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imagines--galore · 6 hours

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||The Thread of Fate|| Part Twenty

Summary: Soulmate AU. They say the Thread of Fate connects you to your one true love. It may tangle. It may stretch. But it will never break. Wrapped around your little finger it tightens when it feels your soulmate is close and loosens when they are far. And becomes visible with the colors of your soulmate’s Nation when you finally fall in love with them.

Pairing: Zuko x OroraOC (ATLA)

Rating || Genres || Warnings: T+ Romance. Adventure.

Previous Chapters - Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, Part Thirteen, Part Fourteen, Part Fifteen, Part Sixteen, Part Seventeen, Part Eighteen, Part Nineteen

A/N: Okay so for the sake of moving things along, I'm gonna be compressing episodes together. Don't worry, we'll still get pivotal moments and plenty of angst inbetween as well as Orora's interaction with the Gaang, plus Zuko's turmoil, but just a bit fast paced cuz I know we're all excited to get to the Day of the Black Sun. One more thing, this chapter tends to get a little.....dark at some points. Orora is dealing with the trauma of Zuko betraying her, and Zuko is just warring with himself. So yeah, neither teenager is in a good place right now. BUT! Other then that! Happy reading lovelies!

He was tossing and turning in his sleep. Half formed thoughts and lucid dreams plagued his mind. Nothing made sense.

Nothing except...........the thought of her.

Opening his eyes, he was greeted with the sight of Orora sitting on the edge of his bed. "Can't sleep huh?" She asked, sounding just as amused as he remembered.

Ignoring her, he sat up, running a hand down his face. "So whats on your mind?" She asked, standing to move around the room. "The Fire Lord?" He shook his head, though he was lying. "Azula?" Another shake of his head. "Aang?" She sounded a lot closer.

He was about to shake his head when something compelled him to look up and meet her gaze. It was almost scary, how clearly his mind could conjure her. And not just the physical aspect of her. He could actually imagine her warmth, and smell the perfume she had taken to wearing in Ba Sing Se.

"Of course, you're not thinking of me." She continued, sitting in front of him. "I mean why would you? I mean nothing to you." The look she fixed him with was once more a mirror image of what he remembered from the catacombs. His heart leaped in his throat.

A sudden flicker of color had his eyes darting towards the string on his finger.

It glowed a feeble blue, before disappearing.

He looked back up.

She was gone.

————————–

"I think I see a cave below." Aang called out from beside her, though she could barely see through the cloud that drifted around them.

Sokka hushed him instantly. "Shh! Keep quiet!" Orora rolled her eyes as she scratched Momo behind the head. "Sokka, I doubt anyone is around this place for miles." She pointed out to which Sokka shot her a glare.

Appa landed as Aang dissipated the cloud he had been airbending around them. Sokka jumped down and looked around suspiciously before crossing his arms and turning to look at the rest of them as they disembarked from the Bison.

He looked so much like a father disappointed at his children that Orora had to suppress a smile to lest she annoy him further.

"Great job with the cloud camo." He praised Aang, to which the young Avatar smiled. "But next time, let's disguise ourselves as the kind of cloud that knows how to keep its mouth shut." He ended, before moving to look around once more.

"You gonna check under the rocks for booby traps Sokka?" Orora called out, unable to keep from taking a jab at the boy's suspicious nature.

Toph, who was standing next to her, and who also couldn't let such a golden tease Sokka opportunity go to waste added. "Yeah, we wouldn't want a bird to hear us chatting up there and turn us in." Aang and Katara, who had been holding back their smiles, smothered their giggles.

His face set in an annoyed scowl, Sokka rounded on all four of them. "Hey, we're in enemy territory." He pointed above his head where a few birds sat atop the boulder right behind him. "Those are enemy birds." He whispered harshly. One of the Toucan Puffin jumped onto his head and screeched.

"Maybe he thinks your ponytail is a friend." This time the other three did start laughing out loud as they walked towards the cave Aang had seen earlier. Grumbling under his breath, Sokka followed after them, though he did not stop in his.........reconnaissance. He brushed past Orora, prompting the girl to scowl at him in annoyance.

The group stood around as Sokka continued to investigate, and once he was satisfied he stood up straight and grinned. "Well, this is it. This is how we'll be living until the invasion begins. Hiding in cave after cave after cave after cave." His head fell lower and lower as his voice lost the enthusiasm behind it and his shoulders slumped.

Katara rolled her eyes at her brother's antics. "Sokka, we don't need to become cave people. What we need is some new clothes." She said, gesturing to herself as well as the rest of the group. Aside from Sokka, who wore the Fire Nation Soldier uniform, all four of them were wearing clothes of their respective nations, except for Orora, with cloaks thrown over their shoulders.

Orora glanced down at herself and grimaced. "Yeah, I think red on green is a little out of fashion." She flicked the front of her dress in annoyance. "Besides if we get Fire Nation clothes we can just walk around in the open no?" She continued, turning to look at her friends.

Aang nodded. "Yeah, blending in is better than hiding out. If we get Fire Nation disguises, we would be just as safe as we would be hiding in a cave." He finished with a big grin.

Having taken to sitting down on the stone floor, Toph nodded. "Plus, they have real food out there. Does anyone want to sit in the dirt and eat cave hoppers?" The girl punched the side of the cave, causing several hoppers to jump out. Feeling a shiver run up her spine, Orora quickly stepped a little ways away from the creepy crawlies, and tried very hard not to look at Momo who was chomping on one of them.

Sokka sighed before looking at Momo. "Looks like we got outvoted, sport." He said, before cheerfully proclaiming. "Let's get some new clothes."

Seems the thought of not living in a cave all the time cheered him up.

And for once luck was on their side.

All five of them crouched behind a rock that overlooked a Fire Nation home with a waterfall nearby. There were rows upon rows of clothes hanging over natural steam vents. As her blue eyes darted from one clothing item to the next, Orora contemplated on what to take.

"I don't know about this." Aang whispered. "These clothes belong to somebody."

Katara, who had been on her one side, jumped out from behind the rock. "I call the silk robe!" She called, grabbing two outfits.

The other waterbender was quick to follow. "No fair Katara! I had my eye on that!"

Aang blinked as the two girls began to race between the maze of clothes, darting to and fro, examining clothes, and picking the ones they liked and leaving what they didn't. "But if it's essential to our survival." He mused, before he too perked up and jumped over the rock. "Then I call the suit!"

Though there was a flurry of activity inbetween the clothing lines, each of them was discrete as they grabbed clothes here and there. Anything they wouldn't need would be returned, but for now grabbing as many garments seemed to be the best way to go about it.

Soon they had all picked out their clothes and moved away to quickly change. Orora looked at what she had picked out. A pair of pants that slid over her legs, sitting loosely and ending just below her knees. Pulling the laces on the edge, she was able to create a slight ruffle once she tied it up. She paired it with a shin length skirt wrapped around her waist, but had made a slight modification by splitting the sides of the skirt to allow her legs to move better.

Her top was a deep red bandeau, with gold accents along the edges, that left her shoulders and part of her navel bare, revealing soft brown skin. She pulled on a pair of armbands that came up to her elbows. They were the same color as the top, and the ends were tipped in gold.

A nearby shed had revealed several shoes within. With a shoe size that was a little tough to find, Orora had taken the first one that fit her. They were a dark brown with a golden stripe down the front to the tip and came up to her calf. Pulling them on, she turned her attention to her reflection.

Now that her hair was long enough, she was able to make a braid that circled around her head like a crown, keeping stray strands out of her face.

Pursing her lips, she twisted this way and that, wanting to see herself from all angles. It wasn't her first choice of outfit, but she didn't have many options. Besides, it felt strange to be wearing red when all she associated with that color was fear.

She missed wearing blue, the girl suddenly realized, sighing to herself. Now she understood why Zuko had hated the colors of the Earth Kingdom. He had missed the colors of his Nation.

A scowl creased her features. Why had she just thought of him? He didn't even deserve a single second of her time.

Growling to herself, and ignoring the way her heart twinged, she bundled up her clothes and threw them into the river, causing her reflection to ripple.

————————–

Once they had all reconvened, the small group walked into the nearby city to purchase some other items they needed. Accessories to go with their now outfits.

Katara bought a new necklace, swapping the one she wore. Toph chose a headband, Sokka picked out a top knot. Aang, already wearing a headband, didn't pick anything out. Orora took a simple hair clip that would keep her braid in place.

Now for the next problem.

Food.

"I'm starving!" Toph groaned. Her complain was followed by a rumble from her stomach. Katara smiled as she patted Toph's shoulder in reassurance. "Don't worry, that's what we're gonna do next."

Before stepping out into the street, they stood behind a wall, waiting for Aang to finish hiding Momo.

Seeing him pat down Momo's ears and hide him inside his shirt, Orora raised an eyebrow. "You sure he won't get out Aang?" She asked, to which he grinned. "Momo knows how to keep still, don't you buddy?" He nearly stuck his face into his shirt. The poor animal responded with a series of chitters.

"I used to visit my friend Kuzon here a hundred years ago." Aang said in a cheerful tone. "So, everyone just follow my lead and stay cool. Or, as they say in the Fire Nation, 'stay flamin'." He walked out from behind the building. With a brief look of confusion she shared with Katara, the rest of the followed after him.

As they looked for a restaurant, Aang continued to greet people n the strange lingo he had learned a hundred years ago. "If he keeps saying that we're definitely gonna get noticed." Toph stated.

Finally finding a restaurant, they all moved to step inside but Aang stopped. "Oh, we're going to a meat place?"

Sokka shrugged. "Come on, Aang, everyone here eats meat. Even the meat!" He pointed towards a hippocow who was consuming a piece of meat.

Aang grimaced. "You guys go ahead. I'll just get some lettuce out of the garbage." Katara waved at him before they entered the building. "Stay out of trouble." Orora called over her shoulder. Aang gave her a playful salute.

————————–

It turns out, she didn't have much of an appetite.

And given that she felt a little restless, Orora decided to walk back to the cave by herself, leaving Sokka to nearly eat the whole restaurant out.

She took her time, looking around at the buildings, and watching the Fire Nation civilians go about their everyday lives. It seemed so strange, to be walking through the enemy and have them acting so normal. Then again they were normal. None of them were soldiers. She doubted any of them had anything to do with the war.

The young waterbender took a long while walking around and just exploring, and it wasn't until it was sundown, that she realized that it was getting late.

Changing course, she walked out of town following the stream towards the cave they would be staying in for the next few days. As she walked, her gaze slowly began to shift to the babbling stream she walked alongside.

Her steps slowed, and soon she came to a stop.

The girl stood there, staring at the water as it rushed by. Ever changing, ever shifting.

It followed it's own course, she thought, just like she had. And yet the stream seemed to have made its way in the world with no obstacles, so why couldn't she do the same?

Her obstacle wasn't physical. It was mental and emotional.

Since Ba Sing Se, she had kept her attention towards her friends and their well-being. There had never been a moment when she had been alone. And if she happened to be alone, she would try to distract herself by either training or wandering around, just as she had done just now around the town.

Now?

She was alone.

With nothing but her thoughts, and the stream for company.

And her mind went to the one person she had no desire to think of and yet.......he was always there.

At the back of her mind.

Zuko.

Her soulmate.

The boy who had decided to return to the Fire Nation. To a father who had banished him. Had burned him.

What Orora couldn't wrap her head around was the fact that he had just............left.

He'd just left.

Her and his Uncle.

Had he not thought of how his actions would effect either of them?

Had he not loved his Uncle?

Love.

She........didn't think he loved her. But he did at least care for her.

Didn't he?

Or rather hadn't he?

Did he still think about her? Or had he already forgotten all that they had shared in Ba Sing Se? All those moments when it looked like they were progressing with their friendship. All those talks they had had, sharing everything with each other.

Had all that amounted to..........nothing?

Was she nothing to him?

Had she not been enough?

That strange sensation began to creep up her throat again, she gulped it back but it took her a couple of tries before it disappeared.

She stared into the watery depths of the stream, completely missing the way her string glowed a dull red for a second before disappearing.

"Orora?"

The sound of her name suddenly echoed in her ears and she blinked. Shaking her head to clear herself of the fog that seemed to have descended upon her, the girl quickly turned her head to the source of the sound.

Aang looked at her from where he stood a few feet away, covered in dirt. "Are you alright? I've been calling out to you for a long time now?" He asked, concern in his grey eyes.

"I'm......fine." She finally responded, pushing away her morbid thoughts and forcing herself to pay attention to Aang. "Why're you covered in dirt?" She asked, wanting to change the subject lest the boy pick up on what had her mind so occupied.

He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "I went to play hide and explode with some new friends of mine." He said. Orora raised an eyebrow. "Uh huh, and where exactly did you make these friends?" From what the others had told her, Aang had the tendency to make friends wherever he went.

Aang grinned. "At school."

That was not the answer she had been expecting.

She blinked.

"Say what?"

————————–

Twice now he had gone to the prison.

The first time he had turned back, not even making it t the door. The second time he had walked in, threatened a guard before entering the one cell room he had been dreading to.

His Uncle's.

Not that going there had done him any good.

His Uncle had not spoken a word, and the already panicked and confused Prince had shouted a few choice words before going back the way he came.

It wasn't until the next morning, when he woke up and was playing around with his breakfast instead of actually eating it, did he realize that all that anger and confusion had morphed into something else completely.

Guilt and shame.

Zuko had wanted nothing more then to forget about it, to go about his day as if nothing had happened the night before. So when Mai had suggested that they take a private stroll to the nearby rocky outcrop that provided gorgeous views of the landscape he had almost said yes.

What had stopped him?

Memories of a blue eyed girl.

Her smile. Her presence. Her kindness. Her words. Her comfort. Her voice. Her hugs. Her laughter. Her smile. Her.............kiss.

"Thanks Mai, but I want to be alone right now." He finally responded. She gave a frown, her lips pinched.

"You know I'm getting tired of throwing hints and you not picking up on them Zuko." He flinched, thinking that maybe he had been a little dismissive of Mai's efforts to win him over.

There would have been a time when he would have actually reciprocated her feelings, and enjoyed them as well.

Now?

Now the very thought of even spending time with Mai had him feeling guilty.

As if he were going behind Orora's back.

Which was ridiculous, because they hadn't even been together officially. They'd just been friends.

But.....friends didn't kiss like they did.

Soulmates did.

Neither of them had thought of accepting the bond either, really they'd never even talked about it.

Mai had already walked off, and Zuko had barely noticed. His eyes were slightly glazed as he focused on the image of the water tribe girl he had called his friend for so many months.

If she were to see him now, she wouldn't be able to recognize him, he was sure.

Guilt and shame returned tenfold.

Though it was futile, he figured a walk along the same route Mai had suggested would do him some good. Pretty soon he was sitting atop a large flat boulder, one leg hanging over the side while the other he had pulled up so he could rest his arm on his knee.

The sun had just begun to set, casting gorgeous red, orange and yellow hues all around. He closed his eyes.

"You know its funny."

His eyes shot open and he turned his head. Orora was sitting beside him, knees pulled up to her chest. For the first time since his return home, there was a small smile playing about her lips. He stared, stunned.

"While we were in Ba Sing Se, we saw the night sky, and we watched a couple of sunrises together. But never a sunset." She turned her head so she could look at him. "I wonder why is that."

Feeling his own lips pull into a small smile. "Probably because we were too tired from being in the tea shop all day." He responded to which she sighed and nodded. "Yeah.......I just wish we had watched one together."

She lay her hands flat on either side of her body, leaning back on her arms, tilting her head back as she took in the last bit of warmth.

Zuko stared.

How was it that such a simple act would make her appear even more pretty then she already was? Had she always been this beautiful, or was his mind making her appear even more so then she already was?

Reaching out, he gently took her hand in his. Orora looked at him, surprise evident across her features. But Zuko was hardly aware of that, as he concentrated on the feel of her hand in his. Her scent as it surrounded him. And her presence that had always calmed him.

And yet.........the guilt..........the shame lingered.......

"I'm surprised to find you here by yourself Zuko. I figured you would be with Mai."

His eyes shot open and his head whipped to the side to see his sister leaning against a nearby rock wall. Her signature smirk was present across her lips as she looked at him.

"What do you want Azula?" He asked, turning his head back to it's original placement. Walking to stand in front of him, Azula cut straight to the point.

"So, I've heard you've been to visit your uncle fatso in the prison tower." Her words prompted him to slide down and stand in front of her, hands fisted in anger and glaring at her.

"That guard told you." He growled angrily, to which Azula shook her head, her smirk growing.

"No." She said, as calm as could be. "You did. Just now."

He wanted to kick himself for his own stupidity. Why did he have to go and fall for Azula's tricks every time. Still he stepped away from her and sighed. "Okay, you caught me. What is it that you want, Azula?"

His sister shrugged. "Actually, nothing." He stared up at her in disbelief. "Believe it or not, I'm looking out for you. If people find out you've been to see Uncle, they'll think you're plotting with him. Just be careful, Dum-Dum."

With that she walked off, leaving Zuko to think over what had just happened. There had to be an agenda behind her little visit. Azula didn't speak to him unless she wanted something. Or when she wanted to torment him and make his life miserable.

Too late for that, he mused to himself, lifting the hand that had held Orora's so many times.

He was already miserable.

The thread flickered a feeble blue before disappearing.

————————–

This was rather strange for lack of a better word.

She'd attended partied growing up, but they had all been rather stiff and solemn affairs.

And there was nothing stiff and solemn about the dance party Aang had decided to throw.

Kids dancing, laughing, chatting and just generally being......kids.

She stood in the corner beside the table Toph and Katara occupied, sipping from her the cup the former had earthbended for their use. The cave looked gorgeous, with hundreds of candles flickering against the walls. Music filled the air as Aang taught his new friends all the dance moves he knew from a hundred years ago.

"Who knew Twinkle-toes could dance." Toph said as she sipped her drink.

"Hope those dances are still relevant." Orora added, smiling to herself as Aang began to pull a few girls to the dance floor, who followed eagerly. Her eyes shot to Katara, and she couldn't help but purse her lips to keep from laughing at the annoyed look on the girl's face.

But she didn't have to wait long. Aang approached Katara, holding out his hand and asking her for a dance.

Orora couldn't help but smile brightly as the both of them ran to the dance floor hand in hand.

Everyone stopped what they were doing and simply stared at the two dancers. Orora recognized the dance. It was actually a series of waterbending forms that required two people to perform together. Looks like Aang had decided to put a little spin on his and Katara's fighting skills to other use.

She sighed.

They looked so happy, smiling and laughing as they glided across the floor. They deserved it. The both of them had seen too many horrors and just deserved to be happy with each other. Anyone could see why they were picked to be soulmates. If they decided to tell anyone that is.

They just fit together.

Like two pieces of a puzzle.

Like.........

Like her and Zuko had been.

Her heart constricted painfully in her chest, prompting her to gulp down her drink, as if it would get rid of the pain. Though the ache remained. While Orora went off to refill her cup, Toph's unblinking eyes followed her retreating back.

This wasn't the first time the young earthbender had picked up on the weird anomaly. And she was starting to wander what it was all about.

————————–

He was back again.

He didn't know why he kept coming back. Call it desperation. His Uncle had always been the one he turned to during his hour of need. It was upon returning to the Fire Capital that Zuko realized he had no one other then his Uncle who could give him advice and whom he could trust.

Despite the guilt he felt every time he visited him, Zuko always pushed past it.

Why?

He was getting desperate.

As he slid some food through the bars of the prison behind which his Uncle sat, he couldn't help but feel that guilt increase tenfold as he wandered what kind of food were they even giving him.

If he received any food at all.

"I brought you some komodo chicken. I know you don't care for it, but I figure it beats prison food." He said, his low voice echoing against the cold stone walls of the prison.

"I admit it." He began again after a beat of silence. "I have everything I always wanted." Not everything, an inner voice supplied, conjuring up an image of a certain waterbender girl with white in her hair. "But it's not as all how I thought it would be. The truth is, I need your advice."

Leaning forward he gripped the bars of the door. "I think the Avatar is still alive, I know he's out there, I'm losing my mind." His Uncle did not even respond. Growing desperate by the moment, Zuko continued.

"Please, Uncle, I'm so confused I need your help." His words were met with silence. All that fear, guilt and loneliness boiled down to one emotion.

Anger.

Anger he let out on his Uncle as he suddenly stood.[Iroh still has nothing to say to him. "Forget it." He declared, his hands shook with anger as he began to walk out of the room. "I'll solve it myself! Waste away in here for all I care!"

A voice called out.

"Is this how you behave with your elders Zuko?"

The boy in question whipped his head around to see Orora standing next to his Uncle behind bars. She was looking at him with such disappointment. "Stay out of it Orora!" He commanded, before walking out and slamming the door behind him.

Behind him Iroh looked up, wandering why his nephew would say such a thing. The thought of his young pupil had the old Master hoping and praying that she was safe.

Two lone tears slid down his cheek.

One for his nephew, who had lost his way, and one for his pupil, who had lost everything.

————————–

It had to be done.

This was the final resort.

He was desperate.

There was nothing else he could do.

As the man he had hired approached, Zuko lowered his hood and looked at him. "You're sure you weren't followed?" He asked the giant of a man with the metal leg. The towering figure gave no response.

"I've heard about you." Zuko continued. "They say you're good at what you do, and even better at keeping secrets." This was it. His chance to keep what he deserved.

"The Avatar is alive." He revealed, a slight tremor in his voice as he continued. "I want you to find him, and end him." After a few moments, the man nodded in confirmation. Satisfied, Zuko pulled back his hood. His heart clenched in his chest, and his stomach flipped. Despite the fact that he had hardly eaten throughout the day, he felt like he was going to be sick. He quickly hurried off, as the urge to take back his order rose in him in a wave of guilt and shame.

No sooner had he disappeared from view when another hooded figure approached, though this figure did not remove their hood, anyone who knew them would recognize the voice.

"You heard what my brother said. And no matter what, do not stop for anything."

The voice continued, smooth and without the slightest bit of tremor as it gave the orders to kill. "I will pay you thrice as much as he does if you follow my orders, and four times my weight in gold if you return with one of the Avatar's companions."

The man blinked at the figure.

"A watertribe girl, with white in her hair." Anyone else who heard the voice, would be able to pick up on the absolute glee in the person's tone.

After all, there was nothing Princess Azula loved more then tormenting her brother.

————————–

She stared into the murky waters of the river.

The voices of the rest of the group were muffled behind her as she sat a little ways apart from them.

They had arrived at the river with the town situated in the middle of it. Calling it a town was a bit of a stretch. It was nothing more then series of planks nailed together to form streets, with people living out in the open with nothing to protect them from the natural elements.

But that wasn't what had gotten to her.

It was the people.

People who were sick, children who looked like they hadn't eaten a proper meal in days. Her heart physically ached at the sight. She'd moved to suggest that they help them, with Katara taking her side, but Sokka had stopped them. They couldn't reveal who they were by using Healing abilities.

He was right though. They had to think practically. And though it went against her very nature to not help, Orora kept her gaze forward, not wanting to meet the eyes of some destitute soul she had the ability to save but couldn't.

Besides, she doubted she would be able to help anyone much, what with her own lack of strength. For the past couple of days her appetite had been completely non-existent, and she was barely sleeping. She would doze off, but then as she would begin to fall deeper into sleep, Orora would forcefully jerk herself awake.

Why?

Because of the nightmares.

Nightmares that were just as horrible as the one from the previous night, if not more. All of them included someone she loved getting hurt or tortured or being killed.

And she couldn't take it.

She just couldn't take it.

"Hey?" She blinked as her head turned to the side and watched as Aang sat down beside her. Aang. The sweetest boy she would ever meet. With a fate that was so difficult and full of obstacles that she didn't think was fair to him. He deserved so much more. So much more then always being on the run, never being a kid all the time like he was supposed to. Loosing his people, his friends, his loved ones at the hands of a mad Fire Lord. He had died, and yet somehow, he still retained his sweet nature.

How could fate be so cruel to him?

"Enjoying the view?" He asked, referring to the polluted river in a joking manner. The older girl attempted to smile, but it was a grimace at best. As she turned her gaze towards the heavens where the moon had appeared out from behind the clouds Aang frowned.

Something was wrong.

Her lips parted as she spoke. "Its strange, how fate gives you something, but then takes it away again. These people have this river, but their own superiors have taken it away from them for their own gain." She hardly blinked as her eyes shifted from the moon to the lake. "Makes you question everything, doesn't it?" She muttered, a strange look in her eyes, never once wavering from the murky water in front of her.

Beside her Aang blinked, his eyes darted to the half-eaten bowl of food beside her. "Are you.......feeling alright Orora?" He asked, the worry evident in his tone and his eyes as he reached out to place a tentative hand on her shoulder.

He felt her tense under his touch. Her back straightened, her racing mind suddenly coming to a halt.

"I'm fine Aang."

Lie.

"Are you talking about the river or about someone else?" Aang asked, testing the waters, hoping he didn't say the wrong thing.

Someone else.

Zuko.

He meant Zuko.

Her soulmate.

In a way, she was addressing him as well. Or rather she was addressing the way she had lost him. Had she lost him though? Had he ever been hers to behind with?

He had been the one to turn his back on her. To attack her friends meant to attack her.

She blinked, her eyes heavy with sleep yet she couldn't go to sleep. She wouldn't.

Not when it meant she had to see Zuko hurt or dead over and over again.

He was gone from her life, but that did not mean she did not miss him. She did.

But now was not the time to dwell on that. Instead, the older girl shrugged her shoulders in a silent response. Aang seemed to accept it, since he fell silent next to her.

Orora stayed there for a few more minutes before she stood up, getting ready to go to bed.

The food she barely touched, she gave to Momo.

————————–

Orora laughed as she pulled him along through the streets of Ba Sing Se.

"Come on Zuko! The fireworks are about to start and I'm not going to miss them." She called over her shoulder. Dropping his hand so he would follow on his own, she turned a corner disappearing from view.

Zuko smiled as he walked after her at a much normal pace.

"If I run after you anyone might mistake me for a robber chasing you or something." He called in a playful tone, as he too turned a corner and came to an open courtyard.

The scene that greeted him had the smile dying on his lips, and his amber eyes to widen in fear and panic.

There stood his father and sister, in full Royal Attire, with more then a handful of soldiers standing behind them.

But that wasn't what got his attention.

It was the sight of Orora, shackled and in his sister's grasp. There were chains on her wrists, around her throat and even her ankles. Her clothes were torn, her hair hanging in front of her lowered face as she knelt in front of his family.

"Zuko, you did not tell me you found your soulmate." Ozai spoke in a pleasant tone as he regarded his son with a look that had always frozen him in place. "That is the sort of news a son shares with his father. I had thought perhaps we were more closer then before your banishment."

The scene around him had changed.

He now stood in the courtyard of the Fire Palace, though the scene in front of him stayed the same.

His soulmate.

In chains.

Azula sighed. "Oh Zuzu, why do you insist on keeping secrets from your own family?" She purred in a tone that had more of a thread behind it then a question.

"Father, I-" He started but then fell silent when his Father held up a hand.

He shook his head. "Not a word Zuko. I would much prefer to hear a few certain words from your lovely soulmate here."

With that the Fire Lord walked forward, only to yank one of the chains. It was connected to the shackle around Orora's throat. The yank forced her to tilt her head back.

Zuko nearly threw up.

Her lips were bloody, her nose broken with dried blood staining her upper lip. One of her eyes was black, while the other was completely shut because of the swelling. There were numerous cuts and bruises all across her once unmarred brown skin.

But worst of all?

There was a burn mark on her cheek. As if she had been slapped by a hand holding a flame.

"Now my dear, I want you to take a good look at my son and tell me." He pulled the chain, forcing her to turn her head to look at him. Tears filled his eyes at the sight of her beautiful face, her one good eye betraying no emotion.

"Is he your soulmate?"

A beat of silence, where Zuko held his breath.

But then he saw it.

A lone tear escaping her one good eye.

