#< bro doesn’t know Noah is having eyes on him the entire time

[milwkwyxd]

Nah I can only see Mana as the chronic coffee drinker, so she took it upon herself to sit there and stare at Neo smirkily while she brings her books there to study to annoy him while he works XD

every coffee shop au is a masterpiece. fight me.

[concretecultist]

Sunshine (muscle memory pt. 2)

summary: "true love never leaves, sometimes it just gets lost temporarily. lost in pride and ego, lost in confusion and misunderstanding. but love being lost is never the end; sometimes love needs to breathe before it finds home again."

word count: 17.6k

pairing: reader x noah sebastian

warnings: angst, talks of mental health, feelings of guilt, mentions of marijuana usage, crying, dad!noah, FLUFF

THIS IS PURE FICTION AND IS FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY!!!

A/N: yeah so idk how to write short stories really 😭 so this is a long one!! Please make sure to comment and reblog as it helps us writers out immensely!! Much love!

~Berry🫐

“You’re so full of shit!,”

Matt had come back into town, rushing to tell Noah and the guys what had happened while he was out. Noah, Nicholas and Jolly were playing a video game on the big screen when Matt rushed in, Folio nodding in and out of sleep with a bag of chips in his hands after facing a whole blunt by himself.

“Bro, I know what I fucking saw,” Matt was seething, does Noah really think he would lie about something like this? “This wasn’t some Y/N doppelgänger, it was Y/N and she had a baby, a little girl.. who looks just like you might I add. It’s weird!,”

Noah felt like his stomach fell out of his ass. Matt has to be bullshitting. Maybe you were babysitting? There’s no way you had a baby. There’s no way he had a baby.

“It’s hard to tell who babies look like when they’re still that young. Maybe the guy who told you to go away was her new boyfriend,” Jolly tried to justify.

Matt frowned at Jolly’s disposition. Everyone in this room knew you like the palm of their hands. It took you a while to open up to Noah and become his girlfriend and even longer to open up to them to consider them playfully-annoying brothers.

“She’s not like that,” Nicholas clicked away at his controller, brows furrowing as he soaks in the conversation.

Matt clapped his hands and pointed to Nicholas as if to say that the point he made was based, and it was.

Nicholas continued speaking while keeping his eyes trained on the screen, absolutely obliterating the characters within the game, “I mean think about it. If what Matt is saying is true-,”

“And it is!,” Matt interjected but all Nicholas did was roll his eyes and continue speaking,

“-Then the time between Noah and Y/N breaking up versus now, would not be enough time for her to get pregnant by someone else,”

“One night stand after they broke up?,” Folio answered absentmindedly.

“You know damn well that’s not how Y/N is,” Matt just wanted to pull his hair out, “If you saw that baby then you guys would see I’m not lying,”

Noah felt like he might be sick. Even if you two broke up, you would tell him that you were pregnant… right?

But then again, the last few months of your relationship, he wasn’t there, emotionally nor physically so he can’t blame you if you didn’t. It doesn’t hurt any less though and he doesn’t know what to believe.

“Where the hell did you even see her? I figured she jumped ship,” Noah shrugged, “And even if this is the case, Matt. She blocked all of us on… o-on everything so how do you expect me to go about this?,”

The silence from the blond was enough of an answer for Noah but Matt’s silence didn’t mean he didn’t have one.

“Why are you so adamant on denying this?,”

“I’m not!,” Noah let his character go idle long enough for Nicholas to say fuck it and actually pause the entire game, “I just don’t know what to do! I mean, if she acted like she didn’t want to see you then what makes you think she’ll want to see me?,”

The guys knew Noah had a point, but he should still try.

“It’s Sunday. Every other Sunday she goes to the markets and you should know that because you would always be at the studio with Jolly so she would take me with her,” Matt stood there with his arms crossed, he watched the gears turn in Noah’s head but he knew the brunet still wasn’t getting it.

“Okay?,” Noah was stumped.

“Which means she still has her routines, dork!,” he tapped his fingers to his temple as if to tell Noah to ‘fucking think’

“Meaning on Wednesday, she’ll be at the actual grocery store getting what she couldn’t at the market,” Nicholas answered for Matt.

“Are we sure any of this is a good idea?,” Jolly probed, “If you guys ended mutually then one, why would she not tell you, two, why would she block all of us, and three, why would she act like that when seeing Matt?,”

Jolly, Matt and Nicholas had their suspicions about the breakup. Noah had told them it was pretty cut and dry but they could never get your side as you pretty much went off the grid.

“I don’t know!,” Noah held his hands up in frustration, “I don’t know why you guys are acting like I’m not blindsided here,”

“There’s only one grocery store within the town I saw her near. Don’t be on any stalker shit but I’ll bet you my fucking mixing equipment she’ll be there on a Wednesday at 4:45 before the after work rush comes,” Matt refuted.

It felt strange to Noah that all of his friends seemed to read you like a book, but when he thinks about you, you seem like a mystery. Maybe it’s because you had no choice but to become one after a while. It’s his fault you closed yourself off. You tried until you couldn’t yet Noah made your efforts seem pointless. Noah had neglected you, he became a stranger who wasn’t involved in your routines anymore and he’s had more than enough time to realize that after you left.

When you left it felt like his world had stopped. How did he fuck up so bad? Letting the voices in his head get to him, pushing you away with the idea that you’ll someday be with someone who deserves you. The demons in his head convinced him that he wasn’t that someone.

He let the weight of the world crush him. He let the brain fog cloud his vision, his judgment and now here he is, doing his best to get better. Now has the news that he may or may not be a father. He’s spooked by the idea. If he couldn’t be a good partner how does he expect you to let him in for a chance to be a good father… if he can find you that is? He’s petrified.

Except he knows damn well it doesn’t outweigh the panic you felt when he pushed you away, forcing you to go through it all alone.

It had been about two and a half weeks or so since your run in with Matt and it has done nothing but prompted you to stay inside more than you already have been. Reid agreed to drop off your needed items and even stuck around to help around the house. He’s even brought Ms. Ernie by as she’s missed you.

You wanted to get out though. You missed going on walks around the woods, missed stepping foot on the outskirts of the city. You couldn’t hide away forever and you really couldn’t do that to Noelle, she needed to see the outside world.

That’s how you found yourself in the supermarket in town with Ms. Ernie as she asked you what you wanted for dinner.

“I think some mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli will be good sides,” you suggested.

“Want gravy?,”

“No, I’m more of a butter and pepper kinda gal,” you lightly nudged her, patting Noelle’s bottom as she laid quietly in her baby wrap against your chest.

“You kids don’t appreciate good gravy anymore,” she playfully rolled her eyes.

This is something you really needed. Was this a friendship you expected to have? Absolutely not, still it helps you feel normal. You share your eggs from your chickens and she makes you milk and yogurt, she always invites you over for Wednesday dinner, you invite her over for a nice cool lunch while she’s on break from the truck.

“What do we want for dessert?,” you ask, looking at the array of fresh baked goods.

“Pick whatever you want, sweetie. I’ll be right back, I’m gonna go look at the teas, I’m running low and I think they’re on sale!” she waved, taking the cart to go get her favorite brand of iced tea.

“What are we feeling, Sunshine?,” you lightly bounce, her hand reaching up to feel your cheek, “Do we want carrot cake, red velvet? Ouuu that caramel crumble apple pie sounds gooooood,”

You look at her, heart swelling while she just squeals and smiles at you. You never expected yourself to be a parent, a single parent at that- but smiling down at this face, with the cutest, chubbiest cheeks and big, animated eyes, you wouldn’t trade this for anything.

“I know, I think we should get all of them too,” you rub your nose against hers just to hear her babble again. You would never get tired of that sound, it became your favorite song.

“But!-” you open the cooler door and begin reaching, “-Mama is really craving the red velvet,”

Unfortunately for you though, it was on the top shelf and you just weren’t tall enough. You hear yourself grunt as you reach and honestly it’s rather embarrassing. You try again and see no one nearby to ask for help and you feel defeated. All you wanted was a nice piece of cake. Deciding to give up, you slap your hand down against your thigh and look to Noelle to pout at her, “I guess it wasn’t meant to be”

While you were looking at her, you were in your own world. Everything just seemed to stop when you peered into those eyes. Noelle nuzzled her cheek against the back of your finger as you caressed it. All you wanted was a nice dinner followed by eating cake while she slept on your chest, a nice night with you and Ms. Ernie competing against each other while watching a game show.

You were so caught up in adoring your daughter that you didn’t see the large hand that reached over your head to grab the cake you desired.

“Here you go,” a hopeful drone made its way into your ears.

You were so set on having a good night except when you looked up, your smile immediately fell and you were frozen. Your eyes seemed to deceive you because there was no way this was real. You had to be dreaming. There’s no way he’s standing in front of you.

Your body betrayed you. Everyone speaks of fight or flight and a part of you always believed that if you were in a situation where you had to choose, that you’d choose flight, not being the fighting type and opting to always run and hide. But… Now that you’re in a situation like this, there’s a third option many don’t acknowledge.

Freeze.

There’s fight.

There’s flight..

and then there’s freeze…

And you froze.

Your mind and body let you down. Your feet should be carrying your body as far away from his as possible but you just can’t move. You’re trying but they won’t budge.

That smile he shines isn’t helping either. It's an expression you want to wipe off his face but for some reason you can’t help but continue to stare because it’s a smile that you never expected to see again. It clicks that your mind is betraying you again because why are you finding comfort in it?

His eyes were tired but still so beautiful. You notice they hold hope as well as hesitation.

“You always did like red velvet,” he snickered but you didn’t find anything funny. What kind of sick joke is this?

“Get away from me,” you whisper. It sounded more confident in your head, you didn’t want to sound weak. Another bodily betrayal.

“I’m not here to scare you or hurt you. I just want to talk,” he caught a glimpse of the gorgeous baby in your wrap and his breath was taken away.

Matt was right and not just about the baby. But your routines. You never strayed far from your habits, so to see you walking in the store with your baby to your chest made this much more real than Noah could process at once. The poor guy doesn’t know if he’s relieved or scared shitless.

“There’s nothing to talk about. She’s not even yours,” your eyes flit as the tears fall down your cheeks. It felt like you were suffocating now. You know Matt spilled and really, you couldn’t blame him because if you were in Noah’s position, you’d want to be told as well. But then again.. you wouldn’t be in this position if you were him because you would’ve tried to save your relationship.

Being found so easily wasn’t something you planned and now you’re battling the feelings of wanting to slap him or run in his arms because while he hurt you- Noah was it for you. He was endgame. Seeing him stirred all these feelings inside that were now giving you vertigo, causing your stomach to swirl and a lump to form in your throat.

“Y/N, she looks just like me. There’s a lot to talk about,”

He tried to get another glimpse but you shielded her in the wrap. No, no way in hell. Taking a giant step back, you hold her closer, “I won’t let you take her away from me. She’s all I have, Noah. I won’t let you,”

Noah took a step forward and could only brandish defeat when you took yet another step back.

“I’m not trying to take her from you,” Noah knows he has no right to be offended. Like, let’s think- you two broke up and his best friend bumped into you, now Noah knows about his child and he found you in a random supermarket after you fought tooth and nail to stay away from him. It would make sense why you think he’d take her from you, but that’s far from what Noah wants. It’s a long shot but he wants to make this right.

Noah understands that he fucked up in the past but he wouldn’t do that to you, “That’s why I want to talk. I want a chance to be there,”

A scoff from you echoes in the empty aisle. How rich.

“You weren’t even there for me and you expect me to believe you’ll be there for her?,” You grit through your teeth, “She is too precious to be let down by you, Noah. Do it to me all you want but not when it comes to my daughter,”

A frown etched its way onto Noah’s face, waving his hands as if to say ‘wait, hold up’. He knows he hasn’t been there but he’s not about to be some deadbeat.

“Our… daughter,” he corrected, “You didn’t even give me a chance to know so I could be there,”

“You’ve got some fucking nerve!,” your voice had gone shrill and you were thankful that there was little to no people in the store. You wished he would have approached you outside, then you really wouldn’t have to worry about keeping your voice down.

“ ‘Our’ daughter, Noah? Really?! If you weren’t there before I was pregnant-,”

“I told you I just needed time,” he interjected, still holding onto that sentiment.

“I gave you four years!,” you spat, “Four years of me, Noah. I gave you four years to learn how to love me. To learn how to communicate even up until the end,”

Who knows how much time he would have needed. Who knows if he’d have even gotten his shit together by the time you found out you were with child and gave birth. Having Noelle now, you know for certain you couldn’t have just sat with idle hands.

“Y/N please,” he begged, still holding the cake in his hands, “I love you and I fucked up. It’s been killing me since the day you left and how I never had to chance to make it right, then Matt told me-”

“Matt is wrong. Matt doesn’t know what he’s talking about!,” you really weren’t trying to make a scene here and you were still trying to convince Noah that Noelle wasn’t his.

“She has my eyes, Y/N. She’s a perfect mix of you and me. Please, just, can we talk about this over coffee. I know you don’t owe me anything but can we meet for lunch or something?,”

Before you could answer with a fat ass denial, Ms. Ernie is coming up with her noisy cart, scooting along with a small frown on her face.

“They done moved my tea, I had to ask for help,” she frowned. She was never the type to like asking for help in stores, she liked it when things were easy to find.

She moves to stand beside you, waiting for your response but then she notices the look of shock you’re wearing and meets Noah’s eyes. It took her a second before she gawked, looking to Noelle and back to Noah.

“That’s that baby’s daddy!,” she looks over her glasses and you loudly sigh at her statement. She didn’t always read the room well.

“Ms. Ernie!,”

“Sorry, honey but it’s undeniable,” she shrugs, looking back to Noah, “You gonna put that cake in my cart or just stand there looking pretty,”

Noah stammered before rushing to set the cake down in the cart and turning to you. Words seem to catch in his throat, not exactly sure what to say.

“I know you blocked us all on everything so just… reach out when you’re ready. I really would like to talk about all of this,”

“I gotta go” Looking to Ms. Ernie so that she would get the hint to start walking. You knew you were in for a long night of her lectures, no matter how insightful they always were, you weren’t ready.

You had a feeling for how the night would go now. This feeling had your stomach queasy as if you’re on a boat, feeling the waves rock you to and fro. It was hard to face the music but she was going to make you. That’s just how Ms. Ernie was, you just weren’t ready for her to be right about it all.

“Give him a chance, sweetie,”

Noelle was fast asleep while you leaned on Ms. Ernie’s shoulder, eating your cake and watching Wheel of Fortune. You wanted your night to go just like this but it wasn’t enjoyable, not with all that was plaguing your mind.

“I can’t let him back in,” you think about it, recalling how bad it hurt you the first time around, “Now that Noey is involved, I can’t let my guard down. I’m a mom now, I have to protect her,”

“I’m not saying throw your whole hand in,” she sipped her tea, “Have a drink with him. I can call Reid to help me with our cute lil plum,”

It wasn’t a secret to how badly you were emotionally wounded when you and Noah parted ways, but it also wasn’t a secret to Ms. Ernie just how bad you love him. From the day you met her, she claimed you and Noah would find your way back to each other. You always told her it was a fat chance. Even now, your heart was playing tug of war.

Do you stay away? Leaving him to wallow in his bad decisions? or do you lean into the possibility of mending things?

“I never stopped loving him, that’s why I’m scared,” you sit up to look at her, she looked so noble when looking at you over her glasses like that, “I watched him love me less and less until our love just became an empty shell. I watched him pick his job over me and I can’t put her through that,”

Ms. Ernie reached over to wipe your tears when she caught sight of your trembling chin. It was comforting, like a grandma tending to her grandchild while they experienced a melancholic mood.

“Take it slow. Take time to get to know the new him and he can take the time to get to know the new you,”

“Does he deserve that though?,”

“Mmm,” she shrugged, “Sometimes a lot of good can come out of a second chance. What if you and him were meant to part ways, only so you two could find each other again?”

“Love shouldn’t come to that, no?,” a twinge of confusion worming its way into your tone

“Oh honey. You’ve got a lot to learn about love,” she lightly swatted your leg, “No amount of time and space can separate you from those that are meant to be in your life. This is a second chance to create a new story,”

You called it. You knew she was gonna get all philosophical on you and be right about all of this.

“Don’t rush into it but…” she sighed, “Give it a shot,”

You don’t even know if you were strong enough to lift the metaphorical gun to give it a shot. Pondering her words each bite at a time while you finish your treat, how do you go about this without immediately falling in love with him again? He was so easy to love even when you didn’t want to, even in his faults. One look at him and it felt like the first day you met him.

You were standing at the bus stop one day, sighing at having to take public transportation as your anxiety has been in overdrive since your car was in the shop. Public transportation meant a lot of people in close quarters and you just couldn’t handle that right now.

In the midst of your mind being in a flurry, a group of rowdy men are approaching. You’re too caught up in trying to reduce your apprehension to notice them getting closer until a nameless man bumps into you, knocking your token out of your hand.

Watching it fly from your hand, floating in mid air, all you can do is try to catch it but it just wasn’t your day. Your token falls down the street drain and your gasp causes the rowdy group to stop.

“No! No, no, no, no noooo!,” you fall to your knees and look down the drain to see the token shining up from the bottom. It was mocking you.

“Dang it!,” your head falls in your hands, wallowing in embarrassment. The token station was 9 blocks away, there was no way you’d make it there and back in time. Of course the transit app wasn’t working on your phone either, you’d been telling yourself to get a new phone carrier for months now, now look at you.

“I’m… so sorry!,”

Removing your head from your hands, your eyes move in the direction in which the voice came. Your breath is instantly taken away once again but for a whole other reason.

“I can pay for another token,” he offers, helping you up, his large hands grasping your biceps to get you up right.

“No it’s okay I can-,”

“Please. It’s the least I can do,” the tall brunet insisted. Your words are caught in your throat, eyes trying to drink in his beauty before he becomes only a memory.

“Nice going, Noah!,” a tall blond wearing a hat pushes him.

“Watch where you’re going, asshole,” another chuckled, he was also decked out in tattoos, gorgeous black hair and glittering eyes.

But your eyes were on the inked man in front of you, the one who made your day even more of a rollercoaster than it already has been. While his friends make fun of him, your eyes are tracing over his tattoos, you’d never seen so many on one body in person before.

“Is… is that a Garden of Eden reference?,” you point to his neck.

He touches his throat and chuckles, a noise that you weren’t aware would change your life.

“Yeah, yeah it is,”

“It’s nice,” you mutter, afraid to speak above a certain octave. You don’t talk to people much, you were only a lonely librarian who went to work, staying in the basement all day to organize books and then go home.

“Thanks…?” he trails off but points to you ask if to ask you a question

“Y/N,” you spill out, “M-my name is Y/N,” you anxiously stick out your hand for him to take and shake, “I think he just called you Noah?,”

“Yeah that’s me,” his smile… my God his smile was hypnotizing. His smile could cure all sadness

“You owe me a bus pass,” you point out, “A-and… and I can pay you back over a cup of tea and some fresh scones at my favorite bakery downtown,”

Your confidence not only caught him off guard, but you as well. You’d never suggest something like that to someone and now you’re overthinking the fact that you’ve made such a fool of yourself.

“Sorry that was… that was abrasive and demanding. That was so rude. Y-you were just being nice and I just… you’re just so pretty and oh my God… Y/N shut up-,”

“Hey,” he softly talked over you, wanting to calm you down without scaring you.

“We’ll stick around until the bus comes so I can pay for your pass and we can trade numbers to set up a date for those scones,”

A date… a DATE?! You’ve only ever been on a handful of dates before and they all went terribly. Surely he didn’t mean like… a date-date, right? Like, you’re sure he just meant a little meetup so you could actually pay him back.

“O-okay!,” wide eyed, you nod your head and look around to his friends that are smiling and laughing and you don’t know if they’re laughing at you. It’s okay if they are, you’re used to it.

“Don’t mind them. They’re assholes,”

“We are not!,” a shorter man punches his arm, “I’m Nick by the way, but you can call me Folio. That’s Jolly, Nicholas, Matt, Davis and Bryan!,”

You nod to them all, making a note of their names.

“Y/N,” you sputter, “I’m Y/N,”

“We heard,” Jolly smiled.

“Right,” you give a bashful smile and turn from them to sit on the bench, “The buses are running 20 minutes late today so you really don’t have to wait,” you set your book in your lap.

“I insist. If these jerks are in a rush, they can go without me,” Noah throws a hand back at them. He’s not surprised that that’s exactly what they did.

They left Noah there, giving you two the chance to talk about the most random things, like your favorite book genres to read, things on your bucket list, aliens, paranormal shit. Just fun things. This is the most you’ve talked to any stranger you’ve ever met, you don’t even talk to your co workers like this.

Noah let you yap about your interests, he admired the way you animated your speech with your hands. He was absolutely enamored with the way you bounced in your seat when he brought up a topic that excited you and he made a mental bookmark so he could memorize the way your eyes close when you laugh.

Noah didn’t believe in love at first sight but this felt like it.

While discussing your favorite twilight characters, the noise of the approaching bus pulled you from your conversation, Noah can see how your face dropped. Your conversation went by too quickly.

