the end of the dirt, staying mindful of the few roots poking out.

Feeling the farmer’s eyes upon his hands had made his heart pick up once again. He had always loved their eyes, especially when the sun hit them just right to show the beautiful color of— a slight crunch was heard. His right hand had immediately left the plant’s roots.

The farmer laughed gently, placing a hand onto Sam’s arm. “It’s okay, it’s okay. Just try to be more gentle. It doesn’t look like you’ve pulled any roots out… completely. Just focus on the roots and your hands, don’t think about anything else.”

Easy for the farmer, he thought. Trying to keep his mind from racing back to them (who had seemed to scoot a little closer to him when he was focused on the roots, now that he was thinking about it), he continued to softly spread the delicate roots of the azaleas, looking to the farmer to see if that was sufficient. The farmer nodded silently, a kind smile on their face to encourage Sam. He placed the small flowers into the pot, still holding the stems gently with his left hand and using his right to pack in enough dirt to keep it steady.

He sat back on his heels, admiring the bright pink of the flowers and the white flower pot with baby pink swirls just around the rim. He had, once again, unknowingly placed his dirty gloves onto his jeans. He was expecting Jodi to be upset with him as soon as he enters the front door, but hopefully, with this flower pot in hand, she’ll excuse his messy day out.

“See? You did amazing!” The farmer praised, fluffing out the flowers by the stems.

Their praise had made Sam’s fleeting worries of his mother dissipate, causing him to turn to them with a teasing look. “Yeah, except for the part where I nearly destroyed the roots of the poor thing.”

Shrugging, the farmer got back to their feet and lifted the pot with a grunt. “It’s fine, you did great anyway. Like everything else, it takes practice.”

They grabbed another bag, along with their watering can and returned to Sam’s side. They watered the flowers immediately, then cut open the bag of mulch and placed a thin layer over the wet dirt. Sam watched without question, watching their hands work around the plant and dirt effortlessly. The farmer’s moves seemed calculated, the only way Sam could relate or keep up was by comparing it to the movement of hands on guitar strings, knowing when to use gentle touch or a moment of pressure.

They pulled back, swiping the palms of their hands together to brush off any loose dirt from their gloves. Sam should’ve been doing that the whole time. “Finishing touches are done! She’s already to head to your house, Sam,” they stood up once more, hoisting the pot up into their arms and ready to hand off to Sam.

“Make sure it’s watered when the soil feels dry; and it can’t be in the sun all of the time, it likes some shade sometimes. The pot is sorta big so it’ll grow a little, but once it kinda grows out some of the leaves and flowers may start dying. Just pluck or cut those off and it’ll grow back.”

Sam nodded slowly, trying to repeat the farmer’s instructions back to himself in an attempt to not forget them. He knew the attempt was futile, but found that with every gray cloud there is a silver lining: he can always come back to see the farmer, just to ask for it again. He gave a nervous giggle, awkwardly trying to hold the gift for his mother.

“Please tell Jodi I said thank you, it means a lot to have help from the community.”

“Well, uh, if you ever need any help don’t hesitate to ask. I’m always here for you,” Sam said sheepishly, almost immediately regretting not omitting his last sentence.

The farmer grinned, waving goodbye to him. “I know you are, and thank you, too.”

He smiled back at them, saying his goodbye and heading back down the dirt path to town, praying that no one would see him struggling with the giant pot of azaleas, potted by him, for his mother.

#stardew valley #sam stardew valley #sam #sam stans i hope this makes u happy <3

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shouldntcryoverit · 3 years

Text

the art of discordance

captain rex x jedi!reader

previous chapter

masterlist

CHAPTER TEN

Hope you enjoy! Might start this series up again so let me know what you’d like to see and if you’d like to be tagged! 💕

———————————————————————

Jaida’s feet felt weighted as she plodded along the corridor. In fact her entire body did. She needed caf and, among other things, she needed peace and quiet.

But alas, as is the way of war, she’d have to settle with yet another delinquent briefing, which would most likely result in another mission for her to loose herself in. How fun.

Peace wasn’t an option as of right now, but caf certainly was. So as any ordinary Jedi going through dramatic changes to their moral code while fighting a war which had so far gone against everything they had ever been taught by their now dead master; Jaida went and got caf.

Now she stood outside the war room, significantly late, but with a half drunk cup in her hand. On any regular day, she would’ve surely rushed in; profoundly apologising for her misconduct and directing all her attention to any matters presented to make up for her tardiness.

But instead she stood and stared at the uninspiring, off-white and dented plastoid door with almost a scowl. After a second, she took a swig and entered.

“Jaida! I was wondering if you had gotten lost.” Obi-wan smiled warmly. There was a hint of a jeer in his aristocratic tone.

“Oh force I really am late aren’t I?” She tried to laugh, setting down her cup on a surface she’d found (ignoring the future ring it would leave), snapping into a character that would resemble her more awake self.

“What’ve I missed?” Jaida asked as she settled into place beside Anakin and across from Obi-wan.

The holo-projector before her displayed the usual; a barren-ish landscape with red dots across it, symbolising places she’d most likely have to risk her and her men’s lives before moving onto the next tiny red dot.

It felt fallacious to belittle that sacrifice to so little as those red dots, especially when they’d been planted like seeds as if they’re cost was unimportant. To Jaida, red dots had begun to look more like casualty reports and defeated medics; so much more than a speck on a map in a heated war room in the middle of comfortable Coruscant.

But as is the way of war, she thought.

“After the failure to capture Grievous on Salucami, we know his ships will be in this western quadrant.” Obi-wan gestured now to the map of the galaxy, the holo map had apparently changed as Jaida was blinking, and more specifically to a highlighted section of space.

Her red dots would be minuscule by now.

“Our fear is that with Grievous now in need of a place to get fuel and rations, he’ll attempt to take-over ,in effect, the next planet viable. Which in this case” The holomap zoomed into a reddish planet with a dark brown hue surrounding it, “Would be Yeon.”

“Yeon?” Jaida asked. “What’s on Yeon that Grievous could want?”

Obiwan shifted his weight before speaking. Jaida sighed; sometimes she really did regret asking questions so much, especially when the answer require a deep breath.

“Yeon used to be home to a powerful empire, though the dissolution of said empire left the planet vulnerable and corrupt. The wealth still remains, but without proper safeguarding. It isn’t unlikely that Grievous hopes to exploit this, and use their land and people to help secure more galactic wins.” He finished with a flourish. He did always make good speeches, however short or dull.

Jaida shivered. The thought of such peaceful people once again being used as pawns in the seperatist game made her stomach turn. Is this what the galaxy had come to? Perhaps that question could be answered another day.

Anakin, who had up until this point been studying his friends demeanour and desperately trying to figure out the reason for her obvious lack of clarity, spoke next.

“Our mission is to intercept their ‘invasion’ and protect the people of Yeon before Grievous can even reach them.”

“Huh, fun.” She clicked.

A few more details were flattened out, though they mostly fell on deaf ears as Jaida replayed the events of that morning.

“We’ll leave tonight, get a head start.”

Great, she thought.

The corridor felt like it would never end as Jaida carried a backpack towards her destination. It was half full of ration packs and bacta supplies: in short she had no clue what to pack for. The feeling of unpreparedness sat heavy on her chest, even as she commed Anakin to meet her in the hanger.

As she did, Echo opened the door for her, between beckoning to Hardcase that his helmet was where he’d left it. Jaida almost laughed at how mumsy Echo got the few hours before a mission; it almost matched Kix’s mother hen approach.

“Where’re we up to?” Jaida asked, hesitantly setting down the bag beside her feet as she looked over the clones all preparing for a mission.

Echo smiled softly, giving one last side eye to his dazed brothers before giving her his full attention “Almost ready.”

“Thank you.” She could always count on Echo, and a warmth spread over her expression, secure in that fact. “Where’s-“

“Hullo!” The other jedi spoke through a cracker in his mouth. “You good?”

“Where’d you get that cracker?”

Anakin swallowed. Echo had to suppress his laughter at how much they resembled begrudging siblings.

“Help me with those crates and I’ll show you.” He shrugged off, beckoning for Jaida to follow his path.

The good news was the Hardcase had managed to locate his stranded helmet, and Fives only laughed for a few minute at how he almost cried that he’d thought he’d lost it: but the bad news was that Jaida realised that she would eventually have to talk to her captain, who was standing by the edge of the hangar with Kix.

He’d showered, and his pauldron was fixed. He looked so perfectly in control as he watchfully peered over his men. Jaida felt childish almost instantly at the anxiety balled in her stomach at just the thought of having to look at his deep and piercing eyes to talk to him. This was that feeling ‘crushes’ gave you, as Anakin would explain, and Jaida didn’t get ‘crushes’. Not ever, and not now.

She began to help the clones prepare what few weapons they thought they needed. There wasn’t much to sort out and load up, but still among the Torrent company; it was a grand feat.

Jaida was counting reloads and ration packs when she sensed him. Rex, as you could quite obviously expect, was coming closer. She exhaled fiercely out of her nose and picked up the crate she’d been kneeling over. “He’s just being a captain, just be a General.” She repeated to herself like a mantra.

But when she looked up and his gaze was already on her, she froze; childish and with a crush.

“You’re coming too?” Jaida cleared her throat and asked nonchalantly, trying desperately hard to prevent a redness forming on her cheeks.

“Of course.” Rex spoke flatly. His eyebrow twitched slightly as the words left his lips, perhaps testing her meaning.

“But you’re still injured.”

Now he did raise an eyebrow, “I’ll be fine.”

Jaida kissed her teeth, slightly annoyed at her inability to calm herself now.

She nodded as no words formed on her tongue. Nothing to express the ball of emotion in her throat. The Jedi didn’t meet his eyes as she turned away.

Rex caught her arm as she went to bring her crate to the ship, but even as he stopped her pivot she was reluctant to meet his gaze.

“Jaida-” He tried.

“Don’t.” Jaida cut him off, finally glaring at him, then quickly skimming over the room to check if anyone was noticing their ‘conversation’.

“Just promise me.” Vulnerability flashed across her face as the words left her mouth, and even those crystallised amber eyes of his couldn’t make her believe he would.

Rex bit his lip and flicked back over his men across the room, before looking back at Jaida’s ask. He nodded slowly, accepting that he’d want the exact same if it were her. Whatever it was that they shared really wasn’t simple.

“I promise.”

She smiled slightly, before he let her go and she walked off to the ship.

The company left not long after, but not before Anakin and Jaida managed to bicker over who should fly the ship, then if they’d brought the right rations, then whether or not they were ready. At least it was entertaining for the clones to watch their General’s be so relaxed yet so uppity.

But nonetheless, the company all fitted into their respective places and the ship left. Jaida, after bribing Anakin, was flying the ship. She thought that it’d help her concentrate ready for the next mission, although it did also mean that she wouldn’t have to talk to anyone - so, plus.

The journey was rather short, but it certainly wasn’t sweet; for each time Jaida didn’t have to plant coordinates or watch the pressure levels in the engine, her mind slipped to the events of that morning, over and over again like torture. The guilt and worry pressed heavily against her frame; it was fair to say she was absentminded.

But they made it.

“I think we’re here boys.” Skywalker spoke over the channels.

The landing wasn’t rough, but Jaida’s vision through the ship window was too clouded to navigate properly through the thick air. The ship rocked as it hit the ground, and as the men filed our, their pilot was reluctant to follow.

The company gathered outside, Anakin knocked her shoulder; something he always used to do if she was nervous before a practice or exam. It made her finally exhale the breath she’d been holding onto.

It was dark when they made it to the village: a small dwelling lit with vibrant lights around each hut and structure. There was a hum in the air of content, they were peaceful people, and their laughter and chatter floated through the company like a warm drink.

Jaida wanted to welcome it, she really did, but she couldn’t, not when her head was this scrambled. She was still tired, and still torn between wanting to stay true to her morals and protect Rex, as well as desperately wanting to give in to her heart.

Mind over matter, her master would say. Though it seemed futile now.

Jaida followed her men into the village and tried once more to be content with the sweetness of the air. The sun was hanging low in the sky, but it still illuminated the tops of houses and slopes of hills in spite of the darkening hue encroaching. It was peace, the very kind she needed. Yet it would not breach her armoured skin.

The clones had managed to settle in rather quickly, having now taken off a few bits of armour and their helmets. They were standing and laughing with locals dotted about a wide fire pit, an area which Jaida took to be the market place.

After a cheer of babbling and exuberance calling for them, drums began playing in the background as entertainment; and the villagers seemed excited to have new guests for what looked like the first time in a while. They passed out food to the solidiers, colours of orange and green mixing on platters of fruits and perfectly cooked meat. After having a drank a few of their offered drinks, of which their alcohol quantity was unknown, Fives, Jesse and Hardcase danced to the beat as Echo and Kix tried not to laugh.

Jaida watched with an absent grin. She was resting on a crate with a cup of some sweet drink she’d been given by a swirling child, happy to see them so relaxed. Her view shifted from the gaggle of men to her Captain, who was laughing handsomely at his brothers’ feeble attempts. She tried to ignore the pounding in her stomach growing at how his face was illuminated so perfectly by the evening sun, and how it made her tongue swell to see him aswell so at peace. But it was rather difficult to ignore, especially when she couldn’t not-look.

Jaida placed her cup beside her and backed away, leaving the dancing and laughter behind her.

She found herself in the main hall of their largest structure, eyes closed in her own attempt at peace. She could still taste the wafting smell of meats and breads being cooked just a little further away. It smelt like herbs and spices she remembered only faintly from her own travels with her master. Jaida stood, staring at the painting on the closest wall to her when she wasn’t instead focused on her closed eyelids. Her brain was too foggy for anything else.

It was silent. Of course the base of the drums and the echoes of her men and their hosts still made their way in and out of the open windows, but it was silent to her. So silent that when footsteps began behind her she almost jumped.

The presence made it’s way to just a step behind her and paused. It didn’t take a genius to figure out who it belonged to, but still, Jaida cursed her abilities to identify the warmth and security it brought nonetheless.

“You left?“ Rex’s tone was more a question than a statement, and Jaida didn’t open her eyes as he stepped and stood next to her.

“I needed to think without Fives’ dancing distracting me.” She joked in a low tone.

“You call that dancing?”

Jaida chuckled lightly at that, meeting his smiling eyeline.

A moment of warmth spread between the two. It was as if the complications of their feelings melted away for a few seconds, and both simply relished the presence of each other. But it was short lived.

“I cant think either.”

Her eyebrows were knitted in slight pain and sadness, something he recognised within his own head. She couldn’t speak.

“Do you regret it?” Rex broke the silence between them.

“What?”

“The other night.”

Jaida paused loudly, but spoke with force after a second passed. “No. I don’t. ”

Silence again.

“I don’t know what to do to make this… better.” Jaida admitted, the vulnerability in her voice making her cringe.

Jaida sighed and fixed her almost tearful expression back to that familiar neutral coldness. “I don’t even understand it.” She almost whispered.

“Neither do I.” His words were barely there. “I don’t think anyone ever does.”

“Then how do you know it’s real?” Jaida swallowed, blinking down her rising dejection.

Rex paused again, but spoke with purpose. He had been brave before, now was no different.

“Because whenever you enter the room it feels like time stops. I always look for you, like seeing you will change everything. And you know what, it does; everything stops.”

Jaida was shocked to hear the confession, and it made her heart melt when she turned to face him. His face was just as creased as hers; just as pained.

He studied her eyes for a second, almost asking for permission to continue, or even to be dared to do so. But he took in a breath and carried on:

“I knew it when we were stuck in that cave, and you fell asleep against the wall. All I could think of was how perfect you looked. Force, I don’t think you’ve ever left my head since.”

She smiled. A wilful smile that covered all of her stern face. She knew that feeling he described and it made her stomach erupt as he spoke of it.

Her words fell as a whisper once again. “I can’t ask you to risk your entire life on this. But you can’t tell how much I want to.” She spoke louder now.

Rex’s eyes softened.

“We’re at war, Jade. Some things are just worth it.” Rex paused and looked to her. Her eyes held a silent beg. “You’re worth it.” He wanted to say, but didn’t. Perhaps a part of him knew that he didn’t need to.

In the dim light, he could hardly see her face at all, but the peace that had spread across it was blindingly clear. Jaida blinked.

And Rex closed the small gap between their faces and pressed his lips against hers; tender and gentle yet proud, as if it was their first. He lifted his hand to cup her face and she melted into his touch, allowing the warmth of his mouth to thaw the cold of her heart. The kiss was acceptance, it was emotion and it was thrill.

“I’m in if you’re in.” He demurred with lighthearted intention.

Jaida smiled softly, joy in her eyes that Rex only caught glimpses of, but she caught his lips in feeble ecstasy.

She broke away with a dainty smile, and Rex laughed.

“I’m in.” The jedi whispered.

He grinned again, wider now as a perfect laugh fell from Jaida’s perfect lips.

His fingers dropped from her cheek and found hers without question, taking her hand in his as he refused to break away from her hopeful eyes.

Rex squeezed her hand, then jolted, taking her with him as he ran out of the hall and back to where the music still rumbled.

Jaida let him whisk her away, gladly.