Then she spoke the words that had his heart stopping in his chest.

"No, he's not."

His heart shattered.

————————–

With a heartbreaking cry, Zuko shot awake, his arm held out in front of him as if he were reaching for something.

For someone.

His chest rose and fell as he panted for breath, sweat lined his body as his mind played the nightmare in his mind over and over again. He could even feel sweat on his face and getting into his eyes since they were stinging so much.

He buried his head in his hands, curling in on himself where he sat.

How could he ever have thought it? How could he ever have thought of bringing Orora here? His Father would never have accepted her as his soulmate. His sister would've tormented her every single day. She wouldn't have been safe.

His eyes stung and he brushed away the sweat that stained his cheeks. Suddenly he stopped, staring at the drops of sweat that shone on his palm.

Not sweat, tears.

He was crying.

He was crying because he had nearly brought Orora to certain death if he had asked her to come with him.

What had he been thinking?

The window beside his bed was open, casting the light of the full moon on his bed. Despite the horrifying nightmare still plaguing him, he turned his head to look at the moon.

"That was horrible wasn't it?" Orora asked from where she sat at the foot of his bed. He always turned to look at her whenever she would appear like this.

But right then, he couldn't.

The image of her so hurt and burned was still too fresh in his mind.

"Don't worry, I've had the same dreams. Though in mine everyone I care about or love always die."

Finally, he turned his head, only to meet her gaze and having his heart stop.

She looked so sad.

So utterly heartbroken.

He had done that to her, he suddenly realized as she stood to walk up next to him beside the bed. He had made her so incredibly unhappy because of his choice. Because he had wanted his old life back.

He had thrown everything they had in her face and just left her.

His stomach roiled inside him, and if he had anything in it, Zuko was sure he would throw up.

She was standing in a patch of moonlight, appearing as ethereal as the Moon Spirit herself as she looked at him. His mouth opened, wanting to say something, anything to her.

But she beat him to it.

"I hope you found whatever it was you were looking for Zuko. I hope it was all worth it in the end."

He blinked and she was gone.

————————–

"Hey guys, we need to talk." Katara called out to everyone, minus Orora. The older girl had volunteered to go get some food from the nearby town they had saved a few days ago.

"About your hair loopies and how out of fashion they were so you're gonna keep this hairstyle instead?" Sokka quipped from where he was cleaning his brand new sword.

His sister glared at him. "No, this is serious. Its about Orora." Her glare melted away to a look of concern. "I'm worried about her." She revealed. Almost instantly the very atmosphere of their small camp became somber. Sokka put his sword down, Toph stopped tossing the space rock in the air, and Aang paused where he had been playing with Momo.

"She's not acting like herself." Katara continued, worry evident in her tone as she spoke. Aang sat up straighter. "You've noticed it too?" He asked, wanting to confirm her words. Sokka frowned in thought where he sat, a hand coming up to stroke his chin in thought.

"Come to think of it, she has been acting a little strange the past few days." He commented. "I mean every time I wake up at night to use the little boy's bush, she's always awake. No matter what time of night."

Aang nodded. "Yeah I mean, have you seen the circles under her eyes, and she hasn't been practicing her bending either. When was the last time any of you saw her actually practice. She was so strict about it in the first week or so since we left the ship."

Pursing her lips Katara stepped forward. "Its not just that, I've noticed she's not eating enough. She's even thinner then when we started traveling through the Fire Nation. And I've seen her give her food to Momo or Appa most of the time." Toph, not wanting to keep what she had discovered to herself sat up.

"Guys, there's something else I've noticed." She revealed. As everyone stared at her eagerly, she continued. "Sometimes, I feel her heart pause before picking back up again." She frowned. "Its strange as if her heart.......skipped a beat or something."

Aang's eyes widened in horror, a thought forming in his mind as Katara spoke. "But isn't that dangerous? Does she have a heart condition we don't know about?" She asked, looking around the group the worry clear in her eyes. Sokka, noticing Aang's expression frowned.

"You okay there Aang?" He called out, to which the younger boy pursed his lips. "I am, but I think I know why Orora is acting the way she is." He revealed. The other three stepped forward, demanding to know what he knew.

They were all worried about Orora. Where she had been the one to get them to get up every morning during those horrible days when Aang was in a coma, now she was the last one up. She would go about her day in a strange way, as if she had no desire to do what she was tasked to do.

Aang held up a placating hand. "Look what I know, I can reveal until I ask Orora. Its her secret, and I don't want to betray her. But!" He called over the sounds of protests that greeted his words. "I have an idea."

Quickly pulling out a map of the Fire Nation, he spread it on the ground. The rest of them crouched over it, heads brushing together. "We're near this waterfall and its surrounded by a lot of rocks so that will give us some cover to just have a mini-vacation." He looked at each of his friends. "We'll stay there for a few days and maybe, without the constant moving around, Orora will be able to rest properly, and even tell us whats bothering her."

Everyone looked to Sokka for confirmation, hoping that the little detour wouldn't come in the way of the route he had designed for them. But Sokka wasn't even thinking of that. He was thinking of his friend, and how sad she appeared all the time.

Her sadness was familiar to him.

Somehow.

The sadness in her eyes, was the same he had carried after Yue had died.

Nodding in determination he grinned. "Alright then Gaang. Operation Get Orora To Her Normal Self will launch tomorrow."

————————–

It was late at night, and he was sitting beside the pond he had frequented so often with his mother. The garden was empty, silence surrounded him as he stared into the clear water of the pond, the moon shining her light down on it, reflecting her silvery glow against the flat surface.

————————–

It was late at night, and she was sitting in front of the fire, while everyone else slept around her. The silence of the night was broken by the sound of fire crackling and the occasional snapping of a twig whenever the fire would eat away at the flesh of the wood. The warmth of the fire enveloped her.

————————–

He was sitting with his legs pressed to his chest, his chin resting between his knees. While one arm was wrapped around his legs, the other was held aloft in front of him, his fingers holding up the small comb he had found laying on the battle-ridden floor of the catacombs.

————————–

She was sitting with her legs pressed to her chest, her chin resting between her knees. Both her arms were wrapped around her legs, keeping herself in a semi fetal position as she stared into the fire. The fire continued to flicker, casting strange shadows against her brown skin.

————————–

This was all he had left to remember her by. A comb. A blue comb with a dragon. Ironic that it was a dragon since it was the symbol for fire. Ironic that it was blue, the color of her Nation. Or more specifically, her eyes.

Her gorgeous ice blue eyes.

————————–

The fire was all she had left to remember him by. The fire that burned within him. The fire that burned in his hands when he fought an opponent. Maybe it was her imagination, but if she stared hard enough, she could picture his eyes looking back at her through the fire.

His beautiful warm amber eyes.

————————–

His heart clenched in his chest, so painful that he actually grunted softly from the pain of it. His mind conjured memory after memory. Memories of her. Of the brief life they had shared before and in Ba Sing Se. All those moments where nothing else had mattered.

Nothing except her.

————————–

Her heart clenched in her chest, so painful that she actually grunted softly from the pain of it. Her mind conjured memory after memory. Memories of him. Of the brief life they had shared before and in Ba Sing Se. All those moments where nothing else had mattered.

Nothing except him.

————————–

He brought the comb to his chest, as if it would alleviate the pain he felt.

————————–

She had nothing to comfort her, nothing to remember him by except her memories.

————————–

He now understood why he was seeing her everywhere. Why everything he did reminded him of her. Why she plagued his mind no matter the time of day or night. Why he could not eat or sleep.

————————–

She now understood why she was feeling the way she did. Why everything she did reminded her of him. Why he plagued her mind no matter the time of day or night. Why he could not eat of sleep.

————————–

He just missed her so much.

————————–

She just missed him so much.

————————–

As they both buried heir faces in their arms, Zuko with tears stinging his eyes, and Orora with a vacant emotionless expression on her face, they both missed the way their strings glowed.

And they continued to glow throughout the night.

Fate had intended them to see the light, yet neither of then saw it.

Instead they each succumbed deeper and deeper into their mutual pits of utter despair and hopelessness.

————————–

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vivwritesfics · 7 months

Text

Mini Me

With how shitty my life is rn, I keep having these depressive episodes. Turns out my depressive episodes breed fluff

Max's six year old son has just started karting and his wife has to take him. Boy oh boy, does he miss his wife and son.

"So, Max, can we expect to see your little one around the paddock today?"

Ever since the day he was born, Fabian Verstappen had been seen with his parents around the Formula One paddock. He was always smiling and waving at those he knew and those he didn't. Fabian Verstappen was the happiest boy around.

Max was very proud of his boy. He showed him off to whoever he could. When he was young, he sat on Max's hip while he completed interviews and such.

Fabian was Max's number one supporter (Tied only by Max's wife and Fabians mother, Y/N. She followed him around the world three times before agreeing to marry him. It was a year long engagement, and in that time Y/N found out she was pregnant. They managed to keep it hidden until after their wedding, although Y/N did have to get a dress that better fit her bump).

There was a year between Fabian being born and him being able to attend his first race. Christian was happy to get him fitted out in Red bull Racing merchandise. He got his own little hat and a too large Red bull shirt with a thirty three on it (Max had lost that years championship. Red bull had won the constructors but Max had just missed out on the WDC. Red bull had worked out the kinks in the car and Max was bound to win this year, just as he had the previous year).

This year was the first year Fabian and Y/N weren't there to cheer Max on. And interviewers certainly picked up on it.

"Uh, no," Max answered when they asked about Fabian. "He and my wife are at a karting event right now."

The interviewer gave him a nod. "Following in your footsteps perhaps?"

Letting out a laugh, Max nodded his head. "We can only hope," he said.

"Do you think we'll be seeing him in a Red bull Racing suit in the next fifteen years?"

Again, Max nodded his head. "If he's anything like his dad, he'll be in a Red bull Racing suit before that," he said and adjusted the cap on his head.

Max left the interview and checked his phone. As much as he wanted Fabian and Y/N at his race, he knew how important karting was to his son.

Max has always been Fabian's hero. His first full sentence was 'I wanna be like daddy'. Max and Y/N did whatever they could to make Fabian's dream come true.

The one thing Fabian wanted but he couldn't have was to have his daddy at his karting races, watching him. There had been a lot of screaming and crying while Max and Y/N tried to explain to him why his father couldn't be there.

But Fabian had made friends at his Karting matches. He and the other kids he had raced against got along like peas in a pod. Fabian's first ever play date was with his karting friends. Some of them had been sat with their eyes and mouths wide open while Max brought them juice. They couldn't believe he, their hero and favourite driver, was Fabian's dad.

Max pulled out his phone and checked his messages. Nothing from his wife yet, but Fabian's race should have been done, he realised when he checked the time.

Dialling her number, Max pressed his phone to his ear.

It took Y/N a moment to pick up. "Hey handsome," she said in a chipper voice when she picked up the phone. Her voice was distant and slightly distorted, and Max realised she was in the car.

"Hello, Liefje. How's our little racer?" He asked her.

"Daddy! Daddy!" Came Fabian's voice. "I won! I won! I won!" He shouted.

Well, that answered Max's question. His cheeks were warm as he smiled, listening to his son. "Ik ben zo trots op je, mijn jongen. Ik kan niet wachten om jullie twee weer te zien!" (I'm so proud of you, my boy. I can't wait to see you too again!)

There was a moment before Fabian responded. He was fluent in English and French, but he was only good at Dutch. It still took him some time before he could work out what Max was saying and respond.

"Papa, ik... heb een... trofee." (Daddy, I got a trophy.)

There was a certain sense of joy that filled Max whenever Fabian answered him in Dutch. "Fabi, make sure mommy sends me a picture of your trophy," he said.

"I will do, Maxy," Y/N responded for the little boy. "Fabi, what do we say to papa?"

Again, Fabian was quiet for a moment. "Oh!" He suddenly cried from the back of the car. "Good luck with your race, Papa! Maybe you can win like me!"

The Verstappens laughed.

"Good luck, Max. Call me after you've won."

"I will, Liefje. I love you."

"I love you too."

Max hung up the phone after that. He his qualifying to get ready for. As he got ready, though, he spent the entire time thinking about his wife and son. He checked his phone constantly, waiting for Y/N to send over the picture of Fabian and his trophy.

No father had ever been prouder of his little boy than Max. Fabian was his everything and he couldn't wait to see him in the big leagues. Who knows, maybe Max would still be racing alongside him. Maybe he'd have Horner's job, team principle of Red bull Racing while his son raced as their number one driver.

No matter what, Max would always be Fabian's number one supporter.

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cinnamon-galaxies · 2 months

Note

Hi! I saw that your request box was open. Could I request a Alastor x fem!reader who is a mornigstar, charlie's older sister and she is engaged with Alastor. In episode 5, Dad beat Dad, I thought their relationship is kept secret and was revealed later on shocking lucifer and their friends

Dad beat Fiancé beat Dad

Pairings: Alastor x Fem!Reader / Alastor x Morningstar!Reader

Tags: hurt/comfort, (a little bit of) fluff, secret relationship/engagement, Alastor vs Lucifer, Morningstar!Reader, Fem!Reader

Warnings: language/swearing, kiss, argument/bickering, reader is Charlie’s older sister, English is not my first language!

Summary: You are Charlie's older sister and secretly engaged to Alastor. When your sister invites your father to the hotel to ask for his help with her rehabilitation program, you look forward to his arrival. However, things take a turn when tensions escalate between your father and your fiancé, leading to heated bickering. Overcome with frustration, you finally lash out and accidentally reveal your engagement to the King of Hell and the hotel's residents.

Wordcount: 5.4k

A/N: This one turned out so long! I really hope you like it and that the story meets your expectations! English is not my first language so I want to apologize for possible grammar and spelling mistakes. I really tried my best to make as few mistakes as possible!

───*✱*.｡:｡*✱*.:｡.*✧*.:｡*✰*｡:.*✧*.｡:.*✱*｡: ｡.*✱*───

“Well, I’m actually running a hotel to rehabilitate sinners. Maybe you saw our commercial,” you heard your younger sister speak into the telephone, releasing a nervous chuckle here and there. Then a sigh escaped her lips. “Listen, dad, I’ve got kind of a big ask…” You stood a few feet away and stared at her, unsure what to think of this whole idea. Was it really that smart to ask your father to organize another meeting with heaven? The last one already didn’t end well. But what other choice was left for you? Still, it released a weird feeling inside your guts, now that you watched Charlie calling your dad, since your and your sister’s relationships with him were kind of… special. Your father tended to distance himself from the both of you for the most time, bathing in his own emotional dilemma and not even trying to do anything about it. Thus neglecting the both of you. Well, at least he called your sister five months ago regarding that meeting with Adam in heaven’s local embassy. But when it comes to you it’s been even longer since you’ve talked. Maybe a year? Or even longer. You didn’t actually know and also some part within you didn’t even want to. But what you knew is that you missed him. Although, in contradiction, you weren’t really fond of him at the moment. It’s not that you didn’t love him. He was your father, regardless, and you both shared a lot of wholesome and fun memories. But since your mother had left him seven years ago, things had turned out strange and you didn’t really approve of his weird-ass behavior towards you and your sister. Still, you hoped your father would agree to help you out. Maybe, just maybe, there was a probability that you saw him again. You had so much to tell him. Your life has changed a lot since you started supporting your sister in the hotel. And even before, when you met Alastor…

Lost in your thoughts you missed parts of the phone call and as your consciousness returned to reality, you saw your sister taking the phone down and ending the call. Curious about the outcome you cocked your head. “What did he say?”

“Well,” Charlie stared at an empty space for a brief moment, “it seems that dad will be coming over.”

Your mouth fell agape and your eyes widened in surprise. “Wait, really?” you asked her and a huge smile grew on your face. “That’s awesome! When?”

Charlie proudly straightened her back and stemmed her hands into her hips. “We have an hour until he gets here.”

You turned around to face the other residents who sat on the couch and raised your voice, “Okay people. Dad’s on his way, so we’re getting this place presentable and we are all going to make an amazing impression. Let’s go!”

That’s when Vaggie spoke up, “That’s a great idea! Husker, Angel and I will go get some decorations for the lobby,” her eyes wandered down to Niffty, “Niffty, you and Sir Pentious will bake some cookies so we have something to eat when it’s time for coffee.”

Nifty nodded exaggeratedly, almost vibrating from that force she put into her motion. She instantly grabbed Sir Pentious’s hand and dragged him down the hallway towards the kitchen. When Husker, Angel and Vaggie went to get the decorations from the storage room you and Charlie were left alone.

“Are you as excited as I am?” You asked her with a moving voice and examined your sister expectantly. It was no secret that Charlie took that whole situation with your father a bit differently from you. While you almost imploded waiting to get a chance to meet him again, your sister was more reserved and kept herself a bit more distant from him. Even though she was the one your father seemed to favor when it came to dealing with the conflict with heaven. It didn’t matter that you were the older daughter…

“Ahm… I don’t know,” Charlie responded nervously stroking her neck, “I mean, yes, I am. But at the same time…” She hesitated and you put your hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t worry, sis. I can understand,” you reassured her with a calm voice and smiled at her with genuine eyes. You could feel her shoulders relax under your supporting gesture.

“Thank you,” she responded and returned your smile. “It’s just… You know, since he and mom split, I often don’t feel like his daughter anymore. Yet he sounded very excited to come over.”

You took a deep breath and removed your hand from her shoulder. “We’ll see how things are going when he arrives.”

Charlie chuckled. “Well, I think you should go and inform Alastor about our special guest,” she requested, raising her eyebrows in concern. Charlie was the only person at the hotel who knew about your secret relationship with him. When you decided to knock on the door to propose your support to your sister, you and Alastor were already dating. In fact, you were the one who dragged him here because – regardless of his fearful and sketchy reputation – you knew he’d make a great hotelier and protector for the residents during future exterminations. But you both didn’t introduce yourselves as a couple right away. Instead, you found common ground in letting your sister know but keeping it hidden from the other residents. There were several reasons you both had decided against making your relationship public: Alastor’s reputation as the Radio Demon, yours as Lucifer’s oldest daughter, the gossip, the media… These and many more were all things you didn’t want to deal with. Especially since Alastor was a very private person who despised showing affection outside his private space and you, as a person who had no desire to brag about your partner, were totally fine with it. What happened in private chambers stayed in private chambers. That was your agreement, and if you let your friends know about your relationship, there would be too much risk that it would eventually become public. The only other person next to Charlie, and outside the hotel, who knew about your and Alastor’s connection, was his decades-long friend Rosie.

Repeating your sister's request in your head you nodded in agreement. It was the best to prepare Alastor. Even though an hour alone wouldn’t be long enough for him to digest the fact that he was about to meet your father. “Oh, I think he’ll be excited about the news,” you responded with a sarcastic tone and couldn’t help but release a malicious laugh. Oh, how much he will hate this...

You heard Charlie laughing along and shaking her head in amusement. But as quickly as the amusement appeared, it disappeared as you continued to think about the fact that Alastor was actually going to meet your father. With a deep breath you dropped your smile and lowered your voice. “Do you think it would be a good idea to tell dad about Alastor and me?”

“Ahm…” Charlie seemed to think about it more carefully before commenting, “I actually don’t know… I wish I could tell you but that’s something you and Alastor have to decide. First of all, I’d wait until after they had their first impressions of each other. Then… maybe… introduce him to the truth? I mean, if you and Alastor plan to stay together, what I hope – I mean… It’s obvious, why else would you date if it isn’t for staying together?” She chuckled at how much she was lost in her words and cleaned her throat. “I’m sorry. What I mean to say is that it would be beneficial for your shared future if you let dad know. At least at some point in the future.”

You nodded in understanding and gifted her a slight smile. “Thank you. Maybe I’ll talk to him about this later. First of all, I need to prepare him for meeting his soon-to-be father in law.” You laughed and excused yourself before you left the lobby and went upstairs.

When you arrived at Alastor’s radio station you knocked on the door.

“You may come in!” you heard Alastor’s dulled voice through the door and opened it. When you entered the radio station you immediately saw him sitting at his desk, leaning over some papers and holding a pen in his hand. When you closed the door, he placed the pen to the side and turned to look at you.

“Why hello, darling,” he greeted you, his signature smile on his face but his red eyes revealing a neutral expression. “What brings you here?”

“Well...” You took a deep breath and strolled towards him with your hands folded behind your back and your lips pressed to your teeth. “I’ve got some news for you that you’ll probably hate.”

“Oh?” he responded curiously and tilted his head to the side. His red hair swayed with the movement.

You arrived at his desk and leaned against the tabletop, your front mostly faced towards him. You tilted your head in the same direction as he did and couldn’t manage to suppress an amused smile. “My dad will be here in less than an hour,” you said with a cocky voice and watched Alastors expression shift as his lips curled up around his smile and his eyes immediately twitched. An awkward silence fell over the room before he broke it with a snippy tone, “You’re right. I hate that news.” His neck returned to a straight and more natural position and you chuckled.

“Vaggie’s the one to blame. She came up with the idea that Charlie should call him to ask for help because she could no longer bear seeing my sister ripping her hair out in despair over her missing rehabilitation success,” you explained and a growl escaped Alastor’s throat. He already didn't like Vaggie and now he probably liked her even less.

“Splendid,” he said without enthusiasm and stood up from his chair, grabbing his microphone cane and leaning on it. Now taller than you, you had to tilt your head back to be able to look him in the eyes. “How about I excuse myself and disappear for another set of seven years?”

“Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” you responded, raised your index finger and waved it in front of him. “You will stand your ground and behave. It’s just my dad.”

“He’s the king of hell, darling.”

“And that's why you'll be going down there and prove to him that you're a worthy partner for his princess daughter.”

He gritted his teeth and your smile widened as you nonchalantly brushed the wrinkles out of his coat.

“Are you questioning my abilities, darling?” He asked, placing one of his hands on top of yours, thus stopping your movements and squeezing it.

You felt your cheeks blush at his affectionate action and stepped closer to him, your body now close enough that it almost touched his. You could feel the warmth radiating off him and tilted your head slightly, your eyes still locked with his. “No, I’m not. And that’s exactly why I want you to do as I said.”

“Oh, is her dear royal highness misusing her mightiness to give me an order?” he asked with a low and unusually soft voice and a shiver ran down your spine. Oh, how you loved it when he became flirty. His charm was able to captivate you instantly, weakening your legs and waking those tingling butterflies in your stomach. He removed your hands from his coat and pulled you closer to him. Your body now touching his, you felt the urge to rest your head into the crook of his neck but resisted.

“She indeed is. And you better behave, peasant,” you teased him back and Alastor narrowed his eyes at you degrading him like this.

He let go of one of your hands and instead cupped your cheek before using his fingers to lift your chin up. “You seem to forget that I’m your finacé”, he purred, leaning in closer until only a few inches separated your noses from touching. His hot breath stroked your face and you could’ve sworn that his eyes had turned to a darker hue.

Without further hesitation he pulled you into a tender kiss. His lips brushed over yours and you leaned in closer, succumbing yourself completely to him. Your free hand roamed up and slid through his hair, pressing his face closer to yours. After a few moments of togetherness both of you let go of each other.

“We should return to the foyer. My dad can arrive any minute,” you said and stroked his cheek before heading towards the door. You could hear Alastor sigh behind you.

“Just as a reminder: I can’t promise you things will go well.”

You rolled your eyes as you left the radio station together. “At least try.”

After you entered the foyer most preparations were already done and it didn’t take long until your father arrived. Your body was shaking from excitement as you and Charlie went up to the door and your sister opened it.

"Charlie!,” your father shouted with joy. A huge grin sat on his face and his yellow eyes sparkled as his gaze fell on your sister who stood much closer to him. He held out his arms and approached her, pulling her into a hug. “It’s so good to see you!”

“It’s good to see you too, dad,” Charlie pressed through the tight hug of her father, overwhelm and a little bit of uncomfort in her expression.

When Lucifer let go of her his eyes fell on you. "Y/N! You’re here too?” his pupils dilated in surprise and you immediately found yourself wrapped in his arms as well.

“Dad!” you greeted him as you placed your hands around his torso and squeezed, the soft fragrance of his cologne entering your nose. He smelled the same he always did, the scent taking you back to the past when your family was still together and healthy. It was wonderful to be this close to him after such a long time and you wished this moment could last longer. You looked to the side and saw Alastor standing near your sister. But what you didn’t see was one of his eyes twitching at your father’s gesture.

You let go of each other and Charlie held out her hand, spinning and pointing at the lobby. “Welcome to the Hazbin Hotel!”

The other residents greeted him with waving hands from afar and your father smiled back at them, walking through the lobby and letting his gaze wander around. “Wow, this place looks, uh…” he twisted his mouth in an unpleasant manner and frowned, searching for the right words. He chuckled nervously and you and Charlie exchanged glances as he stammered around, turning to the side and surveying the establishment as if he was a property inspector. You could tell that nervousness spread across Charlie’s face as she probably hoped his words wouldn’t be too dismissive. You shrugged your shoulders at her to dismiss your father’s unsettling behavior and followed him.

“What do you think, dad?” you dared to ask him in hopes he’d come up with a response a little faster if you pushed on him a little.

“It’s got a lot of character,” he eventually said and winched with a squeak when he turned around and laid eyes on the bar. “What in the unholy hell is that?” he asked repulsively and pointed to the swampy-looking counter decorated with skulls and two full snake skeletons wrapped around the poles. The green wood paneling disrupted the noble red wallpaper of the looby, making it appear like an eyesore amidst the otherwise mostly luxurious decor.

A dark shadow crawled around the floor and took the form of Alastor who appeared right next to him. “Just some of the renovations we had done! ” he explained, pointing his cane at the bar, his signature smile wide and confident before he turned towards Lucifer and leaned on his cane. “Adds a bit of color, don’t you think?”

“And you are?” Lucifer asked with raised eyebrows, a skeptical tone in his voice.

�� You, again, exchanged glances with Charlie and held your breath. The moment has come in which your father and your financé had their first contact and somehow you got the feeling that this won’t end well. Your sister seemed to be fearing the same and she stepped closer to you. Her presence calmed your tension at least a little.

“Alastor,” your finacé introduced himself, “Pleasure to be meeting you, sir. Quite a pleasure!” He shook your fathers hand and you could see the disapproval in both their eyes, before they let go. Your father grimaced while Alastor wiped his hands over his coat.

This most definitely won’t end well. But before you and Charlie could say something, Alastor continued, “It’s nice to finally put a face to the name. You are much shorter in real life.”

You breathed in sharply. Your father didn’t seem to take his comment well as his expression immediately turned to annoyance. You and Charlie both approached them, your sister standing next to your father while you kept closer to Alastor. You really hoped that he’d notice your disapproval over how things were going and slow down a bit. But you knew him well enough to be sure he wouldn’t notice the tension in the room and also wouldn't care if he did.

“Who is this?” your father asked, his eyes fixated on the demon before him. “Who’s this now? Are you the bellhop?”

Alastor laughed in response. “No! I’m the host of the hotel. You might’ve heard of me from my radio broadcast,” he explained.

Your father pretended to ponder his words for a very short moment but then denied with a derogatory snort. “Nope! I guess that’s why Charlie called it the ‘Hazbin Hotel’?” He laughed at his pun, this time more maliciously. The tension grew stronger and you didn’t even realize that you held your breath and pressed your fists so tightly together that your nails painfully stung your palms. Your sister, on the other hand, nervously rubbed her hands.

Hiding his offense, Alastor piled into your father’s laughter, “It was actually my idea.”

“Well, it’s not very clever!” your father responded, increasing his laugh.

Alastor did the same and leaned in closer, “Fuck you.”

“Alastor!” you yelled at him in shock and disbelief over his rude words and took him by his arm, dragging him to the side while your sister shoved your father into the other direction.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” you scolded him with a lowered voice to keep your conversation as private as possible. He’d never been someone who cussed so why did he have to do this now of all times?

“He started it,” Alastor explained, keeping his face turned in the other direction to avoid eye contact.

