#remember how i was like i spent $8 or whatever it was on paint from cvs because i wanted to make the cass fanmix a painted cover?

[tunedtostatic]

[Additional Image Description: On a grey background, there are five small black line art illustrations lined up across the center. The first is a sword with a hooked blade pointing upwards, the second is a hand with magic curling up out of it, the center is a castle with wavy lines extending from it into a dark sky, the third is a beaker with steam curling up from it, and the last is a shortsword pointing downwards. The sword has a few dark red shading lines. In the lower right corner of the fanmix cover is the title, "heart of my own," in dark red medieval calligraphy font. End Additional Image Description.]

HEART OF MY OWN - A FANMIX FOR CASSANDRA DE ROLO IN THE TIME OF THE BRIARWOODS

Overgrown - machineheart // Edge of the World - Within Temptation // Ashes and Rust - Wynnie Stone // Take Me Home - The Paper Kites, Nadia Reid // Nobody (Live) - The Crane Wives // The Tangled Tree - Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker // Heart Of My Own - Basia Bulat // Don't She Run - I Draw Slow // Murder City - Abigail Lapell // Until the Fire - Ladytron // Control - Halsey // Lament - Mount Moriah // Catch the Light - Haroula Rose

Fanmix on YouTube

Fanmix on Spotify

#cassandra de rolo #cr1 #music #fanmix #id in alt text #described #remember how i was like i spent $8 or whatever it was on paint from cvs because i wanted to make the cass fanmix a painted cover? #l + ratio + i did not have time + my camera isn't working so i can't even do a minimalist painted version #so here's literal clipart (not actually clipart its free use images from pixabay but lets be real. stylistically. its clipart) #you can see what my Vision would have been (i wanted to paint the above in medieval manuscript illustration style on a black #background where instead of the (very nice) castle in the center it would have been the sun tree/tree from the de rolo crest #with curling branches and roots filling the whole paper above and below as well #honestly i think artistic vision clip art edition turned out good! captured the vibe. even found a sword that looks like craven edge. #this is another thing i never made a follow-up post about and i'm going to do that rn (pandemic talk incoming) #i'm stepping away from the fandom by the live show because i can't watch them do a live show in a pandemic #like friends are staying in the fandom and i don't judge/care!! i don't *want* to leave i just can't watch or do art and fic for a #work of fiction after it gets real life human beings killed #thats my uncrossable line #its an incredibly sad and fucked up situation #and this week i'm trying to finish up some fanworks (this and another mix and two fics) that i had done or over half done pre-announcement #so i can get that out of the way and focus on. i guess irl is not the word but keeping in touch with fandom bros and practical stuff for #what i think will be a shitty last couple of weeks before the live show itself

[miryum]

Foundling Villa- Chapter 8

Royal!Charles Leclerc x Reader. Princess Y/n is arranged to marry Prince Charles. There will be many ups and downs that the author hasn’t planned out yet, but read along to find out more! (Yes, I know that sounds super cheesy) Warnings per chapter. Hope you guys enjoy!

Tag list: @notleclerc @sunsumonner

Warnings: critiquing (and rude) parents, alcohol, talk of horses from an author who knows nothing about them (and if you haven’t realised it yet, riding horses is supposed to be an analogy for racing)

Update: There should be around 17-ish chapters, but I’m also working on a fic for the brilliant and ingenious @bright-shiningstar (also a prince!charles x reader that may already be over 7k.... sorry not sorry) so they may come a little later than I would like

ao3 link  next chapter>>

Two weeks went by quickly and you knew that the servants were surprised by you. When you ordered a paint job for a scandalous wallpapered room, they hadn’t thought that you would don an apron and help them. You weren’t the best at manual labour, but you tried, and soon your arms were covered in sticky paint, laughing as you tried to get it off. You spontaneously decided to hire a gardener and met a lovely man called Oscar. He was thrilled to construct the gardens of the Princess of Enza, and quickly got to work. Another man, Nico Hulkenberg, came galloping up one day dressed in the regalia of a knight, and told you that Prince Charles had sent him to make sure you stayed out of danger. You, albeit a little peeved that Prince Charles hadn’t conferred with you, allowed Nico to join Lando in a hut by the stables. 

You spent many days with Lando and the horses, trying to learn as much as possible about the animals and the sport that sometimes accompanied them. Lando became a swift friend and you enjoyed his company. Not only was he extremely knowledgeable, but also funny and charming. He introduced you to two horses he had acquired from a breeder with the money you gave him. They were crudely called number sixteen and number fifty-five. He had yet to name them. 

On your first day, you hesitantly climbed on number sixteen. You tried desperately to remember everything you learned from your few minutes on a horse, and luckily, it came back quickly. Lando was highly encouraging and very patient. Once you felt comfortable, he jumped on number fifty-five and joined you in the fields. 

“How are you doing?” he asked, circling around to meet you. 

“This is fantastic!” You smiled broadly. “But it’s a little hard to ride in a dress. I’m going to need to fashion some new garments. I may have to write to Este.” 

“Whatever the princess wants,” Lando said. “Do you know what you’re going to name them?”

You hummed. “Not yet, but I’m sure the right names will come to me.” 

“Milady!” You heard a shout from the house and looked back at it. Elena was waving furiously at you, trying to get your attention. “Your family is arriving!”

You swore under your breath and nudged sixteen into a swift trot. “Elena!” You tried to instruct her from your horse. “Pull out a red dress for me to wear and a white shawl. Have the household line up in front of the house. Nico should be at the doors. Make sure Oscar looks presentable and have Yuki find all of the alcohol.  We’ll need it.” Elena nodded sharply and ran back into the house. “Lando,” you directed. “I want you to tend to the horses at the front of the stable. My family came a day early- we’re unprepared, but it can’t seem like that.”

You hopped off number sixteen and thrust the reins into Lando’s hands. “May I say, Princess,” Lando called out as you ran to the Villa. “You're handling this very well. You make a remarkable leader.”

“Thank you, Lando.” He could tell that you were sincere. It was exactly what you needed to hear.

Sara rushed you upstairs the moment you stepped in the door. “May I ask, Princess,” she wondered as she undid the laces to your plain, around-the-house gown. “Why red? I thought you wanted to hold onto Williams for as long as you could.” 

“No, no, no,” you bundled your hair into an updo. “I don’t care about holding onto Williams- they did nothing for me. I’m simply trying to aggravate whomever I hate most of all. If I see my parents, I change to red for Enza. If I see Prince Charles, I change to blue for Williams.” 

“And if you see both?” Sara couldn’t help but smile at your antics. It reminded her of when you were younger, always finding a new mess to get into with your siblings. You stepped into the red dress and Sara pulled it up and started clipping and tying it into perfection.

“Ah, but that won’t ever happen.” You wagged a finger at her. “They don’t care enough to visit me at the same time.”

“Ma’am, they’re here.” Elena popped her head in the doorway and Sara yanked on the corset of your dress once more before twisting the strings into a bow.

You nodded, straightened your back, and strode down the stairs and out the door. The servants were already lined up elegantly and you couldn’t find one thing that your mother would pick apart. Two carriages stood outside, one containing your family, and the other, their belongings. You inwardly cringed at the amount of possessions they brought with them.

“Y/n, darling!” Your mother swept down from the carriage and embraced you tightly. “How have you been? Have you been surviving? It’s a momentous task to run a household and I was so worried you couldn’t live up to it.” 

Only three seconds in, and you already wanted to strangle her. If it were only your siblings, then their stay would’ve been joyful. Unfortunately, your parents had spontaneously invited themselves, filling you with annoyance and dread. 

“The wedding was phenomenal,” your father appeared at your mother’s side. “And how is Prince Charles? I assume he wanted to stay back at the palace, as this quaint house is no place for royalty, but I hope the wedding night went well?” 

“Why don’t you get settled in, hm?” You blatantly ignored their questions, not offering so much as a ‘hello’. Your mother tittered disapprovingly at your words, but sashayed in the house, looking for inconsequential details to criticise. Your father clapped a hand on your bare shoulder, making you jump. True to his word, Este had altered some of your dresses for warmer weather, but you were now regretting it. You pulled your shawl tighter around you.

“Y/n, I am so sorry.” Your sister’s voice made you turn around. Brenda looked terribly guilty as Robert helped her down. “I couldn’t find an excuse to stop them from coming.” 

“We tried,” Ralph rolled his eyes. “We tried so hard. But they persisted. They were adamant about visiting you.” 

“It’s alright,” you sighed. “I’m glad you three came along. It’ll be easier to diffuse the tension. How’s Cambria doing?” You asked Robert about his heavily pregnant wife. The doctor had confined her to bed, the reason why she wasn’t with him on this trip. 

“She’s splendid.” Robert grinned happily. “We’re both very excited. I’m cutting my visit short, however, to get back to her. I’ll only stay three days.”

“Oh, that’s fine! Give her my love when you return,” you said. You were delighted to have a niece or nephew. It would give you an excuse to visit Williams more often. 

“I feel so bad for Cambria and Robert.” Brenda shook her head and looped her arm through yours. “Mother’s been hounding them ever since she found out Cambria was with child. Ralph’s been lucky to escape her eye.”

“The only good thing about marriage,” you muttered. “Getting away from mother.”

Brenda made a noise of agreement. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

Dinner was stressed. Your father and Robert sat at the head. Ralph had drawn the short straw and had to sit next to your mother. Your glass of wine had been refilled three times. Awkward conversation had been sprinkled throughout, ranging from politics to talk of your recent marriage, though you wondered if they weren’t the same thing. Your father had delightedly bragged about the new finances and influx of immigrants that had been brought to Williams because of the new, prosperous relationship with Enza. You had ordered another round of drinks after that. 

Mercifully, Elena tapped on your shoulder, whispering, “Milady, may I talk to you? Something has come up.” 

You eagerly pushed away from the table and followed her to the foyer. “Please tell me this will take longer than fifteen minutes. I need a break from them. Don’t get me wrong, Elena, I love my family, especially my brothers and sisters, but sometimes my parents can be a bit much. I bought the Foundling Villa to escape everything, but people just keep showing up.” 

Elena grimaced and said, “On that note, Princess, uh, another visitor has arrived.” 

You pressed your fingers to your temples to try and stop the oncoming headache. “I will pay you double for the next year if you get them to go away. I don’t care who they are; I cannot stand someone else here.” 

“Yes, well, ma’am,” Elena stuttered through her words. “I’m not sure I can do that to your husband, who, if you’ve forgotten, is the prince of Enza.” 

Cursing, you threw open the door to see Prince Charles stepped down from a royal carriage bedecked in Enzan colours. He straightened his mantle, ran a hand through his hair, and then locked eyes with you. Prince Charles smiled sheepishly and shrugged, as if to say, Sorry, but I wanted to come see you.

“Elena.” You turned back to the frightened maid. “Please tell Sara to pick out a purple dress. I’m trying to displease many people tonight.”

#Foundling Villa #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc #charles leclerc imagine #charles leclerc one shot #f1 #f1 x reader #f1 fanfic #f1 imagine #lord perceval #monarchy #prince!charles leclerc x reader #prince!charles leclerc #lando norris #esteban ocon #este ocon #nico hulkenberg

[writing-good-vibes]

Hiii, so, for the Valentine's Day drabbles! Could you pretty please write the number 8 (Teddy Bear) from the fluffy prompts with Corey x Reader? That would be amazing! And it can be whatever you come up with, I'll be happy either way. Thank you so much for doing this and take all the time you need; even if it's past V-Day! You always come first, please remember that. Take care! <3 <3 <3

ahhh thank you for requesting !! 🥰 and for being sooo sweet, i really appreciate it !! happy valentine's day 💗 i hope you enjoy reading, because i really, really enjoyed writing this one !! no WARNINGS, only post accident!corey x gn!reader and fluff 💗

🧸 very cute divider by @/plutism 🧸

taglist: @slutforstabbings @ethanhoewke @voxmortuus (just let me know if you want to be added or removed !!)

Three whole years. That's how long you and Corey had been together. Three years but every time he held your hand in his you felt those sparks , every hug made you melt into the soft, safe, serene embrace of his big arms, and every kiss, tender and tentative, felt just like the first.

You remembered the first Valentine's day you and Corey had spent together. In the weeks leading up to it, you'd catch Corey looking at the Valentine's display; candy in heart-shaped boxes, bouquets of somehow permanently wilting roses, teddy bears with plush hearts clutched in their paws proclaiming I love you!

He'd blush if he caught you watching him, and would hurry up to the counter to let you ring up his pre-dinner snacks. He was cute. Opening the M&M's, he offers the bag to you, pouring you a handful to eat while you waited for your shift to end.

When the day finally arrived, you exchanged cards, half excited and half embarrassed. You went on break and sat outside on the curb with Corey, fingers intertwined and sharing one of the novelty heart-shaped lollipops you'd pilfered from the display. Smiling, you licked over the same spot Corey just had.

The next year, Corey had to work in the morning but clocked out at lunch, and you caught the Valentine's matinee at the movies.

He still smelt vaguely of car grease, you can see the spots of it that will never fully wash out of his henley, but when he holds your hand his fingers are scrubbed spotlessly pink.

It was quiet in the theatre, exactly what you expected for a weekday afternoon and perfect for Corey who hating being perceived in public, and the two of you sat at the back of the theatre sharing a bucket of popcorn and a bag of Hershey's Kisses as the dust motes, caught in the light of the projector, float around you.

Watching Corey is just as good as watching any movie. You can see the way his eyes track the movement of screen, that way you can tell exactly when he'll reach for more popcorn, and how he bites his lip in concentration.

Joy paints your cheeks as your lips meet Corey's in the dim darkness.

This year though, even though you were expecting another beautifully laidback date, Corey told you that he'd begged his step-dad to let him have the whole day off work this year, without telling his Momma, and that he had made plans for you guys.

Plans?

"We don't have to do anything big," you assured him, ringing up today's selection of treats; chocolate milk, a slim jim and some skittles. "I just like spending time with you."

"I know," he promised. "All I ever want is to spend time with you, but I want to treat you too." He rips open the skittles and pours some out into your hand.

On Valentine's morning, you open your door and find yourself face to face with the fluffiest brown fur. Corey stands with a teddy bear in his hands, and in the teddy's hands a velvety red heart proclaims, "I love you!"

You didn't recognise it as one you sold at the gas station, although it was similar. Had he gone somewhere else to buy it for you? The thought gets to you more than you might expect, thinking about Corey wandering the aisles of the Walmart, or the Dollar General, or even venturing to the mall in the next town over. Corey hated going anywhere.

"Happy Valentine's Day!" Corey says, handing you the teddy.

"Oh, Corey! He's so cute! Happy Valentine's Day," you pull him into a hug before you can even take the bear from him.

Corey throws one strong arm around you, you can feel his broad hand half-cover the expanse of your back through your shirt. Warm and safe.

When you part, you look down at the teddy again. Holding it beneath its armpits, you bring it to your face, nuzzling the chestnut-brown fur of its face. "Does he have a name?" you ask.

"He's for you, I think you're supposed to pick his name." Corey hasn't stopped blushing, even when you take his big hand in yours and lead him into your apartment. He settles on your couch, ready to wait while you finish getting ready.

"Hmm," you consider your options. The bear looks straight out of a story book with wide glass eyes and a felt snout, his fur really is chestnut-brown and swirls into little rosebud curls. "His name is Corey."

Boy-Corey's eyes are as wide and bright as Bear-Corey's when you look at him. "Are you sure? You don't have to --."

Corey's arms circle your waist when you sit in his lap, his legs spreading just slightly to cradle your weight, "You're the only person I want to cuddle, now I have something almost as cuddly as the real thing for when you're not here." Bear-Corey is nestled between the two of you, as if to prove your point.

One corner of Corey's lips quirk upwards, then the other, as a grin splits his face. Pleased, proud, he squeezes you tight, hiding his smile against your chest. You indulge him, petting at his hair and over his broad shoulders while he breaths you in, humming happily.

God, how badly you want to hold Corey like this forever, where you know he's safe, and loved, and you don't have to think about anything but the pinkness of his cheeks and the softness of his lips.

"So," you finally say, softly, reluctant to disturb this most perfect moment, but mindful of Corey having mentioned plans. "What romance awaits us for the rest of the day?"

on the topic of fluffy romance, you should also read:

first of many by blake (@/slutforstabbings). a little bit angsty, but watch corey and reader be obliviously in love.

amusement park date by toxic (@/toxicanonymity). toxic is a woman of many talents; she can write fluff just as well as she writes smut.

#corey cunningham x reader #💗💌 corey's love letters 💌💗 #did i use this as an excuse to write the fluffiest sweetest lovecore relationship possible ?? yes i did. #holding hands supremacy. giggly romance. sharing candy and afternoon movies #but also cuteness aggression 😳 #i hope you enjoyed reading !! 💗💗💗💗

[atom-writings]

this may be a weird request and feel free to ignore this if you're not comfortable doing it for whatever reason but I saw the request with a British S/O and I thought how about main 8 with a Jewish S/O? Being Jewish myself I just wanna see some S/O representation cuz there's almost 0 in the hetalia fandom and it'd make my week ❤️ ty in advance 😭 (this was longer than I meant it to be ahh sorryyy)

(Hetalia Main 8 x Reader) Jewish S/O!

(Gender Neutral) Scenario ~ A/N omg this is not a weird request at all!!! Im very happy to do this one!!!! Recently i have been seriously considering converting but idk wher to start fjkhjf sorry for taking so long!! PLS LET ME KNOW IF I SAID ANYTHING INACCURATE DEAR LORD

Trigger Warning: Religious stuff obviously, other than that just Fluff!

Alfred supports and loves you completely! His country was supposed to be a land of religious freedom, and he will defend that right to his death, goddamnit!

He has some basic knowledge of the Jewish faith, but most of the information he’s been told is horribly Christianized. A lot of is inaccurate, but rarely downright offensive. So when you correct him, he’ll end up asking a million follow-up questions. Maybe just bring him next time along you go to synagogue…

Now, anyone whose friends with him, is gonna know just as much as he does. If any religious thing gets brought up, he’s immediately trying to educate the rest of them on Judaism. It’s cute but… he’s also maybe a bit too enthusiastic. It’s like trivia night but the trivia is just things you’ve told him about your faith.

As happy as he is to spend time relaxing during Shabbat, he may get a little antsy… and a little annoying. It’s probably all that capitalist wiring messing up his brain, he’ll get used to it eventually.

Arthur has never delved deep into any religion since… well… not since the BCs. So your religion plays no part in his feelings towards you, he’d love you the same no matter what.

Even if he develops some affection for your faith, it’s unlikely he’ll be open to converting. Nothing personal, he supports you completely, it’s just… he’s just found that being religious leads to much more conflict than he prefers. 

But… if you want a wedding soon, he’s all in from the start. His country is known for their weddings, remember? And now the two of you will have to somehow throw the biggest Jewish wedding in the whole of Europe. Under your guidance, of course. Really, it’s just that Arthur wants to prove something about the two of you. But at least your family will have fun. Maybe.

Most of the holidays you celebrate, he won’t join in on unless you beg. He tells you it’s because he’s a protestant (he’s not,) but really he just feels like he’s intruding on your culture. But the days spent deliberately relaxing, doing nothing but eating traditional food? He can get behind those pretty easily.

Francis sees your Jewishness as nothing more than another fascinating piece in the painting that you are. If something is important to you, it’ll become important to him too!

Depending on your devotion level, he’ll try to support you as much as possible. But if your life revolves around your faith, he may get a little concerned. I mean,  being devoted is great! But your health and safety should come first as well. At least, that’s what he believes.

He himself, subscribes to no religion. Throughout the centuries, he’s passed from one to another, even being Jewish for a decade or two! But… that was also in the 200s… and he didn’t really commit. But if you want him to commit this time, he is absolutely ready to.

Oh, and the holidays? He would love to join you in observing them. Even the one which involve worship, he’ll happily do it as well, if you would want him to. He’ll even make a bunch of food to bring! Having such a strong community is something that’s really important to him, so he’d love to share that with you.

Whatever you believe in, it makes no difference to Yao. As long as you don’t think he’s going to hell, he’s cool with it… oh, you don’t believe there is a hell? Even better then!