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infinites-chaser · 3 years

Note

Librarian! PH. 52 MLQC MC / Victor :)

HELLO ANON U WERE ONE OF THE FIRST PEOPLE TO RESPOND TO MY LIBRARIAN ASK GAME I’M SO SORRY IT’S TAKEN SO LONG,,, victor is just. hard to write. aLSO I'm doubly sorry since i’ll be combining this with the Victor ask from @truth-be-told-im-lying hope neither of you mind T-T i don’t think my mind could do two victor ficlets akwlfjsdkls

ANyway I love you both LOTS AND LOTS hopefully this attempt at Victor isn’t extremely out of character;;; it’s a lowkey soulmates AU if that counts for anything :> aND this fic gets the special treatment of an actual Title bc True was wonderful enough to help me by typing Victor as an Enneagram Type One

okaaay and without further ado,

49, 52 + Victor/MC

‘[He] wakes up in [his] bed, determined to begin again.’- These Ghosts Are Family, Maisy Card. (pg. 49)

‘As [he] pushes through the onlookers to meet [her], he is certain he is the only person moving.’- These Ghosts Are Family, Maisy Card. (pg. 52)

((pronoun changes in both quotes to better fit the ficlet))

spoilers for Victor/MC’s childhood!

spend my whole life searching

Victor doesn’t believe in soulmates. (After half a lifetime of searching turning up nothing, he doesn’t believe in much.)

Once upon a time, he might’ve. (He wanted to). His heart rate doubled and sped up to match hers— a carefree little girl skipping across the road, too far away to hear his nerves cry danger, too caught up in dreams and fantasies to hear his warning shout. Time slowed down so he could save her, and on that afternoon on the crosswalk, drops of rain suspended in the air, he did.

At that age, he hadn’t had the sense to wonder why a young girl like her had been crossing the street without supervision. Why her smiles had come freely, but had always looked a little sad, a little wistful. Why she’d been so eager to accept his baked treats. Why she’d been at the playground without a parent. Why she’d always been alone.

Now, seventeen years later, he wishes he did. Wishes he’d known something as simple as her last name.

He dreams of her. Of finding her again: the girl whose heartbeat matched his. The girl whose smile had slowed down time itself for him, as if short moments with her could’ve each stretched into a gentle eternity. He’d wanted them to. He’d wanted to capture every moment spent with her, to make them last, to savor them, so they’d pass slow and sweet like honey on the tongue.

Time had passed slow when he’d wanted it to. Those sunlit afternoons had been sweet, they’d been happy.

Only, time is a fickle thing. When he takes his eye off it, it races away, too fast for him to keep up.

The kidnapping. The experiments. The torture.

The escape.

She saves him. He’s too slow to save her.

And even if he can stop time, here’s the thing: he can never turn the clock back.

Still, he wakes up. Every morning, he gets out of bed. Gets dressed and goes to work. The world around him moves on, and demands he does, too, even if his heart’s still eleven years old and clutching her motionless body, eleven years old, the only sound in his ears his pounding pulse, the absence of the accompaniment of hers an accusation more painful than any hateful words.

It’s a recurring theme in his life, time. It’s ironic, really, when he thinks about it. That he can stop time without lifting a finger, and yet, when it comes to things he cares about, people he loves most, he’s always eleven years old again, always too late.

(His Evol’s time control, but perhaps, all this time, he hasn’t been controlling time, it’s been controlling him. He’s imprisoned by a single moment, a memory, a regret. A past that can never be undone.)

Whenever he has spare time, he devotes himself to searching. Resigns himself to the fact he’ll probably never find her, if all he has to go off of is a child’s face, once preserved in his memory, now fading. Hair color. Eye color. Age. A name. Nothing more.

The searches turn up nothing.

He spends late nights in the office to distract himself, builds up a capitalist kingdom of a company, if only to put off for a few hours more the prospect of returning home to face his nightmares alone.

His father praises him for LFG’s growth over dinners filled with awkward silences. The name Victor Li appears more and more often in business newspapers. Investors approach him. He gets interviews. Gets offers for TV appearances, for sponsorships.

He takes them, these material successes. Wonders if any amount of them could ever make up for the failure from his childhood. If they could bring her back. He tells himself if he finds her, when he finds her, when he brings her back, it’ll be to a more perfect world. One in which he’ll never fail her again. It’s a foolish thought, but it keeps him going. With it in mind, he proceeds to work twice as hard.

Souvenir is what saves him. A small allowance, a self-indulgence, a seed of hope planted in what he thinks is his darkest time.

It’s for her, more than any of his frantic searching ever was. A dream, a foolish one, that one day she’ll step through his memories and through the restaurant’s door, that one day they’ll share a pudding together again, their hearts beating as one.

He doesn’t get to open Souvenir often; his job doesn't let him. He made sure of that, long ago. But when he does, after the last customer’s left, and he’s put up the closed sign, he cooks for two.

(The first time, Mr. Mills had taken a single look at his silent, still face, and his expression must've spoken volumes. The older man hadn't said a word, only helped clean the kitchen after, the normally gentle lines around his mouth pulled taut in a worried frown.)

He sets the second place at the table himself: carefully places fork, knife and spoon beside lukewarm appetizers, tucks a napkin under soup bowls going cold. Watches the empty seat and the untouched meal for an eternity before finally eating his own. His technique's impeccable. It has been ever since he'd aced his culinary lessons, since he'd bought out the school. He'd used the finest ingredients. He always does.

The food still crumbles like ash in his mouth. (It always does.)

Mr. Mills will find him there, nursing a glass of wine long into the night. He knows better not to question it, but sometimes he'll pull up a chair, drink a glass, too. talk of everything and nothing, talk of his parents, his sister's family, of times gone by.

Victor will never admit it, but the older man's presence makes those nights less hard. his stories, his memories — they keep the ice in his heart from spreading any further when it feels like nothing else will.

Ten years stretch into thirteen, into fourteen, into fifteen, into a broken clock, time stopped because does the passage of time mean anything if he measures it, measured it in time with her? If she's gone?

The meals shrink. First appetizers vanish, then entrees too, until all that's left are desserts, puddings that he stares at all evening, puddings a girl had loved once, that he can almost imagine her sitting there eating, her noticing him watching her and her answering blush and smile. His smile back.

Almost, because after all these years without her, he can’t quite imagine her face. Not as she would look now. Not even as she was, seventeen years back.

(He dreams and finds he doesn’t remember what her smile looked like, exactly. Doesn’t remember the sound of her heartbeat mingling with the sound of his.

Memory is cruel. Memory is imperfect. No matter if you can stop time, no matter how hard you try to memorize a moment, when you revisit it, it’ll never be the same as when you lived it the first time.)

Then:

The day starts like any other. He wakes up, gets out of bed, gets ready for another day of work, another night of searching. He scrolls emails while waiting for his espresso machine to heat, then puts his tablet aside when the coffee's done. He eats in silence. As always, he's done five minutes before he needs to leave for the company, the perfect amount of time for him to do a last-minute check in the mirror— his tie's straight, his shirt unwrinkled, not a hair on his head out of place. The reflection that stares back at him is unchanging; these days it barely shows even the passage of time.

He sighs. Shakes the thought off like the piece of lint it is on his otherwise immaculate state of being, and heads for the door, the lock automatically clicking behind him at eight o'clock am, exactly on schedule, exactly as planned.

He's about to take a seat in his car when an inexplicable urge to walk to work takes hold of him. He pauses. Calculates and re-calculates the time it would take (fifteen minutes, not accounting for rush hour traffic making crosswalks slow), and he's about to decide it's not worth it, it's a silly thought, but the urge intensifies.

Do it, the eleven-year-old in his heart seems to be telling him. You won't regret it.

He frowns and rubs his forehead— for a moment, he wonders if all his searching, all his foolish hopes are finally getting to his brain.

He decides to take the walk, anyway.

He regrets it, not nine minutes later, when despite the sun's light shining strong through the clouds, a light rain begins to fall.

Worse still, the traffic lights haven't changed once in the past ninety seconds. He won't be late, he'd accounted for this, but he's stuck in a crowd of pedestrians, and their chatter's beginning to grate on his nerves. He's considering calling the mayor about it after exactly one hundred seconds have passed— clearly, the light's broken, this is far too long for commuters to wait— but then, finally the walk sign flicks on.

He's already across the street when it happens:

First, a phone rings.

Then, the loud honking of a car.

Tires screech.

Time slows. Time stops.

He's back on the crosswalk in a matter of heartbeats, the inattentive idiot in his arms (it's a girl, it's always a girl, hair dark, eyes wide, expression shocked).

"You..." She says, blinking up at him with those wide, almost-familiar eyes. Distantly, he registers the echo of a heartbeat overlapping with his.

"Who are you?"

Who are you? His mind asks, but deep in his heart, he already knows the answer. It can't be.

"Evolver?" He says instead, shoving down memories that threaten to surface: another rainy day, another crosswalk, another heart that had seemed matched to his. He tells himself he's being delusional, that he thinks he can hear her heartbeat because she's in his arms, wide-eyed and fragile, her heartrate skittering back and forth like a fool— this isn't like his careful, methodical searching, this is a fluke beyond flukes, it means nothing, it'll lead to nothing in the end.

But she's in his arms, warm and soft against his protective embrace, she's in his arms and it feels so right it's almost painful, his pulse pulled into a panicked pace to match hers.

He sets her down abruptly, as if burned, and turns to go.

"Someone can't come to your rescue every time."

Around them, suspended raindrops begin to fall. The world, resumed. The world, once again predictable and mundane. Except for her.

He knows, without looking back, she's staring after him, her heart, his heart, still racing.

He allows himself a smile.

He allows himself some small sliver of hope.

(His frozen time starts moving again.)

#mlqc #mlqc victor #mlqc fanfic #val writes #hNnghghg this took so Long and writing vic gives me so much stress BUT HOPE Y'ALL ENJOY #u didnt hear it from me but it was actually really interesting to explore his character like this and. i've definitely developed more of an #appreciation :> of sorts #victor is an enneagram one and rly that's all that matters thats all u need to learn from this fic #also sOULmate AUs i love them that's it does this mean i think vic is MC's soulmate;;; maybe in this universe but not generally ailsjkfd #JUST FOR THE RECORD. i am not a vic stan so it must be said #TIL that mr mills does not have a wife/family and that makes me rly sad

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haledamage · 3 years

Text

Coming Home

I'm a day late because this thing got much bigger than I expected, but better late than never! This is for @shepherds-of-haven Shepherds Summer 2021! The prompt was Pacific Rim AU!

Some of the backstory stuff is from this post here. Some is just pushing ShoH canon slightly to the left so it fits better in a Pacific Rim setting. Some is the result of reading ShoH and watching PacRim at the same time and then taking a nap to see what seeds got planted. There will be a part 2 to this because I had to split it up in order to finish it on time and then I was late anyway.

Shepherds of Haven/Pacific Rim AU. Iorwen Emroth/Blade Bronwyn (well, hints of it. more in part 2)

---

The Haven Shatterdome looked very small from overhead. Iorwen watched it loom closer with a trepidation somewhere between “being late for an important exam” and “being read her last rites.”

It had been just over two years since she’d last been this close to a Jaeger, half a world away and in a different life, but all the Shatterdomes looked the same after a while. Steel and glass and everything painted in olive drab, black, and safety yellow.

Part of her felt like it was too soon to walk into those hangar doors again, the empty space at her side where her partner used to be still a raw, open wound. She couldn’t even think xer name yet without feeling like she couldn’t breathe. Returning to work felt like a betrayal of xer memory.

Another part of her, louder with every passing minute, was just so happy to be home again.

"Wen!"

Iorwen had barely stepped out of the helicopter when she heard her name called and turned to see Red jogging toward her. He looked more tired than she remembered him, but his smile was as bright as ever, his hair vivid against their otherwise drab surroundings. She’d known he was here - he’d transferred to Haven shortly after she left Capra - but hearing it and actually seeing him were two very different things.

She dropped her bag carelessly to the tarmac and ran to meet him halfway, throwing herself at him as soon as he was close enough to wrap her arms around his neck. He hugged her back without hesitation. They were making a Hel of a scene in the middle of the landing pad, but neither of them really cared.

"I knew you'd come back," he mumbled into her hair.

"Had to." She finally pulled away, stepping back just enough that she could see him. "You can barely tie your shoes without me, Liefred."

He only laughed before leaving her side just long enough to grab her bag. He slung an arm around her shoulders as he rejoined her, dragging her towards the hangar. "Welcome home."

She stared up at the Shatterdome, hangar doors towering over them. It didn't look nearly as welcoming as Red seemed to think it should, and was much more intimidating than it had been from the air. It still smelled like blood and motor oil - or maybe it was her memory that did.

She tried to put on her best smile anyway, for his sake if not her own, and let him drag her inside.

They stepped into a hive of activity, the sounds of machinery and voices echoing off the walls, laughter and shouting and clanging metal rising up to greet them. She tried to stop and take it in, but Red was still dragging her along with him out of the main hangar and into a labyrinth of hallways; she probably could have escaped him if she tried, but she didn’t really want to.

“Have you met the Marshal yet?” he asked, once they were in a quiet enough place that he didn’t have to yell to be heard.

“Not yet. Mostly talked to his second so far.” Trouble Alder had, in fact, shown up out of the blue one day three months ago, sitting on her front porch with a stick of charch between his lips and looking completely at home. He’d revisited her every day for a month until he’d finally worn her down enough to convince her to come home. Stubborn bastard. “What's he like?”

“Intense,” Red answered almost immediately. “Most of the younger crew are terrified of him. He doesn't like me.”

Iorwen scoffed. “Bullshit. You’re the most exceptionally likeable person I’ve ever met. Everyone likes you.”

“He doesn't.”

They stopped in front of a door in what was probably the barracks, the walls lined with identical doors on either side. Sure enough, there was a simple bed, a dresser, and not much else inside. Iorwen didn’t mind; she didn’t need much else.

Once she’d dropped off her bag and they started down the next hallway, Red continued, “I don't know if he likes anyone. He barely says two words to anyone but Trouble.”

She was still skeptical, but didn’t push. “Well, he must be doing something right. Look at this place. Capra barely had a skeleton crew compared to this.”

“It’s amazing!” Just like that, Red lit up again. “Some of Blest’s best and brightest are here. Pilots, mechanics, scientists, strategists, you name it.”

“And which of those are you? All of the above?”

“Mostly scientist, I think,” Red rubbed a sheepish hand over his hair. “There’s better pilots. Pan, Neon, and I serve better in the lab than on the field most of the time.” He paused, watching her cautiously, before adding carefully, “And… which will you be?”

“I’ll be working in the clinic,” she said quickly. “As a Healer. I’m not… ready to be around Jaegers again. I might never be.”

“I understand,” he assured her, reaching out to put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “We all do.”

They fell silent after that, and stayed that way until they stopped in front of a door labelled Administration. “This is Shery’s office. She’ll get you all set up.”

“Thanks, Red.”

“Anytime.” With one final quick hug, he turned to leave, only to stop halfway down the hall. “Oh, and Wen?”

“Hmm?”

“Welcome to the Shepherds.”

---

It was two weeks before Iorwen finally met the Marshal, and it happened entirely by accident.

She had just finished a shift in the clinic, patching up minor burns and bruises on unlucky mechanics and restless pilots. The silence between Kaiju attacks left everyone on edge, and that led to carelessness, which inevitably meant stupid injuries. She didn’t mind. All things considered, she’d rather have the silence.

As she turned a corner, she noticed a light was on in the training room, and curiosity led her there without much input on her part.

She recognized the man in the room easily enough. Even if they’d never spoken directly, she’d seen him around enough to know who he was. He commanded the attention of a room like no one she’d ever met before. He was hard to look away from, even here, out of uniform and either unaware or uncaring of her presence.

Magnetic. That’s what he was.

He was also much younger than she expected for a Marshal. He was close to her own age, or at least she assumed he was. She wondered about the story there - obviously there must be one - but knew better than to ask the rumor mill. Gossip was like dust: inevitable, everywhere, and harder to see through the more you stirred it up.

The Marshal’s back stiffened, and Iorwen knew she’d been caught staring even before he glanced over his shoulder in her direction. She stepped into the room as casually as possible. “Hello, Marshal.”

He simply nodded, dark eyes unreadable. “Ranger.” She bit her lip to stop herself from correcting him. “Emroth, right?”

“Yes, sir.” She approached until she could finally see his face. “Iorwen.”

Another nod. “Blade.” She thought he would leave it there, but after a moment, he spoke again. “Antiqua speaks highly of you.”

“Of course he does. He's biased.” She laughed, rolling her eyes at the idea that Red was going around extolling her virtues to anyone who would listen. When the Marshal - Blade, she mentally corrected herself - gave her a look that she interpreted as curiosity, she elaborated. “We trained together as cadets. He was my first Drift partner actually.”

“But you never piloted together?”

“No. It…” Iorwen broke eye contact, the floor suddenly fascinating. “It didn't work out that way.”

“It's not too late,” he said, almost softly.

“Yes it is. I'm not a Ranger anymore. Not after…” Xer name got stuck in her throat, like it always did. She took a couple of deep breaths until she could comfortably breathe around it again, but her smile was still sad. “I'm happier on the ground. I'm a good Healer. It's where I should be.”

She could feel Blade’s eyes on her, but she didn’t look back up to meet them. Eventually, all he said was, “I see.”

He turned his back on her again and it didn’t take long before her gaze was drawn to him again. He was wearing a tank top, like most people did when they came here to train or spar, and standing this close she could clearly see the web of electrical scarring trailing over his arm and shoulder.

She knew those scars well. The scars of someone forced to solo pilot a Jaeger. She should know, she had a matching set.

Blade did an admirable job of pretending he didn’t know he was being observed, but he moved too carefully for it to look entirely casual. Or maybe he just always moved like that. He picked up a bo staff and tested the weight of it.

Iorwen took the opportunity that presented without thought or hesitation. “Looking for a dance partner?”

The briefest flash of surprise crossed his face before his expression smoothed back out. “Are you… sure?” he asked carefully. If she didn’t know better, she might say he almost sounded nervous.