You breathed in sharply, anger boiling within you as you hissed, “I don’t care about who did what. You were supposed to make a good impression!”

“Excuse me, dear, but it seems that your father and I don’t get along. And this seems to be based on mutuality. I don’t know if you noticed this but he already looked at me disapprovingly before we even exchanged words.”

Oh, you did notice this. But you didn’t care because in this moment it was important for both of them to at least pretend to tolerate each other. You couldn’t afford your father and your finacé to already disembowel each other during their first encounter. Important aspects of your shared future relied on their correlation. And… Was Alastor even listening to you?!

You snatched his cane out of his hands and spinned it around.

Alastor finally turned to look at you, his teeth gritted and his eyebrows pushed together. His gaze became softer as he eyed your expression but he still seemed tense.

“You’ll put this right, Alastor. Or otherwise…” You don’t finish your sentence and instead poke the pointy end of his cane between his ribs.

“Fine,” he growled and took his cane back.

You both turned around and saw Charlie pushing your father in your direction, her arm resting on his shoulder while she talked to him insistently with a calm but worried voice, “Without Alastor, we wouldn’t have been able to pretty it up this much!”

Alastor took a step closer, tapping his fingertips on his cane. “Charlie has a very unique vision,” he started and stood next to her, forcing himself to sound as honest and courteous as possible, “I am happy to fulfill her bizarre requests.”

“Thank you, Alastor”, your sister responded, ignoring your frowning father who looked anything but amused.

Alastor continued, “Quite an impressive young lady. We’re all very proud of her.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and Charlie gave him a genuine smile before he let go and turned towards you. “And her sister, Y/N, well…” He laid his red eyes on you with a genuine and almost loving smile and rested his hand on your shoulder, squeezing it slightly in an almost unnoticeable but reassuring manner. “She’s an extraordinary being. Introduced me to this very special place so we can give her sister all the support and assistance she needs.”

You smiled at him, grateful that he followed your request to at least try to make things right.

Your father growled and narrowed his eyes as he noticed the way Alastor looked at you, the demon’s hand on your shoulder triggering his already strained nerves. He snatched his head in the other direction to face your sister. “Charlie… Why don’t you introduce me to your other friends?”

“Oh, yes, of course!” she called out and walked up to the other residents. “This is Vaggie. She’s my girlfriend!” She pulled Vaggie with her who shyly raised her hand in a reserved greeting gesture.

Your father laughed and his mood immediately switched from annoyance to excitement. “Oh my golly! You like girls? So do I! We have so much in common!” He pulled Vaggie in a rushed embrace, letting her go as fast as he got close to her. “She’s beautiful!”

You felt your heart sink in your chest at your father’s opposite reaction to your sister’s partner and a strike of anxiety hit you at the thought of telling him the truth about you and Alastor. It wasn’t only the fact you both were a couple that made you this insecure but the fact that you were even engaged to him.

Alastor seemed to sense your inner tension and squeezed your shoulder again, now with more pressure and you were grateful for him that he hadn’t removed his hand yet. His closeness was exactly what you needed at this moment. You moved a bit closer to him, hoping that you both didn't appear too close in the other eyes, and breathed in his scent while your thoughts raced in your head. You reviewed the events again and realized that Alastor was right. You had little reason to be so angry (only) at him because your father didn’t really behave either from the first second. Hopefully you could somehow dismiss this conflict as a matter of miscommunication between them.

You watched your sister introduce your father to the other residents which he seemed to get along with very well – contrary to your finacé who seemed to be the only one he immediately despised.

You sighed and that’s when your father turned around to face the lobby. With a determined expression he raised his voice so everybody could hear him, “Well, it looks like I could give you some help. With a little bit of alakazam,” he wiggled his fingers, indicating a magic spell, “we could turn this place into something much more appealing! I mean, who needs a busboy now that you got the chef?” He faced Alastor with narrowed eyes and poked his elbow teasingly into Charlie’s side.

You could feel Alastor’s grip on your shoulder tightening. His smile turned into a strained grin as he obviously thought about saying something. You begged that he kept his mouth shut to not reinforce their conflict…

“Well, Charlie…” your father continued before Alastor could even say something, “I’m not almighty but I could give you a lot. Almost anything, if you ask for it. You know, normally, I’d charge a lot for my help but since you’re my daughter and I love you with all my heart, it’s a matter of course I do it for free. Unlike that sketchy prick who probably has some devious intentions in his mind.” He raised his cane and pointed at Alastor.

Charlie blinked a few times and pressed a nervous and drawled ‘Thank you…’ through her uncomfortable smile. It was obvious that she didn’t approve of your father’s comment but she also didn’t want to increase the drama by intervening.

Alastor took his hand off your shoulder and leaned on his cane. “At least I’ve been here from the start,” he commented and eyed his claws with a hint of arrogance.

You breathed in sharply but tried your best to keep your patience up as Alastor continued his monologue. “Let's not forget that I’ve always been faithful to you, Charlie. I support you, care for you and this hotel, and execute whatever you demand”, he exclaimed with such confidence that it was almost awkward listening to him.

“That’s true,” your sister responded carefully with a grateful smile on her face and your father rolled his eyes. “You know, dad, Alastor does a lot for the hotel and its residents.”

“No matter his capabilities, because sometimes, Charlie, there’s no substitute for pure angelic power, which – not to forget – also happens to be your blood!”

“Dad…” Charlie sighed and you growled, the anger cooking inside of you.

“Sadly, there are times a birth parent is a dud,” Alastor interfered again, his grin still as prominent as always but his eyes narrowed, darting invisible arrows at Lucifer. He straightens his back to appear even taller in comparison to your father, the arrogance undeniable in his expression. “Seems like the family you chose is better.”

“You’re such a loser!” your dad spat out.

“And yet here you are proving me right with every word you speak,” Alastor snatched back.

“You know nothing, you prick!”

“Well, unlike you, I don’t abandon my responsibilities!”

“How do you dare question my commitment?”

“At least I care for your daughters.”

“Oh you tacky little piece of–!”

You jumped between them. “Shut the fuck up! Both of you!”

you yelled as your anger burst through the walls you’ve tried to maintain hold of. Your voice cracked with the strain of suppressed fury and your appearance began to morph into a much more demonic form as pointy horns grew out of your head and your eyes turned a gleaming bloody red. “I’m sick of you bickering like children, you fucking attention whores! Is this how you get your kicks, by not being able to keep your mouths shut over such trivial nonsense? Do you even realize how goddamn irritating it is for the rest of us to be subjected to your constant squabbling? You know each other for ten minutes and already start pushing each other to the limits!”

“Y/N–,” Alastor tried to interrupt you but you stretched out your arm, pushing him away from you.

“No, Alastor, back the fuck off!” you scream, looking up in his red eyes and poking his chest angrily with your index finger. “Everytime I tell you to keep your shit together and make a good impression, you make things worse!”

Your head snatches around and you now stare at your father with the same fury in your eyes. “And you, dad, stop your irresponsible nonsense and don’t taunt him as if he were a punching bag for your own insecurities!” Now you poke at your father’s chest, towering over him with floating hair and fire in your eyes. “Because Alastor’s right! Where have you been all the time? Instead of helping us and supporting Charlie in her project, you didn't even contact us! Especially not me! The last time I heard from you was over a year ago! And now you come here, finally ready to help your daughters, and the moment you arrive you start lashing out at my fiancé to deflect from your own mistakes because you can't stand the fact that he was there for us while you preferred to wallow yourself in your depression!”

Silence fell over the room when you finished your rant, all eyes locked on you in shock and disbelief over your courage to attack the Radio Demon and the King of Hell himself in such a manner. Your heart raced, pumped your blood through your veins with such a pressure that you felt your whole body pulsating under your tension as relief washed over you.

“Y–,” your dad tried to say, stuttering and completely overwhelmed by your confrontation and what you just revealed to him. “You–, Your… fiancé?” He ripped his eyes open, his mouth agape in disbelief.

You breathed in heavily and closed your eyes for a brief moment, realizing what you just revealed, before you opened them again and responded to his question with a much calmer but also weak and tired voice, “Yes, dad. Alastor is my fiancé.”

“What the fuck?” you could hear Angel exclaim in the background but ignored him.

“Well…” your father hesitated. He struggled hard to find the right words and put his hand over his mouth, rubbing his skin like a stress ball. “Well, I’m… Wow…”

Alastor approached you, his steps echoing from the high walls in the silent room and he put his hand on your shoulder. Feeling his touch through your blouse, caused a jolt of electricity to rush through your body. It erased the rest of your anger and your appearance returned to your normal form. Alastor’s presence calmed you down to an almost relaxed state. You felt the need to lean on him but resisted because everything that just happened was already enough – for you, for your father, your fiancé and all the other residents who were forced to witness this nerve-wrecking spectacle.

You watched your father’s gaze roam over Alastor’s presence, from his head to his toes and from his toes back to his head.

“I–, I don’t know what to say… Uh… I–... I’m speechless,” he stuttered, unable to look away from the man that stood next to you and encouraged you with a little but meaningful gesture and with who you wanted to spend the rest of eternity with. “I–, excuse me. I need some time to think.”

Your father indicated to turn around and leave as your sister grabbed him by his arm, holding him back. “Would you like me to give you a tour around the hotel?” she asked him reassuringly in hope he would agree, what he then did.

“Yes. Please.”

Your sister gave you an encouraging look before she turned around and guided your father towards the stairs, Vaggie following right after to accompany them.

Now, you and Alastor were alone with Angel Dust, Sir Pentious, Husk and Niffty. All of them stared at you, speechless. Especially Husk appeared a bit traumatized by your accidental announcement.

“So… Mister fancy-talk-creepy-voice managed to slide into the royal family?” Angel asked you with interest but you raised your hand, interrupting him.

“Stop it, Angel.”

The spider demon pressed his lips together in a thin line and hummed.

You turned towards Alastor. “Are you mad?” you asked him, afraid that you damaged his trust by revealing your biggest secret you had sworn to keep.

Alastor leaned his head down sideways to look you in the eyes. His grin was replaced by a genuine smile as his red eyes surveyed your expression. “It’s alright, my dear.”

He looked over to the other residents, walking a few steps closer to them and cocked his head in an unnatural and unnerving way. His antlers grew in size with pointy ends while his eyes changed to a black color with red, moving radio dials as irises. “If you dare say a single word about mine and Y/N’s relationship outside of the hotel, I will tear you apart and hang your guts as flags on the hotel roof so everybody will be able to see what happens if you dare gossip about the radio demon and his lady.”

*****

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irndad · 1 month

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a/n: continuation to this, but you don't necessarily have to read it first! all you need to know is reader got shot protecting maeve, and both survived. spencer has been in love with her the entire time.

“Have you called Maeve?”

She asks it on a beautiful, rainy day, about five weeks after the event in question. She’s a little too nonchalant about the whole thing, has been from the start- Spencer’s been correcting for that. He’s been treating her like something fragile, a beautiful glass figure that was almost shattered. This is something he knows irritates her, but how can he not?

He tries not to think of it, but the memory of her in a hospital bed, bandages over her abdomen, the wooziness of giving her blood. He can’t help his caution, now. People assume, quite often that Spencer was unaware of the fact he’s in love with his best friend. Like it was something he didn’t know, didn’t have to live with.

Spencer can be oblivious about a lot of things, but being in love with the person he’s shared a desk with for 4 years is not among them.

“No,” he replies, looking up at her as she sits down, handing him the cup of tea she made him. They’re at his apartment. She’s been cleared for desk work, but Spencer had been nervous about the whole thing. They’ve fallen into a rhythm of her going to his apartment after work, and for how determined he is to tell her how he feels, he’s not really able to pluck up the courage.

“Spence,” she sighs, “You have to call her.”

“I did! When it happened, I called her. We talked. We just don’t talk anymore.”

She furrows her brow in an adorable way, and Spencer’s heart threatens to fall out of his chest. He’s been playing a game of she loves me, she loves me not in his mind for the. Past few weeks.

Took a bullet to see me happy. She loves me.

She stirs her ceramic spoon, the clink of it against the mug fills the silence. She bites her lip, clearly disappointed with his response.

Wants me to call my not but kind-of ex. She loves me not.

She’s wearing this blue floral dress, and he is trying not to stare at where the fabric has ridden up, kissing the skin above her knee. She’s got lipstick on, and he tries not to read into how she’s sitting so close to him. Except he is kind of reading into it.

Before she got hurt, he had tried to shove this feeling down- tried to ignore the swoop of his stomach when she walked by, or when she gave him a compliment, or when she let him do a card trick for her. He tried to shove down how much he fucking hated it the one time she had a date pick her up at the office.

She’s just easy to be in love with. She writes little smiley faces on post-it notes and leaves them on his desk, and when the whole Emily thing had gone down, she’d spent weeks taking care of him through her own grief.

She’s sitting on his couch. Five weeks ago, she was half-dead in a hospital bed, and now she is on his couch, in a beautiful dress after returning from the job they both share.

He does not want to call Maeve.

The comfortable silence turns tense as the episode of Doctor Who plays in the background, and he’s still a little gunshy- she’s breathing, she’s okay. He feels creepy, but he lets his eyes close for a moment so he can hear the sound of her breath, to know it’s still there.

“Spencer,” she says, after she pauses the show, and he turns fully to face her, “I am okay.” She grabs his hand, and he takes a couple of seconds to process the touch as she places it over her own wrist. ‘I am fine. They fixed me up. You are allowed to stop worrying.”

Her tone is even, but intentional. She’s giving him permission, as if his presence is some guilt-driven notion that’s stopping him from getting what he really wants. It’s true, though, that he doesn’t always believe she’s okay. Notices how she’ll wince when she bends a certain way, and the scar by her eyebrow is healing well, but he still searches for it in her face.

He savors the feeling of the soft skin of her wrist under his touch, running his fingers over the junction of her hand and wrist with delicate affection. How she hasn’t figured out he’s in love with her is anyone’s guess.

He wonders what it would feel like to kiss her there.

“I know I can call her,” he manages to say back, meeting her warm gaze in a maybe too honestly in love glance, “I’m where I want to be.”

“Before I got hurt, you picked out an outfit, you asked for advice on dating, Spencer. You did that. I just-“ she sighs, moving her hand from his grasp and pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration, “The piece of you that wanted that is obviously still there. You don’t have to spend a Friday night with me in your apartment because you feel guilty that I got shot.”

“You’re not here because I’m guilty-“

“Then why-“

“You’re in my apartment right now because I am in love with you, and if you’re out of my sight for more than twelve hours than it’s like I forget that you’re still alive. That you didn’t get yourself killed before I ever got the chance to actually tell you.”

He’s not yelling. Well, he’s kind of yelling. Talking loudly, anyway. Her eyes widened and he’s hyperaware of how close she already was, is. She smells like lilies and her, and it’s all so present. She could have died. She might have never heard it.

She’s heard it now, he supposes. All the weeks of agonizing, notebooks he’s managed to fill in the last few weeks trying to figure out a way to say it to her that could charm her into loving him back- all gone. He’s told her, now.

All the cards are in her hands.

Her doe eyes almost sparkle at him, her head tipped to the side in a fond, loving gesture, and he wants to kiss her, wants to feel her faded-lipstick pout against his mouth. He wants his I love you to turn into I can have this.

“Spence,” her voice is a trembling, insecure thing. One half of his mind wants to rage at him- there’s no way she’s going to tell him she loves him back, that someone like her could ever want someone like him. But the other half, one that seems dangerously like hope- she took a bullet for him. She didn’t even think twice. “You’re in love with me?”

It’s like it’s not even him who replies. Some bitter thing takes over his voice and speaks for him.

“How could I not be? It’s you.”

It’s then he notices, that oh, she’s tearing up.

A beat passes, and Spencer sucks in a deep breath before rambling an absurd amount.

“You don’t have to- We can still be friends, obviously, you know that. But we can, I just- I needed to tell you because when you were in that hospital bed and you’d never heard me say it, I just couldn’t live with you never knowing. But now you do, and you don’t feel the same, and that’s okay-“

He doesn’t get to keep talking, because she grabs him by the collar of his shirt and kisses him. She’s warm and beautiful and her hair brushes up against his cheek and there’s something in him that takes over when he moves to cradle her head between his hands, both desperate to keep her in his grasp and savor the moments he gets to hold her. She tastes like cherry chapstick and something completely undefinable.

When she pulls away after a moment that feels entirely too short, heavy lidded eyes meeting his in affection, and Spencer thinks he’d like to do that for the rest of his life.

“I love you too,” she says back, and he commits it to memory, the sound of her so-sweet voice wrapping around the words he’s fantasized about hearing since the first time she smiled at his joke about philosophy. “I’ve loved you a really, really long time, Spence. I just thought I lost my chance, you know with- with everything. I never really thought I had one.”

He can’t even speak, really. He doesn’t think he can wrap his head around the fact that she felt like he wouldn’t like her back.

It doesn’t feel like a concern, now, when he leans in to kiss her again. She smiles into him, and Spencer memorizes the feel of her waist encircled in his arms, when he realizes that this is the heart he is able to hold without limits.

She loves me too, he thinks. She is safe, she is okay, and she loves me back.

On the following Monday, when Morgan sees the two of them with linked hands before Hotch gets to the office, he doesn’t say anything.

He does hand Emily 20 dollars, though.

#spencer reid #spencer Reid fluff #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid x fem!reader #criminal minds #criminal minds x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x y/n #criminal minds fanfic

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wcters · 1 month

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𝟳 𝗠𝗜𝗡𝗨𝗧𝗘𝗦 𝗢𝗙 𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗧 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗬/𝗡 𝗕𝗘𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗖𝗨𝗧𝗘

pairing: matt sturniolo x fem!reader

word count: 2.5k

summary: a video that someone put together of moments where you and matt where being cute

warnings/notes: established relationship, swearing, pda, i’m trying to be inclusive so please let me know what i can do that i haven’t done already!

In the beginning, you could say you were kept a secret, but only because you didn’t want to be in the public that early in your relationship. Besides that, your and Matt’s relationship was never kept hidden. Matt loved you and liked to show you off, but you weren’t a social media person. You were fine with being in the background of things and posted on his social media, but you wanted your private life to stay private. You knew what you were getting into when you decided to date an influencer, and you had no problem with it as long as he respected your wishes, and he did.

You didn’t even know he was an influencer when you met, not being on TikTok a lot. You were working ━━ and still are ━━ at a clothing store in LA when you first bumped into each other ━━ quite literally. You were coming out of the back when he backed up into you. You both apologized and went back to what you were doing. You asked your co-worker if she knew who he was because you thought he was attractive. She told you he had been there a couple times before but didn’t know his name. When you were ringing him through, you gave him his receipt. He grabbed it, wrote something on it, and handed it back to you. Low and behold, it had his phone number and name on it.

Ever since then, you two had been . . . You. You immediately kicked it off, going on dates and hanging out, finding out about how he was a triplet ━━ you assumed after seeing the three of them in the store ━━ and finding out he was famous. You used that word, he denied and told you he wouldn’t call it that making you laugh. You had moved to LA for school, and told him that you wanted your private life to stay private if you got together . . . And it did.

You did end up being in the background of videos and livestreams, posted online, and you did feature in a podcast episode, but you never expected videos or compilations of you or matt, let alone just you, so you were surprised when you saw a video titled 7 minutes of Y/n and Matt being cute. You have to admit you smiled and took a screenshot, planning to show Matt when you next saw him. You would wait if you weren’t impatient . . . But you were. He could watch it later. You hadn’t really had a clue as to what would be in it. You didn’t really pay attention to clips of you or you Matt. You had Matt as your boyfriend to experience those moments.

The first series of clips to show up was the many times you had walked in to Matt’s room while he was streaming, and not realizing until you stopped looking at your phone and saw him looking at you. This was always followed by your voice off camera apologizing and him replying with ‘it’s alright babe. You need me to get off?’ He always asked you that when you walked in, not wanting to put the stream over you, and he never did. If you said no, you’d either lie down in his bed and go on your phone or head out to the couch to watch a movie. If you said yes ━━ which you rarely did unless you had a bad day ━━ he would immediately end his stream with a quick goodbye and his attention was on you in an instant.

There were multiple times where you had to help the boys with something for a video. Whether it was setting something up, figuring something out, etc. you were always there. Sometimes it was off camera, sometimes Nick would cut it out, but this time it wasn’t. You remembered them filming this video, being over there when it happened to help if needed and make sure nothing bad happened (them burning another house down).

The three of them had managed to get it out of the box and bag and get it into the right position, but not how to get some of the poles in. “Maybe we should ask Y/n?” Chris suggested as he held up the tent. “No, we don’t need to.” Matt shut down the question as he fiddled with the metal pole. The oldest and youngest were caught looking at each other before they both yelled ‘Y/n!’ You were seen running in, panic in your eyes before you realized nothing bad had happened. “You scared the shit out of me,” you told them, half scolding them, “either way, what’s up?”

“We need help.” Nick smiled, holding up the tent. “You don’t know how to set up a tent?” “We do, it’s just a bit more confusing inside.” Chris answered. “I had nothing to do with this.” Matt butted in, hands up in defense. “Alright. Back up.” You noticed why Nick maybe kept it in as you watched the clip. You were instructing Nick and Chris who were holding up the tent as Matt was gathering more poles. When you asked him to pass you one, you kissed him on the cheek as a thank you forgetting you were on camera. After that, Matt had looked at you like you hung the moon and the stars. To Nick and Chris, you did as you had help them set this whole thing up. To Matt . . . He was just admiring his girlfriend.

After you had gotten together, it became second nature for him to let you know if he was coming up behind you. His hands would grab your waist while he made his passed you. It was seen in the background of multiple TikToks. You didn’t really notice it happening after the first few times because it had become so normal for you, but clips of these motions had made it into the video. You didn’t think those were caught on camera . . . But you didn’t really mind. You thought maybe part of it was because of you how you met, but you really didn’t know, and you’ve never asked.

The next clip was one you’d never forget. When Nick and Chris asked you to help them prank Matt . . . How could you say no? You would never be involved if it was something bad, and this one wasn’t. You knew about Matt’s “crush” on Liam Neeson ━━ having had an idea before he ever admitted it by the amount of times you watched movies and Liam Neeson just happened to be in it ━━ and almost laughed when they told you the idea.

They had asked you to distract him for a long enough time that they could set up all of the pictures, blankets, etc. You wouldn’t say this to Matt’s face, but his room was a little boring - he had the same black pillows and comforter. Without any of your stuff that you had “left” in the room, you were worried about what it would look like. When it got closer to the time that you would be heading back to the house, you had started to get excited. Matt had noticed this and asked what was up, so you had to play it cool . . . You aren’t good at that and you ended up texted Nick and Chris saying something along the lines of ‘he knows somethings up, I don’t have a poker face.” Either way, he didn’t have a clue what was happening.

Your and Matt’s footsteps could be heard through the camera as you made your way toward the door. Matt had texted his brothers and when they didn’t answer, tried to FaceTime them. That’s what could be seen when Matt opened his bedroom door with you behind him smiling. “Oh . . . my god.” Matt spoke, shock on his face. Chris and Nick laughed in response. “This is the prank?” He asked them, “Liam Neeson all over my bedroom is the prank?” The boys nodded. “Wait - Were you in on this?” Matt asked as he turned to you walking toward him and into the room. “‘Maybe.” You shrugged. “I knew something was up,” he wrapped his arms around you as you walked, “you were acting weird.” “I don’t have a good poker face!”

Matt continued to look around the room before Chris turned his camera to face you. “How do you feel about this?” “Well, it’s just a little more Liam Neeson than normal, but it spices’s his room up a little bit more.” “Totally.” Nick agreed.

You had a habit of leaving your things with Matt. Most of the time, it was due to the lack of much needed pockets in women’s pants. When you didn’t ━━ or forgot to ━━ bring a purse, you’d ask him to throw a chapstick or a hair tie into his pocket or wallet. Other times, you were just too lazy to carry something and didn’t want to stick it in your bra.

You also tended to get Matt little keychains to hang on his backpack or car keys. Most of the keychains were from when you went back to Canada to visit your family and bought him something, but you also liked to thrift them too. He would always take them and immediately put them on something. It was his way of silently showing that your his girlfriend and that he loves you, and the things you do for him. Giving him things was your way of saying he’s yours too.

When they posted the TikTok of guess who’s is who, you expected them to only do their things because it was about them, but you were surprised when you saw little bits of you in there. A Canada keychain hanging on his car keys and backpack, a hair tie with his jewelry, and chapstick with his skincare. The comments were flooded with people talking and mentioning you, knowing which one was Matt’s stuff. You smiled when you saw this being featured, and your comment that said ‘girlfriend duties”.

When you had featured on the Cut the Camera Podcast, you had mentioned the Let’s Trip and Versus tour and how you and Matt had to do long distance for a bit. You went to a few of their shows - being flied out per Matt’s request ━━ but because fn your job, you couldn’t be with them the full time. When they were on tour, it felt like you and Matt never saw each other, but in reality you two spoke almost all the time. To some people, Matt could be described as clingy, but you were too . . . And you didn’t mind that about each other.

You never knew that your FaceTime’s were ever caught in camera, but they were in this video, so you guess they were. The boys had done vlogs on the bus, as well as TikTok’s, and this video showed Matt talking to his phone that showed a blurry you. You didn’t even spot that. You could hear you and Matt talking, but too quietly to make out what you were talking about. Long distance was always hard for you and Matt, but you made it work. You would be stupid not to.

When the boys travelled for videos, you usually didn’t go. Not that you didn’t want to, but you had a job in LA and couldn’t be travelling all the time. But when Matt, Nick and Chris asked you to come with them to Texas to shoot a video for Sam and Colby and tour the city, you said yes. You’ve been to a couple of states in the U.S. and thought ‘why not?’ to visiting Texas. Plus, Matt had talked about that amazing thrift store they went to while on your and you were a sucker for vintage.

You didn’t feature in the Sam and Colby video ━━ besides little bits of you in the background ━━ and offered to film if they needed someone to. Matt was scared, and wanted you there. Nick had gushed to you about him wanting to do the Estes method, and you and him wanted you to witness it. You did, however, feature in the Texas vlog the triplets put out on their channel - being seen in the background. But this clip was a specific one from the video.

You were used to the cold, having grown up in Canada, and handled it pretty well. But one night when you went out for Italian, you didn’t dress well enough for the weather. You didn’t think Texas would be that cold . . . But you assumed wrong. While Nick and Chris were talking to the camera, you were in the background shivering with Matt beside you. You were in a long sleeve, vest, and sweatpants. Your legs were warm, you upper body? Not so much.

“You alright?” Matt asked you, moving behind you to wrap his arms around you. “Yeah, a little cold. But it’s fine.” You replied, leaning into him. Matt was like a walking heater. “You sure? You want to switch jackets?” He leaned his chin on your head, swaying you back and fourth. “I’m alright, but thank you. You’re too sweet.” Your conversation wasn’t heard by the camera, but your movements were. Matt could be seen moving his hands up and down your arms and holding your hand as you walked into the place.

You and Matt had similar, but different music tastes. You would recommend each other songs and made playlists, as well as a playlist you both shared with music you both liked. You two would listen to this constantly; while hanging out, in the car, baking and cooking, just doing regular tasks. Matt had given you some guilty pleasure songs, and you had given him some . . . Though he would have never admitted it to anyone besides you. That was until the truth or eat video.

“What is your guiltiest pleasure song and when was the last time you listened to and got into the groove?” Nick asked Matt. He paused, a couple songs immediately popping into his head. “I got to check,” he said as he took out his phone and opened your shared playlist. “This is one that Y/n showed me one time and she loves it.” Matt clicked the song and it started to play. “That sounds like Y/n,” Chris nodded as Nick agreed. “Yeah, that would be my guilty pleasure song. It’s one of her favourite songs so it’s on a lot.”

You remembered seeing a lot of top comments on the video taking about it and seeing the clip a couple times on TikTok with the comments being the same. The next clip after that one was an Instagram story you posted of you two in the car, Matt driving and lip-syncing to the song. Everyone had freaked out over that.