“We can have more conversations like this,” Noah shows you his screen, displaying his number and you curse to yourself, knowing he can see you shaking while you hurry to type it into your phone. Your heart was beating out of your chest, he is so sweet and so fricken cute and his tattoos are so cool and he just sat here to talk to YOU?! No one ever just talks to you.

He’s even nice enough to help you onto the bus and get you seated before saying his saddened farewells to leave you. His demeanor gave off reluctance and you felt like you were in a rom-com when he stood outside the bus, waving as it began rolling away.

Your face was hotter than hell, there’s no way any of that just happened. Your phone felt heavy in your hands, demanding to be opened. Gnawing at your lip, your fingers dance on your screen, trying to figure out what to say.

You went with a simple text, something quirky. Something that you hope he’ll answer to and not ghost you after the way you opened up to him so easily.

“So… about those scones?”

All those memories flood back and you can feel the dampness of your face. Where did that Noah go?

How did your once grey world that become so colorful so quickly with his presence, fade into grey once more with his absence in the blink of an eye?

What happened to him that he became so detached? What was lying beneath the surface that he let fester until he let it impact your relationship?

You feel Ms. Ernie takes the plate away from you and rests her hand on your cheek, pulling you out of the pit you were digging with your overactive questioning.

“I got the spare bedroom ready for ya, go get some rest,”

Taking her advice, Noelle snuggled into you as you carried her to the spare room where Ms. Ernie had set up a spare bassinet. You had tucked her in, making sure she was safe and secure before plopping down on the bed with a large sigh, heels of your palms pressing into your eyes to subdue your flowing tears. Now that you were alone, the weight of everything came down.

Tired of feeling so scatterbrained, you grabbed your phone, tapping away at the screen to have your thumb hovering over his name. Was this a good idea? Do you give in this easily? Would this be healthy for your mental state right now? Maybe Matt was right, this wasn’t about you, this was about Noelle, she deserved her dad, right?

But what about protecting her? You didn’t want to introduce him into her life just for him to turn around and jump ship when things got too hard.

Here goes the vicious cycle of overthinking and all the possibilities that made themselves known with the heaviness, giving you no other choice but to feel it filling up your chest. How soon did you want to do this? Did you even want to do this at all?

You’ve been blaming yourself since that day at the market. Had you gone earlier like you always do, you wouldn’t have bumped into Matt, or if you had paid attention, you could have avoided him. There were so many outcomes the universe shuffled in its hand and yet the card you were dealt was the situation you were facing right now.

Finally having enough of your own inner dialogue, a deep breath escapes you when clicking on his contact, closing your eyes when hitting Unblock Caller

Just like the day you met him, you’re faced with the challenge of what to say, except this time there was nothing cute or quirky to say. It was simple and serious.

Tomorrow 12pm at the bakery downtown.

That’s all you could come up with before pressing send. It’s almost like he was waiting by his phone, waiting for you to reach out and it makes you kick yourself. What if this is a set up and you’re falling into his plan.

Wait, no.

Noah has messed up but, He wouldn’t do that… would he? He wouldn’t hurt you any further. You hope you’re right because now this is happening.

I’ll be there.

Sleep fought you all night. In and out of sleep to either tend to Noelle or simply because your mind wouldn’t power down for the night. When you were finally able to get some shut-eye, it was like it was already time for the sun to rise.

Ms. Ernie had breakfast ready for you after you fed Noelle, scooting around her quaint kitchen humming the tune of a classic she grew up listening to. Your nerves were bad as you thought of the day ahead.

“So, what are your plans today?,” she questions.

Slowly chewing your food, your eyes avert down to the table. Why do you feel so embarrassed to admit that you’re meeting him today despite her calling it?

“I uhm, I was going to ask if-,”

“Yes. Reid is already on his way,” the elderly woman delivered a smug expression, she’s been on Earth long enough to know how young love works.

You chuckle at her and shake your head, “You don’t even know what I was going to ask,”

“Baby, I can read you like a book. You’re gonna go see him. I could tell before you went to bed last night. We’ve spent enough time together for me to know you’re not over him,”

Knowing this fact made you feel an ounce of shame. You should be over him. He showed his ass last year yet you’re not sure if the alarm bells that are going off in your head are due to actual warning or if they’re sounding off because you can’t seem to do anything other than overthink. It’s a terrible habit and an even more terrible predicament to be in.

“Am I jumping into this?,” you rub Noelle’s back absentmindedly, enjoying the weight of her in your arms to ground you. Maybe you should have given it a couple days. Did it seem desperate to message him so soon? You were supposed to hate his guts

“It was going to have to happen at some point, dear,” she shrugs while cleaning the kitchen, “You’ve left some bricks of milk in the freezer, you’ve left some spare bottles, diapers, all that. With Reid here to help me she’s in good hands times 2,”

Almost as if she had summoned him, Reid knocks and enters through her front door, a bright smile on his face that you’ve come to learn really helps calm you down. You were thankful for the connections you’ve made since being on your own.

These people were your village and you were in good hands, meaning Noelle was too.

“Gooooooood morning!!,” he claps, hugging Ms. Ernie before moving to you to steal a piece of bacon off your plate. Reid hugs you as well, taking Noelle from your arms.

“I can’t forget you, sunshine!,” he holds her up in the air and she screams in excitement, dropping her head on his chest when he pulls her in.

Ms. Ernie could tell your nerves were getting the best of you, it’s happened enough times to know that spaced out look on your eyes.

“Finish eating and get ready. You can take my car,” she scoots around the kitchen to set her keys on the counter.

“I can call an Uber” not wanting to impose

“Nonsense!,” she waves her hand with a frown, “Your car is back at the cabin, my car doesn’t get much use cause I always take my truck. It’s not a problem,”

Reid sits beside you and rubs your back as a means of comfort, it’s written all over your face that you’re distraught, you never did master your poker face.

“Hey, you got this,”

You drop your head on the table and can feel the tears welling once more.

“Am I stupid for letting him in so easily?,” the familiar knot was forming in your throat, warning that tears would soon begin to fall if you didn’t pull yourself together, “He literally told me he didn’t love me like he used to, then last night says he never stopped. It’s hurting my head. I went about year without him and now I’m going to meet him and I’m terrified,”

“Y/N,” Reid began, “How do eat an elephant?,”

You turn to him and frown at his question. But this is Reid, you know he’s about to say something corny.

“How?,”

“One bite at a time,” he comforts, “It’s okay to feel nervous. It’s okay to overthink all of this and it’s okay to think about the cons. But what if this turns into something good?,”

“It was supposed to be something good the first time,” you hiccup. It’s just tearing you apart all over again to think about what could have been if he’d tried harder back then. You could have been a happy family instead of going through this.

“But then I guess I wouldn’t have met you guys,”

“Exactly. Everything happens for a reason,” Ms. Ernie interjects, “But if you get back with him, you better not forget us,”

Her words were jaw dropping, you know she was saying it as a joke but there was a twinge of truth in them. You all have gotten so close and it would crush her if you left and never looked back.

“I would never dream of it,”

You arrived at the bakery an hour early. Your thoughts wouldn’t slow down unless you did and your nerves were on fire the closer it got.

Maybe this was a bad idea. No… this definitely was a bad idea, right? This bakery brought so many memories. What kind of self torture is it to recommend meeting at the place you two had your first date?

It’s 12 now and he’s still not here. Your chest starts to ache and you don’t know if stress is the cause or if it’s because you knew this was too good to be true.

The reality of having a baby scared him off. He wasn’t ready to be a parent. He’s a big shot rock star, sitting here with the realization made it click that he’s not ready to give that up. He loved his job too much.

It was now 12:06 and there was still no sign of him. You weren’t going to text him, he shouldn’t need a reminder, especially because he never followed up today.

Exhaling mournfully, you gather your belongings, standing up to leave when you hear the bell to the front door and heavy, pattering feet-

“I’m here!!,” panting, hands on his knees as he gets to the table, “I’m here! Accident blocked off the highway- had to take a detour- sped here, no parking. Had to park 2 blocks away so I ran,” he slid into the booth, running a hand through his hair to calm down.

His face was cherry red, chest rising and falling quickly, he looked beat. You don’t say a word, you just slip him your water and he whispers his gratitude just as he chugs it, taking a napkin to wipe his mouth.

“I don’t have her here with me,” a monotonous tone leaves you.

He nods, taking a second to compose himself, trying to get his heart rate down so that he could have a calm conversation.

“I expected that,” leaning back in his seat, his eyes settle in on you and you start to feel self conscious, “You’re still as beautiful as the day I met you,”

“Noah,”

“No, I know I fucked up, Y/N. Trust me, no one knows more than me,” he leans his elbows on the table, dipping his head to catch your eyes that way you can see he was being honest, “I’ve kicked myself in the ass ever since then,”

“I can’t just let you back in, Noah,”

“And I don’t expect you to,” his hand comes to his lips, pressing on them as he thinks, “Everyday I thought about you and what I could have done better. I have therapy now, I learned better coping mechanisms. I know that’s something I should have done before I got that bad, but I didn’t just do it for you I did it for me because I wasn’t treating myself the nicest either,”

Maybe you should have taken a page out of his book and gotten help, but with being a single parent, you didn’t really have time for that.

“I loved you and I still do. You said that you probably weren’t the one for me but you’ve got it so wrong,”

His words reverberate off the walls of your ear canal. This is why all of this is confusing. If he was going through something mentally, why wasn’t he honest instead of shattering you to pieces?

“You’re just saying that because there’s a baby in the picture,” you accuse.

“Ask Matt… ask Nicholas even. This has been going on since the day you left. Finding out about our daughter only solidified it even more that I want a life with you,”

There’s no way this is genuine.

“Noah, I can’t just trust y-,”

“I know. You set the pace, I will respect that,”

There.

Those words started to chip away at the walls that you’d built up. They must not have been very thick, or very strong. Or maybe Noah just had that ability.

“Do you… can I see pictures of her at least?,” He asks as if he’s nervous almost, “I get it if you don’t want to I just-,”

A part of you wanted to tell him no. You didn’t want to reveal her to him just yet. He should work a little harder to prove that he’s legitimate in his stance. A few words shouldn’t grant him this opportunity. Nevertheless, your iced out attitude began melting at his expression, showing him a couple pictures wouldn’t hurt.

“No I can,” you open your phone to your camera roll, having a whole album of her. You’ve taken pictures of her since the day you had her. She’s a beautiful baby and you suppose he could see pictures of his own child, he’s missed out on enough, hasn’t he?

“This is when she was born. I did a water birth,” you show him a picture of you holding her, umbilical cord still attached, “My medical staff was great,”

Then you slid through the album showing him other pictures absolutely adoring your daughter and how cute she is

“This is the first time she smiled at me,” you look at him and you can see the sparkle in his eyes as he stares at the screen. There was a gentle smile on his lips, registering in his mind that this little human was a piece of him.

“She’s a sweet baby. Doesn’t really cry, she’s a squealer when she laughs,”

You play videos of her giggling and babbling and he is instantly in love, seeing this look on his face stirs a guilt inside of you that you never felt before. Maybe he should have known. Things could have been resolved by now had you not been selfish.

But there’s that nagging little voice telling you that you deserved to be selfish at least once in your life. It felt like your mind was in a blender.

“What’s her name?,” he looks to you hopefully. Were you ready to give him that information? It’s silly but the more he knows, the easier it will be for him to tear down the walls you built around yourself. It’ll make it easier for him to weasel his way into the picture again and you weren’t sure yet if you wanted to keep this a co-parenting arrangement or what.

“You don’t have to tell me right now,” he sees the hesitation on your face.

“Noelle,” you answer softly, “Her name is Noelle. I named her after you. But we also call her Sunshine, Plum or Noey, that one’s new,”

He broke out in the brightest smile you’d ever seen. You missed that smile, those beautiful lips framing his beautiful teeth. It was a smile that once brought you peace that is now bringing confusion.

“That’s…,” he gives a breathy chuckle, using his fingers to press into his eyes to keep the tears at bay, “That’s lovely,”

“Yeah, look at who her mom is,” you flip your hair as a joke and suddenly the tension isn’t as heavy. You’re supposed to be icy right now but the hopeless romantic within you is fighting the broken-hearted girl. One could only guess who is winning.

“Yeah, exactly,” Noah is seen getting nervous as the conversation progresses, he doesn’t know what questions are off limits, “So what are you up to these days? You’re not at the library anymore,”

“You looked for me at the library?,” you frown. You left that place a long time ago.

“I sat out on the bench everyday for at least three months before we had to leave for tour,”

Why couldn’t he give you that energy before? Where he used to meet you outside on the bench after you got off, sometimes with a bouquet of your favorite flowers, and sometimes with your favorite take out and you’d have little date nights on the library bench. Why did that flame have to die?

Was life about to present you with new, better tools? Improved ways to bring it back? To make it a raging forest fire that can’t be put out? A lover like you can only hope.

“I work from home. With finding out about Noelle I needed something relaxed, I’m still in the field of library science. I work as an analyst,”

His eyebrows perked up, just like the first time you two ever met when you told him what you did for a living. His interest now was a big 180 from last year.

“Y/N that’s.. that’s amazing,” he leans forward, prompting you to talk about it more. You go on and on about your job, about how cool it is to you and he sat there and listened. Not once did he break eye contact, he interacted with the conversation and it felt like things were how they used to be.

“How’s the Bad Omens life?,” you ask, finally getting winded from talking about yourself.

Noah plasters a look of pride on his face. You wanted so badly to keep up with them but that would do you a disservice while trying to mend what was hurting you.

“It’s great! We’re blowing up, so many more places we can tour now, merch sales are off the hook. We have a new one dropping soon and I uh… I designed one for Noelle, I’ll just need her size,”

His words caught you off guard. How does he have something planned for her already?

“Noah,” he’s got you swooning so easily. This was your Noah.

Snap out of it, Y/N!

If he’s serious, make him work for it.

“I think it’s pretty cute! Nicholas and I brainstormed on it together, it’s a Bad Omens x Noelle exclusive,”

The laughter that escaped you was a melody Noah thought he’d never hear again. When it dies down, his mouth begins to itch with a question he’s been wondering for a long time now.

“Are you,” he clears his throat, “Are you seeing anyone?,”

Your eyes flicker at his question, adjusting in your seat. Snatching the cup of water that was on the table, looking him in his eyes when you set it down after a sip.

“I told you,” tongue in cheek, playing with your fingers to ease your mind, “I wouldn’t be able to fall in love with anyone else. You were it for me,”

You search his eyes, wanting to cry for the sole basis that you never thought you’d see them again. They were the eyes you looked to whenever you were desolate, excited, or livid. No matter what you were feeling you could simply look at him and he was always there, until he wasn’t.

“I meant it when I said I loved you and you fucking sat there and told me that you didn’t love me like you used to,”

“I don’t know why I said that-,”

“It gutted me,” anguish covers your face like a mask, trying to keep yourself from crying while that night replays in your mind like a movie, “You just sat there like it didn’t even hurt you,”

“It hurt me like you wouldn’t believe,” he persisted

“So why didn’t you try?,” your lip hurts from biting it so hard, if you don’t stop it’ll bleed soon enough, “I gave you so much of me, even up until I couldn’t, when I had nothing left and you just… sat there!,”

“I was an idiot,” he admitted, “I fucked up when I decided to love my career more than anything. I messed up when I let it weigh me down,”

“I don’t care that you loved your career, Noah. I cared whether you showed up for us or not. You did until you became complacent,”

“I know I didn’t,” he answers, “I know I didn’t try hard enough. I know I gave up too quickly and those decisions have been haunting me every fucking day. I know I made this bed but I don’t wanna lie in it anymore,”

Taking a napkin from the table to wipe your eyes, you look around to make sure no one is looking at you. You thought in your mind that you’d be stronger but deep down, you expected the tears even though it’s embarrassing to be this emotional in public.

“Were you even honest with everyone or did you make me the villain?,”

“I told them it was mutual,” he confesses in shame.

Choking on your sobs, you shake your head and just look out the window, “So you made them think I just skipped town? That’s so fucked up, Noah. I would have never done that to you,”

“I will tell them the truth,” He panicked, “I don’t know why I lied to them I just… I knew they’d make the guilt worse and I figured the damage was done. I knew if they knew the truth they’d make me reach out but after that I didn’t have the right to reach out to fix it,”

There’s a silence that floats between you two after his words. The culpability of hurting you ate at him while the heartache gnawed away at you.

Both were parasites feeding on their hosts. Ruining their lives, doing their best to reduce them to nothing.

The parasitism ends here though.

“If-” you hiccup, gathering your things, “If you want even a sliver of a chance of being in Noelle’s life… of us getting back together, of us being a family… then you’ll start with being honest with our friends,”

Noah was so anxious that he just might throw up. He wanted you back and he didn’t want to miss out on having a family. He’s missed out on enough due to his own transgressions.

It took Noah a few days to muster up the strength to tell everyone. Every time he tried, he stumbled over his words and gave up. He had to do this though, it wasn’t fair to lie on your name to save his face.

Noah found himself with the guys, all gathered for game night. Snacks spread out all over the table, Folio was high, laughing while throwing a squid at Matt on the course, fucking up Matt’s winning streak. All of them were having a good time but Noah couldn’t focus on having fun, what he was about to confess wasn’t fun by any means. After a few rounds of Mario Kart, he paused the game and sighed, many groans of dismay being heard around the living room.

“What’s your problem?,” Jolly questioned, “I was about to whoop your ass on the Bone-Dry Dunes!,”

Noah felt his breathing pick up. It was now or never.

“It wasn’t mutual,” he blurts out, heart racing in his chest, he can hear his blood rushing in his ears.

“The fuck are you talking about?,” Folio burps obnoxiously loud and Bryan kicks him for being gross about it.

“Y/N and I, the break up wasn’t mutual,” he finds his switch controller a lot more interesting than the feeling of their eyes burning holes into his skin.

“Again, that begs the question… what the fuck are you talking about?,” Matt’s voice sounds strained, like he knows and is getting irritated with the suspense.

“Before she left. I told her that I didn’t love her like I used to. I got overwhelmed with the band. I was… I got deep in my head and started to self sabotage. I neglected her and I fucked up,”

A stillness dresses the air, Noah can feel the tension. He can’t bring himself to look up and see their expressions, he’s ashamed, he should be. How did he go so long with this secret? How did he go about his life knowing he broke the trust of one of the sweetest souls that walked this Earth?

“Woah…,” Davis muttered in a daze. His single word response was enough to have all hell breaking loose.

“I’m going to kick your fucking ass!,” Nicholas threw his controller at Noah, heat from his frustration reddening his cheeks, “Are you fucking kidding me, Noah? Is that why she ran off?,”

“That’s exactly why,” he nodded, cursing at himself. He feels so embarrassed to say it out loud. This is the first he’s ever admitted this outside of therapy. These are people that mattered, people whose opinions mattered the most.

Matt sat up like he’d seen a ghost, a light bulb moment happening for him, “That’s why she didn’t tell you about the baby,”

“BABY?!,” Folio screeched, “where the fuck was I?!,” Hands stuck out as if to gesture “wtf” Folio was always ten steps behind everyone else, even when he was in the room at the time of conversations.

“You were super high, you passed out,” Jolly waved at him to shut up, turning to Noah, “You’re our brother which means I have to be honest. That is a dick ass move, Noah. She was nothing but patient with you. She loved you, supported you even when it was hard because you were gone all the time. What the fuck?,”

“She was always there no matter what you needed,” Bryan added, while it took a while for you to open up to everyone, when you did, they became your little family, “She was always there for you, always there for us,”

“I miss when she packed our lunches for the studio,” Folio sighed like he was daydreaming. Once again finding it hard to read the room.

“Not the time!,” Nicholas gritted through his teeth

“I’m just saying!,” Folio defended, “She took care of all of us,”

Nicholas stuck out his hand to shut Folio up. If there was anyone up in arms about this, it was him. They all became your family and it hurt them when you left without a word. Now that he knows the full story, it makes him livid to know it was Noah who pushed you away. This could have been avoided.

“We were worried sick about her, Noah!,” Nicholas was more upset than any of them, and that’s saying a lot, the others were quite upset, “That girl who stuttered over her words the first time she met you still stuttered after years of being with you because she loved you, because you still made her nervous! After years of being with you she was still smitten and because of the stress.. you… y-you say that shit to her?,”

Noah really had no rebuttal. He knew Nicholas was right. There were no words for him to defend himself with. It almost brought him to tears, unsettled by his own behavior and now that other people know… now that the people closest to him know- it changes everything and forces him to reflect even more.

“Instead of talking to her, talking to us to keep you from doing something so stupid- instead of doing.. anything! You pull a coward ass move!,”

Nicholas viewed you as if you were a younger sibling, taking you under his wing, understanding your reclusive personality. He was the first person you connected to outside of Noah. He had a feeling when he only ever got vague answers when asking about the break up.

“It was time I was honest. I want to make this right with her. I want a chance to see my daughter and be a dad but it starts with honesty.” Noah mumbled, “I just want her back and I want a second chance whether I deserve it or not. I want to be there for Y/N like I always should have been. I want to be there for Noelle. I’m sorry it took so long to come clean.”