She found it charming. She found him charming, with his not-quite-smile and his cool confidence, this magnetic man who could simultaneously terrify the cadets while inspiring absolute loyalty in them.

But she didn’t tell him that, of course. She just grabbed a staff of her own and grinned as she lifted it in a fencing salute. “On your guard, Marshal.”

---

After that first night, it became a regular thing. Not every day, not even on a set schedule. But sometimes after she was done in the clinic or in the garage, Iorwen would stop by the training room, and sometimes when she did, Blade would already be there. Not waiting for her, not exactly, but never surprised when she arrived.

He never really said much, but she didn't mind talking for the both of them. She could tell he was warming up to her, as the weeks passed; his silence felt much less formal and stiff and more cordial. Eventually, even friendly.

Two things were apparent from the very beginning, though. Well, three things. The first was that Blade, as a fighter, was completely out of her league. She never stopped by with any expectation of beating him; she was content to follow his lead. It was nice to be active again, to feel the familiar burn in muscles left dormant in her self-imposed retirement.

The second was that they were extremely drift compatible. While Iorwen could never beat him, she could consistently predict him. They could both be blindfolded and still know what move the other would make. There was an effortlessness to the way they understood each other that bordered on the supernatural. It was a kind of connection that she hadn’t felt since Zori had been killed.

The third thing was that neither of them were willing, in any way, shape, or form, to admit the second thing.

It was barely a week before Red found out.

He flopped down on the bench next to her in the cafeteria. “I brought those papers you were looking for to your room last night, but you weren’t there.” He didn’t say it as an accusation, but it still managed to feel like one.

“I spent a couple hours in the training room,” she said as casually as possible. “Trying to get back in shape.”

Red blinked a few times, letting that sink in, before smiling wide. “That’s really good. Let me know if you ever need a sparring partner.”

“I kind of… have one?”

“You do?” His smile went from friendly to devious, the look of a man who had four sisters and was willing to tease her as if she was a fifth. “Who?”

Before she could stop herself, she looked across the room at Blade. He sat at a table with Trouble, whose laughter was loud enough to reach them even from the other side of the busy cafeteria. The Marshal’s face remained impassive, looking like he wasn’t even listening, but Iorwen knew him well enough to tell he was amused.

As if he could feel her watching him, his eyes snapped up and locked on hers. She smiled at him; he nodded almost imperceptibly.

Red cleared his throat, and she looked away quickly, turning her attention back to the smugly amused grin of her best friend. “Well, I guess maybe it’s not everyone he doesn’t like.”

“Guess it’s just you.” She nudged his shoulder and he rubbed at it as if she’d hurt him. “He’s not as bad as you made him out to be.” She couldn’t stand his knowing look anymore and turned away, but doing so led her eyes right back to Blade. “He's nicer than he looks. And surprisingly funny. He doesn't treat me like I'm fragile. Like I'll break if someone talks about… Zori.”

Mentioning her former Drift partner and copilot didn’t hurt as much as she expected it to this time. Less like twisting a knife in her heart and more like being poked in a fresh bruise.

Mentioning xer also stopped whatever comment Red had been about to make right in its tracks. He studied her with obvious curiosity, mouth still half-open in surprise. Whatever he saw on her face had him leaning forward and tapping his forehead against hers, a quick gesture of affection and understanding. She leaned into it until he pulled away.

And then his teasing smile was back as if it had never left. “Plus, he's handsome.”

She eyed him warily, but let him have the subject change. “That too.” She picked up a piece of fruit from her plate and popped it into her mouth. “Please don’t say anything about this to Pan or Neon.”

“Scout’s honor.”

“I mean it, Red. Not a word.”

---

“So I hear you and the Marshal have a thing.”

Iorwen sighed from the very depths of her soul. “I hope Red knows how very dead he’s about to be.”

Panrachus looked legitimately confused at her response. “What? I didn’t hear that from Red, I heard it from Caine.” Then he gasped, eyes widening with sudden, delighted recognition. “What does Red know?”

She only barely bit back a groan. “Why are you even here?”

“Right! We’ve got something you oughta come see.”

She followed him, with more than a little trepidation, out of the clinic, through the office labyrinth, and out into the hangar. It took her a few minutes to get her bearings and realize where exactly they were going. “Why are we going to the Jaeger bays?” He didn’t answer. “Pan?”

Then they turned the corner, and she had her answer.

Looming over her was a Jaeger unlike any she’d seen before. It looked almost lanky, the proportions lean and sleek instead of the more familiar bulky designs. It would be unbelievably fast with the right pilots; she could tell that just from looking at it. From the top of each wrist, a wicked-looking blade extended over the hand, almost long enough to drag the ground. It was painted black, navy, and silver, but its eyes glowed bright blue.

From the ground, it almost looked like iladrin. Like the same blue light that lit Iorwen’s own eyes.

“What’s her name?” she whispered, unable to tear her eyes away from the Jaeger.

“Stellar Enigma.”

“Who’s piloting her?”

“You are.”

She jumped at the unexpected voice behind her and turned to see Blade, Red, and Trouble approaching, along with an entourage of what looked to be equal parts Shatterdome leadership, actual engineers, and nosy onlookers.

“You are,” Blade said again, quieter, softer, “Ranger.”

“Blade, I--” Iorwen started, but she wasn’t sure what she actually intended to say.

He reached up and lightly pinched her cheek, a faint smile on his lips. “You’ll be alright.”

Before she could reply, Trouble gently but pointedly cleared his throat, reminding her of their audience. She glared his way, just for a second; he grinned back, unabashed and unrepentant.

“Who’s my copilot? Sir.” She added the last as an afterthought, trying to act some semblance of professional.

“I get the feeling you already have someone in mind.”

She couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Bit early to be reading my thoughts, isn’t it, Marshal?”

---

Iorwen’s suit didn’t fit as well as she remembered. Tight around the shoulders, too loose at the waist. Like it was meant for someone else, no matter how many things tried to tell her otherwise.

Blade’s fit him like a second skin. He looked like a Jaeger cockpit was where he was always meant to be. Like it was the rest of the world that didn’t fit him right instead.

She met his inscrutable gaze before ‘admiring’ could cross the line to ‘ogling’. “You look good.”

He paused for a long time, staring back at her in silence, before finally clearing his throat. “You too.”

She grinned, both at the compliment and at the sight of the Marshal so off-balance, but she took pity on him and changed the subject. “Do you want the left or right?”

“Right.”

“Good. I prefer left.”

They didn’t speak anymore as they connected to their harnesses and their suits started interfacing with the Jaeger, the computerized voice talking them through system checks. It took longer than Iorwen remembered, but it had been a long time since she last Drifted with anyone, let alone with someone new.

“Are you sure about this?” she asked, once their helmets were in place and they’d run out of checks to do. “I’m not--”

“Yes,” he interrupted sharply. “You’re ready. We both are.”

There were a lot of things she wanted to say. To thank him, mostly, for a list of things that seemed to be growing bigger by the hour. She kept quiet; he’d hear it in her thoughts soon enough.

“Initiating neural handshake in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… neural interface drift initiated.”

Between one breath and the next, she was somewhere else. Images flowed over her, some familiar, some new. She did her best to let them pass, to not cling too hard to any of them.

The destruction of Drummond's Point, the first attack the day the Kaiju came. Iorwen, dragging Zori's unconscious body out of town as fast as thirteen-year-old legs could carry her. Blade, stern and silent even as a child, a soldier from the day he was born. Zori, tears at the corners of xer eyes as xe laughs at a joke Pan told, Red and Neon joining in, the three of them always together even then. Blade's older brother, startlingly similar to him in appearance and demeanor, the two of them either sparring or fighting; for them, there had never been much difference.

Zori's scream as xe's ripped out of the cockpit. Gladius didn't make a sound as he met the same fate.

Iorwen's grief washed up against Blade's, soothing in it's familiarity. A gentle reminder that they weren't alone anymore, that thanks to the Drift they'd never be entirely alone again.

She saw him in her memory of their first meeting. Stern, aloof, but warm underneath, like a fire behind frosted glass. Captivating her before he even so much as looked at her.

And then herself through his eyes at that same introduction. Sad, withdrawn, but still burning bright. The embodiment of stubborn hope, like a flower blooming in a snowy field.

And then they broke through the surface, both gasping as they came up for air. Below them, Stellar Enigma came to life. The rush of memories and emotions settled into the background, present but no longer demanding attention.

“Pilot connection stabilized.” It wasn’t the computer’s voice this time, but Shery over the intercom. “How do you feel?”

Moving as one, Blade and Iorwen lifted their hands, right fist resting on left palm, and bowed. Stellar Enigma did the same, moving as smoothly as her pilots did. Iorwen couldn’t tell which of them the wave of elation came from, but it burst out of her in a laugh.

“It feels like coming home.”

#rhi writes #iorwen emroth #iorwen/blade #shepherds of haven #shepherds summer 2021 #part 2 will finally get to a kaiju battle #and also will have some actual romance instead of just hints of romantic tension lol #(will probably also have a small cameo from miss elyana trick and whiplash gunsmoke because why not)#and yes I borrowed a few lines from shoh (especially the dancing and 'trying on fancy clothes' scenes)#because they seemed appropriate and also because it was fun

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noire-pandora · 3 years

Text

“Midnight Rendezvous” (and “Take my hand”) for @14daysdalovers. Also on A03

Words: 3162

Pairing: Solavellan

Warnings: it gets a tiny bit steamy towards the end. Nothing too intense but just to be sure. (still not confident enough to write smut. One day!)

Before joining the Inquisition, midnight rarely found Solas wide awake, staring at the ceiling of his room, thoughts racing through his mind and refusing to bend down to his will. In his long life, he succeeded in becoming the master of his thoughts and feelings, able to switch and navigate through them as effortlessly as a seamstress spun her threads. He walked through life, taking pride in his concentration techniques, his indomitable focus not once defeated. Until he met the Inquisitor.

Her mind numbing smirk and cheerful laughter silently found their way into his mind, nestling there and slowly eroding through the barriers set to keep any distraction at bay. Her curiosity and kind nature planted the seed of acceptance in his heart, acceptance that maybe, maybe this Tranquil like world wasn't a world out of his nightmares.

Slowly, she pushed him to become curious about her life, her thoughts and her mind. There, he found a feeling he had never hoped of meeting again since Mythal's death: love. A gentle, patient love. One that accepted him as he was, without questioning and without prodding his mind to reach his deepest secrets.

And now, midnight found him contemplating those facts, turning and tossing in his humble bed, the sheets wrapping around his ankles. He could not comprehend why she willingly offered her heart to him. Her behaviour forced him to lay awake at night, rummaging on his thoughts, every calming technique he knew unable to stop his mind from thinking about her. For the first time in hundreds of years, someone succeeded in distracting him from walking the ever-changing paths of the Fade.

He turned on his side to stare at the door, punching his pillow to fluff it, as if that was the reason for his wandering mind. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath in through his nose, in an attempt to focus. Instantly the memory of their last heated kiss came to his mind, and he groaned as heat travelled down towards his pelvis. He didn't deserve her, he didn't deserve her love or her acceptance. He should turned his back on her, but the thought of losing her, the idea of another one tasting her lips and curling their fingers into her fire like locks brought a heaviness in his stomach.

A faint knock on the door brought him back to the present, and he opened his eyes, unsure if he indeed heard it. He waited for a voice to follow it and call for him, but no sounds reached his ears after almost a minute. He closed his eyes again, ready to accept the Fade's embrace, when another knock, followed by the sound of shuffling feet interrupted him again.

This time, confident he heard someone knocking at his door, he rose from the bed, grabbing the robe resting on the back of the chair, to cover his bare torso, wrapping the sash around his abdomen.

When he opened the door, no one stood in front of it, but he spotted a petite silhouette turning around the corner. He followed it, his footsteps quiet. Soon, the red locks bouncing on the woman's shoulders gave away the silhouette's identity.

"Vhenan?"

"Solas!" she gasped, spinning on her heels to face him. "You're up!"

He hurried his pace to erase the distance between them, the smile on his face creating little wrinkles around his eyes and grooves in his cheeks. "Yes, I am. But why are you awake at this hour? Nightmares?" he slipped a hand around her waist to pull her close and kissed her head. Heat radiated through his chest as she softly giggled at his touch.

"No, couldn't sleep, so I decided to walk around for a while."

He hummed, cocking an eyebrow at her. He knew his love roamed the halls of the castle at night, but something in her cheeky smile made him suspicious of that answer "Is that so? And where are you heading?"

"Well," she started, placing one hand on his chest, raising her chin to look at his face. "Do you know Josephine will meet with a few Orlesian nobles in the morning? The type of people who keep their noses crinkled like they smell shit everywhere?"

"Yes," he patiently answered, tilting his head to the side. He took a step back, his hands living her body.

"And she asked Marin to bake sweets for them. But, the last time he did that, the Orlesians refused to eat it."

"Oh, is that so?"

She nodded. "Yeah, he told me the next day, when I went to grab some food from the kitchen. He ranted about how the Orlesians can't appreciate the skills of a Ferelden baker. After that, he mopped around for days, doubting his skills."

"Too bad. His sweets are delicious."

"Exactly. And I'm sure tomorrow they will refuse to eat Marin's sweets again, and he'll end up upset for another week. I have a plan to stop that."

"A plan?" he repeated, leaning forward to examine her face. She had excellent plans at day, but at night, her ideas transformed into various shenanigans, like stealing food from the kitchen and having a late dinner in the courtyard, under the ancient oak tree. The cooks of Skyhold learned how to hide the food they cooked for the next day before the Inquisitor's nose caught a whiff of it and devoured it at night.

"Yes. I'm going to eat everything he baked for them."

Solas caught a glimpse of pride shining in her eyes as she announced her plan. He bit down on his lip to contain a laugh. "What? Why? How would that help the poor man?"

"When he finds out that the Inquisitor snuck out at night to eat his sweets, he will be annoyed but also happy because the word will spread. And everyone will know how I, the most important person in this hold, ate his food like a glutton," a knowing grin grew on her face, a grin that was too infectious to fight.

In moments like this, when she uttered her plans with unshakable confidence, her shoulders back and chin raised high, he realised why every single soul in the Inquisition followed her without doubting her. Right now, if she decreed she planned to move the mountains, he would believe her instantly. But the idea of making a man feel better by devouring his food brought a smile on his face and reminded him how strange she could sometimes be.

"Oh, the brave Inquisitor, always sacrificing herself for the wellbeing of her subjects." he jested, offering her a bemused smile.

"But of course! C'mon, let's go, we still have a few hours until the cook's apprentice will wake up to heat the ovens."

She walked away from him a few meters, but she stopped as Solas didn't follow her.

"Are you coming?" she asked, holding out her hand for him to take it.

"Is that the reason why you knocked at my door?"

"Yes, I want to share them with you. I like to eat, but I doubt I'll be able to eat the sweets made for four people."

"Vhenan, you know I prefer not to eat at night."

She huffed, rolling her eyes at him. "A late dinner won't kill you," she muttered, shaking her head. "Oh, c'mon Solas, it's going to be fun. Take my hand and join me in this quest of keeping sadness away from my dear subjects!"

With her hand outstretched for him to grab it, and a serious frown knitting her eyebrows, Solas couldn't say no to her. He took her hand, intertwining his fingers with hers to walk by her side on their way to the kitchen.

The hallways were empty, their soft steps resounding in the silence. The majority of the people inhabiting Skyhold slept soundly, a few snores and grumbles reaching Solas' ears. From time to time, he could hear giggles coming from some rooms, and he hurried his step, eager to respect the privacy of those behind the doors.

The wall sconces held large touches to illuminate their way, and, in combination with their Elvhen sight, they could clearly see the path ahead of them. The flames cast long shadows on the floors, and sometimes, their light touched Elluin's face, colouring her pale, freckled kissed skin a soft orange. He found himself staring at her as they walked, his mouth drying and his throat growing thick. An impervious need to touch her, to push her against the wall and kiss her until she moaned with pleasure took over him, clouding his mind. He took a deep breath to steady himself, annoyed she broke his indomitable focus without actually doing anything. He fixed his gaze on the floor, counting backwards from one hundred to calm himself, refusing to take another look at her.

After a few more minutes of walking in silence, they reached the kitchen, one of the three kitchens in Skyhold. The smell of cinnamon and yeast tickled his nose as Elluin slowly opened the door, carefully not to announce their presence. He followed her, closing the door behind him with a low thud.

Inside, the three, tall working tables stood spotless, with no trace of flour or dough to stain their surface. The measuring cups were lined up on the tabletop, small soldiers waiting for orders. He could see the pans, plates and brushes through the cupboards display, their doors locked. He frowned, staring at the small locks, wondering why the baker decided to lock his tools so diligently.

A clay oven with a thick iron door, large enough for a person to climb inside, stood in a corner along the wall. A long flue reached outside through the wall, specially built by the baker to avoid any fumes escaping in the room. Solas admired the man's ingenuity and his ability to keep everyone safe without the usage of magic. He spent a few fascinating hours speaking with him, learning more about the art of creating functionally clay ovens.

"Well, this is weird," Elluin commented, scratching her cheek. "I can't see any tray with sweets."

He snorted. "I believe the Master Baker hid his creations from you. The man learned his lesson."

She rolled up her sleeves, revealing her toned arms. "Like that's going to stop me."

She approached one of the locked cabinets and grabbed a lockpick from her pocket, jamming it into the lock, twisting it a few times. "Let's see if Varric's lock-picking lessons will help me."