People would also freak out when you would wear his clothes. You had a habit of doing that, you lived oversized and Matt has Great style. TikTok’s and Instagram stories of you wearing a sweater or sweatpants that people recognized were Matt’s were also littered through the video as well. And moments of him slipping a sweater on you or turning you around to see if it was his.

A lot of the moments included in the compilation were just regular things that couples did . . . But you loved the video. You liked it, and sent it to Matt over text with the message ‘people must really like us’. Safe to say, the person who had made it freaked out.

#emma writes #matt sturniolo x reader #matthew sturniolo x reader #matthew sturniolo x you #matt sturniolo x you #matt sturniolo #matthew sturniolo #nick sturniolo #nicolas sturniolo #chris sturniolo #christopher sturniolo #sturniolo triplets #sturniolo x reader #x fem!reader #x reader #imagine #youtuber #youtube

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queers-gambit · 5 months

Text

Opening Night and Open Hearts

prompt: opening night - a mother's fear, a locked walk-in freezer, confessions through a thick metal door, questioning what's deserved, and a proposal at The Bear after hours.

pairing: Carmen 'Carmy' Berzatto x female!reader

fandom masterlist: FX's The Bear

word count: 9.8k+

note: i think i give enough background for you guys to feel as if you don't need to read any other relating works, but i linked the fics that could be read as a small series (maybe?) also let author be lonely in peace

warnings: reader nicknamed Peach, established relationship, cursing, spoilers, fluff, angst, relationship angst, hurt and comfort, Carmy still (desperately) needs a nap, depiction of physical illness, boys are dumb and emotions are hard, reader-insert, depiction of toxic family, OC Carmy that grovels a lot, not edited!

⚠️ season two, episode ten spoilers

not necessary to read, but other relating works with Peach:

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

God's Plan part two: Two to Tango

Neon Sticky Notes

"Hi, yes, I can hear you - sorry about that, I was just making note of your reservation," you spoke smoothly into the phone, trying not to ogle your boyfriend wrapped in only a clean blue towel. "So, that's a party of four for Monsieur Claude Badeaux - all right, that's so lovely. I'm obligated to remind everyone that tonight's opening is a fine dining experience and the proper, corresponding dress code is being asked for. Are there any allergies I should make note of for your party?"

"Jean Paul has a tree nut allergy," you were told.

"All right, that's noted and highlighted: Jean Paul has a tree nut allergy. If there's anything else I could help you with?"

"Non," he chuckled. "I was surprised to see your invitation to this evening, though, mon cher. It's been so long, yes?"

"Well, it was my pleasure to extend the offer, we're ecstatic by your reservation," you chuckled. "We'll see you tonight, Monsieur, and should you need anything before then, you may call this number again."

You said your parting words in French, smiling at Carmy when you hung up and dropped your work phone. "Did I hear that correct?" Your lover asked with a broad grin, "Was that...?"

"Senior marketing advisor at The Washington Post?" You filled in for him. "Uh, yeah, I think it was, but you know me - I could be wrong."

"You invited someone from The Washington Post to the opening tonight?"

"Is that okay?" You asked, standing from the bed after making note in your datebook. "You look kinda - I don't know, shocked?"

"I-I am," he blinked at you, watching you gather his pristine clothing to hang on the closet door. "But in a good way - I can't believe you did this," he chuckled, wiping his mouth. "I mean - holy shit, Peaches."

You offered a toothy grin, "Figured I could pull a few of my own strings to help get the word out about your love-child."

This made Carmy snicker, "Hey, now. Tonight's important, don't make fun."

"I know," you nodded, leading him back into the bathroom to view your hair products. "Which is why I invited some important people and some not-so important people. I know this is serious, Carmy," you smiled at him, hoping to convey your support, "and I wanted to help in whatever way I could."

"You being there tonight is more than I could ask for," he chuckled, helping you onto the small bathroom counter. You squirted a bit of hair product in your hand, watching him flinch back a little, "Uh, I just don't want my hair greasy, Peach, you know? Not a good look and I'll sweat it out in the kitchen."

"I feel like I should be offended by you having no trust in me," you teased, insisting, "I know whatcha need, baby, lemme help."

Carmy smiled softly and held still, letting you run your hands through his curls to push everything back and away from his forehead in a stylish but manageable "do". There was a silent, serene moment as you and Carmy just existed together in a mundane space, his big, sad eyes watching your face as you worked. He wondered, "Think tonight's gonna be okay?"

"I think tonight's gonna be more than okay," you assured softly. "I think tonight's gonna go better than you're anticipating."

He sighed and planted his hands on either side of you, suddenly dropping his gaze. "I, uh... Sugar invited Mom t'tonight..."

"Yeah, I know."

"You know?"

"Sugar and I are still friends outside of us dating, Carmy," you smiled patiently, slowing your hands so you more toyed with his curls; pushing some strands behind his ears. "She needs someone as much as you do and I don't mind."

"But isn't that what Pete's for?"

"Yes, but you know, Pete's Pete."

Carmy snorted, "Yeah, yeah, good point."

"I don't know if she'll show up tonight, Bear, but whether she does or doesn't, it won't matter - you're not doing this for her. This is for you, Carmy, tonight's about The Bear opening - it's about you and this incredible, amazing thing you've done. Okay?" You caressed both his cheeks in your hands so he could only look at you directly. "If she shows, that's great," you whispered with a soft smile as your thumbs swept the apples of his cheeks, "and if she doesn't, it won't make tonight any less special. That, I can promise."

Carmy's forehead met yours, both pausing to breathe together; peace always a fleeting feeling as of late and being something you both capitalized on. You brought him in closer for an embrace, his face burying in your neck as your arms snaked around his to keep him as close as possible. His arms were tight around your waist, legs spread to accommodate him; both needing the feel of being close before that night's inevitable stressful event.

"Wow, well, don't you look all pretty! Wow, Peach," Pete greeted you when you scurried to the table with your friend in tow. "Oh, hi there!"

"Pete, this is my best friend, Danielle, and Dani, this is Pete, Sugar's husband."

"Hi, it's really nice to meet you," your friend greeted, the two instantly chattering as they both just blew past their introductions to instantly compliment one another's clothes. You smirked, knowing they'd get along famously, and looked around the brand new, packed restaurant.

"Hey, there she is, my pretty girl," Richie greeted smoothly, approaching your standing form to slide his hand around your shoulders.

"Hi, Cousin," you beamed, offering him a hug in greeting. "The place looks fantastic - it's so - I mean - just wow, Richie," you complimented. "You guys did such an amazing job. I need to tell Fak, too, this is - you guys should be so proud, it looks incredible. Hardly can believe what it was before this."

"It really is something, huh?" He grinned. "Hey, Pete," he nodded.

"Hey, Richie."

"And you must be the famous, the fabulous Miss Danielle?"

"That's me," your friend grinned. "You're Richie, right? Carmy's cousin who's not really a cousin but is as good as blood?"

"Yes, ma'am, the very same," he nodded with pride. "We've some drinks coming your way in just a moment, but I need to borrow Peach for just one second."

"Why do they call her Peach?" Dani asked, but Richie was leading you away as Pete was heard answering,

"Oh, because she mastered this peach cobbler with Carmy's mom, Donna, and she started the nickname..."

"What's wrong?" You asked softly with a smile as to not give the illusion to others that you were worried. "What can I do to help?"

"No, no, nothing too bad, you were just requested by the Frenchie-French guy."

"Oh, right, that's right, yeah, I can help with that," you sighed gently, smiling as you approached the table. Greeting the two men and women was easy, Richie impressed by your connections in the professional world. Tonight, The Washington Post didn't just dine with them - no, it was also the director of social media for three luxury, designer brands: Jean-Paul.

Yes, the man was so elusive that he just went by Jean-Paul. Fuck a last name!

Either way, it impressed Richie to hear the introductions. The two women were executives in their own companies, names Richie didn't catch because he was busy taking note of the way Mr. Frenchie-French was basically eye fucking you in front of them all.

"Well," Richie smiled stiffly, "tonight's incredibly special for us. In fact, uh, Y/N's boyfriend is the owner and head chef."

"Really?" Frenchie-French perked his brows, shifting his gaze over to you. "You always had a soft spots for chefs, non? For those who were versed in the culinary arts?"

"Well, mostly I appreciated a man in the kitchen simply because I burn water and would probably unintentionally starve myself," you teased easily, deflecting the man's subtle dig. "I'm actually here with family tonight, so, please, ladies and gentlemen, enjoy tonight - I know I'm biased when I say the food is exceptional, but I look forward to your own opinions."

"We will talk later, mon cher, I am sure there will be plenty to discuss," the Frenchman promised, kissing the back of your hand as you let Richie lead you away by your free hand.

You released a long sigh, muttering, "Bring them a bottle of real champagne, please, Richie, I had a few bottles imported just for them. Listen closely," you lowered your voice as you both paused on the side of the dining room, "bring them a bowl of thin sliced strawberries sprinkled in sugar and pop the cork at their table - it's impressive for whatever reason."

Richie pecked your temple and gave you a tight squeeze, "I got it all covered, girly. You all right? Look like you're gonna be sick?"

"Just men being men grosses me out, I guess," you sighed with a small shrug. "He's always had a thing for me, I figured I'd use that to get him here tonight - Carmy's work speaks for itself, but maybe he'd be inclined to publish an article or two for us if I play nice."

Richie paused you a few feet from your table, complimenting, "I hope Carmy knows he doesn't deserve you, Peach."

"You said years ago neither of us did," you smirked gently. "Said I wasn't relationship material, right? Remember?"

"I was wrong," he nodded. "I even said y'all would never be serious, but..." He scoffed to himself, "I've never seen that boy so crazy about anyone in his life. You've really changed him, Peach. I don't really know how to thank you."

"You can start by buttering up those flirty Frenchmen," you teased, giving his cheek a peck.

"On it," he winked, parting from your side.

Inside the kitchen some twenty minutes later, Richie approached Carmy, directing his attention, "Cousin?"

"Yo."

"Peach is on 17 with Pete."

"Okay."

"Go say hi."

"Yeah, eventually," Carmy nodded absently, never halting his work.

"Eventually?" Richie repeated with distain, something in his stomach twisting.

"Where the fuck is Josh!?" Carmy called into the kitchen, another chef echoing his concerns.

"Yo!" Richie barked as calmly as he could, "Just go say hi to your girl, Cousin."

"Yo, I'll go when I have a minute," Carmy deflected strongly. "I'm in the fuckin' shit, leave me the fuck alone."

"What? I'm saying - "

"I'll get there when I can get there!"

"I'm saying!"

"What?" Carmy barked.

"She's got important fucking people in that dining room, man," Richie scoffed, hands held up in defense. "Just for your ungrateful ass! Maybe the least you can do is go say fuckin' hi - even if you're fuckin' busy. She knows that, it'd be a nice gesture - or whatever fuckin' shit - I don't know! She's your girl!"

"Yeah! Exactly!" Carmy barked. "She's my fuckin' girl, she knows the fuckin' drill, I'll go say fuckin' hi when I get the fuckin' chance, Richie! Fuck's sake! Always tryna meddle and shit!"

"Jesus, fuck," Richie sighed, turning out of the kitchen with his hands waving Carmy off in defeat.

You were none the wiser, entertained by Pete and Dani's gabbing as Sugar was in-and-out, dealing with all the little things going wrong. These little things came to her in the form of notes left at the table subtly for her to go solve, you wanting to help but being shot down every time. Eventually, Carmy was approaching your table with a tray of food, shocking you slightly.

"Hey, Peach," He greeted softly, lowering the tray to balance on the table and lean over to kiss your cheek. "You look gorgeous, baby, wow," he complimented in a whisper, offering another quick kiss.

"Thank you, Chef," you smiled brightly, touching his forearm in a sign of affection. "What's all this you've got for us?"

He hummed and explained what he set on the table in front of you guys; eyes alight and cheeks flushed from the heat of the kitchen. He poured whatever sauce came with the main dish, smiling at Dani, nodding to Pete, then looking to you.

"I'll check on you later, all right, baby?" He mumbled, watching you nod. "I gotta get back," he whispered, "but thank you for being here, my pretty girl."

"No where else I'd rather be, Cream," you rushed, letting his lips find yours briefly.

"Stick around after, would you? When we close, just... Don't leave yet."

"Yes, Chef," you whispered against his lips with a grin. He gave one single more kiss before pulling away to stand upright.

"Enjoy," he bid the table before walking away.

"So, like," Dani trailed after making sure Carmy was out of earshot, "when's the wedding? 'Cause that might've been the cutest thing I've seen. I mean, opening night, he's cooking, but paused to come serve us? Serve you? And he's so soft with you, kissin' you, bein' all cute," she pouted dramatically. "I want a reason to wear a maid of honor dress, please."

"Hey, hey, chill on us. There's no wedding," you sighed with a small laugh, trying to play off how the subject made your stomach twist. "We haven't really talked about it, you know? No biggie."

"What?" She sputtered. "Wait, hang on. Y'all have been together - like - a stupid, ridiculous amount of time. The fuck you mean you haven't talked about it? What are y'all doing, just ignoring the elephant in the room?"

You shrugged lightly, "I don't know, we know if we ever got married, it'd be to each other, but that's really it. We know we want to be together, we know we want to marry each other, but there's been no serious conversation about it."

"Uh, does that sound right to you?" Dani asked Pete.

He shook his head as you all took dainty bites of food to savor the flavors (and save Sugar some). "When I knew with Natalie, I didn't hesitate."

"Well, Carmy isn't like you, Pete," you defended. "He's got a lot on his plate, too, you know?"

"You've said that since Mikey," Dani frowned, her voice quiet.

"With good reason, don't you think? Carmy's just - he's just going through a lot right now and it's a challenge, you know?"

"No, it's more like Carmy's got the emotional intelligence of a fucking teaspoon!"

"Hey," you snapped, "that's not his fault, he doesn't know much better, so watch your mouth."

"He does with you, like... He knows better when he's with you, when it comes to you, Peach," Pete offered softly. "Look, maybe Danielle has a point - it is a little weird. I mean, you guys have been together, what? Six, almost seven years? Creeping up on a decade of just dating - that's a long time. And didn't you guys do that weird little half-dating thing for two years before making it official? Don't you think that's enough time to know if you want to marry someone, and then, you know? Actually marry them? Or at least ask them?"

"Sure, maybe to other people, but Carmy and I have never been conventional, so, I don't see why we need to start now."

Danielle scoffed, "Look, God love Carmy and everything, but you're just wasting time now. He needs to either commit or let you find someone who can actually love you like you deserve."

"Oh, and Carmy doesn't?"

"Wasn't all that long ago that you two took a break 'cause he called you clingy - and some other unsavory terms," Danielle shrugged. "Doesn't really sound like someone who loves you unconditionally - the way you should be loved."

You sighed and sat back in your chair, "I appreciate the insight, but Carm and I are fine. Okay? We've got years under our belts, we don't want to fuck up what obviously works for us so chill out on the questions, okay? I don't have answers to them."

Danielle and Pete shared a look before the man got up to excuse himself to the restroom. You and Dani finished your meals before sipping your wine, waiting for Pete, but Dani sighed, "This lady's been staring in here for, like, ten minutes already. It's freezing, doesn't she want to come in?"

"Hmm? What're you - ?"

"This lady on the street," your friend pointed over her shoulder towards the window her back was now turned to.

When you peaked out, you gasped lightly when you saw Donna Berzatto smoking a cigarette. "Oh, shit!" You stood from your seat, rushing, "Okay, so, uh, yeah - just - can you just sit here for a second? I have to go handle that."

"Who is it?" Dani wondered earnestly.

"I got it, Peach," Pete told you, passing by the table swiftly with a hand patting your shoulder to keep you at your table.

"What the hell's happening?" Dani asked. "Who is that?"

"Nothing, no one, it's okay, I think that's someone we know, just, uh, hang on a second? We'll be right back."

"Sure," she nodded in confusion, watching you get from your seat and follow Pete out the door onto the blistering cold sidewalk.

"Hey, Mama Donna," you greeted happily, arms crossing over your chest to protect from the wind. "Have you been inside yet? We saved you a seat and all, but isn't this - just wow?" You grinned, trying to encourage her to say anything about her children's hard work.

"Oh, no, no, not you, too, Peach, why are you here?" She groaned lightly, looking upset and close to tears.

"I'm here 'cause of Carmy? I-It's opening night, yeah?" You offered in confusion. "Why? What's wrong, Mama D?" You worried, glancing at an emotional Pete.

"No, it's just, I can't come in, I can't, just no," she backed away, only now making you notice the way Pete cried. "I'm so sorry, Peach, honey, but I was never here. Okay? I-I'll call them later, I swear, I promise, I'll call them - but I-I-I wasn't here. Okay? You can't tell them I was here. I'm so sorry."

"Donna, don't do this," you begged, head shaking. "Don't, please. Just come in with Pete and I - just sit there for a bit. Just come in and see what your kids have done - Donna, it's so beautiful. You'd be so proud, but you should really see it for yourself - "

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I can't, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, not tonight, no, I'm sorry, I can't," she deflected in a rambling mumble, turning and hustling down the sidewalk with her head shaking like a Etch-A-Sketch.

You rounded on Pete, "What the hell was that? Pete, what just happened?"

"Um, I-I don't - I didn't mean to."

"Pete? What didn't you mean?"

"She didn't tell her mom about the baby," he rushed, tears falling. "Nat didn't tell Donna, Peach, and I think I just did - I think I just fucked up and told her."

"Oh, no... No, Pete, you didn't."

"I didn't mean to! I swear it was an accident!"

"No, I know you didn't mean to, honey," you rushed, opening your arms to bring him in for a tight hug. "Oh, you poor boy, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Pete."

He sighed, "I'm sorry, too, Peach."

"For what?"

"That... We fell in love with Berzattos and this is our new normal now, right?" He sniffled.

You half-smiled, "Yeah, something like that. But it's okay. See, where Donna's afraid to give her love, neither of us are. Sugar and Carm deserve that from us, right? To be authentic and just love them?"

He nodded, "Yeah, you're right."

"And that's all we gotta do... Is love them, Pete."

"God knows where else they'd get it," he huffed, wiping his face. "Hey, um, I'll be in, in a second - I just need a minute alone, I think, in the cold."

"Take all the time you need," you agreed.

"We're not - we're not telling them about this, right?"

You sighed, "No, I don't think so - at least right now. It might hurt them more, you know? To know Donna was here, but never came in. That she ran away... Again. It'll hurt, they deserve to be happy about tonight."

Pete nodded rapidly, looking like he was gonna burst into tears. Instead of going back inside, you just moved to Pete's side and stood there; producing a cigarette, lighting it, offering Pete a drag that he turned down, and the both of you just standing silently; one smoking, one crying, both processing.

"Wow, look at these gorgeous ladies! By far the baddest in the whole place! Yeah, man!" Fak teased as he approached you and Danielle after closing the The Bear officially. "What a privilege to have you both dine with us this evening! Ugh, truly an honor to see you both here," he praised comically, evening giving a small bow that his brother mimicked.

Your eyes rolled, "You're laying it on really thick when I already tipped you." He snickered with Theo. "Hey, seriously, though, tonight was incredible. I mean, it was all so beautiful, you should all be so proud."

"Oh, we are," Neil giggled, his brother hanging off his shoulders.

"Good," you teased. "Uh, is now an okay time to go back and see him? Kinda wanna offer my compliments to the chef directly, you know?"

"No," Fak answered instantly, "uh, well, probably not the best time."

"Yeah, probably not," Theodore echoed.

"I can sense you two ramping up to something," you sighed, "so, I'm gonna ask you skip all that and tell me what's wrong. Why can't I go see my boyfriend? He just had an incredibly successful opening night, I kinda wanna kiss him if you don't mind."

"Um, well, h-he didn't want you to worry, so, he said not t'tell you, but, uh... Yeah, no, Carmy's, like, locked in the walk-in freezer. Han Solo style."

"What?"

"Locked in the walk-in," Fak nodded rapidly, "yeah, no, the handle - like, the whole handle came off. He's locked in, Peach..."

"Oh, my fucking God," you breathed. "Are you saying he - he missed opening night? Neil!"

"Yeah, kinda... Well, sorta - I mean, technically, but - "

"Oh, Jesus," you breezed past them all.

"Mmm-mmm, the fridge guy's name is Terry," Tina corrected Carmy, flinching a little when he slapped the other side of the metal door he was locked behind.

"See, th-tha-that's what I'm talking about!" Carmy raged. "I'm so fucking distracted, and for what? For fucking what? 'Cause of a girl?" He chuckled ruefully to himself.

"Nuh-uh, don't do that, Carmy," Tina scolded. "That's not no girl, that's your girl, that's Peach - you don't lash out at her, baby."

"Yo, maybe - maybe I'm just not built for this. Right? Maybe that's okay! Maybe that just is. She'd be better off, Tina... I'm just - I'm not built for this."

But what Carmy didn't hear was Sydney asking Tina to cover her at the front because she needed to step out the back, get some air; Tina accepting and telling Carm to hang on a moment. Something he missed. While Tina took Syd's spot, Syd rushed outside, and you slipped in the kitchen door; Carmy being surrounded by shitty ripped tape and an entire side full of the flowers he had brought in for tonight - for you. It was a haunting reminder; something suffocating.

When you got to the walk-in, you were prepared to call out for Carmy, but he started speaking from within, halting any word on your tongue.

"I wasn't here b-because I was looking a-a-at fucking engagement rings when the fridge guy fuckin' called," Carmy ranted, your heart stalling in your chest. "Right? Like, what the fuck was I thinking? Like I was gonna get married? Commit to this relationship? Be h-her fucking husband or some shit? Have a fucking wife? I'm a fucking - I'm a fuckin' psycho!" He laughed a little, the tears springing to your eyes as his words disarmed your heart and emotional dam. "That's why! That's why I'm good at what I do! That's how I operate! I am the best because I didn't have any of this fuckin' bullshit, right? I could - I could focus and I could concentrate and I had a routine and I - and I had fuckin' cell reception, and Peach and I just had our own routine! We didn't need this extra bullshit, and now..."

You just listened, leaning on the freezer's door, tears silently leaking down your cheeks as you had the horrendous realization that you were what now slowed Carmy down. You were what currently stood in his way, when this whole time, you thought you were helping; making things easier; supporting him. No... No, his words rattled your heart to accept that you were now the bane; the object of his ire. You and your relationship was what was wrong and was causing Carmy hurt and professional complications.

Something you never wanted to contribute towards. You both always said if this relationship got to be too hard, you'd walk away. Better to feel anger than resentment; and now, you knew you had to walk away else risk that resentment fester.

Carmy started up again, "I don't need to provide amusement or enjoyment, I don't need to be someone's 'to have and to hold'. I don't need to receive any amusement or enjoyment, nor for someone to have and hold me... And I'm completely fine with that. Because no amount of good is worth how terrible this fucking feels." You were ready to open your mouth, but he finished by nailing the final nail in the coffin of your relationship, "It's just a complete waste of fuckin' time - entertaining what I know I shouldn't. Being in this relationship, trying to give what I don't have, wasting everyone's time."

You took your chance, speaking through your tears, "I'm really sorry you feel that way, Carmen."

"Peach?" Carmy rasped from behind the door, sounding more alert than he had before. "Baby? Hey, hey, Peaches? That you? Peach - hey. Hey," he sounded desperate as you backed away from the door, a fist pounding into the metal, "hey, no, Y/N? Y/N!" The seriousness settled over you both, Carmen understanding you heard a lot more than ever intended and once those words are out there, there's no getting them back. "Y/N, baby? Hey, no, no, Y/N - listen to me - hey, no, no! I-I didn't know you were there, baby, okay? No, Y/N, please - tell me you're there now, let me explain." He paused. "Let me explain! Please! C'mon, baby, please, let me fucking explain - tell me you're still there! Y/N? Y/N!"

You sniffled and walked away, feeling smaller than you ever had in your life. You barely noticed when the kitchen door opened, not until a figured dressed in black stopped you. "Peach? Hey, hey," Richie halted you - taking note of the tears. "What's wrong? What happened? Are you okay - who fuckin' did it?"

You just stared at Richie for a long moment, opening your mouth twice before sighing and smiling sadly. "I never wanted to be what got in his way," you whispered sadly. "I'm sorry, Richie."

"Peaches, hey, what's - "

But you reached up to kiss his cheek, "Tonight was so beautiful, Cousin, and I'm so fucking proud of you all. Thank you for everything - not just tonight, Richie, but everything you do." You smiled again, whispering, "Take care of him. Okay? He'll need you."

"What're you talking about? What's going on? Where are you going? Hey, where are you going, Peach, please?"

"Have a good night, Richie, I love you," you whispered, leaving out the kitchen door as quickly as you could. "Hey," you sniffled, approaching Dani with the Fak Brothers, "can we go now, please?"

"Are you okay?" Dani worried in shock.

"I'd really like to go, Dani, please," you rushed, throwing your coat on and smiling at the Brothers as if your heart wasn't in pieces. "Thanks again for tonight, you guys, it was magical."

"Peach? Wait, hey, are you okay, baby? What just happened?" Neil worried, watching you snatch Dani's hand, but pause when screaming was heard from the kitchen. Everyone stared at the door, Neil muttering, "The fuck are they...?"

"Now, Dani, please," you whimpered to your friend, who wasted no time in escorting you out of The Bear. The moment you were outside, you burst into sobs, Dani grunting a little as she lead you down a side alley to lean you on a brick wall and beg you to breathe normally.

"What the hell just happened? Hey, honey, you need to breathe," she smoothed hair off your face - but it was like you were drowning in the air with the way you gasped and gaped and panted and whimpered and choked yourself.

"I-I-I-I think - I think w-we're done, I think we're done, I think - oh, fuck - I think we just broke up," you sobbed, hands on your knees. "Oh, my God, Dani," you whimpered, "I-I think - I think we're done, Danielle, oh, my fucking God. I-I heard things tonight that I just - I can't not know, anymore! He said - fuck! He was just so candid, he didn't know I was there so h-he was sayin' things I have t-to now confront - and I really didn't fucking want to! He just - he doesn't want to really marry me, D, and-and-and he was apparently looking a-a-a-at rings - fucking engagement rings! But then he said that w-was the issue - he missed the fridge guy's call 'cause he was looking at fucking rings for me and this is why he missed opening night - 'cause the fucking fridge broke! Oh, my God, Danielle, i-i-it's my fault, it's my fucking fault, he missed the most important night of his life and it's my fault - "

You were cut off by your stomach lurching, emptying your insides onto the pavement. The delicious appetizer, the tantalizing main course, Marcus' fresh baked bread that was delightfully soft on the inside yet baked crisp on the outside, and every bit of the sweetened dessert - all wasted on Chicago bricks.

"Okay, okay, ah, shit, just get it out, babe, there you go," Danielle held your hair, catching you in a suffocating hug once you were done puking. "I've got you, babe, I've got you. You're okay, no, hey, this isn't your fault. I've got you, come on. I think we need pints of ice cream and the saltiest pretzels we can find," she pushed some hair from your sticky forehead, pouting dramatically, "maybe some Pepto? Few Saltines and ginger ale? C'mon, we're going back to mine, there's a good girl," she coaxed you from the ground and away from the wall, "c'mon, you're stronger than this. There's my girl, here we go, just one foot in front of the other - together, with me, just like that."

You sobbed, not knowing that Sydney and her father stood listening just a few feet away behind a set of dumpsters.

The moment the freezer's door was open and Carmy was free, he was sprinting around the kitchen to grab his coat, leave Neil in charge of closing, and racing out the door as the Fak Brothers yelled at him for hurting your feelings.

"Hey, hey, hey, Chef! Carmy, wait!" Sydney chased him outside.

"No time!"

"Wait! She went with her friend!"

Carmy came to a tripping halt, catching himself before he hit the pavement before whirling around to approach her, "What?"

"Her friend? She was with some girl tonight?"