He has seen many different belief systems rise and fall, so he’s never been that religious himself. The only thing he’s ever truly believed in were the things taught to him at birth, and even then he questions. But whatever makes sense to you, he’ll go along with it as well.

If you’re uber-devoted, it’s one of the main things he admires about you. It shows your courage and the strength of your ethics. Both traits he shares with you! Just… about different things. But if you’re not super into your faith, that’s totally fine too. That just means he doesn’t have to do as much.

As much as he loves taking things slow and enjoying the little things in life, he’s  quite the workaholic at heart. After a few Shabbat weekends, he’s itching to just spend time working on his home projects. All of which are…  pretty intense.

This is absolutely wonderful! Ivan would love a Jewish S/O, as he really respects the religion and culture surrounding it. 

Surprisingly, for an Orthodox Christian, he’s very familiar with the faith. Especially its history with his own religion. He rationalizes the differences between you as simply different ways to worship the same thing. Whether or not that’s accurate is up for debate, but either way, he supports you fully.

He’d love to observe Shabbat with you! Setting aside time, specifically just to enjoy the peaceful, domestic beauties of life… he completely understands why this would be a holy practice. He’s a little upset his own people haven’t caught onto that yet… why doesn’t everyone do that?

He’s… very enthusiastic about the concept of marrying you. Regardless of whether his church approves or your synagogue, he believes you two can mix traditions and have the most wonderful wedding. After all, nothing about the two of you is conventional in the first place!

While Feliciano may be devout himself to another religion, he has nothing but love in his heart for yours. Your differences only bring you two closer!

Always the romantic, he’s already planning your wedding in his head. And he wants it to completely align with your faith’s traditions! He’s had plenty of his own weddings before now, so he’d love to make it special for you and your family. He’s been saving just for a grand wedding like that!

Considering how strongly Catholic he is, he knows quite a lot about Jewish history. Religion has always been one of his little fascinations… so he’s very enthusiastic about learning about your faith. He’ll be a little awkward at first, not knowing which questions are ok to ask, but eventually, he’ll figure it out.

If you ask him to, he’ll observe some holidays with you, but most of the time he goes out of his way not to. Just in the same way that he tries not to involve you in his own practices. He doesn’t want you to feel like he’s overwriting your faith, and he’s careful not to intrude. He’s a bit overly sensitive in that way, but it means well.

While Ludwig himself does not care for religion, he respects your devotion greatly! Your beliefs harm no one, so he’ll happily support you in any way you ask of him.

Frankly, he’d probably be the most likely person on this list to convert. It reminds him of the faith his rulers have tried to instil in him, but in a more peaceful and traditional way that appeals to him. It wouldn’t take much of a push to get him all in-

Even if he doesn’t convert, he’s still nothing but happy to come along with anything you bring him to. He’ll be a little awkward, feeling out of place, at the start. But as long as you’re inviting him, he might as well get as much experience as he can!

Regardless of his current convictions, he’s unlikely to join you in observing any of the less vital holidays and practices. He’s still young for a nation and he’s quite the workaholic, so he’s always running from one place to the next. But if you get him to settle down and connect with himself more spiritually, it’d probably do him some good.

Kiku trusts you completely, so whatever religion you believe in, he’ll be right there beside you. Not in converting, per se, but he’ll gladly join you in any open celebrations or gatherings!

He shows his support for your beliefs in a… very Kiku way. He won’t bring it up often, but he’ll do a ton of research on his own time. You never have to remind him when an important holiday is coming up! He knows. And don’t worry, he’s got everything you need already. But will he come to synagogue with you? Well… maybe.

Frankly, I can’t imagine him being a marriage person. If that’s what you want, he’s totally up for it, but don’t expect him to do much planning himself. The one gripe he might have is just that he wants a small wedding… so hopefully, you do too.

#hetalia imagines #hetalia x reader #heta tag #aph america x reader #hws america x reader #alfred tag #aph england x reader #hws england x reader #arthur tag #aph france x reader #hws france x reader #francis tag #aph china x reader #hws china x reader #yao tag #aph russia x reader #hws russia x reader #ivan tag <3 #aph italy x reader #hws italy x reader #feliciano tag #aph germany x reader #hws germany x reader #ludwig tag #aph japan x reader #hws japan x reader #kiku tag #i hope i did. ok. judaism is so awesome

[lonelier-version-of-you]

Anyway it’s S20E14 time, which means the arrival of Queen Abigail Tate :)

Edit 1: Ooh, I’d forgotten this was a Joe Ainsworth one!

Also, remember when stuff that happened in Holby actually had consequences for the hospital? In late Holby, Ric would’ve been right back to normal the minute he arrived at work, despite just having spent months in prison.

Edit 2: Abigail saying she could ask Henrik for advice on being CEO. DON’T, Abigail.

Edit 3: JASON’S HERE, SEND HELP. Also argh Serena going “why don’t we leave Mr. Griffin here to do what he does best??” Jason’s not a child, Serena, even if the writers think he is.

Edit 4: Extremely funny how obsessed these writers were with the word “sapphic” solely to avoid having to decide if Serena was a lesbian or bi.

Edit 5: Fantastic little bit of dialogue. Roxanna, regarding a patient’s risky surgery: “A risk only an addict would take.” The patient: “What does that make John Gaskell?”

Edit 6: Fun fact: you don’t need a risky surgery to have your sense of joy and happiness destroyed, you just need to watch the last 4 years of Holby.

Edit 7: JOHNRIK

Edit 8: I love Johnrik flirting. Also - Henrik wearing pinkish-purple and John wearing blue. Love that.

Edit 9: John talking about “knowing when to stop” like he’s ever been able to do that in his life.

Edit 10: Abi and Fletch was the most forced het romance.

Edit 11: John being baffled by the patient calling Rox “Foxy Roxy”. I tell you he’s gay.

Edit 12: Very early-Henrik esque behaviour from John regarding pushing the patient to have the operation.

Also I’d forgotten what the fuck Abi did to the CEO office. Guy Henry hated it too, actually - the reason they didn’t stick with the green paint was because Guy demanded they change back to a more subtle design once Henrik returned to being CEO.

Edit 13: I checked the interview, it sounds like he actually meant he didn’t like the design of the CEO office around the time he first came back for his second stint (so in 2015). Whatever. The 2018 design still sucks.

Edit 14: Anyway I swear I’m about to start screaming at this patient’s ableist mum lmao.

Edit 15: Serena very hypocritically trying to confront the ableist lady in question lmaooo.

Edit 16: The John and Rox relationship was really fascinating. Do wish so much of the storyline hadn’t been spent on repetitive arguments between the two of them though lol.

Edit 17: “You said ‘thank you Henrik’. What did you mean?” “Let’s focus on the task at hand.” I’d forgotten entirely about this scene! Probably because this one is another episode I haven’t seen since 2018.

Edit 18: John being crazy (affectionate) on main in this episode.

Edit 19: HENRIK

Edit 20: “John, if I hadn’t been there... would you have carried on?” :’))

Edit 21: Abi deserved better than the forced Fletch romance.

Edit 22: Ah, the archetypical Holby “patient makes their injury worse in the middle of an emotional outburst” scene.

Edit 23: The first of several Frankenstein comparisons with Gaskell.

Edit 24: When John says they could try the surgery again, the patient says “So he can still get the headline?”. John bows his head and doesn’t respond.

Edit 25: This whole scene with Ric wondering whether he still fits in at the hospital and considering leaving is really, really sad in light of Hugh Quarshie leaving the show because of how much it changed.

Edit 26: Love John inviting Rox onto the trial because Henrik suggested it.

Edit 27: This patient’s mum is driving me mad.

Edit 28: I had COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN this John and Abi scene existed.

Also lol. Abi saying to John “if you screw up, we all go down”. Actually he screwed up majorly and there was no aftermath to it.

#gaskell rewatch liveblog

[alicedoessurveys]

1 - When was the last time you spent over £100 in one transaction? What did you buy?  the food shop, huzzah for cost of living crisis

2 - Do you sleep with a stuffed animal? Would you judge a grown adult for doing so? I do. I have a stuffed sloth teddy (my emotional support sloth). as a teenager I was embarrassed about it and worried people would judge but now as a 28 year old I don't give a shit.

3 - Would you describe yourself as fashion-conscious, or do you just wear whatever feels comfortable?  I mean, I care what I look like but I will always choose comfort over style.

4 - The last time you got up from where you’re sitting, where did you go and what did you do? 

5 - Would you rather read an erotic novel or watch an erotic film?  neither thank you 🙈

6 - Who taught you how to tell the time on a proper analogue clock?  primary school teachers I guess

7 - What’s your favourite way to make your home smell good? Do you spend a lot of money on making this happen?  reed diffusers and plug in air fresheners. they don't have to be expensive, I get mine from Aldi

8 - How long have you had the computer/tablet you’re currently using? Does it need replacing or upgrading?  gotta be almost 10 years now. and because its apple its starting to give up life. but I can't afford to replace it.

9 - When you’re home alone, do you make sure all your doors are kept locked? I live alone, I always keep my doors locked unless I know someone is coming round.

10 - How often do you light candles? Do you just like regular ones or do you prefer scented ones or ones that make pretty patterns when they melt?  I have SO many candles and vary rarely actually remember to light them. I like scented ones.

11 - Are you any good at taking care of plants?  it is impossible for plants to survive in my care. I don't understand it. they just die. all the plants in my home are artificial.

12 - How many surveys have you taken so far today? Will you take anymore surveys today once you’ve finished this one?  this is the second one today. I plan to play sims after this.

13 - What are the main two colours in the room you’re currently in? Did you pick these colours out yourself?  the room is mainly white/cream but the wall behind me is painted with pink, blue and grey asymmetrical triangles. I decorated it myself.

14 - What was the last hot drink you consumed? What about cold drink?  had a toffee nut latte a few hours ago. current drinking cream soda.

15 - Do you have piercings anywhere except your ears? How many and what are they?  I have no piercings.

16 - Do you prefer taking baths or showers? How come?  I like a good bath, but it always results in my kitchen flooding because there's a leak so I tend to have showers. but my shower has shit water pressure and the temperature fluctuates between too hot and too cold so I don't enjoy showers.

17 - What time do you need to wake up tomorrow morning? What is it that you have to be up for?  8.30am.. 9am at the latest. I have church in the morning and its mothers day so I have to make sure I don't forget to take her presents

18 - If you work, how often do you get paid? Would you prefer to get paid more or less often?  I get paid at the end of every month which is fine tbh, just would like to be on more than £8 an hour

19 - What does your favourite pair of pyjamas look like? Do you wear them to sleep or just to be comfy around the house?  they're Hufflepuff ones. yellow long sleeve top with the house badge on, and yellow checkered leggings. super soft, suuuuuuper comfy.

20 - How often do you wake up in the night needing a pee?  not often.

21 - What apps do you use the most on your phone?  insta, Tumblr, WhatsApp, snapchat, bible

22 - Do you prefer cats or dogs? Do you own any of either?  I like both, but I LOVE dogs cause I work with them. I don't personally own any, but my family do.

23 - Do you have one of those fridges that has an ice-maker in the front? If not, would you find one useful?  I don't but I wish I did.

24 - Do you like wearing hats? What’s your favourite style?  I do. I like beanie hats. also don't mind wearing a cap in the summer.

25 - If you live in a household with pets, who is responsible for their care - both in terms of finance and the physical tasks involved? Im a single paw-rent to a house rabbit so all responsibility falls on me.

26 - What’s your opinion on leggings as pants? literally my work uniform

27 - Have you ever driven in bare feet or do you think that’s too dangerous?  I don't think I have. I think ive driven in socks before but it was uncomfortable

28 - Have you ever walked out of a job before? What were the circumstances and did you ever go back?  I have. I worked in a primary school during the pandemic. the covid rules at the time meant each class was supposed to be its own 'bubble' and wasn't allowed to mix with other classes but this school fully ignored it and had kids from multiple classes mixing together in a small room. the kids were always coughing on each other, licking things, one kid constantly had snot running down his face. it was a germ factory and I have health anxiety. I was also stressed because my 3 year old niece was in hospital and one day it just got too much and I had a panic attack and walked out. my boss had no understanding at all, turned it round to paint herself as a victim and basically was a bitch so I quit. and thank God I did because 2 months later I got hired as a dog walker :)

29 - Do you collect anything? Are these things worth money or are they practical/sentimental items?  I collect funko pop figures and yes I take them out the box. they have sentimental meaning to me because most of them were gifts from my best friend who died last year. we would always buy them for each other at Christmas

30 - Do you have anything hanging from your ceiling apart from lights?  nope

#long #survey #tag

[chill-that-ur-inmyhead]

Are you between the ages of 30 & 40?

Not yet :)

What was your favourite Saturday morning cartoon growing up?

As to whether it was Saturday morning I am unsure, but Scooby Doo immediately pops into my head

What was your favourite toy as a child?

All my barbies

In High School, did you wear acid washed jeans?

I had a uniform in secondary school and I think I missed the acid wash jeans trend

How much was a gallon of gasoline when you first started driving?

Mmmm whatever the prices were in 2021 UK.

What was your first car?

I drove my mum's ford fiesta but have yet to buy and own my first car and already planning a mini countryman green or black preferably but probs will just take whatever I can afford at the time haha

Who taught you how to drive?

My mum sat alongside me but just practice and I had three different instructors (due to moving around)

What was your high school mascot?

We did not have one , or I suppose you could say it was Jesus as a catholic school. Haha

Did you go to your Senior Prom?

I did go to prom

What did you do after graduation?

Tried to find a job but it was the pandemic so took me some time

What was your first job?

Worked in Gap part time during uni

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Working for Vogue

Any posters on your bedroom walls growing up?

YES! In fact, for a time I had wall to wall posters of the classic pop mainstream celebs, Taylor, 1D, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Beyonce etc

Do you remember the first time you drank a beer?

Probs tried some whenever my mum had some maybe 18 but didn't like it

Did you ever try cigarettes?

Nope

How did you spend your summers growing up?

Usually we would go on holiday mainly in the UK and to see extended family.

If you could change anything from your teenage years, would you?

I would start learning to drive earlier!

Do you remember your first time?

Yes

Ever look back and wish some things were still the same?

Yes, I miss socialising with friends and meeting new people. I am currently unemployed and so my days are mostly spent looking for jobs alone. I didn't realise how surrounded by people I was and how much I would miss it until it was gone. Life is taking a slower pace right now.

After high school - straight to college or straight to work?

Uni

How much did you make per hour at your first job?

Pretty sure it was £8 something an hour

Favourite home-cooked meal growing up?

Fish fingers classic!

Favourite place to eat out growing up?

Pizza Hut - the ice cream machine was unlimited refills

Did your parents live in a different country before you were born?

Nope

Do you have a preferred coffee brand?

Nope

Have you ever dated someone who was terrible with money?

Nope

If so, how did it affect the relationship?

How often do you paint your nails?

I go to the salon just over once a month

Do you know anyone who’s related to a current or former world leader?

Not that I know of off the top of my head

What is something you don’t have any natural talent for?

Balance sport - skateboarding, surfing etc which sucks

Did you watch this year’s Eurovision?

Nope

Have there been any periods in your life that could be described as being chaotic?

Yes, pretty sure I have consistently had chaotic moments throughout

What is something you frequently forget?

I would say I am pretty good at remembering most things, I write things down in my calendar. Maybe when my life picks up the pace a little, I will start forgetting things.

If I looked in your fridge right now, what would I find?

Cheese, yoghurt, peppers, cucumber, celery, hummus, milk and much more. Very much an ingredient household.

How do you feel about your body?

Yikes. It is a work in progress. I'm trying to get into an active routine but I know it will change when I get a job.

Who is someone you would like to get to know better?

I don't think I have met them yet!

What is something that turned out for the best recently?

My friend invited me last minute to see Renee Rapp in London. I technically was busy but could have rearranged things if I really wanted. I said that 2024 was the year where I wanted to see more artists live but I am glad I didn't go because:

The tickets were standing and I'm not about that rock n roll life, much prefer seated tickets, that way I'm not packed into a crowd like a sardine. I watched a live stream of the concert and I joined at a moment where there was a break, for the concert employees to give out water to the crowd because it was so hot in the venue. Just from the concert stream I was feeling claustrophobic! (Maybe 2024 will be about learning about myself better and being okay with it!)

It is an hours journey into London and the venue was North London so essentially it adds an extra 30 mins to the journey time. Living at home means my sociable hours are limited to during daylight but as soon as it is night, I am indoors. Ofc when I move out I will go to any event at any time mostly because I won't have the stress of getting back at a certain time and feel guilty if I am keeping anyone up. And ofc there will be plenty of opportunities later in the year to see artists live, this won't be the last time :)

If you had to move to a new city, where would you move?

I would love to live and work in Paris for a while.

Have you ever travelled on a double-decker train?

I think the train from Paris to Versailles was a double decker.

What’s your opinion on assisted suicide?

Pro

At what point do you consider a relationship to be ‘long-term?’

After the first year mark.

What jobs did your parents have when you were growing up?

IT jobs

Do they still have these jobs? Or different jobs? Or have they retired?

Both retired.

Do you own any winter sports equipment?

Not yet but love to get into skiing.

Do you have a cell contract plan, or are you on a pre-paid plan?

Umm I own my phone and just pay monthly.

#surveys #spicynightlife #03/03/2024

[pinkprincessbehaviour]

28/9/23 8:24am

I'm unsure how to deal with death. How to tell people when they ask me, how I am. My Dad died in an accident in the Philippines. I was woken up at 4:51am by my alarm going off for work (it was automatically set even though I didn't work that day). Then I saw a voicemail left at that time by his girlfriend, telling me to call back as it was an emergency. I tried calling back but she was calling my sister. I then spoke to her, wailing. Saying there was an accident, I guess it was already clear what had happened. Something in my mind already clicked but I needed her to say it. He was drunk, he fell down the stairs, there was a lot of blood.

Nothing seems real, the last few days seem like such a dream. Like if I killed myself, maybe I'd wake up from whatever this universe is. He didn't deserve to die like that, no one does. But he was 70 and still had a good 15-20 years on him.

My grief bounces between random outbursts of crying then uncontrollable anger. My borderline personality disorder never seemed more stable? As I feel too shocked? To correctly feel as intense as usual? Unsure, it is difficult to really know what I'm feeling right now.

Dear Dad, I wish I had spent more time with you, but that's probably what everyone always wishes for. More time when it's too late. You irritated me with how drunk you got, almost recklessly drunk especially at family dinners. I remember once being worried you would fall on the road since you were stumbling. You however were too proud to let me help you. Or too proud to let anyone help you. I love you. You took my sister and I to ovals when we were little to kick a soccer ball around and to places to play tennis, squash and badminton. It was strange when I compare things to how it was later. I didn't fully appreciate these actions and how busy you were with work and household chores to be able to take your two daughters out regularly on the weekends. Sometimes just randomly you would wake and announce we were going to the beach. Palm Beach specifically was where we went to. Once even hiring a boat to go off and explore random beaches around Palm Beach. One traumatically surrounded by jellyfish which we escaped from pretty quickly. You always made sure there was dinner for Rose and I. Cooking was one of you hobbies. Always asking how Rose and I enjoyed the food even when you were at work. On your days off - Wednesday and Thursday which became almost like weekends in my mind. You made the most amazing meals. You and your crazy ideas, once when I on my way to therapy scratched my car on the carport wall. You decided to get orange spray paint to stop my car from rusting and spray it on my mulberry coloured vehicle. It looked so random but did the job. You retired and it didn't seem like the life for you really. You were bored but you entertained yourself with watching stuff on youtube and probably regularly terrorizing Dina (his girlfriend - well I suppose I should say partner). You had knee replacements which seemed to slow you down and you didn't eat as much as you used to. I guess all this comes regularly with age perhaps, but it was sad seeing this. Meanwhile you went on all these different trips with Dina. Which I'm thankful for, I'm sure you enjoyed all the adventures. Sadly the recent one was the one where you died. But I remember the last time I saw you, how happy you were about going to Japan. Going to the convenience stores and seeing everything they had in them. You sounded so excited.