As Elluin struggled with the lock, he studied the room, one finger gently tapping his lips, his eyes analysing the potential hiding spots. He realised a man as bright as Marin would know better than to hide his food in locked cupboards. No, that was a trick, an ingenious method to keep the intruder busy until one of the kitchen workers heard the noise and came to stop them. It had to be somewhere in plain sight, a location no one would think about.

"The oven," he muttered, snapping his fingers. "Elluin," he spoke out, a faint trace of excitement in his voice. "The oven, he hid them in the oven. That door is closed to hide the tray from our view."

"The oven?" she made her way towards the oven, narrowing her eyes. "Why would he hide it there? There's ash everywhere!"

"Good question. Let us see."

The iron door made no sound as he pulled it opened, a testament of the cook's care. A faint magical barrier buzzed around the brass tray inside it, protecting the brownies from any ash or unburned charcoal.

"Magic!" she laughed, slapping the back of her thigh. " I can't believe this. He asked a mage to cast a barrier on his brownies."

"Indeed." He gave her a satisfied smile and crossed his arms, content he uncovered the cook's plans.

Elluin licked her lips as she waved her hands to cancel the spell. She reached for the tray and gulped down with gluttony, her mouth watering at the chocolate covering the brownies. She grabbed one, the tray dangerously balanced in her left hand, and bit it. A moan escaped her lips as the chocolate poured from inside it. Solas eyed her, the sound leaving her mouth causing his fingers to twitch as if pushing him to touch her.

"Vhenan," he intervened, taking the tray from her and setting it on the table. "How do you plan to eat twelve pieces of chocolate filled cake without getting sick?"

"That's why I asked you to come here with me, I need your help." she gulped down the food, hitting her chest with her fist as it refused to go down. "Those bastards don't deserve all this chocolate. It's been years since I tasted it, not gonna let it go to waste," she bit down on another, humming with pleasure and licking her fingers. "Take one, you're going to love it."

He gingerly took a piece from the trail, admiring the perfectly spread layer of chocolate, the soft texture reminding him of satin. He smelled it, the hint of vanilla tempting him to take a bite. The chocolate melted in his mouth, wrapping his tongue in a thick layer of pure pleasure. He closed his eyes, and a sigh of satisfaction escaped his throat.

"Delicious, isn't it?" Elluin remarked, smirking at him. "I knew you'd love it."

He opened his eyes and offered her a small smile. "You were right."

She winked at him and grabbed another piece, shoving half of it in her mouth. He laughed and shook his head at her, worried for the integrity of her jaw. He watched as she devoured three more brownies, baffled by her ability to swallow the food barely chewed.

A feeling of weightlessness cloaked his soul as she beamed with happiness, her cheeks rosy with delight. Her joy was contagious, and he smiled at her, grateful she chose to spend this moment with him. She picked him over the hundreds of people around her, over the men and women who craved for her love. She offered her heart and joy to him, a man who hid the truth, a man who had no right to receive this pure, untainted happiness. His shoulders dropped, and he averted his eyes from her smile.

She came closer to him, her fingers reaching for his chin, gently encouraging him to face her again. "You're doing that again," she whispered, her breath tickling his skin. "Getting lost inside your head. Don't. Stay here with me."

His gaze still avoided her face. "I apologise. My thoughts distracted me from the present."

"Is that so?" she murmured." I know the perfect way to keep you here."

Before he had a chance to ask more about it, Elluin grabbed the collar of his robe, pulling him down towards her to meet her chocolate cover lips. His lips instantly parted, as her tongue darted out to lick them, eager to explore his mouth. His muscles relaxed, hands resting lazily on her butt. She was right, he thought as his fingers curled into her hair, gently tugging it. When she kissed him, nothing mattered anymore, just the taste of her lips and the faint scent of lily of the valley coming from her hair.

Her hand moved to the nape of his neck, slipping under his robe. The touch of her skin against his sent a shiver of pleasure down his spine, and he moaned, raw and insatiable lust replacing any thought. He pushed her against the table, and her knees gave out, her butt hitting the tabletop. She wrapped her legs and hands around him, as if afraid he will pull away.

He wanted her. Right here and right now. He wanted to taste her skin, to follow the path of her freckles with his lips, from the top of her forehead to her toes. To make her sing as his tongue played with her folds, to finally taste her. He wished for nothing more than his nighttime fantasies to transform into reality. And right now, he couldn't care less they were in a kitchen, where anyone could find them.

A low growl left his throat as a part of his mind screamed at him, yelled at him to stop this foolishness, to remember his real purpose, his identity. He had no right to taste her body when he gave her only half-truths. He was wrong to take her fully when he hid parts of him. She deserved more than this, more than a man who was too afraid to speak the truth.

With a draining effort, he broke the kiss, gently pushing her away from him. She whimpered as his body left hers and she opened her eyes, arousal and confusion blending in her gaze.

He shook her head when her hands reached for him again. "No. This is not right."

Before Elluin could answer, the door opened with a loud bang, and a woman entered the room, waving a cooking paddle and shouting at them. "How many times do I have to kick you out, you thieves, this isn't the place for…." she stopped in her tracks, eyes widening with shock as she noticed the two of them.

"Your Grace! And you!" she frowned at Solas, confused by his presence. He could see it on her face how the pieces clicked together in her mind, her eyebrows shooting up. "I'm sorry Herald, I had no idea you two--," she stammered, a faint blush dusting her cheeks. "I have to warm the oven, but I'll come later," she left in a hurry, barely giving them another glance.

Solas sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration, his hopes for keeping the matters of their relationship private, shattered.

"Well, this was bound to happen sooner or later," Elluin nonchalantly explained, getting off from the table and reaching for another brownie. "Until morning, every single person in Skyhold will think the Inquisitor had sex with the weird elf in the kitchen."

"Venan, I," he started, but she interrupted him with a wave of his hand.

"Don't apologise. You told me months ago you aren't ready and now you weren't ready yet. I get it," she shrugged, shoving the cake in her mouth, slowly chewing it.

Solas stared at his toes, cursing his mind for not stopping him faster.

"But I did enjoy our intense make-out session," she giggled and winked at him as he raised his head to look at her.

"C'mon, we still have a few of those. Let's be fast before that lady comes back and finds us here again. "

He watched her, eyes widen, once again awestruck by her kindness. Why? Why did she accept his explanations so easily? He had no idea, but he knew one thing: this fantastic, mysterious, infuriating woman would be his undoing. And he gladly accepted it because her love tasted like chocolate and brownies.

#14dalovers #solavellan #take my hand #midnight rendezvous #solas #lavellan #elluin lavellan #dragon age #dragon age fanfiction #noire writes

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yslkook · 3 years

Text

#alignment (2)

#corporate part 2

summary: the announcement of a new project brings you closer to jungkook. also, you see jungkook at the gym, and your grandma tells you for the millionth time that you should marry seokjin.

word count: 3938

warnings: cursing, parental death, discussion of mental health

a/n: omg ok i know i said this was going to be enemies to lovers but it’ll probably be softer than that because i’m me. enjoy!!

***

For once in the workplace, you’re excited and thrumming with anticipation. It had been determined months ago that a submission for one of your new products would be occurring soon, and now it was time for those plans to come to fruition. Preparing for submissions to the country’s approval authorities was an arduous, but enticing task. Enticing for you at least.

This is where you thrive. This is where the half sown seeds you had planted in the ground come to full bloom. You’re good at telling people what to do, having the tough conversations and you’re good at navigating through tough problems. It’s why your boss had assigned you to this project months ago. Even if you resented your boss and he likely resented you, he was smart enough to play your strengths.

After all, it would only make him look good when you were successful.

Over the last few years, you’ve saved up enough money for exactly three designer pantsuits. Today was not the occasion to bring out your black Balmain pantsuit or your Dior heels. The power that your Balmain pantsuit and Dior heels gave you was reserved for special occasions. Only when powerful players were involved and you needed to bring your A game to the table. And when you needed to make a statement- that none of them should even dare to undermine you.

You were a contributing team member, not the lead. You wanted to be, though. You wanted to be the submissions lead, but that was almost always given to the regulatory department. Since they had knowledge of the regulations and adherence to them.

You’re sucked into a daydream where you would start one of these kickoff meetings in your Balmain pantsuit. You would need every single one of these people to know exactly who was in charge. Your painted lips would leave no room for jokes. Not in your conference room.

Namjoon looks at you and you nod. This isn’t your first time being part of a major submission, but you won’t be caught making a fool of yourself.

But still, you pack on a saccharine smile dripping with honey. You need to come across as approachable. They need to trust you, and you need to trust them. You put aside your disdain for your manager and his manager for the entirety of the day and the smile feels much less forced as the morning goes on.

Your manager who sits three seats away from you. And another young woman on your team sits next to you. She’s new, and looks at her in the same way that Jeon looks at you. Wide eyed and innocent. As if you’re meant to guide her through the inner workings of capitalism.

Even Jeon Jungkook, sitting two seats away Namjoon’s boss, doesn’t bother you. Not today. Not when you’re in your element. The sight of him still sends your blood into a rage, but not today. You hardly think about the fact that he’d garnered the attention of all of the higher ups in the regulatory department, and he’s only been here for two months.

You’d graduated from flat out ignoring him to at least offering him a small nod of acknowledgment. He still can’t understand your dislike of him. You pretend to ignore the questions in his sparkling eyes.

You could command the entire room with well-timed jokes earning chuckles from your audience, as they would listen intently as you explain the project timelines and what each team is designed to do.

It’s only a dream, a whisper of a future that you’re torturing yourself over.

“We’re anticipating submission in November of next year. That gives us fourteen months to prepare,” Namjoon says, pointing to the slide being projected on the screen, “We’ll need to go to Tokyo at least three times in the next fourteen months. Two workshops will be scheduled in Tokyo to bring them up to speed and go over a detailed risk management plan. And then we’ll be in Tokyo for the submission itself, where the approval authorities will assess our data. Tokyo in November is beautiful, so let’s be ready for it.”

There are murmurs within your audience, buzzing with anticipation of the next fourteen months.

Tokyo in November is beautiful, you think wistfully.

As Namjoon instructs each person’s role in the team and what the deliverables are, you let your gaze float over to Jungkook. You haven’t truly seen him in the few months he’s been here, unable to reconcile the fact that he was fresh meat and had more of a rank than you. He was doe eyed, naive and a kid with his tail between his legs.

And yet, he was anything but. His hair was dark and fluffy, almost wavy. A stark contrast from the different colors his hair would be week to week when you were in graduate school. He had such a baby face back then, but even then, you thought he was cute. In an adorable, awww look at you, sort of way.

Now, you think, now- with his ears pierced and tattoos on his knuckles, dressed in all black. Filling his clothes out. Now, with his boyish charm, he looks like the man you knew he’d grow up to be. His lips are pink and pouty, slightly parted in concentration as he listens to Namjoon.

It’s only been five years. Only five years and you feel like much more time has passed. He had been more than a mentee to you- one of your good friends, always protective of him over mean girls but not afraid to tell him when he was being stupid. Jeon Jungkook was all bright eyes and bunny smiles, and he still is.

He catches you looking at him, offering you a wide smile as his eyes glitter at you. You can’t help but smile back, giving him more than your usual thin-lipped smile.

You nearly scoff when you take in his tattoos and his earrings. Of course he wasn’t reprimanded for that, in the name of inclusivity and freedom of expression. The corporate world has come such a long way, and yet some things are still the same.

Like you not getting the recognition you certainly deserved, in favor of it going to your male counterparts and superiors

It’s not his fault. It’s not his fault.

Jungkook’s smile fades when your fleeting smile turns into a small frown as you glaze over him. You swivel your chair and he watches your eyes land on your boss. A thinly veiled look of irritation blooming into something similar to disdain flashes across your face when your eyes land on him. It comes and goes swiftly, your dark eyes reverting to a perfect palette of blankness.

You’re a far cry from the person he knew all those years ago, and yet you still feel so familiar. He wonders if there’s a specific reason that you seem to hate him, but he tries not to dwell on it. On you. On the past.

You were a mere blip in his twenty-six years of life, and he’s certain the feeling is mutual. But he wants to catch up with you again, see how you’ve been over the last few years. But it seems you could care less about him. That’s okay.

You had been his dream girl, once upon a time. At least in his mind. He had been just a kid, only twenty-one, and he’d only known you for a few months before you left graduate school abruptly. You were older than him, unattainable even. He and his friends had chalked it up to a stupid crush on an older girl and his own rose-tinted glasses.

But then you had left without so much as a goodbye, and it hurt a little more than a crush.

Jungkook catches steel and ice curling in your brown eyes and he wonders if he knew you at all.

***

Anyone who wasn’t part of the core team had been dismissed, only leaving you with Sana, Jungkook, Namjoon and a few others. It was a total of six people. You agreed with that approach- the less was better. If more people got involved, it would become impossible to move forward. You even thought that only one person from your team and Namjoon’s team should be involved. But you didn’t voice it, knowing that Namjoon had put a lot of thought into the strategy and approach.

With your input as well. You had spent at least two hours a week for the last few weeks with Namjoon, and sometimes by extension with Jungkook to help with the strategy and planning of the project.

Namjoon was always good about giving you credit where credit was due, almost as if it was second nature. Which you appreciated. It was much more than you could say for your own boss.

Working with Namjoon was one of your favorite parts of your job. You both worked well together, like two puzzle pieces that smoothed each other’s edges out. You both had strategic foresight in different ways, and it just worked.

You wish, not for the first time, that you were in the regulatory department. Rather than your own. But it was common knowledge that it was an unspoken requirement that everyone in the regulatory department had a graduate degree. And you did not.

Seokjin would often joke that he was worried that you’d leave him for Namjoon. To which you would tell him to stop being stupid. After all, at the end of the day, Namjoon was just a work colleague and Jin was your friend.

Jungkook had watched and listened intently to you and Namjoon during those meetings, taking notes to summarize. Without warning, you’d turn your eyes to him and ask him what his thoughts were.

In the beginning, he would stutter at the sudden question. And you’d move on quickly with a flash of your eyes, a nonverbal confirmation that he had failed your not so explicit test.

But he’s a quick learner, and he’s perceptive. And he knows you remember, from the fond way your eyes shine at him and the way you give him a small smile when he does speak up. When he’s not thrown off by your sudden brusqueness.

Jungkook thought he misheard you when you had even complimented him-

“Well, we might be getting rusty. The new kid thought of this and we completely overlooked it,” You snort, but throw Jungkook a rare smile.

“I’m not a kid,” Is all Jungkook can choke out.

But then you had gone back to barely acknowledging him in the hallways and anywhere that wasn’t Namjoon’s office, so Jungkook let it go. Again.

Jungkook shifts his eyes to you, centering himself. Your pen scratches lightly as you take notes in your neat, black notebook. You never go anywhere without that thing.

“I can set up the biweekly meetings,” Jungkook offers, already looking for an available time for the five of you on his laptop.

“Thanks, Jungkook,” Sana says, “Beat me to it.”

Jungkook shrugs with a smile, “it’s no problem.”

The four of you pack up, putting away your laptops, pens and notebooks into your respective bags. You’re in a good mood today, happy to be part of something important. You felt like you belonged somewhere, and even if it was temporary and for work reasons... It was still nice to be needed.

You were in a good enough mood to walk with your group to their desks, something you rarely ever did. You were mostly the first one in and out of conference rooms, not really waiting up for anyone. Unless it was Seokjin or even Namjoon.

“Have a good rest of your day, Jungkook,” You murmur, meeting his eyes as you pass him to head to your own cubicle. You offer him another smile as you look at him from over your shoulder, one that he returns. Once you walk away, he sits in his chair, leaning backwards and looking up at the ceiling.

Jungkook has whiplash. He stretches his arms before checking his email and deciding to call it a day.

***

Jungkook gathers his gym duffel bag in his hands and cleans up his desk to head to the gym, located just downstairs on the other side of the building. It’s about a four minute walk, and then another few minutes to change into his gym clothes,

There were plenty of perks of working here, but the gym was his favorite one. It had been newly renovated only six months before he had joined. Everything is pristine and new and it’s everything he wants in a gym.

He plugs his wireless headphones into his ears and allows himself to get lost in the music and the rhythm of his feet thumping against the treadmill.

He pays no mind to you sliding onto the elliptical, five machines away from him. He’s too engrossed in his own workout, allowing the adrenaline and music to flow through his veins. Once he’s done with the treadmill, Jungkook heads over to the weights, mats and body bars to do a quick upper body workout.

His eyes are trained on himself in front of the mirror, mentally keeping track of his reps. Jungkook doesn’t even notice you standing a few feet away, with your own weights.

You can’t help but sneak a few glances at him. A few more than you probably should. Despite the way his gym clothes are incredibly loose on him, nearly hanging off of his shoulder… You can still tell that he takes his gym routines seriously.

You slide your eyes towards his form once more in the mirror and see the deepening furrow between his eyebrows as he huffs through his reps.

For someone who internally claims that the sight of him disgusts you, you sure can’t keep your eyes off of him.

Rolling your eyes at yourself, you decide to change the song and start your lifting regimen. Thoughts of Jeon Jungkook fade away as you concentrate, eyes centered on your form and your form only. Beads of sweat from your cardio workout merge with fresh beads of sweat pooling on your forehead, your neck, your chest, your armpits.

You’ve recently started coming to the gym more frequently as a means to expel some pent up negative energy. Over the last year or so- maybe even two or three years, or maybe this energy has been with you for much longer and you had failed to realize it- you’ve tried to make it a point to come to the gym at least three or four times a week. You came here to clear your mind, and if you were losing inches and becoming toned because of it… Well, that was just a plus.

It wasn’t a permanent fix, of course. It wasn’t a permanent fix to your laundry list of issues that you knew you had and that you knew you were running away from. But for the hour that you were in the gym, it felt like nothing else existed. Your mind was off and the only thing you heard was the pounding of your heart.

