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godofdystopia · 2 years

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Sashannarcy Week Day 5: Outfits.

Since I know next to nothing about fashion i believed it would be a struggle to write this one. It surprisingly wasn’t, but again i don’t know fashion so who even knows.

Anyway, this story is basically me repeatedly chanting ‘Trans Anne!’ at the top of my lungs over and over. It also has Sasha realizing she’s Bi and Marcy realizing she’s in love with Anne. This is the gayest entry I've ever written and I'm proud of it.

Thanks again to @phrogfrommars for hosting this Sashannarcy week. I’ve loved participating in it so far.

In this story, Anne has finally come out as a girl and her two totally-not-girlfriends decide to take her shopping to update her wardrobe. Will these totally-not-in-love-with-one-another friends survive the trip? probably not, they’re gay as hell.

words: 2.8k

“Cmon girlfriend, let’s go! We’re burning daylight.” Sasha said as she and Marcy pulled Anne by the hand deeper into the mall.

It was a bright summer day, the sun was high in the sky and beat mercilessly against the ground. Anyone with half a mind would have stayed cooped up inside with the AC on full blast. But Sasha and Marcy wouldn’t, no, Couldn’t afford to today.

Today they had one of the most important tasks ahead of them, one that if failed or screwed up, would haunt them for decades to come.

They had to upgrade Anne’s wardrobe.

One wouldn’t think that would be so important as to steal away Anne from Thai Go and travel halfway across LA to where the good stores were, or to do so while the heat was near a hundred degrees outside. They had all gone clothes shopping before, mostly Sasha, but they’d all done it, and yet this wasn’t like any other shopping trip they’d ever taken.

This would be the first time the girls had gone shopping to get girl clothes for Anne.

All she had were boy clothes in her wardrobe which, to be fair, was because two days ago she hadn’t been out to anyone. Then she took her two best friends out to the park where they met and told them, with great difficulty and fear, that she didn’t feel like a boy and hadn’t for a very long time.

Sasha and Marcy weren’t sure what she was expecting their reaction to be, and to be honest they didn’t want to think about it. They just hugged her and told her that no matter their gender she would always be their friend.

The tears flowed freely as the three girls hugged one another, just holding each other as Sasha and Marcy comforted their friend. She’d been terrified of how they would respond and yet there was only acceptance. She was a complete mess: Tears and snot running down her face from the force of her sobs but right now she didn’t care.

She had never been happier than right now.

“Uh, guys?”

Sasha and Marcy looked up at the Thai girl, who was still crying happy tears from everything. She was looking at the both of them with a shaky smile. “There’s, there’s something else too.”

Sasha just put on a patient smile while Marcy squeezed her again. Both of them waited patiently for their friend to continue.

“Um, if it’s not too much… Could you, um…” She blushed a bit, looked down at the ground, took a deep breath and looked them both in the eye.

“... Call me Anne?”

And that, as they say, was that.

Anne was happy, and currently forcing down any thoughts about how she was going to come out to her parents, but right now her happiness and bliss overruled any fear or doubt.

“Come on Anna-Banana! We gotta goo!” Marcy whined as she tugged Anne towards the clothing sections with Sasha. Both girls stopped to stare at Marcy before they both descended into giggles.

“I’m- I’m sorry, ‘Anna-Banana?’” Anne asked between giggles as the taiwanese girl blushed.

“I’m trying out new nicknames since my old ones don’t fit anymore.” Marcy said as she turned away from her friends with a pout. “I thought it was good…”

“It’s fine marbles, don’t sweat it.” Sasha said as she brought an arm around to pat her on the back. “That one might not stick, but when we find one that does you’ll forget it even happened.”

Anne looked nervous however, looking at every passing person like she was expecting them to jump in front of her and deadname her then and there. “You know we don’t actually have to do this, right?”

“Actually, we kinda do, F-anne-cy Anne.” Marcy said, before frowning and muttering ‘2/10’ to herself.

“Anne, you literally have no girl clothes.” Sasha paused and looked at her, frowning. “You know what you told us when you came out? That you’ve been wearing your mom’s clothes to try and feel normal. We’re getting you girl clothes even if it kills us.”

Anne sighed. “I shouldn’t have mentioned that.”

“Well too bad, you did. And now we’re going clothes shopping to get you some new threads.” Sasha replied as they dragged Anne towards the shop, rows upon rows of girls clothes hung up on racks as far as the eye could see.

Anne had always wanted to go in one but she’d never really been confident enough to step in one.

Her mom, Marcy and Sasha would sometimes bring her along with them to give advice and carry bags of clothes for them, and she would imagine herself in whatever clothing caught her eye and would sometimes make her way over to some of the racks to just hold the clothes in her hands while the people she came with were in the changing room.

And now she was actually going to be in one, as a customer.

She forced herself not to cry, but from the gentle smiles Sasha and Marcy gave her, a few sniffles must have snuck out.

“Hi! Can I help you girls with anything?” The cashier, a pretty looking college aged woman with a pixie cut, said with a smile.

“Not really, but thanks.” Sasha said as she and Marcy pulled Anne along with them.

“Alright Marcy, this is the most important shopping trip of our lives! Grab whatever you think Anne will look nice in and meet back up by the Changing room.” Sasha said, her face full of determination. Marcy, equally determined, nodded seriously and ran off to grab whatever clothes caught her eye.

“Alright, you just wait here while I go grab some clothes. You’ll look like the most popular girl in the mall by the time I'm done!” She said cheerily as she ran off.

Anne just sat down and, with a happy smile over how her friends were helping her with this, waited.

**********

“Okay girlfriend, let’s try this!”

Sasha and Marcy came back with piles of clothes in their arms and got to work. They would mix and match clothes and thrust them in Anne’s arms.

Anne entered the changing room with something Marcy brought her and came out.

She was dressed in a light green summer dress with floral patterns all over it. The sleeves came down to just past the shoulder and were ruffled and pretty looking. A pair of bright pink knee socks with Kitten designs on them led down to her normal shoes.

Anne looked anxious, like she was waiting for something. Sasha and Marcy had a pretty good idea of what.

“Go ahead already Anne.” Sasha said patiently while Marcy made ‘go on’ gestures with her hand.

Anne, her face breaking out into a dopey smile, immediately began to spin around and around, the skirt twirling in the air as she did so. A little ‘Whee!’ left her lips as she did so.

Sasha and Marcy both had the same thought enter her head while Anne made her skirt spin with glee.

‘She looks cute.’

Sasha and Marcy both blinked at that, though one took it better than the other. Sasha, who had never thought of girls like that before, felt confused and odd. Marcy, who had thought of girls like that before, felt weird about thinking of her friend like that.

She felt bad enough thinking of Sasha like that, and now Anne?

They were both broken out of their thoughts by Anne grabbing a bunch of other dresses and rushing back into the changing room, a giddy smile on her face.

**********

Anne looked the dress over.

It was more fancy than she would like. The skirt was hooped, like something from the 50’s, and was white with black squares making it look like a chessboard.. The top was pure white and had a black lotus over the heart. She liked it when she could make the skirts twirl, but this was also nice. Overly fancy, but nice.

The jacket she wore over the shirt was a poofy thing, white as chalk but with gold lettering on the back in the form of some signature of whatever celebrity had made and endorsed the clothing.

Anne felt like she was about to walk down the red carpet for a movie premier that she was the main actress in.

“See? You look pretty like that!” Sasha said, before blushing a bit as she realized what she just said. “I mean, soo pretty. The guys will be lining up to ask you out!”

,,, why did that thought make Sasha unhappy?

“I just… I don't know Sasha.” Anne said, rubbing one arm. “I… don’t think this is really me.”

Sasha just stared expectantly and Anne continued.

“I don’t like designer clothes or any of this. I like wearing floral dresses and shirts with funny slogans on them. And also cats, cats on the shirt would be nice.”

“Well, you could’ve just said something.” Sasha said.

Anne looked uncomfortable and rubbed her arm. “I didn’t want to say something because… you said it was popular. And I thought… it’d make me seem more like a girl if I-”

Sasha walked forward and Hugged Anne tightly, the Thai girl hesitated before hugging the blonde back. They both jumped a bit when a third pair of arms wrapped around them, Marcy putting her head on Anne’s shoulder.

“Anne, you don’t need ‘popular’ clothes to be a girl. You are a girl, and we both love you.” Sasha said seriously as she looked Anne in the eye.

“You’ll always be a girl to us, Anne. And nothing will ever change that.” Marcy said as she leaned her head against Anne’s.

“I… Thank you.” Anne hugged them both tighter, a dopey smile on her face as she did so. She liked hugging them.

“You know what we need to do now, don’t you?” Marcy asked excitedly, as she looked between them.

“More clothes!”

**********

“Well, what about this?” Anne came out in a black gothic dress with skull designs along the shoulder with a velvet corset around it. The skirt was so incredibly ruffled that it looked more ruffles than skirt. The sleeves werte mesh and she had Fingerless gloves over her hands. Knee high combat boots with more laces than the corset on them made the ensemble look like she was the most gothic punk girl ever.

“Do you really want to go the goth look Anne?” Sasha asked, trying to imagine Anne in the clothes she had worn when they all went through their emo phase together. ‘She’d look good in that.’ she thought to herself.

“Well, I think it looks nice!” Marcy said proudly, a little blush on her cheeks as she kept looking at Anne’s arms. She admired the muscles she could see on them, and then blushed and slapped her cheeks as she realized what she was doing.

‘C’mon girl, Anne’s my best friend. Don’t be weird.’ She thought to herself.

“I… kinda agree with Sasha on this Mar-mar. I mean, I like the dark look.” Anne said quickly at seeing Marcy pout. “I just think I want something a little less… um…”

“No, it’s fine. Really.” Marcy said just as quickly, putting her hands up with a smile. She then reached into her bag and started to rummage through it. “I actually brought something I think you’d look great in Anne.”

She pulled out a deep green sleeveless dress with black, blocky embroidery along the hem as well as the neck line. Actually, the more Anne looked at it, the more it looked like…

“Marcy.”

“Yeah, Anne-tastic?” Marcy asked, then frowned and shook her head. “Yeah, Anne?”

“Where did you get a Minecraft Creeper Dress?”

“Oh, this?” Marcy looked it over and held it up against herself. “Well, while you and Sasha were talking about clothes I saw the dress a few stores down so I decided to bring it over.” She held it up to Anne. “You like?”

Anne just blinked at her. “You found, bought, and brought over a whole dress in the little bit me and Sasha talked?”

Marcy blinked owlishly, before wincing. “I… might have forgotten to pay for it?”

Anne choked on air while Sasha laughed, picking up Marcy in a hug and lifting her. “Oh, I just knew there was a little rebel in you Mar-mar! I’m so proud!”

Anne laughed at the display while Marcy went into yet another little panic, her mind repeating the word ‘Strong’ over and over as she was twirled with little to no difficulty.

‘Why am I like this? They’re my friends and I'm being… very weird about them today.’ Marcy frowned to herself. Anne, meanwhile, kept eyeing something out of the corner of her eye and walked over to what looked like a rack of extremely glittery and girly dresses.

“I’m, I'm going to try one of these on, i think.” She said as she grabbed something that looked blue and ran back into the changing room.

Sasha and Marcy sat back down on the bench and waited.

And waited some more.

“She’s looking very nice, isn’t she?” Marcy asked suddenly.

“Hmm?” Sasha looked over at Marcy, the taiwanese girl not looking in her direction at all as she asked. If Sasha had looked up, she would have been able to see Marcy’s face in the mirror and see the blush on her cheeks. “Yeah. I mean, she looks okay I guess.”

‘More than okay, actually.’ And there were her weird thoughts again, she’d been having them more and more since Anne came out to them. She’d always had a crush on her when she was a guy so it make sense that she was coming to terms with not liking her now that she was a girl.

… right? That was what was happening, right? She wasn’t, she was straight. She liked guys, not girls. She had the years-long crush on Anne to prove it too!

“Okay, I'm ready.”

The curtain pulled open and Sasha and Marcy felt their breath be stolen.

Anne was… she was. She was wearing a beautiful dark blue dress with a light blue top, little gems played across the top that sparkled in the light. She fiddled with the hem of the dress as she looked at her two friends.

“So, um, how do I look?” She asked hesitantly.

Sasha and Marcy, they had no words. Sasha could only stare at Anne as her mind went haywire, her thoughts running together as she did so.

‘Holy shit, holy shit! She’s soo gorgeous, what the hell! I liked her when she was a guy, but now? Oh my god, she’s too goddamn beautiful, this is too much.’ Sasha went increasingly redder as she realized a truth she could no longer ignore.

She was attracted to Anne.

She was attracted to Anne as a girl just as she had been attracted to her as a guy.

She was Bisexual and attracted to Anne no matter what.

‘Oh my god, I’m Bi!’

As her thoughts went even crazier at the realization she wasn’t as straight as she thought, Sasha managed to croak out “It looks great, girlfriend!” in a shaky voice.

Marcy, meanwhile, had gone so red in the face that she pulled her hoodie strings tight, covering up her face. She held up two thumbs up, as she didn’t trust her voice to not say something extremely embarrassing like ‘You’re the most beautiful girl I've ever seen,’ or ‘Please go out with me, I want to ruin our friendship and turn it into a romance actually.’

‘I’m too gay for this. I’m gay and she’s too pretty I’m going too die. I’m attracted to both of my best friends, what the heck!?’

Anne just looked between the two, confusion running through her as well as… happiness? A weird sort of happiness that came from seeing her two friends flustered over her.

‘I… like them looking at me like this…’ Anne blinked as that thought popped into her head. Where the heck had that come from?

“Great, uh, I'm gonna go pay for it i guess.” Anne went back into the dressing room. The second the curtain pulled closed Marcy collapsed and covered her already hoodie covered face with her hands as the words “Prettyprettypretty…” repeated over and over.

Sasha just sat and looked into space as she came to terms with the fact she was Bi and in love with her best friend.

All the while, the shop keeper just smirked as she watched the girls panic.

‘Oh my god, these bitches are gay. Good for them, good for them.’ She thought to herself. She’d give them a discount.

Maybe.

#amphibia #anne boonchuy #sasha waybright #marcy wu #Sashannarcy #sashannarcy week #sashannarcy week 2022 #trans anne #Trans Anne Trans Anne #trans pride #trans women are women #fashion #trans woman #transgender

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queen-haq · 2 years

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Fic: Alive [Part 3]

Summary: Aidan traced the thin chain around his neck, rubbing the infinity pendant between his fingers. No longer a symbol of their everlasting love, it was something he touched in anger when he thought of Sage. It was the only thing of hers that still remained with him after eight years, the last possession which still connected them together. When he did find Sage again, and he would no matter how long it took, he planned to destroy the pendant - and her.

Taking place across two timelines, Alive tells the story of Aidan and Sage, high school sweethearts driven apart by who they are and where they come from. Once enemies then lovers, their relationship runs full circle when they meet again in the present, now prepared to destroy each other.

My Masterlist (contains links to previous parts)

Chapter 3

"I heard Cat's throwing a party Friday night. Can we come?" Anna asked, joined them at the lunch table.

Sage shrugged her shoulders in response. Out of the loop as she was, she hadn't heard any mentions of a party until now. "Why? It's going to be full of assholes."

"It might be fun."

"I don't think so."

David reached over to grab a fry from Sage's plate. "Forget the party, it sounds lame. Let's go to the bar Chris keeps talking about."

"Did your boyfriend suddenly forget we're underage?" Sage asked.

"No, smart-ass. Chris is friends with the bouncer, he'll let us in."

"That does sound like more fun. Let's do that."

Anna rolled her eyes in exasperation. "Oh please. He could have said let's hang out at a graveyard and you would have been all for it. Anything to avoid Cat and her friends."

"Forget the graveyard. I'd rather sit through a root canal, gouge out my eyes-"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," Anna giggled. "You think they suck."

"If you had to deal with them as much as I do, you'd think it too."

"Can we stop talking about them and gossip about my hot boyfriend instead?" David whined.

"Yes, please."

The conversation turned to David's latest boyfriend, giving Sage a free moment to glimpse over at Aidan. He was sitting with Cat and friends, laughing, acting like his usual carefree self – complete opposite of his tense demeanor during their last encounter. Since last week he had ignored her, probably worried any heated exchange between them would make her spill his secret to everyone. She had no intention of doing that, but she wasn't about to tell him that anytime soon. .

At that moment their eyes locked on one another, two rivals staring each other down to see who would fold first. Eyebrow cocked, smugness evident in his eyes, he tried to gauge for any signs of weakness. She returned his disdainful glare before shifting her attention back to David. Jackass.

For the remainder of lunch she avoided looking at Aidan, until the bell rang and he caught her gaze once again. He was still watching her, a steady expression etched on his face, and she was strangely unsettled at being the center of his focus.

*****

Later that day Sage was on route to one of her classes when Cat and Tish, her sister's best friend, purposely crashed into her. Her books dropped to the floor. She shot both girls a menacing glare.

"Watch where you're going," Cat bit out.

Tish's lips pursed into a cruel sneer. "Great, now I have to get my clothes cleaned. You know how dirty ragheads are. Too busy bombing, not enough showering."

"Don't forget to clean that nasty mouth of yours while you're at it," Sage fired back.

Tish followed behind Cat, both girls snickering as they passed by her. "Later, bitch."

Sage knelt on the floor to collect her books when Aidan's voice captured her attention.

"That went well." Leaning against a nearby locker, hand nestled in his pocket, he studied her with a lazy smirk. "Pissing them off isn't a smart move."

"Let me guess. You think I should lie down and make it easy for you guys to walk all over me."

"Probably, but that's not your style."

"Wow, you're not as stupid as I thought."

"And you wonder why they call you a bitch."

"Actually, I don't. And you should really talk to your friends about toning down the racist comments. One of these days they'll get their asses kicked."

"Is that a threat?"

"No. A promise."

The smirk transformed into an amused smile. "You know, I have no pull over what Cat and her minions."

"And here I thought you were their puppet master. How disappointing."

Sage stood up straight, and started walking down the hallway when he fell into place beside her.

"You need to stop eyefucking me," he announced.

"You're kidding me, right?"

"I have my reputation to think of. You crushing on me isn't exactly flattering."

"Just because I'm looking in your general direction doesn't mean I'm watching you. And it sure as hell doesn't mean I'm crushing on you."

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

"Been reading Hamlet for Dummies?"

"Not just a pretty face now, am I?"

"Not sure you're pretty at all, actually."

"Liar."

"You're so full of yourself."

"Why shouldn't I be?"

"I'm surprised you can keep your head up with that massive ego."

"If you think that's massive, you should check out my-"

"Ew. Stop." Scrunching up her face in disgust, she looked at him only to realise there was a mischievous twinkle in his eyes; he was deliberately teasing her. Huh.

"And try not to check out my ass," he said, sauntering past her. "If you can."

She stared after him, a little shocked that not only was he amusing but their conversation had actually seemed to border on the friendly.

*****

Sage heard the music blaring from the house as David turned his car into the Woods property. Earlier that day her father and Stacey had left for Aspen, leaving strict instructions not to throw any kind of party whilst they were gone. An hour later, the kegs had started to roll in on Cat's orders. Now the lawn was full of people, most of them not even from their school, and the path leading to the house was crowded with parked cars.

"Still buzzing?" David asked, bringing the car to a stop.

She leaned back in the passenger seat. "I'm fine. I think." Maybe she should have stopped on her fifth glass of rum and coke – but it had tasted so good.

"Need me to walk you in?"

She gave him a breezy smile. "Nah, I'll be fine."

"You had a good time, didn't you?"

"A great time."

"Think I should have told Anna it was a gay bar?"

Sage started giggling. "She was really excited about hooking up with an older guy tonight."

"Whatever."

"I doubt she'll go with us again."

"Her loss."

She opened the car door and managed to slide out without much difficulty. "Thanks for driving, David."

"You sure you okay?"

Her response was a thumbs-up sign.

Chances were Cat and her friends were inside and, as Sage wasn't in the mood to deal with them, she bypassed the house and took the long way around. Circling the building, she came upon a huge crowd gathered near the pool area. There were tons of people smoking up, guys doing body shots off of girls, and Aidan (of course) was in the center of it all. With friends cheering him on, he chugged a shot back before some girl she didn't recognize started giving him a lap dance. If Sage hadn't already felt like throwing up, that definitely would have done it.

Happy to escape, Sage walked to the pool house only to discover one of the cheerleaders from her school making out with a guy on her bed. "What the hell? Get the fuck out!"

"Chill out, you freak!" the guy said, scrambling to get on his feet. He zipped up his pants haphazardly while the cheerleader, one of Cat's friends, straightened her clothes and shot her a haughty expression – as if Sage had done the unthinkable in interrupting her stupid make-out session.

They weren't moving fast enough for her liking, and Sage continued to yell until they finally rushed past her.

"And you wonder why everyone hates you."

Recognizing Aidan's sardonic tone coming from behind, she turned around. The swift motion made her light-headed causing her to almost drop to the floor but he gripped her by the waist and cushioned the fall. Feeling disoriented, she lay in his arms, at first so the room would stop spinning and then because she found herself transfixed by his gaze.