“Yeah?,” Matt’s jaw clenches as he ponders what has been said. He has his own thoughts regarding the matter but Nicholas seemed to cover them all for the most part, “I hope she makes you work like hell for it!,”

All Noah can really do is agree, they’re right. He was a coward, he did take the easy way out instead of facing his own problems and insecurities, and you should make him work like hell to get you back, to earn his place in Noelle’s life.

“Noelle,” Folio trails off, giggling to himself as he says the name, “Noeeeellee,”

“Dude, shut the fuck up!,” Jolly shouted with a bit of laughter layered underneath, Folio is such an airhead, it’s hard to have serious conversations like this around him. At least it eases some tension.

“It’s a cute name!!,”

“She’s an adorable baby,” Matt confirmed, “I only got a glimpse of her but she looks just like Noah,”

“Nah,” Noah shook his head, “She has my eyes but she has the curl of Y/N’s lashes. She has my lips but she has her mama’s chin. She has my dimples but Y/N’s cheeks. She’s both Y/N and me. She’s beautiful,”

Davis scoffs, raising his eyes, “Well you better get your shit together,”

“Yeah! I’m ready to be one kick ass uncle!,”

“Shut up, Folio!,”

You had taken it upon yourself to unblock everyone, figuring that if Noah told them the truth that they’d want to reach out, which they did.

It was scary at first, Noah had been a coward but you had your cowardly moments as well. Running off and not saying a word to people who cared about you- it wasn’t the nicest thing to do. Going through this with Noah had you realizing there are some things you would have done differently. This is a time of self reflection for everyone.

Although you’d been talking with them over the last week or so, you didn’t let the conversation stray too far from how you were doing. You weren’t ready to introduce them to Noelle or the idea of her just yet, you’re sure Noah has talked about her a bunch but you didn’t want to get too close to everyone again as of right now.

Ms. Ernie and Reid have been watching Noelle while you and Noah rebuild yourselves.

Dates that you made sure to let him know weren’t ‘actual dates’, walks at the park that turned into introspective discussions. It was all a work in progress and it made Ms. Ernie’s words hit even harder, there’s a lot to learn about love and that sometimes second chances are worth it.

You made him work like hell, but he was doing pretty well. He had different plans each day you guys hung out. He was attentive. He was gentle, he even told you about what he and his therapist talked about after each session.

In reality, you could tell he was doing better. You still had some reservations and there was still a long way to go but ultimately he was making a true effort. You could see the change he was making. Granted, it was a change that should have happened a long time ago but things happen the way they’re supposed to and when they’re supposed to.

That sentiment itself was a hard pill to swallow.

Today he took you on a picnic in the park, packed your favorite foods and drinks. He was really laying it on thick, others might find it cringe but it was making your heart flutter.

“I never did thank you, for telling them the truth,” popping a grape in your mouth, “I know it wasn’t easy,”

“It needed to happen. I knew better and I shouldn’t have lied to them but most importantly, I shouldn’t have lied on you. I was a coward and that’s not who I want to be to you… or Noey,”

A pleasant hum emitted from your chest, brows raising at the nickname that left his mouth.

“That one seemed to stick, huh?,”

“Noey is different… and it’s super close to Noah,”

“Noelle is already close to Noah!,” you bicker, both of you in high spirits while you go back and forth

“Noah has four letters and so does Noey,”

“Oh you’re such a kiss ass!,” you push him and he falls over dramatically.

“Help! Someone help!,” he shouted, feigning like he was injured

“Oh my God, Noah, stop! Someone is gonna think you’re serious!,” you reach over him to cover his mouth but he licks it and you squeal

“EEUUUGHHH!! You’re so gross!!,” you yank your hand back, he’s laughing like a hyena. Eyes wrinkling, hand in his chest and head thrown back.

“You used to do that to me all the time!” Justifying his action, you stick your tongue out at him while wiping your wet palm on his cheek

“Which means you can’t steal my move!,”

It was tense the first couple of meet ups and each one gets you closer to bringing Noelle around. These past couple of times had broken the ice and it started to feel like time hadn’t passed.

“Hey uhm, are you?- do you still live at the house?”

Noah settles down, feeling the energy shift to something a little more serious.

“Yeah. Didn’t have the guts to move. Why?,”

You twist grapeless vine in your hands, afraid to say the words now that you’re feeling comfortable to bring it up. It’s about 2 months of this and Noelle is a little over 6 months now.

“I’d like to bring Noelle by,”

Noah struggled for air, coughing up his drink and you can’t help but snicker at the liquid dripping off his chin.

“What?,” his eyes are as big as saucers

“Unless you’re not ready. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed,”

“No! No, I.. Y/N you have no idea how much I would love that,”

If you weren’t mistaken, you swear you see tears welling in his eyes

“I’d love to meet my daughter,”

This was a big step for you and an even bigger one for Noah. Both of you were scared beyond your wits.

“I’d like for it to just be us and then we can work up to getting the guys to meet her? And then you can meet Ms. Ernie, Reid and his husband, Morgan,”

You had to make sure to set some ground rules, Noah responded without any issues knowing that at the end of the day- you call the shots and he has to abide by them if he wants this to work. Yet despite feeling good about all of this, there’s still a smidge of uncertainty.

“What’s on your mind?,” even after all the time spent apart, reading you was like muscle memory.

“I still feel resentful,” you look to him to see his shoulders sagging, “I know you’re tired of it,”

“I don’t expect you to get over any of this anytime soon. In a way, you’re grieving and I can’t police how long you mourn. I can only help ease it,”

You didn’t really think of what you were going through as mourning but you guess you can see the similarities. What you two had was long gone and even in the face of starting over, albeit with the same person, you were still allowed to miss how things were and feel a bit out of sorts about what happened.

“It’s just,” you watch his hands as he picks at his palms, a nervous tick he’s always had. You’re once again feeling a sort of guilt making him feel like this but it’s a price he has to pay, right? You didn’t ask to be hurt to begin with.

“Resentment is so weird. I want to forgive you, Noah. So fucking bad I want to forgive you because I can’t keep doing this with you, I wish I could forget so I could just… hug you, kiss you, hold your hand like we used to,”

“You set the pace, Y/N. I told you no matter what, I respect it. I wish I could take it all back. God, I wish there was a way for me to go back so I didn’t fuck up and hurt you,”

“And my mind is struggling to comprehend why the fuck you would do that to me,” anger bleeds into your tone.

Noah is seen blubbering like a fish out of water as he tries to find his words. You can see the cogs turning in his mind, recalling the very night he ruined what you two had.

“There’s no explanation,” he declared, there was nothing good enough to excuse why he did what he did.

“No excuse, no reasoning that will ever be good enough for what I said to you. For how I treated you. It was unacceptable and there are no words to describe how apologetic I am. All I can say is, is that I’m so thankful you’re here, even giving me this chance,”

“You were all I could think about,” turning your body to him, he needed to know the turmoil you endured, “You hadn’t touched me in almost 3 months by the night I left. I was so consumed with the stress I didn’t realize I missed my period. I went to the doctor and that’s when I heard our little girl’s heartbeat,”

It didn’t get past him that you finally said our daughter and not just “my”. At this point, he has turned to look at you, listening closely, making sure you knew he was paying attention.

“I moved to the countryside and that’s where I met Ms. Ernie and Reid. They were my people while I was managing heartbreak. Keeping myself physically and mentally healthy so I could bring Noelle into this world. You… you should have been there Noah, you could’ve been there,”

“I know,” he blinks, tears falling down his cheeks just like yours were, “I missed out on so much because I couldn’t get my own shit together,”

“I took that pain and restructured it to fuel me so I could be the best parent I could be. I never thought I’d be sitting here in front of you. I never expected to see you again. Ever. But despite all the alarm bells, I am so fucking glad I am because I missed you, Noah. But I hate you so much at the same time,”

His face fashioned that of anguish at your last few words. It was hurting him but he didn’t look away from you, he didn’t hide his eyes, he’s now feeling what you felt that night and then some.

The anxiety. The fear, the fucking aching that burned from his gut all the way up into his throat. The pounding in his head, the heat that blanketed his skin. He can’t believe he did this to you. He can’t believe he sat across from you at the table that night, watching you fall apart and still said what he said.

“I don’t know how you expect us to rebuild anything,” your voice flows into his ears and he can feel his chest tightening, finding it harder to keep his breathing at a normal pace.

“Hell, I don’t even know how I expect us to rebuild anything but I’m going to try because that’s what you should have done!,”

“I-I know. Fuck, I.. I’m aware,” taking a deep breath to try to swallow his cries.

“I’m going to do what you couldn’t do,” a wild fire burns behind your eyes and he realizes this is a new you. The soft spoken Y/N is still there but this version of you takes no shit. You have a daughter now, you had to build tough skin

“I’m going to prove to you that fighting for what you want isn’t a lost fucking cause. I’m going to show you that no matter what is going on in your head, no matter what the voices are telling you- that I am here and I will be here until we are dust returned to the universe, Noah,”

You hated to see the way he dug his fingernails into his palms and you wanted nothing more than to grab his hands to massage the tension and cramps away.

“I know this is eating at you,” you whisper, “For the longest time I wanted it to. But not anymore,”

A great tremor overtook him, flexing his jaw to ease the ache from clenching it so hard. He had to break eye contact just this once to look up at the sky to will the tears away.

“Just take a page out of my book and take what you’re feeling to change and be better. No more apologies. Don’t be sorry, be better,”

“You sure you got everything?,” Reid packed your diaper bag into the front while you buckled Noelle into her carseat.

“Yeah I got my cooler for the bricks. My pump, extra clothes, extra wipes-,” you continue to list other items and at this point you’re not listing them to Reid, you’re listing them because you’re scared. 

“You got this,” Ms. Ernie kisses your cheek and you look at her with worry, “Don’t look at me like that. You both are going to be okay. He’s been groveling for weeks on end, he’s been respectful, if you want to back out I’m sure he’d understand?,”

“No! No. I think I’m ready. She’s already 6 months old now, he deserves this much,” It’s crazy to think that you’ve been at this with Noah for about a few months now.

You’re wrapped in an embrace of them both, Reid whispering words of reassurance as he pulls away, helping you settle in the car.

“Let us know when you get there, okay?,” Ms. Ernie waves from her front step.

You assure her that you’ll do just that. A lively wave is sent their way as you pull out of the driveway to make it to a house that you once called home, a house that could have been a home for Noelle. 

You didn’t need a GPS, you’d never forget the way there even if you tried. You could drive there blindfolded. The drive really wasn’t that long and a part of you wishes it was because when you pull up your stomach is full of butterflies. 

He’s probably nervous too. Don’t stress about it. As if he was waiting by the door, he’s out on the porch, wiping his hands on a paper towel when you exit your vehicle.

“Need help with anything?,” a nervous smirk across his face, he looks like he’s going to throw up at any second.

“Wanna grab the diaper bag and cooler?,”

He didn’t give a verbal answer. He was already down the steps and to your car before you finished asking. You grabbed Noelle’s carrier and waited for him to get the other items. Seeing him with the lavender diaper bag on his shoulder stirred a feeling inside of you. He looked like a dad, he looked good. A yearn made itself present in your body, you just wanted to be a family.

“Follow me,” 

You could tell he was excited, excited but tense. He didn’t want to fuck this up. 

Once you’re settled in the house, he heads upstairs, mumbling that he’ll be right back. When taking your jacket off to hang it on the second hook on the back of the door, you realize the hook still has your name on it. He never took it off, this was your hook, everyone knew not to hang their things on it. And beside yours, you see one for Noelle. Noah, Y/N and Noelle. Your fingers brush against the names and a smile creeps on your face.

“I know she probably already has one but I figured it would be nice if she had one here. She’ll probably end up falling asleep depending on how long you stay,”

You turn around to see a lavender playpen with her name on the side.

“In a lot of the videos and pictures you showed me, she’s wearing lavender so..,”

“Noah,” you coo, stepping over to him, “That’s so sweet,” 

You turn to Noelle in her carrier and unbuckle her, “If you wanna go wash your hands, you can hold her,”

“Yeah?,” his eyes lit up like a little kid on Christmas. He didn’t even wait for you to answer before he’s jogging into the kitchen to scrub his hands clean. About a good minute later he’s rushing back in but he seems hesitant. 

“Don’t worry,” you assure him, “I show her pictures just like I show you pictures. She knows you. She won’t really be fussy” 

You cradle her while handing her over to him.

“She likes to be held like this, just support her neck,” 

Noah takes her from you softly, his large hands make her seem so small, even at six months. He stares at her in awe and sits down gently. Noelle babbles at him, waving her hands and smiling. 

“Hiii, baby girl,” 

You can hear the tears as he speaks to her and you take a seat beside him, not bothered by how close you were.

“I’m your papa,” he chokes on his words, caressing her cheek with the back of his finger, “You’re so beautiful just like your mama,”

There weren’t many words said as Noah soaked in this moment with you watching. His breath is silently hitching from his tears but he only cries harder when Noelle reaches out and touches his cheek, seemingly wiping a tear away.

Noah sits back on the sofa, setting his feet flat on the cushion so he could lay Noelle on his thighs so that she was sitting up.

“You’re so sweet,” he kisses her hand, causing her to squeal and giggle. He looks to you with wide eyes and a bright smile

“You were right!,” 

“I told you!!,” you lean closer and watch the way Noelle is taking in the moment as well. She stares at Noah with a look of bewilderment, she’s never been around him physically yet relaxes into him like she’s known him since day one. She knows that’s her papa.

“Thank you,” he says simply, “I’m far from deserving but thank you so much, Y/N,”

“You deserve to be a dad, Noah. And she deserves one,”

“I won’t fuck this up,”

“You better not,” you poke his cheek, “Because she needs you… we both do,”

You let Noah record videos of him and her, letting him make up for lost time. He carefully danced around the living room with her while playing happy baby songs.

“I heard songs like this make them happy!,” he insisted. Each time she squealed he hugged her tighter, absolutely adoring the sound of his baby laughing with him. You couldn’t help but record some videos of your own, wanting to look back at this moment. 

The foundation still needed some work but what is life without the effort? What’s love without effort? He said he wouldn’t screw it up this time and you’re holding him to his word.

“She’s down for bed,” Noah comes down the stairs, heading to the kitchen to return with two mugs 

“She’s never fallen asleep that fast,” taking a mug from him, you smell your favorite tea in the way he used to make it. 

“Does she wake you up throughout the night? I can be on baby duty so you can rest. U-unless you planned on going home tonight. I can drive you home, I don’t want you driving while you’re tired,” he offered.

“Can we stay?,” circling the rim of your cup, finding the heat from your tea comforting. 

“You two always have a place here,” he sets the baby monitor on the table and takes a sip of his coffee. He was always a late night coffee drinker, at least it was decaf, he just liked the taste. 

There was a comfortable lull that fell over you two and sitting on this very couch in this living room felt like home, like you belonged here. You made a home out of the cabin in the countryside but *this… this is where you felt like you were meant to be. Drinking your warm beverages on the couch while your child slept, simply enjoying each other’s company.

Noah randomly stands up and turns the tv on. He’s getting a game console, plugging it up and connecting the remotes. You’re watching in confusion while he does this all as if he’s on a mission. 

Once he gets everything connected he pulls out a game case. 

Michael Jackson: The Experience

“Nooaaaaaah,” you say suspiciously, “What are you doing?,” setting your cup on the side table, you watch with a questioning frown when he moves the coffee table

“Stand up,” insisting with a wide grin, he takes your hand despite your wariness

“What are we doing, Sebastian?” 

“We’re putting all those nights practicing with the music videos to use. I scored these at a yard sale and figured we could dance to some good ole Michael like we used to,” 

He hands you a Wii remote and the butterflies erupt again, spotting the same broken lampshade that he still hasn’t gotten rid of. 

“You think you still got it?,” you tease, wrapping the band around your wrist. 

He scoffs loudly, rolling his eyes, “You wish I lost it,” 

“Put your money where your mouth is,”��

He side eyes you with a little smirk, choosing the song he wanted to dance to. You expected Thriller, hell maybe even Ghosts. But he surprised you when he chose Do You Remember the Time

“If I win. I get to take you out on a romantic date,” he sighs triumphantly, he knows since you two started to rebuild something new, you didn’t want to get too romantic just yet.

“Okay,” you nod confidently, much to his surprise, “But if I win… you’re on baby duty for a night. That means getting up to feed her, change her diaper, cuddle-,”

“All I’m seeing is a win-win situation here,” turning back to the screen he hits play, “Bring your A game. I’ve been practicing for this very moment,” 

He says it as if he’s joking but he was serious. This was a song you two spent many nights listening to, belting it at the top of your lungs during late night drives, to dancing in the kitchen to it after date night. 

This little gesture may seem like just a night of dancing to a game to you but it was much more to him. So when the gold room appeared on the screen after picking your characters, he became timorous.

The beat begins and you feel a little silly following the movements at first. You hadn’t danced with Noah in ages but he probably feels just as goofy. You notice him missing a few beats and peak to see him adoring you, the way your nose crinkles when you smile, the way your eyes move across the screen, trying to focus.

“You’re not gonna win if you keep staring at me, Sebastian!,” 

“Fuck!,”

~Do you remember when we fell in love? We were young and innocent then~

You trip over your feet as the dance begins to incorporate footwork, glaring at Noah when you hear him laughing at you.

~Do you remember, back in the fall? We’d be together all day long~

You bend your knees and shimmy your feet along the carpet while Noah stands tall and moves in the opposite direction over you. Feeling him this close, despite just playing a game, had your heart palpitating. 

You never thought you’d have nights like this again. With anyone, let alone Noah. 

You hear Noah singing to himself while he follows the dance moves to a T, seeing his score get higher than yours had you ready to wreck his streak.

“Do you remember the time when weeee first met, girl?” He sang obnoxiously while looking at you, purposely singing off key. You snicker at his expressions, missing a move but you can’t bring yourself to care. 

Noah seemed so carefree and comfortable in this moment that it started to overshadow what had once hurt you, somewhat putting it on the back burner. 

~Those sweet memories, will always be dear to me~

You and Noah are now face to face, chest to chest, you two seemed to forget the game. Both of you breathing heavily from laughing and going all out on the dance moves.

“You’re gonna lose,” you pipe up, turning around to focus back on the game. You knew that if you stood there any longer you’d have kissed him. 

Noah seemed to snap out of his daze, immediately hopping back into where he was. You have to squat in front of him for the next move and it seems to last forever, feeling the burn like you’re in the gym.

“Oh my God!,” groaning in relief when you’re finally able to move from your position but the relief doesn’t last long when you’re made to go back, moving your arms up and feeling his hands touch yours. 

It sounds dramatic but you swear you feel a little tingle when he touches you. Maybe it was static or maybe it was the fact you missed his touch. A sensation that you felt so safe in, so comfortable and loved. 

You two slide away from each other, swinging your arms back and forth. You’re still following the screen but Noah decides to freestyle. Falling to his knees to sing the song to you, you’d worry about waking Noelle up but she was a deep sleeper. 

“Do you remember girl?,” he holds his fists up, singing passionately, “On the phone! You and me!! Till dawn, 2 or 3. What about us, GIRL!!,” 

You can’t help but throw your head back in entertainment at his dramatics. He was a performer for sure.

“Do ya, do ya, do ya, do ya- in the park, on the beach! You and me, in Spain! What about, what about- rrrap tap tap, rrrap tap tap!,”

His ad libs bounce off the walls and you’re losing it.

“You look insane!,” you say over his off-key singing. 

He continues to sing despite your judgment, standing up and grabbing you by the shoulders, shaking you playfully

“Yeah! Yeah! Wooo!!,” 

The game is now complete and you fall back on the couch to catch your breath.

“I freestyled and I STILL won!,” he claps and points at you, “Pick out your prettiest dress, doll face because we’re going on a DATE!,” 

He stands in front of you, hands on his hips in victory and all you can do is cherish the view.

“Come here,” you stand before him, hearing your heart pound in your ears as he steps forward until his chest is level with your eyes, his famous chain glinting in the light on the room.

“What’s up?,” the confidence he just displayed was now replaced with diffidence. 

“You better not hurt me again,” it was strange being this close to him, “If you hurt me you’ll not only lose me but Sunshine as well and I don’t want that for her. So if this is going to happen- you talk to me when your insecurities set in. You talk to me before you self sabotage. You talk to me no matter what so that you continue to show up for our little girl. Do you understand me?,”

Noah nods his head so quickly that you think it just might fall off and roll away.

“I understand. I won’t make the same mistake twice. I love you and I love our baby. I was a fool to fuck up the first time. I won’t be that again,” 

“Good,” you nod, stepping away before patting his cheek with a sly grin.

“Because you’re on baby duty tonight,” 

His jaw drops at your antics, he doesn’t mind really. He’s starting to feel like an actual father now.

“But I won!!,”

You wake up abruptly to Noelle screeching, a type of cry you’ve never heard before and you turn to see Noah’s spot empty. Scrambling to get out of bed, you rush downstairs to see him panicking, tears in his eyes and red in the face

“I’m sorry,” he muttered to her, frantically trying to calm her 

“What happened??,” you kept your composure, not wanting to stress him out anymore than he already is. He hands you Noelle and he pulls at his roots, absolutely distraught and upset with himself.