The last time your laundry list of issues had been discussed out loud, Jin had recommended seeing a therapist. That conversation had ended up in a big fight and lots of tears from both of you. You weren’t ready to admit to yourself, much less someone else, that you needed help. That you needed so much help.

The idea has been popping up more and more recently ever since Jin mentioned it. And honestly, you’re surprised it took you this long to think about it seriously.

You’ll table the thought for later.

You audibly wince as your shoulders nearly give out at the end of your set. By then, Jungkook has noticed your presence only five feet away from him. He wants to correct you on your stance to tell you to straighten your back and tell you that the way you’re holding the kettlebell is too loose.

But he bites his tongue. After all, it had taken two months just to get a simple ‘have a nice day’ out of you and he won’t ruin that.

However. He sees the strain on your face and the way your knees aren’t bent. You’re going to hurt yourself if you don’t correct your posture.

Jungkook pulls his earphones out and calls your name. The first time he does, you don’t hear it. Then, you hear your name faintly and it startles you.

“Didn’t see you there,” You lie through your teeth, wondering if he caught you checking him out not even fifteen minutes ago.

He did, but he keeps that to himself.

“Uh,” Jungkook starts, his hand raised in an awkward hand wave.

You roll your eyes.

“You’re the one who called my name, Jungkook. What is it?” You ask impatiently, with narrowed eyes.

Right.

“Your posture isn’t right. You’re gonna hurt your back if you don’t widen your legs and straighten your back,” Jungkook explains, hoping you don’t take it the wrong way.

Annoyance washes off of your face quickly.

“Oh. Thanks,” You reply, “Like this?”

You heed his instructions and pointedly look at him for approval.

“Yeah,” Jungkook says, ignoring the stutter of his heartbeat, “Yeah, exactly like that.”

“Were you a personal trainer in a past life?” You ask.

You chalk up the small talk to the rush of endorphins. Not an actual sense of curiosity. Your body betrays your inner thoughts, as she usually does.

“Nah, not officially. I got into working out in college and would help out friends wherever we could,” Jungkook says, placing his weights back on the rack.

“Friends?” You scoff apprehensively, “So are we friends now?”

“I guess I should’ve let you injure your lower back then,” Jungkook replies, meeting your eyes in the mirror.

You can’t help the surprised laugh from escaping your lips.

“Have a good rest of your workout,” Jungkook says and doesn’t wait for your reply before turning around and walking back to the locker rooms.

He leaves the gym the same way he entered, casting a gaze over you as you bend over to pick up your weights on the mat in front of you. Jungkook looks away quickly, ignoring the heat in his cheeks.

***

Home is your grandma’s cottage, in between Seoul and Incheon. It’s closer to Incheon than it is to Seoul, but it’s still not terribly far from work.

Home has been your grandma’s cottage since your Appa passed away. Even before. The pale green walls and the seemingly random scattering of plants have always reminded you of that familiar, cozy feeling that comes with home. Many of your best memories are in this cottage.

After you shower, cleanse, tone, and moisturize your skin, and change into a sweater and shorts, you head downstairs to see if your grandma has returned from her evening walk with her friends.

“How was your walk, grandma?” You ask, heading into the kitchen to see what to warm up for dinner.

“It’s getting colder,” She says, rubbing her hands close together.

“Where’s your scarf?” You chastise gently, encasing her hands in yours, “Go change into something warm. I’ll set the table.”

Grandma gives you a smile, her eyes bright and identical to your Appa’s eyes. And your eyes. You had never met your mother as far as you can remember, but you think that there’s hardly a trace of her in you. You’re close to the spitting image of your grandmother from when she was younger.

She comes downstairs in one of your Appa’s old sweaters and flannel pants, looking warmed up. You wordlessly hand her a glass of water and curl into yourself on the chair.

“You came home late,” She says, scooping food onto her plate.

“Been working out a few times a week, remember?” You reply after a mouthful of rice and wipe the corner of your lips.

Grandma rolls her eyes at you and you grin sheepishly.

“Maybe you’ll meet a nice boy at the gym. Or a girl. Ji-yoo told me that her grandson’s friend’s sister met someone at the gym-”

“Grandma!” You whine, “Really?”

“Well, you have Seokjin right there. But you refuse to date him,” She says pointedly, giving you a teasing smile.

Grandma loves Seokjin, a fact that she’s never hidden from you. From the first time you had introduced Seokjin to her, she had been relentless in telling you that he was your soulmate.

Maybe your platonic soulmate. But not your soulmate in the romantic sense. He knows everything about you, and you know everything about him.

You had never told her that in college after a night out that you were both too sober for, you had tried hooking up. Just to see what it would be like. You were both lonely, and wondering if your close friendship could or should be something more. His lips had touched yours for all of five seconds, his tongue slipping into your mouth quickly and then you had both pulled away instantly. It was too weird, and you both had burst into laughter right after. Seokjin had been your first kiss, but as weird as it was- you wouldn’t have had it any other way.

“Oh, stop it, that ship has long sailed,” You wave her off.

“You know him more than married couples know each other.”

“I can’t marry him. He’s my only friend, I’ll lose him if I marry him,” You joke but your grandma’s eyes turn sad at your words.

“Maybe if you let yourself accept love, you’d have it. You’d have that, instead of having to hang out with your grandma on Friday nights.”

Appa used to always say that your sarcasm had been an inherited trait from your grandma. And it had apparently skipped over him.

“And what do you know about Friday nights?”

“I was young once. I met your grandfather on a Friday night,” Grandma says knowingly, with a bold wink.

“He swept you off of your feet,” You say, “Somethings are just meant to be.”

“Yes,” She says fondly, “They are.”

You both eat in silence, you noisily shovel rice and vegetables into your mouth and Grandma watches you fondly.

“I met a kid from school at work,” You say off-handedly, “I mean, I didn’t just meet him. He’s been working with us for two months.”

“School?” Grandma raises an eyebrow. You talking about school is rare.

“Yeah. I used to mentor him. Before… before I left and before Appa died,” You say bluntly, trying to keep your voice even.

Grandma’s eyes grow even softer when she catches the hitch in your breath.

“What’s his name?”

“Jeon Jungkook. He only just graduated and he’s got a position two fuckin’ levels higher than me! Two!” You groan in exasperation, “I hate that guy. What does he have that I don’t?”

“A dick,” Your grandma says wryly and you burst into laughter.

“Yeah, pretty much. We’re on a big project together, so I’ll have to deal with him. Sometimes when I see him, it just… makes me so mad. He’s fresh out of school and landed such a great position. Meanwhile, I’ve given them everything and they won’t even fuckin’ promote me. God. I hate them and I hate him, too,” You rant, crossing your arms across your chest petulantly.

Grandma only gives you a small, all-knowing smile.

“I’m sorry, honey. You deserve better,” She offers.

You sigh and rub the side of your face tiredly.

“Yeah. I know.”

#jungkook x reader #jeon jungkook x reader #jungkook fluff #jungkook angst #jungkook #bts x reader #bts fic #jungkook fic

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emwritesfootball · 3 years

Text

Good Girl | Benjamin Pavard

Originally written to torture @midnghtlver / @words-for-marcus (posted with her permission)

- - -

He knew exactly what he was doing when he sent you that message and he couldn’t wait to watch you spiral.

YN: I finished all my work and ate lunch already. Oh, and I finished all my chores and shit!

Benjamin: Good girl

“Fuck,” you hissed when the notification popped up on your phone, the two words making your stomach dip in a more-than-friendly way. Benjamin was your friend, just your friend, but this was different. The two of you loved pushing each other’s boundaries and buttons, and he was one of the few people on the planet who could actually make you uncomfortable - a rare feat in your eyes - but this wasn’t discomfort, this was...arousal. And you hated that those two words sent your secret praise kink into overdrive.

It took you almost half an hour to find your brain but when you did, all you sent back was ‘please don’t call me that’, hoping that would do the trick.

Benjamin took almost as long to respond and your mind was running wild with thoughts and possibilities. So far, you were fixating on what it would be like to have him order you to meet up with him and subsequently fuck you in his car. You let out a low moan, squeezing your thighs together as you expanded on the thought, hearing Benjamin’s accented French telling you to be a good girl and be quiet while he fucked you roughly in the backseat of his car.

“Please, Benjamin!” You begged, breathless as his hands slid up underneath your flimsy t-shirt and he rid you of the garment, your bra quickly falling to the floor soon after.

“You gonna be a good girl for me, chérie?” He rasped, using his pinky and ring fingers to slide your short-shorts and panties to the side so he could dip his middle finger in your already-slick cunt.

“Oui, Benjamin! Just fuck me - please!”

“Be quiet or I’ll stop, ‘mkay?”

You nodded, biting down on your bottom lip and digging your nails into his shoulders as his thick cock replaced his fingers.

Your phone pinged right as you were about to finger yourself to an intense orgasm. With a blush heating your cheeks, you read his response.

Benjamin: What else was I supposed to say?!

“You fucking tease,” you muttered, typing back with one hand as you replied to him.

You: It just sounded weird

Benjamin: You took it that way

You: Which way was I meant to take it?!

Benjamin: However you wanted

Your pussy spasmed around your fingers and you let out another soft whimper. “You would not like to know how I took it, Benjamin,” you moaned, your eyes briefly fluttering closed. “Please, don’t tempt me.”

You: You wouldn’t like to know how it was taken

Benjamin smirked to himself when he read your message. “Oh, chérie,” he murmured, shaking his head, “you had no idea how badly I’d like to make you my good little girl.”

All he sent back in reply was “Mhm” before setting his phone face down so he could free his cock from his sweatpants and stroke himself to a heady orgasm as his brain conjured up image after image of you being his good little girl.

***

You couldn’t help being awkward the next time you were around him. All you could think about was the orgasm you’d given yourself after you’d received his last text.

You imagined him staring at you as you fingered yourself, his arms crossed with his gaze fixed on your dripping cunt. You could practically feel him right there, your fingers rapidly moving in and out of your pussy. None of your roommates were home, thank God, because the wet sounds of your cunt would easily give you away.

“Mhm, chérie,” he hummed, licking his lips lasciviously. “Just like that.” A pause as you whimpered and bucked your hips, your palm brushing against your clit. “Good girl. Are you close?”

“So close, Benjamin,” you whispered to the imaginary figure at the foot of your bed. Your body was slick with sweat, your sheets damp with your arousal and you hated that your imagination was getting the best of you. “Please let me cum.” You leaned back, your head on your pillow as you arched your back and spread your legs wider for the figment of your imagination to inspect.

“Oh, chérie,” he chuckled demeaningly, shaking his head. “You know good girls don’t cum.”

By some power that wasn’t your own, you’d been able to take your fingers out of your pussy and shove your coated fingers in your mouth as you came down from your edge. You could hear Benjamin’s voice echoing ‘good girl’ as you cleaned your fingers with your tongue and when you went to bed that night, all you dreamt of was him taking you in various positions.

“Hello, chérie,” he greeted you, a smirk on his face that had you slightly breathless.

“Hello, Benjamin,” you replied curtly, not meeting his gaze. It was bad enough that your cunt was clenching around nothing right now, but to not be able to do anything about it was torture.

You were surrounded by Bayern players, but Benjamin didn’t seem to care, leaning in to whisper, “Have you been a good girl for me?”

Your head snapped up so fast to look at him you were surprised you didn't give yourself whiplash. “Wh-What?” Your eyes were wide, pupils dilated at those two words that turned you on like nothing else.

Benjamin cocked his head to the side, a small smile on his face as he repeated his question slowly, placing special emphasis on the two words that drove you wild. “So, chérie, have you?”

You swallowed hard, your mouth suddenly dry. “Mmhmm,” you hummed, nodding. You knew you had to be blushing furiously but you didn’t want to give Benjamin the satisfaction of knowing it was because of him - but something told you he already knew and he was more than satisfied.

“Did you know,” he started, leaning in so he could whisper in your ear, his lips brushing against the shell of your ear, “that good girls get rewarded?”

“That’s ridiculous,” you scoffed, the words out of your mouth before you could stop them. “Everyone knows that good girls don’t cum, so how am I supposed to get rewarded?”

His eyes lit up at your confession and he watched you process what you’d just said, your blush deepening. “Oh, I’m sure we can come up with something, chérie.”

His teammates chose that moment to interrupt the two of you and you were left to your own thoughts about how else Benjamin would reward you.

***

As much as the teasing was killing you, it was doing the same to Benjamin. He’d been slowly developing feelings of a sexual nature towards you over the most recent months of your friendship and this newfound way of teasing was just as torturous for him.

“Merde, chérie,” he cursed, his hand squeezing around his shaft as he pretended it was your tight pussy. He was envisioning you riding him, your tits bouncing up and down as you sank yourself down on his cock over and over again. The blush that had stained your cheeks the last time he’d seen you in person was present in this fantasy, but the sounds you made while you rode him were purely in Benjamin’s head.

“Please, Benjamin!” ‘You’ begged, your nails raking down his chest as your cunt clenched around him. “I won’t cum, I swear. Good girls don’t cum and I want to be your good girl.”

Benjamin’s orgasm tore through him before he could come up with a response to the fantasy, your name on his lips as he spilled his seed across his stomach, wondering just exactly what his cum would look like dripping out of your pussy.

***

Things were...intense...between the two of you the next few times you met up, especially since you seemed to be surrounded by either his friends or yours. Every brush of his hand across yours or your hand on his arm sent both of you reeling and you were both unaware of the fact that each of you would go home and masturbate to thoughts of the other.

It all culminated one night when the two of you somehow ended up alone. It had been almost three months since the teasing ‘good girl’ text had started and it was the first time the two of you were alone with each other. Benjamin didn’t want to scare you off or make you mad, so he’d been his pre-text self and the two of you were talking and laughing like old times. The elephant was still in the room, the air thick with so much unspoken sexual tension you were sure you’d be giving yourself multiple orgasms by the time you got home.

Benjamin was having so much fun with you that he didn’t even notice the two words slipping past his lips until you stiffened.

“Fuck,” you whispered, your fist clenching in your lap, mimicking your spasming pussy.

“Sorry, chérie,” he apologized, running a hand through his hair. “It just slipped out.”

“Oh, did it?” You challenged, quirking an eyebrow up at him. “That couldn’t have been a mistake, Benjamin. You know what those two words do to me.”

“I don’t, actually,” Benjamin mused, his eyes alight with mischief at the true confession. “Why don’t you paint me a picture, chérie.” His gaze held yours as he rasped, “What does it do to you when you hear me call you a good girl?”

You leaned your head back on the headrest of his car, squeezing your eyes shut as you let out a groan. “Please, Benjamin.”

“Be a good girl for me and describe it to me, oui?”

You couldn’t resist, especially when Benjamin mixed a little French in with his accented English. Your tongue peeked out to wet your bottom lip and you watched Benjamin’s eyes follow the movement. “My, uh, my pussy gets wet...so wet.” As if on cue, your pussy clenched around nothing and you felt a new wave of arousal flood your panties. “Mm, and - fuck - and my clit th-throbs.” Without realizing it, you’d spread your legs and your hands were planted on the seat, centimetres from your pussy. You were wearing jeans and the rough material on your skin was heightening all the sensations. You swallowed hard, trying to moisten your dry mouth. “I can’t stop thinking about you fucking me.”

Benjamin was floored; that wasn’t the answer he was expecting, but he couldn’t deny that it was the answer he wanted. “How do I fuck you, chérie?”

“S-Sometimes, you, uh, you let me ride you. And, uhm, others you put your mouth on my pussy. There are so many other ways but I-” you shuddered as a particularly intense wave of arousal crashed over you “I think I’d rather experience them for myself.”

“Would you let me taste you, chérie?” He asked, his voice deeper and more accented. “Would you let me bury my face in between your legs and make you scream?”

“Y-Yes.” You were breathless, your chest heaving as you tried to take shallow breaths. “God, yes.”

“Good girl.”

“Fuuuck, Benjamin!” You gasped, whimpering as you squirmed in your seat. He hadn’t even touched you and you were so needy you couldn’t stand it any longer. “Please touch me or do something - anything!”

“Get in the backseat.”

You didn’t have to be told twice, your legs shaking a bit as you got out of the passenger seat and climbed into the back.

Benjamin took his time, the foreplay killing both of you. He kissed you softly with just enough urgency and heat under it to leave you both wanting more. Just like in your first fantasy, he made you straddle him but not before he slowly rid you of your jeans and panties and buried his face in your cunt. The slurping noises he made followed by his grunts of approval that mixed with your whimpers quickly brought you to a screaming orgasm. You rode his face, your hands tangled in his curls as you held him in place and rutted against him.

“Good girl,” he praised, his lips shiny with your juices and you thought you’d cum again right then. “Let’s see how good you take this cock.”

Before you knew what was happening, Benjamin was seated in the backseat and you were straddling him, your pussy poised above the tip of his cock. Both of you let out a content sigh as he lowered you down onto his length, the angle stretching you out in the best ways. His fingers dug into your hips and you were sure you’d have bruises the next day but you didn’t care.

“Harder, Benjamin! Please!” You begged, rewarded with a slap on your ass as he picked up the pace and slammed his cock into you over and over.

You didn’t remember much after he came inside you but you knew he gave you more than three orgasms, forcing the last couple out of you. You were marked up and satisfied, drunk on orgasms and overstimulation by the time he was done with you.

***

A week later, you were walking up to his house, your heart racing as you knocked on the door. Benjamin answered the door in nothing but a pair of grey sweatpants that had you speechless for a moment, but you quickly regained your composure when he pulled you into his foyer to make sure you’d been a good girl all week.