How had she never noticed how beautiful his eyes were before? An unusual blend of hazel and green, they were warm, bright, shining with mischief. Just like his smile.

"You're wasted," he teased.

"Am not."

"Liar. I can smell it on your breath."

Anna often talked about how hot Aidan was but Sage usually just rolled her eyes at her friend's comments. His good looks were overshadowed by his conceited personality and she'd never really found him attractive – until now.

"Shouldn't you be thanking me for saving your life?" he asked.

"I wasn't about to die, you idiot."

"That's an interesting way of showing gratitude."

He was right. "Shukran."

"What does that mean?"

"Thanks for helping me. I hope you don't expect anything in return."

"That one little word meant all that?"

"More or less."

"You know, when there's a girl on my lap she's usually naked." He winked down at her. "Or about to be."

His words brought her crashing back to reality. "Ugh, you're disgusting." Despite trying to stand on her own she still felt woozy, and reluctantly accepted his help in leading her to the bed. Noting his cocky smile, she worried he would try something obnoxious. Instead, he helped her sit down and then sauntered over to the couch.

"Where did you get trashed?" he asked, plopping down on the sofa.

"At a bar."

"A real bar?"

"No, an imaginary one."

He smirked. "You don't seem the type."

"Shows how much you know."

"How did you even get in?"

"I have friends," she bragged.

"Of the sleazy variety, apparently."

"Jealous?"

"No, there's plenty of sleaze to go around."

"I know. I just saw one of them giving you a lap dance."

"Now who's jealous?"

She stuck out her tongue at him, which he responded to with a soft chuckle. Still feeling sick, she lay down and closed her eyes. "Can I ask you something?"

"No, I will not go out with you."

"Never going to happen, jackass."

"Because you're not my type, sweetheart," he retorted, mimicking her tone.

"Shut up."

"So what did you want to ask me?"

"Do you think Cat will ever stop hating me?"

At first there was only silence, making her wonder if she'd made a mistake. Maybe it was foolish of her to try and gain insight into her sister through Aidan but it's not like she had many options available to her.

"I didn't think you cared."

"Of course I do. She's my sister." The words slipped out before she could stop herself. Shit. Shit. Shit. She totally forgot that Aidan wasn't aware of her parentage. As far as he was concerned, she was just a charity case staying with the Woods. "You know I'm fucking with you, right?" she added quickly, feigning non-chalance.

"Relax. I already know."

Sage balanced herself up on her elbows and met his gaze. "Really?"

"Cat's horrible at keeping secrets."

"She acts like it's my fault Thomas cheated."

"Well, it's easier for her to take it out on you than him."

"Do you think she would have liked me if I wasn't..." she paused, wondering what the hell she was doing. This was Aidan. Aidan, of all people. And she was about to indirectly reveal one of her vulnerabilities to him.

"A bitch?"

"Never mind."

"You might as well tell me. I'll get it out of you one way or another."

Finding it difficult to hold his stare, she focused her attention straight ahead and exhaled a heavy sigh. "If I was white, she wouldn't be as embarrassed of me."

"Don't kid yourself. She would hate you no matter what you were."

Sage mulled over his words. She didn't believe him.

"Hey, look at me."

Compelled by his earnest tone, she locked eyes with him.

"There's no point in wishing you were different. You are who you are, Sage, and Cat will just have to find a way to deal with it."

The intensity of his gaze left her feeling defenseless in front of him, as if he was trying to break through the walls and discover all her insecurities. A small part of her wondered if he would exploit her fears or assuage them, but as soon as the thought crossed her mind she realised how ridiculous it was. After all, Aidan wasn't a friend, he was one of them.

He was the first one to look away, a blank expression masking his face as he rose to his feet. "Anyway, I gotta go. I'll talk to you later." Not waiting for a response, he quickly made his exit.

Alone once again, she breathed a sigh of relief. There was something about Aidan that always set her emotions on edge. Whether it was anger, irritation, or reeling with confusion as she was now, it was impossible for her to be calm around him. Frankly, it was just easier when she didn't have to deal with him at all.

She kicked off her shoes and closed her eyes, telling herself she would wash off her makeup in five minutes. Instead, she fell asleep.

#original fic #original romance #enemies to lovers #romance novels #romance #alive #my fics

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cassurrjoybell-30 · 4 months

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Cry Me a River - Chapter 52 - Part 2

*Warning Adult Content*

The Mating Party

"River," Hyde nodded in my direction.

His eyes then pulled back to Alastair's.

"I apologize on my father's behalf. He isn't in the right mind at the moment. He has just returned from the battle zone and is still recuperating, I am afraid."

"And you?" Alastair rose a brow.

"I have not been back on the battle zone for quite a while. Feyona... she is not in the right mind at the moment either. I have been by her side," Hyde's eyes fell back down on me as I took a careful sip from my wine glass.

"I hope you can forgive her for her past actions. She is not in the right mind. She has not been for a long time."

I had never seen Hyde so serious.

It caught me off guard.

The only other time I had ever seen him in any state but a joking manner was with Isaiah and even then he didn't appear as solemn as now.

I nodded, unsure what to say.

"Have you seen Isaiah?" Hyde's voice came hushed as his locked on mine.

Did he not want anyone to know he was looking for Isaiah?

I peered behind him, nearly jumping when I locked eyes with a narrow-eyed Victor.

And like that, the puzzle pieced itself together.

"No," I whispered back.

"But if you find Derek..." I caught myself.

"It's alright, River," a soft laughter escaped his throat though his eyes were sad.

"If he were... not with Derek. Where would he be?"

Without Derek...? What was going on?

"What would be his reason to not be beside him?" I tried for nonchalance but Hyde caught on as his smile fell.

"A sliver of pride, perhaps. None enjoy being used, after all."

"And Derek has used him?" my words came out chipped.

The thought of Derek hurting Isaiah did not set right with me.

It ignited a flame within my chest as anger lifted to my eyes, angry tears bunching.

"Has he hurt Isaiah, Hyde?" my voice rose slightly, this time more demanding. Hyde remained silent.

Suddenly, his head turned, locking eyes on Isaiah by a table of colorful teas, corned by a man who seemed to be unwelcome by Isaiah's drawled expression.

"Goddess," Hyde hissed, completely forgetting my question as he nipped his lip, watching the scene play out only to completely lose his cool moments later when the man placed his hand on Isaiah's shoulder.

That's when Hyde just about had it and took off in their direction.

Though Hyde would probably hate me for thinking it, I couldn't help but compare him to Derek.

They were both so similar when it came to Isaiah, similar reactions when it came to anything Isaiah related.

That's why I couldn't help but deny what Hyde had said.

For someone so protective of the Isaiah, I couldn't see him ever purposely hurting him.

I continued to sip my wine silently, watching as men and women greeted Alastair, exchanging laughter and fake pleasantries as I watched Hyde approach the man, whispering something into his ear that caused him to turn white and take leave.

My eyes narrowed, trying to read their lips as Isaiah's eyes narrowed and Hyde seemed to try to take his hand in his, only to get shoved in the chest as Isaiah made a break for the balcony.

Hyde seemed startled, wide-eyed as he hurried after Isaiah, disappearing from my view.

"River," a voice chirped.

I jumped slightly and turned my head forward, only to squeak as a familiar bright-eyed woman filled my vision.

"Anna," I breathed through a widened smile, wrapping my arms around her neck as slightly jumped in excitement.

"I didn't know you were going to be coming."

I pulled away as she laughed.

"Me either, honestly. I didn't think we were going to make it with the kind of notice we were given. For Goddess' sake River, who gives a two-day notice for a mating ceremony?" she asked exasperatedly yet her voice remained jokingly.

"If you want to blame someone, blame me," Alastair laughed as he pulled away from Beatrice's tight hug.

"He wanted to wait a week because he knew how long your travel was going to be but I wanted to our mating ceremony as quick as possible. Before he could change his mind," he winked.

Beatrice laughed at that, slapping Alastair lightly on the shoulder.

"Good choice, otherwise, he might wake up and realize he's far too beautiful for an oaf like you."

"Is that why you mated with Anna so quickly?" Alastair threw back, taking a drink of his wine as Anna cupped her mouth and burst into laughter.

"Why of course," Beatrice seemed unfazed by the insult as her arm wrapped around Anna's waist.

"Someone as gorgeous as her. I had to make her mine before she awoke and realized what a complete mess I was."

"Are, darling," Anna laid a kiss on Beatrice's cheek with a giggle.

"You haven't changed that much."

Beatrice pouted.

"You owe us," Beatrice pointed at Alastair.

"You don't understand what we went through to make it here on time."

Alastair patted Beatrice on the head.

"Would you like a new dress?" he joked.

"Ass-hole," Beatrice grumbled beneath her breath.

"Oh, how unladylike," Keith's voice rose from behind Anna as he rounded her and side-hugged Alastair.

"How are you doing so far?"

"Fine," Alastair sighed.

"Though, Beatrice is starting to give me a headache," he rubbed at his temples for emphasis as Beatrice sent him a narrowed gaze.

"Or it could be from all the wine you've drunken," Michael appeared from behind Keith as he bent down to pull me into a tight hug.

"You too?" he eyed the glass in my hand as he pulled away.

"What are you doing giving River wine, Alastair?"

"He's not a child, Michael," Alastair grumbled.

"This better have been your first cup," Michael eyed the glass in my hand.

"It is," I reassured him.

"I've been slowly sipping it throughout the night."

"The same cup?" Keith scoffed to which Michael hit him upside the head with a napkin.

Michael brushed his fingers through my hair.

"Good boy," he smiled and then peered down at my glass.

"You seem almost done with your glass. How about instead of more wine, I'll get you a nice steaming cup of tea?" I nodded with a smile.

"Great," Michael chirped. "What flavor do you want?"

"Chai, please."

"Will do," he laughed lightly as he sent a last glare at Keith and headed to the tea table.

"What did you do this time?" Alastair asked once Michael was far enough.

Keith sighed, running his fingers through his hair

"Nothing."

"You know, being stubborn isn't going to get you anywhere," Beatrice commented as she pulled a chair out for Anna.

"Let's sit, yeah?"

Everyone nodded as Beatrice sat Anna down at a nearby table and we all took a seat by her.

"Now," Beatrice sighed, taking a seat by Anna's side.

"Tell us what's really going on."

"Nothing," Keith began only to sigh when Beatrice sent him a droll look.

"The usual banter, that's all."

Beatrice rose her hands.

"Okay, okay."

She dropped them on the table as she turned to Alastair.

"So tell me, are the rumors about Feyona true?"

"That depends on what you're referring to," Alastair took another sip of his wine.

"That she spent a week in a brothel and claims to have fallen for a prostitute."

To this Anna seemed to rise in her seat, suddenly interested in the conversation.

"If what Hyde tells me is true."

"Wow," Beatrice let out a sigh, falling back in her seat.

"The Feyona, falling for a prostitute. I never thought I'd see the day." "What's there to be surprised about?"

Keith asked just as Michael placed a cup of tea in front of me.

"There didn't seem to be any Chai left so I made you mint tea, hopefully, you'll like it," Michael whispered as to not disturb the conversation.

"Thank you," I smiled as I took a sip. "It's very good."

Michael nodded with a smile, rounding the table to take a seat beside Keith. Keith bent down to whisper in Michael's ear just as Beatrice began speaking.

"Well, she's from such a respectable family. For a noble to fall in love with a prostitute. It's unheard of," Beatrice exclaimed as Anna nodded beside her.

"One doesn't get to choose who they fall in love with," Michael's eyes narrowed as his voice rose.

"You of all people should understand that, Lady Beatrice."

And like that, the table grew silent. Anna seemed to get rather uncomfortable beside Beatrice, growing antsy in her seat.

"I do understand that," Beatrice's voice grew low.

"I for one fell in love with someone of a much different background than mine," her hand wrapped around Anna's fidgeting one.

"But with Feyona... I can't help but feel as if her love is more drama-induced than genuine."

Michael nodded.

"To that, none can disagree," he chuckled.

And it was then, amidst the laughter and gossip that a certain cherry-lipped foe appeared through the double doors, heels clicking against the marble-floored ballroom as she headed straight in our direction.

"Speak and the devil appears," is all I heard as her red-painted lips pulled in a devilish grin and dark eyes trained solely on mine.

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greegorygrimlee · 4 months

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Haneul Imagines Chapter 2

Hello Muse. I am having a hard time writing your christmas story for you! I don't really like this much, but I will put them here for you because I know you just want to hear my voice and dont care much if the story is so bad :D

Anyway, Here is at least something for you to fall asleep to. Merry Christmas, I love you xox

Chapter 2

Haneul woke slowly. Sleep made his eyes difficult to open, as did the bright light. “Why was it so bright?” He thought to himself. He realised that the curtains were open, and the morning sun was streaming directly into his room. He shaded his eyes with his hand and fumbled out of bed, moving faster as he realised that the sun’s brightness meant he was already late.

In the shower he remembered parts of his dream. It had been a wonderful feeling to be able to imagine anything into existence. He felt a little regret that the real world wasn’t as wonderful. Also a little bit of regret that Radya wasn’t a real girl. His mind lingered on her.About the way her breast had heaved angrily while she hurled nasty epithets and mean advice at him during the dream. About the cheeky promise of adventure in her eyes, and the way her hip curved so proudly when she had first stood in front of him. In an Olympian effort of self control (he was a teenage boy after all) he put her out of his mind, finished showering and dressed quicker than usual before rushing downstairs.

“You’re going to be late again” scolded his mother half heartedly as he arrived in the kitchen.

“Well, I don’t want to set expectations too high, this is the first day after all.” He joked back, before flashing her a smile that always got him out of trouble with her.

She groaned in an overly dramatic way as if his joking pained her, but he could see that the smile had worked. Happy that she was in a good mood despite him being late, he made to leave. Putting the toast she had made for him into his mouth, he mumbled goodbye around it, pulling the straps of his backpack over his shoulders and leaning forward for her to kiss his cheek. She diligently gave him the goodbye peck but held his face lightly in her hands before he could turn and leave.

“Please don’t get into trouble today?” she almost begged. Haneul saw concern in her eyes so he turned his smile up a little for her, gave an extra hug and promised that he would be extra careful to make a good impression at his new school.

There were two other new students standing near the deputy principal when Haneul arrived in the school office. Haneul had come with his mother to register the previous week, and had already met this man, but the two students were strangers to him. As was the tall girl who was walking towards them purposefully. She wore a shiny metal name badge which probably stated that she was part of some student council or body.

Haneul didn’t really care for the shiny badges though. He had been through these inductions at a half a dozen previous schools in the past two years and knew her type. She would be ever so helpful and keen to have him filled with school spirit, but when she realised he wasn’t very interested she would soon forget him. He hoped she would realise his disinterest sooner rather than later. Her type were always so pushy and it annoyed him having to think of excuses not to join this or that school activity.

“Ah, there you are, Anna.” Greeted the deputy head cheerfully. He introduced the badged girl Anna as their guide and urged the new students to ask any questions they liked of her, assuring them that Anna was delighted to be of assistance to them. Then he turned and left the little group of students on their own.

Anna took them out of the Administration building and began their tour. As soon as they were out of sight of school staff though, she turned and drew aside her long blond hair, showing them her ear and the nape of her neck below it.

“I can get each of you one of these.” She said, pointing with her other hand to the small brown sticker behind her ear. “they have a mod that takes them outside the Bluetooth range of the schools jamming. “And also one of these.” She pulled her phone from a pocket in her skirt and tapped a small plastic cover at one end of it. “which will also get you a signal from outside the school. It’s forty for the mastoid sticker and eighty for the out of band wifi. And no, I don’t give credit.”

Haneul had assumed these devices would be available from at least a few of the students, that was nothing new. That it was this prim class princess who was selling them was a little surprising though. He looked at her more closely, and thought perhaps Anna was friend material after all. He bought himself two of the speakers and the wifi adaptor straight away. He smiled happily as he thought maybe this school was going to be more interesting than he had expected.

#muse # cornystoriesformuse

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kjsnugget · 2 years

Text

Jin x Male Reader

Genre: Angst

Warnings: Death, suicide, cheating, mentions of depression and mental illness.

Please let me know if I left out any warnings! Request are open feel free to message me, I hope you enjoy 😊

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Darkness filled your home as the tears were falling down your face. The once filled apartment was now empty left with nothing but the remembrance of your relationship. You tried everything to ensure happiness for you and Jin in the relationship. Your efforts went to vain when you caught him with his ex in your bed together. You stood in shock when you seen them together not a word of apologies coming from either of them. He only packed his things and left with her leaving you alone in your once shared apartment.

What Jin didn't know was how fragile you had become in the weeks leading to the break up. Your depression returning stronger then it ever had before. Your motivation was wiped away with willingness to do anything. You were unsure of what to do being alone now. You had no one to call for comfort as it was late at night and your family would be sleeping. You didn't want to bother your family and friends with your problems leaving the only option to sleep in the guest room.

The sun began shining through the windows causing you to stir awake. The feelings from yesterday flashing back made it hard to move. You felt stuck, no one was able to help you. Even when you tried to get yourself up the pain and heartache held you captive in your sheets. After trying for hours you gave up and remained in bed returning to the only thing that helped you, sleep.

As the sun began to set you heard keys jingling in the living room. The only one able to come in would be Jin so you still stayed out. He was probably here to get the rest of his things. You didn't bother to greet him or look up at him you were to focused on trying to avoid another break down. "Have you just been laying here all day?" Unable to respond to him you focused on keeping your breathing steady "Whatever I'm here to get the rest of my stuff" still you gave him no response.

Jin focused on packing the rest of his things to move in with Anna He could say he didn't mean for this to happen but that would be a lie. Jin felt like your relationship died a long time ago. You had become boring, never wanting to go out, always laying in bed, you never did anything anymore. You stopped paying attention to him so he looked for attention somewhere else. Even now you ignored him he had hoped for some reaction but got nothing in return. He finished packing his things and left without saying goodbye to you.

Jin began his relationship with Anna forgetting about you fairly quickly. He had fallen in love with her all over again, the only problem was she was still the same person he had been with years ago. Nothing had changed with her and slowly he began to regret his choices, but he was determined to make it work.

With you out of his mind he focused on his relationship and he hung out with his friends more. They were not happy nor did they agree with what he did but they were still his friends. They still spoke to you when they could finally get ahold of you. Most of them knew what was going on with your depression and tried to help. They would visit you only to be turned away. Most of your days were spent in bed, the break up wasn't even on your mind anymore. Your thoughts had been consumed by hateful remarks. Slowly death began making his way into your mind as he was ruthless and pushed his way in.

After weeks Jin broke off his relationship with Anna as nothing ever changed when it came to her. He had no sympathy from his friends or family when he told them. They were angry with him for how he treated you. Days had passed since he left Anna, you started to fill his mind once again. His memory flooded with images of you, your smile, your laugh, the way your face scrunches when you laugh. The image of you on your anniversary and how perfect you looked, the feeling of your arms around him when you hugged him. The warmth of your skin under the sheets and how you would touch him with your cold feet. He knew he messed up but he wanted to try and amend things with you.

He made his way to your house, when he knocked on the door you didn’t answer. The door was opened by Namjoon, the rest of his friends behind him. Tears filled their eyes as sobs fells from their lips. Namjoons eyes were red a sign he had also been crying. Asking what happened he shook his head. “M/n is gone. He overdosed this morning” before he could finish his sentence Namjoon began crying once again.

Jin was unable to process what was said, he didn’t want to believe you were gone. He didn’t believe it he yelled accusing his friend of lying to him, knowing he would never do such a thing. However grief makes you act in unreasonable ways. The oxygen had began leaving his body as the tears began to fall. His breathing becoming unsteady as he broke down. Unable to understand why you did this he blamed himself for losing you. His friends trying to comfort him and calm him down, Jimin explained you had lost your battle with depression.

It was as if everything made sense, the reason you stayed in bed, stayed home, lost interest, everything made sense. You were struggling with depression and he never noticed. Instead of talking things out with you he left you for someone else, someone who didn’t and would never love him the way you did. He was never there for you the way you were for him and he would never forgive himself.

Days had passed since you passed away, sitting at your funeral he watched as they laid you to rest. He still didn’t want to believe you were actually gone, he was hoping this was some sick joke. He got passed his denial at the end of your funeral. He had to accept you were gone. All of his memories of you, your smile, your love, your laugh everything he loved about you would be just that. It would only be a memory.

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blogevaawrites · 3 years

Text

Keeping to the schedule.

Pairing: Chris Evans x Reader

Warnings: angst, sad, marriage, divorce, smut

Summary: After seven years of being married, two daughters and a difficult divorce, they try to understand what went wrong and why they let that happen.

Part I

“I’m so sorry to do this but we’re having problems with a few scenes. I won’t be at home until next week.” He said from the other side of the line. Since the divorce we have been being very strict with the custody agreement of our children.

“So, will you come to pick them up the next Friday?” I asked.

“Yes, I will be there. And again, I’m really sorry, I tried to do everything in my hands” I knew that he doesn’t like to change anything about the kids, he says we should try to give them as much stability as we can. I couldn’t agree more.

“Don’t worry, it’s fine.” I simply said.