"Yeah - yeah, yeah, yeah, uh, um, that's - yeah, that's Danielle," Carmy nodded. "Her best friend, yeah, they were here tonight, sitting with Pete and Sugar."

"Listen, Carmy, I heard them when they left the restaurant... Peach was really upset, like, more upset than I've ever heard, saying you two broke up? Or something? She cried so hard, Carm, she actually threw up, it sounded like she was in genuine distress. I-I didn't know if I should've intervened, but her friend was with her and helping."

"Shit - fuck - Goddamnit," he seethed. "All right, thank you - "

"I doubt they went to your place, I think I heard her friend saying they were going to her apartment."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, great, I know where Dani lives, thanks Syd!" Carmy bid, sprinting in the other direction - never bothering with the public bus system, just running into the night. Sydney was left to sigh on the sidewalk, Neil and Theo joining her before Richie followed - all watching Carmy disappear down the sidewalk.

"He's a fucking idiot," Richie shook his head.

"What the hell even happened?" Syd asked.

"Carmy mouthed off in the walk-in, Peach heard it all," Richie supplied. "You know the dumbass was gonna propose tonight?"

"What?" Syd blinked in shock.

"Yeah," Neil tacked on, "we had a whole plan and everything. Candles, soft music, flowers - there's a bunch of flower bouquets in the walk-in."

"I'm sure that was hard for Carm to look at," Syd sympathized.

"Doesn't excuse whatever he said," Richie snapped. "She looked devastated."

"She cried so hard, she threw up in the alley," Syd frowned.

"How do you know?" Neil asked.

"I heard her," the other chef frowned. "My dad and I - we actually both heard her."

"Jesus fuck," Richie seethed.

"I mean... Should we still set up?" Theo wondered to his brother. "What if they kiss and make up, like always? Carmy might still wanna go through with the proposal, right? You know?"

"Maybe," Neil trailed, looking at Richie.

"I don't fucking know," he sighed, hands on his hips.

"She thinks they broke up, I imagine whatever she heard was pretty nasty," Sydney frowned. "Think they'll really make up tonight?"

"Let's hope," Richie sighed. "That fuckin' idiot isn't gonna find anyone better than Peach. Fuck," he looked around the city street. "All right, fuck it, fine, let's fucking set up. Not like the jackass deserves it, but let's do it for Peach."

Neil and his brother grinned at each other, turning to hustle back into The Bear - leaving Sydney and Richie on the street. No words were exchanged, just silent shakes of their heads before they followed the Faks with the intention to help set up for a proposal nobody even knew if would still happen.

The cold night burned Carmy's lungs, but it was nothing compared to the feeling of suffocation he felt earlier when listening to one of your voicemails while trapped.

Your words were sweet as pie, as they usually were; a voicemail left when you were still at work, but feeling so excited to see him that night that you just had to call him. You reminded him of the adoration and love you held for him, relaying how proud you felt - and that you knew Mikey would be, too. You were always doing that, reassuring Carmy; and maybe that's why he felt so freaked out, he wasn't used to it. Even after almost 7 years together, he just wasn't used to what he didn't know he deserved.

Because Carmy didn't think he deserved anything remotely close to love, understanding, compassion, patience, and / or reassurance.

He had sobbed out loud as he locked his phone, not having the heart to delete your message. He often never did - he liked listening to your voice on long, hard nights; it brought him peace when the world felt too loud. He also kept whatever little notes you left for him, even going as far as to get a few of your hand-drawn hearts tattooed on his forearm. One for each anniversary you've shared together. He realized he never wanted to be without you and all his doubts and fear was him projecting his own incompetence towards this relationship; so, he locked his phone, he didn't delete your message.

The moment the fridge door had been opened, Carmy was out of there, shot off like a Roman Candle - your words of love and understanding still ringing in his ears as he was freed. He needed to apologize, and he needed to apologize right fucking now.

The whole run to Danielle's apartment, Carmy wasn't sure what to say to you; mulling over different ideas in his head. He tried to plan his speech, but the only thing he could think of was how much he loved you and that the ring in his pocket weighed a hundred pounds.

He pounded at Danielle's door. Carmy paced slightly as he waited, knocking frantically, and surely waking the neighbors - but that didn't matter. All that mattered was talking to you, something he was desperate to accomplish. When the door opened, your friend offered a stale look and shook her head, "Nope."

"Dani, please," he halted the closing door, "it's all a misunderstanding, I swear to God, please, just - let me try to fix this. Please, okay? I-I need her - I fucking need her and I have to fix this 'cause she's all that matters, okay? So, let me talk to her - please. Please, Danielle!"

"Yeah? The only thing?"

"More than anyone, more than anything - more than The fucking Bear, I swear to fucking God, Danielle! Just - Just one chance, please. I-I don't know how it all got so fucked, but please, I have to try - "

"Whatever you said in that freezer, Carmen, fucking gutted her, you hear me?" Dani stood in her doorway protectively. "Should've had your ass frozen for the hurt you caused her. How the fuck do you intend on making this right? Huh? It's been almost a fucking decade, dude, if you're seriously still afraid of commitment, just fuck off and leave her alone. Let her walk away 'cause I promise, there's a line of dudes who would love to put a ring on her loyal-ass finger - "

"Please, let me fix this," Carmy begged, sounding close to tears. "I need her, Danielle, please."

"It's okay, D," a voice whispered from behind Danielle, and when she turned, you were revealed - jacket and purse in hand, looking completely exhausted, drained, and disheveled. "I'm just tired, Dani, but we have to talk about this... So, I'll go home with him and call you tomorrow, okay?"

"You sure?"

"It's a decent walk, gives us too much time to talk," you shrugged, refusing to meet Carmy's bloodshot eyes. "Thanks for tonight, sorry I was such a mess," you whispered, hugging your best friend since pre-school.

"Girl, don't you ever apologize to me. But hey, look, I don't know, you were just drowning in your tears, like, five minutes ago. Sure you really wanna go? You can stay here as long as you'd like, girl, fuck him."

"Better to work it out now than later, I guess," you whispered, letting her kiss your cheek and see you guys out.

"She calls me cryin', Carmen, I'll kick your ass," She threatened as you moved down the apartment's hall. You might've snickered just a little, but the amusement was wiped clean when you rounded the corner and came up to the elevators.

Now that it was just you two, it was dreadfully awkward.

"Baby - "

"Just - don't talk for right now, Carmen," you sighed, shaking your head. "I'm still digesting all you said."

He frowned when you walked onto the elevator without a single emotion on your face, following you, and when on the ground floor, moved out to head home. It was quiet, it was awkward; only the sounds of traffic filling the space between you as you walked.

"Listen," he started with a long sigh, "you came in at the worst time, Peach, heard some shit you shouldn't have that I-I didn't even mean. I was just," he paused, sighing, "really angry and frustrated, fucking running my mouth 'cause I didn't know what else to do."

"Sounded like I came in at the best time since you're not very forthcoming with emotions. So, hearing your confession put a lot in perspective for me, Carm."

"I was just angry, Peach," he frowned, hands deep in his pockets. "Felt like I was self sabotaging myself, I wasn't sure what else to feel. So, I just lashed out. I didn't mean it, but I just felt like being angry... So fucking angry, baby, I just - I didn't know what else to feel."

"I don't know if I can be with someone like that," you whispered. "Someone who throws our relationship under the bus when he's angry, someone who's first line of defense is apparently to blame the relationship he's been in for over half a decade with the same girl. Someone you've known your whole life..."

"Peach - "

"If it's that easy for you to just disregard us, I don't think we should continue this."

Carmy took a breath and reached out to pull you to a stop. He dug in his pocket for a moment, then showed you the black velvet jewelry box. "I was gonna propose tonight, when everyone was gone," he explained when you took the box to open gingerly. "I think because that was on my mind already, something I was more than nervous to actually do, you're right, it did become my first line of defense to blame us - not just you, baby, but us. You and me... Mostly me, though," he chuckled sadly. "You're this perfect, sweet angel who just loves me out loud when I don't deserve it, and I'm... I'm just me," he sighed, eyes reddening. "And I know I'm never gonna be enough for you, I think I started to get in my head about if you said no. How I missed the call from Terry about the fridge 'cause I was picking out an engagement ring that you didn't even want, that you rejected - rejected me; and in turn, I missed opening night, and it all just - it got to a boiling point. Look, Peach, it's never been a secret that I don't think I deserve you... But I wanted to be the man that could at least give you an honest try of my best. You've stuck by me the past seven years when you should've ran for the hills, and I knew I wanted us for life years ago - but everything was still so up in the air. So confusing. So fucked up. I figured, after opening tonight, if things went t'plan, I could propose - prove to you that we're on our feet and there weren't any rugs to be pulled."

"What if things didn't go to plan?" You whispered.

"We're kinda living it now," he admitted, hand rubbing the back of his neck. "But even if tonight was all a total failure, I know I might've still done it because it's you, Peach. It's you... I've known for years you're who I want, I just never knew how to do this - to move us forward. You're my first relationship, hopefully my only relationship, and I just didn't know how to advance us. I think when things got real for me, my insecurities crept in, and I just reacted - I didn't think."

"We always said when this wasn't healthy or when this wasn't good for us anymore, we'd walk away," you reminded. "That we'd rather be sad or angry about a breakup instead of letting resentment fester from being together."

"It's still good for me, Peach, we're still good," he whispered, stepping closer. "Is it still good for you? Or did I lose you completely tonight?"

"I don't know, Carmy, you've been lashing out a lot lately. At me specifically."

"And with The Bear now open, I-I should be okay. You know? Back to normal?"

You chuckled dryly, "I see, back to your high walls? Emotional constipation?"

"Then maybe not normal," he corrected, "because I just needed to get us here, to tonight, to opening, and then show you that it's over. Show you that part of our lives is over and we only have more adventures to look forward to. Not ones like this, though," he gestured up the street, your eyes cutting over and realizing you were back at The Bear.

"Do you really think you're a psycho?"

He chuckled, "After tonight? Yeah, pretty convinced... Plus, I, uh, I saw in the freezer the way we're labeling things - and got angry about it. Angry about the way we were tearing tape and labeling things. It was so fucking stupid, but I just - I felt so crazy. I still do, I still feel like my head doesn't make sense and I'm a bit, you know... Crazy."

You nodded slowly, "Then how can you promise me this kinda shit won't happen again?"

"I don't think I can, but I can make you the promise that I am working on it; trying to identify when I feel reactive, trying to calm that down. I'm trying, Peach, I really am - it's just... Taking a lot of time," he sighed sadly. "And I know you don't have any more left to give me."

"I've already given you this many years," you reminded softly, "I think I could spare another or two if it meant you getting your shit together, that you get better, stop feeling so crazy."

"I don't deserve anymore time - "

"I think you need to step back and reevaluate what it means to be deserving because you always say that. That you don't deserve something - even as simple as time. Everyone deserves time and opportunity to figure shit out, Carmy, and you're no exception."

He nodded, "I'm... Trying." He took a long, deep breath, "I'm, uh... Going to meetings, you know, like, uh, Al-Anon and whatever."

"That's good, they're there to help," you nodded, stepping closer to take his hands in yours after closing the ring box and stuffing it back in his pocket. "Now, I think you need to do something."

"Anything, Peach."

"Take my hand, bring me back to The Bear, and go about your plan."

He froze in shock, blinking at you in earnest, "You really mean that?"

"Do I look like I'm joking?"

"No, ma'am, and I think that scares me more."

"You'd rather break up? 'Cause at this point, Carm, we either move forward with this engagement and fucking work our shit out, or we break up. It's been almost a decade. It's your choice, you're the one who was saying he couldn't be someone's husband, that he didn't need to provide anyone nor have them provide you with anything. So, you tell me what you want to do - because all I know is that I love you, I want you for life, but not if you're going to resent me and regret moving our relationship forward. I don't need to get married, Carmy, but you can't keep jerking me around like you have been. So... Make a decision based on what you want - based on what's best for you. Not what's best for us, but put yourself first right now, Carmy, and make a decision about what you want."

With a nod of his head, Carmy cleared his throat and offered you his hand. When he felt you lock your fingers with his, he glanced up and down the street, then lead you across it. Up the sidewalk and to the front door of The illuminating Bear, he paused to produce his keys and then lead you inside.

The lights were dim, but a flip of the switch brightly lit up the newly constructed restaurant. He seemed nervous at your cool demeanor, watching you shed your coat and set your purse down; but his hand took yours again and lead you further into the place. He seemed nervous, but once in the kitchen, it was almost like Carmy's stress melted away.

"I was... I had this plan," he explained softly, leaning on one of the work stations with both hands in yours to keep you in front of him. "I have all these candles, right? Was gonna distract you in here," he looked around the fluorescent lighting, "while Richie, Fak, Tina, and the others set everything up. We'd hang in here after the place was closed down, you know, show you around the completed kitchen. And really casually, I'd ask if you were ready to go, so, we'd go out the front, and we'd walk right into the candlelight..."

"Yeah?" He nodded, thumbs running over your hands as he pushed off the counter. "Don't deviate from your plan now..."

Carmy smirked, "Wanna hear the boring kitchen stuff?"

"Of course, I do."

So, he lead you around in a tour of the kitchen; showing off the new office space that he invited you to take advantage of whenever you wanted. The sleek appliances were shown off, the vast fridges, freezers, new cutlery, state-of-the-art dishwashers. Everything, he showed you, knowing you helped him pick a lot of it out - it was still nice to see it all come together finally.

And then, slowly, he lead you out of the kitchen, but to your honest shock, the dining room was covered in lit candles and different bouquets of thick, gorgeous floral arrangements. "Oh, holy shit," you breathed, Carmy hiding his confusion much better than you.

You came to a slow halt in the middle of the room, the lights out and only leaving the candles to provide an ambiance. "I had this whole speech planned, too," Carmy told you softly. "Remind you of the day we met, how you saved me from those jackass bullies - remember?"

You smiled softly, emotions swirling in your chest, "First day of first grade, you had a Buzz Lightyear backpack and some kids were picking on you 'cause of it."

"And what did you do?"

You felt bashful remembering, but humored him by answering, "Pushed their faces in the mud at recess and made them apologize."

"You've been my best friend since that day," he nodded, bringing you in a few steps closer. "And when we got to high school, my feelings changed. You weren't just my best friend, but the girl I was madly in love with... Took me a couple years to buck up the courage to ask you out officially, though."

"Sure took your sweet time," you whispered with a smile, "but all good things to those who wait, right?"

"And I think you've waited long enough for a man to be who you deserve," he frowned. "All these years - it's been you at my side. You even - fuck - you even came over to Amsterdam for a bit because I was feeling overwhelmed and lonely. Sad, maybe even a little homesick. But you just - you just showed up like it was the most common thing in the world."

You chuckled through your tears, "Yeah, we had some good times on that boat, didn't we?"

He nodded with a softening smile, pushing hair from your face and behind your ear; pausing to hold your cheek carefully. "And when we came back stateside... You were still the only constant presence in my life. You were my family without blood, and I knew after that Christmas that you'd forever be my other half, and I'd spend my life conveying how grateful I am for you. I just - I never knew how to put it into words until now."

"What changed?"

"Realizing that I wanted to marry you years ago - and I should've. I know I shouldn't have drug my feet with us, delay our inevitable, because honestly? I couldn't see my life without you in it and I knew I needed you with me forever. Peach," he frowned, reaching for your other cheek, "we agreed when this wasn't healthy, we'd walk away - I remember that. But I need you to know, I'll never fucking regret you. I'll never resent you. You've been unwaveringly supportive and loving and... And I've been the luckiest man to experience it all. But now," he pushed himself a step closer so he was hovered over your lips, "I know that you deserve someone just as present in this relationship as you are. I knew once The Bear was done, I was done - I was done beating this bush around and wasting time. I knew what I needed to do because the idea of you not being in my life anymore terrifies me more than anything. I don't remember life without you, Peach, and I don't ever want to know what it's like. So," he cleared his throat, "here, in the restaurant I so desperately wanted to give up on so many times, but you always stopped me, I wanted to make this official. I wanted it to be here to show you that the past year of our turmoil - it's fucking over, Peach. We did it," he whispered, "and now, the next and only thing I want to focus on is us."

Carmy readjusted you both for a little bit of space, holding your left hand tightly as he lowered himself to a single knee; looking up at you with those big, wide, sad blue eyes that were growing redder by the passing second. The candlelight created a romantic atmosphere that cocooned you both in a warm embrace, the flowers around you projecting their floral scent.

"So, I need to ask you something real important, baby," he whispered, his throat bobbing to restrain his emotion that clawed up his throat, "because if I don't, I don't think I could breathe again." He cleared his throat, pulling the ring box from his pocket and opening it to present to you officially. "Y/F/N Y/M/N Y/L/N... My sweetest Peach, I've loved you almost my entire life, you're my best friend, my most loyal and sweetest confidant. You make me want to be a man better than I was yesterday and never before have I ever seriously considered marriage - until you. Now? Now, I can't get the idea out of my head, so, my sweet girl," he took another breath, the tears in his eyes swelling and slowly dripping down his cheeks as you slowly got on your knees in front of him, "I need to ask you... W-Would you do me the honor? Of being my wife?"

"Carmen."

He grinned at you, both with tears down your cheeks. "Will you marry me, Y/N? I can't see my life without you in it, so... I want this, I want you for life. Y/N, will you marry me?" He paused, adding a meek little, "Please?" at the end.

With a deep breath, you slowly reached for his cheeks in a soft caress to wipe his tears; both just staring at one another for a good few moments before a face-splitting grin nearly cracked your lips. "Yes," you finally answered, "yeah, yes, yes, of course, I'll marry you, Carmen, yes!"

"Oh, thank fuckin' God," he laughed, letting you lunge forward to knock him backward in a hug - missing the candles arranged in a small circle for you two to stand in. Carmy laughed loudly, happily, giving you a tight squeeze as he mused, "Had my heart beatin' outta my chest for a second there, Peach."

"Oh, please," you laughed, "after all this time, you really thought I'd say no?"

He shrugged meekly, "Thought my most recent fuck-ups would've added to any reasons you might have to say no."

"Oh, spare me - you're my best friend, Carmy, you know I couldn't ever say no to you. Not without puking in nervousness."

"Can we maybe not talk about puke when we just got engaged?"

You laughed and nodded, "Fine, fine, fine, then put the ring on, please."

You presented your left manicured hand, watching Carmy almost giddily removed the band from the box, took a slow, deep breath, and then, the most beautiful ring was being slid onto your finger in an official show of your engagement. Of your undying love. Of your commitment, promises, and future together.

"YEAH!" An array of varying cheers and hollers of support and excitement rang out around you; startling both you and Carmy to look up. Richie, Sydney, Tina, Neil, Theo, Pete, and Sugar all hung in the bathroom's alcove - watching with splitting grins and cheering in celebration.

There was no time to question them as Richie lead the charge over; helping you to your feet for a giant, bear hug before gushing over your engagement ring. Neil and Theo popped one of the authentic bottles of champagne, pouring different flutes for those present.

"Calm down," Natalie scolded Richie lightly, "and move out the way, I want to hug my engaged bestie!"

You squealed with Sugar when her arms wrapped around you tightly, Rich moving on to congratulate Carmy - who apologized for his angry words earlier and thanked them for still setting things up. Richie promised it was for you, not Carmy, but still hugged the little shit with a laugh - indicating he was just joking.

"Let me see!" Natalie grinned, examining the ring Carmy chose and squealing again. "Oh, my God! Oh, it's so pretty! Oh, shit - sisters!" She gasped, holding your hands tightly, "We're going to be sisters - like, officially!"

"Sisters in law, but yeah, cupcake," you beamed at her, wiping your tears and giggling. "I can't - this just doesn't feel real," you told her softly, looking the few feet over to see Carmy with the lads as Sydney stood with you and Sugar. "Him proposing? I genuinely thought it wouldn't happen," you tried to laugh your nerves off, looking at your ring and fiddling with it.

"Yeah, right," Sydney laughed. "I haven't been around that long and even I knew this was gonna happen."

"Oh, please, she's right," Natalie grinned when you went to retaliate, "he first started talking about how he wanted to marry you when he was, like, 15. This has been the longest thing coming."

"Thank you guys for helping," you whispered with a smile. "It's all so beautiful."

"Happy to help for a good cause," Syd smiled, complimenting your ring as Neil called for a toast. Everyone was given flutes of champagne, Carmy's arm wrapping around your waist as each friend gave their own little speech, congratulating you both before the alcohol was being drained.

"Uh, and where are you two going?" Sugar asked about an hour later with a small giggle when Carmy wrapped an arm around your neck after helping you into your coat again.

"Gotta celebrate alone with my fiancé," he smirked, "later, guys! Don't forget to lock up!"

"Carmen!" You scolded with a small laugh, gaping at him.

"What? They got this," Carmy chuckled. "Thanks, you guys, see you tomorrow!"

"We can help clean," you told him as he lead you out of the restaurant.

"Nah, we've got bigger plans," he smirked at you. "Got plenty t'celebrate, yeah? Ever fucked as fiancés before?"

"No - but I hear it's some crazy sex," you whispered, locking your arms around his waist to stay close. Neither of you cared about the bus at this hour, opting to walk home in the cold - not that you felt it. Your love burned brighter than the cold biting your skin.

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flanaganfilm · 1 year

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Good day Mr Flanagan. please what does "the rest is confetti" mean to you and in the context it was used in hill house??

Okay, here we go. Buckle up for a long read.

To answer this, I've got to explain a little bit about what was happening and where I was when I sat down to write episode 10 of The Haunting of Hill House.

Hill House was not a fun shoot. The picture above is from very early in production, when I was still chubby and happy.

It was my first foray into television. I was absolutely terrified that I'd mess it up. So I'd opted to direct all of the episodes myself, figuring that - if nothing else - I'd have no one else to blame if it went south.

It was the most grueling professional experience of my career. The shoot was by no means a smooth one, every day was an uphill battle from a budgetary perspective, and between the three giant production entities involved with the production, I spent a lot of time fighting over the creative and logistical elements of the series.

I began losing weight. I was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.

By the end of the shoot, I had dropped almost 40 lbs.

I was very depressed. Every day was a battle, and for the first time in my career, I wasn't excited to go to work in the morning. We were fighting for basic resources, fighting for the show we wanted, and even fighting amongst ourselves by the end. It was grueling.

We hadn't written all of the scripts when we started production. I believe we had finished through episode 7, but the rest of the scripts had to be finished while we were already shooting.

We'd mapped everything out in the writers room, and I had great support on the other episodes, but I was writing the finale solo. I'd thought I'd be able to juggle it with everything else. I quickly fell behind.

I finally got to the script about halfway through production. I'd work on it between takes at the monitor, and then get home to our tiny rental house in Atlanta, where Kate was waiting with our baby son. (One of the rare bright spots of this shoot came when Kate found out she was pregnant about halfway through production. We even named our daughter Theodora, in honor of her origins.)

I'd typically fall down from exhaustion when I got home, but I had to push through it and work on the script. My weekends were spent shotlisting and prepping for upcoming episodes. We didn't have enough time to stay ahead of prep, so every available day was used for that... I went three months without a single day off at one point.

I'd sit up late staring at the script. I was in a dark, dark place. Overwhelmed, exhausted, and feeling like I lived in an eternal present. Each day bled into the next and it didn't feel like there was an end in sight. That feeling of unreality was heightened because we kept returning to the same sets, same locations, and even the same scenes throughout the 100 shooting-day production. Stepping back into the exact room we had shot in days or weeks or even months ago made the whole thing feel absolutely surreal. Making movies is always an non-linear experience, but this one felt particularly so... it was like the days of our lives were happening to us all out of order.

I remember feeling something like despair creeping into my daily experience on the show. And I remember dwelling on that when I got into the scene work of episode 10.

As I worked through the draft, I recall that despair coloring a lot of what was on the page. My filter was breaking down. There's a monologue at the beginning of the episode where Steven's wife Leigh (played by my dear friend Samantha Sloyan) spews out a torrent of eviscerating insults about Steve's value as a writer. That is just me vomiting onto myself. She was voicing all of my deepest insecurities about myself at the time, and of what I was doing with this series.

She says "Is anything real before you write it, Steve? The things you write about, they're real. Those people are real, their feelings are real, their pain is real - but not to you, is it. Not until you chew it up, digest it, and shit it out onto a piece of paper and even then, it's a pale imitation at best."

This was the mindset I was in for a lot of the shoot. The writing became a reflection of a lot of that turmoil, and I knew who I was referring to in that monologue - I was talking about my family. I was talking about how much of their lives I'd used as building material for this show. I was talking about the fact that I'd lost two loved ones to suicide, and seen what it had done to my mother in particular. And I knew I was using - possibly even exploiting - those people for this series.

There's a lot of despair in this episode. The Red Room, as we conceived it, was a place that would feed upon those emotions. Grief, sadness, loss... those were the real ghosts of our series, and where our characters find themselves at the start of the finale. They're being slowly digested - eaten alive - by those feelings.

So finally, it came time to write Nell's final scene with her siblings. I knew from the outline we'd constructed in the writers room what this was supposed to accomplish - she was supposed to be their salvation. She was supposed to take all of these feelings that we'd been wrestling with and finally provide catharsis... finally say something that would free everyone.

I remember sitting with a blinking cursor for a long time. The Crain siblings had just turned and seen Nellie standing by the door, and suddenly were able to hear her speak. But what should she say? What would I say? What would I want someone to say to me?

What she ultimately says lays bare a lot of what I was thinking about when it comes to grief. It exists outside of linear time, much as I felt I existed at the time. That sense of eternal present, that sense of a nonlinear eternity of moments and memories - it all came out in her speech to her brothers and sisters.

I remember feeling, looking at my insane present and looking back at my past, how strangely overwhelmed I was by memories. That I wasn't experiencing time in a straight line, and hadn't been for a while - for the better part of a year, I'd felt more like I was standing in a whirlwind of moments. "Our moments fall around us like..." Nell said, and I recall sitting back and trying to find the words.

"Rain," for certain, but there was something too uniform about that. The moments of life as I experienced them weren't that orderly, they weren't that small. They didn't fall the same way. Some sailed by, fast and unremarkable, while others lingered in front of me, twisting and stretching. So it was a good word, but not the right word. I left it on the page though.

"Snow" was my next attempt. Better, in that I imagined the snow blowing in the wind, swirling and dancing and feeling more organic. More chaotic. More like life. But for some reason, the word that stuck with me, the word I felt Nell Crain would connect with was...

"Confetti."

And that was because I was thinking not of Victoria Pedretti at this point, but of Violet McGraw.

Violet played Young Nell, and I wondered what she might have said if she experienced time this way. As an adult, Nell was despairing. Nell was overwhelmed. But as a child... there was an innocence to the word. There was a joy to the word.

I imagined moments falling around her, this little girl with the big smile and the wide eyes. Her moments would be colorful. They would be of different shapes and sizes, some falling fast and some falling slow, flipping and turning and dancing in the air, independent of the others. Sparkling, whirling, doing lazy summersaults as they sauntered down to Earth.

I thought of myself, and of the members of my family. I thought of those we'd lost. I realized what I hoped for them, and for us all, in the end... was to look upon that mosaic of experience, that avalanche of days and minutes and moments... and to smile with some of the joy we had as children.

And this, I thought, was something that gave me hope. This gave me a glimpse of some kind of salvation for them. This was also how I hoped my life might seem if I was a ghost - a cascade of color and light and shape and movement, something I could dance in.

So Nell smiled and said... "or confetti."

It stuck with me. The rest of her monologue gets heavy again, and gets to the real point of the show - the point of the whole series, if I'm honest - and that's forgiveness.

I figured the only thing that would let the Crain children out of the Red Room was to be forgiven. I thought of the losses in my own family, and I thought of what I wished for my mother and for my aunts and uncles and cousins and I tried to pour that into her final words.