“Let’s see how many orgasms I’m rewarding you with this week, eh, chérie?” He asked, smirking as he slipped a hand underneath your skirt, a grunt of approval when he discovered you’d followed the rules and hadn’t worn panties.

From then on, it became a weekly - and sometimes daily - thing between the two of you. Benjamin loved giving you tasks to complete and you loved completing them, especially when you were first praised with a ‘good girl’ and sometimes an orgasm.

#my writing: benjamin pavard

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smuttyanimeslut · 3 years

Text

Time

Paring: Tsukishima Kei x fem!reader

Warnings: mentions of sewer slide, cussing, war, death, slight fluff, angst, immortality

Description: Kei is presented with a very special ability, leaving him wondering the world alone for most of history, until he meets you.

Word Count: 2,438

Time. Time does not stop for everybody, least of all those who wish it so. And when it does stop?

It is equivalent to floating in space with endless oxygen. The planets pass by, sometimes ensnaring everything in their gravitational pull before inevitably letting go.

Time is meaningless when it has no bound. Everyday, and any day, blend together so seamlessly, it becomes hard to tell them apart. Minutes turn into days. Days turn into years. Years turn into decades. It goes on forever, because when time stops. When it really stops, there is no end.

Time is picky with whom it shares its secrets, and even pickier with whom it stops for. Kei did not want time to stop. That was not his intention. He wanted time to be over, more specifically, his own time.

The day in question was a sunny one. A pleasant breeze blew the smell of death through the streets. Bodies of less fortunate lay stacked in small buggies as people milled around them. Smallpox had ravaged the town, laying waste to half the population. Those who survived lost friends, and family alike. Kei was one of the unlucky few left standing.

Despite all that had happened to him, Kei was a relatively healthy young man. His family had the misfortune of being poor, but they always seemed to make do with what they had. For most of his life, he was happy. He knew that as the second born son he needed to marry a nice girl and take over her families estate, seeing as his brother would acquire what little his family had, and he was okay with that.

However, with smallpox came a devastation Kei had never experienced before. Loneliness was not a new feeling to the young man, as he was the second born son, but the depths of which he felt it now were unlike that one could imagine.

Kei’s elder brother, Akiteru, was the first to contract the virus. Aika, Kei’s mother, tended to him as his fever over took his body. By the time Akiteru finally passed on, Aika and Kei’s father has also fell victim to smallpox. Kei was the last one left. Surviving on his own seemed nearly impossible. He had always had his older brother to fall back on when things seemed to hard, and always cherished his advice when it was needed the most. Without Akiteru, Kei was not Kei anymore.

The first time Kei had wanted his time to be over was on that sunny day when he lost everything. He had never seen himself as a noble man, but dying with his family fit. Time would finally be over, and he would pass on just as he should have along side those he loved. Only time had a different idea.

That’s the funny thing about time, it has a mind of its own. While Kei succeeds in ending his own time, it only lasted for a moment. The small space between the end and the beginning meshed together seamlessly. The moment his heart stopped, it started right back up again. His cells, organs, skin, stitched itself back together again, and he lived.

The second time Kei wanted his time to be over was in 1353. Another plague stole those he loved from him, and he swore he would never love again. While time does not play by the same rules as those who are slaves to it, neither does those who are not.

Since Kei’s birth in 718, and his family’s death in 736, Kei has dead many times. He has participated in war after war, in country after country, to find meaning in his life. But the young man keeps drifting past planets, not being pulled into a gravitational pull since 1353. Attachments were not to be made by any means.

That is, until he met you. France was beautiful in 1889, as the construction of the Eiffel Tower had recently been finished. The soft sound of music floated down the street as Kei sat admiring the monument. A glass of wine slyly placed between his slender fingers warmed his insides when he first noticed you. The night was slowly coming to an end as you stumbled out of a café, your sweater clutched tightly around your body.

You were breath taking. Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the glisten off the Eiffel Tower, or maybe it was just France, Kei didn’t know. All he knew was he needed to spend one night with you. This didn’t break his rules, he thought. One night would not turn into your lifetime.

And so he sat his wine glass down, and uncrossed his legs to approach you. “Madame,” he began enticing you with his golden brown eyes, “I couldn’t help but notice the stars in your eyes.”

A giggle left your mouth as you looked at the tall blonde before you. “Is that so?” You questioned, fluttering your lashes. With so few words, you were absolutely smitten. However, you knew that this one night, would not turn into a lifetime.

So you let him sweet talk you. The cool air of the night never settling as he pulled you in close. His warm breath whispering down your neck as he showered you in complements. And when he offered you refuge in his arms, you took it.

Sticky sweet words passed through your lips that night, and the following morning when Kei awoke, you were not there. The dull feeling of disappointment settled on his chest once he realized you were gone. His limbs still felt the weight of your body, and the warmth of your touch lingered. He thought that be the end of it, but it was only the beginning.

Nearly an hour had past when a knock sounded throughout Kei temporary apartment. Much to his surprises there you stood, with a steaming cup and pastries. “Can I come in,” you asked, giving him a shy smile.

You did not intend on coming back. When you made it out of Kei’s apartment that morning a shallow ache started in your chest. He had been so sweet and caring, his fingers gently caressing your skin as if you were made of glass. No one had ever conveyed that much longing in one night to you, and it had drawn you back. When you made it to your favorite café you grabbed a few treats and headed to Kei’s apartment.

The two of you spent weeks together in France, traveling all over the country side. During the day, the two of your were tourist learning the culture, and at night the two of you were one. It wasn’t until Van Gogh died a year later that the two of you separated.

Years passed, and a few times he thought he had seen you again. Your shared nights in France lingered at the back of his mind on days that were a little too cold. Another war came and went leaving new ideals, but the same Kei. At least, on the outside. While time had stopped for him, it had only planted seeds of hate and loneliness deep inside him. He would forever be drifting through space, alone.

The next time Kei felt hope was at the turn of the century. Standing in a crowd of thousand of people was one of Kei’s least favorite things to do. Time Square on New Year’s Eve signified another year of forever for Kei, why would he want to celebrate it?

In short, he didn’t. A few of his friends from work had convinced him to come out to party the night away with them, and he begrudgingly agreed. Blink 182 took the stage as Kei stuffed his hands deeply into his pockets, looking unamused. He didn’t want to be here on a night like this. Just because he was unable to die, didn’t mean he was unable to feel the cold. He was fucking freezing.

A bored expression encompassed his face as a particularly nasty breeze tossed snow back into the air. His friends hopped along to the music and shouted loudly as Kei stood still, shivering.

When the count down finally approached, Kei was glad. His time in the cold was almost over, and he was about to spend the next few hours getting undoubtedly drunk. That is, until he saw you.

As if it was fate, you turn to smile at a friend as you loudly proclaimed the seconds counting down to one. A beanie sat atop your head, and a scarf was wrapped securely around your neck. But it was you. When your eyes met Kei’s it was as if the both of you stopped breathing.

“Impossible,” you thought, “he looks exactly like the young man in France.” If not for the stunned look on his face, you might of assumed it was a coincidence. Many times you had run into great great grandchildren of a former friend, and this could have been one of those times.

Without thinking, you pushed through the few people between you. The crowd buzzed with electricity as midnight came crashing down. Your lips were on his as confetti and fireworks shot throughout the city.

Kei nearly toppled over when you came barreling into him. His hands wrapped around your waist tightly as his lips pushed back into yours. The cool metal of his glasses imprinted into his face as you snaked your arms around his neck, pulling him in closer. Cheers erupted around the two of you as the new year began.

“Sorry,” you said once the two of you pulled apart, “I thought you were someone I knew a long time ago.”

Kei pushed up his glasses with his pointer finger before examining you further. Your hair was shorter now than it was in France, and your nose ran from the cold. Your eyes, however, held the same stars as they did on the first night the two of you spent together.

“Who did you think I was?” Kei asked, keeping his arms tightly wrapped around your waist.

“Someone who could understand me I guess,” you replied looking into his eyes. Chaos surrounded the two of you as snow and confetti fell from the sky.

People bumped into the pair of you, braking you from your trance. Slowly, almost longingly, you separated from one another. Scratching the back of your neck you looked away, a motion that Kei mimicked.

The movement of the crowd began to separate the pair as stillness settled into them. Neither knew what to do. Do you press the topic forward, you wondered.

A decision was made for you as Kei grabbed your wrist, bringing himself to your ear. “Why did you leave me in France?” He asked, his words laced with hurt.

At every point of contact with you, Kei’s skin burned. From the tips of his fingers to the rounds of his lips, the heat radiating from you was like a slab on this cold night. You were just like him, but you had left him all by himself.

“It was my time to move on. I had been there for years when I met you Kei.” You said placing a hand on his cheek. “I didn’t know you were like me.”

“I didn’t need to be like you to understand why you had to go. You should have told me.” Kei knew his usual stoic face held centuries worth of pain. He missed you when you had left, and mourned your death when he knew you could not have been alive any longer. “Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving.”

“I couldn’t bare to see you look like you do now. I just-” You began as your friend cut you off.

“Y/N,” they asked approaching from behind, “Are you okay?”

It took you a moment to see that the crowd had finally began to thin out. While being in Kei’s grip, you had lost yourself in time.

“I’m fine,” You told your friends, and to Kei you said, “Meet me tomorrow at the café down the street from here. Noon. If you don’t come I will understand but I promise I will find you again.”

“Noon.” Kei repeated, slowly letting go of your wrist.

For a moment, the two of you stayed close together. The crowd was no longer a worry, your friends were not longer a worry, and time had never been.

“Noon,” You thought as there was a tug at your wrist, “I will see him again.”

The next day as you sat in the café, clock striking 1, you knew Kei was not going to show. The time you had spent with Kei in France was one of the best times of your life, and leaving him was one of the hardest decisions you had ever had to make. Being alive while everyone around you grows old and dies is awful. It is something you feared before you stopped aging. You never wanted to have to see it happen again, and then Kei became such a big part of your life. What were you to do?

So you left. You left before he even knew what the two of you could have been if you continued. As much as you wanted to feel like you were protecting him from getting to close you knew that your act had been selfish. If you truly wanted to protect him you never would have brought him coffee and pastries that morning and you knew it.

Standing from your table in the café, you headed out. “I have a promise to keep,” you thought as the cold air of New Years Day hit you, “I will find you Kei.”

Down the block Kei stood, watching you leave the café after an hour. He had thought about going in and hearing you out. Questions swirled in head while he watched your retreating form. “You made a promise,” he thought, “and if you keep it maybe we can have forever.”

Kei had thought maybe 2000 would be his year. He had been wrong. The next year when the opportunity presented itself at the Worlds Trade Center, he took it. He had not intended to disappear on that day, but he saw no other way to get ready for his next life. That is where your search halted. For years after the 9/11 attack, there was no new news on Tsukishima Kei. He was a ghost.

Many years later as you stood in the entrance of a gym, a small orange haired boy yelled, “Nice kill Tsukishima!”

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rosarenn · 3 years

Text

All things are ephemeral

I've been thinking a lot about the illusion of certainty and the way it holds us back from achieving great things.

There's this idea that if something is temporary, transient, that it isn't worth putting any effort into. That something is only worth your time if it endures, if it's permanent. That the investment must be followed by a payoff or why bother.

I am very much talking out of my own experience here, as a white settler/colonizer raised in a more or less middle class family. I know my experience is not universal, and I am still going to talk about "we" and "us" because I want to include myself in this group, and I'm noticing a pattern that I want to talk about. If you have never experienced certainty, or are in a stable position for the first time in your life, this is probably not about you, for example. Take what you need and compost the rest.

I'm reading Nine-Tenths of the Law: Property and Resistance in the United States by Hannah Dobbz, which discusses squatting in the US. One of the themes that comes up over an over again is the idea that because a squat is temporary, because the police could kick you out at any moment, because you don't have ownership or equity or any kind of title on your side and you could lose everything in a moment's notice, that it doesn't make any sense to improve the home you're living in. That the work would be wasted, and who wants to work their ass off and not reap the benefits? Why would you bother?

And this, to me, is so incredibly short-sighted, and represents an internalization of the logic of capitalism. Why would you bother? Because you are fucking living there. You're living there, you're passing your limited time on this planet in this space, and why would you live in a dump if you don't have to, if you don't like living in a dump, if you would feel better, be happier, enjoy your time there just a little bit more than if you didn't clean it up. It's the same reason I've painted countless rental apartments - even though I don't know how long I'll be there, while I'm there I eventually get sick at looking at plain white walls. It's why I'm planning to paint a mural in my rental apartment - it will bring me daily joy for as long as I am here. It's why I decorated my office when I still had an office. Because if this is where I am passing my time, I want it to be a little more pleasant.

We've so internalized the logic of the state and the market that we have this illusion that home-owning provides certainty, that it makes sense to invest in a home you own because it can't be taken away at a moment's notice. But it's a lie. The bank could repossess your home. The sewer could back up. A flood or a wildfire could make your home vanish in a moment. With climate change these events are only going to increase in frequency, as will the unrest and failed states and all the other forms of violent dispossession that that entails. The entire stock market could blow itself to pieces tomorrow, the currency we've all agreed to use could become worthless pieces of paper, anything can happen. I could die tomorrow. I could die today. There is no certainty, any where, ever. Anything I work for could be for nothing - nothing except for what I make of it here and now. I want to live before I die.

I think about the way I've been indoctrinated to delay gratification to the extreme. That's what the promise of capitalism to the middle class is, after all. Work tirelessly for all of your productive years, save your coins prudently, invest them in the stock market for the future and never take out your principle because compound interest is magic and you'd be a fool to forego that sweet, sweet "free" interest income. And then, and only then, you can retire for a few years and live a tiny sliver of your life free from the constant grind of daily waged labour. If someone is not able to make ends meet, I was taught, it's because they are too loose with their spending, they aren't able to delay gratification long enough for the real payout, the poor dears. Scrupulously saving, denying ourselves the momentary joys of right now in order to chase a possible future prosperity, is positioned as a moral good.

Of course this is a lie, and a terrible way to live (even as it is incredibly privileged). I lived this way for years and I'm only now beginning to come to terms with it. There's so much grief there. How much did I miss out on? Think of all the joy, vitality, and the things that make life worth living that I denied myself - and for what? To chase certainty in the future, because I couldn't accept the ephemerality of today.

There's a delicate balance needed here, of course. There's an argument to be made that what we need is more delayed gratification, not less. The constant churning consumption, the endless extraction from the earth and our bodies, putting today's profits ahead of tomorrow's, or even above the survival of our own children - these are features of capitalism and they are destroying us.

But they need to sell us this lie, that if we work hard today we can be happy tomorrow, to keep us working. Because if we truly looked at horrors of this reality, if we truly knew in our bones that everything we have today could be gone tomorrow, that everything in life is fleeting - would you still go to work, day after day after day? I know I sure wouldn't. Even though I don't know what I would do to survive instead. Even though stepping into that unknown is terrifying. Even though I have no answers, I would have to take that leap.

I think, too, about the way I sometimes see people talk about revolution - and I include myself in this group. That until we are ready to make a global revolution, until we are all but guaranteed success, until the moment we reach critical mass, all we can do is wait. Maybe we agitate, maybe we form unions and organizations and try to spread the word, but until success is certain we can't act, not truly. I see this more in communist circles than in anarchist ones, and it was especially present in the critiques of the temporary autonomous zones that popped up in the midst of last summer's uprisings - they would never succeed, they would be quickly dismantled, and thus were doomed to failure and shouldn't even be attempted. As if there was no value in the experiences, however fleeting. As if the way we live our lives is irrelevant. As if a thing bringing you joy is not enough justification in itself.

Even though I skew more towards anarchism, I can still feel this attitude infecting my own thinking. I don't want to try to unionize my workplace because it will fail and I'll get fired and it won't matter, really, anyways. I don't want to talk openly about my politics when I know people don't agree with me, because what's the point when I already know I can't change their minds. What's the point of guerrilla gardening when the city can just come by with a weed whacker and destroy our labour. So on and so on ad nauseum, every endeavour doomed to be temporary and thus, automatically, a failure.

I think of my friend who spent the past two summers building up an incredible garden, who now has to move, suddenly, before the end of the growing season. My first reaction was that it was such a waste, that she had put in so much effort and time and money and now wouldn't even be there to collect the final harvest, that it would be better if she hadn't done the planting, somehow. As if she hasn't taken immense pleasure and pride in her garden for the past two years. As if she hasn't harvested throughout the whole summer. As if the harvest she planted suddenly winks out of existence if the benefits go to someone other than her. As if this somehow invalidates everything that came before. But this line of thinking is horseshit. Someone will still eat those vegetables. If nothing else, the birds and the beasties will love eating what she has grown. She learned so much and will be able to carry that knowledge forward with her. On and on, there was great value in this venture even if she will not be there to reap every last piece of the harvest. And if it wasn't a sudden move, it could have been a drought, or a violent storm, or an infestation, or theft. Or or or. The possibilities are endless, results are never guaranteed, and if we are only working to achieve an ends, we might need to take a good long look at what we're up to.

I wonder if the roots of this ideology stretch all the way back to the agricultural revolution. Ephemerality would have been the day to day lived experience of hunter-gatherers. Here today, gone tomorrow, pick the berries now, while they're ripe and before the birds get them. But agriculture? Prepare the field, plant the seeds, water, tend, wait. wait. wait. then finally harvest. Finally finally your labour has paid off and you can eat. Careful though because there won't be another harvest until next year, so be careful, ration, wait. Would you plant the field if you didn't know if you'd be around to harvest it? That's a tough sell, for sure.