We got married seven years ago, we had a happy marriage, but loneliness and exhaustion made me give up on our marriage. He started to spend more time away, accepting more projects in L.A or any part of the world but home. I guess home wasn’t what it used to be for him and for me because eventually I stopped complaining about his absence.

“I need to talk to you.” I said when I saw him getting out of the shower. I closed the door of the bathroom and l leaned on the sink. “About what? I’m kind of tired, can we leave it for tomorrow?” He said, drying himself with a towel. I was sick of it; I was being left to a side for so long that I didn’t hold it on. “Not really.” He looked at me then, normally I don’t insist. “I filed for divorce.” His face went from confusion to anger quickly.

We fought, he got really mad. I knew I should have talk to him before doing it, but he was never around, I was mad and sad, I wasn’t thinking properly. He didn’t talk to me for four months after that night, he moved to his mother’s house and did everything in his hands to accelerate the process. I know I didn’t deal very well with all of that and either he did. Our relationship since then got even more complicate.

Our obsession with our kids’ stability grew after that. We both knew they were going suffer the most, at least Anna. She was almost six when all of that happened, she asked a few times, but we never gave her an answer she could understand. Emma was only four, she noticed that something was wrong but was too young to assimilate it.

“Mom, Lindsay is having a sleepover this Thursday, and we don’t have school on Friday, can I go? Her mom will call you tomorrow to ask you, can I go, please?” Anna asked, taking my attention from the road as I drove us to home.

“Sure honey” I said with my eyes on the road.

“Dad is coming on Friday, right? I will tell her mom to bring me back in the morning” she always gets excited to see him, both do it.

“It’s not necessary honey, he probably will come to pick you up after dinner. I will pick you up to get lunch together at the park, what do you think?” she nodded enthusiastic, eating her sandwich.

Thursday comes quickly and Martha, Lindsay’s mom, picked Anna up. Emma got to sleep very early after a long afternoon at the park. I went down to watch a few minutes a TV show before to go to bed. The doorbell rang, startling me, it wasn’t late, but I wasn’t expecting anybody. When I got close to the door, I recognized the silhouette of the person behind the door.

“Hi, what are you doing here?”

“I wrapped the film early, I’m sorry if it is too late but I knew you wouldn’t mind. You can have the entire day to yourself tomorrow, in this way.”

“It’s fine, but Anna is not here, she’s at Lindsay’s house and Emma is already sleeping.” He looked devastated and it broke my heart. He usually doesn’t spent too long without seeing them. “You can see Emma if you want to.” I offered and he accepted quickly. He got into the house and went upstairs to Emma’s room.

After a few minutes, he came down to the kitchen where I was preparing things for tomorrow. I wouldn’t say our relationship was good, o was getting better. it was confusing. “How have you been? How was everything with the kids?” he asked from the doorframe. I turned around to see him and answered, “It was fine, no incidents.” I simply said. We looked each other for a while, we haven’t talk since we had sex the last time, he came to bring the girls back. He stayed for dinner and a while after, the girls went to sleep, we started to talk about them, about our past together, about us a couple. We kissed and one thing took us to another.

“I want to talk about the last time. I don’t want you to think I…” he started; I knew it didn’t mean anything for him, it was just sex, he has been avoiding me since then but him bringing the subject up made me mad and it hurt me a little.

“I know! Don’t worry! Let’s just forget about it.” I said walking to the front door.

“No, it’s just that we were kind of drunk and got emotional.” He started to say without following me.

“It was just sex. I get it! You made it very clear when you couldn’t wait to leave.” As soon as we were done, he got up from the bed and started to dress up. He told me it was late, and he had a thing to do in the morning, but I knew he was lying. He left me, naked in the bed, the one we shared for several years.

“I didn’t want the girls to get confused.” He got closer to the door, shaking his head, and rubbing his face roughly with his hands.

“You didn’t want me to get confused.” His eyes got bigger, and I could see the anger growing in his face.

“You couldn’t care less about what I wanted so don’t tell me what my intentions were.”

“You made them very clear.”

He looked confused, but he moved quickly. “You always so understanding. But why don’t you just listen to me? I’m trying to …” He couldn’t say anything more.

“You’re right, it’s kind of late and there isn’t a reason for you to stay.” I interrupted him, he looked mad.

He took a deep breath and kept on “I’m picking the kids tomorrow’s morning” he informed me before walking out.

“They won’t be here until late afternoon.” I said back. He looked at me without saying anything and kept on his walking. I stood at the door, looking how he got in the car. He turned on the engine, and before driving away he looked at me through the window. “Thank God we’re divorced.”

When the topic isn’t our kids, it never goes well. I guess we’re still hurt.

I didn’t fully understand why he got so angry until I saw the pictures.

After he picked the girls the next day, I did some work and later I filled a glass with wine and turned on the television to pick up a film to watch but my phone rang.

“Hey hon! How are you doing?” Lily asked, with a worried voice that I didn’t get.

“Hey! Why are you asking like that? I’m pretty fine.” I said laughing.

“Well! I don’t know, I thought you will be kind of sad o maybe angry, if my ex-husband was dating with somebody after not even a year from our divorce, I would be ready to kill him.”

“What? What are you talking about? I mean he hadn’t told me anything, I don’t think he’s dating again.” I said quite confused.

“Shit! You haven’t seen it, have you?”

Right away, I googled him with the call waiting.

Chris Evans is off market again? The former superhero and the upcoming actress Rachel Welles spotted holding hands and getting affectionate.

He was trying to talk about our night together because he was going to tell me about her. I felt my heart shrinking. I guess I should have been ready for this, he was free to be with whoever he wanted but it hurt me.

“I’m sorry, girl. It must be weird and hurtful. If you need anything you know I’m right here, right?” she asked kindly.

“I’m fine. he’s free to be with anybody but I guess I wasn’t as much ready to see it as I thought.”

“Yeah, knowing something isn’t always mean assimilating it, right?”

“Right”

After the call I refilled my glass and went to sleep with a few tears in my cheeks.

Our relationship began so natural, and it went so fast. We met through common friends, we dated just for tree moths after he asked me to move on with him. We didn’t take long to get married either, we both just knew that it was the right decision. I really loved him, and I know he loved me too. It wasn’t a fantasy, but we were grown-ups when he met, we knew what we wanted for life, in a partner and we found it in each other.

He was a great husband, a great father and a great friend. I single tear fell through my cheek, remembering the beginning of our freefall.

“There’s not a good way to say this. I’m really sorry to tell this but, Mrs. Evans you had a miscarriage.” Doctor Lars said. I felt Chris’s hand in my knee, comforting me. I felt I couldn’t breathe. My heart broke in pieces. “But I’m six months pregnant, this usually happens during the first trimester. This can’t be true.” My mouth slurred. “Well, the actual name is a late-miscarriage, there are several things that may play a part in causing it so we need to do a few tests to find a cause. I know this isn’t easy, but these things can happen, and we can’t do anything to prevent it.” I touched my barely swollen belly, missing the movements of my baby. “What are we doing now?” Chris talked, taking care of the situation. “You will need to go through labour to give birth to you baby. I know this can be a very distressing time and you may be in shock but there’s not other way.” I could hear him breathe hardly before kissing my head.

We went through our worst nightmare. I gave birth to a baby I could take care of. Thankfully, after inducing the labour, the birth came quickly. We decided not to hold the baby. We thought it will be less traumatic in that way.

He went with me through all of that, but we changed. Everything changed.

Five days later, I came into our bedroom to see him packing his suitcase.

“What are you doing? I asked softly.

“I need to go to L.A for a few interviews and shoot a few scenes” I looked at him straightly. Not quite believing he was going to leave so early after everything. “Don’t worry, I asked my mother to come to help you with everything.” he said, seeing my expression. I didn’t want to be alone, I didn’t want his mom here, I wanted him. I caressed his back, calling his attention.

“Don’t go, please.” I muttered. “It will be just a couple days, two weeks max.” he said holding me in his arms.

“Two weeks?” that was so fucking long.

“Listen, I can really do anything. I’m sorry but it’s work. What you want me to do?” he tried to reason with me, in vain.

“Call Meghan and ask her to reschedule it. We have an appointment with Doctor Lars next week.” I didn’t like to complain about his job or ask him to not to do it, but I couldn’t go through that alone.

“Everything will be fine, call me after the appointment and tell me what she says. I will be here as soon as I can.” I pushed him away with my eyes watering.

“Okay” for the first time in our life together he was putting his family in a second place.

The worst thing it was that trip didn’t last 2 weeks, but 3 months. He told me that his next project was being moved forward, and nothing else. He left me alone in the worst moment of my life and I couldn’t forget it.

After a few more glasses of wine, I took me phone and I called him.

“Hello” he said with a surprised voice. “What’s going on?”

“What was what you wanted to tell me last time? Hey, I know we just fuck but I’m actually in a relationship with some else and you must forget about it.” I slurred, mimicking him.

“You know it.” He said, I could hear him moving to another place. I guess he left the house.

“Of course, I do. Do you think I live under a rock?” I wasn’t jealous I was mad at him, at myself.

“Okay I get it you’re mad, but I wanted to talk…”

“What for? To say sorry for fucking me or to ask me to keep back of your new love.”

“No, it’s not like…”

“Why did you leave me? Why wasn’t I your priority anymore? I asked, removing the tears away from my face. My voice broke a few times, I was unable to keep myself still.

“Where are you? Are you drunk?” he asked hurriedly.

“It wasn’t my blame; I couldn’t have known it.” I kept talking.

“What are you talking about?” his voice was full of curiosity and confusion.

“We didn’t name him, he died without a name.” my face was completely wet, my arms were crossed around my stomach and my heart… I couldn’t feel my heart.

“Are you at home? Pease tell me where you are.” He asked desperately.

“Yes, I’m here.” I muttered before hanging up.

A few minutes later I heard the door opening, and his footsteps. I was in completely darkness, no TV, no lights, nothing but somehow, he knew exactly where I was.

“Hey! What’s going on? What happened?” he asked softly, sitting next to me in the half-furnished nursery.

“Why did you leave me?”

“Well, when you wife files for divorce, it’s actually kind of what you have do” he said with a sad smile in his face.

“You left me way before that.” I said quickly, he left me when we lost our baby. “We never talked about him.”

“I don’t think you are in an appropriate state to talk about him.” He said without looking at me.

“I’m fine. Don’t make excuses! You just don’t want to talk about him with me.”

“I don’t want to talk about him with nobody.”

“I’m not nobody.”

“Why is this so important now? It’s been a year since then, we are not together anymore...” he started to get up from the floor.

“You’re dating again…” I finished the sentence off for him “you told me you weren’t ready. You said you missed me, that you missed us.” I said, remembering what he told me when he was taking me to our bedroom between kisses and caresses.

His face looked confused and tired.

“I don’t get it. Why are so upset? You filed for divorce without telling me why, without giving me a chance to make it better. All I know is you felt neglected, but I didn’t do anything wrong. I thought we were just going through a rough patch, but I thought it was normal after all.” His voice was firmed, he wasn’t yelling me, but I bet he wanted. “I know you don’t think this but I’m not the bad guy here.” His eyes were red and watering. He never told me anything of this. He had been too angry to talk to me about anything.

He walked to the door, ready to leave me.

“You left me.” I said, calling his attention.

“You already said that.” He barked back.

“When I asked you to stay you left me for almost four months after I gave birth to my death son. I needed you Chris, and you rather work than be with your wife.” His face kept straight; he knew what I was talking about. I got up when I saw him get closer to me. He looked at me for minutes, as he wasn’t sure about his next words.

“I went to therapy. I didn’t come back home because I wasn’t stable, not because I was working, not because I wanted to leave, it was because I didn’t see another way to deal with everything. You were right when you said holding our baby it would be traumatic, it was.” I didn’t understand what he was talking about, we agreed on not to hold the baby when he was born but he cleared all up “I couldn’t help it, I saw him coming out of you as the same way Emma and Anna did. I needed to see him, and it was the worst thing I could have done, but it was my son.” His eyes never left mine when his body got much closer to me. “I lost my son too, honey. I couldn’t be there for you because I wasn’t handling in the right way.” I saw a single tear going down through his cheek. At least I wasn’t the only one crying.

“Why didn’t you tell me this?”

“Because you gave birth to him! How the fucking hell could I have told you I was the one losing his mind after that? I know I should have stayed with you but believe me, there wasn’t another option, I didn’t find another way.”

#chris evans imagine #Chris Evans #chris evans fanfiction #chris evans fic #chris evans smut #chris evans fluff #CHRIS EVANS ANGST #chris evans and reader #chris evans x you #chris evans x reader #chris evans x wife!reader #marriage #divorce #fluff #Smut #angst #sad

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punkpoemprose · 2 years

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A Convenient Arrangement Part 11

Universe: Canonverse Arranged Marriage AU Rating:T Length: 3840 Words A/N: Finally finished this speed-bump of a chapter. Hopefully now that it’s written it won’t take me nine months to do the next bit.

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Part 8] [Part 9] [Part10]

The last thing Anna wanted was to let him leave the castle. Frankly, she wanted to lock him in the room and keep kissing him until they were called away to their duties, or until they fell asleep, whichever happened first.

Probably sleep.

She was exhausted. She’d been tired all week, and while their day’s reprieve had been a comfort, she still felt a deep fatigue that seemed to settle in her very bones. He was tired too. She saw it in his eyes when he broke their kiss. If she would have led him to the bed, wrapped them in blankets and promised that they could stay like that for the rest of the evening, he would have wanted to stay.

I should have convinced him.

Instead, she’d encouraged him to go see his family. She knew that it was the right thing to do, that he wouldn’t have wanted to leave her unless it was important. She didn’t want to interfere with his traditions and when he didn’t invite her along, she knew that it must be for a reason.

She didn’t have the time to ask him all the things she wanted to, and she knew that she wouldn’t be able to see him off at the gates without running after him, so she’d watched him from a window instead. She’d stood and quieted every voice in her head that told her he wasn’t coming back. She’d watched dutifully, keeping her feet still and her hands braced on the windowpane as he and Sven rode off until she could no longer see either of them.

She’d only allowed herself to move when she knew that it would be impossible to follow them, when the sky started to darken, and she was certain that she would only get lost if she tried to tail them up the mountain. Even then, knowing all she did about exactly how it would go, it took all her energy not to follow.

Her lips still felt the ghost of his upon them. She wished that she would have stolen a goodbye kiss, a goodnight kiss, or a just because kiss because she knew that she’d be missing the feel of it until he returned.

Instead of marching to the front doors, her feet carried her on autopilot to her sister’s office door.

She knew that Elsa would be in her office. There was nowhere else she would be on an evening without courtly duties. Someone who was not in the know might imagine that she would be in her bedroom, or relaxing in the library, but Anna knew that her sister would be pouring over paperwork.

It was difficult for Anna to knock on her sister’s office door. Physically speaking it was, of course, quite simple, but making her knuckles rap against the door and having to trust that her sister would answer was still difficult. She had forgiven Elsa for the years of isolation they’d both faced, but she hadn’t forgotten. She was certain that she and Elsa could grow close and communicate daily for the rest of their lives and Anna still wouldn’t ever forget what it felt like to knock on her sister’s door and have it go unanswered.

It had felt like she was mourning the death of someone who was still very much alive.

“Come in.”

Anna didn’t need to be told twice. She could feel the muscles she’d not realized she was tensing relax in her arms and legs. The anxiety in her stomach quelled.

Pushing the door open and then closed again behind her, Anna found Elsa very much as she had expected her. Her pale face framed by mussed blond tresses that were, themselves, almost as white as the piles of paper around her on the desk.

“Oh! Anna, I wasn’t expecting you. I thought you were spending the day with Kristoff?”

Anna wasn’t sure what made her happier, the way her arrival seemed to be a splendid surprise to her sister, or the way that Elsa so pleasantly mentioned Kristoff by name. It surprised her how quickly Elsa had gone from thinking her husband was some brute, to calling him by name and occasionally indulging in his company for brief moments.

Anna wondered if with a little more time, they might begin doing things as a family. She did think that Kristoff and Elsa could be friends with time, so she was pleased that they were something like acquaintances now. Anything was better than strangers, particularly now that Anna knew that her feelings for her husband weren’t only reciprocated but that they were fated.

“I was. He’s had to head up to the mountains to speak with his family.”

“The trolls?”

“Yes, the trolls,” Anna quickly replied.

“Ah, is there something going on?”

“Well yes, but it will take some explaining.”

Elsa nodded, seeming entirely too pleased to shift the pile of papers she’d been working on off to the side of her desk. Anna knew that Elsa had been making efforts to get closer to her, to get to know her better, and as infrequent as their moments alone were, Anna couldn’t help but to feel surprised that she was so ready to set her work aside.

She smile was somewhat sheepish when she returned her full attention to Anna.

“I should have taken a break hours ago anyway.”

***

Kristoff supposed he should have expected his family to fawn all over him when he arrived in the valley. He just hadn’t anticipated the sheer amount of raw chaos that would be created when he held up the pink crystal he’d brought along with him and said “Anna is my soulmate.”

In hindsight he probably should have expected it. He’d simply been too wrapped up in his own excitement to think of how anyone other than Anna and himself might react. Anna only really knew the half of it at any rate, and of course his family, knowing even more than he did about the matter, would be ecstatic.

He was being buffeted about the space, pushed and pulled by stone hands. There were plenty of congratulations being tossed his way, as well as questions.

“No, no, really I don’t want to do a feast or anything… I’m sorry I didn’t bring Anna, but… thank you! Of course, I’m thrilled… no, I came right here after… I don’t think.”

“Hush!”

He’d never been more grateful for his mother’s loud and commanding presence than he was now. She’d somehow broken through the throng of questioning and congratulatory family and was in the process of putting everyone in their place, clearing the way for Pabbie, who was walking through the chaos toward him.

A hush fell over the valley as the elder troll walked to him and extended his hand. Kristoff for his part was grateful for his grandfather’s calm aura, his ability to pull the chaos from the collective and replace it with quiet attention in a way that rivaled his mother’s commanding shout. Kristoff couldn’t help but think that he would need to take lessons from them in both skills if he and Anna ever decided to have children.

He felt the flush creep into his face as he got ahead of himself, but he was able to tamp it down when he stooped down and took Pabbie’s hand. He’d long since figured out the best method to walk in a dignified manner at his height while being led by the much shorter troll, following him back toward the center of the valley where he most often held court over the assemblage of relatives.

“You were right,” Kristoff managed to tell the old troll as they walked through the space, “Anna and I… it was fate.”

There was a rumbling laugh from the troll and Kristoff couldn’t help but smile.

“Of course! It was all but written in the stars, I don’t know how I didn’t notice sooner. I am happy for you, for both of you. Not all things that are fated are positive, but you and Anna have made the best possible choices with your hearts, and the crystal knows that.”

“It did.” He knew he would never, so long as he lived, forget the surprise and joy on Anna’s face when she saw the crystal glow under her touch. There was nothing so perfect than knowing that her joy came from understanding what it meant, that she knew that they were connected and that the love they felt for one another went deeper than their arrangement.

“I assume you came home to make arrangements then?”

“Of course he did! He may be doing all of this out of order, but he’s not going to keep his mother from seeing him married properly.”

Kristoff couldn’t help but laugh, hearing the voice from behind him. His mother, bless her, could be silent no longer.

“Yes Ma.”

***

“Soulmates?”

Anna could understand how the concept would be foreign to Elsa. Her sister was not necessarily opposed to forming relationships with others from what Anna could tell, but Elsa was still new to the process and as such it was probably impossible for her to wrap her head around the idea that two people could be meant for each other.

“Yes! Well, according to his family’s traditions. It’s a kind of magic.”

“That doesn’t really explain it,” Elsa said, her fingertips making, then catching a large crystalline snowflake, “I’m kind of magic, but I didn’t look at the two of you and think ‘this is fate’, I thought ‘gosh I hope I didn’t just doom my sister’ and then later… after we had our whole… thing… I thought ‘wow I’m glad he’s good to her, she deserves that’.”

Anna pouted, but understood where Elsa was coming from. She supposed she should be happy about hearing that her sister’s views on her marriage were positive, but she wanted Elsa to understand the importance of the fate element to her. She’d never felt like fate had much planned for her beyond repeated failure.

“To be fair until recently you haven’t done too much looking at anyone.”

The comment wasn’t supposed to bite, and despite a moment of caution that flashed in Elsa’s eyes, it didn’t seem to land that way.

“Fair enough.”

Anna took a sip of her wine and it burned all the way down. She’d been the one to suggest a nightcap, but it was clear from the level of relaxation between them that neither of them had much of a tolerance to alcohol.

“It’s just… I believe it Elsa. I believe Kristoff and I are soulmates and I… I love him Elsa, I really do. I wanted so badly for it to glow when I touched it, and it did!”

Elsa for her part still seemed slightly unconvinced, but not in a way that was upsetting to Anna. She didn’t need her sister to believe in magic crystals, though Anna thought given her magical abilities that she should, she didn’t need her to believe in anything but her.

“I don’t know how magic crystals work Anna. Seems like an Earth magic thing? I guess it’s probably different than snow magic?” She yawned a very unladylike yawn, wide mouthed and rather loud before draining the rest of the wine from her glass, “But I’m happy for you.”