Your body looked like you were sleeping, like you would just wake up and start a conversation about something that happened at work before. Like all the confused patients and all the staff you liked/disliked. I've been asked why I keep the screenshots of your face/body. Dressed in the suit you were meant to wear for the wedding you both went to the Philippines for. I guess I keep them for myself. To have something of you still. To look at them and remind myself you are sleeping now. To try to remind myself you will not wake and this is real life. That this bizarre reality is reality.

I love you and wish I was a better daughter to you. One that saw you more/took more time out with you. Just to even talk about your past which you occasionally told stories about. You never gave too many details about yourself on the best of days, but that is something I will always wish for. Knowing about your life more - apart from your nursing life. Seeing pictures of you when you were younger with long blonde hair and an edgy looking face. I wonder how you were back then, back when you were my age. I wonder a lot of different things, a lot of what if's.

I also wish that I died instead of you and think that if I killed myself maybe I could keep you company and go to wherever you are.

Life is a confusing mess - life is also so short - I get little bursts of wanting to take the entire world on before puttering out into grief. I love you so much Ellie

[sylverstorms]

Cassandra x Maiden ----Anonymity Ch. 11 (NSFW) (END)

Ch.1 Ch2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.6 Ch.7 Ch.8 Ch.9 Ch.10

If you are curious to know what my version of Alexia looks like, check here

All maids are dismissed from dinner at night.

The doors are kept sealed shut. It is clear whatever the Dimitrescus are discussing is not for ears outside of their family's to overhear.

You are thankful for the windows you have to focus on repairing while they talk. It keeps you from overthinking and that keeps you sane.

Once everything is fixed, the only physical sign of the nightmarish day you had is Cassandra's sickle, still embedded within what is no doubt a priceless painting.

You approach slowly, as though the weapon has a will of its own and can turn right around to finish the job of gutting you. Your fingers close around the leather handle. The first pull does nothing. The blade is so firmly lodged it won't budge an inch.

But you are nothing if not determined.

That is what you busy yourself with until you see a familiar fly come to land on your shoulder. It doesn't cut at your flesh, but it does bite and tug on your shirt. You understand the silent command to follow.

The insect leads you to the dining room. The table is cleaned, but the daughters are all still there, talking in hushed tones among themselves, poker faces adorning their expressions.

Three sets of yellowish eyes immediately fall to the sickle in your hand. Bela raises an amused eyebrow. The redhead whistles. "That looks sexy on you~"

"Can't imagine it would look as good in me." You give Cassandra a pointed look as you pull the chair beside her, but she only shrugs and leans back, motioning for you to hand it over.

"No... did you throw it at her?" Daniela guffaws. "And you missed?"

A sour grimace comes from the brunette. "I wasn't trying that hard..."

"What if I hadn't dodged?" you ask.

"...well. It's good that you did." Cassandra looks down at her manicured nails, as apologetic as she'll let herself be in front of her sisters.

"Do I want to know what was hit instead of Alexia?" Bela carefully asks.

"You really don't." Cassandra shakes her head and they leave it at that for both their sake.

"So." Bela speaks up after a brief moment of silence. "After our discussion with mother, we are to inform you that you're free to come and go from the castle as you please. Cassandra's key is as much hers as it is yours, now. But. Should any other maid escape using it or learn of our weakness, we'll have to do something nobody here wants."

"We'll have to brutally murder you to make an example. And whoever knows." Daniela cuts in and Cassandra gives her a glare. You aren’t looking forward to learning what their interpretation of the word ‘brutal’ is like.

"Yeah I... I could have guessed that." you reply.

"But I'm sure you're smart enough to not let that happen." Bela states. "This settles everything, I think."

"Not everything." Cassandra retorts, a shadow around her eyes.

"Cassandra, drop it. You heard what mother said." The blonde's tone grows harsh.

"What did she say, other than what we already knew?" comes the sharp bite back. "Why is she so vague every time one of us asks how we came to be?"

"I'm sure she has a good reason. What does it even matter about before?"

"Because I'm sick of having nightmares about people I don't remember!" Cassandra slams her hands onto the table. Both you and Daniela flinch back a bit.

You could have already guessed Alcina is not their biological mother. But a lot of puzzle pieces fall into place before your eyes now. And this new picture you're starting to see of the Dimitrescu family isn't a pretty one at all.

The tension between the two siblings is enough to electrify the air around the table.

"Did you ever consider it's probably for the best that you never do remember them?" Bela asks, her irritation ice-cold as opposed to Cassandra's sizzling fire. "Maybe there's a reason nightmares are all that's left."

You can see your lover's jaw clench. Cassandra's fingers curl into white-knuckled fists as she sits back down. "Don't you get these flashes? These almost-memories?"

"No." Bela says as she stands to leave. "I don't get them. And even if I did, I don't much care for leftovers."

"Daniela?" Cassandra asks, turning to her younger sister.

"I uh... I gotta go do a... thing. Bye now!" The redhead disperses into a swarm right there, before any more can be said.

Cassandra huffs in an exasperated, 'of course' manner. Only the two of you are left in the gigantic room, but you're not sure if you should speak up. You're not exactly confident in your ability to comfort others, nor can you tell where she and you currently stand. It doesn't look like either of you has the energy for any type of loaded talk.

You need each other, that much is as certain as the sun’s rise and fall.

And that's enough, for now.

-

-

Within the next few days, Cassandra and you take your time gravitating back together.

You let the thought of her ripping you in half slowly bleed away and she probably does the same with the notion of you using her weakness against her.

It starts with little touches, on your shoulder or your hand, as you make plans to spend a night or two in your house at the village once the temperature allows it.

Then one evening she comes to your room complaining about Daniela just like the old times and it feels only natural to rub her back like you used to.

Cassandra leans into you like a purring cat.

"Oh, you're so warm..." she sighs, resting her head atop your shoulder.

Absent-mindedly, you bring your travelling fingers up to her nape, pressing at a tiny knot of tension there with your thumb. A little moan slips past her lips –you're aware of just how close to touching your neck they are– and it hits you straight in the gut. You've missed drawing these sounds out of her.

Cassandra shifts against you and every minuscule brush of her lithe form on yours brings sparks to life. Her finger reaches under your chin to tip it her way.

"If you want us to stop here I need to leave now." she speaks with that impatience in the edges of her voice you recognize well.

"What happens if you stay?" you ask. It's not just your body warming at the thought of keeping her close.

"Don't tempt me, Alexia." Her lower lip just barely traces yours as she says it. "I'm not good at resisting and you know it."

You know it. Maybe that's why you tempt her with another almost-kiss in the first place. You could never deny how badly you wanted her and that certainly hasn't changed.

Cassandra crashes your mouths together hungrily, like she's been left without it for too long and now she can't go another second without having you. Her leg crosses over yours to lift herself into straddling you, two strong thighs bracketing your hips tight.

She's trying, you can tell, to not tear both your clothes off and have what she craves hard and fast and right there.

You keep a smirk to yourself when you slip your tongue into her mouth and unhook the buttons of her outfit extra slow. Her nails press into your shoulders. You refuse to speed up.

"Can you go any faster?" she breathily pants once you trail your lips to her neck.

"I can." you say. And lightly bite her.

She's one step away from ripping your shirt off, you can tell from how her fingers curl on the fabric. So you make the smarter choice and distract her with another little bite where you know she likes it best, just underneath her ear, then guide her clothes off of her.

Cassandra pushes you back into the mattress and kisses you again while her cool hands make short work of your clothes. You let her grind her hips into you for some measure of relief as you continue to suck and nibble on her flushed, sensitive skin. Her hands find purchase on your sheets when she no longer trusts her control to have them on you.

"Will you touch me already?" she growls into your ear. You can feel how badly she needs it from the way she shakes on every caress near her center, but this is your payback for that sickle throw.

"I am." you give her a smirk, then lightly push a fingertip into tight, wet heat to cut off her response.

"Ah. I— fuck Alexia!" You've never heard her curse before. And you can't figure out why it's so sinfully hot. “Oh, yes, darling, there!”

As much as she deserves to be tormented for the fright she gave you, you can hardly contain your own lust when she's moving on top of you like this, calling you ‘darling’ and hers.

Both of you come undone not long after, gripping at each other, her soft cries of pleasure filling the room until she lowers her head over your heart, completely spent.

Your fingers gently comb through her wavy hair. For quite some time, Cassandra looks so relaxed you think she has fallen asleep on you.

Until she lifts her head up and nuzzles your jawline, in a way she probably knows kills you every time she does it. Her teeth trap your earlobe. That spells trouble even before she speaks up:

"You didn't think one round would do it, did you? After all, I have yet to pay you back for sneaking into my room and stealing my key, darling…"

Well.

It turns out you won a battle and started a war that lasts throughout the night. And it's only the first, you're sure, of many to come.

For once in your life, you can't wait for what's next.

#cassandra dimitrescu #cassandra dimitrescu x oc #lady dimitrescu #bela dimitrescu #daniela dimitrescu #fanfiction #writing #resident evil village #resident evil 8 #thank you for all the support it has been crazy

[heloisedaphnebrightmore]

Alone? Together! [Sirius Black x Reader] - Requested

Title: Alone? Together Pairing: Sirius Black x Reader Word count: 1.5k Published: 8 July 2021 Author: Heloise Daphne Brightmore Notes: Post-Azkaban era (kind of fix it fic) Summary: The war has taken a toll on everyone and Sirius finds himself useless whilst hiding at Grimmauld Place. His own thoughts are eating him up, wanting to be reckless, but not daring to lose those he loves. When you arrive to sooth his worries, your strength reassures him that he is not alone, that whatever happens, you can face it together. Request: [x] Prompts requested by @sexysirius for my celebration event.

Sirius Black x Reader Warm embrace / Hug prompts #14 - "Hugging with head on shoulder" Showing affection / Kiss prompts #21 - “we’ll face this together” kisses

Harry Potter Characters Masterlist | Masterlists

Battle of Swords; 2.9k followers and 1st anniversary celebration event

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Wars have always had a big impact on people's lives. Whether it be a yearlong fight or a decade, it took a toll on those who were affected by it. Lives have been lost, people have gone missing, meanwhile others were driven into madness. It was draining, both physically, mentally, and emotionally. Wars were dark times, making everyone suffer, regardless of the side they decided to support. And for what? Power? Greed? People fought for their lives and their loved ones', for their independence and freedom. But the sacrifices wars have demanded were endless and heart-wrenching.

Sirius laid down in his room, limbs thrown across his bed, saddened eyes staring at the ceiling. Grimmauld Place was unusually calm. Sirius hated silence; it made his mind wander to places he never wished to go back to. Not only Azkaban and the years he had spent in silence beating himself up about entrusting Peter with their friend's lives, his friend's greediness and his own judgement in people causing nothing but grief. But the death of his friends, Lily and James, who had done nothing but good, fighting against those whose hunger for power demanded innocent lives. And Harry. Little Harry's upbringing, who thought he had no one left in this damned world, but his half-wit aunt whose mere presence was poisonous and her family who hated Harry from the moment they set eyes on him.

Sirius cursed under his breath, the memories flooding through his mind, vividly replaying every horrible moment he wished he could forget. But a part of him wanted to remember, He wanted to remember the memories, the rage that dwelled within him. Wanted to be angry and hate Voldemort and all his lap dogs, wanted to make them suffer. But he thought about it twice. His rage was endless indeed and he could have gone reckless and wild, he would have done so if he had nothing to lose. But he couldn't do as he wished, not as he heard your loud chuckle from downstairs, breaking the deadly silence. Not as Harry's loud steps were heard from the corridor as he scoffed at something. Sirius could practically sense his reaction, a frustrated eye roll, just like James had done so many times before.

He couldn't get himself to risk losing you, Harry or Remus and Tonks. He would have never forgiven himself for putting his loved ones in danger, regardless of how angry he was, how much he wanted to forget everything and slaughter everyone who thought starting this nonsense of a fight was worth something. He, Voldemort, deserved a long and painful death, one that would have made him suffer as much as each and every death his meaningless war demanded. But Sirius couldn't do it. Not with so many lives at stake. A heavy sigh left his lungs as he rubbed his eyes, feeling useless in his situation, in his own body.

"Hello, handsome," you opened the door to his room, a sweet smile painted across your face. Sirius couldn't stop himself from mirroring your expression, he couldn't stop smiling whenever you were around. You were the light in his darkness, the one that made him feel at ease even in the midst of his swirling thoughts, ones that made him feel incapable of doing anything. But your mere presence, a tiny smile of yours made him feel like times would be better, that it was not the end, that one day you would wake up to a better world. You were his hope, his light, his power. He had you and he couldn't imagine waking up in a world where you weren't beside him. The thought made his skin crawl.

His arms reached for you as he sat up on the edge of the bed, wanting to feel you, needing to remind himself that you were real. With a silent giggle you walked up to him and sat down on his lap, hinting a kiss on his forehead, his nose, his cheek before finally pressing your lips against his. His arms sneaked around your waist as you wrapped yours around his shoulders, letting him lean into your warm embrace, his head buried in the curve of your shoulder. "What's bothering you, love?" You asked, placing a finger under his chin, lifting his gaze to meet yours.

"Nothing," he shook his head, earning an incredulous scoff from you.

"You are going to have to try harder than that if you want me to believe you," you placed a hand on his cheek, caressing his jaw, the subtle stubble pricking your thumb. Your other arm still rested around him reassuringly, knowing he needed you more than he let on.

"I'm just thinking," he shrugged nonchalantly, not wanting to worry you.

"Oh, is that so? Now I understand why you seem down. It's been a long time since you used that smart little head of yours, huh?" You tilted your head innocently, a slight smile hidden in the corner of your lips. Sirius offered you a deadpan expression, but he couldn't stop himself from letting out a humorous scoff. He knew you were trying to lighten the mood, encouraging him to be more positive. And he needed that.

"Your humour is still questionable, darling," he shook his head, but regardless of your silliness, the smile you longed to see was back on his handsome face.

"Well, it worked, didn't it?" You shrugged. "So, are you going to tell me what's troubling you or am I going to have to play a guessing game?" You arched a brow, earning a heavy sigh from him. Sirius knew you wouldn't let it go, but he didn't mind. It was a silent understanding between the two of you, as though you both felt when the other needed to talk something out, and when a subject had to be left alone.

"I've just been thinking about the war, all of those lives we lost, all the grieving and rebuilding and destruction. It feels like it will never end, like a vicious cycle. I just wish I could do something, be useful, but instead I'm stuck here in this hell hole like a ghost," a heavy sigh escaped his lungs as he ran his hand through his long locks, messing them up. "I want to be out there and fight. I want to be able to protect those I love. But if the Ministry catches me, I won't be able to do a damn thing, so instead I'm just sitting here being utterly useless," he groaned in frustration, closing his eyes as a heavy scoff left his lungs. "I feel like I just want to go wild and slaughter everyone that caused all of this mess, but I know if I even attempted it, I would hurt those I love. I would hurt you and Harry and then Remus and Tonks and I can't have that," he shook his head as he buried his head in your shoulder again.

"I can't possibly understand the frustration you must feel. Though I know if I was stuck here, I would certainly have a mental breakdown in the best-case scenario. But Sirius—," you reached for his cheek, signalling him to lift his head, "when you left to the Ministry to help Harry and you almost died—," you could feel the tears collect in your eyes, throat drying out at the memory, "there wasn't a single moment I didn't think about finding them all and slaughtering them like the animals they are," you clenched your teeth in anger. "So, I know how it feels to be useless, but I can not and I will not let you go out there and risk your life again unless it's a necessity. The final war is upon us, everyone knows, everyone can feel it and then you can do whatever you want. I just need you not to die on me, because if you do, I will revive you and murder you all over again," you let out a sharp exhale, earning a silent chuckle from Sirius. "I wasn't kidding."

"I know, love. I know," he pressed a kiss to your lips.

"You know you don't have to deal with these feelings alone, right? You can talk to me," you squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. "I stand by your side, whatever happens in this damned war. When I said I loved you, I meant I loved you in every possible way. And I'm still true to my feelings. I'm here for you the same way you are here for me. We can and we will face this together," you said as you brushed his hair behind his ear and cupped his jaw, pressing a long, reassuring kiss to his forehead. "Together," you said with a soft smile as Sirius involuntarily mirrored your expression.

"Together," he nodded, hope slowly but reassuringly flooding his heart. With you beside him, he was a man full of love and hope, ready to do whatever it took to protect those he loved. All because of your endless strength, the power your mere presence projected. You made him feel like he was capable of anything.

Notes: If you enjoyed reading this little piece, please don’t forget to leave a like, comment and/or reblog. Your opinion matters and gives us motivation. Thank you ^^

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#sirius black #sirius #sirius x reader #sirius black x reader #sirius black fanfic #sirius black fanfiction #sirius black x y/n #sirius fanfic #sirius x yn #sirius x y/n #sirius x you #sirius black x yn #sirius black x you #sirius black fluff #sirius black imagine #sirius black one shot #battle of swords celebration event

[fabricated-misslieness]

pairing: bodyguard dainsleif x heir gn reader

req: no | wc: 1.67k | cw: mentions of war | tw: fire

part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 (you are here) | part 5

a/n: i didn’t get into the mindset while writing and it just felt so corny (sometime july or early aug) sorry this took so long (8/16/21)

You venture deep into the woods in search of your guard, tracking him through the footsteps marked on the muddy floor and the bushes cut slightly to form a path.

Dainsleif had always been a mysterious man. There have been many times where he disappears for a couple of concerning hours, sometimes under the guise of patrol, and other times simply slipping away unnoticed. No matter the method, it sort of became a part of his character.

He wasn’t always around. He placed trust in you, trust that you would be fine on your own; not only trust but also knowledge of the fact that you could handle yourself.

You never knew what he was doing, and you never pried. Dainsleif was the sort of person you didn’t question; he gave off an air of intimidation, and due to the fact you’ve never rendezvoused or spent much time off duty with him, it was easy for him to scare you away. Surely he did not mean this, though that never stopped it from happening.

You’ve always wanted to get to know him more. He shared plenty of facts about himself –willingly, you surmise. Otherwise, if you’d inquired yourself, maybe it wouldn’t be hard to ask about him– except it still felt like you knew nothing about him. This reason was why you were so appalled by your questioning earlier that day.

Perhaps, off in whatever wonderland he was at and surrounded by no other human company except his, you would get to know him better.

You didn’t expect his trail to lead up a hill, not to mention the nearby sound of flowing water. When you finally catch sight of him, he stands by a lake of water that leads into a river and eventually a waterfall. The sun is nearly setting.

“Dainsleif.”

He turns his head slightly, not doubting your voice but just making sure it really is you. “(y/n).” He greets you with your name again.

“What are you doing here?” You hope the warmth of your cheeks and your momentary fluster is unnoticeable as you approach him. Your name, specifically the fleeting moments when it rolls off his tongue, has always been rare from his lips. Though recently, he’s said it time and time again.

Why was that? “Taking a breath of fresh air.” He turns back to the view from the top of this hill, unfortunately depriving you of the beauty that is his relaxed face. “It’s nice up here, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” The sun’s beginning to lower itself below the horizon, and you’re beginning to realize you haven’t brought a lantern. Although with Dainsleif, you felt safe. It didn’t matter if you had no light, for he would be your reliable guide back.

When you finally set foot behind him, you remember the soreness of your feet, the stiffness of your shoulders, and just how tired you feel. It’s almost draining.

Upon hearing the sound of water as your foot dives below the surface, Dainsleif glances your way for a moment. “What are you doing?”

“My feet are aching.” You don’t want to blame him for your journey over here, as it was your decision. “The chase took a lot from me.”

“Really? You seem to have handled it well.”

“Thanks.”

Bathed under the painting that is the sunset, you're more beautiful than ever. “No, well, sort of.” It’s a shame that you doubt yourself, in fact in his eyes, you’re as great as can be. No one person can juggle all these positives in their life, no one person can be an expert of everything. Yet here you stood, well near the state of total expertise. And for that, he admired you.

“No need to thank me.” Dain takes advantage of the fact that you’re not looking at him to admire you, something he rarely gets to do. “Was my comment so hard to believe?”

“You should give yourself more credit.” He rakes his eyes up your figure, from the tips of your calloused fingers, to your slightly scarred shoulders, up to your relaxed eyelids. “It’s what you deserve.” Dainsleif didn’t know when this admiration turned into adoration.