"I loved you completely, and you loved me the same," she said, "that's all." And this was the point I wanted the most to make. That at the end of our life, if we can say this about each other, the rest doesn't matter. The rest is that rainstorm, or that blizzard, that fell around this one central truth, and maybe built itself in piles around it, to the point we lost sight of it along the way.

And I thought again of that little girl, and almost as an afterthought, wrote "The rest is confetti."

I liked the way it sounded, but I was insecure about the line. I almost took it out, in fact. I remember asking Kate to read the scene and talking about that last line with her. "Is it too cute?" I wondered. She was on the fence. "Depends on how it's acted," she said, and I figured she was right. We could always take it out if it didn't work. The scene could end with "I loved you completely, and you loved me the same. That's all."

Why not shoot it and see what happened.

I turned in the script, we published it quickly so that we could start breaking it down and prepping it. And the next morning I was back on set. I'd deal with episode 10 when it came down the pipe again, sometime in the coming months. We had a lot of shooting to get through before I had to worry about it.

I recall Netflix asking me to cut a lot of that monologue, and I remember them also having questions about the "confetti" line. I pointed out that it didn't cost us any extra to shoot it all, it was only words, and fought to keep the script intact.

Ultimately, they insisted I make a series of cuts on the page. I begrudgingly agreed, but left Nell's speech alone. I made superficial cuts around it, throughout the draft, and even considered changing the font size to fool them into thinking it had gotten shorter (I ultimately was told I wouldn't fool anyone and not to risk starting a war). But Nellie's final goodbye stayed intact.

It must be said - Victoria Pedretti SLAUGHTERED this scene.

By the time we got around to filming it, things had never been worse for the production. There was almost nothing left for a lot of us. Tensions were sky-high, resources had been exhausted completely, and we were all ready to give up.

Filming in the mold-ridden Red Room was depressing, morose, and led to a lot of arguments and unpleasantness. The room itself just felt gross, always, and we were in there for days at a time. The last thing we had to shoot in there was Nellie's goodbye.

Victoria came to set having to push through pages of monologue, and she did so with captivating bravado. I recall being teary-eyed at the monitor watching her work. And when we finally made it to the last line, I watched her deliver it with... a smile. A sincere, innocent, longing, joyful smile. A smile informed by the sadness, grief, and loss of her own situation, of her own life... but a smile that finds forgiveness and grace after all. Pedretti knew how to say the line, and how that word would work.

And as she said it, I knew it would stay in the show.

Over the years, that sentence has become something of a tagline for The Haunting of Hill House. I'm always a bit mystified and touched when I see people approach me with the line on T-shirts, or even tattooed on their bodies.

I started signing it with autographs back in 2020 after enough fans asked me to. Now it's my go-to when I sign anything related to Hill House.

The line, for me, represents a lot of things.

It's about the insane, chaotic, non-linear experience of making that show. It's about trying to find and hold onto joy, even in the grips of despair.

It's about the way the moments of our lives aren't linear, not really, and how we may be unable to understand them as we exist in their flurry. It's about finding hope, innocence and forgiveness in the final reckoning.

And it's about how, outside of our love for each other, the rest is just... well, it's fleeting. It's colorful. It's overwhelming. It's blinding. It's dancing. And, if we look at it right, it's beautiful. But it's also light. It's tinsel. It flits and dances and falls and fades, it's as light as air.

The rest is the stuff that falls around us, and flits away into nothing.

It's the love that stays.

#haunting of hill house #the rest is confetti #that was a very long story #man I was not okay while we were shooting that #forgiveness #heal

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notafunkiller · 5 months

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Bucky Barnes is the best super soldier

How it was subtly emphasized in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier:

He always holds back

With the Flag Smashers and even with John Walker. We could see the difference in the last 3 episodes. Sebastian Stan did an incredible job making it clear in a subtle way.

I want to mention that famous "Stay there" scene, and how it was visible Bucky was not punching as hard as he can in the fight with John.)

This is the thing about Bucky, he isn't after the kill, he just does his part. He doesn't try to show off his skills or that he is a good guy. He doesn't try to play the victim role, either. In the scene where Zemo fake-activates the Winter Soldier in Madripoor, he just makes a point. He's obviously not even trying hard.

If he wanted those in the club dead, they would be. But his self control was wow. Sebastian acted so well, his exes said everything.

*And to be honest, even when he was TWS, he could have killed everyone, but he didn't. He could have killed all of the Avengers in Civil War is they were his mission, but they weren't. This is how Natasha survived when she met him, too. It depended on what kind of mission he had (if he wasn't allowed to be seen, then the witnesses would die too, but otherwise? He didn't bother).

2. His skills

People tend to forget how smart and good at making strategies Bucky is. He's been fighting (even though he hates fighting and never wanted to be in the army) for years before he was even captured by Hydra. And this is the reason why government still want him, after all. They can use his strategies as a leader (*cough* Thunderbolts *cough*).

In the last episodes of TFATWS, we could see how he outsmarted everyone. Karli was so terrified of him.

3. Karli Morgenthau

And talking about Karli, the phone call was interesting:

She asked him if he's not tired of fighting for the wrong side, and then told him she's fighting for something bigger than herself.

"And with all the bodies you've collected, have you ever been able to say the same?"

The first thing I wanna point out is how everyone talks about the deaths Bucky caused when he was controlled by Hydra, but everyone ignores the fact that all the Avengers killed far more, but since we consider them the good side, we just don't care.

Clint, Tony, Steve, Wanda etc. They all cause(d) far more deaths than "two dozen" (known assassinations - to quote Natasha), and neither was controlled. The double standards are something else, especially for Clint. (One of the reasons why Tony was on the other side in CW was because of his guilt, after all.)

The second point is how Bucky's answer says a lot more than we might realize at first:

"You don't think I ever fought for something bigger than myself? That's all I ever tried to do, and I failed twice."

Even as TWS, Bucky had to be convinced he is on the right side, that what they do is to save the world, to give "the world the freedom it deserves".

Even brainwashed and put to sleep all the time, he had to be lied to. Bucky as TWS was a victim too. He is not a victim only because he didn't have memories or control, but also because they lied to him and used him as a toy. That milk scene is so loud. (And I am gonna talk about it in a different post). He had no rights, no choices. He was used to being tortured.

[And I wish they explored it more. We deserved and deserve a WS film - maybe with him in Romania getting back his memories, writing in his journal etc.]

"You think your cause justifies all this death, but in the end, the nightmares won't go away. You're gonna remember all the ones you killed. Trust me. Don't do this. Don't go down this path."

Despite being on opposite sides, Bucky still said this to Karli, trying to help her, to make her see the big picture, sharing how he felt and feels.

He is on "the right side". He is a hero, and Bucky being thanked by that man for saving everyone's life was touching.

4. Baron Zemo

You can see how smart, strong, and rational Bucky is when he decides to break Zemo out of jail (his plan was amazing too), risking so much (his relationship with Wakanda people and his own freedom) to get his help for the mess. He puts the cause above his own (huge) trauma. And this makes that moment in Madripoor even more disgusting (he is treated as an object, as a toy):

Zemo: Tell us what you know about the super-soldier serum. And I give you him, along with the code words to control him, of course. He will do anything you want.

The way he keeps his composure, reacts and manages the situation... absolutely incredible!

This conversation also says a lot:

Zemo: The desire to become a superhuman cannot be separated from supremacist ideals. Anyone with that serum is inherently on that path.

Bucky: Maybe you're wrong, Zemo. The serum never corrupted Steve.

Zemo: Touché. But there has never been another Steve Rogers, has there?

Bucky positions himself below Steve, who's considered a good hero, a good person... like no other. But Steve never had to go through what Bucky did: from being kidnapped like that, to being tested on, to falling off the train, to being tortured, and used, and brainwashed for decades, and put to sleep when he was not needed and having n "keepers".

Also, interesting how all Steve wanted was to fight (for a good cause, but still)... and fighting still means violence, meanwhile Bucky never wanted to fight, not even before becoming TWS, in the army (and yet he is still great at fighting. And he is deadly, even when he holds back.). All he wanted was peace.

Despite not getting the "perfect serum", despite being brainwashed, put to sleep, and forced to fight for decades, he is still himself. He never gave in to the dark side for real. He fought in his own way. The first thing he did when he woke up was to choke the Hydra guy with a whole new arm!

Bucky is so underrated: from his intelligence and fighting skills, to how human he is. Being flawed, keeping his sassiness and charm from the 40s, but getting more mature and carrying his past on his shoulders... he's so relatable and real. And every day, he shows Zemo he is wrong.

The show he makes in his final scene with Zemo is absolutely fantastic. He doesn't just prove the point he isn't defined by the serum and Hydra (AND not even by Steve, thanks to Sam. His speech made him realize the important thing about himself: that he decides who he is, not others - even those who know him before becoming TWS- "And this might be a surprise, but it doesn't matter what Steve thought. You gotta stop looking to other people to tell you who you are." parallel to "Steve believed in you. He trusted you. He gave you that shield for a reason. That shield, that is… that is everything he stood for. That is his legacy. He gave you that shield, and you threw it away like it was nothing. [...] So maybe he was wrong about you. And if he was wrong about you, then he was wrong about me."), but also that he is superior.

When Zemo tells him that he decided to let him alive (probably so he can kill Karli) and basically calls him a killing machine: "programmed to kill", Bucky plays the role, lets Zemo talk him into killing Karli, and then Bucky watches him waiting for his own death.

[Also, Bucky's line: Imagine my relief is hilarious.]

The acting was incredible: the shock on Zemo's face and the amusement and somehow relief on Bucky's after he pulls the trigger and lets the bullets fall... He proved him he's THE standard of the super soldier. Because despite everything he went through, he is the best.

Zemo telling him to cross his name off felt like a fresh start (+ telling Nakajima the truth).

5. John Walker

John, on the other hand, is lucky Bucky is an understanding person. He gets what is like... the pressure, the environment, the loss, and even tries to help.

Bucky: Don't go down that road. Believe me, it doesn't end well.

John: I'm not like you!

Of course he is not like Bucky, because Bucky has control. He is not killing to get revenge in a cynical way.

"That serum doesn't exactly have a great track record."

John kept judging Bucky every time they spoke, somehow placing himself above this "broken" man.

"This is all really easy for you, isn't it? All that serum runnin' through your veins. Barnes, your partner needs backup in there. Do you really want his blood on your hands?"

This is so wrong on every single level, especially because Bucky didn't choose to take the serum, and he always had his friends' back. He's loyal and ready to sacrifice himself.

The "funny" part about this is John ending up taking the last super soldier serum vial. All the judgement, the disgust, the patronizing tone, just to do that. Plus, of course, to kill someone with the shield.

(John proves Zemo's point about super soldiers, and Bucky does the opposite.)

And what is it easy for Bucky anyway?

He's under government conditions (so CACW coded), he has a vibranium arm that I bet the government would try to take after he dies (HOPEFULLY WHEN HE'S 200 YEARS OLD IN HIS BED, as Sebastian wants too) if he isn't in Wakanda, he is haunted by nightmares (which also can mean he is still Hydra's TWS in another universe as we found out from Strange), and he has to learn how to live for real. He's smart, charismatic, has values and principles, and he's incredible.

We need to see his version of TWS going after everyone Hydra helped. TWS is him, a part of him, and doing that on his terms, having control over it would help him heal.

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ireneaesthetic · 24 days

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Pointing out little moments and details of my fav s3 scene.

choir practice scene • episode 2

this scene caught me so off guard, in the best way possible.

it only took simon's "you should do an activity you actually like" for wilhelm to drop everything and choose getting to spend more time with him!

simon's reaction at wille joining the choir was also mine: he can't believe his eyes and keeps looking back at him with the brightest smile on his face. and simon shifting wille's attention to where the song lyric is bc it's all new to him is adorable.

wilhelm's little proud smirk between the kisses while simon is so into it: he knew and imagined simon's surprised and happy reaction to all this, but i bet he was thriving to see it up until this very moment. so he might just be thinking that he made the best choice of his life.

having to practice and wait for everyone to leave was probably torture for simon, when all he really wanted to do since wille came in was this (simon's main love language is clearly acts of service btw *cough*). he felt important, cared for, loved - and couldn't wait to reciprocate it.

also, he's holding the key chain and happens to do the middle finger with the same hand. if you look at it as a way of saying 'mind your own business' to us is quite funny.

simon setting the rhythm and wilhelm fully going along with it. they don't even separate their lips before leaning in for another kiss - melting into it. they literally said 'no need to catch air bc we're already breathing each other in'.

simon not breaking physical contact even once. his hands are the third main character in this scene: they act like a glue for their bodies and carry so much passion. it is peak chemistry.

going on his tiptoes to push himself as close as possible and clinging to wille for dear life is the most simon thing he's ever done. love really brings out the cuddliest version of him.

smiling into the kisses and out of the kisses? insane of them if you ask me (i support it) (keep doing it lovers).

wille smiling and biting his lip bc he's the one overwhelmed by simon's presence now. physical touch is his love language and he's flooded with simon's - he must feel the luckiest boyfriend on earth.

one of their greatest proofs of love has always been to provide each other's comfort by being exactly what they lack receiving from other people or what they need most of the times - it's a constant learning of how to give and take.

they can't get enough of it: it's not even only about the kissing but more about their need to just keep pulling the other closer, leaning into each other, slowing their movements to not leg go yet but take time to touch and deeply feel instead - wille's face speaks for itself. this hug is so intimate ugh.

it's finally shown a glimpse of wille's hand on simon's back! it was always there obv but it's nice to see it more properly.

wilhelm obsessing over simon's neck and simon who tilts his head back to make it more accessible. wille could've done it all and trace the path with kisses - simon wished - but the boy knew what he was doing!

the way simon looks up at him and wille rubs their noses back and forth, keeping his eyes on him, gives me butterflies.

they're super affectionate and it's the easiest thing for them to do. the intimacy that comes with their whispering, their own personal space becoming one for both of them to share bc it's safer, warmer, a lot more comfortable. everything is such a manifesto of how much they genuinely adore each other - it's what makes this the it scene for me.

their bottom lips touching are sooo *internally screaming*.

wilhelm stands still to let simon's lips brush past his own and simon's cheek resting against wille's lips to enjoy the feeling a little longer. they look so peaceful.

it happens after wille's "i like listening to you sing": they went from "he likes it when i sing" / "i do too, don't i?" (locker room's fight in s2) to wilhelm actually telling him that listening to his voice is one of the main reasons he joined the choir. it has to be extremely special for simon to finally hear it.

idk if it's just my mind making this up but let's pretend simon is kissing wille's neck here!

wilhelm picking simon up by the waist to carry him elsewhere and keep the thing going more privately. that's my wille.

can you believe this is the face of someone who's saying that he needs to go? to not miss the bus? he just looks crazy in love to me.

wille's laugh is cute! and simon throwing his stuff on the floor bc the priority was to push his boyfriend against the lockers to make out will never not be funny.

also, @allthefakepeople once said the only thing that could've made this scene even more perfect is if simon paused when walking away and ran back to wille to steal a quick goodbye kiss - ahhh i'd have been so here for it!

#sorry not sorry for rambling #this scene deserves all the praise #young royals #young royals analysis #yr s3 #choir practice scene #wilhelm x simon #wilmon

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seireitonin · 1 month

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Dating Toby?? Like is he clingy, jealous or protective of his partner??

(I don't know....this is my first time doing these things.....)

Toby brain rot :3 this is how I see Toby mixed with some canon information! (I’m gonna try to keep it realistic)

What would it be like dating Toby?

Toby’s life is filled with tragedy

Abuse, death, murder, mental illnesses, being a slave to Slenderman

It’s all bad

So when he finds you, someone that accepts him and loves him despite all that, he’s not letting you go

He’ll do anything for you

I mean to the point it’s unhealthy

Because hes obsessed with you

Like really obsessed with you

He’s super touchy, not only because he likes to feel close to you, but it keeps him grounded

That’s important to him because his disorders/ mental illnesses cause him to hallucinate or space out

He’s not gloomy he’s actually upbeat but when he remembers something from his past or the current state of his life he goes through episodes of depression and mood swings

They can get really intense and as you’re with him you’ll learn how to support him through it

Just laying with him, making sure he has water and reminding him you’re here for him will help lots and lots of physical affection

If his mood swings get violent he’ll isolate himself from you but it’s heartbreaking to hear his suffering

His swings can go from extreme anger to intense sadness to reckless happiness

Since he hasn’t had much kindness or interaction in his life he doesn’t have the best social skills

He’ll say whatever is on his mind with no filter and that includes you too

So he’ll say mean things unintentionally a lot because he doesn’t understand how what he says can be hurtful

And he might try to call you sensitive for it too

“Ugh you’re overreacting I didn’t even say anything that hurtful. It’s just what’s on my mind”

He literally doesn’t understand how it can make you feel because he’s a bit detached with emotions

It’s gonna take a while for him to understand but he loves you so he’ll try to understand for your sake and will work on apologizing

He can also just be rude or a jerk sometimes in general

Toby likes just spending time with you to the point where you’re connected at the hip

He won’t say he loves you with words but he says it with his actions

He brings you gifts, holds your hand, goes on walks with you, holds you and try’s to be better for you (even though it’s really hard because he’s set in his ways)

He talks a lot so sometimes you’ll just listen and smile

Since he can’t feel pain, when he gets back from missions you’ll have to help him check for injuries to make sure he’s okay

He doesn’t say it but he appreciates it

Sometimes he’ll just stare at you because he loves you so much, taking in your every detail

He notices everything about you, from your body language, how you tan in the summer and lighten in the winter, he even knows how many times you breathe in a minute

Toby eats a lot of instant ramen so be prepared to eat a lot of that at first but you start to cook for him because he needs to eat better

Toby never expected to have a girlfriend since he’s a lot to handle but he liked the way you handle him

He’s full of himself literally thinks he’s gods gift to earth so sometimes he puts himself before your relationship but he’s trying to change that

He’s really funny especially if you like dark humor

He’s a jealous man. You’re his no one else’s

If someone even looks at you romantically he’ll go crazy on them

Remember, Toby is still a murderer and enjoys murdering

Chasing them down and threatening them and if it escalated kill them with a smile

He does it all for you. Everything is for you.

“You know I love you, right?”

He looks at you covered in blood

Toby likes it when you wear his sweaters

He wants a family one day and hopes you can give that to him

He’s possessive over you but does it out of intense love and obsession

He wants to keep you safe by any means necessary because he’s so used to losing the people he loves and he really doesn’t wanna lose you

Toby drives a pickup truck and likes to drive you around in it

He likes to sit in the back of it with you and look at the stars in an open field

Since Toby’s older his tics have calmed down but they’re still there and he still has the occasional tic attack

You’ll have to help him through those because sometimes he can’t even talk when he’s having one

Stuff he can squeeze, ice pack on his forehead and making sure he doesn’t hurt himself

He’s happy you don’t see him as a burden like everyone else did

He’s never letting you go

He didn’t know he could feel love this intense

#creepypasta #creepypasta hcs #creepypasta characters #creepypasta fandom #creepypasta headcanon #crp #ticci toby headcanons #ticci toby #ticci toby hc #ticci toby hcs #ticci toby x reader #ticci toby creepypasta #creepypasta toby

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squish--squash · 9 months

Text

I'm rewatching Good Omens, and noticed something in the first episode that has left me spiraling into a theory.

It's in the scene when Hastur and Ligur are handing Adam over to Crowley. Hastur asks Crowley to sign something beforehand, and:

I thought it was a scribble the first time I watched it bc I was trying to figure out what was going on. But it's not a scribble.

It's not a 'C' either, for 'Crowley' It's not a 'A' or 'J' either, for the rest of his name.

It's an 'L'. It gets hard to see as he's finishing it, but it's the letter 'L'

This is how you write a capital 'L' in cursive:

you swoop up and to the right, drop down, swoop left, and finish on the right.

and Crowley does this with his signature:

here's him beginning the letter, swooping up and to the right

Then he moves down,

loops to the left,

And finishes it as he moves back towards the right (and at this point, the complete letter is hard to make out. It's why I thought it was a scribble the first time I watched this episode)

Crowley's signature on the document Hastur makes him sign before delivering the Antichrist to start Armageddon, something that is arguably one of the most important things hell wants to document, is an 'L'.

WHY?

Why not a 'C', for Crowley, the name he currently goes by? Hastur and Ligur confirm the name itself earlier in the same scene ("What's he calling himself up here these days?"/"Crowley.")

Well, if going by what he claims in a later s1 episode that "Crowley" is his last name (Anthony J. Crowley), it would make sense for one of his initials to be put there.

Except it doesn't, because "Crowley" is not his real name. it's not the name he began with, the one he had as an angel.

So then, what would this name be? What would be a name for an angel, who is now a demon? A demon who was there to tempt eve, as a snake, into eating the forbidden fruit. Someone that brought the stars, and light, to the universe. A name that begins with the letter 'L'.

There's one I can think of that matches, and that name is Lucifer.

"But Squish!" I know some of y'all will comment, "What about that line Crowley said in episode 5? He mentions Lucifer, so it can't be him!"

In episode 5, Crowley says the following: "I never asked to be a demon. I was just minding my own business one day and then...oh, lookie here, it's Lucifer and the guys! Oh, hey, the food hadn't been that good lately. I didn't have anything on for the rest of that afternoon. Next thing, I'm doing a million-light-year dive into a pool of boiling sulphur."

Crowley also says in the second episode: "I didn't mean to fall. I just hung out with the wrong people."

A lot of people believe that it's implied that when Crowley said this, it meant he met Lucifer and hung out with him. But when he says it, it sounds like he's mockingly quoting someone else, talking to him.

The "Lucifer and the guys!" might've been directed to Crowley, using his name. This would match that line from a previous episode, "hung out with the wrong people."

"But Squish!" I know some of y'all will comment after reading that, "What about Satan? Lucifer is Satan, and Crowley isn't Satan!"

And neither is Beelzebub. Fun fact, by the way: One of the many names for The Devil, Satan himself, is Beelzebub. But Beelzebub is a whole different character. So why can't Lucifer be a whole different character too? After all, many people still argue to this day that Lucifer and Satan aren't one and the same...

Also, here's something interesting:

Crowley is the only character in the tv series that has mentioned Lucifer, and it was in that line I mentioned earlier. Lucifer is also mentioned once, in the book, but by Shadwell, mishearing Newt's last name as "Lucifer" instead of "Pulsifer". And Satan? In both the book and the tv show, he is never called another name other than "Satan", usually followed by his fancy and long title. His description in the book's "DRAMATIS PERSONAE" is literally "fallen angel; the adversary". No Lucifer.

And how about this:

Crowley was the one who started the universe, we see that at the beginning of season 2. He was the first one, to our knowledge, to say "let there be light." "Lucifer" means "light-bringer" Crowley was the snake that tempted eve into eating the apple in the garden of eve. We see this in the beginning of episode one. Many claim Lucifer was the one who did that. Crowley fell because he asked questions about how the universe should be run, after seeing its creation and being so proud of it. Many claim Lucifer's big sin that sent him falling was his pride stemming from his beauty causing him to revolt; eerily similar to Crowley asking questions after watching the beautiful universe he helped plan be born and growing protective after learning it was going to get shut down so early in its lifetime, isn't it? Crowley was a powerful angel. This is heavily implied in season 2, with the tiny joint-miracle he and Aziraphale made being as powerful as an archangel's. He has the ability to mask his presence powerful enough to fool Uriel, Michael, and Gabriel (the only other character we've seen have that kind of masking power was the Metatron, who Crowley was also the first to recognize). When going through records with Muriel, they claim only very high-ranking angels have clearance to look through the records of Gabriel, an archangel so powerful he single-handedly had the power to stop "Armageddon 2" from being put into plan; Crowley is able to access them. And Lucifer? Often described as having been a very powerful angel.

Lucifer is such an important name, such an important character, in the theologies surrounding Good Omens. So, where is he? Why has he only been mentioned seriously once, by Crowley?

The answer could be this, simple and short: Because he is Crowley.

EDIT:

I dug up the book. It's been a while since I read it (I honestly don't remember much from the book) and here's what it has to say about Crowley's signature...

"Your real name."

.........

HELLO?

EDIT 2:

I found this post from Neil Gaiman's blog. The wording is confusing me, and I can't tell if this debunks or supports the theory..

What Neil Gaiman says is "That was the angel Lucifer. He doesn't exist any more. Now there's just Satan, the adversary." which might throw this entire thing out of the window, but the thing is: he never said Satan used to be Lucifer. He just said Lucifer doesn't exist anymore, but Satan does.

Furthermore, the person who first asked a question asks more questions, two of them: 1. Is Satan what's left of Lucifer after he fell and stopped existing, and 2. If so, does that mean there was an angel that existed that then fell and turned into crowley?

Neil Gaiman's answer is "As far as Crowley is concerned, the Angel that he was no longer exists. (And his name as an Angel wasn’t Crawley or Crowley.)"

He doesn't confirm or deny anything about Satan in that. All he said was "the Angel that he was no longer exists" and that Crowley's angel name wasn't his demon name.

Huh. Funny. He's saying angel!crowley no longer exists, when he just revealed that Lucifer "doesn't exist any more." Either there's a connection here, or I'm going insane.

#good omens #good omens 2 #spoilers #good omens 2 spoilers #good omens spoilers #crowley was lucifer theory

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fanficimagery · 3 months

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Violent Little Thing

To the Sons of Anarchy, you're just Happy's neighbor that doesn't care for drama or the fact that they wear kuttes. But in actuality, you've dealt and probably have done far worse, and it isn't until you're kidnapped that they find out your secret.

Author's Note: Long time no see, huh? Does this mean I'm back? Hell no. This has been sitting in my drafts since mid-2023 and thought it was time to go out. For never having seen more than a few episodes, I love these SOA boys. I'm not super familiar with the lingo or clubhouse etiquette, so this is gonna take place away from that particular setting. Trigger warning for graphic violence and attempted sexual assault (it doesn't get far). Reader is gonna be a little… off the rails. Blame all the dark romance I've been reading lmao.

Before moving into your new home, you knew it was going to be a fixer upper. Fortunately for you, you loved working with your hands, and after having been banished to Charming in hopes of calming your inner demons, you were going to have a lot of time to do just that. But the joke was on your family because there was no calming your demons. People just needed to learn to not piss you the fuck off.

When you get to the house, however, you see that a majority of the work has already been done for you. The only thing left for you to do is paint the walls, rearrange furniture, and unbox your belongings. The electricity and water are already turned on, and wifi has been installed with your password on a sticky note.

The master bedroom is huge and you love it, but you don't have nearly enough belongings to fill it. Your queen-sized bed looks tiny and you immediately want something bigger. So heading back outside to your vehicle, you grab your bag that has your laptop inside and head back in. Setting up at your kitchen island, you search for a place that will deliver any type of food and beverage. You find a pizzeria just on the outskirts of town that will deliver to Charming, so you place a quick order. It's a forty minute wait period, so to pass the time you start looking up bedroom ideas.

You run across a California king bed, but none really catch your eye. What does catch your eye, however, are the DIY beds that touch from one side of the wall to the other. You take your laptop back to your bedroom so see if it's do-able, and come to the conclusion that it is. You'll have to add some floating shelves since you won't be able to have bedside tables, but that's perfectly fine with you. You then take the time to get down the measurements of your room because you still have to situate your dresser and mount your TV to the wall, and you need to make sure everything will fit.

Eventually your food gets there and, sitting at the kitchen island, you dig in. You slowly eat and drink your fill, and then place any leftovers in the already cool refrigerator.

Needing some bathroom necessities and sheets for your current bed, you unload your vehicle. You place each box in their respective rooms, but leave them mostly boxed up. And not wanting to get any TV's mounted or bed fully put together since you still have to paint the walls, you remain on your laptop to pass the time and send messages to your family to let them know you're okay.

It takes you a couple of weeks to build your bed frame, get in your special ordered mattress, and paint the walls to your liking. You do most of your building in the driveway, so you've become accustomed to the people living on your street, waving at them as they pass or call out a greeting. But there's one individual everyone seems to steer clear of or avoid eye contact with, and that's your next door neighbor who rides a motorcycle and proudly wears a Sons of Anarchy kutte.