“She was hungry and I… I heated up her milk for too long. Fuck, Y/N I’m sorry I didn’t mean to-,”

“Noah,” a soft hand on his chest, “It happens. She’s okay,” 

“I made her cry,” 

“She’s okay,” you reassure, “See,” you wipe her tears and she’s just left whimpering now.

You take his hand to sit him down at the table and give Noelle back to him despite his fear

“Don’t tense up. She’ll feel it and become fussy. Relax,” 

He took heed to your words, relaxing so that Noelle could follow suit.

“I should have put a brick in the fridge to thaw,” you mention, “I usually do if I know I’ll be too tired to breastfeed but I was exhausted so it slipped my mind. A brick will usually thaw in the fridge overnight and when it’s time, just set it in a cup of warm water for a few minutes and you’ll be good to go,” 

You take her bottle and run it under some cool water, testing it on your wrist, deeming it cool yet warm enough for her to drink. You sit beside Noah and hand him the bottle. 

“Here, you’re all set. 45 degree angle while she drinks,” you instruct. He follows your words and Noelle hums around the bottle, cuddling into Noah’s shirtless chest, “She likes skin to skin contact while feeding. Now she’ll really know you’re her papa,” 

You realize this is the same table he broke your heart at, tracing the pattern of the mahogany wood. You wouldn’t let that night haunt you anymore. Here’s to new memories. Now, this table will be remembered as the table that he fed your daughter for the first time, a learning experience for him. 

“I’m so sorry for hurting you, honey,” he whispered to her, kissing her forehead while her eyes fluttered sleepily, “I’m still learning but it won’t happen again,” 

You know his words were directed to you as well, finding solace in the reassurance. 

Once you teach him to burp her, the three of you make your way upstairs and back to bed.

“You can put her in the crib,” climbing into the bed that was once yours to claim. He took the time to build her crib and didn’t even wanna put her in it.

“I will once I’m ready to sleep, I just want to spend time with her is all,” 

Despite the infant sleeping, he wasn’t ready to put her down. His hair was thrown all over his head, his eyes here heavy but he was willing to fight sleep just to hold her in his arms for as long as he could. 

“I missed out on enough, I just wanna hold her,” 

“Okay,” you nod, sitting up and scooting closer to rest your head on his shoulder, “Sing, you are my sunshine, to her. It’s her favorite song and I think she would like to hear it from you,” 

“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,” he begins with ease, “You make me happy, when skies are grey. You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away,” 

“You are my star shine,” you add in, “My only star shine,” 

You reach over to hold her small hand, resting your hand on his chest,

“I love you so much, each night and day,” 

Noah leans his head on yours, finding comfort in the words you sing. 

“You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take my star shine away,” 

You look up to Noah, refusing to move your head off his shoulder so he rears back to look at you, your face being illuminated by the little nightlight you had plugged in for Noelle.

“You are my love shine, my only love shine,” he sings lowly, surprising you that he even knows the third verse of the nursery rhyme, “I miss you so much when you’re away,” 

The smile that appeared on your face was one he’ll never forget, especially when you begin to harmonize with him quietly, watching the way Noelle snuggles into his chest as if she can’t get close enough to him. 

“You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you,” you two sing together, curling into him even more when he plants a kiss on the crown of your head.

“Please don’t take my love shine awaaaay,” 

Days had passed since that night. You and Noah alternate every couple of nights of whose place to stay at. He finally got the pleasure of meeting Ms. Ernie and Reid officially, offering his gratitude to the people who kept you and Noelle safe when he fell short. Despite his own shortcomings, they welcomed him with open arms. 

Reid currently had Noelle in the living room, both of them watching some cartoon movie while Ms. Ernie helped you with your hair, preparing for the night Noah had planned for you. 

“Do I look like I’m trying too hard?,” you turn to her, concern painted all over your face.

“You look like a beautiful youngin who is about to steal the heart of the love of their life,” 

“You flatter me,”

“Well it’s true,” she boops your nose and tucks your hair behind your ear, “You’re going to have fun!,” 

Noah wouldn’t exactly tell you what he had planned. He just said to dress in something comfortable and cute, so you stepped out of your comfort zone, going with a light floral dress, styling your hair to your comfort and a light face of makeup. 

When you heard the doorbell to your cabin go off, your stomach sank.

“Oh goodness!!,” turning to the smiling woman above you, “He’s here!! He’s 10 minutes early!,”

A light rumble comes from her, shaking her head and standing you up, “You would have still freaked out even if he showed up on time. Head up there!,”

You didn’t have time to respond due to the doorbell ringing again. A nervous Noah stood on the other side, worried that maybe you changed your mind. When the door swung open, both of you were speechless. 

You stood there, radiant as ever with Noelle in your arms. A nervous grin framed your teeth and Noah watched as you rubbed Noelle’s back, not for her comfort but for yours. You were antsy. Just as beautiful as the first day he met you when he knocked your bus token out of your hand.

Noah stood there in a plain, white shirt tucked into a pair of sleek black joggers. You noticed he cut his hair, cutting the sides short and keeping the top longer. He recreated the outfit he wore when you two first bumped into each other.

“Hi,” your throat tight around the simple word.

“H-hi,” he had a hand behind his back and stuck the other out, “Nice to meet you, my name is Noah,” 

You frown at his words until you realize this is a reintroduction.

“Hi, Noah. My name is Y/N and it’s wonderful to meet you,” 

Both of you are similar to giddy teenagers falling in love for the first time. He handed you a bouquet of your favorite flowers and you were quick to gasp. You loved flowers, you loved it even more when he gifted them to you.

Inviting him in, Noelle was quick to reach for him and he spun her around while you retrieved the glass milk bottle you received from Ms. Ernie to use as a vase.

“Looking gooooood!,” the elderly woman entered the room and pinched Noah’s cheek lightly.

“I can clean up nice!,” 

Reid entered the space and gave his compliments to the both of you and caught sight of the flowers, nudging Noah.

“Nice choice,” he whispered.

Once both of you give Noelle a ton of kisses, Noah takes your hand and guides you out to the car so you all could get your evening started.

“You gonna tell me what you have planned yet?,” hounding him as he begins to drive. 

“Dinner,” he answers, a smirk on his face to tell you that it wasn’t just dinner.

“Why so cryptic?” you poke him

“Relaaaaax,” he reaches over to grab your hand and squeeze. The two of you missing this simple gesture, feeling safe like this, like all will be okay, it will- but you’ll never get tired of the warm feeling of security. 

Noah took you out to your favorite restaurant, a nice night of expensive wine and taking bites of the other’s food. A bunch of blushing, a bunch of butterflies, laughter and unspoken I love yous. 

Now you find yourself with your hand in his, strolling downtown, him insisting that the night isn’t over. When you stop walking, you peer up to him and see an uncertain smirk on his face. Looking up to the sign on the building, you see what he had planned.

“Kiln of Sunshine,” you read aloud, “Couple’s pottery?”

All he does is laugh at your surprise and leads you inside. There aren’t many couples but it’s a nice intimate place. Dim lights strung up on the ceiling, custom printed aprons with your names on it, which he helps you put on and tie. 

When you’re directed to your designated spots, he sits behind you while you sit in front of the wheel.

“Welcome to the Kiln of Sunshine! We are a couple of potters who met through our love of art,” a young woman stands in front of the class, it’s hard to listen when Noah is so close like this. He still makes you so damn nervous.

“We created this abode to help other couples not only find a new hobby, but also grow together by means of communication and teamwork through making art!” The woman’s husband added with excitement. 

You look over your shoulder to see Noah already looking at you

“You look so beautiful,” he whispers. You have to tuck your chin into your shoulder to hide the fact your face was burning up at his compliment. 

The couple teaching gives you all step by step instructions to begin and then it’s just you and Noah left to your own devices. They gave you the guidelines but now it’s up to you and Noah to decide what you two create.

Much like a relationship. 

“Here, let’s try this,” Noah’s large, clay covered hands form to yours, his chin resting on your shoulder, “Pinch here,”

“Maybe we should coil instead,” suggesting lightly. 

“Okay, yeah,” he nods, taking in your point of view, “I think it’ll turn out better that way,”

Noah hands you the wet sponge, watching the way your tongue sticks out from your lips as you concentrate. 

“I brought us here because I came to a lot of conclusions during our time apart,” his body frames yours like a puzzle piece, after a while, instead of you taking the lead, you let his hands guide yours now.

“Yeah?,” 

“Pottery teaches us a lot about accepting faults- appreciating the imperfections and flaws that can turn into something beautiful,” he moves your hands to pinch the clay in certain spots and watch your piece come to life. 

“Furthermore, we have patience and persistence- pottery, like relationships, demands patience at every turn. To keep going in the face of difficulties, even if you don’t see the results right away. It takes time to mold something beautiful” 

Noah kept going and you’d be lying if his words weren’t tear jerking. While you two were rekindling, you had some introspective moments of your own. Realizing that there are some things you could have done differently yourself. Especially since finding out about the mental battles he was facing during the last few months of your relationship, which caused him to break it off.

You were so caught up in your own mind that you didn’t realize Noah’s actions were due to the fact that it wasn’t Noah- he pulled back from you because he was trying to figure his own labyrinthine mind out, that’s why he kept asking for time, he just felt ashamed to say it out loud. 

Both of you got time, even if it wasn’t in the most ideal form.

“I’m still learning and growing and I know I have a long way to go for you to fully trust me because of those faults, but I’m patient and I’m not going anywhere,” 

You felt him kiss your shoulder, causing goosebumps to flourish on your skin.

“Well… maybe we won’t need the water bowl to wet the sponge anymore since you’ve got me crying over here!,” 

The laughter that erupts from the two of you is boisterous, providing comedic relief in the midst of him expressing his emotions. 

“You two are doing great over here!!,” the instructor complimented the piece the two of you were crafting.

You felt the swell of pride in your chest because whether she was talking about your pottery piece or not, you and Noah are doing great.

The night progressed beautifully. You had to leave your piece at the place overnight so it could get fired and glazed before you took it home to decorate yourselves. So, Noah took you on a stroll, your hand in his, taking in the view of the pretty lights set up downtown. Finding yourselves in front of the big fountain in the center, you stick your hand out to him

“C’mon, big money. Hand over a quarter,” 

He quickly digs in his pocket and hands you a shiny coin in which you hold up to your mouth, whispering to it before throwing it in the fountain. The light plopping sound it made was satisfying to you.

“What did you wish for?,”

You notice him taking his shoes and socks off, rolling up his pant legs and you feel suspicion rising in your belly.

“That would beat the purpose of a wish!,” 

“Take your shoes off,” 

“No! I know what you’re about to do and I spent too much time on my hair and make up!,”

Noah sat you down on the edge of the fountain, removing your shoes for you

“You know that you don’t need your makeup and hair all done up for me to find you absolutely breathtaking… right?,” 

He gives you no time to reply before he’s standing you up and bringing you into the fountain, twirling you around under the raining streams. 

“Noah we’re gonna get in trouble!!,” squealing in his arms, trying to get out of them. He sets you down but before you can scold him, his wet hands are framing your face to pull you in for the long awaited kiss that he’s been wanting to give you since the day you left. 

You felt like you were in a movie. The hopeless romantic that lived within you was thriving. You were stuck in your spot for a second, realizing that since starting over, this is your first kiss and he made it so damn romantic. Pulling him in by his shirt, your lips follow his, flowing with the same desire and unspoken words.

I’m sorry.

I forgive you.

We’re going to be okay.

I don’t hate you

I love you.

I always will.

Damning your own instinctive need to breathe, you pull away from him, pressing your fingertips to your lips, still completely shocked by it all.

“I’m sorry I just… I couldn’t fight it anymore,” he looked so ethereal, wet hair sticking to his face, droplets on his cheeks and big, brown eyes staring back at you with blown pupils.

“Until the day we are returned to dust to the universe, I will love you and cherish you. I will be what I should have always been. And even then… even after we are just dust- I will find you in another timeline and continue to be that and more”

Life is a beautiful thing now. It was no longer grey and neither of you felt like you were just getting by, you were finally living. 

You didn’t want to give up your cabin, so despite all the memories the house back in the city had, you two decided to make more memories out here.

Your house was full now, filled with friends you missed dearly, all of them soaking up time with Noelle, getting used to being uncles. 

“Nuh uh!,” Noah shouts, “Folio, wash your hands before holding her,” 

“What the hell! I just did!!,” he defended, arms halfway out, ready to reach for his niece.

“Not long enough! Sing happy birthday twice if you have to- and don’t swear around my daughter!,” 

Noah fit the dad role real well. He was proud to be the father of your child. He doted on Noelle, always took pictures with her, sang to her (a lot better than you ever did) and though Noah had a love for the city, he loved being out here with you two, taking her on daily walks around the countryside while you tended to the chickens and garden. 

You thought he’d put up a bigger fight due to his career but- things were simple out here and being out here made him feel normal and domestic. This is what life was always supposed to feel like and it’s what the two of you had always envisioned. 

“Everyone get ready, dinner’s almost finished!,” Ms. Ernie hollered. She loved the guys, it didn't take long for her to warm up to people and just like she took you under her wing, she did the same for them. She even listens to their music now, she says Hedonist is her favorite. 

Folio doesn’t care to make his plate now that he has Noelle, making her squeal and laugh at his silly faces. 

Matt bumps you as he moves past you to get a drink out of your fridge, “I told you he wouldn’t take her from you,” 

“You only get one ‘I told you so’ in our friendship and you used it well. Thanks, Matty,” 

During the time you and Noah were reconnecting, you had to rebuild your friendships with the guys as well. You and Matt now have your farmer’s market dates back. You, Jolly, Davis and Folio have your bowling on Thursday nights while you and Bryan go to the movies every Tuesday because they’re half off. And Nicholas- the one who truly is like a brother, both of you had your chess game that you abandoned but he kept the board set in hopes that one day you’ll come back. 

He taught you how to play ages ago and when you finally got the hang of it, you two matched all the time, some matches going for days, this match being the longest ever due to a hiatus. 

He had the board with him, setting it up on the counter, both of you moving your pieces throughout the day.

“I know how to beat you,” staring at the board, he comes to stand beside you.

“Yeah?,” grinning as if he wasn’t about to lose.

“You have nowhere to go, Nicky,” you pick your Queen up, moving her to h5, threatening his f7. You watch him frown at your movements and you have to hide the smirk on your face. If you win, you’ll no longer be tied. 

You move your Queen to take his f7 and you check his king.

“No!,”

“Checkmate!,” clapping in victory, you jump up and down, “I still got it!!,”

“You got lucky!,” 

Despite him losing, he was always a good sport. He did teach you after all.

After dinner, Reid provided dessert, topped with a delicious honey glaze he made from his bees. Matt started a fire pit outside which left only you, Noah and Noelle in the kitchen as you two arranged to put her down for bed. He had her wrapped up against his chest while you prepared his coffee and your tea.

Noelle cooed against his chest, eyes fluttering and trying to fight sleep.

“I love you,” he searched your face, feeling blessed that he can say the words to you again. Your eyes sparkle in the warm light of the kitchen, feeling blessed to hear those words once again. You’ll never get tired of hearing it, especially because it’s all different now. It’s healthier, happier.

“And I love you,” of course you do- it was muscle memory. 

After lightly clinking your mugs together, your eyes catch sight of the fruit bowl you and Noah made in your pottery class. Your painted hand print on one side, his on the other and Noelle’s in the middle with 4 simple words written across it.

You are my Sunshine.

Stepping closer to him, his arm wrapped around your shoulder, the two of you stood in silence just enjoying each other’s presence. Finding joy in the laughter of your loved ones outside. 

All is well and always will be. Ms. Ernie was right. Sometimes second chances are worth it. 

“Thanks for adding to the sunshine instead of taking it away,”

Noah could hear the relief in your voice that things turned out for the better. He’d never give this up. Home isn’t a place, home is this moment right here and every moment after.

“Until we are dust returned to the universe.”

First and foremost i wanted to thank everyone for their patience while i worked on this!! this story means so much to me and i am grateful for the love i received on part one and hope you all enjoy this part even if it’s a little long!!!

Please be sure to reblog and comment as it helps us writers out a lot!!!

much love!

~Berry 🫐

tags: @dravenskye @babs-96 @tech-depression-inventory @magnificentstrawberryomen @mrscevans @tinyfairies @mxddymay @themorticians-world @rainy-darling @lma1986 @darknightstarryeyes @thisbicc @lilhobgobbler @lovethe-void @cind6547 @flowery-mess @widowsofchaos @abiomens @amelia-acero @collapsedglasshouses @poppy-in-the-woods @rostoken @dkxxm @collisionofyourkissmakesitsohard @fadingintothegrey @blairboo

[cowpokeomens]

Good morning squad I’m thinking bout

Matt who so clearly has a big ole crush on you and everyone knows except you and him it seems! It’s ironic because you’re so sweet and down-to-earth and Matt is. Himself. Anyways! The whole gang has a whole day to run amuck and explore The City right? And so everyone is making their little plans when like Nicky asks what you’re gonna be doing and if you wanna tag along with anyone. You’re like “what’s everyone doing?” And he says “some of us are gonna go walk around downtown, there’s some wildlife center that someone mentioned, and Noah said he’s just going to rot in bed for the morning and decide later.” And you’re like ooooh!! Wildlife center means goats I’m going there!! And Nicky is evil and says “cool Matt will go with you teehee bye” and Matt is pouting because he wanted the day to bro down with the owls and now some girl he doesn’t even like liar is coming with him smh so you’re hesitant but you go for the goats okay and Matt drives the rental and his mood is sour but you’re keeping your spirits high!! He doesn’t speak the entire time and when you try to engage in conversation he just grunts at you :-/ but you arrive safely and the folks working there are so nice and let you hold the chinchillas and the capybaras and Matt is actually cracking a smile watching you, takes lots of pictures bc he adores you the capybaras :-/ they let y’all meet Rocky the raccoon who’s recovering from a leg injury and Matt gets so excited that he goes from hesitant smile to literally beaming like a little kid, feeds Rocky little bits of fruit :-(( you take lots of cute pictures of him so you have evidence that he can feel human joy, y’all tromp around the center for hours petting deer and holding owls and giggling until the sun is starting to go down and you’re abt to pass out from hunger and Matt is like “cmon there’s a good place not too far from here” grabs your wee hand to help you navigate the “rough terrain” (there are some pebbles) but then ope! Doesn’t let go! No reason in particular! And it makes your tummy flip flop but it’s probably just because you’re starving so you write it off :-/ Matt opens your door when y’all get to the car :-/ someone cuts him off in traffic and his arm instinctively comes up in front of you :-/ he drops it onto your thigh and just :-/ leaves it there :-/ lets you queue up music and he bitches the entire time about it until you roll your eyes and put on like. PeelingFlesh or Cannibal Corpse or whatever passes the vibe check and then he’s rolling his eyes and saying “you can listen to your Taylor Swift it’s fine I don’t actually care-“ so you start bumping Picture to Burn and belting it out and he’s just :-( so fond :-( keeps smiling to himself bc he can’t name the emotion he’s feeling but I’ve thinks it’s content :-( y’all get food and you steal half his onion rings even though you swore you wanted fries and his foot keeps bumping into yours under the table and you don’t know why it’s giving you goosebumps!! It’s just cold in here that’s all!! When everyone gets back to the hotel you two are sitting on the couch practically in each other’s laps comparing photos of the day and giggling and teeheeing :-( he gets an arm behind your shoulders bc it was “falling asleep” so you’re all nuzzled up in his chest now and he smells like soap and grass and maybe you’re a little drunk on it but who knows :-( everyone knows

Anyways bye

[justmochi]

Auntie

pairing :: eden x evelyn (ft. her brother in law)

word count :: 1.8k

synopsis :: eden catches up with her sister when coming back to korea.

time :: may 12, 2023

warnings :: mentions of pregnancies. pregnancy scares and fertility issues

a/n :: for those of you who don’t know, evelyn is eden’s older sister and noah is her brother in law. also let me know what you guys think of this bc im projecting 🥲

taglist :: @cafemilk-tea @cixrosie @moonlight-additions @cosmicwintr @astraw-astro @ateezjuliet @fromfreesia @succulentmom @kimhyejin3108 @enhacolor @multiplums @meginthebuilding27​ @kang-ulzzang @hybesunstone @allthings-fandoms

Watching the door open, Eden was met with her sister’s beautiful smile. It had been a while since they had seen each other, due to Blackpink still being on tour. She wanted to catch up and spend some quality time with her sister before she had to leave again.

Evelyn pulled her in for a hug, squeezing her tightly and swaying them back and forth. “I’ve missed you so much!” 

“I missed you too, Evie.” They both pulled away, the woman inviting the girl inside her home. Eden was carrying a gift bag in her hand, showcasing it to her sister. “I got you a couple things while on tour.”

“I’m gonna have to buy a glass case to showcase all the things that Lee Eunhye has bought us.” Her sister joked as the two girls walked to the kitchen. Eden set the gift on the counter and sat down on one of the bar seats. It seemed that she had interrupted her sister who was making dinner for everyone.

“Where’s Noah?” Eden asked the woman with her eyebrows furrowed.

“He should be here any minute now. He had to drop some paperwork off at work.”