Anna felt the last of the tension leave her body. She’d told herself a thousand times that she didn’t need her sister’s approval, particularly not given the fact that her sister had been part of the reason for the arranged marriage in the first place. Having it though, having her say that she was happy for her, made Anna feel lighter than she had in a very long time in her sister’s presence.

“Good. That’s all I wanted to hear!”

Elsa quirked a brow, then flushed.

“Oh, I probably should have opened with that, you know… instead of arguing the finer points of magic rocks.”

“That you don’t even know about.”

“That I don’t even know about,” she confirmed.

Anna wasn’t sure which one of them laughed first, but she was grateful for it. She was grateful for her sister, and that felt strange and new.

It’s the small victories.

***

The sun was peaking up over the horizon when Kristoff broke through the clearing edge and began slowly by surely making his way into the city proper. He wanted nothing more than to spur on Sven, to rush him along the streets and to the castle, but even though he knew the deer could comply, he would not push him after so many hours without a good long rest.

Despite this, Kristoff noticed that Sven was racing toward the castle of his own accord. He wondered if he could sense his anxiety to return to Anna, or whether it was a much more personal desire to get back to the palace stables for his morning feeding. With Sven it could be either, or both.

He let a groom take Sven from him when he came to the stables. Normally he wouldn’t leave Sven under anyone’s care but his own, but he knew that the reindeer wouldn’t hold it against him. The grooms probably gave him more treats than Kristoff anyway.

He still felt strange walking into the castle. Sometimes he wondered if it wouldn’t be better for him to use the servant’s entrance to enter, but between Anna and Kai he’d been encouraged to embrace his role in the castle hierarchy. He had to admit that he was feeling more up to the task now, holding proof of his belonging in his pocket.

He took the stairs two at a time, maybe even three at a time as he sped up to the direction of his and Anna’s barely separated rooms. He knew that she was a deep sleeper, that she was likely to not wake for another hour or two unless she was required to be awake on some business. Yet, he didn’t feel foolish for his rush to return, not when being in the same place as her, even in the walls of the palace, felt more like home than he’d ever felt in his cabin.

He thought about opening her door, walking in and waking her. He thought about knocking, or about slipping into the room without bothering. He had a feeling that she wouldn’t mind. He could still remember the look in her eye as he left, the way she’d faked a smile for his benefit as he made his plans to go.

She wouldn’t be upset by the intrusion. He knew it as well as he knew that, roles reversed, he wouldn’t mind either. Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to even knock on her door. They’d had an exhausting week and were about to face another and he couldn’t bring himself to steal her sleep, not even for what he had to give her.

If this weren’t so entirely out of order…

He didn’t have the energy to think on it. He didn’t have the energy to think about how, had he met Anna in any other way he would have been able to wake her with a gentle kiss and show her what he’d brought her because they would have surely been in love for months and had already told each other such.

He pushed his hand into his pocket, feeling the cool metal and stone within.

Out of order or not, he couldn’t help but feel incredibly lucky. He still hated that Anna hadn’t had a real choice when they’d married. He hated that he hadn’t either, and more than that he hated that he would have been unlikely to ever meet her if it weren’t for everything that went wrong for her before they met.

And yet we did.

He gingerly ran a finger around the edge of the thing in his pocket, once, twice, and then he slid his hand out from the fabric and allowed the trinket to be left alone. He took his eyes from Anna’s door as he did so, turning instead down a door to his own bedroom.

It can wait.

***

When Kristoff opened the door he glanced toward the door between their rooms and found it closed. He did his best to not allow the pang he felt at the realization of this to affect him. Anna was of course always welcome to close the door between their rooms, to maintain her privacy. It was just that he had hoped to steal a glance at her sleeping before he allowed himself to lay down for an hour of shut eye for himself.

He shucked off his boots, tossed aside his tunic, and made a weak effort at untying his pants as he approached his bed. He normally would have made more of an effort to keep his things together, to be neat knowing that despite his protest a palace maid would likely feel the need to clean up the messes he made, but he was tired enough to have the care overrode by the desire to disrobe and sleep.

Except, as he approached the bed, his hand slipped away from the lacing of his trousers, allowing the knots he’d been untangling to stay blessedly tied. He felt his breath catch in his throat and felt a warmth come to his face, because while he and Anna had shared a bed before, he was awestruck by the realization that he’d just walked into his room to find her in his bed, wearing nothing but one of his tunics.

Her hair was splayed wildly about the pillow, she’d evidently decided against braiding it before she fell into his bed. He couldn’t help but reach out to her, to brush a strand that had fallen over her face away.

“Gods you’re beautiful,” he whispered into the still half dim space, studying the slight upturn to her mouth, the sprinkle of freckles that played across the half of her face that wasn’t pressed into the pillow below her.

He’d never really found many women beautiful before, but Anna had ruined him for anyone else for as long as he lived. He was sure he’d never find anyone as beautiful as he found her.

My beautiful wife. My soulmate. My everything.

He tried to hold onto the words as he thought them about her, thinking that he may very well want to tell her as such when he offered her what he’d created for her. He’d never been very good with words, but he wanted to be when he asked her to marry him… again.

She stirred, only slightly, and he couldn’t help but feel for a moment like he was well and truly in limbo. He loved her. He loved her so much that he was beginning to find the pomp and circumstance of his new life to be worthwhile so long as it meant that he could be at her side, and yet he also didn’t know whether she was ready to hear it.

Once again, he wished that things could have been just a little simpler between them, that he’d been able to court her properly… in whatever way she deemed proper. He wished that he knew what she’d want him to do now. He wished his body wasn’t begging him to just fall into bed beside her without another thought.

“Bed,” she muttered as if reading his thoughts, “Sleep.”

Despite his careful study of her sleeping form, he hadn’t noticed the slight flutter of her lashes as she stirred.

“I can go sleep somewhere else if you want Anna.”

One naked leg was exposed to him, the other was tucked underneath the coverlet, and he wasn’t such a stubborn man that he couldn’t admit that it was likely a factor in distracting him from her face.

She’s so small.

The image his brain concocted with their relative sizes and her exposed skin was so risqué he had to think long and hard about his promise to her on their wedding night to shame himself into forgetting about it. They would never have to be intimate. Not if she didn’t want to. Not if they both didn’t want to. Not even though he very, very, much wanted to.

“Shuddup, bed. Now.”

Her sleep addled voice and unamused demanding tone almost caught him as off guard as her current clothing situation, but he was exhausted, and she was in his bed after all.

“Okay.”

He thought he heard a little sound of satisfaction come from her throat when he carefully settled onto the bed at her side. He knew he heard it when she pulled herself against him, that uncovered leg hitching up and over his waist, entangling him. Her hands were on him in an instant, one interlacing their fingers and the other splaying across his chest.

“Missed you,” she muttered, seeming half asleep but still somewhat coherent.

He turned his head slightly to look at her, feeling true peace for the first time since leaving her side the night before when she turned her head in return and brushed her lips against his so gently, he could have almost believed it was an accident.

Almost.

“Missed you too,” he replied, “I rode all night so I could get back to you. I didn’t sleep a wink.”

She seemed to stir a little more, and after an extended processing time she smiled at that.

“I tried to stay up until you got home. Elsa wouldn’t wait up with me, so I came to your bed in case I fell asleep before you got home.”

He could all but feel her lips brushing his again with every word.

“I see.”

“Can I kiss you goodnight?” she asked, still clearly not fully awake, but seemingly aware enough of the situation to ask and add, “That’s why I stayed up… You’re a good kisser.”

He wasn’t certain of why that made him blush even more than the feeling of having her leg draped over him. The compliment was unexpected to say the least.

“Yes… always Anna.”

“Always?”

He swallowed, staring down at her lips through the scant space between their faces.

“Always. You can always kiss me goodnight.”

She didn’t need more encouragement. Her lips were on his in an instant and he felt all the wakefulness train from his body as if he’d been running on nothing but adrenaline for hours. He may as well could have been, and her mouth on his knocked all the fight or flight out of him.

He settled his hands across her back, fingers gently rubbing circles against the fabric of his shirt that she wore.

When she pulled away from his lips it was such an imperceptible distance that it was almost as if the kiss didn’t end at all. There was barely a hair’s breadth between their mouths, and it seemed as he allowed himself to begin drifting off, that it was exactly what she wanted.

#kristanna #frozen fanfiction #A Convenient Arrangement #Arranged Marriage AU

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scorpio-karma · 2 years

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BBHC Week: Sexuality

I'd like to tell a little story

That's been told time and time again

I've had many lovers all of which have seen a different phase in my life.

First there was Tyler. We had puppy love. He was my first everything, crush, kiss, first time, and first love. But like most puppy love we didn't last. I like to think what we could have been had he not been so concerned about what his parents thought, but it doesn't matter because we were never meant to last. We were just meant to be with each other for the time we were and I have no regrets. Not every person you date or fuck is supposed to be your everything, they were just meant to be my something.

Then there was Vicki. Even I wasn't immune hurricane Vicki, but I was probably the least bitter about. I suppose that's what happens when you have no illusions of what you are to a person. For Vicki, I knew I was just right now. Something for her to do to further the rumors about her. For me she was a revelation, one I wouldn't understand until later on.

Kissing Vicki felt exactly the same as kissing Tyler. Sure, there we physical differences between the two, but that inside feeling was exactly the same. That feeling of wanting more, for it never to end until we were both raw and satisfied. I wouldn't realize until later in a conversation with Caroline that that's not how it is for everyone. That there was a difference between curiosity and what I was, gay.

Then there was Damon. With him I learned what it truly meant to hate fuck someone. To have such overwhelming feelings of hate that it comes out in weird ways, in my case, fucking Damon Salvatore. That ended quickly much to no one's surprise. Thing about hate is it dissolves into indifference pretty quickly and all that was left was contempt. Although one satisfying thing came from that, being able to reject Damon Salvatore and it actually hurt him. It seems my opinion only mattered when I was fucking him.

Then Jeremy, my best friend's little brother. I took a chance with him, a leap of faith. In a world suddenly filled with monsters he was all that made sense. I think I understood Vicki the most then because when everything feels like it's crashing down Jeremy will always be there to help you pick up the pieces. That is, until Anna.

The most confusing time in my life was when Jeremy cheated on me. It was the icing on the fucking cake after everything with Esther and my mother. I suppose that's how I ended up with Klaus, and later Professor Shane. They were older, more experienced and everything Jeremy wasn't. But again, those don't last. Nothing ever lasts out of spite. That's what I learned from Rebekah.

To be fair, she did like me, just not more than Stefan, and especially not more than her brother. I'm always getting blind sided when it comes to love. I'm there as a filler and never the main course, but with her it hurt the most. She was my first girlfriend and I guess I had some false notion that it would be better than having a boyfriend, that she couldn't hurt me the way Jeremy had, but of course she did, her loyalties never lied with me. However, again, I don't regret her. Our time together was noteworthy and showed me once again that there was no difference for me.

After that I didn't date, I fucked. I fucked Stefan, I fucked Matt, I fucked Jeremy again, I fucked Nora. You can't be betrayed if there's no commitment, but I guess that's why he surprised me the most.

I fucked Kai and I thought I would leave it at that but nothing ever goes to plan with him. I thought I'd feel contempt like with Damon, but it never came. I thought he'd find someone he'd want more like the others, but that never came either. The level of devotion he had toward me was unlike anything I ever experienced, so when he left me in that prison world I was surprised at how betrayed I felt. Of course, I evened the playing field after, but I'll never forget realizing when everything changed.

He was no one. He was a child murderer. I should have felt nothing but anger, but I found myself disappointed. The thing I had been avoiding since Rebekah Mikaelson broke my heart. But he was different in every way which is how we got here today.

#bonnie bennett #bonkai #bbhcweek #bbhc week #day 5 #Sexuality #drabble?#Bonnie's inner monologue

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hunflowers · 2 years

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The Final Act

Word Count: 12.1k

A/N: hiiiiiiiii long time no see i knowwww but don’t worry i had faith in finishing this story so here we are now. i don’t have much else to say except if you like this story, if you like me, if you like giving feedback, do let me know because i am always curious.

WARNING: mention of sexual assault. sorry i know more pain to endure after every thing we already went through :/

*extra nose boops*

The start of 1976 kicked off a well-deserved fresh start for Giulia Stone. Beginning with her very first trip to the Oscars.

The Dreamers decided to take a few months off and separate before diving into their next project.

Giulia: God, that feels like yesterday. I don’t often look back on my past with fondness, but that night was one of those nights I’ll… I don’t think it’s possible for me to forget that night.

I felt like a true princess. I wore the most beautiful periwinkle dress by Valentino and if you could believe, I had the honor of wearing the Jubilee Diamond. I mean, come on, right? Complete princess.

Anna: I was at home eagerly watching the Oscars for the first time in my life because Giulia was there. I thought Midnight was an incredible movie and if anyone deserved to win, it was Giulia. I saw it as a beacon of hope for her, y’know?

Harry: She was so happy to even be there. I don’t think she cared all that much about winning, it just felt nice to finally be seen as more than just a pretty face.

And then the best actress category was up. She kept a smile on her face but her hand was squeezing mine so incredibly hard.

Giulia: It’s a nerve-racking environment and I was probably the only one sober there which didn’t make it much easier on me. But then I thought to all of my progress and my future and knew this couldn’t be the event to break me. If I let a simple award corrupt me, what does that really say about me?

Anna: She won. “And the Oscar goes to… Giulia Stone, Midnight.” Connor and I were cheering like we were at a concert.

Harry: Tears were spilling down her face as soon as her name was called. I’m pretty sure I cried too, I don’t really remember.

Giulia: I didn’t think I was… exactly worthy of that award. But, to this day I’m still so grateful, as anyone would be.

After that I took a break from work. I was scared at first about what the media would say but then I realized I didn’t give a shit anymore. I was happy and I wasn’t tired and I was in love. All good things were headed my way and it felt so good.

Vince: I know she told me to take a vacation of my own and not worry about her for a little while, but I still kept an ear out for her in case I caught wind of a role she would really enjoy.

As for the Dreamers, they weren’t too happy when their enemy, the Waves, had won their first ever Grammy award that same year. Ned Blithe and Gordy Berkshire decided there needed to be a change if the Dreamers ever wanted an award of that prestige themselves.

Before we go on, it’s necessary for me to include that over the course of my interviews and research, we unfortunately lost Gordy Berkshire due to natural causes. Though his perspective would have added more to this part of the story, enough has been gathered to understand where the truth lies.

Ned: Gordy and I had been coworkers for such a long time, it’s weird thinking back on that time now with him not here. We only spoke just last week [long pause]. Okay, sorry, where were we?

John Vancamp (producer): Right well, I guess let’s get into it. I’m not a Grammy-winning producer for nothing. I wasn’t labeled one of the best producers at the time for nothing. I know how to make music and I’m part of the reason the Waves got that first Grammy, okay?

I’ve known Gordy for a long time and he asked me to check these guys out and see if I can help them out where they struggle most. I wasn’t there to fix them, I was there to help. I’ve heard their songs and they were good, but they could do better – that’s a lesson for you, there’s always room for improvement, no matter how good you think you are.

Ned: They were in a bit of a funk, writing wise for a while. When they were on tour they decided to focus just on the tour with no stress of a new album, which I totally agreed with. But the tour was over and they needed to move on to something new; they just couldn’t find that groove when they got back to work.

Niall: All I knew was that I wanted a Grammy. I think it was hard being around for what, five, six years, with two hit albums and absolutely no recognition from the academy.

SP: The Waves were the most popular band, but we nearly matched them in numbers, and if we’re bringing things into perspective, who do you hear more on the radio as of recently, the Dreamers or the Waves? Fucking us.

Harry: People only liked us for the headlines. We were probably the most controversial band at the time. We had good music but if you’ve got a bad reputation people don’t want to be associated, like the Grammys.

Which is bloody bullshit because that really affected us – both as a band and individually. Then John Vancamp walked into the studio one day and we all knew things were gonna change.

John: I admired how they worked together, truly. It was homely and they all had such genuine relationships with one another, this wasn’t just a business thing. I felt bad coming in there and ruining the atmosphere and bringing this business mindset, but they needed that.

Music is about doing what you love, but when you’re famous and you have fans and you have important people throwing money your way, you have to think with, well, with money and awards on the mind.

Opal: I never liked John. The guys loved him because he was, “A sign from the gods above,” according to SP, but he had greasy long hair, rotten breath from the thousands of cigarettes he smoked, and an overall bad attitude. Woman’s intuition or maybe just the fact that I never cared about money or a stupid Grammy, I knew he was bad news.

Niall: I had a good feeling about him.

Harry: John came up to me one of the first days asking where my head is at because I didn’t seem like I cared all that much about writing this next album. And if I’m completely honest, my head was elsewhere.

July 1976, Harry and Giulia take the plunge and move in with one another - or rather, Harry has officially moved into Giulia’s new Malibu home that she bought earlier in the year.

Giulia: I bought this house, right, and it was beautiful and I fell in love and it felt like the perfect start to a new beginning – to a new me. But it was too big for just me. I adopted a dog, a dalmatian and yes, I named him Pongo; but it was still too big.

Harry: We were in bed one night and I was almost asleep. I felt her in my arms, stroking my hair, my face, and I could feel her just… staring at me deep in thought. I asked her, “Is something wrong?”

She said, without even a second thought, “Move in with me.”

I wasn’t gonna fall asleep after that. I opened my eyes and sat up on my elbow. I couldn’t tell if she was serious or not. Her hair was all messy and her face was still flushed from, well, I’m sure you could guess, and I found it quite difficult to tell if she was serious. But that look in her eyes, the way she was looking at me, holding on to me, I knew she was serious.

I was shocked when she asked me I mean… we’d only been dating for seven months, it felt a little fast. I told her I needed to think about it.

Opal: We didn’t see Harry for a few days. He told us he was “sick” and didn’t want any of us catching whatever he had. For as long as I’ve known that man, I’ve known that if he was bleeding out, he wouldn’t miss a day of work. That's how much he loved it.

Gemma: Harry called me up one day and he sounded like he was panicking. I tried to get a word in but he was rambling about nothing that made any sort of sense to me. When I finally heard him take a breath I butted in.

I asked him, “Harry, what is going with you?”

And he said, “Giulia asked me to move in with her.”

I know he was scared about it being too fast but I saw it as a good thing for him. He bounced around hotels and renting apartments every couple of months or so and I didn’t think that was necessarily healthy for him. Plus if he’s as crazy for her as he says he is then it really was only a matter of time until they moved in together.

Harry: Everyone I asked said yes, I should do it. And when I thought about it, really thought about it, I thought what could be so bad? The band and I record close to her house so the commute wouldn’t be so bad, plus I loved Malibu. The beach was right in her backyard and the sunsets were always so mesmerizing. I could picture us every night sitting on the back patio watching the sun blend into the ocean.

I wrote ‘Malibu Sun’ about those daydreams of mine. Beautiful song for a beautiful moment.

Giulia: I was nervous after I asked Harry. He kind of distanced himself from me for about a week and I had no idea if he ran off for good [laughs]. I felt like I did something wrong.

Harry: I was wrong for keeping her in the dark like that and not talking to her.

Giulia: But then he came over and he said, “Okay, let’s do it.” Four days later he was officially moved in.

SP: H was so happy he looked high all of the time. I realized I wanted happiness like that.

Niall: For some reason it all felt like it was coming together – like we were headed in a good direction.

John: Every song we made turned into something fantastic that when it came down to the best twelve songs for the next album it was going to be really difficult to choose.

Opal: He was so full of himself. John thought everything we created was good because he was there not because we were good musicians. He was a sexist piece of shit that thought I was an assistant at first.

Niall: John helped out a lot. Really gave us a lot to work with to beat the Waves.

Ned: By the end of that year, they released a single from the new album; despite being nowhere near done with the album. But they wanted to give everyone a little taste of what they’ve been working on.

‘One Night’ hit number one overnight.

Giulia: I made dinner for everyone the night after their release which slowly turned into a house party. Of course everyone was drinking and doing some type of drug while I stayed sober, but I didn’t mind. I thought I would if I were in crowds and around drugs a lot but I didn’t. I liked being sober, it kept me in touch with who I really am.

I used this analogy a lot when in therapy, but for those dark years of my life I felt like I was in this deep hole, the surface miles away getting smaller and smaller with every next step I took. I thought that if I got high and or drunk I would be able to float my way out of the hole and into the light and be happy again but instead every time I got high and or drunk I just went further down. I thought it would be impossible getting out and I had no hope that I ever would. I felt trapped and I knew one day soon it was going to close in around me and I’d never be free.

But I realized drugs weren’t the answer and the only way for me to get out was to climb. It wasn’t an overnight process and I fell back down a few times but eventually I made it out, and that was when I had left rehab. It was a dark and lonely place and I never wanted to go back, so I stayed true to myself and stayed sober because it was for the best no matter how tempting it was. And that’s the thing, I may have been out of the hole, but that didn’t mean I was far past it – it was next to me at all times and one wrong step I would fall back in.

I reminded myself happiness isn’t found in the euphoric feeling of the rush to the brain but rather the moment in which we live. I lived in the moment and I celebrated their song and I laughed and I smiled and I was happy.