“Well, if that’s what you think, then I’ll work towards it.” If anything, this love was a little dangerous.

If feelings ever got in the way of his duty as your bodyguard, something might happen to you. Dain hated that idea just as much as he hated the distance between the both of you.

It was due to his bluntness that made him a little reserved around you, for he did not know what his impulse would have him say next. For a strategic soldier in battle, he certainly didn’t know what to think outside of such intense situations, even when he had all the time in the world.

He regretted his youthful decision to bury himself in work, for if he had been a bit more lax, perhaps he would’ve gotten to know you better.

He despised that scout who just had to ruin your alone time together earlier that day. At the time, he was far too immersed in nature to even comprehend the tenderness of his own words, or even to find embarrassment in being so forward. Had that scout not been there, perhaps this moment wouldn’t be so silent.

Though he could not change the past now. He could, however, pave the path of his future.

“Dain?” You glance over your shoulder at him. He dips his toes below the surface of the water next to you, biting his lip awkwardly and looking slightly away from you.

The only thing he can muster is a small “Hey.”

You snicker at his newfound and quite sudden sheepishness, “Hey yourself.”

He always thought he handled himself well. Calm and collected were the perfect adjectives to describe him, but he couldn’t seem to embody them right now. There was a deep desire in his heart, he deeply wished to get to know you better, to find some foundation to set his love on top of. However much it may trouble him to do so, he would act on it.

“So… what do you do often? As a… hobby, was it?”

That includes overcoming his lack of knowledge on the average life.

Illuminated under the bright stars and full moon, speaking words into the silent night, sitting ever so close together, you begin to understand the complexity of each other. You weren’t mere books, but puzzles that you were to piece together.

Who knows how many hours you spent together in comfortable darkness, time of worry within your knight bandwagon, and smug acknowledgement laid upon Kaeya’s face.

Many days and many nights later through your journey, the sun peeks through the cracks of your tent opening and wakes you up mercilessly. You can tell it's far too early.

When you exit, you find Dainsleif to your right stoking a new fire. “Good morning.” He greets you with a small wave. There’s a sweet smile on his lips, something you don’t see quite often. Perhaps he is simply elated by your presence. “What brings you up so early?”

“Good morning.” You say briskly as you sit near him. “I have no idea, honestly.”

Something about that answer seems to amuse him. He laughs so silently you almost miss it. “What is it?”

He shakes his head, laughing harder once he’s been caught, “Nothing, nothing really.” However much he insists that it’s ‘nothing’, he contributes with a reason anyway, “It’s just, how do you not know?”

“Look, I was taught many subjects, but certainly not the reasons why I wake up early.”

“I suppose I can relate to that.” He busies himself in the fire again.

Out here in plain grasslands, where the next patch of natural shadows is far from your location, the sun is relentless and intolerably warm against your skin. Luckily for Dainsleif, the last wagon paints a shadow over his position. You, on the other hand, are not so lucky; he seems to notice this.

“Come here. The sun must be a bother.” He taps the spot right next to him. You open your mouth to object but he stops you before you can. “Nuh-uh, no objections.” He smiles cheekily, tapping the spot once more.

Ever since that night, you’ve… grown closer together, in more ways than one currently. Your shoulders press against each other, contact that you haven’t felt with him in a while. You’ve been moving rapidly since the spies had been dealt with, which both left you with less resting time and less time available for sparring. While this would’ve meant that you weren’t going to speak, he seemed determined to know more about you. Each day, you rode side by side on your horses, bantering –which is new– and speaking.

You’re glad to be making progress, but your evergrowing crush on him is not helping.

“Something on your mind?”

“What?” He snaps you out of your train of thought, and suddenly, you’re back in reality. “Oh, yeah. Nothing you should be worried about though.”

“Really? It seems troubling.” His gaze is still downcast upon the flames. “You know, I care about you.” He’s made that wonderfully clear this past week. “If it’s enough to keep you quiet then surely it must be important, whether or not it involves me.”

You nod dumbfoundedly, “Yeah, I suppose.”

“So,” His eyes lock with yours. “tell me about it.”

His smile is still there, warm and reassuring. “I… well, I-” You clear your throat, steady your breath, and begin to find an excuse. Why did you even consider telling him?

“Like me?” Dainsleif guesses. He observes the shock in your widened eyes and parted lips with a crinkle in his eye. An amused laugh escapes his mouth.

“How’d you know?”

“Intuition, let’s say.” Just then, the fire spikes up into a flame. He begins to make breakfast, though his focus is still on you. “If it makes you feel better, I like you too.”

It does. “Yeah.” It really does.

#dainsleif x reader #dainslleif x gn reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact x gn reader #🌸 // success! #🎟 // genshin impact #🎫 // dainsleif

[lovestruckay]

Request: "Hi there! Loveeee your writing for Fire Force and was wondering if you could do headcanons (SFW and NSFW if that's ok!) for Akitaru and a fem s/o for celebrating birthdays or holidays?"

Pairing: Akitaru Obi x Fem!Reader

A/N: Happy birthday, Obi! I’m a little late but I made up for it by making this 2.5k words, haha. NSFW content is below the cut, it’s mixed in throughout instead of separate! I used these HC as a way to talk about some of the days I celebrate personally from the Wheel of the Year - eight holidays that celebrate the spring equinox, the summer solstice, the autumnal equinox, the winter solstice, and the four cross-quarter days between them.

Akitaru loves the holidays. He’s the kind of person who plans celebrations a month in advance, sometimes even longer depending on what the special occasion is. He’ll put out decorations, bake pastries, cook whole meals, and even throw parties where he’ll give mushy speeches.

You think he leans into celebrating even more for the sake of the rest of Company 8. Nearly all of his companions had come from troubled backgrounds or had lost their loved ones and he was always clear that the Eighth was their family too. Akitaru is the father figure of their ragtag company and he takes that role seriously. Not just in protecting them and guiding them but in doing the little things that family did - like celebrating holidays.

So, when these special occasions roll around, you better get ready because this man is not just celebrating for the fun of it but because it’s a way to bond with you and the rest of Company 8. 

The Holy Sol Temple has generic, catch-all versions of all the seasonal holidays. With the Temple worshiping a Sun God, their holidays are centered around solar events like the solstices, the equinoxes, and the cross-quarter days between. December celebrations are all bundled up into the Winter Solstice, Ostara and Easter became the Spring Equinox, Samhain and Halloween became the Autumnal Cross-Quarter Day, and so on.

Even though these combined holidays are the most frequently celebrated, the pre-Cataclysm holidays still exist and are still celebrated. It is on a much smaller scale though so this makes celebrating these holidays a much more meaningful affair. If you celebrate a particular day, whether it’s because of tradition or your heritage or something else entirely, Akitaru is excited to learn and be a part of something so important to you.

Valentine’s Day is one of his favorite holidays because it’s a celebration he gets to spend with the woman he had fallen madly in love with - you. He likes that there’s a holiday dedicated to your love for each other and he tends to go overboard with making sure you know how much he cherishes you.

Akitaru is really cheesy about showing you how much he loves you. He always starts the day by waking up before you and sneaking into the kitchen so he can make you breakfast in bed. He’ll cook your pancakes in the shape of wobbly hearts and there will be a protein shake there with your orange juice. He has covered your entire bathroom with sticky notes, each note containing sweet messages he had written throughout the year about how much he loves you. You have a hand bound book on your shelf filled with pressed flowers and love notes that he had made for you one year.

He once hired a skywriter plane to write your initials in a heart in the sky. He loves you so much that it turns him into the corniest, sappiest man on the face of the planet.

He takes the Firefighter Calendar very seriously and he’s absolutely playful and confident enough to wear something sexy for you as a surprise. If you surprise him by wearing some revealing lingerie, he will spend the rest of the night absolutely worshiping you and showing you how beautiful you were.

Akitaru is such a big man but he can be so delicate that the tenderness he touches you with makes your breath catch. But sometimes he forgets his own strength, especially when you’re wrapped up like a present, and he tears the wrapping paper. You know better now than to expect whatever pretty lingerie you buy to survive the night.

He makes sure that you can’t get out of bed when he’s done with you and that works out great for him because, guess what - dinner in bed is on the way.

The Spring Equinox mornings are always spent outside basking in the nice weather and the warm sun as you plant new flowers in the cathedral garden. You spend the afternoon spring cleaning your home, sweeping behind all the furniture and packing up winter clothes. The afternoons are spent painting eggs and hiding little gifts of candy and sweets around the cathedral for the rest of the company to find.

Every year, the Autumnal Cross-Quarter Day (or Halloween as most call it outside the church) is a day-long affair. Mornings are spent carving Jack-o’-lanterns and baking cookies decorated with icing in the shapes of skulls, bats, and spiderwebs. During the afternoon, you’re putting out last minute decorations and filling bowls with king-sized candy bars for the trick-or-treating children that stop by the Fire Force cathedral.

Somehow, Akitaru is always able to convince everyone at the Eighth to dress up in costumes. He especially loves doing coordinated outfits with you, like Frakenstein and the Bride of Frankenstein or a werewolf and a vampire. One year, he was able to convince the entire company to dress up as zombies and you all spent the day making zombie noises at each other and giggling.

If you like getting a little scared for Halloween, he'll take you to a haunted house or a haunted trail where he will inevitably be clinging to you by the end of the experience. If you get chased by the workers wielding fake chainsaws at a trail, he will get so scared that he will literally scoop you up into his arms and run away.

If you’re more interested in staying home and spending time together, you’ll nestle up on the couch together with a bowl of candy and some of the pastries you had baked earlier and binge watch horror movies. He has absolutely no talent whatsoever for video games - you swear the man can’t even figure out how to hold the controller half the time - but he will happily cuddle you and cheer you on if you wanted to play some scary video games instead.

Once you two are alone, Akitaru can’t seem to get his hands off of you. He thinks you are so beautiful every single day but there is something so alluring to him about you dressed up. If you’re wearing one of those revealing costumes, his eyes are glued to you the entire day and, once he can finally get you away from everyone, he’s tearing it off to get to the sweets underneath.

He is very sensitive to the fact that winter holidays can be very personal to a person depending on their background. Most people in Tokyo celebrate the Winter Solstice but there are people who still celebrate the pre-Cataclysm holidays. Whichever holiday you want to observe, Akitaru wants to support you and celebrate with you.

You want to build an altar for Yuletide? He’s bringing home pretty rocks and little trinkets he found that he thought you might like to give as offerings.

You want to light a menorah for Hanukkah? He’s cleaned off a special spot in the kitchen window for the candelabrum.

You want to decorate a tree for Christmas? He’s driving around looking for a pine tree he can cut down for you.

You want to decorate the house for Kwanzaa? He’s singing with you as you both hang brightly colored kente and he’s memorized all seven core principles to talk to you about during the week.

You want to host a dinner for Las Posadas? He’s in the kitchen helping you make tamales and he even stuffed and hung two piñatas - one for the new recruits and the other for you both and the rest of the company.

When it comes to gifts, Akitaru is really good at picking out presents for you. He always listens when you talk and he makes sure to remember when you talk about things that you like. He’s the kind of guy who will buy small presents throughout the year and stow them away in the back of his closet until the winter holidays roll around.

He’s extremely easy to buy gifts for, he loves the traditional “dad” gifts. Get this man some brand new winter socks, a new jacket to replace the coat he got too muscular for, and some new underwear and he is happy. If you give him something a little more exciting in addition to his gifts, like taking off your robe to reveal you’re wrapped up in a bow, he will gladly unwrap you and give you a present of his own.

For New Years, he likes to host a little get together with Company 8 to celebrate. You all make a big dinner and maybe even get a little tipsy before going up to the roof to watch the fireworks. You sit in chairs you had set out earlier, Akitaru settling you into his warm lap instead, and watch in amazement as Company 1 puts on their yearly fireworks show in the sky over Tokyo.

When the show reaches its climax and the clock rolls over to midnight, he kisses you.

Whether you’re drunk on a little alcohol or just the excitement of the night, sex on New Years Eve is always fun. It’s so easy to be yourself and to feel beautiful with him - he is such a light hearted and openly loving man - but tipsy sex is always full of smiles and laughter interspersed with little gasps and moans. There’s no shame and it just feels good to be complete with the man you love.

On Lunar New Year, he is taking you out to shop for new clothes and he’s helping you give out cards and gifts. He makes sure to buy a bag of sweets to leave as an offering once you clean the altar at home later that day. In the evening, he’s once again in the kitchen, helping cook eight different dishes for the reunion dinner with a communal hot pot always being the centerpiece of the meal.

Akitaru loves the holidays but his favorite celebrations are the ones for you two specifically: your birthdays and your anniversary.

For his birthday, he just wants a small get together with the rest of the company and maybe a couple friends. He is still as ridiculously easy as ever to shop for, just buy him new exercise equipment and he’ll love it. He works out so much that he wears down and breaks his equipment and he’s always excited to try a new machine.

He especially loves it when you surprise him in the bedroom with something new. If you teach yourself how to deep throat his impressive size, he’ll be wrapped around your little finger for a week straight. If you give him the remote to your vibrating panties while you’re out getting dinner, he’ll break down halfway through your meal and pull you into the bathroom to make you see stars. You never need an excuse to experiment in bed but it’s always fun surprising him with something every year.

For your birthday, Akitaru will always ask you what you want instead of trying to surprise you. He doesn’t want to overwhelm you with a party if you don’t want it and he doesn’t want you to be craving more if he plans for a day at home.

If you want to go out, he'll take you to the amusement park for games and roller coasters (one of which he couldn’t even ride because the safety harness didn’t fit over his muscular body). If you like the outdoors, he’ll take you on a hike through one of the nature preserves and lead you to a picnic he prepared for you. If you like to dance, he’s taking you out and trying his best not to step on your toes.

If you want to stay in, Akitaru will buy you a copy of the newest video game you had your eye on and will order pizza so he can watch you try to beat it in one sitting. He’ll spend the morning baking and decorating a cake from scratch and it comes out incredible. He’ll give you a massage and his almost too strong grip feels so good it sends shivers up your spine.

On your birthday, he is in the palm of your hand. Whatever you want to do, anything you want to try, he is so eager to please. He’s an open-minded man and there really aren’t many things that are hard passes for him in bed. He isn’t particularly well versed in the kinky stuff so he’ll need a bit of an explanation sometimes but, once he understands what you want, he will gladly give it to you.

Without a doubt, your anniversary is Akitaru’s favorite holiday of the year. He loves that your anniversary is a celebration of your bond and a reaffirming of your love for each other. He’s honestly just as dramatic on this day as he is on Valentine’s Day - if not more so - and he will come up with the most cheesy, romantic ways of telling you he loves you.

Sticking to tradition, he took you out to a fancy dinner one year to a restaurant with a dress code and no prices on the menu. Even with the overly formal atmosphere, he was still his usual boisterous self throughout the dinner and his sunshine smile puts you at ease. The dinner was spectacular and, even if you normally hated stuffy environments like that, his happiness is contagious and you feel comfortable.

On your anniversary, he makes it his Sol given duty to fuck you until you scream when you cum. He makes it a point to give you the best orgasm of the year, making you finish over and over until your pleasure climbs to a high that has moans shamelessly spilling from your lips. You absolutely cannot walk the day after your anniversary so, every year, you take not only your anniversary off but the day following as well.

Akitaru pays such close attention to your moods and your likes and dislikes when it comes to the holidays throughout the year and tries his best to make you happy. At the end of the day, he just wants to be with you and for you to have a good time.

After all, he loves you so much he wants to spend the rest of his life making happy memories like these together.

#akitaru obi #obi akitaru #akitaru obi x reader #obi akitaru x reader #obi x reader #akitaru x reader #fire force x reader #fire force #enn enn no shouboutai #fanfiction

[moondustis]

remember when (m)

pairing: jaehyun + reader genre: angst, smut, soulmate!au, rich kid!au, convenience marriage!au, hurt/comfort, college!au (more details + warnings after read more)  word count: 12,7k summary: A story about vulnerability and the lines we draw to avoid it. About soulmates, desires, setting yourself free. And, of course, a story about love and discovering exactly what it is. song recs: skin by mac miller and pure love by hayley williams 

warnings: there are some mentions of drug use, brief mention of mental issues, bad parenting. just overall some subjects that might not be comfortable to read like i usually put on my fics but it's nothing out of the ordinary, and nothing graphics happens!  disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. none of the events described are real or are an accurate representation of the people and brands named. 

a/n: i would like to thank mary (neostains) for requesting this fic and cami (caiuscassiuss) for helping me with some informations about how ivy leagues work lol. this is my longest work so far, i think, and it’s a very special one. i hope you guys enjoy it! 

✶

There was a time in your childhood where you remember being obsessed with princess movies. Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, name a fairytale and you would have probably watched it a couple of times, entranced by the images playing on the newest television your father had bought.

Isn’t it fucked up that young girls are always fed this stereotypical image of love? It’s like a woman is not good for anything but to love someone, to be a half until she found the other and became whole. At 8 you ate that up like no one else.

At 11 your mother hires someone to give you a talk, about how the world worked and about the weird name that would appear in your arm once you turned 18. It feels like a lecture, the woman telling you about perfect matches, the probabilities of love and soulmates in a flat tone that didn’t make you feel as excited as you did watching the fairytales you used to like. When you tell your friends at school about it, they act surprised at the way you were told and instead, tell you about the stories about meeting your true love their own parents had shared.

At 15, your mother enrolls you in preparatory school, with full theatricals about intellects and getting into the best college possible so you can do your duty as heir of your father’s company when it becomes necessary.

It takes you a while, but you realize finally that love is nothing compared to money when you see for the first time that the name on your mother's wrist is not your fathers. Not long after that, you find out that for the sake of the company, you would be marrying Jung Jaehyun, heir of the second biggest automobilistic company in the country.

At 18 you think romance and love are trivial things.

⋄

NOVEMBER, 2013

It’s a harsh winter, one that makes your hands tremble and your head hurt more than usual.

You rub at your temples as you make your way down the hallway as students pass by you at the same pace as yours to get to their next class. A dreading routine, one that is so busy it leaves you with no time to think of anything else but the essay you have to write, or the grade you have been waiting to receive.

Today, though, your headache is so intense that your mind is filled with nothing but a black void.

Despite that, you walk in small steps to your literature lecture. Your bag feels as heavy as your head and the thick wool sweater you have on is barely enough to keep you warm, legs shivering from the stupid skirt they made you wear. Knee length, of course, but still a bother to sit and move.

Fuck boarding school, is what you think as you pass a group of boys talking loudly. One of them has a Harvard pin on his cardigan, you notice in the back of your mind. It only makes you feel sicker.

The first bell rings and you realize how slow you have been really walking. A faster pace, a muttered curse and then the second bells makes you feel like your ears are melting, headache increasing. Now you’re late, a rare occurrence that will probably not affect your records in any way, but still, makes you walk faster.

It all happens very fast. You turn into the corridor that leads to your classroom but not a second later you’re bumping straight into someone, books in your hand scattering to the floor and head spinning from the impact. It’s hard keeping your balance, but the harsh grip on your forearms helps and then you’re opening your eyes, that you didn't notice you had squeezed shut in the first place.

“Fuck, I’m really sorry.” The voice is familiar but the curse feels alien on your ears. Jung Jaehyun never curses, he has manners better than that. “I’m running late and walking too fast.”

He mumbles and you almost snort at the obviousness of it all. At the fact you were literally doing the same thing. “It’s okay. I should’ve been paying more attention.” There’s no reason for either of you to be apologizing, is what you think about as your hand immediately moves to your temple again in hopes pressing on it will cease the pain.

He’s looking right at you when you finally meet his eyes. His face is painted with embarrassment, the red hue on his ears a dead giveaway. He doesn’t keep eye contact for more than five second, instead moving to pick up your books for you. “Still, I’m very sorry.” He sounds polite, as always. The curse from before is still fresh on your mind.

You had met Jung Jaehyun at the age of 9, not that you remember exactly how it went. Some random brunch where you and him sat side by side as your mothers talked about whatever was happening seven years ago. You remember your old nanny being there, and how she asked sweetly if you would like more juice. You remember missing her when she got fired three weeks later for unrelated matters that were never told to you. And that’s about it.

After that, the years passed with Jaehyun being a weird presence in your life. The rich kids ran in the same circles, that didn’t take you a long time to realize and wherever you went he was there too.