“It smells so good.” The scent filled the entire kitchen. She always wondered where her sister learned to cook, because they never learned from their own parents.

In no time, Evelyn’s husband entered the kitchen, approaching Eden to rub the top of her head with his knuckles. “Hey kiddo.”

“Hey bro.” He messed up her hair, wanting to return the favor but he walked out of her reach. He approached his wife, kissing the side of her head as he wrapped his arm around her waist. Eden felt her cheeks heat up by seeing her sister so happy.

“Could you help set the table and maybe get Eden something to drink?”

“Of course,” He turned around, pointing to Eden. “What do you want to drink?”

“Do you guys have wine?” She asked, pursing her lips when looking at him.

“Yup we do.”

“Give me the whole bottle.” She snickered.

“I guess touring has been exhausting?” Evelyn spoke up, looking over her shoulder briefly.

“Just a little. I haven’t been sleeping well.” She sighed. “Are you guys gonna have a drink too?”

The kitchen grew quiet for a few seconds. It felt like minutes had passed.

“I’ll drink with you, yeah.” Noah cleared his throat, grabbing two glasses from the cabinet.

“I haven’t been able to drink anything ever since I got plastered and threw everything up.”

“Oh, I remember that.” She cringed, looking back on the time her sister went AWOL. Her in law had to tell her himself why she was absent. She was sick for a few days, not being able to pick up her phone.

“Yeah, never again.”

They had just finished dinner, Eden and Noah having a bonding session while doing the dishes. After that, they all gathered on the sofa to watch a movie. Once it ended, Eden put down her third glass of wine on the coffee table.

The couple were sitting across from her, stretching their limbs while complimenting the movie. Eden and Evelyn giggled together when Noah took it upon himself to start massaging his wife’s feet.

“What’s so funny?” He pouted, looking between the two girls. “Doesn’t your boyfriend rub your feet?”

“He does. You two are just so cute. It’s almost gross.”

“Ya, we could say the same thing about you and Seokmin.” Eden flattened her lips, rolling her eyes while standing to her feet.

“It’s time to open my gifts. I’m getting impatient.” She felt really warm from all the alcohol she consumed, but not feeling completely drunk yet. She skipped to the kitchen where she left her gift bag and brought it back to the living room.

Eden had gotten the two of them many things from visiting all the different countries on tour. From house decor to jewelry, it felt like they were opening presents on Christmas morning. She got her brother in law some headphones that were trending these days.

“Wow! Thanks kiddo.” Evelyn looked at how his eyes lit up. He was a responsible, grown man but he still had his moments where he acted like a little boy.

“Don’t mention it.” She smiled, sipping more from her wine glass.

“Speaking of gifts…” Evelyn looked intently at the man beside her. “We got you a little something.”

“But you didn’t have to get me anything!” She feared that they would one her up with their gift.

“Oh hush. Honey, it’s in my closet. Can you please get it?” She smiled, watching him bite his lip as he was on his way to their bedroom.

“Evie, You really didn’t have to get me anything.”

“Stop being so humble and accept the gift. Or I will give you everything you just got us back.”

“But I like the headphones!” He returned with a big box, setting it down on the coffee table in front of Eden.

From the familiar name, she knew it was going to be an expensive bag. “Evelyn.”

He sat down next to Evelyn, holding her hand while admiring his new headphones. “Don’t make me scold you in front of Noah. Open it.”

“It’s a gift from both of us, by the way.” He raised his eyebrows to remind her, knowing that if it was a gift from him she couldn’t possibly refuse it.

She had plenty of handbags that have accumulated over the years. Now she wasn’t going to use any other bag than the one in the box in front of her.

She lifted the lid off of the box, being met with pink tissue paper. Pulling the paper back revealed the beige crossbody bag. It seemed like the perfect size for her and she loved all the embroidery on it. She turned to Evelyn, pouting while her sister simply smiled at her.

Eden walked over to hug the two of them quickly before sitting back down across from them. She pulled the bag out of the box and admired how nice it was.

“It’s so nice, thank you guys.”

She didn’t see the way they looked at each other as she started going through all the pockets, unzipping them all and removing all the wrapping paper they put inside.

She set the balls of tissue paper next to her, a grin on Eden’s face as she reached down to the deepest part of the bag. She picked up what she thought was a strap that came with the bag, looking down at the pregnancy test in her hands.

It took her one second to process what she was holding, seeing the two lines to indicate that it was positive. Eden gasped loudly, slapping her hand against her mouth before shooting her eyes over at them.

“Shut the fuck up.” She felt her heart drop to the depths of her stomach, her muscles becoming jelly and feeling her hands start to shake. It wasn’t too long before the tears started to pool in her eyes.

“Surprise!” Her sister had a devilish grin on her face.

“Are you serious?” Eden’s voice climbed a few octaves, muffled against the palm of her hand.

“Yes! I’m pregnant.” She nodded, Evelyn trying to hold back her own tears.

“You’re pregnant?” Her voice cracked into a whisper, still in disbelief.

Over the years, she watched her sister fall in love with the man sitting next to her now. The two had always confided in each other their entire lives. Evelyn had been there for all Eden’s ups and downs, especially when she had many pregnancy scares. Their support for one another was what made their relationship so special.

After their wedding, they knew they wanted to get straight to business. But it took more time and a toll on the couple as planned. She was there for every negative and false positive so she witnessed how frustrating and painful it was for the two. She tried her best to comfort her even when they started considering doing IVF.

Knowing everything they went through to get to this moment right now only made Eden more emotional.

She set the test down on the coffee table, getting up to hug her once more. Evelyn held her head in her hands, rubbing her back as the youngest sobbed onto her shoulder.

“I-I don’t know what to say. You’re really pregnant?”

“Yes!” She told her again, hugging her trembling body. “I’m 8 weeks along.”

She was still crying so hard that her makeup began to run. When she pulled away, Evelyn’s eyes were teary too. She wiped Eden’s tears away, rubbing the smudged makeup on her pants.

During their moment, the man started tearing up too. He laughed at himself, pulling the ultrasound pictures out of his pocket and handing it to her.

“Look, you’re gonna be an aunt.” It looked as if she just found the news out all over again. She was so caught up in feeling overjoyed for her sister finally being pregnant that she completely forgot this meant she was going to be an aunt.

She widened her eyes, covering her mouth with both of her hands as she shook her head. “I’m gonna be an aunt?” She wept quietly, squeezing her eyes shut as her whole body shook. “There’s really a baby in your belly? Why did you wait so long to tell me?”

“So we could have this moment of course.” Evelyn wrapped her arms around her neck, pulling in Noah to hug her too.

“Oh my god, I can't believe this. I’m so happy for you!” Her voice was once again muffled on her shoulder. “Does mom and dad know?”

She nodded. “We told them over a video call last week. Surprisingly, dad cried more than her.”

“Did he really?”

“She’s so excited. She’s already bragging to everyone about being a grandma.”

Once Eden was finally able to calm down, she found herself staring at the pregnancy test again. In the past, she hoped she wouldn’t ever have to see one of these again. Today, all she could feel was happiness.

She cracked a joke to lighten the mood. “So I can keep the bag right?” She sniffled as they busted into laughter.

“The bag was my idea.” Noah raised his hand with a smirk on his face.

Eden chuckled, hugging the woman again but being extremely gentle this time. “I’m so happy for you. You don’t even know.”

“Thank you so much.”

“You’re gonna be an amazing mom. I am certain.” She had cried so much that her nose was stuffed and her eyes were red. Because of her words, the woman’s lips started to quiver.

“Wait, you gotta help me tell the girls. And Seokmin!”

[tdnoco]

Made up some dialogue for noco

*watching a horror movie together* Noah: "And she's dead. Finally." Cody: "Babe, how can you be so cruel?" Noah: "She was too dumb to live. The dumb ones always go first. That's why Lindsay was eliminated first in All Stars" Cody: laughs "Hey hey hey, Lindsay wanted to be eliminated, that doesn't count. And you're saying this like you weren't voted out in the 4th episode." Cody: "Come to think of it, you've never gotten past the merge. So I wouldn't talk if I were you." Noah: "That's because I wasn't trying" Cody: "Oh, I can believe that." Noah: "Shut uppp! I don't know why I go out with you sometimes." Cody: leans into Noah’s shoulder and smirks  "Because of my dashing good looks and piercing blue eyes?"  Noah: takes a long look at Cody  "Well. You aren't the worst looking guy on Total Drama." Cody: sitting up "Who's the worst?" Noah: "Harold." Cody: "Nooo-" laughing "That's my bro!!! You can't just insult him like that." Noah: "I just did. And it's true, is it not?" Cody: "Noahhh." Noah: "I don't hear a denial." Cody: "You have to be nicer to my friends." Noah: "Have friends that aren't so easy to pick on." Cody: "You pick on everyone!" Noah: "You're friends with everyone!" Cody: "No, I'm not friends with everyone. I'm not friends with Duncan.  I'm not Owen, now that's a guy who makes friends with everyone. Even people who don't deserve it. No offense." Noah: "None taken, I know better than anyone how friendly Owen is" Noah: "..." Noah: in a low voice "I'm only going to tell you this because you're my boyfriend, but-" Noah: "I'm pretty sure the only reason Owen hangs out with me is he's too nice and he knows I have nobody else-" Cody: "No-" Noah: "It's true. He has so many other friends but he only hangs out with me, because he knows I'd be alone otherwise. Like a baby bird fallen out of the nest." Noah: "He was happier than ME when he found out we were dating. Jumping for joy! He was like 'I don't have to supervise him anymore!!!'" Cody: laughing  "Noooo, that's not true Noah. That's not true." Cody: "He likes you babe. Serious. Don’t be ridiculous." Noah: "I don't know. I mean - look. You get voted out first out of your team, TWICE, you get trust issues. All I'm saying." Cody: "Noah. Noah. I love you. I truly do, cross my heart and hope to die, BUT-" Cody: "People didn't vote you out because they hated you, they did it because you did nothing. And also you kinda shit talked your team the entire time. Like of course they disliked you." Noah: "Not helping." Cody: "Look. If you want people to like you, you have to be nice first. That's just how the world works." Noah: "Yeah because that worked out so well with you and Gwen." Cody: chokes Cody: "That was in the past! Anyway  - YOU were the person who told me I should get with a person that actually liked me back.  Someone that would actually treat me well." Cody: "Right?" Noah: "Yeah..." Cody: "So.. you understand the importantance of mutual kindness. And if you’re kind and they still don't like you - well at least you'll be like a little brother to them." Noah: snorts Cody: "I'm serious! Just remember the saying - 'If you don't have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all'" Noah: opens his mouth, then closes it Cody: smiles at him, then turns back to the movie Noah: "..." Noah: "But what if it's like, really funny though?"

[hockeylvr59]

More than Morning Sickness || Matthew Tkachuk

Requested: [x] yes [ ] no

Yoooo I love your writing! Can I request a Matthew Tkachuk imagine where the reader is pregnant but she has severe morning sickness and Matty has Chantal and Taryn come and stay with her while she’s on the road so she doesn’t have to be alone because he wants so bad to stay and help her through it even though he knows he can’t 💕💕 I love your writing omg

Authors Note: So I had an idea for a twist on this request kind of based on current events so after running it by the requester I went ahead and made the changes to write it the way I wanted to. Enjoy!

Warnings: none?