Harry: John thought she was pregnant because she wasn’t drinking. Instead of ridiculing him for not knowing her situation or being upset about it, Giulia smiled and said, “I don’t need to drink to have a good time.” I thought she was being passive aggressive at first but then she squeezed my hand and went to get another bottle of vodka after SP finished the second. I could tell she was genuinely having a good time despite the drunk people in our house making a bloody wreck of the place.

SP: I met Del that night. Delilah Albright, the woman of my dreams.

Opal: I kissed a woman for the first time that night. I’m not even sure I remember how it really happened but I remember her lips. She tasted like peppermint.

Giulia: It was a good night. I paid the cleaning ladies extra the next day.

Niall: John, Harry, Mitch and I came to a conclusion on eight out of the twelve songs for the album. Opal was pissed we decided without her but maybe if she wasn’t so busy getting in whatever orgy she was partaking in she could’ve voiced her opinion.

Opal: I never understood why they thought I was in some orgy at Giulia and Harry’s house. I kissed one woman, who was the first person I kissed in a while. No orgy. God, I hate that word.

Giulia: For the remainder of ‘76 and the majority of ‘77, I don’t think I was ever unhappy. It’s weird because you never really understand how depressed you were until you see yourself extremely happy. It was like I was a new person with just how different my emotional stability was and how my personality had shifted.

I got back into surfing and I also joined a beach volleyball league for about a year over at Manhattan Beach and just had fun and met some pretty great people.

And while I was out the band would be at my house writing or whatever if they weren’t over at the studio. I loved watching them work and create the magic but sometimes it could get a little boring and I also just didn’t want to be around John often.

Opal: Woman’s intuition. I saw the way Giulia would look at him when he wasn’t looking. He had the audacity to tell her to get some lunch while he was a visitor in her house. If I was Giulia, I would’ve kicked his sorry ass out.

John: Giulia and I got along pretty well in the beginning. And if I’m being completely honest, I have a feeling if she weren’t with Harry she would try to get with me. I saw the way she looked at me when she thought I wasn’t aware.

Giulia: I think it was around September of ‘77 when I called Jessica and Vince. I was ready to get back to work. I hoped I could come back with a bang after ending on such a high the previous year.

Jessica: I was so happy to hear her voice. We of course kept in touch while she was on her hiatus but hearing her say she wanted to get back to work and that she had a good work-life balance was good. I felt proud. She transformed into her butterfly era of life and it was truly beautiful.

Vince: I didn’t know how comfortable she was with traveling too far, so I sent her the script of a movie I knew would be shooting locally. Sand Dollar Summer was perfect for her.

Giulia: I never thought I really fit into the whole “Cali-Girl” stereotype but I guess I kinda did because of my obsession with the beach [laughs]. I just wasn’t blonde.

Harry: After spending nearly every day with her, I missed her when she went back to work. I became such a sap [laughs] but that’s alright, it felt good being in love with her.

John told me I should try and write some songs that weren’t about Giulia but it was so hard when she was all I thought about or all I felt. I did try though. It just so happened that none I wrote were as good.

I took a backseat on the writing process for a while. He didn’t like the songs I was writing so I figured I’d let the rest of the band take the wheel. Normally I did most of the lyrics and they worked on their individual parts but I don’t know, I wanted to see if they had anything better that would fit John’s standards.

Niall wrote ‘Temporary Fix’ sometime within that space and turns out John really loved it. I think because it focused more on sex rather than love.

Niall: I’m quite proud of that song.

John: Every song Harry wrote was good, but I just felt fans didn’t connect with love like they connected with sex or freedom or just a good party – I mean it was the 70s, that was mainly what was going on.

Giulia: Harry told me about what John said to him one day about all of his love songs and I thought it was absolutely ridiculous. So, I helped him come up with the idea of ‘Watermelon Sugar’. [laughs] I’m sure you know what it’s about.

Harry: John loved ‘Watermelon Sugar’. It was one of the first songs we finished for the album.

Opal: The third album was a good gateway into writing for me. I got into poetry from writing lyrics. I never submitted them or published them but I’d say I wrote some good ones at the time. Both lyrics and poems.

It was interesting how John always thought my songs weren’t good enough. “They don’t really pack a punch, Opal,” he would say all of the damn time. One time I asked Mitch if he could tell John he wrote a song that I actually wrote and guess what, John said he loved it. It didn’t make the album but it was good.

Sexist piece of shit.

Harry: When she went back to work a big realization had hit me.

Anna: One night while Giulia was out filming, Harry came over unexpectedly.

Connor: Harry asked if I could take him to our parents house, had something he needed to talk to them about and that Anna and I also had to be there.

Harry: It was a pretty rash decision on my part but I didn’t really see a point in waiting any longer. We were together for a little over a year at that point but I felt like it’d been much longer.

Anna: He wanted their blessing to marry Giulia. It was genuinely the sweetest encounter I’d ever witnessed. I could tell he was so nervous but her parents absolutely adored him ever since they first met him back in New York all those years ago.

I guess he planned they would say yes because he already bought a ring and everything. I was stunned when I first saw it. A beautiful princess cut diamond with a ruby on either side on a gold band. It was the perfect ring for her.

Harry: My only concern was how to do it – how to propose to her. She deserved an extravagant scene but I knew she wouldn’t want a huge crowd around her; but I also knew she didn’t want a mundane setting like in our living room.

Anna: I suggested where they first met or their first date or when he figured out he loved her.

Harry: I thought that was perfect. So, when she finished filming I told her I wanted to spend time with my family because we were with hers for the holidays. She agreed without thinking twice.

When she was busy having a girls day with my mum and sister, I went to the bar I spent my twenty-fifth birthday in – the night we shared our first kiss, and paid him to keep it closed for the night so I could be in private with her. It took a bit of convincing but it was also a Wednesday so it’s not like it was going to be one of his busy nights.

My friends were teasing us the whole night and saying I was whipped and shit and I didn’t admit it but I definitely was. That was the night I fully accepted my feelings.

Giulia: I thought he was acting really suspicious the whole time we were there. I had no idea what was going on.

Harry: I told her I had a date night planned for us and that I was doing my best to not tell her. Not the best liar in the world but she bought it. And I mean, technically I wasn’t lying I just didn’t include the bit about proposing.

She looked absolutely stunning that night. She was wearing a blue plaid dress with a black turtleneck underneath and black tights. I mean, she made any outfit appear stunning.

Giulia: I really only saw Harry dress up for tour. But he surprised me with his look that night: A houndstooth suit with a black shirt underneath. I loved that suit on him.

Harry: When I pulled up in front of the bar she started freaking out. Not physically but I could see her fighting whatever was going on inside her mind.

Giulia: I had no idea why he was taking me to a bar. Initially I started to panic but then I just let myself breathe and thought I’m never going to be able to move on with my life if I fear alcohol or being in a room with it. Anyone could be in a room with it and not drink, and I was destined to be that person.

Harry: I set up an entire dinner with candles and roses and everything. I wanted to make it perfect for her.

Giulia: He poured us some soda in wine glasses so it could at least seem like we were drinking wine. I let him know time and time again it’s okay if he wants to drink, which I said again that night but he said he wanted to be sober for the plans he had.

It was awfully romantic though.

Harry: I was near shitting bricks after we finished eating. I had to just come out and say it but my mouth didn’t know how to.

Giulia: He started with, “This is where I fell in love with you. On my birthday. What a gift that was.”

Harry: I said, “I think I loved you before that night but that was when I really came to term with my feelings. Right over by the dart board where you absolutely annihilated me.”

She laughed at that and asked if I wanted a rematch.

Giulia: He said, “Not tonight. We’re gonna have plenty of years for rematches.”

The gears started turning in my head trying to understand what he meant but then my question was answered when he pulled a little box out from his inside jacket pocket and got up off his chair then knelt down on the floor.

Harry: I said, “I know normally people have this big speech planned and I did but I’ll be honest I forgot everything I was going to say. So, I’m just gonna say this: I love you, Giulia Stone. I don’t know if this is considered too fast, but I have every intention of spending the rest of my life with you so I figured I might as well get this out of the way sooner rather than later. Let’s spend the rest of forever together. Will you marry me?”

Giulia: The rest of forever sounded really good. Of course I said yes.

Word of the star-studded couple’s engagement spread like wildfire. Every news outlet wanted an exclusive interview but the couple kept their relationship underwraps. When Harry and Giulia were finally ready, they agreed to a couples photoshoot, posing for the February, 1978 issue of American Vogue.

Giulia: That cover photo is one of my favorite photos of us ever. I have the first printing framed downstairs.

Harry: I didn’t want to do the photoshoot at all at first. I’m not anyone without my band, y’know. I’m not a celebrity without them, I’m part of a group, and this felt a lot like the media was trying to separate me from them and making me out to be this hot-shot guy who got the chick.

But Ned said I should do it. He said to me once, “This will be your and Giulia’s chance to be on the cover of a magazine because you want to be; not because people are trying to dig up Hollywood drama.” That made me feel better about all of it.

It was a really good photo.

Niall: They shared the news when they got back from vacation. They were so in love it was gross. But it was also nice.

SP: I don’t even wanna know the pretty penny he spent on that ring of hers.

Opal: She was glowing. Like that pregnancy glow women get but she wasn’t pregnant, she was just really happy. I couldn’t blame her, she deserved the world after everything.

Giulia: John was there when we told the band and I swear he looked disgusted with the news but I didn’t want to even bother with him. I honestly did not care at all what he thought about our engagement.

Jessica: By this point, Giulia wasn’t the so-called “Princess of Hollywood” anymore because of her lack of appearances but after that Vogue issue dropped, the world fell right back in love with her and inevitably her and Harry.

They were no longer this raunchy hook-up story but now the “It” couple.

Ned: People were anticipating the next album. Was it gonna be all lovey-dovey because of the newfound news or were they gonna stick to their old sounds? The pressure was on.

They already felt pressure but it was truly coming down on them now.

Niall: We would be in the studio all day and then when we were hungry and in need of time away, we would go to Harry and Giulia’s. For a few months, their house felt like our house as well.

Opal: Most nights, writing didn’t even happen. We would be so fried from working all day that we would have no energy left to think of anything else.

Giulia: John pushed them a lot. He was so persistent they work, work, work. Once, I told him to ease up because they weren’t gonna think of anything if their brains were overtired. They were jacked up on coffee, soda, candy, anything sugary and caffeinated that would keep them up.

He told me, “This is the life they chose. If they want a shot at being remembered for good music then they have to make the good music, Darling.”

Giulia: I said, “First of all, never call me that. Second, if you want them to make good music, then they need to fucking sleep. You can get out of my house, you’ll see them tomorrow.”

John: Giulia was so weird. I think she liked when I called her pet names. Maybe Harry didn’t show her that kind of affection, I don’t know.

Giulia: Low and behold, the next day it was only Harry that came home and he told me they made progress on a new song. I don’t know how John was considered good at his job if this is how he worked with musicians.

Harry: I never saw it as him being hard to work with but rather him knowing when to stop, when it was time to call it quits for a day. Now that I think about it, we never stopped until he said so.

Giulia: This was the routine for a while. We hardly even had time to have sex, that’s how much he was working. I’m a woman, I have needs, and I wanted my fiancé there to fulfill them.

Harry: I kept telling her it’ll be done soon, we’re gonna finish it soon, but soon kept pushing further and further away. We didn’t want to rush it because we wanted to do it right and finish it when we thought it was fully ready but after a while it was getting really hard to do better like everyone wanted.

Opal: One night, like any other night, we were all over their house eating dinner together. Ned came over for a little while to talk about some things but he didn’t stay long.

Niall: Normally we’d try to let loose a little and drink a bit or smoke a bit, but none of us were really in the mood. The only one who was drinking was John.

SP: He brought two six-packs and nearly drank them all by himself. I told Delilah to come over because I hadn’t seen her for a week and even she was a little weirded out by how much he drank.

Giulia: Delilah was a sweet girl, not at all who you’d expect SP to date. But I don’t know if it was me or the band or John, but she left around ten o’clock.

SP: I was gonna go with her but John told me I couldn’t leave because I still needed to think of a part for a song called ‘Remember This’. I hadn’t bothered to think of a part because I hated that song.

Del almost broke up with me because I didn’t go with her. John was starting to piss me off.

Giulia: As much as I liked watching them work, I couldn’t do it anymore. Not with John acting like some dictator or them looking completely miserable.

Harry: Giulia kissed me goodnight and went upstairs. I wanted to go to sleep as well, but no matter how many times we told John we were done for the night he wouldn’t quit.

Giulia: It was around one in the morning when I decided I was gonna head upstairs to sleep. They were free to continue but I had a headache and with the long day I had the next day I knew I should get some shut eye.

So I go upstairs and get changed and take an aspirin before getting into bed. I didn’t know what time it was but I still heard them all downstairs laughing and everything. Eventually I heard the bedroom door open and of course I assumed it was Harry because who else would come into our room? I didn't think much of it so I didn't open my eyes and then I felt the bed dip on my side and a hand resting on my leg. Even through a comforter I know Harry’s hands and that wasn’t his.

I jump up and there’s John fucking Vancamp looking me dead in the eyes, a smirk on his face.

I said, “What the fuck are you doing?”

He said, “Don’t act coy. I know you wanted me up here.”

Like fuck I did. He was insane, I knew that much, but I didn’t think he was this bad. I moved away from him but he crawled onto the bed and followed me.

My stomach started churning. I said, “You’re drunk and delusional. Get the fuck out of my room.”

Men don’t scare me. I dealt with the Devil, so John was nothing in comparison. I’m sure I could beat him fucking bloody. But in that moment, I felt so vulnerable and horrified of what could possibly happen. He didn’t say anything back, he just kept smirking at me.

I was so close to getting off the bed when he grabbed my leg and pulled me closer to him. He got on top of me and immediately I could smell the alcohol and cigarettes in his rotten mouth.

I’ll never forget the way he whispered in my ear, “Keep resisting. I love a woman who can put up a good fight.”

John: I’ve heard the story she likes to tell people about me and I’ll tell you right now, she’s a fucking liar. Nearly ruined my career over something that didn’t happen.

Giulia: I started screaming for Harry but John put his sweaty hand over my mouth. I could taste the salt from his skin. I just gagged at the thought.

Anyway I felt his… y’know on the inside of my thigh – and oh my god he was so hard from this. I had to get away. So I bit his hand and when he started groaning in pain I brought my knee up as hard as I could and nailed him right in the balls. I pushed him off of me and he still had the audacity to try and keep a hold on me. I ran out of there.

Harry: SP was in the middle of creating a rhythm and drum pattern with a fork and knife when we heard Giulia running down the stairs. She was moving so fast she nearly fell down the stairs.

Opal: I knew right away what happened. She was crying and looking behind her like she was scared someone was following her. John went to the “bathroom” ten minutes ago and he still wasn’t back. Even Pongo sensed something was wrong and started barking like crazy while trying to also comfort Giulia.

SP: We just thought he had a major case of the runs. And by this point, I’m sure you know I don’t try to take things too seriously and that’s why I feel some guilt for that night because I made a joke about him in the bathroom when in reality he was doing… he was hurting Giulia.

Harry was gonna go check up on him to see if he passed out or something because of how much he had to drink and I told him not to worry. I made a fucking joke.

Niall: Her tank top was twisted on her torso and her face was all red and I’m pretty sure she was hyperventilating. Harry had to take her outside to try and get her to calm down.

Opal: John came into the room two minutes later. He fixed the fly of his jeans and when he saw us all in shock he feigned confusion asking, “What’s going on? I heard yelling.”

I went right up to him and spat his face.

Niall: We had no idea what was going on but it seemed like Opal did. After that night she said she never wanted to be in a room with him again; Not that anyone could blame her.

Harry: Giulia cried in my arms for a while. I didn’t question her, I just held her. I didn’t know what to think. I wanted to hurt him but… God it sounds so awful when I say it out loud but we were so close to finishing our album. After the album I didn’t care whether or not the guy dropped dead but I just wanted to finish this one.

Nothing ever came easy for us.

Giulia: I didn’t know how to tell Harry the guy he looked up to and admired just tried to put his hand down my pants and kissed my neck where he usually did. I felt gross and that hole was right beneath my feet again. The only thing keeping me afloat was the fact that Harry was holding me.

Otherwise I probably would’ve downed the bottle of wine sitting on the table.

Harry: I could see into the house through the sliding back door and I could see him still in there but no one was talking.

I felt her start to relax in my arms so very gently I asked her what had happened. She lifted her head from my chest and I could tell she didn’t want me to let go; So I didn’t.

She said he assaulted her in our room. He didn’t get very far but that didn’t matter to me. What mattered is that the prick thought he could do that to her and get away with it. He seriously thought she wanted to fuck him and not only that but with me downstairs? Where everyone would probably hear it?

I figured something along the lines of what happened as soon as she came downstairs and he wasn’t anywhere in sight, but hearing her say it… I can’t describe the anger I felt.

Giulia: Harry stiffened and his jaw clenched so hard I thought he was gonna break some teeth. I had to hold him down so he wouldn’t storm in there and kill the guy even if I did want him dead.

This really messed with everything. I was doing so good and everything was going so well and then John fucking Vancamp had to ruin it all. But… I didn’t want him to ruin everything. It’s hard to explain but I knew this album they were working on was going to be really special and as much as I hate even thinking about him, he’s part of the reason. They had to finish the album with him. And yeah there were other producers just as good as John but he did have a big name and it would really be a dig right at the Waves if the Dreamers also won a Grammy with his help.

My only condition was that he never step foot near me again. Not in my house, not fifty yards from me, I didn’t want to see him ever again.

Harry: Giulia told me all of this about being okay with us still working with him and I didn’t really quite understand how she could’ve come to that decision in such a short time span.

Opal: A little while later Harry came back inside and asked if I could sit with Giulia. I nearly ran outside and took Pongo with me. I didn’t even care anymore about what was going on inside.

At first I had no idea where she was. I couldn’t see her for shit but then I saw her out by the water. The beach really was her place. It’s weird, normally people are one way or the other, like a city person or a rural person but of course Giulia was more than that. She could be anyone wherever she was and it was admirable.

Niall: It was tense in the house while Harry and Giulia were outside but I felt like I was suffocating when Harry walked in.

He went over to John who was sitting on an armchair and picked him up by the collar of his shirt. I’ve seen Harry mad but he looked about ready to kill John. Not that I blamed him.

SP: Harry was seething. When he spoke, his spit was hitting John in the face.

He said, “You’re lucky she asked me not to kill you, you fucking prick. Go anywhere near her again and I’ll personally chop your dick off, got it?”

Niall, Mitch and I had to separate them.

Harry: He looked like he was enjoying all of this.

Niall: John said, “H, you’ve got it all wrong. I went to the bathroom and when I came out Giulia was standing there waiting for me. She made a move on me and I guess she got a little upset that I rejected her. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Harry: First of all, of course I was going to believe Giulia over him. Never would I have believed such a horrible lie like that one. How many times do men use that excuse for their actions?

After everything she and I had been through I knew she wouldn’t cheat on me. She didn’t cheat on that asshole ex of hers but she was gonna cheat on me? Give me a break. We were in a great place thinking about our fucking wedding. He sure had the balls to outright lie like that.

I said, “We’re gonna finish the album, we’re gonna get that Grammy, and then I never want to see your pathetic face ever again.”

Opal: When Giulia told me the plan moving forward I thought she was bloody insane. I told her she should go to the police. She laughed and said, “And then have John pay them off? It’s not gonna do anyone any good if I go to the police because we both know it’ll be the headline on every paper and tabloid tomorrow and I’ll be named the villain.”

What a great fucking world we live in.

SP: Shit was Harry a strong lad. He ripped his arm out of my hands to step closer to John again.

He said, “Did you really think Giulia would want to get it on with the likes of you?”

John replied, “I told you, she made a pass on me, okay? I mean, come on, man, women like her are labeled whores for a reason.”

Niall: Without missing a beat, Harry lunged for John. By all means I’m not the strongest man but I sure felt like it while trying to hold him back along with SP and Mitch.

Harry: I was seeing red. I didn't even know I almost punched him until I heard one of the guys tell me to calm down. I couldn’t exactly get calm after what he said though.

I said, “Get the fuck out of my house before I throw you out.” He threw his hands up in defense but casually walked out. I could tell he was scared of me but not to the point where he felt threatened and had to leave if that makes sense.

Giulia: It was a while until Harry came back outside and told me he had left. I felt relieved he was gone but I felt myself spiraling. I couldn’t go back to my room and go to sleep, how could I? I barely wanted to go back inside that house at all.

Fuck, men really knew how to ruin everything. It was my goddamned house and I couldn’t step inside.

I asked Opal if I could stay at her place for the night. She said, “Of course, whatever you need.”

I wasn’t running from Harry, I just wanted to get some sleep.

Harry: Giulia asked me to pack her some clothes and her toothbrush and such so she didn’t have to go back inside. All I wanted was to protect her and care for her after everything she’d been through and then this happened under the same room as me.

I felt like I had failed her [pauses] When I proposed to her, I told her I’m not gonna let anything bad happen to you ever again and I, well, didn’t keep up on my promise. This was my fault.