German classes at 11, the birthday party of the daughter of someone you didn't know at 12, etiquette classes at 13. An event for your father's company at 14, one of his fathers at 15 and now at 16, attending the same boarding school and having to meet each other like this, with awkward smiles and polite conversation. Because navigating a relationship you didn't know the other very well, but too well at the same time was a weird thing to do.

Jung Jaehyun was like you, but at the same time he wasn't. You were friends but at the same time merely acquaintances.

But this you remember vividly: him asking you random things at german classes and making you laugh with his awkward pronunciation. Him eating cake by your side at the birthday party, covering his lips before he asked you if you like chocolate or vanilla more. Him making fun of you quietly for dropping down your fork loudly in the middle of etiquette class. Him standing awkwardly by your side while you got reprimanded by your mother during the event, for not properly remembering the name of a lady that came to greet you, your head down as you forced yourself not to cry in front of him.

And then, his father clapping yours on the back after they talked about how lovely it would be if someday the two of you got married to join economic forces. No, not someday. When you two got married.

You, pretending he didn't exist after that day, because you realized that this too you wouldn't get to decide.

Jaehyun clears his throat, hands you your books. “How is your father?” He asks, a stupid question to ask when you're both late. A stupid question to ask, period.

You try not to grimace. “He's okay. Alive.” And then he’s chuckling lowly, awkwardly.

“That’s good, no company to run at 16 then.” He tries to joke and it's amusing, in a way that for someone else might not be. But you two are the same, at least when it comes to this.

“And hopefully never.” A stupid thing to hope for, but still he smiles at you.

Then the moment is over, the third alarm sounds and both your eyes shoot open and you’re muttering goodbyes before heading to your classes.

Your head still hurts, but you don’t feel as cold anymore.

⋄

2015

Anticipation, isn’t that just a fancier word to describe the gut feeling that something is going to happen? Worst yet when you know exactly what it is, but have no possible ways of knowing the possible outcome.

There’s a window behind your advisor, with a view to the field where the lacrosse team practices. You watch it with a lack of interest as the older lady flips through pages and more pages of what is possibly your future.

No, not possibly. Definitely your future. Because at least to this, you knew the only outcome possible.

It’s a pretty day, one that shouldn’t be spent inside a room with wood furniture and shelves and more shelves of books, that are almost as many as the certificates on the wall. Not when it also happens to be your birthday.

“This is a really good essay, ___. You have a talent with words.” Your advisor breaks the silence in a flat voice despite it being a compliment. It makes your eyes immediately refocus on her but she gives you no time yet to reply. “I am sure the admission team will read it with interest.”

“Thank you.” A polite smile reaches your lips. She was never much of a praiser, not that she needed to be. Your last name carried all the confidence you needed to have for a thing like this.

And, perhaps the interest they would be having would be exactly about that. What does the only heir of the biggest automotive company in the country have to offer for Stanford? Probably a lot, with a weight that heavy on her shoulders.

“You have started applications to only two schools, are you sure you would not like to add more?” Now she says it in a weirdly soft tone. Persuasion, because it would look good for the school that one of their best students accepted to all the ivy leagues. Your GPA would make sure of that, but that's not all.

“I don’t see the point. Stanford has always been my only choice.” You say it as nicely as possible because this is an old conversation.

“I see, well. This is it then, there's a few other students interested in attending Stanford too." She smiles bitterly, gathering the papers and putting it back on their respective folders. "But the chances of you getting in are very good. I'm sure all your hard work will pay off.”

You go to thank her but at that moment there's a pinch on your arm that leaves you distracted. It's followed by a weird burning sensation that doesn't cease when you grip it underneath the table as gently as possible. If anything, the fabric of your cardigan only makes it worse.

She bids you your goodbyes, with pleasantries exchanged but when you reach the door to leave she interrupts. “Oh, I almost forgot. Happy birthday, ____.” She smiles when you turn to thank her. “Please enjoy the rest of the day, turning 18 is very special.”

With a small bitter smile and promise to do so, you leave the room.

You reach your dorm room in no time, a stoic face on but with quick steps. And you try not to think about it, but the burning sensation on your arms continues.

It goes like this:

You close the door behind you gently, dropping your things down and immediately crumbling as you slide to the floor, unable to stand still anymore. You cry, for the second time today because birthdays were just not good. For about 10 minutes that's all that happens, your silent sobs and complete silence filling the room.

The burning in your arms stays there as a painful reminder and it tempts you to look, even though you know that the outcome didn't matter, not for you. Because behind blurry teary eyes you can see perfectly the image of your own mother's arm and the name of someone you didn't know, that she probably also didn't.

Because you are now 18 and you think romance and love are trivial things, that's all they could be.

You are now 18, and when you can't stand not knowing for another minute, you raise the sleeve of your cardigan and the name Jung Jaehyun is there on your wrist.

An ugly, incredulous laugh leaves your lips and soon turns into a sob. Of course it had to be him, you and Jung Jaehyun were tied to each other for a reason that was beyond fate.

You squeeze your eyes at the same time your hands squeeze your thighs, trying to get a grip. You calm yourself down, deep breaths in and out, your mind providing the good and the bad. No matter how you looked at it, it seemed like a trick the universe was playing on you. One, it would be worse if another name appeared, a name that you would have to pretend didn't exist, because this was just another thing you didn't have a say in. This was supposed to happen anyway, maybe it was better this way.

Then your mind provides another thought that makes your mind swirl. Jung Jaehyun had turned 18 in February, your name had appeared on his arms months ago and he didn't say a word about it to you, or to anyone for all you know. Maybe he was pretending too, maybe he wanted more time thinking that at least this he would get to choose.

Well, whatever fairytale that had been created inside stupid minds, was gone now.

⋄

The whole thing is announced two weeks later, in a gossip magazine with information from an inside source. Information that is carefully crafted from a marketing team the moment you reveal the result.

A result, like a test had been applied and you got Jung Jaehyun for whatever reason.

You exchange pleasantries the next time you see him, no trace of being too young to know the rest of your lives already. You just look at each other in maybe defeat, while your families make a toast to celebrate a wedding to take place in a few years from now. A wedding that held meaning beyond the marks that tied the two of you. Destiny just helped a little bit, it was just a good excuse to justify a marriage that had been arranged ages ago.

A month later you get accepted to Stanford, of course you do. And your mother's smile is a loud reminder of every single time she called you and inquired about every grade, every step you made to make sure this happened and that it all happened accordingly.

It doesn't take you long to find out Jaehyun got accepted there too.

⋄

AUGUST 2016

The heels of your Miu Miu boots make small stomping noises on the wood floor sounds as you walk through shelves and shelves filled with books. It’s not a loud sound, probably only perceived by your own ears, and you let it distract you as you navigate the big corridors of the Green Library.

Stanford had made your eyes shine during your first visit and then for the first months of your freshman year. The thrill of finally experiencing something new and yet undiscovered carried on until it gave space to normalcy, another routine. But this time, a feeling blossomed inside your stomach with wanting to eat it up.

A feeling that died and resurrected every now and then, but you played it safe. Navigating it with baby steps with fear of what could happen if you strained a little too far from the line. And what could that be? A magazine spread on how a famous philanthropic's daughter parties too hard in college, with pictures of you doing a line on marble countertops?  A class failed and the disappointment on your mother's voice when she called you? A scandal about your night escapades? You didn’t want to find out just yet.

So you settle for your new routine, of going out every now and then with the roommates that you were about to consider friends. Pondering if it’s worth it to join another club, just to feel like there's something else that makes you feel excited. Coming to the library, studying to keep your mind busy because your thoughts were never up to no good.

And it's so easy, being busy like you always managed to, with assignments, and volunteering and maintaining a perfect GPA.

It's also easy to ignore Jung Jaehyun’s existence. Because this time, unlike in boarding school, the task is much simpler, since classes are filled with so many people that on the ones you shared with him you barely get a glance of his eyes. Because he ran around in circles that had nothing to do with yours.

It was always clear to you, since youth, that Jaehyun was a social butterfly that just needed a little pushing, and he was nice enough that people always wanted him near. A high contrast to your quietness and introverted ways, staying in small circles and almost never allowing people to get too close.

It's weird thinking about him, putting a face to the name that was forever marked on your skin as a reminder of your future. It was weird thinking that it was easy to ignore this feeling too, like all the other ones that you have kept away in your small little box. The feelings that came out at least once a year when it all became too much, and you would sit in a duvet to spill all the dead butterflies inside your stomach out on the floor of a therapy clinic.

But even like this, weirdness doesn't begin to cover the way sometimes you catch yourself thinking of a memory that involves him, random and unexpected. A moment shared before the two of you discovered what expected you, before destiny was revealed. And you don't pretend that it's not real, that you don't feel the longing and need to be close, that your skin doesn't tingle when you see him around campus. You were long past pretending now, because there was no reason to play dumb when sometimes all you had were your own thoughts to rot your brain.

What you were good at, though, was concealing it all.

Was Jaehyun good at that too? Now that's something that you think about more than you would like. It didn't help that sometimes you would bump into him out of nowhere.

You enter the marketing aisle, eyes fixed on the small numbers taped to each section in hopes that the book you need was still here. It takes you awhile to realize that there's someone else with you, only moving your head up when you hear the footsteps approaching.  

“Hi.” Jaehyun says, a small smile on his lips that is as gentle as every other thing about his looks. He stands close, but not too much. A safe distance for you to run your eyes through his body one time, eyes stopping at the big ‘S’ on his sweatshirt.

You clear your throat before greeting him back. “Hello.” Your voice is low, thoughtful of your surroundings, but you match his smile in a silent agreement of politeness.

His eyes run through your face the same way yours does his. Curiosity, or maybe the longing feeling you try to not think about. The unspoken space in between the two of you is intact for now.  

He has changed so much in a year, is what you always think about when you two get to see each other up close. It always made you feel a weird nostalgia, seeing a face you had known for so long but now feels a little out of reach because of your own stubbornness. Your own fears.

“What book are you looking for?” He asks after some time, making small talk.

You turn your eyes to the books, him following. “Uhm, Kotler.”

“Oh, of course. How is marketing going?” You almost laugh at his attempt to make conversation, a skill well acquired during etiquette class.

“It’s okay. Not regretting it yet.” A half lie. Maybe another thing you were keeping locked deep down, your dislike for your major. But thinking about that while having a conversation with your soulmate was far from something you wanted to do.

He hums amused, eyes still fixed on the shelf. “That's good.”

You finally find the book, leaning down to get it and hugging it to your chest as your mind searches for something to offer for your own piece of ice breaker. Then you remember seeing his face last week printed on a glossy paper, an intricate article on consumerism tendencies online besides it.

“Congrats on the publication.” You say, facing him again. It’s genuine, because you knew how things like that really mattered. Small things that were nowhere near the accomplishments expected of the two of you, but still something to be proud of.

He laughs lowly, with bashful manners of looking down to his feet and with ears turning red. “It’s just a campus magazine.” Because of course he would be humble, amongst all the other qualities you were well acquainted with. Deep down you know that it's just a reflection of the high expectations that have been set the moment he was born.

“Still, it was very well written. And everyone said it was impressive for a freshman.” Everyone being the friend that showed you the magazine, but you'll pretend for him that it was something more. To try and erase the feeling of not deserving something that probably runs through his mind.

You would crush it beneath your boots if you could, it's the weird thought that runs through yours.

He huffs. “Well, it’s Stanford. Hard to know what's gonna be impressive and what is just expected of you.”

“Good thing we are all promising young adults that don't need their egos to be fed, right?” You joke back and it makes him laugh a little too loudly, quickly stopping himself as you two exchange awkward but familiar glances with tiny smiles on your lips.

A moment of silence settles next, one that lasts only long enough for you to shift the weight from one leg to another. Then he's asking. “Are you… Are you doing something this weekend?”

“I’m expected at a company party.” You reply flatly, blinking twice but not really pondering the reasons for his curiosity. You two stare at each other for a second that passes quickly.

“The HSBC event?” He asks and you nod, expecting the words he says next. “Oh, I'll attend it as well.”

“Boring, huh?” An attempt to continue a conversation that should've ended by now.

“Yeah.” He looks at you, and then away, and then back at you. “I was thinking that we could have din-“

Footsteps interrupt his words and you look behind your shoulder to see who the newcomer is. A tall man, taller than Jaehyun even, smiles at you guiltily before he’s looking at Jaehyun and raising his brows. “We are late, dude.” He deadpans as you look between the two of them.

“Shit, I didn’t realize.” Jaehyun says in a groan, bringing his big watch to his face,  and you have to contain a smile at the curse. Then he turns to you. “Sorry, I gotta go.”

“It’s fine.” You mumble, the book still held tight against your chest.

He waves awkwardly as the other man throws you another smile. You watch them leave with trembling fingers.

⋄

DECEMBER 2017

December always made you feel a little weird. Blame it on the cold and the days spent in bed trying to get the warmth you craved. Or on the impending approach of winter break and having to deal with your parents and your obligations for the month to follow.

But you try not to think about that just yet, when the time comes you'll deal with it. That's what you always do. For now you let your bed swallow you as you scroll down mindless through your instagram feed, double tapping publications of past boarding school acquaintances smiling with the Harvard location attached to each picture, just like the brand names are attached to their clothes. It's a little pathetic to you that your own account looks the same, with pictures carefully picked with a marketing tactic in mind.

Your little distraction is interrupted when the door to your room opens and your roommate, Ela, walks in, clearly shivering from the cold even underneath her thick dark grey coat. “God, it's fucking freezing outside.” She mumbles as a greeting, removing her boots and setting it close to the door before draping her coat on her chair.

“How was the meeting?” You ask from under your blankets, laughing a little as she drops her things on her own bed. The question makes her sigh loudly.

“That dude is still an asshole.” The dude in question being her partner to a never ending project of rebranding that sometimes stressed even you, from how much she talked about it. “But we are almost done with it now.”

“That's good.”

She plops on her bed, across from yours and a comfortable silence settles for a moment as she probably tries to have a moment of calmness.

Ela was an old face on your life, having attended the same school but never really getting closer than knowing each other's name. Still, it was good that you got paired to dorm with her. A familiar face that became a friend of sorts, as the two of you built a relationship on things in common and the want to have someone you could trust in a new place. And she was different than you, more outgoing, had a liking for socializing that you could never match, but still understood you.

“Hey, did you finish that essay already?” She asks, turning her face to you.

“Yes, it was bitch to write.”

“And Kotler is super boring to read.” A sigh escapes her lips and you agree loudly because she's right. Sometimes, when you allowed yourself a moment of wishful thinking, you would wonder what it would be like to have a major that you didn't feel like your brain was melting from boredom when reading about.

“I'm really tired.” You reply, just to say something back.

“Same. Are you doing something for winter break?”

In your mind you know exactly what you'll be doing, a schedule even ready on your mind, but  instead you say “Not really, are you?”

She hums, voice tired but still excited as she goes on about how she wants to go to Europe again, visit Amsterdam because that was one of her favorite travel destinations. When you ask how it was, she describes in perfect detail, how the streets looked and how it felt very welcoming, telling you that you absolutely had to go there someday.

You promise to go and in the back of your mind you wish you could. Maybe you can if you can do more week hours on your internship and ask for a free week.

You shake your head at that though.

“Oh, I got this little get together today. At that bar downtown.. .Do you want to go?” You know she’s asking out of politeness, not because she didn't want you there but because you rarely said yes to her invitations.

But there’s a tiny spark on your chest, one that resembles the restless feeling you would get when you stayed too long laying down. It's not a motivation as much as it is boredom and the wish to feel something other than half emptiness. Other than the want to escape.

“Ok.” You say, shrugging slightly.

“Really?”

The raise of her brow makes you laugh. “Yeah, we are getting home next week. That's the last time I get to do this for a while.”

⋄

The bar is a little crowded, with winter break approaching and no one really daring step outside for a smoke because of how cold it is. The owners took great advantage of that by offering a ‘buy two get one free’ deal, that if you take a closer look at is really just a scam considering the price. But it's enough to fool college students that are excited about being away from this place for a while.

That’s what you think about after you down the remnants of the third drink you and your roommate shared. It’s not that kind of night, of getting wasted and not remembering anything the next day. It’s more of a little get together, for your roommate's club members and you are here merely as an intruder.

You feel just a little tipsy as you listen to her friends talk, some of them you knew from afar and some were just strangers that were nice enough to make you laugh every now and then. Still, you feel detached from the conversation, smiling and nodding when needing but not really taking part.

“What about you, ___?” A girl with round cheeks and pretty eyes asks you regarding your vacation plans. “You gotta invite us if you are throwing a party.”

You scoff before you can catch yourself. Alcohol always drops your inhibitions a little, but still you are quick to cover it up. You laugh along with the others, promising to invite everyone even though you are not throwing any parties, most likely never.

You roommate looks at you from the corner of her eye, smiling sympathetically because she knows you, and knows how stupid her friends are, but it's fine. You just wish you could just take it easily, the interest, the wanting to get close so they too will appear in a gossip magazine and live the life they think you do, without wanting to tell them to get a fucking life already, because this is just pathetic.

You smile back at her, wishing for another drink as your thigh highs start to roll a little uncomfortably. Shifting from leg to leg does nothing to help it, so you try to push the little annoyance to the back of your mind.

The small groups divide in different topics over the time, and you find yourself talking to some guy you had never seen before, that goes on and on about his amazing business ideas and how successful it's going to be when he finds the right stakeholders. You nod and try to focus through the whole thing.

The rest of the night goes like that. Fake laughter, loud music and conversation that gets more boring as the clock ticks, so you find an escape excusing yourself to go to the bathroom, not because you need to but to get away for a second.

In retrospect maybe it would've been better to endure another discussion about LA clubs and entrepreneurship.

The bar is so crowded that you have to excuse yourself at least five times, and on the sixth one you end up bumping into someone.

“Oh.” Is the clever thing you say when your eyes are met with Jaehyun already looking at you, his eyes lower than usual from probably taking advantage of the drink deal like you had.

He looks relaxed, hair parted in a way that shows his forehead and an all black outfit that doesn’t look as expensive as it probably is, but he makes it work so well that you do a double look while in your hazy state. If he notices, he doesn’t show it by the way he keeps his smile unfazed at you.

“We gotta stop seeing each other by accident,” he says, laughing a little.

“Yeah.” His words take a little to digest so you keep looking at him for a beat of a second. It’s a first, seeing him in a place like this. Where you can see just how well he really can adjust to any setting. He fits right in with the low lights and the relaxed atmosphere.

“This is Johnny.” He gestures for the guy besides him, who turns his attention to you and smiles in a way that’s a little familiar. Then you realize he’s the guy from the library over a year ago, and the friend Jaehyun posted pictures every now and then on his instagram page.

“Hey, It’s nice to meet you.” Johnny says, same smile from before still on and you return it. “Have heard a lot about you.”

That makes you laugh, a mixture of confusion and excitement and politeness that confuses even yourself. “Good things I hope.”

He tilts his head playfully. “Only the best things you can hear in place like this.”

The three of you share smiles, the interaction then turning into a conversation promoted by a question you ask, both from wanting to have something to say and out of curiosity. Johnny does most of the talking, explaining how he and Jaehyun had been friends for a while but only got closer now that they are attending the same university. They share a story of something that happened, them buying each other the same thing for christmas and you listen to the whole thing entranced.

It’s weird in some way how you can learn so much from your own soulmate from someone else. And it's weird how you react with joy, perhaps, to the teasing Johnny does to Jaehyun so naturally.

When the conversation settles down, Johnny looks between the two of you for a few seconds before he’s excusing himself to find an unnamed person. It was predictable he would do that, with the way he kept aiming the conversation to make it about Jaehyun, as if he somehow had to wing his friend to you.

You stare at your shoes, unsure of what to say now and maybe too worn out from the whole night to come up with something to talk about. But you don’t have to, because soon he’s asking  “Are you here alone?”

You look up, a tiny smile on your lips. “No, I came with my roommate. But she's with her friends.”

“Oh, I’ll keep you company then.” He offers and you nod, following him to the bar where it's more illuminated and you can both lean a little on the counter.