Word Count: 1,670

~~~~~

Nausea. Vomiting. Headaches. Fatigue. 

You’d been staying with your boyfriend Matt and his family in quarantine for about two and a half months when those symptoms hit you like a truck, coming completely out of nowhere. You’d gone from messing around with Matt’s family in whatever sport they were attempting to barely being able to get out of bed. 

For a couple of days you were able to play them off as a minor bug or your body’s disagreement with something you had eaten. But when they didn’t go away, Matt’s family started asking questions. 

Taryn and Brady both suggested that Matt take you to the doctor. Keith didn’t seem to know what to suggest. Matt’s mom Chantal, however, disappeared to the store before returning with a bag full of items. As she pulled the items from the bag, gradually the eyes of her family grew wider. Saltine crackers, Gatorade, B6 vitamins, prenatal vitamins, and finally a pack of pregnancy tests. 

“Bro...you knocked her up!” Brady exclaimed. 

Keith mumbled something about quarantine babies under his breath while Matt just stood in the kitchen looking completely shell-shocked. 

__

When you stirred from your nap, you saw Matt sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. The moment he realized you were awake though, he shifted, leaning in to press a kiss to your forehead. 

“How are you feeling?” He questioned softly, fingers gently pushing away strands of hair that had fallen in your face. 

“Little less tired.” You murmured. “Still have a bit of a headache and feel like I’m going to puke.” As always, Matt’s face was filled with worry, but you’d learned that lying to him did more harm than good. 

“Mom thinks you’re pregnant,” Matt whispered, moving to lay down beside you. “And she’s probably right.” He added. This time it was you that was shell-shocked, your stomach twisting as you thought about it. You and Matt certainly hadn’t been practicing abstinence...and there was that time out on the lakehouse dock where you had gotten a little careless. 

Matt pulled you from your thoughts with a gentle kiss to your lips and when he pulled back he sighed. 

“She bought a couple of tests, think we should maybe take them?” His fingers rubbed the skin of your hip gently, helping you remain somewhat grounded. 

“Yeah...okay.” You agreed. 

Five minutes later, Matt was holding your hair back while you once again vomited, the sound of your phone timer going off on the counter. After a moment, Matt stood and the sound of the faucet ran for about 30 seconds. Even still, you heard the clatter of plastic against the counter as Matt checked the tests and silenced your phone. Kneeling back beside you, Matt draped a cool rag over the back of your neck and his hand fell to your lower back. 

“This is all my fault,” He mumbled, words of apology spilling from his lips. You didn’t even need to hear the word ‘positive’ to tell you that was exactly what the tests had read. Resting your head on your arm you attempted to send Matt as much of a smile as you could. 

“Last I checked it takes two to tango Matty.” You admitted. “So unless you plan on up and leaving me you have nothing to be sorry for.” Matt didn’t pick up on your weak attempt at a joke and instead cursed, promising that he wasn’t going anywhere. 

___

Though Matt’s family ribbed the two of you hard for conceiving a quarantine baby, they were all super supportive, willing to get you whatever it was that you needed. While the vitamins Chantal had bought helped a little with the fatigue, they really didn’t do much to stop the constant nausea and vomiting. 

Two weeks after finding out you were pregnant, you were being diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum. The same day you got this diagnosis, the NHL announced further information about its return to play plan. You were upset knowing that Matt would be going into a bubble and would miss so much of the pregnancy but you knew it was his job and there was nothing you personally could do about it. Talking with Taryn and Chantal, you knew the best thing you could do was take the medication the doctor had given you, try to intake as many vitamins and nutrients as possible, and put the rest up to a higher power knowing that you were doing your best to take care of yourself and the little one growing inside you. 

Because you had decided that return to play wasn’t something you could control, it wasn’t something you ever talked about with Matt. Instead, you spent as much time as possible with him, watching from the outside sofa as he messed around with Brady in the backyard, cuddling him on the couch while a random movie or tv show played in the background. You talked about the things you’d need for the baby, who you hoped the baby would take after more and just other random things that had nothing to do with his impending departure. 

As the date for summer training camps approached, you found yourself packing Matty’s bags out of habit, tucking them off to the side of the room ready to go. Though you were feeling a little bit better since starting the medication, you still tired easily and you knew that the emotional strain was beginning to take its toll. You’d cried yourself into many a nap thinking about how much Matt was going to miss and how you were going to do this on your own. It was silly because you had Matt’s entire family at your beck and call and there was no doubt that you’d be taken care of, but it just wasn’t the same. Having your boyfriend’s family around would never be able to compare with having your boyfriend/baby daddy by your side. 

Matt was out with Brady and Taryn and you were lounging on the couch with Chantal when your phone rang. Caller ID showed that it was Noah’s girlfriend and while you hadn’t really spoken to any of the other wags recently you answered curious as to why she had reached out. Without even greeting you, she quickly spoke one sentence that sent your mind spinning. 

“Noah just told me Matt is opting out.” You froze, your eyes immediately filling with tears. “Y/N.” She repeated your name, but you barely registered it. 

“I’ll call you back.” You whispered, cutting the line before glancing over at Matt’s mom almost full-on sobbing. She looked at you with confusion on her face before moving over to your end of the couch wrapping her arms around you. 

“What’s wrong?” She murmured, her hand rubbing over your back. 

“Where’s Matt?” You hiccuped, trying desperately to calm yourself before you ended up sick once more. She murmured that she would call him and fifteen minutes later you felt Matt’s arms wrap around you, pulling you into his chest as you continued to softly cry. 

“Sweetheart...what happened?” He questioned, thumb tucking under your chin to force you to look at him. 

“You’re opting out?” The words were barely audible, but it was clear Matt heard them when he let out a soft chuckle. 

“All of this is over that?” He breathed in disbelief. “Yeah, sweetheart. I opted out. My only priority is right here. You and our baby.” You couldn’t wrap your brain around that and just stared at him with wide eyes. His thumb brushed over your cheek as he stared at you, a look of fondness and worry in his eyes. “Did you really think I’d leave you?” He murmured. “I promised you I wouldn’t and I intend to keep that promise.” 

“But…” Every excuse you’d told yourself as to why Matt was certain to go rushed through your head but before you could voice them he was speaking once more. 

“But the cup can wait until next year..when I put our baby in it. But I don’t have to go and I can’t imagine missing all of this. But I know my family would take great care of you but that’s my job. There isn’t an excuse in the book that would justify me leaving you right now. So I’m not going to. This baby...while tiny...is so much bigger than hockey. You both are so much more important than hockey. Okay?” Matt finished, his forehead pressed against yours as you took in the weight of his words. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” The question slipped from your lips immediately and hearing it made Matt sigh. 

“I thought you knew.” He admitted. “I talked to Brades and dad, asked them what they’d do. I talked to my coaches and Gio and asked what they’d do and everyone supports me staying here. I didn’t think it was a secret that I was planning on staying.” You didn’t have anything to say to that and seeing how quiet you were Matt pecked your lips. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you directly. I didn’t mean to cause you stress over it.” 

Wrapping your arms tightly around Matt’s neck you buried your head against him, the weight you’d been carrying over him leaving suddenly disappearing. 

“Are we good?” Matt mumbled against your head, his hands dropping to cradle your hips. 

“I love you.” You breathed after nodding against him. 

“I love you too,” Matt replied. “I love both of you so much.” As he pulled away he kissed you softly, his smile growing. “Now how about some Italian ice? We brought some home from that place we had talked about.” 

Offering out your hand you let him pull you from the couch and as you tucked yourself against his side you couldn’t help but notice that for the first time, even momentarily, your nausea had vanished. Evidently the baby was just as happy about daddy sticking around as you were. 

[kaznejis]

Only Fools- Marco Peña x Flynn!Reader

nialler-tpwk5 said: Can we get Marco x reader but lee and Noah are her bothers and Noah gets in to a fight with him bc they kissed

A/N: Thankyou for sending in this prompt! I wrote this in a matter of hours, so hopefully there aren’t any mistakes- sorry if there is. I really enjoyed writing this; I think the scene between Marco and Noah at the football field is definitely my favourite!

Alsooo, whilst I was writing this I received a request for a ‘making out with Marco’ head canon- so I will have something similar to the opening out in the next few hours ;) 

Feel free to send in any prompts. :)

Curling the tips of your fingers into Marco’s hair, you breathed out hot puffs of breaths against his face as you moved your lips against his passionately. Marco’s hands clung to your waist as he dragged you into his lap, running his tongue against the seam of your lips as he pushed back with the same level of fervour. 

“We can’t do this for long,” You panted as Marco traced the pliant skin beneath your loose shirt, “My family will be home soon.”

Marco just smirked up at you as his hands moved further north, “You know that never stops me.”

You huffed a laugh as you dragged your lips down the base of his throat, “Yeah well, I don’t feel like watching my brothers beat you up today.”

Marco pulled back, pulling a raised eyebrow as he stared at you, “You think I can’t take them?”

“Lee, definitely,” You both broke into giggles at that, “but Noah is multiple feet taller than you with an added sprinkle of anger issues- wouldn’t exactly be a fair fight.”

“Well, that doesn’t matter because we won’t get caught,” He grinned at you as he pecked the tip of your nose softly, “The older brother will go back to college in a week and the younger one is to wrapped up in his own drama to notice anything.”

“True,” You sighed, tracing your finger along his face- the scar at his hairline, the light freckles beneath his eyes, the stray hairs that trailed the edges of his eyebrows. He really was beautiful. Despite what your siblings could ever think, you truly loved Marco- and you believed that he loved you too with the same level of compassion. The two of you were meant for each other; the sneaking around and hiding had only proved to deepen the connection that formed between the two of you. 

Though, you could tell that Marco was beginning to grow restless of this factor to your relationship. You were too- you wanted nothing more than be able to be with Marco in public and get rid of the masses of girls that flocked towards him in school. You wanted to be able to bring him home for family dinners like Noah did with Elle and Lee with Rachel; instead of having to sneak him in and out of your bedroom window as soon as the front door opens. 

To say the least, your brothers were extremely overprotective of you. Though, Noah’s protective nature was much more intense than Lee’s- he had gone to the lengths of beating up any guy who even dared to look at you, let alone touch you. Although he had softened slightly since opening his heart up to Elle, you still had no doubt that he would hunt Marco down if you were ever caught together. The thought of the two people you loved most in the world going against each other terrified you and you never wanted to be put in that situation. You just wished your brothers would lay off and stop seeing you as the timid girl you once were. 

“Are you still with me?” Marco mumbled softly, pushing a strand of hair from out of your eyes. You just smiled sadly back at him before reluctantly climbing from upon his lap. 

“You should probably get going, they’ll all be back soon.” 

Marco climbed up from your bed after you, letting out a heavy intake of breath as he listened to what you said, “Alright- but I will forever dream of spending an entire night with you here.” And at that he laughed before giving you a sloppy kiss to the cheek and swinging his legs over your balcony ledge

“Be safe!” You hollered as you leant against the door and watched as he jumped from the tree just below your balcony. 

-

The family sat around the table in comfortable silence as everyone tucked into the food your mother had prepared as usual. Though tonight there were no best friends or girlfriends that usually frequented the seat next to your siblings present tonight- meaning that it was just family. 

“Noah,” You inquired, looking up to make eye contact with your older brother, “This is completely hypothetical...but what would you do if I had a boyfriend?”

Noah paused, his fork in the midst of digging into a mound of spaghetti, “Depends,” He brought his fork up and chewed slowly as if he were deep in thought, “If your hypothetical boyfriend were to be someone I know I would beat his ass as they are all assholes.”

“Noah!” Your mum snapped, swatting at him in an attempt to weaken his use of words.

“Sorry,” He groaned, holding up his hands, “I was about to say that if he was someone I didn’t know, maybe I would give him a chance.”

“Moral of the story, don’t date anyone from our school,” Lee laughed as he and Noah high-fived, “Why are you asking that anyway?” 

“Oh, just wondering.” You smiled in what you hoped was a reassuring way, but you didn’t miss the intrigued, tilted-head look your mother gave you. 

-

Later that night as you lay on top of your bed covers mindlessly scrolling through your social media and waiting for Marco to message you, a knock sounded at your bedroom door. 

“Can I come in?” 

“Yeah,” You called as you propped yourself up against the headboard, “Hey mum.”

“Sorry to barge in, I bought you some hot chocolate.” 

“Thanks,” You grinned as you accepted it and took an elongated sip, though you noticed the look on her face as you did so, “Alright, what do you want to ask?”

“You always know when something’s up,” She laughed and gestured for you to scoot over on the bed, “Earlier at dinner- that situation wasn’t hypothetical, was it?”

“No.” You gulped, opting to stare down at the chocolate that swirled within the mug. 

“Oh, sweetheart,” She cooed, wrapping her arms around you and bringing you in to cuddle into her side, “Why didn’t you just say? I would never get mad at you for having a boyfriend.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” You sniffled, cuddling closer into her side, “It’s Noah who would.”

“Ah,” She whispered as he tightened her grip around you slightly, “I see.” 

“Yeah.” You whispered back, finding it difficult to speak through the lump that was beginning to 

rise in your throat. 

“He’ll come around, I promise,” Your mother let out a small chuckle before continuing, “He can’t really judge your relationship status when he’s dating his brother’s best friend.”

You both dissolved into light giggles at that, the situation really was bizarre, “That’s actually true.”

“So,” She spoke slowly, nudging your side, “Who’s the lucky guy?”

“Promise you won’t tell anyone?” She nodded sincerely, “Marco.” 

“Marco…” She mumbled with furrowed brows as realisation slowly set in, “Marco! Oh, he’s a cutie.” 

You laughed fondly as you entwined your fingers together in your lap, “Yeah, I would know.”

“You love him, don’t you.” It was a statement, not a question. 

You just nodded, smiling shyly as you turned to look at the woman beside you, “I wish we didn’t have to hide.”

“Your brothers will understand eventually, I promise,” and she bundled you up all snug in her arms and kissed your forehead as she spoke. 

“I hope so, I really do.”

-

A few days later, you and Marco were once again hanging out in the confines of your bedroom- though this time the interaction was much less heated as the two of you simply sat with your legs intertwined as you studied and helped each other with homework. If someone was to walk in right now you could brush it off as two friends simply hanging out. But, once again- Noah would beat up any guy who even looked at you. Any interaction could be seen as risky. 

“Hey,” Marco spoke, reaching over and rubbing his thumb over your clothed thigh, “Help me with this?” In return you smiled and leaned over to press a slow, teasing kiss to Marco’s lips- which he quickly reciprocated as he looped his arms around you.

Of course, Noah decided to walk in at that moment. 

“Hey Y/N-” You and Marco pulled away immediately and froze in place, staring at Noah who was practically steaming with anger, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Noah, wait-” Though your brother completely ignored you and stormed straight up to Marco, grabbing him by the collar and slamming his back against the wall. 

“My sister? My fucking sister? You made a mistake.”

“Noah!” You screamed, running to the side of him and grabbing the arm that clung to Marco, “Let go of him, I’m fine.” Though your pleads fell upon deaf ears.

“Out of all the people in the world you decided to play my sister?” Noah spat, getting up in Marco’s face, “You’re a fucking asshole, bro.”

“I’m not playing her,” Marco choked out, kicking at Noah’s legs and sending them both to the ground, “I love-”

“Don’t even say it.” Noah practically growled, landing a solid punch onto Marco’s face as they wrestled. Gasping at the sight of blood dripping from your boyfriend’s nose, you jumped forward and grabbed onto Noah’s shoulders- digging your nails into his skin in a way to replace the lack of strength you inhabited compared to him, “What the hell Y/N, get off me!”

“Get off of Marco then, he didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Y/N,” Your brother spoke sternly, “He was touching you.”

“Yes,” You yelled back, anger fizzling through every fibre of your being, “Because he is my boyfriend!” You dug your hands into your eyes, “I’m not a child anymore Noah, I don’t need you to protect me.” 

“Well, when you’re with boys like him maybe I do.”

“Boys like me?” Marco deadpanned, taking his hand from his steadily bleeding nose as he did so, “The hell does that mean?”

“Assholes that fuck around.”

“Flynn,” Marco spoke calmly, sitting down on the bed, “I’m sorry to say it but I love your sister, more than anything. I would never do anything to hurt her.” You smiled softly at him as he spoke, he returned it once he was done. 

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“Trust me, I guess?” Marco shrugged, wincing as his nose began to sting, “Did you really have to punch me in the face though?”

“Yeah.” Noah insisted, throwing an arm over your shoulder which you attempted to shrug away, “Hurt my sister though and I will fucking kill you- we clear?”

“Sir, yes, sir!” Marco saluted as he walked over to you and looped his arms around your waist, laughing as he accidentally smeared blood onto your shirt. 

Yeah, your relationship was about to become ten times better already.

-

Would anyone be interested in being added to a tag list? If so, please send me an ask or message saying that you would like to be added! 

[a-day-in-the-afterlife]

Your afterl!fe x obey me crossover is so good!!! It got me thinking about how the reapers would react to Mammon calling the manager "his human" and saying he was their first 😳

🥺🥺🥺 You are too nice, anon!

And now that you asked that, I am curious, too, so behold:

The Reapers Reacting to Mammon Calling the Manager “His Human” and  Saying That He Was “Her First”

A.K.A “The Soul Reapers Are Very Good at Jumping to Conclusions”

Mane

Ell is an uncomfortable mix of dubious and nervous.  He gave up his title of an angel for a chance to be with the Manager: now she’s gone off to be the property of a demon, allowing him to call himself “her first?”  No, no, Manager wouldn’t!  ... Right?

I reckon I should prob’ly congratulate him or somethin’ thinks Jamie.  He only has a vague idea of what “first” means—it probably had something to do with “makin’ love,” which causes him to blush, before he decides that Manager has more sense than to do that with a troublesome demon.  ‘Sides, ‘ts not like Manager’s a human, anyway—she’s an Otherworlder like the rest of us, so we’ve got her all to ourselves.

Ghilley is cackling at this announcement.  Ufufufu, her ‘first?’ By the God of the Celestial Realm, he was the first Soul Reaper of the 14th Department—being the first of whatever this demon was to the Manager means nothing to him.      

Version 1 — Licht cannot fathom what Mammon means when he dares calls the Manager “his human” and himself “her first!”  Was his darling tainted by this wretched demon?  Had his baby lamb been coerced into something so heinous?  He loved her either way, but for his darling’s honor, he resented Mammon with every fiber of his being—to the point where even harmlessly flirting with him seemed repulsive.  

Version 2  — Oh, “her first,” was he?  Licht could live with that.  Really, why make things a competition?  If his darling consented, then there really was no problem, was there?  He’s content with being her third or fourth or whatever the number was.  But Mammon calling her “his human,” was too much.  His baby lamb was was her own human—er, Otherworlder!

Die

As soon as the words enter his ear, Theo grabs Licht’s rifle and heads to the Devildom.  No thoughts, no feelings inhibit him as he makes his way to avenge the good name of his Manager.

June congratulates the Manager.  Surely if she is "first,” then she must have won some amazing competition and been bestowed a great honor!

As prince of all, Louis is pretty sure that makes the Manager his “human.”  “Foul demon, thou art mistaken!  The Manager can belong to none other than I!”  (He doesn’t know why Manager punches him in the stomach for this statement.)

Ethan makes the appearance that he doesn’t care (“He is only a demon.  You need not worry about his words, ma’am.), but inside, he is incensed.  How dare someone as unworthy as Mammon say such words to the Manager!  Such scum should never have even laid eyes on her in the first place, much less claimed her as his own!

Hesperide

What the—?  Surely Mammon couldn’t mean “first” like that, could he?  I—it wasn’t like Sian cared about what that dude said, no way!  And, well, anyways, it wasn’t as if all these implications had an effect on him, hell, no!  Sian was only worried for the Manager’s well-being and good name, that’s all!  He wasn’t feeling any sentiments of jealousy, or anything!

Cyrille doesn’t really know how to say anything against Mammon’s claims because the demon is just so cool.  Sure, he much preferred his plain red coat and harness over the demon’s absolutely badass fashion-forward denim-and-aviator-jacket combo, totally!  He may have stared at it in not-jealousy for so long that he forgot the entire point of the confrontation.  

What the bleep did that annoying demon say about Big Sis?  Kati was going to bite him next time he saw him, and bite him hard!

Noah wonders if this whole thing is a big misunderstanding, and, by way of common sense, asks Mammon what he means by that.  When Mammon explains that being “her first” meant that he was the first demon that the Manager made a pact with and nothing more, he is satisfied, even though he can’t help the twinge of jealousy that flares up.  Noah somewhat resents Mammon for calling the Manager “his human,” because really, that’s untrue as the Manager is no one’s but herself’s. 

Noctu

Nine is lost.  Like Noah, he is intelligent enough to ask for elaboration on what Mammon means by calling the Manager as such, but, even still, he doesn’t fully know where he stands on the issue.  No one can really tell how undecided he is, for he keeps such a calm front, but he is quite in emotional turmoil on the inside.  Nine knows everyone is entitled to their secrets, but how long had the Manager been bent on keeping this one?

“Three cheers for you, boss!”  Day thinks Mammon Bro is super cool and it must be super cool as well for the Manager to have him as her “first,” whatever that meant!  Maybe they’d have cake and games to celebrate, heehee!

Kirr is relieved.  He doesn’t know what business this demon has in being her “first”—whatever that entailed, he could not guess—but he, unlike the other Soul Reapers takes comfort in knowing this information.  In the forest, the first hunt of the season is always unsuccessful, as animals have yet to grow comfortable to their new environment and are more skittish than usual.  Kirr’s heart is full with this knowledge, for Mammon being the Manager’s “first,” means he is merely expendable and not worth much at all. 

This must be the greatest dishonor of all! thinks Aitachi.  To be claimed by a demon as his own!  To be robbed of one’s own humanity!  Poor Miss Manager!  He has half a mind to perform a cleansing ritual that is sacred to his tribe on her, but she only laughs and says not to take Mammon too seriously. 

Diluculo

Youssef takes a page from Noah’s book of maturity and thoroughly examines Mammon’s words when he explains what he means by saying that he is “her first.”  He is troubled but only a moment, for the whole ordeal is quite benign in nature.  “Dear, as long as you’re not hurt by his words, then there’s no reason for me to worry ... right?”

Being someone’s first must have a lot of value, Mori wagers.  While he kind of wishes that he had the value of being the Manager’s “first,” he can’t dwell on it, however, for instead, he has to inquire of Mammon how much it would cost to get himself one of those demon pacts the Manager apparently has ... it seems like having one could be very useful.

Quincy laughs and laughs and laughs at what Mammon is trying to insinuate.  He is fully aware that he means demon pacts when he says “first” and cannot believe that Mammon would try to make it sound lewd just to lay claim on the Manager.  That being said, he’s considering offering a pact to the Manager, too.  Why?  “None of your business!” he says with a blush.

For some reason, Verine’s heart feels weaker at Mammon’s words, and he feels faint.  He blames it on his condition, punctuating the statement with a bout of coughs, but he knows that his words are just a delusion.  How could he have been so stupid to think that he, sickly and bothersome as he was, could be anything special to the Manager when she was consorting with handsome demons on the regular, it seemed?

(Please note that for all AFTERL!FE content, I will be using she/her pronouns, as that’s what’s presented in the game.  For regular Obey Me! content, I use they/them.)

Hopefully, that didn’t suck too much.  I apologize for any spelling mistakes, for I’m sure that there are many.

[gins-potter]

The Yaya and Torrey of it all...

To distract myself from the fact that Chicago Med likely won’t be uploaded for hours yet, and also because I’ve been kind of slack about posting about One Chicago lately, I thought I’d write down some thoughts I’ve been having about Yaya and Torrey leaving.

At first I was stunned, like I did not see that coming at all.  Tbh I’d forgotten completely that with this being the sixth season most of the main casts contracts would be up.  Fire owns my heart so I’ve mostly been following news about Jesse and Taylor’s contracts, while keeping half an eye on news about PD contracts - Med was so not on my radar.  But once I think about it, Torrey and Yaya leaving kind of makes sense.... emphasis on kinda.

(it got kinda long so full thoughts under the cut)

April Sexton - Nurse Practitioner

I think everyone agrees that this is the departure that makes the most sense of the two.  I think I remember being a little worried when this storyline started that this was a way of writing April out but I guess I just settled into the assumption that she would study off-screen and maintain a work/study balance ala Penelope from ODAAT (if you’ve never seen that show the main character Penelope works as a nurse while studying to be a NP at the same time and both are shown on screen).  Presumably now April will just be written out completely to go study.  