I think of flatwormposting, on instagram, who announced suddenly that they would delete their account today. That they felt like they had accomplished what they wanted to accomplish, that they were complete, and ready to move on. The immediate response, of course, was no, don't go, or if you must go, please don't delete the account. Leave it up, to sit in perpetuity, an archive of your work and legacy. Please, you did good work, please let us keep it. As if deleting their account deletes their work. As if they won't carry it forward with them. As if people who interacted with the account while it was up weren't changed in some small way. As if a thing that is temporary - which is all things - is somehow less important than a permanent thing.

And their response was simply, all things are ephemeral. All things are ephemeral, everything could be gone tomorrow. If they didn't delete this account, instagram could. A hacker could take it. Nothing is certain, everything is a constant renegotiation. Given that, what now?

What now? How do we want to live before we die? What choices might we make if nothing was certain? What risks would we take? How would we live our lives if we knew, deeply, truly, in an embodied way, that another world is possible, as the Nap Bishop constantly reminds us? That the continuation of this one as it is, that the status quo is not and has never been certain? That each day we wake up we make this world again, and we could simply chose to make it differently, to paraphrase David Graeber. If we no longer privileged that which is over that which could be. If we no longer held onto the illusion of certainty and control and permanence.

All things are ephemeral. What now?

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tessiete · 3 years

Note

"I wish you would write a —" continuation or AU of that scene from away the vapour flew (because I've seen you mention that even your AU's have AU's lol and I'm selfishly hoping you'd consider revisiting that fic and coz I can't let this opportunity pass when this fic literally lives in my mind rent free lol)

Alright! At long last I have figured out what happens next. This is for you, dear thing ❤️❤️❤️ ( @lightasthesun on - or very near thereabouts - your birthday)

LED BY THE WANDERING LIGHT

It starts with a very little thing: a seed.

It is slipped from the glove of a Republic aid trooper who smiles as he passes it over.

“From the General of the 212th,” he says. “Don’t know what it is, but I damn near lost the thing on the way over.”

“For me?” he asks, and the man nods, his grin growing wider.

Then he leans in as though commiserating with a friend. “Jetiise sha’bise, lek?”

“Elek,” agrees Korkie, dubiously, turning the little living pebble between his fingers.

The trooper grins, and gives him a friendly shove before trotting off back to his ship. Korkie has come down on his aunt’s behalf to oversee the relief efforts, but he is distracted by the seed in his hand. It is flat, and furry, and pleasingly plump. If he squeezes it, he can feel the skin relent and rebound, and if he digs in his nail ever so gently, he can feel the taste of water upon his thumb, and see the pale blush of springtime in the depths of the cut. It is a seed of something, he knows, but of what?

He places it in the breast pocket of his Academy jacket, and turns his attention back to the work. It is an impressive, and important sight, but his thoughts linger on the seed, and he feels it sit bright and eager against his heart.

Later, when the supplies have been unloaded, and the aid troopers seen off, when the ceremony of thanks and assurances of neutrality have all been displayed, when he is back in his room at Sundari only hours away from the magtrain ride back to school, he plants the seed in a little pot of black earth, and dampens the soil. It will not grow tonight, but he cannot help but stare at it anyway, waiting in the dark, beneath the stars, so patient.

A week passes, and he is back at the Academy when the mail officer - an upperclassman he’s never met - stops at his place during first meal.

“Su-su, Kryze!” he calls. “A package for you from the Core.”

A small bundle wrapped in layer upon layer of bonding tape, and stamped with the ink of a hundred spaceports too numerous and cramped to decipher lands upon his lap. He uses the thin knife from his plate to slice through the plastifibe envelope.

When his fingers graze the object within he gasps, and pulls back the wrap to reveal a real, proper book. It’s not even printed on flimsi, he notes, cracking the aged spine and letting the pages fall open, but on actual paper. They don’t make these in the Core, and hardly ever in the Mid Rim, it’s just not economical, and most planets don’t have the resources to spare. But this one is old, it’s pages creased, and worn smooth at the corners with the turning of many fingers. It is about horticulture, though the illustrations of green and growing things have faded to browns and burnished golds. It is beautiful.

A piece of dried grass has been tucked between two pages, and when Korkie folds them back to look he sees an image of the seed he’d sown in the pot by his bed. Beside it, a riotous bouquet of blossoms burst in an array of different colours. It is a daesyn flower.

He tucks the book in his kebisebag, and carries it around for the rest of the day. At nightfall, he takes it out with careful reverence, turning the pages back to the daesyn slowly lest they tear or turn to dust. Then, by the light of a little glowrod, he props the book against his window and reads along as he tends to the small green sprout only just peeking through the soil.

He buys a sun lamp, and a watermeter, and adjusts the temperature of his quarters much to Amis’ chagrin, determined to provide the most optimal growing conditions he can for the little plant.

After a month, the seedling has become a sturdy sprout, with prickly leaves of a green so deep it might be blue. He is attempting to commit those variegated lines to flimsi when Amis returns to their quarters, a small pouch swinging from his hand.

“I’m supposed to give this to you,” he says, tossing the pouch. Korkie reacts without thinking, snatching the bag out of the air before it can hit the ground.

“Who’s it from?”

“Front desk. Said some high up Republic alor sent it.”

“Which one?”

“Don’t know. Didn’t ask, did I? Too busy polishing the silver.”

Korkie grimaces in sympathy, having spent many an afternoon of his first year cleaning the trophy case in the main hall. He thinks that Amis’ plight could be easily avoided if only he behaved himself, but refrains from saying so to his friend.

Instead, he pulls the drawstring at the top of the purse, and turns it over his hand. A dozen discs of coloured glass tumble into his palm. They are thick, and smooth, though not polished by anything but time. Each is a different colour, though some are struck through with shimmers of gold and silver.

“What’s that?” asks Amis over his shoulder.

“Don’t know,” he echoes. The glass feels comfortable in his grip. Made to be held, and carried, and passed from hand to hand.

“Should ask Lagos,” says Amis. “That seems like her kind of thing.”

He makes no reply to Amis, but of course, he does as he suggests. Lagos is, after all, a walking encyclopaedia, and of all their friends the most likely to at least have an idea of where to start looking.

The excitement on her face when Korkie shows her his hoard tells him she has more than an idea - she knows.

“Oh, oh, oh!” she gasps. “Where’d you find Abafar trading beads?”

“They were a gift,” he replies. “What are they for?”

She picks them up one at a time and holds them to the light. By some trick of their design, they cast no shadow, but seem to capture the rays inside like banked embers, or twisting prisms. The ones marked with ribbons of ore grow warm in her hand, and she presses them to his cheek so he can feel their heat.

“They’re the traditional currency of Abafar,” she explains. “It’s a desert planet in the Outer Rim, and craftsmen in the Void used to make these beads as a means of facilitating trade over great distances. Metal was scarce, and the beads could also be used to retain heat for longer - that one in your hand could keep the warmth of the sun all night, if you wanted it to.”

He considers the disc of deep indigo, and holds it up to the sun until it turns red. The glass seems to have become molten, but its warmth is not painful in the hand. He leaves the bead out for the rest of the afternoon to test Lagos’ theory, and brings it into bed with him at night. Tucked beneath his pillow, it radiates a soothing heat, and he feels his muscles relax and his worries melt as he drifts away into an easy slumber.

The next gift he receives is shattered into bits.

“Sorry, kid,” says the attendant at the delivery depot when he arrives to claim his parcel. “Happens sometimes with these packages from the front. The war is not a safe place for fragile things. Bic cuyir meg bic cuyir.”

He takes the present anyway, carrying it delicately back to the Academy, fearful of breaking it further. When he finally tears through the tape and plastifibe, clay and ceramplast pieces give up any pretense at form and clatter over the surface of his desk.

It was beautiful once, he can tell. Perhaps a bowl or a cup turned by hand - he can see the telltale print of a foreign finger pressed into a section of naked clay - but now it is only fragments and dust.

Still, he hovers over the pile, turning the pieces this way and that, trying to see how they fit together. He doesn’t notice when sixth bell rings, or when Soniee pings his comm, or when Amis sneaks in past curfew and turns out his light. He stays up late into the night, until the form takes shape, and through the cracks and crevasses of painted clay dawn creeps in.

It is an amphoriskos. A small vessel for storing precious oils, like the kind used in the rituals of so many traditional peoples. There is none in it now, and Korkie retrieves the sachet to see if perhaps it was spilled into the weave of the plastifibe wrap. But it is dry. And the clay, when he looks at it more closely, is dry and unstained by use. The gift was always empty.

The shards sit upon his desk in their loose arrangement until, one afternoon, Amis moves to sweep them off into the dustbin.

“No, no!” protests Korkie, before Amis can complete the task. “I want to keep it.”

“What for?” his friend asks. “It’s broken.”

“I don’t know yet.”

He collects the bits of amphoriskos into his hands, and arranges them about the base of his daesyn pot. The paint glints in the light, and so too do the Abafar beads nestled amidst the debris. The plant grows green and bushy, its leaves reaching out to skim the rim of its bed as though a swimmer poised on the edge of emersion.

He receives Theelin singing strings wound tight around a holodrive meant for the Duchess, paired basalt spindles from Hapes, seashells from the deep oceans of Mon Cala, and a set of Lateron hoops carried on the wrist of the visiting senator from Naboo.

“From Master Kenobi,” she says, and she smiles at him with a warmth that feels like family. He wonders if they’ve met before, if he should know her, but she moves along with the entourage of press and government officials before he can ask.

He is home for Holyrod month, and has brought his prizes with him carried along specially in his kebisebag, his daesyn in his hands. He sets them out along the windowsill in his rooms at Sundari. The watchet blues and greens of crystalline filtered light play over his collection, illuminating one after the other in joyous turn. He does not know what they mean, or why his father has sent these particular things to him, but they are all precious, and he longs for a way to display his gratitude for the thought he has been spared.

The daesyn itself revels in its new surroundings, and leans close to the glass to get as close a view of the sun as it can, budding with imminent delight.

The Senator from Naboo is called Padme, he discovers when he is introduced to her again at mealtime. And she has not come alone. She is part of a delegation of foreign ambassadors, all from the Republic, but not all, Korkie suspects, as enthusiastic about the Chancellor as they had once been. There are murmurings and whispers amongst them, hurried out between thin lips and caught only in the corner of his eye, or the turn of his head, but whether satisfied or not, they are accompanied by the ceremonial force of the Senate, and the might of Palpatine himself - Two Jedi travel with them.

Anakin Skywalker, and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

He sees him through the crush of bodies, and later down the line at suppertime. In the midst of deep blues, and mauves, and furs, and silks, his earthen tunics stand out, but he is always distant, always just out of reach. All he needs is a moment, he thinks, to make sure he’s seen, so he can acknowledge his father - even in the polite, and suitably respectful language of perfect strangers if he must, but it never comes.

The plates are cleared, the halls are emptied, and Korkie finds himself bidding his aunt (she is always his aunt here) goodnight, and wandering back to his rooms alone.

It is dark when he arrives, though by the window the Abafar beads glow like the distant lights of the city. He slips off his stiff shoes, and his raiments of clan, but is interrupted by a knock at the door. He waits, uncertain, until the knock comes again.

Perhaps his mother come to assure herself of his health and presence, as she has done so often in the past, but he opens the door to find Obi-Wan Kenobi waiting, with his hand out. In the euphoric rush of astonishment, he hastens to place his own hand upon his father’s as is customary on Stewjon, though he holds fast in a manner peculiar between children and their parents.

“Master Kenobi,” he stammers. “I did not expect you. I thought you’d left. Forgive me.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” Obi-Wan replies. “I’d rather hoped to catch you alone, but I’m afraid our schedule was somewhat packed.”

“Of course.”

He is staring, he knows it, but he can’t seem to think of anything else to say, caught up in looking at his father and searching for all the commonalities between them. Does he tilt his head like that? Does he stroke his chin? Does he frown and smile by equal measure?

But the weight of his scrutiny is too much to bear, and Obi-Wan cracks.

“I thought to ask: did you get my gifts?”

“Yes,” says Korkie. “Thank you. They were very thoughtful.”

“Ah...And did you - did you like them?”

At this, Korkie cannot help but smile, and he shakes his father’s hand, tugging him forward with zeal.

“Yes, of course,” he says. “Would you like to see?”

If he is confused by his son’s desire to reintroduce him to items he has already laboured over and seen, then he does not show it. Nor does he resist when the hand in his pulls him further into the room, and doesn’t let go even as a curtain is flung open, and a light flicked on low.

He is pulled over to the broad casements and left to bask in starlight as Korkie steps aside to reveal a colorful mobile hanging from the frame of his window.

“The amphoriskos broke,” he explains, and sees a shadow flicker in his father's eyes. “No, no,” he insists. “It wasn’t your fault. It just happened. But I couldn’t bear to throw it away. It was so beautiful.”

He gestures at a silver thread from which hang a variety of irregularly shaped clay shards. The shiny amber and black paint catches the light thrown by the glowing Abafar beads strung further up, and on another and another thread. When he blows on them the threads hum, and sway together, the seashells and pottery and glass clattering together like wind chimes.

“The singing strings,” notes Obi-Wan, and Korkie grins.

“And the Lateron hoops,” he says, pointing to the frame from which the strings are suspended. “And the spindles, for balance. It’s meant to hang with my window open, like it is at school. And then, at night, when the dreamwinds come, the whole thing sings, and shines, and glows like the stars.”

“It’s beautiful,” says Obi-Wan with awe. He reaches out with one hesitant finger, the beads flickering beneath his touch, and the strings murmuring the low notes of an opening phrase.

“You gave it to me,” says Korkie with a shrug, and Obi-Wan turns his awe upon his boy.

“No,” he says. “I gave you fragments, but you have made them into art. You gave them meaning. You gave them a soul.”

Korkie shifts on his feet, fretting at the cuff of his sleeve, and diving in.

“Would it be okay, do you think -” he starts, then stops. Then he starts again. “Do you think it’d be alright if I wrote you? Every once in a while.”

“Wrote me?”

“Or com’d,” he says, quickly. “Only I know you’re busy, and I can’t expect to lay claim to any of your time, not really, but I -”

“Com me,” says Obi-Wan. “Write me. Send me anything you like, but only say you will and I will have all the time for you I can spare.”

“I promise that I only want a very little.”

“If it’s mine to give it’s yours to have, Kiorkicek,” his father swears. His grip upon his hand is firm, willing him to believe him, and Korkie nods his head because he does.

They stand there, hand in hand, reading themselves in each other, and learning the other in turn, and in the glow of the stars, and the city, and the Abafar beads, the daesyn flower bursts from its roots into a riot of colour and life.

#Obi-Wan Kenobi #Korkie Kryze #SW #Star Wars #my fic #GFFA #prompt fill #Korkie is a Kenobi

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darkhymns-fic · 3 years

Text

“Welcome back.”

With Lloyd, Colette had never felt more at home.

Fandom: Tales of Symphonia Characters/Pairing: Lloyd Irving/Colette Brunel, Zelos Wilder, Phaidra Brunel Rating: G Mirror Link: AO3 Notes: Written for Colloyd Week, Day 7: Free day! And yep, this is a day early because quote day fic isn’t finished just yet. But this is also about a quote so it fits the theme still?

Colette had always been searching for a place to belong to.

When she first met Lloyd, it had been by chance. She didn’t meet him on his first day of school, when he had already been fifteen minutes late, earning a frown from the new professor but forgiven when he explained how far he traveled just to get here. It had not even been on one of the few trips that Lloyd had gone along with Dirk to Iselia, the dwarf picking up supplies to fill up their food pantries, and any extra seeds and tools for the vegetable garden he was just starting. On the former, she had been away at the Church for her routine lessons, and on the latter, she was always at home, the language of the angels swimming in her head as she devoutly read the scriptures from heavy tomes.

When she was already receiving her lessons as the Chosen, they only told her about her fate once she turned six – all with fanciful words of how she would take her place in heaven with the goddess and rest peacefully. But even back then, she understood the meaning of it.

So one day, with that knowledge deeply part of her, Colette had to leave her room, her house, and the books far away, so that she could breathe. She left in the middle of the day, thinking only to go as she snuck through the front gate to the forests surrounding Iselia, all before they would implement guards to prevent such a thing from happening again. She walked and walked, until the brush at her feet grew darker and the trees closed in, until the light dirt pathway slowly started to vanish.

She walked until she couldn’t anymore, the sun all but blocked out from the thick boughs overhead. There was no more path to lead her anywhere, the entire floor overtaken by snaking roots and shrubbery. The air felt cold around her. The shadows stretched wide, making the woods feel like early evening when it was still in the middle of the afternoon.

Or had she really lost track of time?

She stumbled over a stump – or it could have simply been a pebble, or only air. But she fell onto her knees, her hands clutching the grass between her fingers, thinking over and over the words that the priest had left her. And her grandmother, trying to soften the blow, with peaceful hands that stroked through her hair, but not denying the truth of what it all meant.

“Chosen, you will be like a friend to the world. And once you grow older, you will have to leave, but that is what happens to all of us,” Phaidra had tried to soothe, an old scripture book still laid at her knee along with Colette’s head. “It will just be a little sooner than most…”

She felt a hand take her own – but it wasn’t familiar, and it fit inside her own like a puzzle piece.

Colette blinked. She saw that she was on her feet again, grass stains on her bare knees, and on the sleeves of her dress. And right in front of her was a boy, his hair sticking up in wild ways, his eyes blinking along with her own. In a red shirt and suspenders that held up dark shorts, she wondered if this was someone from school that she couldn’t seem to recognize yet.