Jaehyun is good at making people feel comfortable, you had noticed that many times before and it's no surprise when he asks you about your roommate, about what songs you have been listening to lately. He tries to keep a conversation with ease, even if it stays in the usual surface you two are used to.

If you weren't so distracted by everything, your mind would probably offer that it feels a lot like when you were kids and standing in the corner of a ballroom in uncomfortable clothes, talking about things that didn't matter.

“Have you ever been to Amsterdam?” You ask him suddenly when the past topic dies down.

“Yeah, it's really nice there.”

You hum, remembering your roommate's words. “That’s cool, I really want to go there someday.”

Out of nowhere he starts laughing a little, as if you had said something funny. When you inquire about it, he shakes his head clearly amused by the way his eyes squint a little from his smile. “It's just… Don’t you think it's weird that we have known each other for all these years, and all we do is do this weird small talk?”

You laugh too, speaking before you can stop yourself. “And still for some reason I feel like I know you.”

His eyebrows raise for a second but his smile is unfaltering, your statement not bothering him.  “You know me.” He says, as a matter of fact. “And I know you.”

Now this makes you freeze, blinking slowly but it doesn't last long until you are covering your surprise by chuckling. Your eyes meet his and it strikes you that it's true, you know him and he knows you. Not everything, but what would be the fun in that.

Maybe that's why the two of you kept doing this small talk, to get to know each other better even in the smallest things. That's what getting to know someone is, after all. Not the business interviews and networking you grew up with.

You shake your thoughts away, leaning on the counter with one elbow and then resting your face on your palm. “What is your favorite thing about me then?” It's what you ask, in a playful tone to keep the conversation going. Or because you actually want to know, out of curiosity or vanity.

He chuckles, bringing his hand to his face as if in deep thought, before he replies. “I like that you are smart.”

The simplicity of it makes you snort. “Please, that's a cliche thing to say in a place like this.” You say, mimicking the words his friend had said to you earlier. “What does that even mean?”

“I don't know.” He shrugs while laughing, “Johnny just says things like that sometimes.”

You nod then, making an amused sound while you turn on the counter to stare forward. Your roommate is on the opposite side of yours, leaning against a wall while talking to a girl taller than her but just as pretty. The view makes a tiny smile settle on your lips, the beginning of a spark on your chest.

It always amazed you how people who didn't know their soulmate yet continued to live on, simply letting the universe do its thing naturally. In your young mind you had always thought that love was supposed to be a yearning that you couldn't control, that you would have to be with the person you love no matter what, and do anything to find them. That had changed now.

You turn to Jaehyun again. “What would you say is your favorite thing about me then, if we didn't know each other already?” You ask. It's a weird question because it makes him raise one eyebrow at you, but there's still not a trace of annoyance on his face.

“Isn't that also cliche to say?” He huffs. “That you are the prettiest girl I have ever seen?”

You can't help the embarrassed laugh that leaves your parted lips in shock. “Are you flirting with me?”

His ear gets an incredible red shade and you find it extremely charming. “It's just the truth.” He defends himself and it only makes you giggle more.

You thank him, tell him that you think he’s pretty too and correct it to handsome when he raises one eyebrow again. It makes a nice atmosphere settle and you feel comfortable enough to ask “So... if we didn't know each other you would flirt with me at a random party? Buy me a drink and all that?”

He smiles, dimples showing while he brushes his hair back. It's not the first time, of course, but you find yourself a little in awe at how pretty he actually is. Pretty in a way that makes you feel a little out of it, stunned by the way his lips start forming his next words.  

“What do you like to drink?” He asks casually.

Now it's your turn to raise one eyebrow. “Hmm, I like Moscow Mules.”

You watch as he turns to the bar, calling the waiter over and ordering two drinks of your said preference. The mixture of feelings on your chest make you feel drunker than you did before and you wish you could put a name to it. Excitement, amusement, whatever it is only increases when he looks at you again.

“I’m Jung Jaehyun, by the way.” He offers, smiling sweetly and you match it when you realize what he's playing at

“I’m _____. It's nice to meet you.”

⋄

Playing pretend with him is easy, even more when the drinks make your inhibitions fall completely. Jaehyun tells a joke and you lean forward a little. Then you talk about something and he comes closer as if to hear better. Another drink and plenty of silly conversation later, he's completely invading your space in a way that you don't feel slightly bothered by.  

Not even when leans to whisper in your ear. “Do you want to get out of here?”

You leave the bar giggling like the two mildly drunk people you are, basking in the joy of it and of the little fantasy you two have created. Jaehyun keeps you close, your hands linked and it's such a nice feeling that you get even more overwhelmed in a good way. The two of you walk almost glued to each other basically skipping and muttering playfully things just to say something.

When you are near the dorm complex, he stops abruptly and when you turn to him, his hands find your cheeks and his eyes search yours for a brief moment before he’s bringing your face closer to his.

It's a sweet kiss, contrary to what you thought it would be when you allowed yourself to think about this. You had always imagined desperation, not being able to endure not doing it anymore. But the reality is that Jaehyun kisses you with delicacy and  even if there is desperation to it, it's not in a way that overpowers anything else. But in a way that makes you moan lowly, makes you press him even closer by grabbing his shirt as he moves his lips slowly against yours.

There are no fireworks, no deep realization that you are kissing the person you are meant to be with for the rest of your life. But it's good, makes you want more, makes you want to bring him closer than possible, and maybe that's proof enough.

You reach his dorm in a blink after that, him having a bit of a hard time opening the door but when he does it takes no time for you to be pressed to it.

For a moment he just looks at you, eyes hazy and shining. They run through your face the same way yours does his, with longing that is finally allowed. You try to quiet the way your heart beats by leaning forward and kissing him.

The kiss is hungry but never too fast, with his hands moving to your hips and you pulling on his lips. When you moan a little at the feel, he opens his mouth a little, sliding his tongue against yours and you swear at yourself for waiting so long. Swear that you will never get enough of this.

Your lips move together in a way that is proof enough to you that this is something else even in your drunk state. His lips are soft, tongue moving with yours as if he wants to take his time and when your hands move from his shoulders to his neck he  shudders, parting from you with a wet sound.

“W-We should...” He murmurs against your lip and you nod before he even finishes, letting him lead you to his bed. It feels a lot like yours, and the rest of the room is just as familiar but you pay no attention to that when he lays you on it gently.

It’s no surprise that Jaehyun is a giving lover and you figure that out when he kisses you like he wants to find out exactly what you like. Exactly how to make you fall apart in his hands.

He does everything with an expertise that maybe should make you feel jealous, but out of all things you are, a hypocrite is not one of them. So he shows you what he has learn from other people, and you show him what you have

And he doesn't settle for anything less than kissing all over your body after the two of you get undressed. For less than telling you in whispered words that he has dreamed about this before so many times and immediately swallowing with his tongue the words you would never be able to let out.

That you had dreamed about this too.  Dreamed about coming on his tongue as he eats you out, your hands grabbing at his hair and seeing stars. A giving lover, of the best kind,  Even more when he asks, with his mouth shining with your arousal. “How do you want it?”

You blink as your mind spins with the endless possibilities, but the ultimate realization that you would have him any way.  You decide on the one that gives you more control. “I… I want to ride you.”

He bites his lips, ears burning red again. “Yeah,” His words come out mumbles as he just looks at you for a second before moving to lay on his back. “Yeah, ok. Fuck.”

You straddle his hips after he rolls down the condom, his eyes looking up at you in what you think is adoration, pure desire. And then you kiss him again, all tongue but still slow. So deep that you think you’ll never forget what he tastes like.

He lets you sink down at your own pace, palms on your ass when you move slowly, feeling him stretch you with every inch you sit on. He hums, hands tracing your skin delicately and it only makes it so much worse.

You move, a grind at first testing the water and immediately crying out lowly from the friction and you look for support with nails grabbing at his chest. He doesn't seem to mind.

“Good?” A stupid question to ask with the way you are so wet around him that the room is filled with a squelching sound when you move up and down with all the patience in the world.

Still, you nod. “You feel - Fuck - really good.”

He looks down at where you’re connected, biting his lips to suppress the noises you want him to let out so you move your hips with purpose, eyes roaming his face to watch it contort in pleasure as he lets out the prettiest moan you have ever heard. Low and deep.

His hands move further down then, gripping your hips and moving you in a grind that feels too good. So good that you have to drop your arms to his chest for leverage as he moves you to his liking, pushing your hips back and forth.

You come with your back arching, long moan of his name as your entire body shakes and tingles and you have to grip at the sheets beside you for support. You try to keep moving as your orgasm washes over you but its too much and your walls clenching around his cock  makes him grip your ass even tighter, the action sending a thrill down your body as you fall forward on his chest with a wail.

Your mind swims in the gooey feeling of pleasure and all you can think about is him. Jaehyun, Jaehyun, Jaehyun.

He waits for a second, hand moving to your back as your body trembles, drawing calming circles on it. When you have calmed down, he plants his feet on the bed and starts moving his hips up slowly and patiently but with deep strokes that make you bite your lip with oversensitivity.

And when you can, you move your head up, balancing yourself on your arms and looking at him. He wastes no time in kissing you, not deep because he parts his lips in a groan during a particular stroke, speeding his movements and grunting when you try to meet them back.

It’s when he has had enough, that he pulls out only to turn you on your back so he can enter you more easily, his hips now meeting yours in a pace that tells you that he’s close.

“Jae, oh… oh my god.” You sigh dreamily yet broken enough that it makes him smile when a sharp thrust makes your hips raise a little. He looks proud of being able to get you like this.

He hums as if agreeing with a very thorough statement, moving his arms so he can press his chest to yours as he fucks into you with calculated thrusts . You can barely move with his weight on top of you, with how he seems to lock you in place with his hips and it’s enough for another broken sob to fall from your lips.

“Deep?” He asks in a groan and with a nice slide of his cock inside of you to punctuate the question. You nod frantically because he’s as deep as he can get, knows this very well, and the feeling is something that makes you flutter around him in the desperate need to come.

He kisses your cheek then, two sweet but filthy enough with his heavy exhales against it. His pace never gets too fast, just hinting at it but he maintains a speed that leaves you in the brink of another orgasm. But, you only reach it when he pinches your clit with his fingers, circling it until your lips part in a silent scream and you’re coming again, stars behind your eyelids.

And the sounds he makes when your walls squeeze just a little more than he can handle are something else. A deep groan and a pained little sob that you find extremely endearing and hot at the same time, his face contorting as he quickened his pace just enough to push him over the edge, finally releasing inside the condom.    

He pulls out, breath heavy as he smiles at you falling putty on the bed and watching as he removes the condom and disposes it only to come quickly to the bed quickly.

He hovers over you, kissing you sweetly. Your arms find his shoulders easily as the two of you bask in the afterglow of it.

Then he kisses you again, tongues dancing together and you don’t mind when his hand starts to wander again, sending goosebumps to your body. His fingers find your clit with ease, circling it slowly before applying more pressure as your lips part and your hand grip his arm, for support and not to cut the actions.

You come again, not as strong as your first one but still enough to have you shaking a little and screaming silently. His finger stays at your clit, hovering until he asks again in a whisper. “Another?”

You nod, and he resumes his actions slowly, until you are seeing starts and he swallows your moans with kisses and stops your trembling with soft hands grounding you.

When you recover your breath, an incredulous laughter leaves your lips. “You’re insane.” He just smiles, nose brushing against yours.  “God, I...I gotta clean up now.”

He moves to get up. “Yeah sure, I’ll show you the bathroom.”

You end up cleaning together, a shower that doesn't take you long, even if it's hard to keep your hands to yourselves but you are both tired, feeling a little drained after the glow has gone away.

⋄

Afterwards, you are laying on his bed side by side, surrounded by the smell of his body wash and wearing the big t-shirt and sweatpants he offered you.

Your mind starts wandering lazily with the remnants of your high, that's why the words escape your mouth without much thought. “Isn't it weird that even if we have someone in the world meant for us we can still feel lonely?” You are not lonely right now, not really. Maybe it's just the sadness of winter speaking, or maybe you're still a little drunk.

He takes a second to reply, voice low when he does. “Yeah. But you don't have to.” He says.“ Feel lonely, I mean. You don't have to.”

It's a little funny how he feels the need to explain himself to you, as if you don't quite understand him when the reality it's both very far from that and exactly it at the same time.

“I don't think thats how it works. It's not up to me.” If it was, wouldn't you have stopped being lonely by now? Wouldn't you have finally succumbed to the desperate need of wanting someone, something, when late night hit and the mark in your arm would burn just as your eyes as you fought back tears?

Still, he says simply. “I think it is.”

You smile sadly then, turning to him a little and watching as he kept his gaze on the ceiling. He looked relaxed, as if this setting was soothing his mind and it makes a familiar feeling blossom on your chest.  “What did you feel when the mark showed up on your arm?” A question that you had wanted to ask the moment you found out it was him, but instead had failed miserably to guess the answer to.

“Relief.” He says without thinking, a truthful and genuine reply.

“That you wouldn't have to end up marrying someone that wasn't your soulmate?” You ask. All these years you had thought that this must've been it, what you felt that day.

“No. I was relieved that it was you anyway.” Is his reply, body turning and eyes meeting yours. For a second you’re frozen, blinking because it’s strange to have someone put their feelings out so easily.

“Is… Is that what love is, then?” You ask softly. “Relief that you have at least one person that makes you feel held?”

Maybe this is not really what he meant,  and more so wishful thinking of your part than anything else, but still he nods.

“I think it’s that. And other things.” His voice is soft when he says this. “I'm not sure what it is, but I want to find out.”

You can’t help as you examine his face after his confession. Is this what being soulmates is, then? Having someone that it's worth taking the risk of finding out? Or maybe it’s having someone that will show you exactly what it is.

Does all that explain the way you can't look away from him?

“Me neither.” You reply in the same quiet voice because it’s true. You tend to act like you know everything, and that you know what love is. You know love it’s pathetic and that it gets in the way of things, but is it really that bad? So you ask “Is it bad that I think you'll only love me because the mark on your arm tells you to?”

He laughs briefly. “No, it makes sense.” His eyes find yours again. “But you know it’s not, don't you?”

“I do.” At least you do now.

Maybe that's why you fall asleep so easily

⋄

2014 (flashback)

It’s the last day before summer break and Jaehyun is tired.

The other four guys he shared a room with are all packing their things for a nice vacation somewhere in Europe or one of the paradisiac beaches they all like to talk about. Jaehyun just wants to get home, not think about college applications for two months and maybe go somewhere he can be alone for a while.

“Sooyoung is kinda hot, huh?”  Yugyeom says out of nowhere and the room settles in a unison hum of agreement. He joins in too.

There’s a loud creak noise as another one of his roommates slumps into the bed but he doesn't bother checking who it is, mind somewhere else as he stares at the ceiling.

“True. But I would die if Ela gave me her number.” Jungkook sighs dreamily and Jaehyun can't help the snort that escapes his lips. Just yesterday they had a conversation exactly like this one, but not quite as innocent. Trust a group of men that have no idea who their roommates are to act like this.

Even though Doyoung, the only one of them that already knew, still acted the same when it came to this. His soulmate isn't someone he knew already, so what was the point in waiting. That's why he asks the next question. “Jaehyun, you know ___, right? Does she stick to the whole ‘waiting’ thing?”

Jaehyun blinks, shifts almost unnoticeable. “I don't know her like that.” Is what he says, which is a half true. He knows her, probably things no one else knows but that’s what happens when you grow up in the same circles, he guesses. Right now though, he feels like he doesn’t know her anymore, not with the distance she had put between them after the wedding was announced by your parents.

Then, he starts thinking about himself. Is he waiting for his soulmate? He has kissed some girls, but it never went beyond that. But now he remembers coming home from german class one day and his mother making soft cake as she told him about the name that would appear on his wrist.

He remembers that he had said loudly that he wished ____ would be his name, because then they could be better friends for some reason as silly as playing around together.

Sicheng interrupts his thoughts by snorting loudly. “Are you really trying to hit?” He asks Doyoung. “Gonna end up in the cover of a magazine for trying to corrupt the nation’s good girl.”

The room erupts in laughter and comments after that. He drowns it with his mind going somewhere else.

That night he dreams about her.

⋄

10, FEBRUARY 2018

Winter break goes by quickly with one too many end of the year celebration and wishing people you had never seen before a happy new year.

You spend your days fulfilling your internship at the company you would one day own, following around the superiors for the Marketing team and playing nice when they try to flatter you.

So busy that you can barely think about it, but you still do. You think about him so often that you think you have lost your mind.  And you see Jung Jaehyun too, here and there at parties, between whiskey glasses, tuxedos and unspoken words. Because, as you always thought, keeping it all unsaid is easier. At least for now.

Perhaps he knows it all, in a different way than you. So the two of you kept it lowkey, for the duration of those two months that are now gone with the wind. Two months of not a single magazine spread on your escapades, or you parents mentioning anything that is out of the ordinary.

It's as if the two of you have a secret, that some may assume, but still don't know for sure. What you and Jaehyun did that night is kept inside a locked box, one that you share with him and that every moment until now seems to fit in. What you don't know is if he too keeps the box as sacred as you do.

What you don't know is if the thought of it being opened by prying eyes scares him too.

Being back to campus is, ironically, a breath of fresh air. No more business meetings disguised as family celebrations, or stupid networking, or smiling for a camera to say that the company has never been better. No more internship and lack of time for something else.

February comes and it's just you, your dorm bed and the roommate you will miss when it's time. Just the lectures and keeping busy and trying not to think about things only to fail miserably.

But then, there are the phone calls, never ending and always the same. Or almost always.

The phone lights up, stupid ringtone, and your heart starts beating a little faster. How could someone ever guess what a phone call is about?  Not having control made you antsy.

Your mother greets you as always, stern words, asking how you have been out of politeness. You spend the entire phone call waiting for her to just say what she wants to already.

She mentions being busy, good opportunities, of an article you should read and something that sounds like a threat if you let yourself slip and get a scandal, even though she has said all this not long ago after gifting you another piece of jewelry you’ll keep stored deep in your drawer.

At least this time it doesn't take long for her to finally say what she wants. “Jaehyun’s birthday is soon. Don't forget to greet him.”

“I won't.” You reply simply but she’s quick to cut you off.

“Publicly. Maybe sending flowers would be good, or buying something that can get attention from the press.” It’s obvious this is not about you and your soulmate, it’s about you and your future. As everything is.

“Ok.”

“Just because he's your soulmate doesn't mean people will connect you two together forever.” She continues, never knowing when to stop. “You have to remind them of that.”

“I know that.” Because you do. There was no guarantee that your marriage with Jaehyun would be good publicity if the two of you weren’t liked or even popular.

You fear that when the time comes, people will realize something you yourself already has. That maybe you don’t really deserve Jaehyun, not because he’s better than you, but because you are not sure you can give him the love he deserves.

What you don't know clearly yet, is that you’re selfish and want him anyway.

“Good.” Your mother says and then the line cuts.

One time a therapist told you that maybe your mother was jealous. Because you would get to experience something she didn't, being with your soulmate, and that it was normal. It didn't mean she was evil and hated you. Another one said that that was the reason she was so stern, she wanted to keep you in line to prevent you from failure so as to not hurt you. That, behind the lack of affection, was a wish for your happiness.

Maybe there will be a time you understand that plenty. Maybe some things can never be truly fixed, only forgotten.

Four days days after that, you text Jaehyun a simple happy birthday with a heart at the end of it. You also get a chocolate cake sent to his place from a bakery you like, and when he calls to thank you, you tell him to not post it anywhere.

He laughs and tells you that it's a good idea.

⋄

2007 (flashback)

It was another late afternoon party, for another thing that you couldn’t remember or care about because things like this shouldn't really matter when you are only ten years old. Still, you had watched the other kids play with each other as their parents talked business and laughed, drunk from the bubbly drinks they downed glass after glass of.

For a moment you felt like reaching out and playing with them too, but it died soon and you stayed unmoving on the chair you had been placed in, while your parents did the same as the others somewhere in the distance.

It had been a pretty day, you remember, the sun was about to set and it made the shiny fabric on the tablecloths that were spread around the individual tables set outside, sparkle just the tiniest bit. You played with it to have something to distract yourself with.