I’ve seen some theories floating around that she’ll move out of state to be with Noah (where did he move to? Atlanta?) and I think that could really work.  I do wonder how this might be tied in with Archer’s offer to get her into that school she wanted.  I cold see April going back and forth for a few episodes deciding if she wants to take him up on his offer or not, so I’ll be interested to see how that develops.

I’ll definitely miss April, she was never my favourite character, but I think season 6 was really good for her and seeing her work in two different areas she was clearly passionate about was nice to see.  And as far as storylines go, writing her out so she can advance her career is a good way to do it, it’s hard to be too sad about her leaving when you’re happy for her as a character.  I am a little bummed in terms of the Chexton of it all just because I did ship them for a little while, and I did kinda see them getting back together eventually, but I guess that won’t be happening now.  I’m not too heartbroken about it but I did think they had moments where they were good together.  I think one of the biggest downsides to writing April out is that it means we’ve completely lost another sibling duo in the One Chicago universe (and if I’m counting right that leaves only the Halstead bros standing?)(editing to clarify I mean siblings who are main characters/regulars on the shows not characters who have siblings in general).  But it sounds like Yaya already has a new show lined up in which she’s the lead (correct me if I’m wrong about that part) and I think this NP storyline really serves for a good exit for April and Yaya both.

Natalie Manning - Where the hell does she go from here?

The one that makes less sense to me has to be Nat’s exit.  And I say that in the context of the entire show, her current storyline trajectory makes a lot of sense actually.  Obviously we don’t know for sure what’s going to happen but there’s a lot of theories going around that make a lot of sense.  Where we’re at as of writing this post (I haven’t seen 6x14 yet) Nat’s taken the pills, Will’s in trouble for it, and she knows he’s in trouble for it.  It seems plausible to me that from here we get a couple episode of Nat fucking around trying to come up with a way to get Will out of trouble, before ultimately coming clean to save his ass, the repercussions of this being that she has to leave the hospital.  I have two problems with this.

The first, where the hell does this leave Natalie?  Because at this point we’re contending with two different entities, the drug company who was in charge of the trial (spacing on the name) and Chicago Med as a hospital.  Will’s in trouble with the former so to save him that’s who Nat’s primarily gonna have to come clean to, and I’m having a hard time seeing how realistically they wouldn’t want to charge her with the theft.  But where would that leave Nat besides probably in jail and Owen on his own with a sick grandma?  It’s kind of a shit ending for Torrey’s character, and I just can’t see the Med writers going that route.  So I guess my theory is that Sharon steps in and brokers some kind of deal with the drug company where she convinces them not to press charges but to show that Nat is facing consequences she’s fired.  Then she either stays in the city with Owen and just (presumably) finds a new job, or I can even see her also moving out of state as I think her parents live in Seattle?

My other problem is that this kind of doesn’t make sense in the broader context of the show.  The Chicago Med docs are always up to shady shit, Will and Nat most especially, why is now suddenly the time they face consequences for their actions (besides the fact that Torrey is leaving of course).  It just seems mighty convenient to me, and that’s not something I particularly like about character exits like this.

In terms of Nat’s character in general leaving, my feelings are pretty similar to April’s exit.  While I think the exit itself hasn’t been set up great (I much prefer how they’ve set up April’s) I am vaguely sad about Torrey/Nat leaving.  Much like April, Nat was never my favourite character, in fact I swung wildly between eh she’s alright and oh my god I hate this chick for a while there.  But again, like April, season 6 was good for her, and I even got on board with Mancel (rip that relationship) and it’s sad to see her go just when I was starting to like her again after really really not liking the way Manstead ended.  Speaking of, I think even more so than Chexton I fully expected Manstead to get back together by the end of the show, and I even thought they were setting that up by giving them storylines together in the back half of this season (now I just wonder if they wanted to give fans a chance to see them interact again before Torrey left).  So it feels very weird to me that we won’t see them again now after spending seasons thinking of them as an endgame ship.  I can see there being some kind of final romantic moment between them, especially if Nat’s written to move out of state but idk if I would want that or if it would just be rubbing salt in an open would.  That all being said I wish Torrey all the best, I read that she already has a movie gig lined up so that’s awesome for her.

Final Thoughts

Look, the writing on Med has always struck me as kind of repetitive if not weak in general so I can’t really blame either Yaya or Torrey for wanting to move on to new things.  Even if it was the best writing in the world, playing the same character for 6 years is a long time and while there are plenty of actors who like a steady gig there are also plenty more who like the challenge of new characters/stories/sets etc.  And like I said above, they already have new gigs lined up so this is clearly something they both want so I’m at least glad that that allowed the writers to set up somewhat believable exits for them both.  I don’t know if I would say I hope they come back someday, but it seems like they’re certainly going to leave it open for that.  Unless they pull an Ava Bekker-esque last minute death, it seems like they’re both going to leave the show alive and somewhat happy so there’s always a chance they bring them back one day (this feels more likely for April/Yaya then Nat/Torrey but you never know).  All in all definitely not the worst character exits I’ve seen in this franchise, or even this show, yeah I’m looking at you Ava Bekker.

[dujourmeans]

noah larsson | twenty-one | a #frat | w. novogratz

showtime • one half of the larsson twins. (sure, they both had different surrogates, but they were born around the same time so it counts, and don’t try to tell them otherwise!!) • his twin = his best #bro outside his other #bros ... which he clearly has a lot of. • was a mega #ultra stereotypical big man on school grounds type throughout junior and high school. • played virtually every sport you can think of and was decent at all of them, but never good enough for either the big awards or the scholarships that the majority of his old friends had handed out to them. • got into university the old fashioned way: by applying with passable grades. • smart enough, but also not THAT smart, iykwim. • passing all of his classes with mediocre grades with the exception of one that he’s hardcore bombing, but it’s okay: it’s not because he DOESN’T get the material. it’s because the material doesn’t get HIM. (and he currently has a super cute tutor in the class so it’s all good.) • a genuinely nice guy, but also a pretty genuine tool in regards to a lot of the mistakes he’s made in the past. most unintentionally, but that doesn’t make it any better for anyone affected by them. • for example: the entire incident around the end of last school year when he accidentally sent out all of the funds he had been managing for delpha ro’s charity of choice to one that his ultimate idol, cher, had mentioned that he was researching on his chrome tab at the same time the donations were due. • some believe it was a genuine mistake; others think it was it was his way of trying to get cher’s attention. (spoiler alert: it didn’t.) • an eleven year sone and he won't let you forget it. soweoneul malhaebwa, bitches. • ... not that he ever says "bitch". that'd go against everything he BELIEVES as a human being ... and decent man. (eye roll.) needs: the rest!! of his frat bros!! fellow #sones and cher enthusiasts. people that he’s had both disastrous and ... intriguing tinder dates with. a few exes?? and past flings?? y’know how it goes, but he’s pretty #smitten right now.

tamsin jeong | nineteen | very confused | face #tba

into the future • younger and only sister of pop sensation tyler jeong; pretty much his biggest fan and number one supporter. she runs the local branch of his fan club, so!!!!! (really, she doesn’t trust anyone else to do it and gets weirded out thinking about people drooling over him when putting together fan events, so ... it’s better this way.) • textbook definition of an oops baby. • had a very typical childhood, was a very typical preteen, and teenager? yeah, her teenage years have been pretty typical as well. (minus the whole ... having a pop star for a brother thing.) • just started university back in september, and she’s still kind of struggling with living away from home. (sure, her house isn’t that far from the university, but we’re not gonna talk about that.) • majoring in music with a minor in double minor in composition and production. • starting playing the guitar when she was eleven, is pretty much self taught minus a camp rock esque summer camp she went to before her freshman year of high school started (which she spent most of the time homesick during.) • wants to be the next corinne bailey rae or something, but she doesn’t believe in herself much. • (but she is good and could probably make it onto the voice or something if she found the courage to audition.) • has done a few open mic sets when she’s been feeling a little more #up on herself, but it’s rare.• has a pretty awesome snowglobe collection back at home. • essentially a cute excitable baby, but she doesn’t like being told that. (kind of. it depends who it’s coming from.) needs: some university kids around her age to help her feel more in her #element as a ... you know, adult? some high school friends that she’s either fading away or starting to reconnect with. possibly cousins?? on either side of her family?? (she’s half-white, so anything’s possible there.) some sort of longtime friend that she can fall for in a totally romcom way. 

ione nam | twenty-five | poor rich girl | face #tba

seasons • the eldest of the infamous nam family. • why infamous, you ask? in the past it was for being rich as fuck, but more recently they’ve been better known for losing everything. • was beyond privileged growing up. the whole silver spoon thing embodies everything about her and her siblings’ upbringing, and they all have a really hard time seeing that despite the last few months. • textbook intelligent, but lacking in a lot of the skills a person needs to not die when out in the world on their own. (she recently proved this by almost burning down the apartment complex she lives in after forgetting to shut off the oven. she thought it turned off on it’s own like the ones she “used to” have did.) • (none of them ever shut off on their own. it was her butler doing it for her to keep their house from going up in flames.) • spent the first month after her family lost everything living with some rich friends who eventually gave her the boot for “embarrassing” them with her ~financial scandal. • moved into a loft with a few other girls on a whim, and she really, really appreciates them being so open to her. and she really, really appreciates them. she hows it in strange ways, but the love is there. • dropped out of university after one semester studying fashion. • ... but she actually has a good eye for it and could pull something off if she found the right person to take a chance on her. • ... which she hasn’t so she’s currently on her third month of waitressing at a diner / restaurant not far from her loft. • she’s gotten pretty good at it, but she still messes up orders and slips on the wet floor at least once a week. • it also doesn’t help that she always tries to bring at least one of her old designer pieces with her on the job for good luck. they never match and they’re always running the risk of getting ruined, but she insists. • she's still very materialistic. once again: she's gotten!! better!! but it's been hard adjusting to a life where she isn't able to go to a spa on a weekly basis and where she doesn't have the capacity to never repeat wearing the same outfit more than once a year. • a little on the socially awkward side so things have been lonely for her outside of her loft girls, but she’s enthusiastic and does try despite sometimes having word vomit and saying shit that she probably shouldn’t be saying. needs: virtually anyone who lives in the same apartment complex as her! (she’s prob the newest addition to the little girl gang of lofters there.) people who work at the same diner slash restaurant that she’s taken up waitressing at (which ... if there’s a group for that right now ... send me in their direction.) all of her siblings, and people from some of the richie rich families she grew up around?

[julia-highstorms]

She Trips In The Woods: Open Wound

This is an absolutely hilarious fanfic my great friends @kennaxval @sawyeroakleyscowboyhat @begging-for-kamilah @strangerofbraidwood @stopforamoment @tornbetween2loves wrote for my birthday!!!!!!!!!!! I cried laughing while reading this and words aren't enough to describe how thankful I am for all of you who found the time in your schedules to rite this masterpiece!! To the people who don;t know this already, I've working together on this super project, @choicecrossover​, for the past months with all these geniuses!!! It's been a blast getting to know all of these phenomenal writers and I'll be forever grateful for this opportunity <3

The woods around Julia were dark and oppressive,  a stark contrast to her own bubbly and upbeat personality. Her various woodland creature companions all faithfully gathered around her in a posse of fur and claws, all speaking the language of their own species as they gallivanted through the trees like a literal Disney princess. 

A large shadow flew in front of her, causing her to shriek loudly in surprise. She stumbled backwards, her ankle catching a fallen tree limb and twisting painfully as she fell onto the hard forest floor. 

“You aren’t a woodland creature!” she shouted after the mysterious shadow as it disappeared behind the trees, a strange laughter coming from the mischievous apparition. She rubbed her ankle painfully, cursing her ill luck.

“Curse my ill luck!” she shouted. 

One of her furry companions approached her tentatively, bopping her with his cold nose. She stared into the canines eyes, feeling an understanding pass between them and knowing what she must do. 

“I know what I must do!” she said happily, looking into the dog’s eyes. 

“Run like the wind, go forth and find me help!”

The dog stared into her eyes, an understanding passing between animal and master. He sniffed Julia carefully, making sure she was alright. Then he lifted his leg and peed on her stomach, marking her. Making sure she would be safe until he got back. Julia was HIS bitch and no one else’s.

The dog streaked through the woods, dodging rocks and scooting under low branches. Suddenly he stopped, ears pricked. He heard footsteps. The dog eased forward cautiously, but not cautiously enough. The clumsy human tripped over him, face planting into the ground.

Jesus Fucking H. Bi-peds were the most useless creatures. The dog began to nudge the human, whimpering and licking his face.

“Easy boy, it’s ok, I’m fine I just tripped,” Bryce said as he stood up and brushed the dirt from his butt. The dog barked at him, then turned to head further into the woods, stopping and barking again when he realized he wasn’t being followed. 

Bryce laughed and shook his head. “What is it boy? Did Timmy fall down the well?” He cracked up laughing at his own joke as he jogged after the dog. He followed the dog through the woods, becoming a little more hesitant as the woods became thicker and darker. 

He was just about to turn back when he saw her. And smelled her. Whew! Sprawled out at the base of a huge tree with gnarly, thick roots was the most beautiful creature he had ever laid eyes on. He stood up straight and rushed to her side, kneeling beside her. He asked her name as he assessed her situation. Her voice was meek and soft. 

“I’m Julia.” He flashed her a megawatt smile. “I’m Bryce and I’m going to help you Julia. Do you think you can walk?”

“I... I’m just too weak”, she sighed dramatically, placing the back of her hand across her forehead like a damsel in distress. 

“Well don’t you worry about that ma’am, I’m going to get you all the help you need.” 

Bryce lifted Julia into his strong, muscular arms, careful not to hurt any potential injuries. 

“Wow, you’re so strong”, she gasped as he carried her through the woods with ease. 

“Oh no, not really”, he chuckled as he flexed his muscles. He then decided to show Julia just how strong he really was. He held her in one arm, then decided to pick his dog up with his other arm. 

Julia’s eyes widened in awe. 

“Oh no, this is nothing”, he smiled. 

Before she could respond, they had arrived at the hospital despite having been in the woods just sentences ago. The dog was also somehow safe at home now since he probably wasn’t allowed in the hospital itself. 

All of a sudden, everything became a rush. As soon as Bruce stepped through the hospital’s double doors, it was as if he were a new person. 

“QUICKLY, WE MUST GET THIS POOR WOMAN A BED IMMEDIATELY!” 

“But Bryce, I’m fine, it’s only a twisted ankle. Nothing is even bro-“

“Shhhhhh. It’s alright. You’re delirious but you’ll survive.” 

Within moments, Bryce laid Julia down into a hospital bed tenderly. 

“I’m going to hand you over to the care of an intern now Julia. She’s very capable. You’ll like Jackie.”

At that moment, a beautiful young lady came in with a very cheeky smile.

“So, you’re the woman causing the entire hospital to fall into chaos”, Jackie smirked. 

“I guess... but I don’t really know why. I was in the woods when I-“

“Fell from heaven?” 

“Errrr...”

“I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t flirt with a patient. Especially one in such critical condition.”

“Critical condition? I’m not even bleeding!” 

“Bryce warned me that you were delirious. It’ll be alright Julia. I’m going to wheel your bed onto a ward now, to prep you for surgery.”

“SURGERY?!”

But it was too late. Before Jackie had even heard Julia, she was already on a ward full of patients. 

On the bed next to hers lay a young sweet man, drinking a strange milky red substance. He turned to face her and was immediately taken aback.

“Oh... I hope you don’t mind me saying but... you’re extraordinarily beautiful. I’m Tom, by the way.”

Without warning, a screen popped in front of Julia that read “Say ‘hi’ to Tom for 30 diamonds or tell him you don’t like talking to people for free.”

Julia wanted to say “hi.” Tom seemed a friendly enough guy, but she knew she had to be careful with her diamonds and reluctantly told him she doesn’t like talking to people. 

Instead of a dejected face, which Julia expected, Tom seemed eerily ok with the exchange and a nurse quickly came to wheel his bed out into another room.

Just as Tom was brought out, two more bed were pushed in to either side of Julia. She waited a moment, curious to see if talking to her new companions represented another diamond choice before looking to her left to see a beautiful woman clothed in white silk with blood red eyes and dark skin and hair.

“Excuse me, I don’t know if this is allowed but…”

“Oh, it’s allowed. You may talk to me as much as you please, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up about us doing anything more if I were you. I’m Priya, and I can tell you that even if you spend every single diamond you have, I’ll never be your love interest. Sure, there will be options for us to flirt, but don’t get too excited or else, Adrian or some other forced male will swoop in to stop you from being able to make your own choices. You’d have better luck with your neighbor to the right.”

Julia turned away, discouraged. But even more, once she saw the man next to her. He appeared to sweat grease out of his pores, had a reddish hue to his face, but more of an “I’m constantly angry” red as opposed to an “I get a lot of sun” look. He had a badge on his chest that read “Walsh.” Julia turned back to Priya.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

The vampire shrugged. “I don’t make the rules, I just follow them. Do you really think I’d be attracted to the likes of Gaius Augustine?” Priya gagged. “All I can say is that I’m glad fic writers exist or else I’d never get any proper action.”

Julia watched Priya carefully, a feeling of confusion washing over her.

"What on earth is going on?"

Before anyone could answer, Julia found herself sat in the hospital canteen. On one side of her sat the man from earlier, Tom, sipping away at his strange tomato milkshake. On the other side of her sat a pensive looking man with a hat on. 

Opposite the trio sat two more people- a handsome man holding a large sword (where the hell was security in this place?!) and a stunning young woman with purple hair and glasses.

"So... can I speak without paying diamonds or...?"

Tom chuckled. 

"Sure you can. Well, to some of us at least. By the way, this is my buddy Noah", he said, giving a nod to the quiet man on the other side of her. 

"And this guy here is Jax. He likes to cook and slash things with his sword."

Jax gave an eye roll. 

"You can talk to any of us for free. But next to Jax is Lily. It'll be 17 diamonds upfront if you want to converse with her."

Julia exhaled in frustration. 

"But I only have 21, and you can't do anything with 3 diamonds!"

Tom shrugged.

"I don't make the rules." 

"Okay, fine. I'll pay the diamonds. Where do I pay exactly?"

Without warning, a screen above Julia's head appeared and subtracted the 17 diamonds. 

"Hey girl, I'm Lily", the woman opposite her smiled. 

"Okay cool. So, now that I can talk to all of you, I wanted to ask what the hell is going on?!"

"What do you mean?", Tom asked, sipping away at his thick, red milkshake. He slid a bottle of the goop over to Julia, which she took hold of absentmindedly without drinking. 

"Well, I was just in the woods, then I tripped. And this surgeon Bryce found me. But he got all weird and dramatic, and said I needed surgery. But I'm not even that hurt! What's happening?!"

All of a sudden, the entire canteen froze in place. A white screen popped up above Julia's head. It read: "What could Bryce possibly want with you? Find out in the next chapter of "She Trips In The Woods: Open Wound." 

Julia reached up to the white screen and touched the tick. She was immediately rewarded with 2 diamonds, before another screen popped up. It read: "Watch ad to gain reward". 

"Might as well", Julia thought with a shrug as she ticked the box. 

For the next 45 seconds, Julia sat and watched an extremely boring advert for Homescapes. She drummed her fingers atop the canteen table waiting eagerly for it to end. When it was finally over, she reached up and pressed the "tick". 

"Sorry. Reward could not be collected. Try again later."

With an irritable groan, Julia found herself taken to another screen. This time, her own story popped up before her. 

"The next chapter", she gasped with excitement. She hit to play the next instalment, only for ANOTHER screen to pop up. (Seriously, what the hell is up with all these screens?!)

It read: "To buy a key, pay $1.99 or wait 1hr 58m for your next key."

"Oh my god, what the fu-"

***

Julia sat up and looked around. She was safe and sound in her bed. She glanced at her phone and it was only 3am. She sighed with relief before chuckling to herself. 

"What a weird ass dream", she smiled before rolling over onto her side and drifting off to sleep, clearly not noticing the bottle of tomato milkshake down by the side of her bed...

[luminisvii]

Am I losing my shit about fanfiction again? You BET! It’s time for Tell to lose her goddamn mind about some truly awful fanfic! It’s my blog, I get to do what I want! And that’s to talk about how people are more blessed than they believe since they didn’t read this!

Today I’m going to talk about Super Smash Sisters: Damsel to Hero. Given the title uses a word like Damsel in it and it’s rated M, this is going to be GREAT

content warning for well what do you think a horny man on the internet would write ie: cheating, incest, terrible depictions of women being horny, violence (I don’t explain any of this in detail so you’re welcome. but it is mentioned) I’m not linking this thing because you guys don’t deserve this.

It took me forever to finish the entire fic, and I actually wrote most of this before finishing. You may say “Wait a second Tell, you need to fully read the work in order to discuss it!” No I do NOT. Trust me, this doesn’t need to be finished to understand. I needed moral support for this, I couldn’t have possibly read this by myself. I feel really sorry for my poor friends that have to deal with this horse shit with me because it’s kind of got a bit of je ne sai completely godawful. I’m semi tough and can stomach some senseless nonsense pretty nicely, but the real heroes here are my friends for toughing out the rampant sex and terrible female character writing all mixed with Call of Duty plot and characters. You thought this was about Smash Bros? WRONG! 

I know exactly jack about the author, Yamagata, other than they are probably some poor horny straight guy in high school or maybe a genius troll. We just don’t know. Either way they were pretty dedicated. The fic itself is 91,621 words and 45 chapters, and apparently on hiatus but we all know hiatus is just another word for dead. It’s better off that way. All good awful fics end on a cliffhanger.

The premise, as the title implies, is that all the men of Smash are kidnapped by nazis or some shit after a failed drug raid and it’s up to all the women to save them of which there are Zelda, Peach, and Samus because this was written in the Brawl era. You might think “Wait, isn’t that not a lot of female characters?” right you are! The author decides to bring in tons of female characters from all sorts of video games and anime. A personal favorite is a major character in this fic is Bright Noah from Gundam, notably not a woman. I love him! I’m disappointed he hasn’t slapped anyone yet! What’s the point of importing Bright Noah into a fanfic if he isn’t going to deliver a Bright Slap? Sorry folks, there’s gonna be me getting distracted about Gundam once in a while.

I can’t remember exactly what happens because the chapters really blur together quickly. They’re almost always first half violence in COD land and second half really bad lesbian sex scenes. See, the title is a misnomer. The women don’t actually do a lot of hero work. It’s still handled by men. Ones who aren’t even from Smash Bros. Bright Noah and another guy called Hargrove who I’m not familiar with are constantly telling the women what to do and while the women sometimes go on missions to fight Nazis or whatever, half the time we’re following some random male characters. A good friend had no idea one of them was Tuxedo Mask because they used his dub name and we spent like ten chapters with this idiot before realizing it was him. They just spend their time fighting different various enemies from real life as opposed to smash. So the guys fight and then the women all fuck because when your boyfriend is missing you have to immediately bang the nearest female out of grief. It’s not cheating if it’s gay! Even worse is there’s a lot of incest because apparently that’s how women act, too. Also for some reason when the women DO fight it plays exactly like the men’s side but with Bright Noah just telling them what to do. Also for some reason Peach just fucking kills people and I’m not really sure how to deal with that. Like, yeah, I guess.

Let’s try to do a plot recap but that’s going to be difficult because I’m not sure what the plot is. Okay, in theory, I do. But we’re just circling around and doing the same thing so many times that I’m plain lost. 

In theory, the plot is as mentioned before. The men of Smash get kidnapped and turned to trophies by Nazis. I’m noting that besides Nazis the men are all brutally murdered in order to turn them into trophies. Then it turns out that Samus, Peach, and Zelda are safe because they were at the Smash Mansion cleaning and having sex as princesses and bounty hunters are known to do. Then they find out from Bright that the men have been kidnapped so they have to form a task force against them. So there’s a long ass paragraph of characters, many of which do not have speaking lines until much later anyway, but they’re all female characters from other games or anime. I’m really into Fire Emblem and there’s a bunch of those so time to cry. Bright has to tell these women to stop being so damn emotional and be ready to start murdering. 