Niall: It felt weird leaving Harry alone after that after seeing Giulia leave with Opal. The guys and I decided to stay. We were never the best at comforting one another or sharing our emotions but I’m sure being alone after all that just happened wouldn’t be ideal, so we stuck around.

We played rock, paper, scissors to see who would get the couch while the other two got the spare rooms. SP lost.

Harry: When I walked into our room I immediately saw the messed up bed which looked like there had been a struggle and… I broke down. I wanted to finish the album like everyone else but at what cost? I didn’t sleep at all that night.

It took everything in me to show up to work the next day without punching him.

Giulia: I thought maybe I could sleep if I wasn’t anywhere near my house but turns out whenever I shut my eyes, those beady little eyes and that god awful smirk were all I could see.

Opal: I didn’t want to go to work the next day. I thought she shouldn’t be alone but she insisted I make the most of this awful situation and win that Grammy.

There it was again, that dumb award. All of this happened because of a stupid award and I was supposed to be okay with it.

Niall: John bought coffee and donuts the next day.

John: I thought it would cheer them up to get a little sugar and caffeine in their bodies. We had a long day ahead of us. I needed them to stay awake after the long night we had.

Opal: Harry and I kept our distance mostly and only spoke to John if we had to. The rest of the guys tried to ease the tension but I could tell even they were wary about interacting with him.

Niall: We had written a fair amount of songs for this album and pretty much had ten out of twelve completely done. We were so close but we still had that key element missing. That little something that would really pave the way for us, sound wise.

Giulia: From previous experience of never sleeping, I needed a distraction that wasn’t drugs. I tried to stick with my routine of going to volleyball and surfing every day to ease the tension in my body and visited Dr. Baros a bit more frequently again but nothing was working.

My life had been flipped upside down again so there was only one other situation that could distract me and that was work. I auditioned for three movies before that night and eventually I got one of the roles, so I took the opportunity and flew away from California and back to New York.

I wasn’t running from Harry in fact I wish he could’ve come with me.

Harry: She had to go through her process and I understood that. I preferred her working over getting hammered and ending up dead in some alley. She called me every day and slowly I could pretty much hear how much better she was doing after getting away for a little while.

Giulia: I think I was gone for about two months and although New York wasn’t a safe place for me anymore, it did feel refreshing compared to California. I wasn’t supposed to be home for another week but I finished earlier than expected so I thought maybe I would surprise Harry before leaving in a few weeks for England.

I didn’t want to move out of my home because of John and it was really only the master bedroom that I couldn’t stand in for more than two seconds, so the solution I came up with was redoing it. Painting it, getting a new bedspread, changing the floors, the whole works. I associated that old version of the room with the assault, so I thought if I changed the room, it would help me leave it in the past and not bother me anymore.

When I got home, I don’t know why I did it, but I decided to try just one more time to look at my room without freaking out. Well, I stepped into our bedroom and immediately it sent that night back into my mind. The feel of his weight on me, his hair falling over my face, his disgusting words, all of it. I refused to let this get to me but I couldn’t help it.

I slammed the door shut behind me and ran back downstairs to try and get as far away as possible. It just so happened that I ran into the kitchen and ended up next to our liquor cabinet. I think my body was ahead of my mind and pushed me to be near that cabinet.

I wanted nothing more than to drown my sorrows, if I’m being honest.

Harry: They wanted to get dinner but I had this voice in my head telling me to get home.

Giulia: I opened the cabinet and pulled out the Absolut. I set it down on the island counter and got myself a glass.

Harry: It was still fairly early in the day, only about five, so they said we could go to mine and get some drinks then go eat and go to some bars or wherever the night took us. I was tempted to go because it had been a while since I really went to a bar or party, but I needed to get home first.

I pulled into the driveway and saw Giulia’s car. My heart suddenly dropped because she wasn’t supposed to be home.

Giulia: I was shaking. I had no idea Harry was going to be home so early or that the band would be with him. I could hear them outside laughing, completely oblivious to the fact that I was inside, losing my damn mind. I was staring at that bottle of vodka like it was Jesus himself. My savior, my knight in shining armor, my true happiness.

I heard the front door open and it took everything in me to not hide with the bottle, just so I could escape the embarrassment of being vulnerable and slipping. I was sure I wasn’t going to be able to hold my composure the moment they saw me, but then their footsteps sounded louder as they approached the kitchen and I knew there was no turning back. I poured myself a glass.

Harry: The kitchen lights were the only ones on when I walked inside. I called out and expected an answer so when I didn’t get one I got a little nervous. But then I cautiously rounded the corner and saw her sitting on the floor with a glass in her hand and an open bottle of vodka on the island. She was stiff and completely emotionless just staring at the liquid. Giulia: I felt completely stuck in my own brain. I barely acknowledged that Harry was in the room with me.

Harry: The guys started to waltz in but I told them to go to a different room. Opal asked me what was wrong but I didn’t really have time to answer her because it was really only a matter of seconds until Giulia sipped that drink if she didn’t already.

She didn’t seem like she was really herself, so I knew I had to be there for her and help her… overcome this and not drink. I know how hard she worked to get to this point of sobriety and she’d hate herself for giving it up and looking weak.

I knelt down next to her and called her name again. I think she heard me but she didn’t look at me. I said, “Baby, what’s going on in that head of yours?” That’s when she started crying. She was silently crying, like when a child gets hurt and their jaw drops open but they’re not making a sound – that’s what she was doing. She almost dropped the glass on the floor but I caught it before it could shatter.

Her knees came up to her chest and she was visibly shaking. I’ve never been great at knowing what to do in a situation like this, like if you hold them close or give them their space but I felt like she just really needed me.

I fully sat down next to her and pulled her in my arms. Her body fell into mine, her head on my chest while her fingers held a tight grip on my shirt. All I could think was, when is Giulia Stone going to catch a fucking break.

Giulia: The sun started to set by the time we got up off that floor. I could feel my stomach growling but I couldn’t bring myself to eat anything in fear of not being able to keep it down. I knew the band was still in the house so when I finally could get up and walk away from that open bottle - which by the way I could smell the entire time I was crying - I told Harry to be with them. I needed to be alone.

He was quick to grab the bottle and glass I poured and get rid of it. I went outside to the back porch, sitting myself down on the couch that perfectly overlooked the beach and the water. I couldn’t help but think back to my childhood and being on the beach all day, only worried about how good my serve was for the upcoming match. I sat on that couch wondering where I would be if I just stuck to volleyball.

I sat wondering where we went wrong… Where I went wrong. Did I only deserve the bad? Was there something wrong with me? I thought I was covering all of these points in therapy yet the bad shit keeps happening so maybe there’s something legitimately wrong with me. I didn’t know what to think anymore.

Harry: I left her alone for a while because it was clear she didn’t want to talk otherwise she would have already. I sat inside, watching her, waiting for her. I didn’t listen to anything Niall or Mitch pitched for the album.

Opal: I thought Harry was crazy for not being outside with her.

Giulia: Sitting there, watching the ocean crash onto the sand and the sun slowly setting, I did a lot of thinking. What makes me happy? And a lot of things came to mind but the first thing that popped into my head was, well, Harry. He makes me the most happy. But I’m not currently happy so how do I fix this? I realized the way to fix this was to separate myself from him. It sounds bad but I said I was okay with Harry seeing John everyday for work but I really wasn’t deep down. It felt like John was winning because he still had a job and he still was around my fiancé and friends. He wasn’t suffering like I was. And then Harry would come home and he’d say it was a good day at work and that he truly felt something with this album, the album John helped create. When we spoke on the phone I could hear him in the background, laughing.

Imagine John as this black smoke. Everyday Harry would come home with a little bit of smoke lingering on him and around him which would then get onto me. It would build up everyday and soon I felt like it was getting into my lungs and I was choking on it. I needed the air to be clean. So as long as Harry was around that man, I couldn’t be. Because clearly, the longer I was, the easier it was for me to succumb to my urges.

It sounds unfair because Harry did nothing wrong but I knew how much this album meant to him and the rest of the band and if anyone was going to do well by them it was John and I didn’t want Harry to choose between me or him. He would’ve chosen me and I knew if he did that, there’s no telling what John would do to spite them.

Harry: I asked the guys to leave for the night so Giulia and I could talk. The night out on the town could wait. The album could wait a little longer even if our label was hounding us. I really didn’t care anymore.

I slid open the back door and asked her if she wanted to come inside. Compared to before, she looked peaceful now; like whatever was weighing down on her had lifted. She turned towards me and shook her head. She said, “The air is a lot clearer out here.”

Giulia: I patted the seat next to me so he would sit down. He seemed so anxious so I knew it was best if he would sit down for what I had to tell him.

Harry: She took my hand in hers and said, “I need to leave until this is all over. Until you have that Grammy in your hand.” I didn’t understand her at first. I thought she was calling off our engagement.

Giulia: My heart sank when I told him the truth about how I truly felt about all of this. I could tell he was putting the blame on himself and that’s the last thing I wanted. I loved him with all of my being and nothing was going to stop me, nothing ever stopped me from loving this man. We had everything I could ever dream of. What John did put a pause on our future but it didn’t stop it completely.

I deserved to be happy and so did Harry and this was the best way to get there.

Harry: The air was so thick and I felt so claustrophobic even though we were outside. I thought she thought I was putting my career before her and that I was choosing him over her. I thought I was becoming the version of a man she hates most: A pretentious dick who cared more about my fame and my music rather than her. I thought I was becoming Levi.

Giulia: He started crying. I’ve seen him be emotional and maybe shed a tear or two but never cry like this. My heart ached for him.

I grabbed his face and made him look me in the eyes. I said, “Words simply cannot fathom the love I have for you in this body of mine. We’re going to get married and have a family and the life we’ve always wanted. I just need some time, H.”

I took off this other ring of mine that I hadn’t taken off in years and gave it to him.

Harry: She put her birthstone ring in my palm and closed my fist around it. She never took the thing off.

Giulia: I wanted to give him a token of me so he knew I would come back. I kept his engagement ring on as a token of his promise for forever.

I had nothing left to say. I planned on heading up to see my family for a little while before going off to England for Cry Baby like originally planned. Right before I walked back into the house to pack my bags, I turned around to tell him one final thing. “I hope you write an incredible song about this. I expect nothing less than grammy-winning.”

Harry: She walked away and that was it. It took me all of about ninety-seconds to realize I couldn’t lose her but she was gone. That night I wrote ‘Nothing Less’.

Because she was right. Giulia Stone deserved nothing less than remarkable.

I showed it to the band and John the next day and he said to me, “Now this is good shit, H. I told you there was more to songs than being in love with some chick.”

SP: Harry punched John so hard I could’ve sworn I saw his eyes roll to the back of his head.

Opal: Harry was seething and screamed for John to get out and never come back.

He looked heartbroken. He wrote ‘Nothing Less’ as an uptempo song but the lyrics were awfully dark. I asked him what had happened and he didn’t want to talk about it.

Niall: John was willing to take the punch and stay, that’s how passionate he was about our music. In my opinion, I think he just wanted all of the credit. I realized after we finished that we worked our asses off for that album, not John. He took about thirty smoke slash drink breaks a day and really only helped us come up with a drum line for one song or a guitar riff for another.

He was like a placebo. People think because of him they do better, but I can guarantee other musicians just didn’t realize how talented they were in the first place.

John: I made that fucking album and he was gonna come in like a fucking caveman and kick me out just like that? She got into his head again and now I was the bad guy. That’s what women do best, pin men against each other for fun.

SP: ‘Nothing Less’ was gonna be the next single. Ned loved it, Gordy loved it, the label loved it.

Opal: ‘Fine Line’ was finished. Our third studio album. My personal favorite.

Niall: ‘Fine Line’ the song closes off the album which was the exact thing we were missing. It was probably our most meaningful song at the time because no matter how you interpreted it, it would mean something to you.

Giulia: I heard news of the album like everyone else, through the media. It was speculated to be an amazing album worth the wait and I couldn’t wait to listen.

On August 18th, 1978, ‘Fine Line’ was released to the public. Within its first week, it sold just over a million copies worldwide, becoming one of the fastest selling albums of the time.

On December 1st, 1978, ‘Fine Line’ was nominated for a total of eight Grammy awards, including Album of the Year. The ceremony would be held at the Shrine Auditorium on February 15th, 1979.

On January 17th, 1979, Giulia Stone was nominated for her second Academy Award for Sand Dollar Summer.

Opal: When we got news that we were nominated, we cheered, screamed, cried; It was so strange. We worked so hard and went through so much and it paid off. Finally.

SP: It’s great being nominated, honestly, no better feeling. But only one thing would top that feeling and it would be getting that award over the Waves. Of course they were nominated that same year.

Niall: People had their money on the Waves. Guys on the radio said they’d rather eat shit than for us to win.

Harry: I was so happy when we got the news. It felt like a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders but it felt wrong celebrating without Giulia. I knew she was proud of us though, even if she didn’t call.

I just had to keep hoping she would come back to me.

I called her as soon as I heard she had been nominated again. Anna answered the phone and told me she hadn’t even heard the news yet because she was still asleep. I was worried she had fallen back into her old tendencies but Anna reassured me that she had jet lag.

Giulia: I was not high or drunk ever within those months away from Harry. I went back to therapy more frequently and went to a few support group meetings. I was doing better.

It’s also important to mention that I had no idea Harry fired John months prior so I thought he was still around. Doesn’t excuse me… what do kids say, ghosting him but no one ever said I made the best decisions with my life.

Anna: While they were separated, Giulia kept her ring on every day and really began planning their wedding. She truly never had any intention of leaving him ever again. That’s why she even planned how she was gonna see him again. She may not seem like it but she is quite the romantic.

Opal: When Grammy night came around I was a mess. God, I was nervous, we all were.

Ned: I’m not a very religious guy, but I prayed for them ever since they got nominated. They needed this win.

SP: So much was going on that day. That morning we learned Mitch had been seeing the drummer of the waves for a long time; right under all of our noses.

Whenever we were at the studio and took a break, I noticed he would always run straight for the phone to make a call but I never would’ve guessed who he was calling.

When tour would end and we’d get a few months to ourselves, he’d practically vanish off the face of this planet until it was time to start on some new music. It was nuts. I mean we felt betrayed because she was our fucking enemy. Maybe he told her about our songs and she took inspiration and told her band, who knows.

Niall: I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t care who he put his dick in, but he had a relationship with her. For like, seven years. Seven and he didn’t bother telling us.

Mitch Rowland (rhythm guitar, The Dreamers): I don’t like talking about my past but I’ll tell you this: I don’t regret my relationship with Sarah and I don’t regret not telling the band and I don’t regret being in that band, I regret nothing.

I didn’t tell them because I knew they would’ve tried to take advantage of our relationship and use it to get a one-up on the Waves. Much like Opal, I cared very little for that award and I most certainly wasn’t going to put my relationship at risk for it.

That’s all I got for you.

Harry: Younger me would’ve felt betrayed like SP or Niall but I knew what love does to you and what you would do to protect your relationship. In fact, I respected Mitch for what he did.

Opal: Honestly, his relationship was the last of my business and the last of my worries that day. I wasn’t hurt because he kept it from us but more so hurt that he didn’t trust us. Because that’s what it was – he thought we would’ve used their relationship for leverage, he didn’t trust that we’d just let them be. And maybe he was right, but I would’ve loved more women around.

Harry: I told SP and Niall to get over it because there was nothing we could change now, not that we had any right to change it anyway. I told them to put on their best fake smiles and be mad after the night is over. We didn’t need any drama before the ceremony.

Giulia: So, honestly, I didn’t watch the whole thing. I mean does anyone ever watch the entirety of an award show aside from the main awards? Doubtful. I had about an hour to finish setting everything up before switching the TV on.

My heart was racing in my chest for them.

Ned: Before the big awards, the album won one of the other five nominations. Next was Record of the Year. ‘Nothing Less’ won.

Giulia: ‘Nothing Less’ won Song of the Year.

Harry: Final award of the night was Album of the Year. We had three Grammys under our belt. We already achieved everything we’ve wanted and more. And then ‘Fine Line’ won. We did it.

Opal: I was walking on cloud nine by the end of the night. I didn’t want the night to ever end.

Niall: I cried. I went to the bathroom and wept.

Giulia: I remember leaping off the couch and nearly falling into the glass coffee table. I was so proud. All I could think about was hugging each of them and expressing my love.

I… wish I had been there to feel Harry in my arms when they won. It feels so good to hug someone after hearing your name get called. It’s hard to explain but it just feels good.

Harry: They all talked about going out afterwards and I wanted to, but I had to get home. I had this feeling, I don’t know. I told them we could pregame at my house and if I was up for it I'd join them. I had to go home to see if she would call or maybe answer if I called.

Opal: We were keeping a secret from Harry. We’d known for a while what was gonna happen. I’m surprised we were even able to pull it off.

SP: We were so fancy, we even had a limousine drop us off. I guess that’s what winning a Grammy does to you [laughs].

Giulia: I saw the limo pull up outside of the house. I was giddy and so relieved they won because otherwise all of the decorations I put together would’ve been like a knife in the back [laughs].

Harry: When I opened the front door, the last thing I expected was a surprise party coordinated by Giulia herself. There she was front and center, clapping along with everyone else, tears in her eyes while she had the biggest smile on her face.

Niall: All of our families and friends were there. Mine, SP, Mitch, Opal, and Harry, all of them.

They were so loud it felt like we were at a concert.

Gemma: Giulia called me one day saying she needed me and our mum to fly out to California for a surprise party after the Grammys; for when they would come home as winners.

I asked her, “How do you know if they’re gonna win?”

She didn’t even stutter when she said, “They will. So I need you to call your mom and any of Harry’s friends. I’ll buy plane tickets if I have to.”

Giulia: It was hard getting the numbers of everyone’s family because I originally wanted to surprise all of them, but I realized it was gonna be impossible unless I at least asked Opal. And then one-by-one I had to tell all of them and made them swear they wouldn’t tell Harry.

I’m really surprised it worked out if I’m honest.

Gemma: The look on Harry’s face said it all. He was so shocked, it was honestly endearing.

Harry: Giulia came over to me and I think she was nervous and didn’t know whether or not she could touch me or hold me and I’m sure most people would’ve been really hurt if their fiancée pretty much vanished for months but… I don’t know, I couldn’t find it in myself to be mad at her. I was glad she was back.

I grabbed her and kissed her. I could feel her smile into the kiss and for a brief moment it felt like we were the only two in the room.

Giulia: I felt good. I felt back on track. I was happy to be back in the arms of the man that I love.

Harry: When we pulled apart from each other, her arms stayed wrapped around my shoulders while I held onto her waist. I saw tears well up in her eyes.

She said, “I’m so proud of you.”

I said, “I couldn’t have done it without you,” which is true. She’s my muse and it’s because of her that we were able to finish that album.

Giulia: There was only one thing left for us to accomplish.

Harry: I went to give her her ring back but she shook her head and insisted I keep it.

I felt like the luckiest man on earth that day.

Giulia: After everything we’d been through, it kinda felt like we were star-crossed lovers: Destined to fail at the hands of the stars. But each time we bounced back and came back stronger than ever. That’s how I knew I wanted to be with him forever, because no matter what we always found a way back to each other.

Maybe you should name the book that: Star-Crossed.

#yay :D hope you guys enjoy #star crossed series #harry styles series #harry styles fic #harry styles one shot #harry styles angst #harry styles fluff #harry styles smut #harry styles au #harry styles imagine #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles writing #harry styles #one direction fanfiction

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fruitcoops · 3 years

Note

Hello! I just watched this video

https://youtu.be/jFFD5-vr_hY

It is a Puck Personality where the players are trying to name as many Disney Princesses as they can. I thought it would be so funny to see the Lions try this because some would be so good at it and some would probably only get one or two.

Thanks for writing so many amazing stories! I love your work!

-(my plan was to sign this with a cute little squirrel emoji but there isn’t one! Who makes an emoji for a mosquito but not a squirrel!)

Hey, Squirrel! This video was a great way to start the week and watching them all struggle was just adorable. Hope you enjoy! SW credit goes to @lumosinlove <3

“Can I wear the crown?” Finn asked someone behind the screen. His face lit up as Marlene came around and placed the tiara on his head. “Hell yeah! What am I here for, again?”

#7: James Potter, Winger

“Hey, Lions, I’m James Potter and today I’ll be trying to name as many Disney princesses as I can,” James said when the video cut to him. The tiara was slightly askew on his hair, but looked quite lovely with his glasses. “I’m probably going to fail. I know Jasmine and the mermaid girl. What’s her name?”

“Can’t tell you,” Marlene called off-screen.

“Damn. Well, there’s a mermaid in there somewhere. Oh, shit, which one is Lily’s favorite?” He bit his lip, then grinned. “Merida! I’ve got three, right?”

“Two.”

“Jasmine, Merida…Cinderella? With the slipper?” He glanced out of frame. “Yeah, Cinderella. And there was the one with the gnomes who fell asleep.”