You remember too, that Jung Jaehyun and his family were at the table right in front of yours, your parents greeting each other and talking briefly. Later on the party you had watched as he listened to something his mother said to him. She was beautiful, like your own mother, and you had heard her voice before so it had been easy to imagine in what tone she was speaking. Soft and low, how warmth felt like. As to the content of her words you would never know, but it had clearly been something nice because it made her son laugh as she patted his head.

You didn’t know back then that this moment would stick with you for the years to come, for a reason that at ten years old you were just beginning to understand. But still, the weird twist in your stomach, as you started to realize that something was wrong, would be felt many more times. As you realized that your family dynamics were not as warm as the others appeared to be.

⋄

25, FEBRUARY 2018

What you and Jaehyun have turns into something hard to describe.

The line you had so clearly put between the two of you, to avoid your future, had been replaced now by acceptance and the weird feeling of navigating a relationship that It’s still a new thing, but it’s also nice enough. Especially when he sends you a silly text and jokes about something, later on commenting the same thing on one of your instagram posts. It makes you feel giddy, that you have a shared secret.

Even more when he gives you a small knowing smile across the table while your father is non stop talking about the new model the company is about to release.

It’s a small dinner to celebrate Jaehyun’s birthday, or at least as small it can be in a restaurant like this, where the waiter will look you up and down if you are not wearing your prettiest silk dress and stiletto heels.

The whole thing had been rescheduled twice, because of busy schedules and whatnot, and now that both your parents had been able to fly here, you all sit underneath lowlights and drink expensive wine that is accompanied by a conversation that is so boring that you have trouble keeping up with it.

He finds you on the rooftop, hair blowing a little as he walks to you and in the back of your mind you think it’s a crime that he looks this good in a suit. That’s probably all the wine you had talking.

“Sorry I left you alone there.” You mutter with a sympathetic smile thrown his way when he reaches you, but you both know you are not sorry at all for escaping the stupid conversation your parents were having.

He chuckles. “You leaving was just a reason for me to escape too.”

The two of you turn to look at the city, the illuminated buildings looking minuscule from here but the tiny lights from each of them make for a breathtaking view. Jaehyun stands so close to you that your arms touch. You don’t mind.

“Looking at the city like that makes me feel really small.” You whisper, without really thinking.

“That’s because we are.” You hear his voice clearly, warm like honey and you don’t try to help the smile that forms in your lips.

“How do you do it?” The question makes him look at you, raising one eyebrow. “I mean, you always sound like you got it all figured out. While I just say the most random stuff because I don’t know who I am.”

You know you are the heritage left to you, the face of your father's company, a good student, smart. One of the few socialites that have never stepped a foot out of line, according to the magazines. But take all that and what’s left?

“I don't.” He says simply, “I’m just good at pretending, like you are.”

That makes you laugh. “Good to know we are both good at playing our roles.” You say, as a joke, because you are sure the two of you are beyond the acting now.

And It’s always funny to you how the masks the both of you put on fall completely when you are alone. That’s what it means to be friends, you had realized, and that’s what you decide to call your relationship for now. Friends, from a long time, that happened to be tied together for other reasons.

And Jaehyun is a friend that sometimes makes you feel like you deserve the love you crave.

“Hey. You are ____.” He says after a second, for good measure. “That's enough, you don't have to be anything else.”

“Is it enough for you?” You ask without really thinking.

He smiles, dimples showing and your heart grows warmer. “Yeah, and we can figure it out together. Who we are and all that.”

You share a smile, both staring forward at the view and shivering a little from the night wind.

“I’m sorry for getting you into these deep conversations.”

He laughs deeply at that, with his whole body. “It’s good, don’t worry. I want you to trust me, even if you won't let me get to know you.” And you do, you want to desperately trust him and let him in. ”Because you are scared I can't handle your daddy issues or something.”

A scoff mixed with laughter leaves your lips. It’s been a long time since you were able to joke about this with someone. “It’s mommy issues, please get it right.”

He turns to you with a silly smile on his lips. “Is it because she made you take those piano classes?” He jokes and you laugh before tilting your head.

“Wait, how did you know I played the piano?” That was ages ago, finally a hobby that you enjoyed amongst the numerous other classes your mother had enrolled you in. You played it for a long time before you stopped completely for whatever reason.

“You told me, when we had to introduce ourselves and talk about things we liked in german class.” He explains. “You said you liked it, even though your mother forced you to go.”

You turn to him now as it strikes you that Jung Jaehyun remembered you from his childhood the same way you remembered him. Not the same things, but still memories. The thought is so comforting that you can’t hold the way your cheeks move up in a smile.

“What about you?” You question. “What things did you say you liked?”

“Hmm, I don't really remember.” Is what he says with a shrug.

You two share a look, perhaps meaningful but maybe that's the wine making you feel on cloud 9 under his gaze.  “What do you like now?”

He chuckles as if your interest is amusing. “I like… music, getting coffee with friends. That kind of thing.”

“Not cars?” You joke, making him laugh. You decide then that you like making him do it.

“I mean, a little.” He replies playfully, and it’s very easy to be comfortable like this.

It’s good to know after all this time Jaehyun was like you, even if you felt alone in the world sometimes. That’s what a soulmate must be after all, not the missing piece to make you whole but someone that makes you realize exactly that you don't have to be.

“We should get coffee together sometime.” You offer after some time, a gentle smile being shared between you two in laziness, at the thought of soon having to return to the restaurant and popping out of the bubble you have started creating for yourself.

“We should.” He says, and the bubble stays afloat a little longer.

⋄

JULY 2019

It’s another charity Gala, with sparkly lights, champagne, fake smiles and a dress too tight. Everything is the way it always had been, except for you.

And Jaehyun, whose hand stays on your waist as he guides you through a slow song. He had wanted to dance, said he always thought it was nice when lovers did it in movies.

Lovers. The mere use of the word had made your heart somersault in your chest, but you kept it down. Instead, you move with him with soft smiles adorning both of your faces.

Your hand finds his cheeks. Nothing could describe the look you give him in the light but pure admiration. And you don’t care if anyone sees it,  you don’t care if it ends up in a magazine spread. Because even if everybody knew about it, this is yours.

The way he brings his hand on top of yours, and how his eyes match the exact look on yours. Every little detail about it makes you know that this right here belongs to the two of you and nothing can change it.

“Jaehyun?” Your voice is low, almost inaudible underneath the music and conversation echoing through the ballroom. “I don't want to be here anymore.”

His eyebrows raise at your confession, steps faltering for a second as he loses the rhythm “What? We can leave right now if you want.” He offers. “I came with my own car, so we can-“

Your soft laughter interrupts his words. “No, I don't mean right now.” You explain, swallowing around your next words. “I meant.. I don't want to keep playing a role, I want to go somewhere with you where no one knows us.”

A smile grows on his lips, one that tells you that he understands exactly what you mean. And you don’t have to guess anymore, there are no more maybes. You know.

“Okay, we can do that.”

He pulls you closer, dance now long forgotten as you just move in complete muscle memory.

“I want to find out.” You confess in a whisper. A secret between the two of you that no one else would ever know.  “I want to go somewhere with you and find out.”

You wonder if he already found the answer to it, to what love is. But you also don't need to know right now, because you will know when you have to. Either way you want to find out  and it's not for you to guess.

He smiles genuinely at you, with his dimples showing, like he always smiles at you.

You smile back, heart aching from something that can only be only be explained by years of shared stories, and in your mind, deeper connections that go beyond what everything and everyone inside this ballroom would understand.

You smile back, in the exact way you have always smiled at him.

⋄

APRIL 2020

A ray of sun peeks from the half closed curtains and set right above your eyes, getting you to wake up lazily and slowly. It takes you a while to come to it, the sheets on the bed just now starting to feel truly familiar with the warmth left on the bed, from someone that had probably gotten up just a little before from you.

You blink once and twice before your eyes are completely open, vision still unfocused but it slowly comes back as you stare at the bedside table. A lip balm is the first thing you see, then your phone and lastly a picture framed of you and Jaehyun hugging in front of the sunflower field at the Van Gogh museum. He’s laughing, at something said by the kind fellow tourist that had offered to take your picture, and you have the beginning of a smile on your own lips. One that you mimic perfectly now as you remember that day.

Your thoughts are suddenly interrupted by the door opening and Jaehyun walks in the bedroom, holding a bowl. His eyes are still drowsy and his hair a mess but you  think he looks right at home. Because he is.

“Morning, baby.” His voice is low and raspy, but enough to make you melt even more on the sheets.

“Good morning.” The smile settles fully on your lips now.

He sits on the bed next to you then, almost drowning inside his large t-shirt and hair plopping cutely when he tries moving even closer to place the bowl with sliced fruits on your lap. “We gotta add apples to the shopping list.” Is all he says and you nod while picking a slice of melon and chewing it leisurely as you bask on the hazy feeling of still being half asleep

Jaehyun stays by your side, head weirdly pressed to your chest, and asking silently for you to feed him apple slices every now and then with just his mouth opening.

Your mind wanders as you eat and then you’re having one of those moments where realization dawns on you finally. A silly small thing that makes you smile and your chest grow warm. “Jaehyun?” You call out softly, fighting back the bubble of happiness that forms on your chest because old habits are hard to die.

“Hmm?” He looks up at you, eyes blinking at you in the same way he always does, but this time it makes you want to cry a little bit.

You lean down, press a quick peck to his lips that make you both smile and then the words are out of your mouth.

“This is what love is.”

#here she is! #cant wait to hear what you guys think about it #works #commission #neowritingsnet #nct smut #nct scenarios #jaehyun scenarios #jaehyun smut #jaehyun scenario

[sophieakatz]

Thursday Thoughts: Good Omens and Judaism

Recently, I watched Jill Bearup’s review of the Good Omens Amazon Prime adaptation – a video you can watch here, and even if you don’t, I highly recommend you watch any of her other videos, especially her newer stuff about fight choreography – and something she brought up set my brain rolling down a particularly interesting hill.

She compares the series (written by Neil Gaiman) to the book (written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman), and points out how one of the things the series does differently is that it shows the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Jesus doesn’t appear in the book Good Omens, though a major part of the story’s premise is that all the events described in the Bible actually literally happened. The book is centered on the birth of the Antichrist, but it doesn’t present us with the Christ that he is “anti” to.

Bearup comments that the story of Good Omens doesn’t really work so well if Jesus’s death (and subsequent rebirth) is one of the things that actually literally happened in the world. This is because the other major part of the story’s premise is that Heaven is, in many ways, just as bad as Hell. The angels are just as much a threat as the demons are to the world, to humankind, and to our protagonists. There is no inherent, definite separation between “good” and “bad” in Good Omens; humanity, and life on Earth, is the important thing worth fighting for.

But Jesus’s death indicates that there is an inherent “good” separate from “bad.” It also indicates that Heaven is the ultimate good place, and the ultimate goal, because Jesus’s death was for the purpose of redeeming the sins of humanity so that humans could in the end go to Heaven. If Heaven is just as bad as Hell, how can there also be this objectively good “dying for our sins” thing?

I find this view particularly interesting because none of this occurred to me while watching Good Omens. I didn’t think at all about the Jesus scene or what it implied. It didn’t linger with me; it didn’t affect my interpretation of the rest of the show.

And that’s really because Jesus doesn’t matter to me. At all.

I didn’t grow up with the Jesus story. My first exposure to any New Testament content was the time my dad was in a community theatre production of Jesus Christ Superstar. He played Caiaphas, and we have home video of my siblings and I – little Jews between the ages of 2 and 8 – singing about how much of a problem this Jesus guy is in our best imitation of a bass voice. Mom didn’t let us stay to watch the second act, so we missed out on all the betrayal and whipping and death parts, and once the run of the musical was complete, we never watched it again.

In middle school, it took me until the last chapter of The Last Battle to realize that Aslan had been Jesus all along. Yes, I did read all seven Narnia books; I just thought it was fun fantasy, until they all suddenly died and went to heaven. In hindsight, I get how heavy-handed the sacrifice and rebirth in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe is, but at the time, I didn’t know that part of the Jesus story, let alone that it was something people cared about or believed.

Bearup is right – Good Omens doesn’t work with Jesus. The series worked for me because I didn’t think that the Jesus death scene had any impact on the rest of the story, because as a Jew, that scene doesn’t have any impact on my life philosophy.

And I think that’s the key thing here. Good Omens makes the most sense if you remember that it’s a Jewish man’s take on Christian theology. Neil Gaiman is Jewish. Of course Jesus doesn’t matter in Good Omens. He’s a detail that doesn’t fit with the story’s philosophy and is therefore easily deleted or relegated to a flashback that’s actually about Aziraphale and Crowley’s friendship.

Which brings me to something I did think about while watching Good Omens. Though it focuses on the Christian Bible, Good Omens is really fricking Jewish.

For Jews, the here and now matters so much more than whatever is after death! The mashiach hasn’t come yet; no one’s “saved” our souls. In fact, our souls don’t need “saving” – “Elohai neshama shenatata be t'horah he,” we say – “My G-d, the soul You have given me is pure.” We are already good, as we are now. We’re here on Earth doing the work of creation every single day, and that work is important. All that we create – all the stuff that Aziraphale and Crowley love about us in Good Omens – is important. The very idea of everything being destroyed so that we can all be shuttled off to Heaven or Hell is, well, icky.

The existence of the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley is also very Jewish. In the Torah, angels don’t really have personalities. They’re malachim – literally, messengers. If one shows up, it’s treated in the text like it’s just speaking G-d’s words. We have stories about them in the Talmud that give angels a little more color, but they’re not exactly painted in a very “good” light there. In one midrash, when the Red Sea closed over the Egyptians, allowing the Jews to escape slavery, the angels sang and danced in celebration. G-d then said to the angels, “Why are you celebrating? My children are drowning in the sea.” So the idea of an angel like Gabriel, who’s spent his whole time hanging out in heaven, being a jerk who doesn’t care about humanity fits well with the Jewish perspective. However, if an angel did stick around on Earth for thousands of years, getting to know us, instead of simply parroting G-d’s words… then he’d probably become a decent fellow who loved humans. That’s Aziraphale.

As for Crowley, well, Jews question everything. Arguing with G-d is our thing, all the way back to Abraham. We love G-d, sure – if we believe in G-d, and there are plenty of Jews who don’t. For every law that exists, for every story we tell or prayer we recite or tradition we take part in, there is a Jew who has said, “But why, though? Does it really have to be like that?” And isn’t that what got Crowley in trouble in the first place, and what motivates him throughout the series? “Does it really have to be like that?”

Good Omens talks a lot about “God’s ineffable plan,” and it leaves things ambiguous in the end about whether the events of the series actually were Herself’s plan. That’s very Jewish, too. The Jewish answer to “Does G-d have a plan?” is, basically, “Does it matter?” We’re here now. We’re living our lives now. We’re doing what good we can now. If there’s a Heaven or a Hell, if there’s even a literal G-d, if any of the stuff in the Bible actually literally happened… Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Tl;dr, if it feels like Jesus doesn’t make sense in Good Omens, that’s because he doesn’t. Jesus left Judaism behind, and Good Omens is a Jewish story. It’s Jewish fanfiction of the New Testament. Which itself is fanfiction of the Torah. Think about it.

#thursday thoughts #good omens #judaism #christianity #jesus #media analysis #aziraphale #crowley #adaptation #religion #torah #new testament #angels #theology #god #jewish stories #jill bearup #neil gaiman #terry pratchett #good #evil #fanfiction #reviews

[listovite]

How Trauma Team 10th Anniversary Artwork was Made

Before that, I apologize not being active during Trauma Team’s 11th Anniversary. Got several personal problems that I don’t want to disclose. 

The piece above was the refine piece from the one in zine (You can check it out here!). It wasn’t supposed to look like that at first, haha. And this is how this piece was made. Zine Mod, Please correct me if I made some mistake in remembering what happened during the Zine development, thank you! Let’s start, shall we?

It all started when Rae invited me to be one of the mod for the Zine. Since it's my first time participating a Zine, why not? Fast forward, deadline was like a month left and I just keep procrastinating. My mind state probably was in a big mess before, assignments, argued with lil and big sis, that case at the hospital which I don't want to remember. Whatever, just grab my old drawings and do full black and white artwork then I'm done.

Ok, nvm. Probably too simple to submit a black and white artwork. Let's just add some base colour, simple shading, and background... It's a total mess. The feelings of guilt started to appear. Trauma Team is a franchise that help me a lot in my stress time, and also a franchise that helped me meet someone amazing. Let's do it properly in... a week!

At first, the main casts supposed to be drawn on the board, but since I was too lazy researching how chalk stroke looks like on board, screw that idea. Let's swap it to paper and make it like a detective board or something since the climax is during Naomi's episode, yes?

The casts... They are important in building the story plot. So they need to be in great quality too. Okay, I'm sorry not be able to draw all of them in full body and colours but hey, better than nothing? Stupid lazy Listo.

80% of the time spent was arranging the casts' portrait location compared to rendering CR. That Portland map is the real map I took screenshot of from google map, lol. Did anyone notice Albert was there too? 

If I remember correctly, my friend/big sis? I forgot... Saw this and told me, "Anniversary supposed to be a happy scene with bright beautiful colours right?" Damn it, she had a point there but it's too late to redo everything from zero since I had only less than 24-H left... 

Whatever, just make this piece look like a find the object game then for the viewers to reminiscence? idk... Like putting some trivia like typed Delphi between Naomi and LG, CIFM... And I always find that rendering realistic objects are easier than 2d objects somehow. Idk if anyone noticed this. This is not canon, but I think CR should have scars around his wrists for being handcuffed for 8 years. But I painted too many scars there. lol.

Then it's announced that there will be extended deadline. Oh well- I have finished this piece then all done and good and more time to refine bit.

REFINEMENT

Today, I found out that the lightning actually looks bad and stiff and the colour not balance either in before version... I made some minor adjustments and should look more natural now, I guess? I wish I could change the Zine page too, haha.

Closing

Idk what kind of piece I'm going to draw for next year's anniversary. It's a small fandom but it means a lot for me. Hmm, probably something more colourful and happy?

#trauma center #trauma team

[astro-rain]

delicate; b.barnes

chapter seventeen - “wouldn’t dream of it”

delicate masterlist

word count: 4.7k

synopsis: reader has a strange dream that ends up bringing on a cascade of various events and feelings.

pairings: bucky barnes x fem!reader

A/N: feel free to drop any opinions/thoughts/predictions below (or in my asks if u wanna be anonymous!!)

She would have woken up from a night's sleep saturated with regret... if she had slept a wink. She spent the night tossing and turning, and at about five in the morning, the pursuit of rest was abandoned.

Forcefully and exasperatedly, she sat straight up, glaring at the clock and letting the blanket pool around her waist. Y/N had her weekly meeting with Shuri at nine o'clock... that meant four hours to kill. More like four more hours of trudging through thoughts, memories, questions, and fears surrounding the previous day. Four more hours of ruminating over Bucky Barnes. This seemed to become a reoccurring activity her life.

She stared at the wall, thinking about how before, there was at least the excuse of being drunk: maybe not completely knowing what she was doing, maybe not remembering something correctly. But they were sober this time... she was sober. And what struck her was that, when it happened, when he kissed her, there was no moment of initial startle. There was no surprise jerk back or woah-what-are-you-doing response. Their bodies just fell into form. She just fell into form. Like it was an instinct. Like they were both used to it, and had done it a number of times before.

She wasn't sure what shocked her more: the fact that he kissed her or the fact that she kissed him back. Was he being bold? Or did she lead him on? Had she been leading him on? He wouldn't have done it on his own account, right? She had a degree of difficulty in believing she was wanted. Truly.

She could've sworn that she wasn't this emotionally invested. She could've sworn that if she couldn't control what she was feeling, she could at least control what she was doing. She rubbed her eyes, wondering where she went so wrong. It probably happened at some point during the isolated time she had been spending with Bucky in a secret corner of the world, not minding the least bit that she had been away from home and work for months whilst working on a project hardly anyone else was even aware of.

Even with all this in mind, she didn't seem to care. She didn't really mind that she hadn't been home in ages, it didn't really bother her that she might be in trouble when she gets back for helping enemy of the state Sharon Carter, runaway fugitive Steve Rogers, or war criminal James Buchanan Barnes. Because every time she thought about the consequences, it just didn't seem to matter more than what was keeping her in Wakanda... Besides, she guessed Bucky would probably be pardoned and after everything settled down, who would pay any attention to her? It's not like she mattered in the grand scheme.