You had first seen the intimidating, bald man when he showed up a couple days after you moved in. You'd looked up when you heard the rumblings of engines and watched two motorcycles pull into the driveway next door. You paused hammering for a moment, nodded at the two men who took a moment to stare back, and then went back to work.

Over the next few days, men came and went from next door. And each time, they were intrigued watching you work. But eventually your bed frame was finished and you had to situate it in your bedroom. Maneuvering the mattress was no easy feat, but you were not about to ask for help, and it didn't take you long to finally finish furnishing your home to your liking.

As busy as you've been, you haven't really had the time to eat a home cooked meal. So after everything, you took a trip to the grocery store and bought hundreds of dollars of food and drink to stock your kitchen with.

The air is finally cool and crisp, so all the windows to your home are wide open. You'd been feeling a little restless, so you opted to cook a meal that would keep you busy. Enchiladas, rice, and beans is one of your favorite meals, so after making sure you have everything, you put a pot of beans to cook. They have to cook for a few hours, so while that's going on you get online to check in with your family.

When the beans are done, you get started on browning hamburger meat. Setting a majority of the meat aside, you use only a bit for the enchilada sauce. You pour in water, flour, spices, and some canned chili until it's to your liking, and then heat up some corn tortillas before you start rolling the enchiladas. After they're in a pan that holds far too many for only you, you pour the enchilada sauce on top before shredding some cheese atop of it. Once that's in the oven, you get started on a pan of rice.

It's when the rice is boiling that your doorbell rings. A little tired and more than a little hungry, you grab up your beer after turning off the rice, and take a swig of it on your way to the door. Since the door is wide open, you can easily see who's standing just on the other side of the screen door. It's one of the Sons, one of the only two with brown skin that you've seen so far. But this isn't the intimidating bald one, this is the one with a shaved mohawk down the center of his head and a killer smile.

You arch an eyebrow at him as he tucks his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and you take another swig of beer as you lean against the door jamb. "Yes?"

The corner of his eyes crinkle as his smile widens. "Hi. Uh, me and my boys are chilling next door and we couldn't help but smell whatever it is you're eating. You mind sharing the name of the place where you picked up your food from so we can go get some too? Smells really good."

Your lips twitch. "Who said I picked anything up?"

"You cooking?" His eyes widen. "Bullshit."

You huff a laugh and nod. "YN."

"Juice."

"Mhmm." You push the door open just enough so you can lean out and peer next door, catching sight of two men sitting sideways on the seats of their bike. "Just you three?"

"Yeah."

You hum again and then back into your home as the screen door shuts quietly. "I've been watching you guys come and go, nodding cordially when our gazes clash," you say. "If you're willing to leave your shoes by the front door, you're more than welcome to pull up a seat at the table."

"Forreal?"

"Sure." You shrug. "I never learned how to cook for one, so I might have made an entire tray of enchiladas that will most likely go to waste if someone else doesn't eat them."

"Oh hell yeah." Juice turns, cupping his hands around his mouth as he says, "Yo! Free meal! Get over here!"

You watch as one man eagerly gets off his bike, whooping in delight of free food. The other, the one you believe actually lives next door, casually gets up at a leisurely pace. You push open the screen door as they're stomping up your porch steps, and Juice introduces you to Tig and Happy. You do your best not to smile because Happy does not look quite so happy, but he grunts a greeting when you tell them your name.

As Juice steps into your home, he's quick to kick off his shoes and tell his boys to do the same. They do and then you lead the way to the kitchen, pointing at your table. "Siéntate."

"Ohhh. A Spanish lady," Tig muses as Juice translates for him to sit down as you instructed. When you glance at him, his wild-crazed gaze makes you snort. "I like 'em a little spicy."

"And I like 'em less talkative." Happy and Juice both snort, and Tig beams at your sassy retort. "Beer or soda?"

Tig and Happy take beers, and Juice takes a soda. You serve them each their own plate of three enchiladas, a scoop of rice, and a scoop of beans. You serve yourself last with a glass of water, and finally take a seat to dig into all your hard work.

"Goddamn," Tig grumbles after his first bite of everything. "This is some Mexican restaurant level shit here."

You grin as you eat at your own pace, feeling content at watching three grown men finding your cooking delicious.

"So what's your story?" Juice asks. "In all the times I've come around, it's just you here."

"That's because it is just me here."

"Why Charming?"

You take a moment to swallow your food, washing it all down with a sip of water as you lean back in your chair. Then glancing between each man and the patches on their kuttes, you ask, "Do you want the real story or the story I'm feeding anyone who asks in polite small talk when they see a new face in the store?"

All three men slow their eating, their gazes sliding up to you in surprise.

"What's the story you tellin' the locals?" Tig asks.

Placing a hand over your heart and changing your voice so you sound like a southern belle, you say, "Just that I just left a very nasty relationship and my family thought I deserved a fresh start away from the man who dared lift a fist in my direction."

Tig snorts. "And the real story?"

You chuckle as your voice goes back to normal. "My family thought I needed to calm my inner demons, so they banished me to Charming. Joke's on them, I've made peace with my demons. It's not my fault people keep pissing me off."

Tig and Juice laugh as Happy smirks at you.

"What'd you do to earn banishment?" Juice wonders.

You shrug. "I wasn't joking about the nasty relationship. I just leave out the small detail that once I was out of the hospital, I went crawling back to my dickhead of an ex-fiancé and plotted my revenge."

"Crazy and you can cook. Marry me," Tig says.

You shake your head at him, eating a bit more before finishing the story. "I was raised to take no shit from anyone. So after he put me in the hospital, I made him believe all was well. Then one night, when he least suspected it, I slipped him a little something so he was conscious, but paralyzed, and set fire to his house."

The three men freeze, but you continue eating as if it was no big deal.

"Did you- did you kill him?" Juice warily asks.

"Unfortunately, no." You pout and then laugh at their awed expressions. "He had nosy neighbors so they were able to get the firetrucks there as soon as they smelled smoke. But when my family found out, they said I was sloppy, so I got shipped out here."

"Yoo.. what the fuck?" A moment of quiet ensues and then Juice is laughing. "That has to be the craziest shit I've heard in a while."

"I highly doubt that." Your gaze drops to the patch on his kutte. "I'm sure you've heard, seen, or taken part of some pretty crazy shit." When you meet his gaze again, you smirk. "Am I wrong?"

Juice grins and then looks at Happy. "Your neighbor is cool as shit. I'm kind of jealous." The air of amusement lingers as everyone continues to eat. "So what do you do for work?"

"I do some IT stuff for my family." You shrug. "I can work from anywhere, so I guess I'll still be doing that. What about you boys? What do you do other than ride?"

"We work at Teller Automotive," Tig says. "Only car garage in town."

"Really? Do you guys have any openings this week? I need my oil changed."

"Sure. We'll leave a number before we leave."

The rest of dinner is spent with the men telling you what there is to do in Charming and asking how long you plan on staying. You're not really sure, but if you end up liking Charming then you have no issues setting down roots. And then when dinner is done and you've seemed to exhaust all the small talk topics, you plate up the leftovers and send the men on their way.

Over the next couple of weeks, you befriend your neighbor. You take your vehicle into Teller Automotive and Happy takes it upon himself to take care of it for you. Tig and Juice had kept you company, and introduced you to a few of their other brothers when they took interest in their new friend. You were invited to one of their parties and, after some pressuring, you went. Nothing shocked you, not even a few members of the club getting head in plain sight, but Happy apparently shocked everyone else by gluing himself to your side. According to the club President, Happy was normally found in the ring outside or fucking his way through croweaters, but that night he made sure that no one bothered you.

Then more often than not, Happy reaped the benefits of your cooking and appeared for dinner before taking leftovers home for lunch.

In such a short period of time, you grow accustomed to the stern biker's company.

One morning, you're startled awake by the doorbell ringing and a fist pounding on the door. You sit up and scoot out of bed, hurrying towards your front door in a groggy, yet panicked state. But before you pull the door open, you peer out one of the thin windows on one side of your door. It takes a moment for you to realize it's Happy and that the sky behind him is still dark.

Unlocking the door, you pull it open. "What the fuck, Hap? What's going on?"

With a duffel bag hanging off his shoulder, Happy looks you up and down. "You always answer the door like this or am I just special?"

You freeze and then glance down, rolling your eyes when you remember you went to sleep in a gray wife beater, that makes it very obvious you're not wearing a bra, and a pair of hipster underwear. "Neither. You're lucky."

"Sure." You narrow your eyes at him and he smirks. "I forgot the bills were due and everything got shut off. Can I crash here until I get it sorted?"

Without missing a beat, you say, "Yeah," and step back from the door, opening it wider. "Shoes off. You know where the bathroom is and I'm pretty sure you can find the guest bedroom." You yawn and lock the door behind your friend. "What time is it?"

"Little after five."

"Happy," you whine. "S'too fuckin' early. M'going back to bed." As you pad back to your room, you don't hear any footsteps behind you. "Stop staring at my ass!"

"Can't help it. Might start dropping by early now."

"Do it and die, Lowman." Stopping and turning, you point an accusatory finger at him. "Do not come in between me and my bed. I will murder you."

His lips twitch. "Worth it."

. .

It takes less than a week for Happy to get his power and water turned back on, and then he's back at his house. Though there are times when he shows up for dinner, dropping off on your couch when he's too tired to walk back home. Normally you would mind, but Happy knew how to clean up after himself, so you didn't mind that it seemed he was practically half moved in.

One night, you get a call from your brother that they need you to come in and work on cracking the passwords on a few laptops they'd gotten their hands on. You agreed, but first you needed to arrange someone to look after your house.

The next afternoon, you show up to Teller Automotive. You find Happy on a smoke break and ask him for a favor. When you ask him if he can keep an eye on your house for two days, he seems surprised, even more so when you give him a copy of your house key. You tell him he can crash there and eat whatever food you have so long as he doesn't trash the place. He readily agrees.

And when you return two days later, you realize you should have specified that he could crash in the guest bedroom. Finding a nearly naked Happy in your bed isn't half bad, nor is the firmness of his ass when you smack a hand down on it to wake him up.

Immediately he jerks awake, twisting his body as he sits up, and pointing a gun right at your face. You laugh and lick the tip of the barrel while wiggling your eyebrows at him. "Wakey, wakey."

"You're a fuckin' pyscho," he grumbles, lowering his gun.

"Yeah, well duh. You should have had that figured out a long time ago." He rolls his eyes before turning to drop down face first back into your pillow, shoving his gun back under it. You grin. "Was there something wrong with the guest room you've been using?"

"No. I just didn't know how fuckin' massive your bed was. It looked lonely without a body in it."

"Mhmm. I'm sure." He grunts and you chuckle as you crawl out of the bed. "I'm gonna go pick up some breakfast from the diner. Want anything?"

"Anything and everything."

"Gotcha. I'll text you when I'm on my way back."

. .

The dynamic between you and Happy ended up changing after that fateful morning. When he slept over, it was in your bed. You hadn't crossed the line past lingering touches or innuendos, but it was a given that he was the only person allowed in your bed. You didn't care for the croweaters at the parties his club put on every Friday night, but the two of you made a statement when he rolled up one night with you seated behind him.

The Sons nearly gaped as Happy amped up his protectiveness, pulling you between his parted thighs as he took a seat on a stool at the bar. Tig and Juice had walked over, and Happy perched you on his knee as you joked with his brothers. The croweaters didn't bother to hide their glares or sneers, but you merely smirked at their cattiness and took to scratching the back of Happy's head with your nails when you'd draped your arm around his shoulders.

"So, is this a thing?" Jax, the club president, had asked.

You shrugged and grinned. "We're friends."

"Friends don't stake claims."

"We're possessive friends."

Happy had snorted but didn't correct you.

From there on out, it was known that you were Happy's.

The Sons are relaxing at the clubhouse after a long day's work when blacked out Escalades and BMW's pull up. The atmosphere immediately goes from relaxed to tense, and the Sons flank their President when he walks out to the lot to see what the deal is.

Thug after thug exit the vehicles before opening the doors on two Escalades, ushering out four well-dressed men. None of them look like they'd be a person to fuck with, so Jax is extremely curious as to what the fuck is going on.

"Can I help you?" He asks, eyebrow arches as tattooed thugs flank the apparent important men.

"I hope you can." The one in charge reaches into his coat pocket, pulling out a picture. "What do you know about this woman?"

When Jax is shown a picture, he mentally curses. It's Happy's neighbor and a friend to many Sons. He keeps his expression neutral, before shrugging. "Nothing. Should I?"

"She's my baby sister."

"Oh hell…"

"YN never misses check-in and she's missed two," the man explains. "It's come to my attention that she's made some connections to Happy Lowman, Juan Ortiz, and Tig Trager- all Sons of Anarchy. Do you understand why I'm here now?"

"Fuck, man, we didn't know. What can we do?"

"You can start by questioning your men to see if they'd heard from her."

At that, Tig steps forward. "I haven't seen or spoken with YN in a little over a week."

"What about Juan or Happy?"

Jax looks at his gathered men, frowning. "Where are Juice and Happy?" No one says anything, looking as confused as their President when they don't see their familiar faces. Then raising his voice, he asks, "Has anyone heard from Happy or Juice today?" Nothing. No one utters a peep. "What about yesterday?"

"Jax." Opie has his phone to ear, shaking his head. "Both are going to voicemail."

"Shit." Then turning around to face the slowly darkening expressions of YN's apparent brothers, Jax asks, "How can we help?"

. .

When your eyes flutter open, every inch of your body is in pain.

"How the fuck does my hair hurt?" You groan. You try to sit up, but realize you're on your side, on dirt and hay, with your hands tied behind your back. "What the actual fuck?" Clearing your vision, you see that you're not alone. Happy and Juice are with you, but they're in chairs with their hands tied behind their backs and looking a little beat up.

"Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty," Juice tiredly muses.

"What happened?" Maneuvering around some, you manage to sit up.

"Kidnapped," Happy says. "They injected us with some shit, but they gave you too much."

You grimace as you roll your neck. "Dicks." It's dim in the empty barn you're being kept in, but you can see sunlight through the cracks of the walls. There are stalls for animals on either side of you, all empty, and a table filled with various blades and weapons not too far away. Your aching arms are your main priority though, so you move into a crouch and wiggle your tied wrists under your butt. With a grunt, you fall backward and maneuver your hands until they're situated in front of you. "Ah. That's better."

"Get up and grab a blade so we can get the fuck outta here," Happy urges.

You do as you're told, mentally scoffing at the thought that these morons didn't think to bind your ankles. Unfortunately, you're not so lucky as someone had been watching from the shadows. So just as you're reaching for a blade, that someone jumps out at you and roughly pins you against the table.

Bent over with your arms above your head and someone pressed up right against you, you immediately start thrashing and cussing out whoever it is. Happy and Juice shout, and start wriggling in their own seats when a hand then pins you to the table by the back of your neck.

"So close, princesa." A man tuts and you jerk in his hold, but still he persists. Laughter causes you to look up, watching as another two men step out from behind Happy and Juice. "Is that anyway to talk to your host?"

"Fuck. Off."

"Oh, I will." Just then, a hand grips your waist and squeezes, and you freeze. "Just not yet. I have some questions for you."

"Don't you fucking touch her."

When you glance up at Happy, there's a look on his face that you've never seen before. You know what he does for the Sons, but you'd never seen that particular dark look or glint in his eyes, and for a moment it steals your breath away. Then you remember that look isn't meant for you, and you squirm a little as the man behind you laughingly presses his pelvis into your ass. "Or what?"

Juice answers, "Or we'll fucking kill you."

That causes all three men to laugh some more.

"Doubtful. But thanks for the laugh." Then the man behind you focuses on you once again. "Besides, my business isn't with you, but with the princesa de la mafia."

You tense. "I don't know anything."

"Aw. Of course, you don't," the man coos. "I would hope that your brothers are smart enough to never let a woman in on their secrets. But then again, you are the baby sister of one of the most dangerous mafias in the United States. I'm pretty sure you know something that I can use to hurt those brothers of yours."

You manage to angle your head just enough so you can make eye contact with Happy. He meets your stare, and you see it subtly soften, but then he's glaring at the man holding you once more. "I won't sell out my brothers."

"No?" The man releases your neck, only to trail his fingers down from your ribs to hips. "I don't want to mess up such a pretty face, but you do know there are other ways to break you and get you to talk, right?"

And then before you can answer, he's grabbing the back hem of your shirt and ripping it down the middle.

You yelp just as Happy shouts, "You motherfucker!", and squirm to get away. Across from you, Happy and Juice are pummeled a few times until they stop trying to break the chairs they're bound to.

The man rubs a hand up and down your back, fiddling with your bra strap, but never unsnapping it. You feel gross, but it's only when the guy reaches around to fiddle with the button on your jeans does red cloud your vision.

"Hey, Hap?" You manage to meet Happy's livid gaze. "Remember when I spoke about my demons?"

"Yeah."

"They desperately wanna come out to play."

"Shut the fuck up, you whore!" The man slaps you across the back of your head and you grit your teeth, biding your time.

Happy slowly smirks. "Then let them out to play, baby."

The moment the button on your jeans is opened, you scream at a pitch that startles every man in the room. Then pushing up as much as you can, you headbutt the man behind you. As he swears, you reach for the first handle you see and are pleasantly surprised to find a small machete. Then without even thinking, you whirl around and swing the blade, catching your would-be abuser in the neck with the blade.

Blood sprays as you immediately tug the blade free, leaving the man to try and cover his wound as he splutters on his own life force. From the corner of your eye, you see someone running at you, but another swing of the machete finds a home in the second man's face.

As the man falls back with a scream unlike anything you've ever heard, he takes the machete with him. Happy and Juice shout at you, and it's then you remember the third. He's running at you, a small blade in hand, and you reach for the nearest weapon. It's a metal bat and just as you rear back to swing, he swings first. The blade makes contact with your bicep, slicing it open, but you only feel the sting of it after you swing.

The bat clips the man in the jaw, stunning him. As he stumbles back, you advance. He sloppily swipes at you again, but you dodge it. The second hit with the bat hits true, catching him in the temple.

The man falls and you're quick to stand over him, bringing the bat down a third time.

The bat connecting for a fourth time makes Juice cringe, but Happy proudly watches on.

Thwack.

Thwack. A scream.

Crack!

"Shit. I think that was his skull," Juice mutters.

YN screams as she continues to wail on the man with her bat, caving his skull further and further in, to the point there's now a puddle of blood beneath his head and splattering with every pull back.

The barn doors open, and Happy and Juice tense when armed men start to file in, but they exhale with relief when they see Jax, Tig, Chibs, and Opie in the mix. All the unfamiliar men take in the scene with an air of indifference, but it's the expressions of the Sons that almost make Happy laugh out loud. They'd only known YN to laugh, feed them, or threaten the croweaters with violence. None of them, with the exception of himself, Juice, and Tig, knew the violence she was capable of.

"Uh, a little help?" Juice calls out. "My arms are killing me over here."

Tig rushes over, pulling out a blade to cut his brothers free. "What the fuck happened?"

"One of them threatened to rape her and she just lost her shit."

Juice is cut free first, and he immediately stands, rubbing his raw wrists. As Jax checks in with him, Happy is cut free.

"Boss, should we stop this?" Someone asks.

Happy looks over in time to see a guy in a suit grimace when blood is flung onto his pristine boots. "Do you want to get in the middle of that? You know how YN is. Let's just let her run out of steam."

As the guy steps back in line with a nod of agreement, Happy huffs and stands. He stalks over to YN until he's behind her. Then when she raises the bat high above her head, Happy lunges. He manages to grip the bat where it isn't slick and pulls it from YN's grasp.

Still very much livid, especially now that your weapon's been ripped from you, you whirl around to start screaming expletives and pummel whoever it is with your bound fists. Instead, arms are wrapped around you, keeping your arms stuck between your chest and another, and there's a gruff voice in your ear saying, "It's over. It's over, baby. The cavalry's here. You can stop now."

It takes a long minute for the voice to infiltrate the fog of rage, and then a moment to realize who's speaking.

When your struggles cease, Happy leans back a little to look down at you, but with his arms still wrapped around you. "You back?"

"Y-Yeah. M'sorry."

Happy grunts and leans his face closer to yours, and for a moment you think he's about to kiss you. Instead, he presses his forehead against yours as his eyes close, and he exhales with relief. "Don't be. That was hot as fuck."

You huff a quiet laugh as a bout of silence ensues, but then one of your brothers decides to ruin it.

"Hey, Lowman, we'll give you a million dollars if you give her your last name and take her off our hands."

You jerk in Happy's hold, turning to glare at all your smirking brothers. "Fuck off!" Laughter ensues at your disgruntled expression before Juice fills them in on what happened, and then Happy is tugging on your bound wrists so you look back at him before finally cutting you free. "Thank you."

One hand grasps the hair at the back of your head, gripping a little tight as he holds you in place so he can press a kiss to your forehead. "Let's get you home. You're covered in blood, and I need to take a look at your arm."

Glancing at your arm, you shrug. It stings, yeah, but it doesn't seem deep enough. And then just as you go to take a step, Happy swoops you up into a bridal carry.

It's then you notice that you, Happy, and Juice are all barefoot, and it's Juice who answers your unasked question. "You sleep like the dead, girl. Happy and I heard them enter the house, but they still managed to get the drop on us."

"I'm getting you a goddamn dog," Happy grumbles in response.

"Only if you clean up after it." He grunts and you grin. If he wanted a guard dog for you, then he was cleaning up any messes.

Outside the barn, suggestions are made about where to go now. Jax suggests the clubhouse, but at the wrinkling of your nose, Happy says you'll be going home. Your brothers mention not everyone can go because that many vehicles will draw attention, so Jax suggests sending your brothers' men back to the club with Opie and Chibs. They agree, and then you're loaded up into an Escalade with your brothers and Happy.

When you get to your house, Tig mentions that they had cleaned up and straightened your furniture after they figured out what had happened. You thank him and let Happy carry you to your bathroom while Juice takes the guest bathroom.

As Happy sets you on the counter, you watch as he gets the first aid kit from beneath your sinks. "They're gonna talk."

"Let them. The club already thinks we're fuckin'."

You snort. "Please. They should know by now that I'd never settle for a relationship where the guy gets to fuck around when he's on the road." Happy freezes with the antiseptic spray bottle in his hand before shaking himself free of thought and spritzing your arm where you were cut.

"Is that why you haven't given me the go-ahead to slip between your thighs?"

You smile at his blunt question and then wince when he wipes your arm clean. "Pretty much. I'm not a fan of my partner sticking his dick or tongue in some rando pussy, then coming home and doing the same to me." Happy grunts and you arch an eyebrow at him. "Would you be okay with me visiting my brothers and sucking someone's dick before coming home to you?"

"Fuck no."

"Exactly." You grin triumphantly. "So, unless you plan to stop dicking down croweaters or sweetbutts, the most you'll get out of me is some cuddling."

Stepping back, Happy tosses the used gauze pads into the trashcan and then reaches into your shower stall to turn on the water. Then looking at you, he demands, "Strip."

"If I fully strip, there's no going back. You're mine and mine alone." You hop off the counter, slipping off your ruined shirt without batting an eye. "I was calm and collected at your parties before because we're friends, but that all changes after this. I won't take it easy on any woman touching what's mine."

Happy smirks as he eyes you in your bra and jeans, and then strips off his shirt. "Good."

You've seen the man shirtless only a handful of times, but seeing his ink never fails to give you pause. You reach out for the first time, tracing the snake tattoo that takes up a majority of his chest and upper abdomen, before you trace the various happy faces on the side of his waist. You feel his abdominal muscles twitch and then between one heartbeat and the next, Happy's crowding you against the sink counter and angling your head up.

His kiss is as aggressive as you figured it'd be, his tongue sliding against yours and teeth digging into your bottom lip. You give as good as you get, nails digging into either side of Happy's waist as you kiss him. Then when the need for air arises, you pull back and try to catch your breath. "Well okay then."

Moving out from Happy's reach, you strip, uncaring of your nudity and then step into the steaming shower. Happy isn't too far behind you, but you're not too interested in seeing him fully naked as you are cleansing a stranger's blood from your body. Standing under the waterfall, you watch as the shower floor turns red. Happy presses in close behind you so he's under the water as well, and you straighten up before leaning your head back onto his shoulder, smiling softly at his hardness that presses against your ass.

"No funny business, Lowman. At least not until we've eaten a fuck ton and slept for a day or two."

He grunts. "Agreed."

You immediately start washing your hair, and you're surprised when Happy takes it upon himself to lather up some soap on your bath pouf to wash your body. For the most part he behaves himself, but when his thumb oh so casually brushes over your nipples, you slap his thigh and pay him back when it's your turn to wash him. He grunts when you take his dick in hand and thrusts into your soapy palm, but you quickly release him to finish washing his body.

"Fuckin' tease."

"You started it."

You get out of the shower first, smirking as Happy tells you he'll be out in a moment. You know exactly what that moment's going to entail since his hand is already stroking his cock before you can even find a towel.

"You gonna want something to eat?"

"Send Tig to get burgers and fries."

"Alright."

Back in your room, you can hear a muttered conversation from somewhere in your house. Clutching the towel around your body, you stick your head out your door. "Tig!"

"What?"

"Happy said to go get us some burgers, fries, and Cokes!"

"Do I look like a fuckin' maid?!" Tig appears in the hall, hands on his hips.

You grin at him. "No, but I do have a maid's costume. Wanna try it on?" Tig gapes and you laugh at his expression. "Come on, Tig. Please? You can grab some cash from the junk drawer."

"Fine. But only because I know Hap will murder me if I don't, not because I'm picturing you in a teeny tiny maid's outfit."

"Sure, buddy. Thank you!"

Tig grumbles as he turns to march out of your house and then you worry about getting dressed. You dress in nothing but a sports bra and boy short underwear, and then with a reluctant sigh you head to the front. Everyone's in your kitchen, sitting around your table, and your brothers groan when they see how little you're wearing.

"Oh, shut up. You've seen me in clothes like this before."

"In tights, not underwear," one brother grumbles.

"Just be glad they're boy shorts and not a g-string."

All your brothers groan yet again whereas the Sons find the interaction amusing. You take a seat at the table, grimacing a little and touching at your raw wrists.

"Let me get that for you," Juice says. He leaves to, no doubt, grab the first aid kit from the bathroom. Then taking a seat next to you, he asks, "Did Hap disinfect your arm?"

"Yeah. Just spritz it again and wrap it. It'll be fine."

As soon as Juice gets to work, Happy enters the kitchen in nothing but a pair of jeans hanging off his hips.

"Jesus," one of your brother's mumbles. "Are people suddenly allergic to clothes around here?"

You grin as Jax arches an eyebrow at his friend. "You have clothes here?" Happy nods and sits, and you quickly introduce him to your brothers while Jax looks at Juice to say, "You seem to know your way around this place too."

"It's because they practically live here when they're not at the clubhouse," you say. "Hap's moved his shit in my room, and Tig and Juice have slowly taken over my guest room." Then glancing at your brothers as if you didn't just drop somewhat of a bombshell on Jax, you ask, "So what the hell happened?"

Juice taps above one of your raw wrists and you situate them so he can disinfect them.

Your eldest brother meets your gaze. "There's a new family in town- Jimenez. They're trying to make a name for themselves and thought they could intimidate us." You scoff as your other brother's chuckle. "When they didn't get the reaction they were looking for, they came up with the bright idea to target the weak link. They thought they had the perfect candidate when they found out we had a baby sister."

"Joke's on them, you're fuckin' psycho," another brother muses.

"I'm not-"

"We literally walked in on you bashing a guy's head in."

"And let's not forget the whole reason you're in Charming is because you tried to burn down your ex's house while he was still inside."

"Or that one time you wrecked your car into that other girl's car all because she broke your friend's heart."