#6: Remus Lupin, Winger

Remus pinched the bridge of his nose as he thought. “I watch these all the time, how am I forgetting the names? Okay, we’ve got Belle, and Elsa, and Rapunzel, and then I am totally blanking on every other princess. This is awful. Does Nala count? From the Lion King? Oh! Maid Marian!”

“She’s not a princess,” Marlene laughed.

“She’s the king’s niece!”

#30: Kasey Winter, Goalie

Kasey tapped his feet on the floor as he counted on his fingers. “What’s the record so far?”

“Five.”

“Ah, shit. I said Snow White, Elsa, and Anna already. How many are there in all?”

“Officially? Twelve. That count is up for debate, though.”

“Are you kidding me?”

#12: Sirius Black, Center (Captain)

Sirius raised an eyebrow at the camera with an amused smile, then cleared his throat. “Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Moana, Tiana, Rapunzel, Belle, Ariel, Elsa, Anna, Jasmine, Mulan, Snow White. Oh! And Merida, she’s Lily’s favorite.”

The camera crew was silent for a moment. “Holy shit,” Marlene finally said. “The record was five.”

“Part of living in the Dumais household is in-depth discussions with a five-year-old about the intricacies of Disney princess movies. Five is pathetic, now gimme.” Marlene handed him the tiara and he put in on with a smug smile.

#9: Pascal Dumais, Center

“Sirius only got thirteen?” Dumo asked with a shake of his head. “That’s so cute. Cinderella, Snow White, Aurora, Tiana, Rapunzel, Elsa, Anna, Belle, Moana, Ariel, Jasmine, Mulan, Anastasia, Elena, and Giselle. I believe I was promised a tiara?”

#10: Logan Tremblay, Winger

Logan stared off-screen with wide eyes, one hand covering his mouth. “Oh, merde, Katie was just interrogating me about this the other day. Um, Elsa and Anna? I think they count. There’s—there’s Belle, and then Arielle. Ugh, wait, I have to say it all American like Loops. Ariel. Is Cendrillon the same in English?”

“Cinderella,” Marlene supplied. “But that works.”

#43: Thomas Walker, Defenseman

“Come on,” Talker scoffed. “That crown is mine, McKinnon, or my baby sisters are never going to let me live it down. We’ve got Cinderella, Aurora, Rapunzel, Anna, Merida, Tiana, Moana, Ariel, and Mulan. Easy.”

“Dumo named fifteen.”

Talker’s jaw went slack. “Fifteen?”

#1: Leo Knut, Goalie

Leo had his head in his hands. “I was feeling so good about naming seven until you told me about Cap. You’ve crushed my spirit, Marlene.”

“Will a tiara make you feel better?”

“…yes.”

#5: Olli Halla, Defenseman

Olli looked hopefully at the camera. “I know them in Finnish. Does that count?”

Victor: Pascal Dumais

“Can we keep these?” Finn asked, leaning out of the way when Marlene tried to take the tiara back. “I know I only got, like, four, but I feel like I earned it.”

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athenadione · 3 years

Text

‘you are mine (and I am yours)’

In which you can find out the hard way that demons don't like sharing. @vi-la-vi

AthenaDione and I did a thing! Everyone loves jealous Damian, but hear us out....jealous Raven? Hope you enjoy! -Vi

I’m so incredibly honored to participate in this collab. Vi practically paved the way for me to give you all the delicious demon Raven smut that ensues and did a superb job writing the majority of this piece, as always. If you enjoy and feel so inclined, you can leave a kudos HERE on A03. Vi— thank you for allowing me to be a part of your writing process. You’re such a talented writer and I’m happy to have found you :) -AD

She couldn’t stop staring at him. Not just because it had been years since she last saw him, but because ever since she met him, Anna Vandergilt had thought of little else.

Damian Wayne.

They’d met at a benefit when both were sixteen years old, and it had been love at first sight. The elusive heir finally returned to Gotham after five years abroad, doing god knows what. She’d collected every bit of information she could about him, academic transcripts, tabloids, medical and legal records. Vandergilt influence ran deep and she had no compunction about using it to fuel her obsession. Securing an internship at Wayne Enterprises as Tim Drake’s assistant was just the latest step.

And now he’s here, and I won’t let him get away again.

Damian had to remember her, the spark when their eyes met, the unbreakable connection they’d made. He didn’t acknowledge it when they were introduced, but that was fine. He was an intense, secretive man and likely just didn’t want to make a scene.

Green eyes flashed to hers and narrowed, catching her staring. She willed herself to keep it together, sitting up straighter and crossing her legs in an attempt to draw his attention to the slit in her pencil skirt. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and leggy, she knew how to make men stare.

Or so she thought. Damian had turned his attention back to Tim’s presentation, arms crossed and expression impatient. So serious. She planned ways she might be able to get him alone, with no one and nothing to distract him from her. After today, I’ll have more than just fantasies. She’d been looking for an opening to approach him all day and was sure she couldn’t wait much longer.

They broke for lunch, but just as she moved towards him she was intercepted by Tim.

“Hey Anna, can you run up to my office and grab my blue flash drive? I forgot to bring it down earlier.”

Get it yourself! she wanted to snap. An assistant position was well beneath her pedigree, and she hated taking instructions from common-born Tim Drake. Swallowing her irritation, she smiled and nodded.

When she finally returned, Damian had already gone, apparently having had a lunch appointment with someone else. Anna sighed. I’ll speak to him after work, I’m sure he wouldn’t say no to dinner and drinks. No man had ever refused her.

She spied him later as she was returning to the conference room, speaking to a dark-haired woman she didn’t know outside of his office. She took a moment to admire him in his suit, noting curiously that the girl with him was only casually dressed in black jeans and an off-shoulder top with a band logo. Unprofessional much? He’s probably scolding her about the dress code.

Just as the thought solidified, she leaned up and pressed a kiss to the underside of Damian’s jaw, tugging his tie playfully as she did so.

It was as though a bucket of freezing water had been dumped over her head. Anna stood stock-still, mouth falling open in horror. Who the fuck...how dare…?

The woman whispered something in his ear, kissing his jaw again as Damian rolled his eyes and smirked. She continued to stare, waiting for him to shove her away, glare, do something. She heard someone approach from behind.

“Ugh, those two,” Tim groaned.

“Who is that?” Her voice was tight and strained, and the man next to her gave her a curious glance.

“That’s Rachel, Damian’s girlfriend.”

“Oh,” she said, at a loss for anything else.

It’s not fair. I planned...I’ve been waiting…

She shook her head, determination moving in. A minor setback. He just needs to know there’s something better on the market. Vandergilts were practically royalty, after all. Her beauty and breeding were no doubt superior. She bit back her anger as Damian dropped a kiss on the other woman’s forehead before walking away.

Just a minor setback, she mentally repeated.

Tim’s assistant had a serious staring problem, and Damian was relieved when he was finally able to retire to his office. Annoying. The older man had joked earlier that Damian’s constant absence in Gotham and avoidance of the public eye elevated him to mythical status among some of his father’s employees. He longed for this week to end, eager to be back in Jump and away from the Wayne gawkers.

His phone buzzed, distracting him from the revenue charts in front of him.

“Stephanie is insane.”

Damian smiled, eyes darting to his watch to see how much longer he’d be stuck in this office. As necessary as it was that he be here for the audit, he felt bad abandoning Raven to his siblings. Next time they came to Gotham he’d make sure it was purely recreational and personally show her the sights.

“A half hour more, then I will come rescue you.”

Then two days more, and they would be home.

A knock on the door called his attention. “Mr. Wayne? Could I borrow you for a moment. I need a second pair of eyes on this file.”

He looked up, raising an eyebrow at the worshipful expression on her face. The scent of expensive perfume assailed him and Damian fought the urge to wrinkle his nose. She looked at him hopefully, blinking rapidly.

“Ask Drake.”

She shifted, reaching up to toy with her platinum blonde hair. “Oh...he just has so much on his plate. I wanted to avoid bothering him,” she replied, voice high and lilting.

Strange woman. Damian wondered where his older brother had found this one. He hadn’t really been paying attention when they were introduced, Vander-something or other.

He sighed. “Fine.”

“Oh, thank you,” she breathed.

She circled around the desk to stand next to him, laying the file in front of him and bending low. A fall of blonde hair brushed his shoulder and Damian shifted slightly to put some distance between them. He spent so little time in normal society it was easy to forget how bad most people were with personal space.

“What exactly did you need help with?”

“This.”

Without warning, she sat on his lap and pressed her lips forcefully against his, throwing one arm around his neck for good measure. Damian completely froze, protests firing rapidly through his mind. She tugged on the waistband of his pants and it was enough to break his paralysis. He shoved her off of him violently and she caught herself on the desk, shifting it several inches back.

“What are you doing?!”

The alarm on her face lasted only a second before being replaced with a coy smile. “Don’t be shy, I know you remember me. It’s been years, but you’re all I’ve thought about, Damian. I swear.”

“I - don’t…” Damian felt uncharacteristically frazzled. “I have - no. I’m not interested,” he finally managed.

“Please, Damian.” She tried to take a step forward and he instinctively backed away. He hated the way she said his name, he realized distantly.

“I have a girlfriend,” he said, hard edge in his voice. One who would kill you and probably me if she was here right now. Raven did not share.

The woman sniffed. “Her. Don’t be ridiculous, you’re a Wayne. She can’t possibly-”

“Enough.”

He glared fiercely, daring her to try and continue. Tears swam in her blue eyes and Damian felt a touch of relief that he finally managed to get through.

“I...hmph, fine. Keep her on the side if you must. My father had a mistress. Just keep her out of my sight.”

She’s insane. What the fuck kind of vetting process do you have, Drake?

He closed his eyes and exhaled before meeting her watery gaze once again.

“Listen very carefully. I. Am. Not. Interested. I want you out of this building in the next five minutes or I’ll call security.”

“I - but - we…” She straightened, eyes glassy with disbelief as she tried to compose herself. “I see.”

Damian kept his glare on as she left the room, feeling a headache build behind his eyes. He grabbed his phone again, feeling a pang of guilt when he saw Raven's name, and called his brother.

"I fired your assistant. You're welcome."

"What? Damian, you can't just show up and start firing people!"

"I'll...explain later." Vaguely, and with as few details as I can manage.

The hint of discomfort in his voice must have given him away. "Seriously? No wonder she was staring at you all day.”

"Drop it."

"Alright, alright. Her dad's going to be pissed though, he pushed Bruce for months to take her on here. Sounds like you got your very first stalker."

Well that was a disturbing thought. Damian shook it off. "Just tell him it didn't work out." He didn't want any rumors getting back to Raven if he could help it.

Lying to an empath is easier said than done.

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

"I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She snorted disbelievingly, eyes glued on the book in her hand. “Why do you feel so guilty?”

“It was a long day. I felt bad for you.” Half-truths were the only semi-effective way he’d found of getting around her lie detector. Normally Damian would smother inconvenient questions with lips, hands, and other parts of him that Raven was always deliciously responsive to, but touching her would have felt wrong right now. She deserved to know the truth before she decided how near she wanted him.

She rolled onto her side then, burrowing down against her pillow and studying him curiously. “You don’t have to spend every second with me, Damian. I’m pretty self-sufficient, in case you haven’t noticed.”

He shrugged, laying back and closing his eyes. “I’ll just be glad to get out of here. People in Gotham are a different breed.”

Raven hummed. “Fine, don’t tell me what’s actually bothering you.”

With that, she leaned over to kiss him goodnight. Damian flinched at the contact before responding in kind, and pretended he didn’t see the confused look in her eyes.

“I love you,” he said, focusing the emotion to make sure she felt it as well.

She closed her eyes, slightly mollified. “I love you, too.”

I'll tell her when we get home, he promised himself. As much as he hated keeping secrets, he knew she was going to be upset and preferred a controlled setting. Damian remembered an incident shortly after they began dating when the ticket-taker at the theater had slipped him her phone number. Raven said nothing at first, but the night ended in a supply closet instead of a screening room.

"I don't share," she whispered dangerously, legs tightening around his hips to draw him in deeper. Red flickered across her purple irises. “You’re mine.”

He smirked at the memory. We never did get to see that movie.

Definitely safer for all involved to wait until they'd left Gotham.

Anna stared at her discreetly from the park bench. He’s loyal, that’s all. And I wouldn’t have him any other way.

She grudgingly admitted to herself that the other woman was pretty, if unconventional. Pale purple eyes and dark purple hair - hadn’t anyone told her the punk rock look was out of date? She had nothing on the blonde’s classical beauty.

A hefty bribe to the Wayne's chauffeur had given her knowledge of the woman's - Rachel's - movements throughout the day. She was ordinarily accompanied by Tim's banshee of a girlfriend and one of Bruce's orphans, but had separated from them earlier in the day to visit Gotham’s Arts District. Anna waited until she saw her enter the nearly empty arboretum before making her move. If Damian couldn’t be persuaded to break things off, this one could. An affair with the office hottie - tale as old as time.

“Pardon me?” She adopted a nervous affect as she approached, eyes downcast. “You’re Rachel, right?”

The other woman tore her gaze from the plaque in front of her, violet eyes locking on baby blue. “Do I know you?”

“Anna. I work - worked at Wayne Enterprises. I’m really sorry to do this, but...there’s something you need to know.”

She regarded her silently and the blonde fought the urge to fidget. There's something off about her. What were you thinking, Damian? Finally, Rachel nodded once, crossing her arms. Anna smiled internally and fiddled anxiously with her hands, doing her best to look miserable.

“I was Tim’s assistant until Damian fired me yesterday,” she began, voice weepy. “Tim’s the one who told me about you, I swear I didn’t know before.”

Rachel’s eyes narrowed, something dark and inscrutable flashing in and out of her gaze. “...Excuse me?”

Anna took the low anger in her voice as an encouraging sign and continued. She dropped her eyes again and let out a harsh sob. “I’m not the kind of person who fools around with other women’s boyfriends, and-"

A massive burst of black and red interrupted her thoughtfully planned speech, demolishing the stone plaque next to them and knocking her to the ground. She screamed, covering her head with her arms. A bomb? What’s happening?

Before she could get her bearings, something hauled her up by the throat, slamming her painfully against a tree. She blinked against the white spots in her vision and the dust in the air, squinting to see what held her.

Four slitted golden eyes met her own, radiating fury so thick she could almost taste it. I’m seeing things. I hit my head and I’m seeing things. The devil tightened its hold on her neck and stepped closer, heat pouring off its red skin. Terrified beyond anything she’d ever felt, Anna felt her bladder let go.

“Did you fuck Damian?” it - she - asked in a deadly calm voice.

“Wh-what?” she croaked. No way...what the fuck is she?!

“Answer, mortal.”

She sobbed in her grasp, all her carefully crafted lies flying away in the wake of her terror. “No! I just kissed him!”

The claws (claws?!) around her neck tightened and she felt warm trickles of blood start to seep down into her collar.

“That - that’s all! That’s all I did! I’m sorry!” she cried, “I’m so sorry! It won’t happen again!”

“I know.”

Shadows wrapped around the two of them and she screamed.

Stupid, stupid woman, Damian thought furiously, raising his eyes from the weeping figure on the floor. He’d put it together fairly quickly after walking in the door, and was currently kicking himself for not considering this possibility. She’s clearly deranged, I shouldn’t be surprised she approached Raven.

The woman in question sat in a nearby armchair, looking every bit the queen of hell she was. Her demonic appearance and the regal way she carried herself in this form lent their mundane bedroom at Wayne Manor the feel of some macabre court.

“Something to confess?” his demoness asked lowly.

“I was going to tell you when we returned home. This is the exact situation I was trying to avoid.” Sparks of black and red magic at her fingertips told him that was the wrong thing to say.

“You think a couple hundred miles would have saved her from me when I found out? I would cross entire universes.”

The woman before her seemed to curl in further on herself, as if trying to become a smaller target. Prayers fell from her lips, whispered and unintelligible.

“She’s not worth it. I would have made you see that.”

“That’s not your decision to make. You are mine, this was a challenge to me. A proper demon would have brought just the head.”

A loud wail met her words and golden eyes flicked downwards, oozing contempt. Damian felt a thrill race down his spine. He'd never seen her this angry - possessive. The idea that he was the catalyst, that his composed, serene Raven was burning so brightly over a stolen kiss made his blood tingle.

Apparently feeling the weight of the demon’s stare, she covered her head with her hands and tried to choke back her cries. A prey-like instinct to hide taking root.

He swallowed before speaking, mindful of the thin ice he was on. “I know you’re upset, but you can’t kill her.”

An amused sound escaped her, and Damian wasn’t entirely sure how to interpret it. “Beloved?”

She finally met his eyes again, clearly unhappy with the situation. “Fine. But if I ever see or sense this creature near you again, I will tear her apart slowly. Testor ego eam.”

With that, she waved a hand and the other woman vanished in a rush of black. He didn’t bother to ask where, not wanting to push his luck with Raven right now. Hysterical as the other woman was, no one would believe anything she had to say anyways.

The demoness crossed her arms, studying him silently. She seemed to have no intention of changing back to her human form. Oh.

“I suppose I’m in trouble as well?”

“Lies deserve punishment. And you need to be reminded who you belong to.”

“You, habibti. Always.”

Her smile offered nothing but trouble and his heart started to pick up. "That’s a start."

“Oh?” he asked her, not moving from the spot where he stood. It seemed that court was still in session, and her final judgement on his own transgressions had not yet passed.

She picked at a claw unhurriedly, hooded eyes flicking over his figure. Not one to back down, he met her appraising stare inch for inch.

“Did you know that demons mate for life?” she asked without warning.

“No, beloved,” he breathed. The information was new but it hardly mattered. He had already decided that he was going to spend the rest of his life with her long before they ended up together. He just wondered why she felt it necessary to mention now.

“It’s a sacred bond. Actually sacred, unlike human marriages. Challenging it is the worst insult one demon can deal to another.” Her eyes narrowed, and her claws seemed to sharpen before his eyes.

“She wasn’t a-”

“No one will threaten our bond. Do you understand, mate?”

Dear gods.

He resisted the urge to lick his lips, instead pressing them firmly together. “You should know that you will never be at risk of losing me, beloved.”

“I know. I also know you will never lie to me again.” The demoness waved a clawed hand before resting it underneath her chin. She was waiting for him. He swallowed again.

“What can I do to make amends?”

Her grin widened, boarding on malevolent, as if she finally found the answer she was looking for. Lifting effortlessly from her chair, she began to stride across the room to him with measured steps.

“I have a few ideas.” She purred.

“Oh?” he asked again, displeased at how out of breath he sounded.

Golden eyes held his own, and she didn’t speak again until she was just an arm's length away from him.

Then she pointed at her feet. “Kneel.”

He felt his jaw go slack. She wants me to do what?

She cocked her head at his hesitation. “You will not kneel for your demoness?” She clicked her tongue in distaste. “Don’t you want to remedy your indiscretions?”

He set his jaw, barely suppressing a wince. When she put it that way, there was no reason not to kneel before her, even if the thought of doing so went against every instinct in his body. He did, after all, lie to her, and if this was what she wanted from him then who was he to deny her?

Besides, there would be an opportunity for her to return the favor. I’ll make sure of it.

Revealing nothing, he stared at her impassively and slowly dropped to one knee, biting back a scowl as her smirk grew.

Then, he watched as a slender leg poked out from the slit of the dress she was wearing, and a strappy, black heel. He gave her a simmering look, then took it in his hands without a word, and pressed a kiss to her ankle, trailing up the side of her calf.

“That’s very nice, mate.” She murmured, resting a clawed hand onto this shoulder. “What else are you willing to do for me?”

A light smirk replaced his features. She was asking him to seduce her. To fuck her. That was something he would be more than willing to oblige.

He promptly stood to his feet and grabbed her wrist, pulling him into his chest. To his amused delight, she went pliant in his arms— nearly purring as he captured her lips with his. He kissed her thoroughly, drowning out the memory of the other gods-awful kiss that’d been forced upon him.

Then a clawed hand traveled his cheek lightly, moving its way to the back of his head. She suddenly grabbed a fistful of his hair and tugged downwards, tearing his lips from hers. He hissed when sharpened teeth latched themselves on his neck, nipping at the exposed flesh there before soothing it with her tongue.

Then she began to walk forward, forcing him to step with her— until the back of his knees touched the mattress of their bed.

“Meus es tu.” She said lowly, and she pushed at his chest, sending him backwards.

It turned into a battle for assertion. One that he admitted he thoroughly enjoyed— and intended on winning.

He took her with him, grabbing her waist to position her underneath. His smile was smug when he peered down into four golden slits, obviously dissatisfied at the turn of events.

Ignoring her bared teeth, he nudged open her legs with one knee before settling between them, then rolled against her in one swift movement, taking pleasure in the way she threw her head back with a growl.

He continued his ministrations, trailing hot kisses down her neck, just as she did to his moments before. One hand reached up to graze her breast as his kisses went farther down the middle of her chest, while his other hand roamed over the swell of her hips.

Raven in turn, was growing more frustrated with every second he kept her distracted with his teasing, light touches.

“Enough.” It was a command.

By the time he managed to blink he found himself on his back and she was straddling his waist.

Her hands encased with her dark magic. “Alliges duplicia.”