“Hey! Where were you going? It’s dangerous down this way!” The boy’s palm was just against her own, a little damp, scuffed with dirt. She realized why that was so.

“Oh! But my hands are dirty…” she could only trail out, still feeling a bit light-headed. Hadn’t she left her grandmother in the kitchen, and then had gone out the back door? What would she think…?

The boy tilted his head, the motion of it catching her attention. It reminded her of the neighborhood dog that she always wanted to pet whenever she saw it. “Are you okay? You were walking by yourself and being really quiet…”

She saw in his other hand that he held what looked like a long stick. The end of it was freshly snapped, like a jagged point of a knife. He tapped it against the ground, keeping in an even tempo.

“Ah? Where… am I?” Colette arced her head to look around her, but the trees looked unfamiliar, and she could hear the rapid flow of a river nearby. But this wasn’t anything like the small glades that were in Iselia. “Who are you?”

Another blink, and there was something about his eyes. Full and matching the shade of the tree bark, yet catching the light of the sunshine. They were in a sunny place now, the previous shadows from her wandering gone.

“You should tell people your name first before asking theirs, you know!” The boy huffed, but then looked embarrassed right away. “I mean…I guess I did just come up to you. I’m Lloyd! I live here. Well, near here. Not this place though. There’s a lot of mean wolves around.”

And still, Lloyd hadn’t let go of her hand. He was gently leading her away from the darker part of the forests, back out into the light with the pathway, with the flowers that lined parts of a nearby field, white petals drifting in the breeze. And on that same pathway, she saw what looked to be the largest dog in the world.

Colette had almost forgotten to say anything, still dazzled by sights out from the shadows, by the dog that looked so fluffy to the touch, wondering what it would be like to dig her hands through the fur – and by the boy next to her, his eyes still catching that light.

“I’m…Colette. I’m the…” She paused, and suddenly the title that she had always known felt deeply heavy in her chest. She couldn’t finish.

“The…girl that got lost?” Lloyd finished for her, grinning wide then. “You’re silly! I was playing with Noishe when I saw you. You shouldn’t wander off! Or, that’s what my dad says.”

The dog named Noishe padded up to her, ears drooped low, sniffing at her curiously. She reached out to pet it, and the warmth she felt from scratching the dog’s head was the same as Lloyd’s hand in hers.

“I was lost,” she admitted, but the smile touched her lips easily, feeling refreshed. “But then you found me.”

And since then, it was hard for Colette to forget the shape of his grin, the touch of red on his cheeks. From playing? From the sun shining down on them both? Or because their hands stayed together? She remembered how much she didn’t want to grow up then, even more than before.

“Well, it’s good I found you,” Lloyd admitted. He was leading her and Noishe up a hill, past the rushing river, and soon she could see the shape of something in the distance. A house? Right in the middle of the woods, almost as if out of a fairytale…. “But I don’t know how to get you back home…”

Colette looked at the house as they moved closer; the weather vane in the shape of a rooster on top of its roof, the wooden shed to the right, the multitudes of potted plants that lay near the front door. She pointed at it suddenly. “There,” she said with full conviction. “I live there.”

“Huh?” Lloyd blinked, back to her then back to the house that looked so far off from everything she had known. “You do?”

“Well…today I live there. Maybe not tomorrow.” Colette scuffed her shoes against the dirt, excitement running through her chest, like the rush she had felt when she ran through the woods with complete abandon. But different this time, because she knew where to go. “Is that okay?”

Maybe another boy would have found her strange, or weird to suggest such a thing. But Lloyd only laughed, and excitedly pulled her along the makeshift bridge across the river.

No one had ever accepted her so easily.

“Sure it is!” Lloyd said, his happiness beaming out from the eyes that she couldn’t look away from. “So… welcome back, Colette!”

In the Church, the priests taught her the language of the Angels; an ancient script that only those of the cloth and the Chosen they watched over would be able to decipher. They taught her to memorize the landmarks of the journey that she would travel to, the names of ancient heroes that conversed with goddesses and how she would one day be as close to such figures when the time came. They taught her to watch and listen from a distance.

But Lloyd taught her to use her hands.

When Lloyd had first come to Iselia, she’d see the way his fingers would tap on the desk, (and ever since they first met, he’d always choose the desk closest to her – as long as he wasn’t late) starting off light, then faster, louder until the Professor would shush him across the room. But his hands wouldn’t stop moving then. Instead, they’d take something else, like the pencil he’d been chewing on, or the small little carving knife he always liked to carry around. Sometimes he’d draw lines on the paper, or carve them onto the wood.

And no matter what, he’d always show her what he made.

“That’s dad,” he’d point out to her, tracing the jagged edges of a beard, sprouting so wildly from a circle that was his father’s face. “You remember him, right? He’s really big!” And of course she did, recalling the adult with thick arms and a heavy beard, the way his laughter boomed inside the home when he first met her then. He hadn’t minded that she wanted their home for her own, at least for that one day.

Then Lloyd would draw a shape that she was familiar with, a furry creature standing on four legs, standing a head above the sketchy scribble that was Lloyd’s father. Scritch scritch came the sounds of Lloyd’s pencil on paper, his tongue just sneaking past his lips in concentration.

“I can’t draw at all,” she said, fingers curling around her dress, all as she kept scooting closer to Lloyd to see his work better.

“Huh? How come?” He sounded so curious. And though she still only knew Lloyd for a little bit, she didn’t think he was teasing her about it.

“Ah, it’s not really something meant for me?” It was the best way she could explain it. Why would a Chosen need to learn to draw?

“But you want to, right?”

“Well…”

Lloyd’s hands, even back then, had dwarfed her own. She felt the calluses against his palm as held her wrists gently, the lightness of his fingers as they seemed to dance over her knuckles, adjusting the shape of her hand. The pencil he gave her slipped easily into her grip.

“Just copy mine here. Try drawing Noishe!” He grinned at her, all teeth and stretching his cheeks that she thought she could see dimples. It made her stare, fascinated, and how this was something no one had told her about at all.

With his hands guiding her, she learned to draw for the very first time. It wasn’t anything particularly amazing, and her own doggy was lop-sided, complete with uneven ears and an oversized tongue. She had tried to capture the likeness of Noishe on that first day she had seen him standing beside Lloyd, on how the light made the green of his fur that much brighter, like the fields that surrounded Iselia.

Yet even as she saw the stark difference between her and Lloyd’s, his voice thrummed next to her in pride. “See? You can draw just fine!”

“Lloyd! Are you bothering people now?”

Raine’s voice was sudden, and with that, Lloyd had to let her go. The warmth of his hands left, even though she could remember the shape of it.

But still he smiled at her, inclining his head just a bit until so that only Colette could see. Only for her.

When she would go back home, she would try to practice drawing too, all within the margins of her own scripture books; little butterflies and happy dogs, and the wide-eyed smile of someone that filled her head during the day.

Her heart felt so, so full.

It was only natural for people to leave their home, to leave their friends behind.

Colette was just doing it sooner than most.

Outside, as the floorboards of the balcony creaked underneath them both, she went over the lie in her head, turning it over like a fine piece of jewelry. In the dark, she could hide away any small tells, any moments that Lloyd would catch her in.

She had to try not to laugh, because how easy it was to just let it free, a small giggle filled with every worry and fear in its waves.

“You know, this will be the first time we ever go somewhere that’s not just in Iselia.” Lloyd leaned back against the railing, his smile lighting something within her that it was almost too painful. But she took it as something good, something she would remember once she was on the last leg of her journey and… “We’ll get to see the whole world together!”

A world where she could be so easily lost, maybe forgotten. But she should want that for him, at least. “That’s what you always wanted to do, isn’t it?” she asked him, remembering the little dreams he’d tell her she’d ride on Noishe, his hand over her own to keep her steady, fingers entwining through green fur. “I think in a regenerated world, you can finally do that even more.”

The moonlight caught his eyes, and already she wanted to go and embrace him. But wouldn't she just trip right into the wood, with his hands reaching to keep her balanced? “Yeah. Maybe after the world’s regenerated, we can go on another trip together too. How about it?” He said it so casually, as if such dreams were not nearly as impossible as touching the stars in the sky. “But maybe once you become an angel, we can go back home for a little while. Is that okay?”

It was childish for her to wish for anything different.

In her heart, she brought with her the scent of oak as she left with Raine and Kratos in the early morning, the remembered texture of finely polished wood when she had leaned on the railing with Lloyd, looking up at the stars. And she kept the shape of his smile, lit up by the moon, tracing it over and over in her head.

Even if she had to lose a friend, she could keep parts of it, couldn’t she? These small memories that kept her mind afloat as she walked further away from home.

And when Lloyd lived in the new world, maybe, if he wanted to, he could do the same for her.

If he wanted to.

For a while, after Remiel called her forth and she felt her heart shatter in her chest, Colette had been adrift.

She knew of death, but she didn’t know how it would be for her. Would it be like the shutting of a door, cutting off light for her and leaving her in the dark? Or would it be like going to sleep, stuck in dreamlessness, never on the verge of waking up again?

Instead it was like she was floating out to sea, half-blind, with no compass to point out her way, and no sail to take her home. And through it all, she was left with the imprints of memories she had trouble placing.

She remembered the shape of the temple she would pray at, the scent of the tea her grandmother would make for her, the sad smile her father would sometimes have… and Lloyd, his hand in her own.

The longer she was away, the more she was beginning to forget.

Colette drifted as voices danced around her, half-remembering who they were, until she would forget again. Sometimes, she would still feel a hand inside her own, yet find nothing there.

And other times, she would see shadows out in the distance. The faces of friends she knew, and friends she didn’t yet. It was strange to see the new among the familiar, but in all of that, she could still see Lloyd, a passing ship that she tried to call out to. But, he couldn’t hear.

Or did he not want to hear her?

In all her drifting, she felt alone. And the fear that came when Remiel took away the last remaining thread of her humanity was her only companion.

There’s nowhere for you to go.

Colette tried to grip back the hand she could still feel. But it wasn’t real. It couldn’t have been. Even if she sometimes saw his face.

Lloyd will grow up. He will go away, the fear inside her said, continued to say. And you want to keep him locked in place?

When Sheena had spoken to him back in Sylvarant, he had smiled and laughed. She saw that now, in passing, like quick flashes of light. When a man with brilliant red hair had half-embraced Lloyd, he had grumbled but didn’t push him away. When a girl with eyes so familiar spoke, Lloyd would always turn to her.

She didn’t want him to keep from meeting these new people, new friends.

But then, what of her home?

Nowhere to go.

For a time, she stayed out in that nameless ocean, drifting and drifting, slowly losing her way. It was hard to look out for any familiar light through the darkness, easier to try and sleep. Still, she thought she felt that hand, the same hand that had brought her up to his house with no hesitation. But isn’t he gone? the fear in her kept asking. Why would he stay behind for you?

It was difficult to not be selfish.

“So that I could have a home to go back to.”

In that ocean of darkness and fading memories, she felt the hand there, remembered how it held the broken pieces of something precious. She would have accepted it as it was, kept it locked within her grip that she wouldn’t even give way to the angels. And once, when light flooded her senses, when she felt such a force try to take away a precious gift, she was able to keep that promise to herself.

Faces that she knew and didn’t know, all of it so much that she couldn’t even stay standing. But there was solid ground, and there was a hand to bring her back to her feet.

“Colette!” Lloyd called out, bringing her near, almost embracing her if it weren’t for the remnants of dirt on his jacket (and she could strangely recall a rigorous climb up a cliffside..) “You remember me?”

“Lloyd! Of course I do.” She felt the weight of the necklace on her, keeping her rooted, no longer adrift. “I think with this… I was able to find you.”

His smile always left her warm, left her nerves singing. “Heh, welcome back then. We missed you.”

Only did she realize just then – could a home be more than a place, but a person that lights your way?

There were little figurines on the stand, half of them already covered in snow.

“Are you looking for a souvenir?” spoke the salesman of the cart, decked in multiple layers, his mittened hands grasping one of the small things that had nearly drowned within the white. The finer details of its ears pressed flat against its head, the snout that made up its front, along with the embedded gems that served for its eyes – it all reminded her of something so familiar. She felt bad just getting one, and clumsily handed the gald to the salesman, carrying both charms in her shaking hands.

Was it because she was afraid? Or just so cold? The chill spread across her now unmarked skin, made her bones feel stiff, made her lungs ache from the sting of the cold air. Was she still afraid it would all go?

“They bring you luck,” the salesman had told her just before she left, his smile hidden away in the caverns of his scarf. “And we could all use a little luck nowadays.”

She wondered if she would have such luck now. She couldn’t stop shivering as she went to Zelos, asking a dear favor of him as she gave him the snow bunny to bring to Altessa. “Maybe he’d like it?” she asked of the other Chosen, wondering if he thought she sounded so childish just then. “It could go with his home, or maybe he could give it to Tabatha once she’s…”

Zelos patted her shoulder, and something in his motion felt more freeing. Maybe even relieving. “Anything for you, angel. Don’t mind doing a little delivery if it means I get to leave this place.”

“Ah, you don’t like the cold?” she asked him. But, no, she could see the smile on his face too, hear the little snicker that left his throat. “Or is it something else?”

“Don’t worry about it… but thanks for asking.” Zelos placed the bunny in his pocket, more carefully than any other gift he had ever received from a lady. “But you still got that other one, right?” He nodded to the snow bunny still clutched in her hands. “Make sure to give that guy a good home, too.”

Home has always meant something else to her, and maybe Zelos saw that too. With a wink, he left with the others on the Rheairds, and soon found herself rushing back to the inn, the cold biting her cheeks.

“Welcome back, Colette,” Lloyd had said to her, his gift hanging from her neck with a comforting weight. But in words, she heard something else too when he said that…

Or was that just wishful thinking?

Colette was all shivers as she rushed towards the inn, boots sinking into the snow, soaking them through. One charm flew across the ocean in the dark to reach a kind but grumpy dwarf, reminding her of Dirk in small ways, if not all.

The other stayed clutched in her hands, small enough to hide away from sight. It was nothing more than a toy, a childish thing, yet it felt as nice to her as the necklace she wore.

"Lloyd," she called out once she'd had the courage to knock on his door, to see him silhouetted against the windowpane and the snow flurries just outside. The room was doing all it could to stay warm with the heater in the corner, but she didn't mind the chill. It kept her awake as she kept asking. "Do you wanna go for a walk?"

She hated her own doubts, how much she worried for Lloyd to choose something else. But his smile to her gave her the answer, even before he spoke.

Home was warm with him.

“Welcome back, Colette.”

“Thanks.”

“Hmm? What’s wrong?”

“Ah well, I really like it when you say ‘welcome back.’

“Uh? Why?”

“Do you remember when you said it to me when I returned to my normal self?”

“You mean the time at Fooji Mountains.”

“Yeah. I was so happy. When you tell me, ‘welcome back,’ I really start to feel like I’m really back.”

“I see. I’ll say it at any time and as many times as you like!”

Colette was running late.

She had spent so long in Iselia throughout the evening. The temple where she had once endured hours of lessons and ritual was now a refuge for the orphans of fallen cities such as Palmacosta and Luin. The teachings of Martel couldn’t leave her, even after everything. She couldn’t help the prayers that fell naturally from her lips, or the soft remembrances of helping others. Many priests still made their pilgrimages, though it was now that they would stop at Iselia, to follow the once-Chosen in her charity.

But she hadn’t meant to stay so long…

In her haste, she had decided to use her wings, though only doing so once she was far enough away from the village. Easier to get past the trees and the steep cliffsides, the winding of the river that would make her circle around if she were on foot. But she could still follow it, knowing where it would eventually lead to.

She heard Noishe barking up ahead. “Ah, Noishe!” she called out, pink fluttering behind her, trailing stars as she saw the shape of the dog running across the grass – and the shape of a home she had long grown to know.

At the door, silhouetted by the firelight inside, was Lloyd. He waved both arms to her, his jacket unbuttoned and hanging loosely from his shoulders. “Colette! Welcome back!”

She hadn’t really meant to fly that much faster – already she was going at a fast pace as it was. But the sight of him made her want to fall that much quicker to the earth. Already Lloyd was there to catch her, his arms moving around to clasp her tight, feet stumbling to keep them upright.

“S-Sorry..” Colette apologized, winking in both amusement and shame. “Guess I must have tripped.”

“In the air?” Lloyd laughed, his voice traveling through her in a steady rhythm as they stayed close, one that she was beginning to know by heart. “But I can tell it was a good day for you.”

A nod, hands pressed lightly to his chest, fingers curling into his shirt. “It really was. But, I’m glad to be home again.” She stayed there, in his hold, with the crackling of the fire in the forge nearby, hearing the footpads of Noishe as he walked around outside, happy enough to sleep knowing that everyone was back home. They were only staying here for a few weeks while Dirk was away, and then they would need to go back on their journey, but…

“What is it, Colette?” he asked, his voice soothing, his words sincere. He hadn’t let up his grip.

“Do you think you could…say it again?” She could fall asleep in his arms if she let herself, and there were times that she did, never having felt safer than she did right now. “I just like hearing it.”

She felt his hand – the hand that had once pulled her out of the dark – lift her chin to kiss her. It was just one of many that he gave to her, but it left her in a sea of sweetness all the same.

“Hey, Colette,” Lloyd whispered against her hair, then kissing her forehead lightly. Even within this home, and the cold wind at her back from the still-open door, she felt his warmth over everything else. The necklace around her neck and pressing against skin, the figurine she could feel at his chest, still tucked close. All these things that made her feel like she belonged.

“Welcome back.”

#tales of symphonia #colette brunel #lloyd irving #colloyd #colloydweek2021 #fanfiction #one shot

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