"That cunt cheated on him. She deserved every bit of karma I dished out."

Jax snorts, shaking his head. "Christ. You and Hap are gonna be a pain in my ass."

"You know it."

Tig shows up just after Juice is finished with your wrists. Juice then dishes out the food to you, Happy, and himself, and you get up to grab drinks from the fridge. As you settle back down, Jax and your brothers watch in surprise at how the three of you go to town on your provided meals.

"So, what exactly does one do as a mafia princess?" Jax wonders.

Chewing the food in your mouth, you only answer him after taking a drink of your soda. "I'm the family hacker. If they need a computer hacked into to gather information or scrub information, I get called in."

"So, in other words, you're female Juice," Tig says.

You laugh. "Yeah. Yeah, I am." Juice grins and you reach over to fist bump him.

You continue eating as Jax speaks with your brothers, listening as this small portion of the Sons of Anarchy are filled in about what business your family gets up to. When you're finished eating, you stand and start gathering up the trash to toss. While you're up, you grab yourself a glass of water and some Ibuprofen. Then after downing four pills, you head back to reclaim your seat at the table, only for Happy to gently grab you by the arm and tug you down onto his thigh.

Your brothers don't care about your new chair, but Jax, Juice, and Tig can't help but raise an eyebrow.

"So, is this a thing?" Jax wonders, gesturing between you and Happy.

As you drape an arm behind Happy's shoulders to settle more against him, you smirk. "What's the matter, Teller? Scared?"

He huffs and then stares at Happy, but the man beneath you merely says, "Gonna start drawing up a crow. Does that answer your question?"

The kitchen goes eerily quiet and then…

"Holy shit. Hap's actually gonna take a woman," Juice says in awe.

"This is a momentous occasion. We gotta throw a rager." The glint in Tig's eyes has you narrowing your own eyes at him.

"You just wanna see a girl fight. Don't you?"

"Hap's been possessive of you since you first showed up to the clubhouse, but now that you're staking a claim, the thought might have crossed my mind."

"Are you sure you wanna see that?" One of your brother muses. "YN might traumatize a few poor souls."

Tig smiles. "I look forward to it."

You roll your eyes at Tig's excitement about possibly seeing you fight and your brothers chuckle. The Sons really had no idea what they were in for when someone tested your patience.

Standing, you keep a hand on Happy's shoulder as you say, "Well as much as I love, like, and appreciate all of you, you need to go. I'm exhausted and I still need to sleep off whatever I was drugged with."

Jax grins. "Is that code for us to get the hell out so you can bang Happy's brains out?"

Snorting, you shake your head as your brothers all grimace. "No. I'm seriously exhausted. The fucking will come later after we're well rested. I have a feeling I'm gonna need loads of energy for Hap."

Your brothers all make noises of disgust as they stand, and you take a moment to hug and kiss each of their cheeks on their way out. You promise to call when you're feeling better and then you're ushering the Sons out as well.

Locking up after everyone has left, you head to your room where you find Happy stripping off his jeans. He's in nothing but a pair of boxer briefs as he pulls your blanket back before sliding under and you pad over to do the same. You meet him in the middle, laying on your side as you drape one arm over his abdomen. With your head on his arm, you snuggle closer and Happy reaches for your leg to have it draped over his thigh so you're as close as can be without actually laying on top of him.

"Were you serious? About the crow?" You ask right before you drift off.

"Does that freak you out?"

"Not really. But if I get your mark, you're getting mine."

Happy huffs. "And just what is your mark?"

"My lips and name." You run your hand across his abdomen before walking your fingers down to one of the few empty patches of skin, below his belly button and right beneath where the snake's tail curls. "Right here."

"Above my dick, you mean?"

"Mhmm."

Happy grunts and then squeezes you a little tighter to him. "We'll see, princess. Now get some sleep."

#happy lowman imagine #happy lowman x reader #happy imagine #happy x reader #sons of anarchy imagine #soa imagine #happy lowman #juice ortiz #tig trager #jax teller #dark romance

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woso-dreamzzz · 3 months

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Wingwomen

Hardersson x Child!Reader

Part of the Big Adventures Universe

Summary: The Wingman episode

"We are your wingwomen for today," Morsa says to the camera attached to the car," This is Pernille Harder. She plays for Denmark. She plays for Chelsea." She smiles at Momma. "I know you pretty well, I can tell you that."

"You do," Momma says," I can introduce you too. Magdalena Eriksson, captain for Chelsea FC. Playing for the Swedish national team, making a lot of tackles on the football pitch but, also, at home sometimes."

Morsa laughs awkwardly. "Oh, okay."

You laugh too and Morsa reaches back to wiggle your leg. "And our little baby," She says," y/n. The future of Sweden."

Momma rolls her eyes as she pulls out of the spot. "Denmark."

"Sweden."

"Denmark."

You giggle again. "I like Arsenal!"

Momma and Morsa both groan and you beam a sunny smile.

"We started off as just friends, playing together for the same team in Sweden," Morsa says during the drive," Pernille asked me if I wanted to take a math course with her and then we studied math. And yeah, the rest is history."

"Momma doesn't like math!" You say from your seat as you make your girl-swan and girl-moose kiss.

"I like math, princesse!"

"Don't teach me math," You say back, sticking out your tongue.

Morsa laughs. "Now the producer wants to hear about the photo."

"The photo."

"The photo, yeah."

Momma smiles. "Which one? The one with us or Princesse? Because both of them kind of blew up."

"Our one first."

"It was taken at the world cup.. Yeah, after the game I kissed you. The picture was taken and we suddenly just had twenty-thousand more followers on Instagram and Twitter. I didn't get it, like, what happened?"

"After that picture," Morsa says," We really became role models. A lot of people were looking at us and were happy to be able to see that people can be open. If you're two girls in love or a girl and a boy or two boys, it doesn't matter, whatever you are. That's the message we wanted to share. It was a complete coincidence that the picture was taken but it ended up becoming a really beautiful thing."

"And the medal picture?"

"The medal picture," Morsa says softly. She turns her head to look at you. "What's the medal picture, princesse?"

"When I was wearing your medal!" You reply with a silly grin," I was very little but you still gave it to me."

"She did," Momma says," We've got that picture framed somewhere in the house. It was very cute."

"I was just making sure she understood how heavy it was," Morsa laughs," For when she wins her own."

"I'm gonna win a World Cup medal!" You insist.

"Of course you are." Morsa presses her finger to her ear to listen to the producer man before turning to Momma again. "Who or what convinced you to join Chelsea? Anyone in particular?"

Momma laughs. "Morsa thinks she's the reason we moved to Chelsea, princesse."

"She is," You say, stubbornly crossing your arms over your chest," Could've stayed at Wolfsburg."

Momma rolls her eyes. "I just think it was just the perfect timing and obviously you were playing on the team."

"It's a little bit of a bonus."

"That's a bonus, yeah. No more bath time duties, no more having to play all the time. You definitely have your uses."

"Morsa plays with me a lot," You cut in," And she does my hair in the morning. It's not always good but she tries."

Morsa turns to look at you in betrayal. "What do you mean it's not always good?!"

You shrug. "Sometimes you tug too hard."

Morsa still looks at you, mouth open wide before she reaches back to tickle your sides. You shriek and try to wiggle away but you're still strapped into your seat so you can't go anywhere.

"Do you have a funny story about the party?" Morsa asks," After winning the league?"

Momma's face lights up. "Ugh, yes!"

Morsa hides in her hands. "Are we really sharing this?"

"Morsa got excited," You say," Because she had a party with the team and forgot that she's too old to party."

"I'm not old!"

"Yes you are."

"No I'm not!"

"You're a Morsa. All Morsa's are old! You're too old to party! You went blergh everywhere!"

Morsa rolls her eyes and looks at the camera. "Because of Covid, because of everything, I hadn't been able to party in over a year. I didn't really know how much I could handle in that evening and..."

"And Morsa threw up in the toilet!"

"And I was taking care of her," Momma says," Like the good girlfriend that I am."

Morsa smiles weakly as you giggle. "Yeah, you had to do girlfriend duties."

"And Millie had to take over babysitting the princesse."

Momma pulls up to the restaurant and you eagerly look out the window, kicking your little legs. It's not often that you get KFC.

"Okay, Pernille," Morsa says," It's time. It's called The Colonel's Quiz." She pulls out a little KFC bucket.. "You can start."

"I'll take the first one."

"And just so you know before we start, Princesse gets to choose a forfeit for the loser so there's a lot at stake, okay?"

"Okay," Momma says," What is my favourite food?"

"I would say..." Morsa thinks for a moment. "Like sushi or Japanese food."

Momma nods. "It's Japanese slash Mexican."

"That's what we had yesterday!" You giggle.

"That's right, princesse. I got one correct answer!"

"Okay, so the next one," Momma says," What is my worst habit?"

"It's you sometimes ask too many questions," Morsa replies.

You think for a moment. "Er...You make me speak English at home!"

Morsa and Momma laugh.

"I said I ask questions before I try to figure it out myself."

"Two points for Morsa!" You announce. You like this game. It's fun.

"How many times did I win player of the year in Denmark? I mean, if you were a really good girlfriend, you actually should know."

"Five times?" Morsa asks, not looking too sure.

"Is that your final answer?"

"No, six times?"

You frown. That doesn't sound right either.

"Is that your final answer?"

"That's my final answer. Is it correct?"

"Yes?"

"Is it correct?"

"Yes, it is."

"Oh my god!" Morsa celebrates

You shake your head. "No," You say," Morsa's wrong. It's seven, I counted all of them at home."

Morsa laughs. "Pernille, the producer says she's right. It's actually seven."

Momma's eyes go wide. "Oh, is it? I thought it was six!"

"Momma's won too many," You say earnestly," 'Cause she can't keep up with how many she has." You shake your head almost in disappointment. When you win prizes when you're older, you're never going to forget how many you've got.

"Two out of three is not bad," Morsa says.

"No."

"Not let's see how well you know me." She picks up the slip of paper. "Who is my favourite music artist slash band?"

"Er..." Momma looks a bit worried. "Leonard Cohen or something."

"It's Lana Del Rey."

"Are you sure?"

"Momma," You say," I think Morsa knows who her favourites are."

Morsa laughs. "Thanks, princesse. Next question, what is my party trick?"

"I know! I know!"

"Let Momma answer."

"Er..." Momma doesn't look like she knows. "You get drunk and you throw up."

"Shut up!"

"Those are bad words, Morsa! You have to put money in the swear jar when we get home!"

"Yeah, I don't know."

"Princesse?"

"Morsa can open a bottle of beer with her teeth!" You say," She's going to teach me when I get all my big teeth!"

"Magda!"

Morsa tries to change the subject quickly. "Zero points for you, Pernille. We already have a winner but let's do the last question just to see if you know me a little bit. Which team did I make my international debut against?"

Momma blows out all of her and you giggle.

Morsa sighs in disappointment. "Oh, okay well...I'm gonna get out of this car now. This is not good."

"I think it is..." Momma thinks for a while. "Ukraine?"

"No."

"Hungary?"

"No. It's France."

Momma sighs.

"The forfeit is yours. Princesse?"

"Er..." You hadn't actually thought of one in advance. "Er...You...You have to order the food in an English accent!"

Momma looks stricken and Morsa laughs, leaning back to give you a high five.

"Princesse..."

"You have to!" You wave a finger at her," 'Cause you got the forfeit! Forfeits aren't meant to be fun!"

"Are you ready to practice your accent?" Morsa teases.

"You have to say please and thank you a lot," You say helpfully.

Momma pulls up to the window and in a shockingly bad accent speaks," I'd like a Twister Wrap and I'd also like a salad, please."

"Is there anything else?"

"Princesse, what do you want?"

"Popcorn chicken! And er...Fruitshoot!"

"What flavour?"

"Apple and blackcurrent!"

"And a kid's popcorn chicken and an apple and blackcurrent fruitshoot," Momma says in her bad accent.

As you pull away from the machine, the car is filled with laughter.

"Yeah," Morsa laughs," I don't know what the hell that was but it was great. It's so funny that you're like a farmer girl from Denmark doing a posh accent."

The laughter keeps going when Momma drives past the window and then tries to take the tray with her.

"If you're going to eat in the car," Morsa says as she passes you your food and drink," Then you can't spill anything."

"I won't!"

"Okay," Morsa says as you start the drive through," We've got another question here. Which of the players from our team would you want to see doing a Wingmen episode?"

"Well," Momma says," The first one I was thinking about is Sam and Erin."

You giggle. "Sam and Erin are very silly. Like clowns!"

"What about Emma Hayes doing an episode?" Morsa offers.

"Yeah that...that wouldn't be quiet," Momma replies.

"Coach Emma talks a lot," You say," She talks and talks and talks-"

"Where are we?"

"-And talks and talks and talks-"

"This is Harry Potter's World."

"-And talks and talks-"

"I don't know. I've never seen it."

You stop your repetition to gasp. "Momma! But we live in England now! That's...That's really bad!"

Momma laughs. "Sorry, princesse. I didn't realise you were this passionate about it. Who even showed you them?"

"Millie did," You say," She's fun. I like Millie."

"Is she your best friend?"

You think for a moment. "Erin and Sam are my friends too and Guro but they're not my best friends."

"Who's your best friend?"

"Jessie! I like Jessie!"

Morsa laughs. "You and Jessie are two peas in a pod. Best friends forever!"

"Jessie's my bestest friend."

Momma unlocks the car and hoists you out. "Home sweet home. I think we've been some good Wingwomen. "

"I mean this was great fun." Morsa gets out too, pressing a kiss to your cheek before smiling at Moma. "I loved you English accent, that's the best thing for me today."

"I liked the food!" You say, stuffing some chips into your mouth.

"We're never going to get her to eat healthy again," Momma laments.

"Enjoy it while you can, princesse," Morsa says," Because you've not getting anymore fast food for a while."

You stick your tongue out at them. "My bestest friend Jessie will buy me some!"

#woso x reader #hardersson x reader #pernille harder x reader #pernille harder #magdalena eriksson x reader #magdalena eriksson #woso community #woso fanfics #woso imagine #woso #The Big Adventures Universe

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alastor-simp · 2 months

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Hugging Them Out of Nowhere - Lucifer Morningstar, Cherri Bomb, Vox and Valentino

Here is the second part of the hugging headcanon with the other hazbin characters. I am going to try to make Valentino be a bit more approachable in this story since I know he is on this fandoms hit list.Will contain spoilers from some episodes. Enjoy!

Lucifer Morningstar🐥

🐥"OH! Ummm.....something wrong? Did you want to play with one of my rubber ducks?” Lucifer would have no idea what is going on. He will be stood like a statue, while holding one of his signature ducks. Despite being the king of hell, this man is an awkward softie.

🐥Lucifer was officially staying at the hotel now after its renovation after the fight with Adam. It was nice that he was finally making an effort with Charlie’s dreams and acting like a father.

🐥However, this poor man suffered from depression, due to being stressed being the king of hell and also thinking about his wife leaving. Man couldn’t catch a break.

🐥His bedroom is where he would stay when he was like that, crafting another duck figurine at his desk. He hadn’t noticed you coming into his room to see how he was. The minute he felt arms wrap around him is when he realized your presence.

🐥 “Ummmmmmmm….hi there?” Lucifer just remained in the position he was in, staring at you, trying to figure out what was happening. Soon, you had let him go, wearing an apologetic smile.

🐥 “I’m sorry, your highness.” Lucifer jumped when he heard that and waved his hands. “OH! Just call me Lucifer or Luci! Don’t need to be formal with me!” You smiled at him and nodded your head. The both of you stared at each other for a bit before he broke the silence and asked why the sudden hug.

🐥Feeling shy, you rubbed the back of your neck, “Well, I noticed you seemed more melancholic than usual today. Usually when I am sad, a hug always makes me feel better so I thought maybe that would help you.” Red pupils continued to stare at you making you feel nervous, wondering if you had upset him

🐥Your body was met with a strong impact, as Lucifer tackled you in a hug, squeezing you tightly to the point it was hard to breathe. His face was in the crook of your neck, as he continued to squeeze. “C-can’t br-eath.” Gasping out an answer, you felt Lucifer let you go, by still placed his hands on your shoulder.

🐥 “S-sorry! Sorry! I forget my own strength sometimes haha! You okay? No broken bones?” He kept moving his head to peer at you, making sure you were alright. His actions caused you to laugh, surprising him. “You’re such a dad.” Lucifer then smiled at that, placing a hand on his chest, “Of course I am! I am hells number one daddy!” That sentence caused you to cackle, confusing Lucifer even more. “Hahahaha! Don’t ever say that again!” Lucifer tilted his head at you: “Wait, what did I say?”

🐥His clueless side to him was quite cute at times. You managed to calm down. “Lucifer, if you ever need someone to talk to or have another one of your depressed episodes, come find me okay. I’ll be there to listen and also provide comforting hugs." He wore a shocked expression, before he broke into a kind smile, patting your head. "Thank you."

🐥The relationship the both of you had improved a lot. He was more open with you and would discuss his problems. He was kind enough to bring you to his workshop, showing you how to make his prized ducklings. You received a nice surprise when you went into your room and saw a duck figurine that resembled you, with a red rose lying next to it.

Cherri Bomb🍒

🍒"Woah! Hey bit✪✪!! Why the sudden tackle? You looking to throw down?" Cherri is very hyperactive and fun-loving, you almost never see her depressed about anything. She is either throwing bombs during turf wars or partying at the club with Angel Dust. She wasn't close with everyone at the hotel except Angel, but she was friendly as long as you didn't do something to piss her off.

🍒However, she does have a sensitive side to herself, but she puts up a tough guard to hide it. The three of you, yourself, Cherri and Angel were partying at a popular sex club, chugging down shot after shot. It took you a while to notice, since you were slightly buzzed, that Cherri had a more sad expression on her face then usual. You were about to question what was wrong, but she got up quickly from the bar, saying she was going out for a quick smoke.

🍒Sensing something else was going, on you let Angel know that you would be right back, before following after Cherri. Looking everywhere, you were able to find her on the patio deck of the club, smoking a cigarette while leaning on the metal bar. She didn't noticed you until she heard the sound of the door sliding and saw you walking towards her.

🍒 "Oh! Hey hoe! Whatcha doing out here? Craving a smoke too?" She was smiling wide at you, but you can tell that it was forced. Walking closer to her, you threw her arms around her, causing her one eye to stare at you in shock. ""Woah mate! Whats wrong with ya?" She patted one of your arms, wondering what was going on. "Cherri, drop the act already. I saw that look on your face in the club. There is obviously something going on. So come on, spill it."

🍒 Cherri's eye just widen further and the smile on her face dropped. She turned her head down, not saying a word to you as you kept holding her. "AGH! I'm just pissed with myself at the moment! I'm trying so hard to obtain the level of overlord, but it's not working. I need that status, so I can help Angie to be rid of that moth fu✪✪face!!" Cherri yelled out, as she threw the cigarette from her hand, while punching the metal bar with her fist. You continued to listen to her, and hugged her tighter.

🍒You both stayed like that for a bit, before you spoke: "You will do it Cherri Bomb! I believe in you and so does Angel Dust. Its gonna be hard in the beginning, but you can do it. I want the same for Angel too and I'll try to help in anyway I can." After that little speech you gave, you felt Cherri shaking with laughter. "AHAHAHA! Sorry mate, but you fighting in turf wars? I'm sorry, but your baby face is way to sweet to be considered a threat!" Her words cause you to pout. "Still, thanks mate for coming out here and making me feel better." She moved her body, positioning herself so she could hug you back.

🍒The both of you let go after that, just in time for Angel Dust to come, wondering where the both of you went. "Cherri? Toots? What's going on? Y'all been gone for a while, I thought you bailed on me!" The both of you laughed and walked closer to Angel. "Nothing Angel. Just having some girl talk." You didn't want to tell Angel what had happened before since you probably expected Cherri didn't want to worry him. You felt an arm wrap around your shoulder, and pulled you closer to them. Cherri smiled down at you before looking back at Angel. "Sorry Angie, got distracted. Lets get back to the party! I owe you a drink Y/N!" Cherri looked down at you when she said that before pulling you to the bar, with Angel following behind, wearing a smirk.

🍒Cherri exchanged numbers with you after that. She chatted with both you and Angel on the regular. Her messages were very wild and enthusiastic, either sending a picture of herself in a fight or just making funny inappropriate jokes. She had invited you to her crib to hang out at one point. You should consider yourself lucky, cause she only invites the people she cares about to her place, so the fact that she did that means she considers you a very close friend. She has offered to help train you too, since she noticed your lack of skill in combat, so she wanted to help prepare you. She knew that it would help you in the long run and also allow you to tag team together in a turf war.

Vox📺

📺Hugging Vox was not as simple as you think. He had a reputation to uphold as one of the three Vee's. Also he didn't like being touched.

📺He was an alright guy despite his massive ego. You had been in his business for a while, so you knew quickly how he function and acted in certain situations. His mood had been very sour lately, since he had just realized his arch enemy, the radio demon was back after disappearing for seven years. His great plan was to call Alastor out during one of his video podcasts, only to be mocked down by Alastor, causing him to short circuit and cause all the power to be cut off.

📺Vox remained in his office after that, fuming. His screen was flickering every once in a while, as blue sparks kept popping up around him. You hesitated a bit, as you stood at the door to his office, contemplating if you should go in a calm him down or just let him cool off on his own. Finally reaching a decision, you walked in.

📺He was sitting in his large red chair, in front of his multiple screens. The back of the chair was facing you, as you walked closer to wear he was. Having reached closer to him, you look at him, seeing if he was okay. He was leaned back against the chair, hands covering his screen. It was mumbling something to himself, which was hard to make out, but you heard some words like "alastor" and "a✪✪hole."

📺Clearing your throat, you allowed your presence to be know to him. Vox jumped a bit, before removing one of hands to look at you. He was clearly irritated, given the scowl on his face. "The hell you doing in here? I made in clear I was not to be disturbed." You bounced back a bit at his tone, but you stood strong. "I apologize, sir. I had come to see if you were alright, since you have been in here for a few hours." Vox continued to glare at you before putting his hand back to cover his face. "Argh! That old fashion radio di✪✪head still has me pissed off!" You listen to him rant, and wanted to at least find a way to ease his emotions. "Will you allow me to help calm you down?"

📺Vox removed his hands from his face, his screen eyebrows arched up a bit. He gave a sigh and just waved his hand in the air, saying to do whatever. Taking a deep breath, you walked closer to Vox, leaning down to wrap your arms around him. Vox just froze, hands raised up in shock. He wasn't expecting something like this. After a few seconds, you let him go and stood back up, rubbing your neck. "Sorry! I- That always use to make me feel better whenever I am upset about something, so I though that would help you." You continued to look down away from Vox, afraid that you overstepped.

📺You slowly look back at him, hoping he wasn't more enraged. He surprisingly wasn't, but was more stumped then anything. Soon his screen face lit up with his blue-teethed smile. "Well that was a surprise! Didn't expect you to do that?" He continued to smirk at you, which made you twiddle your fingers. "Sorry." Vox just gave a huff, turning his face away. "Well I didn't hate it." That comment surprised you. You weren't able to see his face,, but his screen looked a tad pinkish, but it was hard to make out. Letting out a cough, he turned back and stretched. "Well time to get back and do some overlord work. You can head back and do whatever." Smiling, you bowed your head a bit, "Very well, sir." You turned around, beginning to walk back to the sliding doors. "Vox." You stopped and turned back, "I'm sorry?" Vox spun his chair, around facing you, "You can call me Vox." His face was hard to read, since you never seen him with that kind of expression before. He slowly turned back around, back of the chair facing you now.

📺He was a bit different after that whole interaction. Yes, he was still the egotistical Vox, but he acted a bit softer when he was with you behind closed doors. He would ask how your day was and how the new Voxtech sales were coming along. He tried to have you around more, whenever he was doing his podcasts or having a meeting with the other Vees. You noticed his eyes staring at you, with a sort of soft look, but he would quickly turn around like nothing was happening.

Valentino🦋

🦋It wasn't easy to offer Valentino a hug. He was one of the the three V's, the overlords that dominated most of Pentagram city. Valentino was a busy man, since he controlled a lot of the lustful side of the city, so he was either surrounded by hot demons or working as the director for his porn videos.

🦋 However, he was prone to hissy fits, that would result in him either breaking multiple things in his office or injure one of Velvette's models. You weren't sure what caused this tantrum, but you could hear Valentino's squeaks of rage from his office.

🦋After a couple minutes, it began to quiet down, giving you a sign that it was safe to enter his office now. Opening the door to his office, you saw the mayhem that was now his office space. Papers had scattered the floor, some clothes were throw on the ground and broken pieces of glass were scattered everywhere on the floor. In the middle of the room was a giant red smoke cloud, likely containing the moth himself. You could see him a bit through the smoke, wearing a scowl, but his eyes were closed.

🦋You didn't say a word, and just started to clean up the mess. Valentino peeked his eye out to look at you, and closed it again. After fixing his clothes and throwing away the shards of glass, you picked up the papers, assembling them in a stack and walk over to his desk. Placing them down, you looked up at the moth man in front of you. He was still wearing a scowl, while muttering little curses under his breath. "Umm..Mr. Valentino?", calling out his name, you approached a bit closer, to where you were standing near his chair. Valentino opened his eyes, flashing crimson at you. "What is it?" his tone was still agitated, and his eyes were glaring at you.

🦋You fiddled with your fingers for a bit, then you slowly got closer to him, wrapping your arms around him in a hug. He was very tall, but since he was sitting down, it was easier for you to place your arms around his back, putting you head next to his neck Valentino let out a little squeak in shock, his multiple arms jumping up, which caused the pipe in one of his hands to drop to the ground. "Oh~ You looking to play gatita?" You could tell he was smirking at what you were doing. You shook your head, "I'm not doing this to have sex with you. I'm giving you a hug to cheer you up." Valentino was quiet after you said that. You were about to let go, thinking you made him more upset, but you felt his arms pull you closer, lifting you up to have you sit on his lap. His head bent down as well, leaning closer to your neck.

🦋None of you had said a word, as you continued to hug each other. You felt a pair of lips kiss your neck, giving you goosebumps. Slowly Valentino removed his head from your neck. His two hands moved to push you back, before placing the both of them on your cheeks. He was wearing a very tender expression, it was quite a surprise to see since you only saw him with a smirk or glare. "Gracias hermosa." Leaning down, he placed a kiss on your forehead, causing you to blush.

🦋His attitude with you change entirely after that. He was still a horny bastard, but he cooled it down for you. He wanted you with him at all times, either next to you or sitting on his lap. Vox took a notice to how different Valentino was being, but he didn't question it, since it saved him time and prevented him from having to come and calm Valentino down himself. Valentino began to send you little gifts as well, you expected something erotic like vibrators, but surprisingly, you got roses and beautiful jewelry. He started addressing you by your name more, or he would called you "hermosa" like he did when he kissed your forehead. Welp, looks like you have a giant moth demon attracted to you now.

~END~

(Sorry no Velvette in this headcanon. It is hard for me to write her character. Maybe i'll do a separate headcanon for just Velvette when I have time)

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@pepperycookie , @yourdoorisunlocked, @ghostdoodlen, @aceofcards0-0, @jyoongim, @saturnhas82moons, @unholycheesesnack , @luujjvi , @forbidden-sunlight, @pinkcrystal44 , @veethewriter , @rains-sleeping , @danveration , @demoarah, @cookiekyo , @iiotic, @delectableworm , @91062854-ka , @alastorsgoldie , @lokis-imaginary-friend , @themysteriousslenderman , @huntlowfan , @pawstrey , @futureittomainn , @christinaatyourservice92 , @littledolly2345 , @just-trash-yeah-thats-it , @angelinevalentine89 , @yunimimii , @staryosh1 , @mihawksdemoness , @crystalreads , @blahblahbruhmeow , @madam-strawberryrose , @inkslayer , @azazel-nyx , @lixanjewel , @ainsliemac

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