His arms lit up with her magic and they were forced above his head. When he tried to bring them back down he was met with resistance. What the hell? When he looked up his eyes widened with realization. She bound my fucking hands to the headboard.

“Raven.” He snarled in warning, tugging on his bonds. The demoness was unperturbed by his outburst.

“You will submit to me, mate.” A dangerous red swirled in those golden irises, and he clenched his jaw in response, then bit back a groan when she brushed against his length.

“Let me go.” He glared.

“I will not. This is your punishment. You will stay like this until you beg for me.”

“Tch.”

He detested how painfully hard he was. His erection strained against his trousers, and he couldn’t contain his next groan when she palmed him.

It didn’t matter how much he wished she’d slip her hand underneath his belt. He would not beg.

She began to strip slowly, until she was completely bare before him, and then she peeled off his pants carefully— and then his shirt. His full erection was on display for her, and he released a strangled noise in the back of his throat when she settled her heated core against him.

She chuckled darkly when he twitched underneath her. “Say please.”

“No.” he gritted out, breath hitching when her mouth latched onto one of his nipples, nipping roughly. Her tongue flicked it right after, mixing the pain she had caused with pleasure.

“No?” Her claws wrapped around his throat, squeezing in warning. “You are in no position to deny me, mate.”

He just glowered.

“Fine.” She relented, retracting her claws. “You will break eventually.”

Her fingers lifted to her full breasts, reddened from her true form, and her fingers began to tease one darkened nipple into a tight peak. The bonds went taut when he pulled at them roughly in an attempt to reach out to her. She noticed this and smirked as she teased her other nipple, then rocked against him. They groaned together.

He watched as she then slipped one hand down to her core and began to tease herself, parting her folds before slipping a finger inside while grazing against his cock.

She moaned, mouth parting slightly and he growled again in protest. That should be his fingers inside of her.

“If you insist on not obeying me, then I will use you for my own pleasure.” She sunk down onto his cock and his head hit the wall with his groan. Fuck, she felt so damned good and the pace she was setting set him on a steady course towards an impending orgasm, regardless of how much he despised not being in control.

“Beloved.” He growled when she brought him to the brink all too soon, then slowed back down while teasing her clit with her own fingers. Quick, circling motions that revealed her own need to him— that she was nearing her own orgasm.

He caught her hitched breath. She was losing resolve, caught in her own wave of pleasure.

“Release me.” He tugged on his bonds again and bucked his hips into her for good measure. “I want to be the one to fuck you when you come.”

She gasped and clenched around him, drawing him even deeper. “I will come soon. If you want to fuck me, you must beg now.”

He cursed. Goddamn her.

“Please, habibti. I am yours.”

With a victorious smirk, she waved a hand. That smirk was short-lived however, because as soon as the bonds disappeared he lunged for his little demoness, twisting them both before pulling out of her to roll her onto her stomach.

“You are mine too, Beloved. I will also make sure of that,” he snarled into her ear, teasing his cock at her entrance. His hands held her pressed against the bed.

The demoness laughed, then inhaled sharply when he pushed into her with one swift movement. They were both right at the edge, only a few more thrusts was all it would take to throw them both over.

“I can feel how close you are,” He reached a hand underneath her to press his thumb directly against her clit, “Come with me, now.”

She cried out— a sound that was more animalistic than human, and she fluttered around him. He fell shortly after, nearly seeing stars. He continued to thrust languidly, drawing out their orgasms. Vaguely, he watched as Raven’s skin turned from red to flushed ivory. One pair of eyes turned to peer up at him instead of two, and the color of her irises receded to lavender.

For a moment he watched her transform, breathless.

She smiled up at him as her breathing returned to normal and he returned it before dropping his face to her neck. “I’m going to have to make you jealous more often,” Damian murmured into her skin.

Raven snorted, lifting a hand to run through his sweat-soaked hair. “Unwise. Not only will I definitely kill the next one, it will hurt the entire time she is dying.”

“Green is a good color on you, habibti.”

She said nothing, but he could feel her contentment in the gentle run of her fingers across his hair and skin. As post-orgasmic clarity continued to take hold a question popped into his mind and he leaned up to regard her.

“When were you planning on telling me we were essentially demon-married?”

She flushed. “Eventually. Are you...did you not want…?”

He silenced her with a kiss, letting his actions and strength of his emotions answer her question. As though he could ever give this up, or stomach the idea of either of them being with someone else.

After all, Damian didn’t share either.

#damirae #damian x raven #damian wayne #raven #teen titans #fanfic

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giorno-plays-piano · 3 years

Text

Erased Part 1

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: yandere, obsession, stalking, mentions of death and grave robbery, might get darker as the story progresses.

Words: 3870.

Summary: One night your friend calls to remind you about commemorating your classmate who had drowned many years ago.

P.S. This was influenced by a Russian VN Opravdanie and some mourning rituals.

_____________________

One more evening. One more wasted day. With a grocery bag in your hand you kept walking the snowy streets of your home town where you spent all your life, never really trying to move somewhere: you had long decided there was no sense in going anywhere else even if your never changing routine was driving you crazy sometimes. Life was all the same in other places, too.

It was boring. Always quiet, always repetitive, always reminding you that it didn’t matter even if you’d forget the whole past year because it was all the same. A boring office job, small but stable salary, meetings with a couple of friends and fellow classmates from time to time, going to the same grocery store every week, returning to an empty apartment, spending your evening watching tv on the couch near a small radiator. Sometimes you would visit your parents or grandmother, listening to their concerns about you not having your own family yet and refusing to meet some son of their friends. Visits to another town close by were even more rare. You had never actually been to another country, and you had no idea what if felt like. Funny, but you didn’t even care.

You were stuck in that small snow-covered town where it had always been cold even when the gloomy summer was coming, and that was how it was supposed to be. You were destined to work somewhere you didn’t even like, one day marry a good for nothing guy and give birth to children who would inherit the same fate. There was nothing that could change - unless some hurricane would come and destroy the town at all. Then you would have to settle in some similar boring place and live the same way there.

Shaking off the snow from your hood, shoulders, and boots, you stepped into your apartment, happy it was much warmer inside - the radiator was working, thank goodness. As you hang your coat inside a hall closet, you brought the bag to the kitchen, lazily opening the fridge and looking at the meat leftovers and some porridge you cooked this morning. Uh-huh, you were too tired to make dinner, really. Some ham sandwiches would do.

Sitting on the coach again and watching some noir movie with a sandwich in your hand, you thought about how stupid your life was. What was you reason to live? Do some work nobody cared about? Making those silly reports nobody was going to read? Pleasing your parents with your mere presence? It was all you could think of, and the thought made you sad.

Suddenly, your phone rang, and you almost dropped the sandwich. Who was that? Your parents were going to bed early, and they didn’t really call you at this hour. Who was that?

Ah, Alex, a former classmate of yours who then studied in the same university as you. He was your good friend, and from time to time you were gathering in a cafe to chat about how things were going or just walked the streets together, complaining about your jobs.

“Don’t forget to commemorate Barnes today.” The message said, and you froze, furrowing your brows. Commemorate who?

That’s what you wrote to him, trying to remember who Alex was talking about.

“Barnes! Our classmate.” The next message said. “Remember when he got transferred to another school when we were 14? I’ve just talked to Anna, she said he drowned in the lake that year. Commemorate him today, it’s the day of his death.”

Oh shit. It’s true, you remembered that funny kid with a smile a mile wide and striking blue eyes all the girls were jealous of. How could you forget James? If you remembered well, you were kind of in love with him, but you were too young to really recognize your feelings and do something about them. Besides, when you thought of it now, you doubted James wouldn’t laugh at you. You two were just 14 years old, for God’s sake.

So, he died? Drowned? He probably wanted to take a shortcut through the lake instead of going through the whole park surrounding it, but that year the ice wasn’t strong enough to carry his weight, and he drowned just like several careless boys before him. Poor James. He was just a kid when it happened.

Suddenly, you realized how stupid of you was to think about your boring life and get upset over something so trivial. James was dead. You’d never chat about him with Alex and hear something about Barnes moving to some other city or getting a good raise or having a kid. He died. He was never going to get a job, marry someone, have children and live happily. You bet he would give anything for the boring life you were having.

Feeling cold, you stood up from the couch and headed over to the kitchen with a phone in your hand, a half-finished sandwich in the other. If it was the day of James’ death, you should really commemorate him: it meant having a drink and remembering something good about the boy, rest his soul. Maybe the next time you saw Alex you should talk about James with him, ask how did it really happen.

Despite you going through all the kitchen counters the only thing you found was some half-empty bottle of vodka probably forgotten by Alex or some of his friends. Shivering in your old knitted sweater, you looked out the window and furrowed your brows: it was too cold and dark to return to the grocery store for a bottle of wine. You’d prefer staying home and having just one shot of vodka, it was more than enough for commemorating someone. Not like James would care, really.

Cutting a few pieces of ham, cheese and some stale bread, you stopped for a second and went to an old wooden cupboard, taking out a few candies in bright-colored wrappings. Deciding it would be enough, you poured vodka into the glass and flinched, taking it closer to your mouth. Ugh, you never really liked strong alcohol, and the smell was kind of disgusting. Alex would laugh at you now, you thought and brought the glass to your mouth again.

I’m sorry it happened to you, James, you said to yourself, and the image of a smiling boy suddenly appeared in your head. You were a good kid. Rest in peace.

Knowing you won’t be able to tolerate the drink in your glass if you kept taking a sip after sip, you downed the shot and squeezed your eyes shut, feeling the liquid burning your throat and making you cough. Shit, it was certainly too strong for you, so you quickly took a piece of bread and put some cheese on eat, swallowing it to get the taste of vodka away. Disgusting.

I hope you are in a better place now, James.

Taking a deep breath, you quickly finished your improvised sandwich and took a candy, leaving a wrapping on the table and not even bothering with throwing it in the trash bin. The taste of alcohol was still lingering on your tongue, and it was hard to breathe, making you cough and shut your eyes again. Damn, that was the last time you drank it. From now on nothing but wine!

Thinking water wasn’t enough to keep that irritating taste away, you put a metallic kettle on the stove to make some tea and sat back, watching the snow storm becoming stronger outside. Except the actual snow, everything was pitch black - street lights never worked despite people complaining to the town administration all the time. They only shone bright near the town hall, that’s how thing were in this godforsaken place.

Shit, you had the audacity to think of things like that when you were commemorating James, the boy who died before he even reached adulthood. Who on Earth cared about street lights right now?

Shaking your head, you decided to switch the lights off in the kitchen to have a chance to see the street. Soon you were sitting close to a cracked windowsill and staring at the never ending blackness, finding an odd comfort in it and the sounds of a raging storm. With each passing second it felt like your life wasn’t as bad as you thought.

____________

When you woke up from a loud sound as if someone was hitting the walls with great force, it smelled like something was burning in the kitchen, your throat dry and your head heavy; you felt like you were knocked down and stepped on because your head hurt. What had happened? What was that? That smell?..

The kettle on the stove.

Your body moved on your own when you opened a window, the snow getting in immediately and flying over the kitchen while you struggled to stand, using a chair to get closer to a stove with its surface becoming red, a kettle slowly melting on it. As you switched if off, you turned on the tap and immediately poured water over the kettle, then spraying some water on your face and clothes, realizing you almost caused a fire. Why didn’t the damn alarm work? Oh, this shit was so old you were hardly surprised.

Damn, you were lucky you had an electric, not a gas stove. You’d be dead by now.

As you slowly came back to your senses, you suddenly thought about that odd sound of someone hitting the wall upstairs, eventually waking you up. There was an old man living upstairs, the one who had always been in a cranky mood, but he had never woke you up at night like that. Was it the heat? Did he feel it and woke you up? Was it something else?

Looking at what was left from your beautiful metallic kettle on the stove, you let out a breath nervously and, wearing something like your old autumn jacket - it was hard to tell what you pulled from a hall closet - you quickly left your apartment, running up the stairs. What if the old man was having a stroke?

Feeling a bit dizzy still, you banged his door desperately, not knowing if he was still conscious or not. Was he still alive? Was he alright? If he were, was he going to open the door and yell at you at the top of his voice for almost burning your apartment down? Well, you thought you’d prefer the last option if it meant the man who saved you also stayed alive.

But he wasn’t opening. In fact, you heard no sounds coming from his apartment at all. Shit, he was really having a stroke, and you needed...

“Is everything alright?” Somebody to your left asked, and you jumped, clutching the jacket on your chest. “I’m sorry if I scared you, but you have been banging the door as if your life depends on it.”

It was a tall, beefy man in a black t-shirt with some heavy metal band on it, his dull brown hair quite long for a man living in a town as conservative as yours, eyes strikingly blue. He was living next to the man above you.

“Your neighbor...” You had a hard time pulling yourself together, your throat parched and scratchy. “He has been hitting the wall... He might be having a stroke.”

The man arched an eyebrow at you, cocking his head to the side. “You sure? He went to see his children a few days ago. I don’t think he came back.”

“No, I’m sure!”

Obviously, the wall banging sounded right above your head, and no one but an old man living above you could do it. Yes, you were close to fainting that moment, but the sound was too clear to just brush it off.

“I need to call an ambulance.”

“Wait, he left me the keys to his apartment in case if the drain bursts again. Give me a second.” The next moments the stranger disappeared inside his own apartment, and for a couple of agonizing seconds you were left all alone on the staircase until the man showed up with a key in his hand, proceeding to open the door.

Getting inside, you started yelling loudly, “Sir! Sir, are you here?”

You ran to the kitchen, almost forgetting about the stranger: the picture of an old man laying on the floor breathless was making your hair stand on end. However, once you got there and put the lights on, you realized there was no one there. The kitchen was completely empty, dust gathering on the top of the counters and in the corners of the room. It looked like no one had been there for at least a couple of days. Were you mistaken? No, it couldn’t be, you heard that sound, it woke you up, for God’s sake!

Immediately proceeding to the other rooms, you saw a blank expression on the face of the stranger wandering the corridor and realized no one was in the apartment at all. How could it be?

“See, he didn’t return yet.” The man said as you turned to him, perplexed and not really understanding what was happening here. “There was no banging, I didn’t hear anything but you, actually.”

“No, it can’t be.” You put a hand on your forehead, deciding whether you had been hallucinating from the heat or the man was simply lying to you. “I... I’m sure I heard something. Could it be the other neighbor?”

“There are no other neighbors. Just the old man and me.”

___________

You tried forgetting about that night, still shivering from the thought you could easily die if you didn’t wake up. The kettle was destroyed along with your stove, and dad sent you some money to get a new one once he heard you crying over the phone. He promised not to tell about this your mom - she would definitely either faint or have a real heart attack.

The old man came back home a few days later just like Bucky, the guy you met that night, told you. He was perfectly alright, still in his snarky mood though. You decided you really heard that knock in your dream, otherwise the only way to explain what had happened was if thieves got inside old man’s apartment, but it was ridiculous. Bucky’s flat was certainly too far for you to hear the sound so clearly, too.

When you told Alex the story, he took the whole other direction, watching you wide-eyed and telling you it was certainly the spirit of James waking you up and saving you from such stupid death. In the end, that time you had been in the middle of commemorating your dead classmate. He certainly didn’t want you to die the same day as him. Maybe he was even grateful to you for remembering him.

Well, whatever. Despite you actually getting nervous because of Alex’s words, you decided it didn’t matter. You were safe. Now you just had to take care and never drink anything alcoholic at all. And never switch off the lights when your stove was on.

The next week you spent trying to forget about this story, working like a horse and taking extra hours just not to return home to your empty apartment. You were going to spend the weekend at your parents’ place for a change, but on Friday the last minute when you already wanted to depart Alex suddenly showed up at your door with a bottle of vodka, pack of ham and some sliced bread in a plastic packet.

“Are you mad?” You raised your eyebrows at him, angry he brought a bottle when you explicitly told him you weren’t drinking anymore. “What is this?”

“That’s not for you.” Your friend brushed it off as if it didn’t matter. “We have to visit Barnes’ grave.”

“Wait, what?”

“We need to visit his grave.” Alex repeated to you angrily, shoving a pack of ham into your arms. “I talked to the priest, and he said we need to go visit boy’s grave. It’s a must!”

You rolled your eyes at him, not even knowing how to react. Clearly, your friend has lost his mind.

Surprisingly, Alex was so pushy you couldn’t get him out of your place until you agreed to go to the graveyard with him and pay your respect to your classmate. Alex was absolutely sure the boy had saved your life, and it was disrespectful towards him to just leave things as they were. You agreed only because your friend had promised to bring you to your parents with his car.

Once you bought a couple of red carnations, the two of you headed to the graveyard, passing a small church and stopping the car right in front of the large iron gates. Nervously looking at them, you wrapped your coat tighter around your body trembling from cold, glancing at Alex in that stupid fur hat of his.

“Come on, it won’t take long.” He said, catching a sight of you. “I know the place. Let’s just go clean the grave, leave flowers and vodka, and then go. It’s the least we can do.”

Huffing and puffing with irritation, you got up from your seat and left his old car, a pack of ham still in your hands along with carnations. It was ridiculous, but, well, cleaning someone’s grave wasn’t a bad thing, really. You wouldn’t be surprised if James’ parents moved to some other place after that terrible incident, and his grave could be deserted after all these years.

Clenching carnations in your hand, you followed Alex into the gloomy graveyard, looking at old rusted crosses and new shining ones, moss-covered gravestones and a couple of monuments made by some rich citizens for their beloved who had passed away. You didn’t like coming to this place - it felt like it had always been cold here even in the hottest day of the year. Now, in the middle of February, it was freezing.

“Just a few more meters!” The man in front of you said, gesturing somewhere to the left where there were much less graves. “It should be here.”

Furrowing your brows, you kept walking, looking at the grey gravestones and looking for a familiar name. Not this one... not that one either... those two weren’t what you needed...

You bumped into Alex all of a sudden as he froze in place, and you snapped at him, “What the hell man? Why are you standing here?”

But he didn’t reply to you, gesturing somewhere to the right side of the path, and you stilled on your spot, too, looking at the destroyed grave with a broken tombstone laying in the snow. A little iron fence around it was torn apart, and it even looked like someone tried digging the grave. As you got a bit closer, you read “James Buchanan Barnes” on the broken stone and clenched Alex’s hand in yours, afraid to make one more step. God, who did that? What monster could destroy a grave, much less the one of a poor boy who died so young?

It looked so horrible there was no reason to attempt cleaning this mess. This place certainly needed a renovation, but you didn’t even know if you were allowed to do it since you weren’t James’ relative. God, why no one tried doing something with it? Did his parents really leave the town?

“That’s not good.” Alex suddenly said, his face getting extremely pale. “Oh shit, this is not good at all.”

“Of course, it isn’t.” You shook your head, still unable to believe your eyes. “What kind of bastard do you have to be to do that? Let’s go ask a supervisor what has happened here.”

When you found the man cleaning the path on the other side of the graveyard, he told the two of you it was a very odd story when somebody destroyed a boy’s grave, going as far as ruining his tombstone and even digging up the coffin. Well, of course, from time to time some vandals would show up to make a mess, but it had never went further than painting a few tombstones. Besides, only James’ grave had been destroyed, all the ones close to him were left in the same state as before. Why? Why targeting a grave of some poor drowned boy? The supervisor thought someone decided that his parents put something very valuable into the grave, provoking a thief to act, but the strangest thing was that the coffin turned out to be completely empty. The corpse had never been found as if it had never been there at all.

Did they bury an empty coffin? If the body had been destroyed or not found at all, there was nothing odd in that, but the supervisor swore the coffin wasn’t empty when he had been helping bury the boy. It had been such a tragedy when it happened, he said, adding he remembered that day well: the town you lived in was small, and the death of a child was a big thing here.

What happened to James’ body? The supervisor didn’t know. By the end of the story he was talking in a hushed voice. On the other hand, Alex was so pale as if he saw a ghost.

You spent time crossing the graveyard in complete silence as you processed the words of an old supervisor. What a cruel thing it was, to stole a corpse of a 14 year old kid who had done nothing wrong in his entire life. You couldn’t comprehend the reasoning behind this act: what, when the thief found nothing in the coffin he decided to take a corpse and throw some punches at it? God, it was disgusting. You really hoped that person was already in prison.

“Listen, I need to go and see the priest.” Alex mumbled to you in the car, and you realized he was trembling a little as if the thing he saw was too much for him. “That’s a very, very bad thing. I'm not sure Barnes’ soul rests in peace.”

“Alex, please.” You rolled your eyes, eating a piece of ham you were intended to leave on the grave. What, did you friend was really going to talk about ghosts after all he saw? He should have been worried about the thief destroying people’s graves. “You’re too superstitious. Of course, he rests in peace! His grave has nothing to do with it, but we really need to contact the administration, make them repair the place and found the bastard who did this. It’s inhuman to leave it like that.”

“No, no, you don’t understand!” The man on the driver’s seat shook his head disapprovingly. “What if James is still here, unable to continue his path? What if his ghost still wanders this place after all these years? Fuck, he certainly isn’t good anymore.”

“Alex-”

“No, can’t you see? That time when you fell asleep with your stove one... What if he didn’t save you but tried to kill you when you commemorated him that night?”

__________________

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