As soon as that very thought arose, she could hear Bucky's voice scolding her in the back of her head. Why was he always there?

Frustrated, she groaned into the air in front of her. Her feelings were so confusing, she wasn't even sure what exactly it was she felt towards Bucky. On one hand, she felt fiercely protective over him: she'd go down fighting before she'd let anyone lay a hand on him, prepared to stay in his corner forever, ready on defense.

But at the same time, she felt this ineffable sense of warmth for him. Like one look at the way his eyes crinkle when he smiled, and she'd turn soft as water. Like being in his vicinity smoothed out the rough around her edges.

And if all this wasn't enough, now she had been touched by him, she had felt his lips and the gentleness in his skin. This brought a cascade of new feelings, ones she knew she had to hide. It... was definitely a problem. She knew, don't get her wrong, she knew it was a problem. As much as she understood this irrefutable fact, the numbness in her lips just wouldn't go away. He had remained with her even hours later. She couldn't get rid of his heartbeat; it was still in her hand. She could still feel him.

Basically, she knew this most recent development was an issue. She knew it was bad, wrong, worrisome, and whatever else. And knowing this, recognizing the very hot water she was in, the only thing she could focus on was trying to ignore the recurrent desire to be near him, to find him and be close to him.

"Fuck."

She plopped back down on her back and elected to cast a burning glare at the ceiling until she had to get ready for her meeting.

—

"I think it might be too hot for this," she complained with a smile on her face.

"It was your idea," he said, a few steps ahead of her, "and we're almost there, so buck up."

She laughed. He smiled at the sound.

"What?" he asked.

"You said buck up. Like Buck... Bucky. Like you."

He just looked at her, amused. Sun kissed and happy.

"It's fitting," she shrugged, grinning.

"Guess so. Hurry up, slow poke. You're gonna fall behind."

"I'm already behind," she huffed . "Your super soldier legs are too fast for me."

"Well," he stopped short and she finally caught up, standing right beside him, "we're here. So worry not."

He looked over at her to find her already looking at him. Funny how their eyes always found each other like that.

"What?" he asked again, not able to help how the corners of his mouth turned up just slightly.

"Nothin.’ Everything," she shrugged. "You."

Perhaps she just liked looking at him. Him and his long hair and light eyes. Was that such a crime? His skin looked caramelized under the sun. She wanted to reach out and touch him.

"You're a real peach, y'know that?" he smirked.

She looked away, pretending to find the grass around them spectacularly interesting while hiding a dopey smile at his compliment.

"Hey, doll face. I'm a lot more fun than the grass, I swear," he teased. "Lemme see my favorite face."

"Hold on." She got an idea.

She reached down beside her and plucked a flower from the soil.

"A little hibiscus," she smiled, tucking the small flower behind his ear. God, he was just so pretty.

She stood back, satisfied with her decor. She sighed, content. How couldn't she be? She was looking at two of the most beautiful things. Flowers and Bucky.

As soon as it was securely in place, Bucky bent down to pick the hibiscus that sat right next to the one Y/N chose. Mirroring her actions, he placed it behind her ear.

"A little hibiscus," he repeated fondly, "for a real peach!"

She didn't dare try to hide the next dopey grin while taking in the sight before her, of Bucky beaming in the sunlight with a flower in his hair. Looking at this, she understood why mankind began to paint. Why there needed to be someway to capture something as precious as this, some method of preserving something so idyllic and beautiful and pure and perfect.

Perfect like the cool, fresh water of the lake. Their lake. Their place. The flowing, breathing water she felt around her waist. They floated around, her and Bucky, as light as air in that lake.

The two were weightless, adoration suspended in animation. The water preserved the feeling of feather light kisses and chests pressed together and hands beginning to roam. If only she could be closer to him. Her fingers in his hair and his palms on either side of her face wasn't enough. She needed more. More, more, more of him.

Skin is so soft and the sun is so warm and soon enough, the water was up to her shoulders as his arms ran up her back. Arms plural, she noticed. He held her with both, protectively enclosing the longing feeling between them.

"Oh, fucking hell!" Y/N sprang up, throwing the blanket off of her.

She must've fallen asleep... and began to dream... She could imagine if her brain was a person, it'd be laughing at her for that.

Why? Why? What was the reason for this? There was no point! How frustrating! How embarrassing that her mind betrayed her with dreams of him.

"God damn it," she swore under her breath.

She wanted to angrily shake her fist in the air like vengeful cartoon character, as she got out of bed and headed towards her wardrobe.

It was 8 a.m. One hour until her meeting with Shuri. She would spend the time changing her outfit until it was distracting enough to draw her attention away from thoughts of that damn lake... and his damn hands...

—

"My friend!" Shuri greeted in her usual upbeat manner. "How are you? How are things?"

There was absolutely no way to answer this honestly.

"I'm doin' well. Same old, same old. How 'bout you?"

"Good as always," she smiled. "Thank you."

Y/N took a seat at one of the tables in Shuri's lab. "So how is T'Challa doing with Nakia?"

"Oh, who knows these days! He is so awkward, I have no idea!"

They both laughed. Y/N was glad she and Shuri were able to talk like this. They weren't just robotic colleagues who only communicated when they needed to. They were partners, and they worked well together.

The meeting commenced like it did every other week. Updates on Bucky's progress, new ideas or adjustments to treatment or planning, going over scans or data, you name it. But this time, she had something else in mind. Something that a dream reminded her of. She had mentioned maybe getting her hands on a prosthetic for Bucky. She wasn’t familiar with the prosthetics industry in Wakanda, but they could probably make something work.

Was that too much? Did she care too much? Was she showing too much regard for him? Was this too much to ask of her?

"Hey, remember a couple weeks ago when I talked about prosthetics?"

"Of course," Shuri smiled. She genuinely enjoyed her partner - her partner who was intelligent, confident, and articulate but still sometimes sounded shy. "You wanna see what I've been working on?"

"You... you ordered one? I didn't-"

"Oh, no. Not ordered. Just you wait," she said, pulling out a drawer to dig amongst papers. "I've been workin' my magic."

Shuri pulled out a manilla folder that had W.W. - Proj. 1 printed on it.

She dropped the folder in front of the psychologist who sat across from her, gesturing for her to look through it. Y/N opened it to see several pages of prosthetics research, information on cybernetics and various designs for a bionic arm.

"Oh... wow." Y/N marveled.

"What do you think?"

"It's incredible," Y/N shook her head. "I didn't- ... I thought you meant you bought one or something. I didn't know you designed one"

"I didn't just design it. I made it."

"You- what?"

"Yep. First model ready for use. Do you want to see it?"

"I'd love to."

Shuri walked her over to a large, rectangular case in the side of the lab.

"Holy shit," she let slip.

The arm was astounding: a glossy black with ridges etched in a shiny gold. It glimmered, sitting in its casing.

Shuri laughed. Thank you."

"Sorry. Excuse my French. This is... remarkable. Can I give it to him?"

"I suppose so. It hasn't got much use just sitting in my lab."

Excitement grew in her chest. Bucky would be able to have an arm he was in control of, one that wasn't forcefully attached to him and used as a weapon. In a way, he would be gaining a sense of autonomy. God, she wanted to see him right away and tell him the news. She was happy to make Bucky happy.

"Oh," Shuri perked her head up. "And there was something else I wanted to talk to you about."

"Yeah, what's up?"

"You're aware of the trigger words, correct?"

"Of course."

"I'm close to fully deconstructing the mind control, but there's no way to know for sure unless we test it out..."

Oh. The excitement dissipated and her stomach dropped. She didn't mean...

"You don't mean..."

"The effect and response of the words needs to be tested on him."

Oh God. There was no way this would be easy.

"And you need to be the one to do it."

Fuck.

"Me?" she tried to hide her shock, her worry, her now overwhelming urge to protect him. "How come?"

"It seems like he trusts you most out of everyone here. I consulted with the Doras about safety and we think that if something were to go wrong, it'd be safest to happen with you. Of course they'll be nearby, but you'd be the one mostly likely to be able to control him in that state."

Her mouth went dry. Control him? She could never. She would never. She knew, in depth, the anguish he carried in his bones as a result of being trapped as a weapon wielded by other people. The thought of her controlling him made her skin crawl.

She knew how much he feared the Winter Soldier and how he would hate losing touch with himself again. He's been free from this kind of violation for a while now; she had very much rather not take that freedom away.

At the same time, she understood how this test was necessary for a full recovery and rehabilitation. And who knows if the words will even work? Maybe she'll say them and nothing will even happen.

He would have to get over this obstacle in order to make it to the other side clean. She could only imagine how scary this would be for him. But she'd be damned if she wasn't going to be right there with him.

"Okay," she said dryly. "When... when are we gonna do this?"

"Not yet but soon. I'll keep you updated."

The rest of the meeting carried on as usual, but Y/N might as well have not even been there. Her mind was off. Off somewhere trying to think of how to tell Bucky the news. The very last thing in the world she wanted to do was hurt him. She'd take his place if she could.

—

As soon as she was free from the calm, professional facade she had going with Shuri, she found herself speed walking back to where Bucky was. She needed to get to him. Now.

When his hut was in sight, she was nervous. She was nervous before, she supposed. She just wanted everything to be okay.

"Buck," she called, a few steps away from the entryway. "I need to talk to you!"

When she stepped inside she froze in place, staring blankly at the two super soldiers in front of her instead of the one she expected. Two as in Bucky and Steve.

"Y/N," Bucky stood up. He sounded surprised.

"Oh-uh," she stuttered. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I can come back later."

"That's okay," Steve's voice was gentle. "I'll leave you... to it."

Steve threw Bucky a look she couldn't quite decipher before he left. Bucky just looked panicked.

And soon enough they were alone. They stood directly in front of each other, but with a noticeably awkward amount of space between them. The tiny part of her brain that was still mulling over the dream wanted him closer.

"Hey," he said softly.

"Hey..."

"You wanted to talk?"

"Yeah," she breathed. "It's uh... there's kind of a lot."

"Look, about yesterday, I-"

Oh. She completely forgot about that. Well, not completely. There was no way she could forget that. But, at the moment there were more pressing matters on her mind.

"It's not about yesterday."

"It's...not?"

"No. I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?"

"Uh... bad news?"

She took a steady breath in. She wasn't sure exactly how to tell him, she just knew he needed to know. He deserved nothing but the truth.

"So, I was just with Shuri and we discussed the next step in your treatment..."

He said nothing, waiting for the aforementioned "bad news." She continued.

"Apparently, we have to test the trigger words on you..."

His expression dropped and she watched all the color drain from his face.

"I know. I'm sorry. I don't wanna do it, but we have to do it to see if it's really outta your head."

"Yeah, that's the problem," he finally spoke. "What if it's not? Then I hurt someone - or multiple people. There's gotta be some other way to test it."

"You're not going to hurt anyone. Or multiple people."

"How can you say that?"

"It's just gonna be the two of us."

"What?!"

"Shuri thought the safest way of doing this was for me to conduct the test. That way, if things ever got out of hand, which is very unlikely to happen, I'd be the best bet at... handling... that situation. Since you know me the best."

"No way. There's no way. I thought you meant they were gonna strap me down and have some lab tech read them. This is way too unsafe-"

"Strap you down? Bucky, no-"

He still saw himself as an animal that needed to be contained. Muzzled.

"What if I hurt you?" his voice shook just a little.

The fear in his eyes was potent. It made her angry. Angry at Hydra and whoever the fuck else had a hand in this sin against the kind and gentle man who stood before her. The man who was genuinely scared of himself. How dare they make him feel so unsafe within his own mind, within his own body. All she wanted to do was make it better, and suddenly, she could no longer stand for the distance between them. She stepped forward and grasped his hand between both of hers.

"I trust you, Buck," she smiled a small but earnest smile, letting him know that she truly was here for him. "Entirely. I promise. Okay?"

He nodded, still reluctant and entirely scared.

"Do you trust me?" she asked.

"I do. I trust you, I do," he cast his glance downwards, almost in shame. "It's myself I don't trust."

Her chest twisted with an emotion difficult to place. Mostly, it was the desire to take every ounce of pain away. She wished she could just snap her fingers and make it fade into nothing.

"That's okay," she said.

He looked back up at her, confused.

"You don't have to trust yourself. That's hard enough as it is and Hydra didn't make it any easier. You just trust me, alright? I'm the one reading the words, so, even though I'd hate it, if you were to be... activated... you'd be listening to me not trying to fight me," she squeezed his hand. "And I will not let anything happen to you."

"I'm not worried about me..."

She knew. She was not stupid; she knew that Bucky was separate from the Winter Soldier and that theoretically, the Winter Soldier - and only the Winter Soldier - had the potential to hurt her. She wasn't blind to the dangers, but she also wasn't blind to the fact that there was no exact science to brainwashing. Whos to say nothing could ever seep through the programming? She knew what happened with Bucky when he was forced to fight Steve for the first time. How it changed him.

Even though the Winter Soldier was in there, there was more of Bucky. She knew that for sure. And she needed to make sure he knew one thing: even if the Winter Soldier was trying to claw his way back and entire world was against him, she saw Bucky and trusted Bucky and believed in Bucky. She was a constant. And she wouldn’t give up on him.

"What, you're worried about me?" she joked, lightheartedly. She took the hand she was holding and pressed it against her cheek. "This wouldn't hurt me, James Buchanan."

He sighed, feeling the warmth from her face. He did not deserve this kindness and he definitely did not trust himself despite her trust in him. Of course Bucky would never hurt her. But Bucky wasn't the Winter Soldier. And he didn't have the heart to tell her what the Winter Soldier could or would do. He didn't have the stomach to even think about what would happen if the Winter Soldier actually did something.

But there was something about the way she believed in him, the way her conviction was so strong. It made him almost start to doubt these feelings. He could never be sure of everything being okay, but at least he could be sure of her.

"Okay," he whispered.

"Okay?"

"I'll do it."

"Alright," she smiled.

She removed his hand from her face, but still held onto it.

"And even if you did try to fight me, I think I could go a couple rounds in the ring with the Winter Soldier. I'm big and tough."

They both laughed knowing she had very minimal fight training.

"You'd definitely kick my ass," Bucky chuckled.

She just smiled. And then her eyes grew wide.

"Oh! You wanna know the good news?"

"F'course."

Bucky watched her briefly disappear through the entryway before returning with a big, rectangular case. He raised an eyebrow.

"That's good news? What is it, a bomb?"

"I don't do bombs... arson only."

The look on his face made her wonder if he actually questioned whether or not she was serious. She fought laughter as she opened the case. It was silent for a moment. Y/N looked at him, waiting for a reaction.

"Is that... for me?"

"All yours, Buck. A favor I asked of Shuri."

She told him about the arm. Told him about Shuri's design, and the features and functionality. She didn't mention what made her think to ask Shuri, but that surely wasn't important.

"It's really cool, and like super sleek and badass. But more importantly, it will make you feel more... I don't wanna say regular 'cause nothing about you is regular," a shy smile slipped. "But more... how you're used to having your body feel and function."

"That's..." he shook his head before looking up and making dauntingly deliberate eye contact. "Thank you. For thinkin' of me. I mean it. I hope it wasn't too much trouble for her to make it."

"Nothin's too much trouble, Bucky. You're worth it."

"You're a real peach, y’know that?"

Suddenly she looked abashed. Did he say something wrong?

"Sorry- I didn't-"

"No, it's okay. I just got a weird sense of déjà vu. Don't worry about it."

He looked at her like he didn't quite believe her, but she tried not to think too hard about it.

"So..." Bucky gestured towards the arm. "...what do we do with this?"

"You wanna try it on?"

His brows shot up. "Oh! I mean- sure- I guess so, yeah."

She tried to pick it up and nearly threw her back out. "Jesus!"

"Woah there, tiger," he withheld a laugh, putting a hand under the vibranium arm to hold most of its weight.

"Okay, sit down," she ordered, both of them fumbling to hold onto the arm. "Shuri told me how to get the arm on. There's some... magnetic thing. I don't even know - it was some complex engineering lingo. Not my field."

After a couple minutes, clumsy hands attempting awkward assembly, and several curse words later... the arm was attached. They both stood as Bucky stuck out the bionic arm, admiring it and Y/N leaned back, admiring him. Wow.

Bucky smiled, holding both his forearms out - palms facing up - to see how they moved. "This is incredible."

He turned to her. "You're incredible. Thank you."

"No problem at all," she stepped forward. "How does it feel?"

Her hands found their way below his, cupping the underneath of them with a feather light touch. "How do you feel?"

"More... balanced," he laughed. "Coordinated?"

"Steady?"

"Absolutely."

"Stronger?"

"Definitely."

She looked up at him. "Confident? More comfortable in your own skin? That's what's most important."

He gripped her hands. "For sure. Thanks to you."

"Glad I could help. Just wanna make you feel more like yourself, you know?"

"I feel the most like myself when I'm with you," he nearly whispered.

He smiled, and then did something... unexpected. He let go of one of her hands and with the other, he twirled her around as if they were dancing. She went along with the movement, body falling in sync it even though she was confused.

"You make me wanna dance again."

With his voice so endearing, and his heart so spirited, the world around them fell quiet. She stepped forward and rested her hand on his shoulder. Then she placed one of his hands on her waist, and held the other out to the side, fingers intertwined with hers. And oh, the feeling of his hands on her; it was nearly overwhelming.

"Then dance."

And they swayed. They swayed to nothing, to the sweet sound of finding comfort in another person. She let her eyes flutter shut, allowed her guard to come down for just a moment. Just this moment. With him.

Bucky broke the silence with a shy question. "So yesterday... what does that mean for-"

"Let's just keep it between us."

"What do you mean?"

"It was a moment - like this one. I think I think too much, and I may have overreacted before. It doesn't have to be some cumbersome ordeal. It's just us."

"We're good then?"

"We're good."

"Good. 'Cause I like this."

She inhaled and smiled at the feeling of him inside her lungs. They continued swaying as they continued talking.

"You were in my dream you know?"

"Was I?"

"You were."

"Could I fly?"

"No," she laughed. "You were - well we, actually, were walking to that lake."

"To swim?"

Not exactly...

"I don't know. It's kinda foggy and didn't make much sense since it was a dream but we were definitely there."

"Did I say anything existentially insightful?" he joked.

"I don't remember much of what we said, but I remember how it felt."

"How... how did it feel?"

There she went again. She could feel herself slipping, but found it hard to care. She closed her eyes, thinking back to hibiscuses and Bucky's arms.

"The water and sun on my skin felt kind of like this," her hands ran up his sides dangerously slow and settled behind his neck, finger tips tangling into the ends of his hair.

His breath faltered. "Is that so?"

Unconsciously, his other hand found her waist and somehow the little space between them grew even smaller.

"Mhm," she hummed. "and the sight of a flower in your hair felt kind of like this."

Her hands moved to cup his face, the soft skin of her palm settling on his jawline.

"It was so pretty," she sighed.

"Yeah... pretty," he agreed. But he wasn't talking about the dream or the flower.

"And... your arms and your hands... felt kind of like this."

Gently, she pulled his face down to hers, though he needed no guidance or encouragement. When their lips met, that feelings of incompletion and longing, which had been prickling the back of her mind since the previous day, finally went away. They dissolved into fingers pressing into her hips, soft stubble tickling her cheek, and the delightfully encompassing presence of him.

She wasn't sure how long it was until they separated and words were spoken again. All she really recognized what that she was out of breath.

"And to think I was going to apologize for yesterday," Bucky smirked.

"I had to return the favor."

"And I gotta make up for lost time"

"Well, please don't let me stop you."

And he didn't. They continued right where they left off, except this time, it felt much too similar to something she had felt before. Hands began to roam just like they did in her dream.

The only thing was, her dream was cut short. She had no idea how it ended. But his hands were everywhere and it was all her senses could register. He was everywhere: her lips, her neck, her collar bones. She was burning.

The air ran out of her chest, and her voice was barely a breathy sigh. "Don't stop."

She could feel his smile on her skin. "Wouldn't dream of it."

-

The next morning, she awoke entwined in his arms - both of them.

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