Also in the first chapter, we have the reveal of the villain, some Tabuu knock-off named Emerald. She too recruits a ton of villainous characters who all introduce themselves AFTER THEY’VE BEEN RATTLED OFF IN PARAGRAPH FORM. You didn’t get it the first time? They’re all going to painstakingly state their name and identity. Admittedly it’s kind of funny to have Cell in a room with Liquid Snake and Ashnard. Also who invited Valtome? They didn’t even invite Zelgius. Maybe our favorite Begnion General figured out that a certain thirsty ass senator was gonna be there and stayed in bed today. Okay, fewer tangents, I promise. 

With the establishing of all the villains and heroes, everything instantly turns to shit. Half the time we’re not even following a group who’s connected to the main characters and when we are with the main characters they are either having terrible sex or shooting nazis. This sounds like it’d be funnier than it is but it’s really Grade A Depressing. I can’t tell what’s going on or why and since I have exactly no knowledge of Call of Duty I’m afraid I don’t know anything about our actual protagonists either. Every chapter starts with some pretentious usually WWII related quote and involves some guys dying and then some ladies bonking. It’s the same format every time and after a while I feel like this is some advanced torture method. 

Among the bad sex is for some reason moms are banging their elementary school age daughters because their husbands are out. Women are so horny they’d rather fuck their children than wait long enough for their husbands. It’s so messed up. My eyes naturally glaze over on the sex scenes because they’re kind of clinically written and something about cute pussies or whatever. I feel bad for Bright Noah, he has to break up these badly written orgies to talk more about the nonexistent plot. Bright Noah needs a raise. All in all the sex is something that maybe a 13 year old boy might find hot if he hasn’t managed to read all the other way better smut fics out there. If 13 year old boys even do things like that. 

Since there’s no way for me to coherently walk through the plot since each scene hardly seems to amount to anything besides either violence or a roll in the hay, I’ll just have to start briefly talking about the few notable things that happen, probably out of order. Who the fuck even knows what chapters these happened in? I sure don’t! 

First off, a lot of the women conscripted into the task force have supernatural powers but they’re just given guns. I also think the author has something for Krystal or whatever since we focus on her a lot for no good reason. The women are also often infiltrating secret bases to nazis or other bad guys that I’m not as well versed in because admittedly I’m not that interested in the history of warfare, modern or old. I just assume this is a COD thing. But in order to infiltrate the bases, they just wave papers at literally every guy they come across and that does it somehow. I started going ballistic and every time they mentioned papers I would start screeching again. They get stopped by some dude and he’s always like “Where are your papers?” and they ALWAYS have the papers and then they go past but the author FEELS THE NEED TO KEEP BRINGING IT UP. It’s like The Black Fucking Mountains again. Something I’ve learned about myself is that I do poorly with overly repetitive writing, so I wonder why I’m reading world’s most repetitive piece ever penned for fun. I can’t recall anything that happens in any chapters.

Somewhere in the mix they actually save Ike, Marth, and Roy. Somehow the most in character thing in the entire fic happens with them when it’s offhandedly mentioned that they sometimes dogpile into the same bed as a joke. What was more shocking to me is that suddenly Ike is a total nuclear bomb genius out of nowhere. Sure, he’s from a medieval fantasy setting, he knows what nukes are. We finally get some more plot. Apparently Emerald is trying to develop some insanely powerful nuke in order to destroy the trophies of the remaining captured heroes. See, she’s holding them ransom so she can get… money? Power? Fame?

Trying to do this from memory is so hard. I did My Inner Life practically all from memory, only going in there for the copy and pasted quotes! What the heck? This fic just slides off my brain. I don’t know if finishing it is even worth it since it’s not like I’m reading any of the sex scenes in detail (I mean why would I, a woman with decent taste, want to read about usagi feeling up chibi usa) and I sure as hell can’t understand the Call of Duty parts so in conclusion this fic really wasn’t targeted at me. 

But whatever. So now the main crew has to slaughter their way to bomb storage or development or something. Some of the COD guys died and I didn’t notice, some of the villains died (tragically Valtome was K.I.A.) and all in all too much sex was happening. Seriously, Mist has sex on her brother’s bed, that’s kind of nasty. I don’t know why I’m so hung up on all of that. It’s like the piss drinking thing, it’s a minor offense in a long line of “HOLY FUCKING SHIT” but here’s where I get derailed. 

How many times can I say that this fic is terrible? Because it is. I don’t understand who a lot of these characters are and why they’re here or what they’re doing. I managed to read to the end and all that I learned was Shadow the Hedgehog apparently cheated on Rouge with some guy called Makarov who is another major villain. What, so when Rouge cheats on him with another woman it’s fine, but when he cheats on her with a man he gets killed for it? I smell double standard! Don’t worry, I’m a feminist, I support equal rights of everyone getting punished for their perpetual horniness. Still, there’s this shocking turn of events where the men are somehow the ones who aren’t constantly obsessed with sex and the women are going around topless and banging each other constantly while homosexuality in men is seen as evil and wrong. For some reason I think the person who wrote this might be a man. He feels the need to remind us, 40 chapters in, that there will be No Yaoi scenes but plenty of Yuri. No shit dude, like, fuck! I didn’t know! 

Towards the end, Washington DC gets overrun by Colombians and the team has to kill them. There’s some drawn out attack sequence where everything is described in monotonous detail with military terms I don’t understand. I have a general revulsion to military weeaboos as they are sometimes called, so this stuff turns my stomach. It also features Kenichi, the main character of the animated Metropolis adaptation, which I DID see a long time ago! This little boy is killing people! It’s fine! Also it mentions Frau Bow from Gundam and discusses that she’s training to fight in a mobile suit to help support, but Peach and Samus are the ones who actually use the mobile suits. Peach kills people in the RX-78-2. I’m not sure how to feel about that. Another aside is King Boo is in the mix and he dies. How do ghosts die? Asking for a friend. 

There’s also some weird aside of the COD guys doing an arrest in Disneyland. Gaz, Soap, and Price all go there guns akimbo and chase down some dudes and some people die. I don’t think Disney would like that. This also comes out of nowhere, Gaz was playing fucking Go with this dude called Katsuie and it was practically a smash cut transition of “well I arrested a guy in Disneyland once wanna HEAR about it?” and it was. Something. I don’t understand why we did this.

We end with Krystal and Fox discussing that she’s breaking up with him because while he was held hostage, she got engaged to a woman and is unceremoniously dumping him. The scene was honestly kind of funny for the fact that she was having a lesbian three way in his fucking bathroom and then was like “Yeah we’re not dating anymore. I’m engaged. Later idiot!” while naked. Shortly after it’s decided that they need to bomb some German base, I think. So Bright Noah tells the crew to suit up and get ready, and so Krystal and her Lesbians fly off to go fight. Krystal ends up in a one on one with a dude called Scales who I’m unfamiliar with since I don’t know Star Fox lore but I’m sure it’s super important to Krystal. The duel ends so badly that Fox needs to jump in and he and Scales end up plummeting to their death out a window and also getting blown up by grenades. Fox just fucking died for the girlfriend that cheated on him the second he wasn’t home. Honey, you deserve more than this, and Krystal deserves to be treated better by the narrative as well. He gives his blessing as he’s dying, though, so it’s fine. 

The whole thing ends shortly after that. It was never completed, not that I think it could be, since I read all 91k words and I still don’t understand who is who, what’s going on, or why things are happening. Even if I did know all the characters featured I don’t think it’d help. I know about 50% of them and it’s not helpful at all. I completely forgot that Emerald is a thing. She’s the main villain! She’s hardly in it! The guy should have cut the shit and just written 

Tell’s recommendation? Don’t read this unless you’re really, truly a masochist. It’s not funny enough most of the time to justify the insanity. It’s sexist and racist. Chapters monotonously drone on with the same things happening almost every time. The bad sex isn’t even funny. Save yourself the trouble and if you really must know, check out the first few chapters only and then call it. The author has other works that I haven’t read but I’m not sure that I will based on the quality of this work, and they also published something as recently as 2017 meaning they could probably rise from the hiatus grave and kick my ass for trash talking them. 

One Sentence Review: Bright Noah doesn’t slap anyone. 

[pharaohsparklefists]

Episode 105, part 1: we should all get an AWARD for sitting through this duel tbh

At the beginning of the episode, Jounouchi helpfully recaps in two sentences what it took me three whole posts to do, that is, he started to duel ~Judge Man~...

Love the way “bit too” is emphasised. It makes me hear it in like a dorky British comedian way, like Richard Ayoade or something.

Anyway, Jounouchi presses on, cleaving tight to his ultimate strategy:

[voice=advertisement] Dueling and it’s not going your way? Lacking a coherent strategy? Unsure how to win? From an experienced finalist of both the kidnapping extravaganza, Duelist Kingdom, and the massive corporate overreach, Battle City, comes the ultimate strategic Duel Advice(tm): Don’t bother thinking about it!! [/voice]

Jounouchi’s not doing great but he’s sure he can turn it around by using Devil Dice to reduce Judge Man’s monster’s attack points. The dice initially lands on a six, comes to a complete stop, then suspiciously RISES UP OFF THE GROUND, SPINS WILDLY, AND LANDS ON A ONE

Yes, Jounouchi, A ONE.

No one points this out as being OBVIOUSLY WILDLY SUSPICIOUS. Against the nature of dice, and physics, and games, and everything. Easily explained by the fact that Jou’s opponent can change his own appearance, make entire courtrooms appear, etc etc, because THEY’RE IN A VIRTUAL REALITY.

But no. No one comments. Except this fucko. In his head. Like a loser who wants to be an ~~eeevil mastermind~~. 

Once again. Why. Did he change into Judge Man. When he could use. An equally virtual simulacrum of his real body?????????

Anyway! Jounouchi’s not worried. He got quote-unquote unlucky with Devil Dice, but Angel Dice will sort him out! If he can raise the attack of his OWN monster, that’s just as good!

... It’s a one-in-thirty-six chance, Jounouchi. Exactly the same chance as both dice landing on six, which they both did, before Judge Man intervened.

I wonder if -- going with the idea that the Virtual World is sort of pliable, and Judge Man is just exerting his will on the digital reality, as perhaps Yami did when he walked on the water -- Jounouchi did it too, unconsciously, willing the dice to land on six? And Judge Man took it a step further then, moving the dice after they already landed, which Jou “can’t” do because he doesn’t realise it would actually work if he only tried?

Anyway, the cheer squad is appalled -- APPALLED -- by this statistically unlikely but not impossible event:

Judge Man continues the duel, drawing Pot of Greed, to which Jounouchi, with the swiftness and inevitability of a lethal superheated cloud of gas and tephra obliterating everything in its path as it flows at up to 700km/hr down the side of an explosive andesitic volcano #pyroclasticflowjokes, replies:

“Whatever does it DO????”

Faced with TWO WHOLE NEW CARDS FROM JUDGE MAN’S DECK, Jounouchi decides to do the only thing he can do, really really lean in hard on the gambling deck:

This fuckin card is literally just called Gamble. (Or rather, gyanburu.) You gamble on it.

It’s the gamble card.

Look, where the hell are they getting these silver coins with the Eye on one side??? No one comments on them, they’re not a VR thing, they must already have them. It made almost no sense that Yugi had one, it makes even less sense that Jounouchi has one.

Also I want one.

Jounouchi places his faith in one last draw gamble

Is there? Do we think there is? Is this a real thing? I thought it was a metaphor but now he seems genuinely worried that “she” has abandoned him. Like demi-gods are canonically real, in their universe. I wonder if Pegasus trapped her in a fucking card for their fucking card game...

And Judge Man gets all judgey... #quellesurprise

Look, fucko, like, broadly speaking, I agree with you. The gambling gimmick is kind of crap, and is clearly powered by the engine of Plot, and is a super weird choice for Jounouchi specifically (”raised” by an abusive, alcoholic gambler in the manga, leaving him with maladaptive coping mechanisms). But you didn’t LURE HIM INTO IT. He had literally one card left in his hand, OF COURSE he used the Gamble card. He’s running a fucking gambling deck. What was he supposed to do? Summon new cards from the ether? I mean, MAYBE. That’s the kind of shit you might be able to do in VR, but Jou doesn’t know that. Whatever.

Speaking of “maladaptive coping mechanisms”, where are the Kaiba bros?

Taking a break from shouting at the sky, Seto listens to Mokuba shout at the sea.

Really, Mokuba? Why? Why did this identical door make you think that it wouldn’t be like all the other identical doors, which have so far just led to startlingly beautiful landscapes or terrifyingly accurate recreations of your own memories?

After calling Noah a jerk who pisses him off #hardsame, Mokuba goes in for the killing blow

Seto: Ah, so you DO admire him?

Mokuba: ???

Anyway then, I swear to god, Seto just goes RIGHT back to shouting at the sky, and Noah...

... gets some kind of creepy-ass kick out of it, idk.

Let’s check back in on the duel:

Ah, a fine contender for Out Of Context Yu-Gi-Oh! Bullshit

Oh, by the way, were you wondering if Judge Man kept up the ridiculous judge roleplay shit throughout the duel?

HE SURE DID (actually only intermittently, which is funny, because he would switch pronouns: he uses kimi (you, informal) for Jounouchi mostly but switches to anata (you, formal) when he’s Judging)

Jounouchi busts out the last line of defense, the stalward veterans of dicey situations, the tried-and-true self-sacrificing heroes...

ADORABLE FUZZY GOAT-BABIES

Judge Man slices through them in two consecutive turns using his two active monsters and I didn’t bother screencapping it because (a) it was boring and (b) it was even boringer the second time, which was reused animation with the goats re-coloured #smh

Jounouchi’s friends are chinnily worried and Yugi is specifically suspicious...

Yami is also suspicious...

“He didn’t lose, Yugi. He failed.”

The writing on this show is truly scintillating.

Just as Yugi and Yami blotchily agree that something Suspicious is up, an Angel from On High shines the Divine Light of Heaven unto the duel arena with the most glorious of news...

Halle-fuckin-lujah!

[steve0discusses]

S5 Ep6: Joey Wheeler is on Fire, Yet Again

Came down with a little sickness-not the biggie, just a little sly guy. But I took some meds, I’m a little floaty, I’ve only been listening to baroque music all morning for some reason? And I hate baroque music usually? But I’ll leave it to bro to tell me if this is fluid enough.

Just so you know, these caps were kind of a hot mess for a while and some of them read like that Garfield in of hot eat the food comic until...today. So pls don’t judge me, Judge my damn DMV where no one was following Covid regulations because I’m pretty sure that’s where I got this damn cold.

We start off with Roland getting more attention than he ever has in his entire life. Like honestly, I don’t know what Roland’s job really is...but he’s got a very diverse set of very useless skills. One of which, is knowing how to announce sports games that aren’t really a sport, while those games he’s announcing slowly fall into chaos.

Anyway, Roland’s taking so long cherishing his sweet time before everything goes to hell, that he’s boring Joey, who’s kinda turned into a ball of stress in the waiting room.

A lot of this episode is us watching them watching Joey having a break down moment by moment, TBH.

(read more under the cut)

Yugi telling Joey to study his cards and straight up--what?

Like at this point they know what’s on the cards, right? Like there comes a point where even Yugioh cards have a finite amount of words and I’m just going to assume that like...Joey probably knows them all in his own deck, right?

(bro note: they have no limit on what they will put on a card)

Then again, maybe Yugi doesn’t know what “study” means?

Also, appreciate how some artist crosshatched the hell on Joey’s nose there and I zoomed out and ruined it.

Now for some reason every duelist is hanging out in the duel lodge, including our current arch-villain guy who’s brought a book. I want to know what book this guy even reads so no one could suspect he’s actually a hacker who uses computers. He’s reading romance, right? And I don’t think he’d even be into Twilight, I think he’s straight up into hard core Mom romance like a lame ass Nicholas Sparks over there reading “Dear John” for the millionth time because he is completely un-phased by anything else happening in this room.

Joey, our hero, just out there being an asshole for no reason.

After Tea is pushed into a locker or something screaming about her need for female friends (which she screamed in earshot of Rebecca again, who I figured was on friends terms with her after last episode...but I guess not) Leon hops up to remind us that we should be caring about the fact that his character exists.

And like, I love Leon’s hair color--that’s a good choice, and legit that is the color I tried to dye my hair at the beginning of the epidemic (it didn’t work PS, my hair cannot take dye for the life of it) but also like...he just kinda feels like a weak Rebecca as far as characters go. He’s young, he’s good at cards...I think he goes to a private school? That’s all I can think of about Leon.

He mostly just reminds us that the big prize of this tourney is to duel Yugi, who anyone could have dueled at any point even without the tournament.

On the way out of the...duel room? lounge? Area? Joey decides to like...make peace with Zigfried, and I gotta tell you, I kinda have to side with Zigfried, because Joey spent the last ten minutes being a freak in the dressing room/lounge/bathroom and at one point looked like he was going to hold the entire locker room in a stranglehold.

I would also want some space from Joey Wheeler, is what I’m saying.

After insulting Joey’s style (which honestly, Joey...has a style? He pops his collar, that’s his entire style.) Zigfried assures us that Joey’s gonna lose and like...

...probably, right? Just looking at the plausible direction this season will go.

Anyway, Joey is such a mess (which is the theme of the episode, that Joey needs to learn to chill in order to win at card games) that Rebecca is like “I understand if all of you leave me to go help our poor baby Joey.” And no one felt bad for her.

Mokuba comes over to tell everyone all of the Kaiba family secrets because Mokuba has no filter.

Seto has devoted himself to staring at a computer screen for the rest of this episode. I guess he’ll put their names into Google, realize that social media hasn’t been invented yet, and then just lie his head down on the desk and take a power nap until the tournament is over. Much like I did after taking Dayquil this afternoon.

I like how Seto dressed for success and then locked himself in the server room for most of this arc so far. Maybe he’s just...really tired, I dunno. I don’t really blame the guy, he’s had a hard time.

And then Yugi was like “DAMN IT MOKUBA, JUST ONCE CAN YOU NOT INVITE THE ILLUMINATI???”

And we had a weird scene where Yugi just started talking to the ghost and it was while he was talking to everyone else, and the show didn’t treat it like that’s a weird thing to do...but it was a weird thing to do.

This show does that sometimes, where I guess they imply that Yugi’s Pharaoh conversations are split second conversations but...they’re not, right?

Also this chick ain’t gone yet, and Mokuba is just failing at his entire job for not zeroing in on vibes coming off this chick like stinky cheeseman.

So listen.

Did the Kaibas make like 3 types of Blue Eyes Caboose to one up Noah? Because Noah made one choo choo dragon, and then Mokuba and Seto were like “how dare” and then made sure that everyone ride every single version of the blue eyes caboose just to see how proud of them they were.

How many months of troubleshooting was the train? Like how long in development did Seto and Mokuba spend on these? A lot right? Like most of the time?

I did not check the subs to see if Roland said Jumping or Champion but I like to believe that Roland thought it was a cool new name he gave him.

Then these guys all showed up.

Hey so...can we talk seating arrangements?

Tea decided not to sit next to Yugi after complaining about not spending time with him for like how many episodes? Or was it too awkward to sit on top of what was probably Pharaoh?

Or did Mokuba go like “please, Tea, I cannot sit next to the others because I’m pretty sure one is a mole that is about to go cray” and was Tea like “Good, I need female friends, these ones are driving me crazy!” and then was Mokuba like peering desperately over the edge of his self made dragon train prison realizing he has to listen to Tea complain about boys for the rest of his ride across molten lava?

Headcanons abound about this weird seating arrangement that the animators drew for the reasons they did...but reasons I cannot fully understand. That and the Dayquil is making me overfixate on random stuff.

And also, Tea is kind of the Kaiba’s security’s understudy. Just there to always protect Mokuba with her ass because she’s the strongest woman alive.

PS I missed the tumblr wars because at the time I was trying to like...run a proper business on blogger. When Blogger died and I jumped over here it was like a weird ruin where everyone was like “tumblr is the most toxic place alive” and...I’ve had a really nice time here, actually. Completely missed that civil war period and I have no regrets.

Now I was there for the Petz wars (warz, I guess) where people were very militant about Petz abuse (abuze?) where apparently people were using the spray bottle on their catz too much and people were very, very upset about it to the point that they were like campaigning about it on their angelfire websites with the most bizarre grassroots campaigns that I still recall, to this day because they were like...well they looked like this:

PLAPA. Not only am I 100% positive that only this one guy ever called this movement PLAPA, but I’m 100% positive that not only are Catz not real people, but also this wasn’t actually happening and we never had any proof that it was. Either way, if people knew or suspected that you hadn’t deleted the spray bottle from your game (which at the time I had no idea how to do because I was a wee child) they would basically assume you were on a one way road to being a mass murderer in real life.

In real life we were 7 years old so like...thanks?

But that’s the closest I got to toxicity and at the time I was too young to make an email account and actually converse with these people. I was just there to download their Petz hexes, and I already made a post about how wonderful and incredible Petz Hexing was.

And y’all, I heard, just now after a little deep dive into the Petz Abuse debacle (which yes, is on the wiki), that apparently, like gardening, Petz Hexing came back in a big way during the epidemic--and I have found an active Petz forum in this the year 2021. The only problem is that I no longer remember how to use old timey forums...and I think I’m locked out of seeing most of these threads (and like this forum is so old I think I have to send them a letter in the physical mail to apply). But, I’m pretty sure they’re hosting a picture contest for who’s dogz poses the best. And I’m pretty sure someone created a hexxed Pickle Rick. Or it’s a photoshop that was made to look like a hexxed Pickle Rick.

Dammit why did it have to be Pickle Rick? That’s not worth re-installing Petz and getting it to run on Windows 10...

Guys is this the Dayquil? Is this really happening? I feel like I’m losing my mind for so many reasons...

Anyway, speaking about useless hexing it’s about time that our villain did something that was actually dangerous, so Zigfried decided to install a new virus that does more than turn off the lights. (it still turns off lights)

the Spreadsheet Virus!

Confounded by the spreadsheet software, it...um...it does this:

Straight up how does Excel make a volcano erupt? Is that why I have to pay for Microsoft office now?

All this because Joey made fun of Zigfried’s naturally pink hair? Which is the most normal hair on this series outside of like...Tristan?

Hey guys...Joey’s fine, right? Like how many times has Joey been on fire? And once in an iron cage next to like...a Fire Golem?

Joey’s fine.

MAN I miss Fire Golem. He had a good mug.

And then we just kinda watch chaos go across the park, chaos that includes: Too many ghosts in the haunted mansion (which honestly--you’ll get your money’s worth, sounds great!), the Ferris wheel goes kinda fast and thus might accidentally be fun, the lights turn off at some concert stage that only had 2 people on it (so it might just be motion detector lights and not even a virus), and um...literal fire and magma are going to set Joey Wheeler on fire.

Just...one of these events does not seem like the others. In fact most of these things sound like good improvements to the park and they should just hire Zigfried at this point.

Roland puts down his microphone and jogs across the stage, about a mile through the audience bleachers, and into the staff lounge, to go and bother Seto Kaiba, who is in a room that has a hi-def classical painting copy-pasted on the wall and I can’t look away from it.

I almost did a Google search on this painting but then thought better about it. There’s like...a billion classical paintings that look exactly like this, and they wouldn’t use like a Monet, they would have to do something that’s harder to catch to avoid copyright issues (because yes, even old ass paintings have copyright issues, but no one tell NFT’s which are going to be so freakin screwed and was such a bad idea, that I can’t even start).

Anyway, I have no idea who it is and it is legitimately driving me up a wall, but I’m on too much meds to do the effort of putting it in a reverse google image search.

Plus, a reverse google image search would only pull up Seto Kaiba.

So Kaiba takes us on a little flashback to his weird ass past, a weird ass past that just...doesn’t follow any of the established timelines, but I assume was shortly after adoption but before Seto got into a phase where he wore his school outfit everywhere and tried to shove his MMO off onto his Dad as a business model.

Seto is like 8 for some reason. I don’t know why, they kinda drew him younger this season anyway, like maybe they got a lot of fan mail and realized “Hey I think we made the 16 yo boy too sexy?” And they just toned Seto the hell down. That, and it’s a different animation team, and maybe they looked at Seto’s character design and were like “we don’t get paid enough to draw this well.” So...since Seto actually looks like a teen again, I guess his 12 year old self has to look like he’s in Elementary school.

Also, I only recognized this, because at some point in S3 as I was roasting Noah Kaiba’s weird fashion:

I remember distinctly roasting that little bow tie. I don’t remember when I wrote it, I think there was a version of this outfit that was in color...but I don’t remember where.

Anyway, it’s not the same jacket...but man that’s kind of awkward, ya? Like the maid who dressed Mokuba deffo got fired?

He um.

Turned the lights off a little bit.

Guys this villain is like...

...why does he think lights are scary? Like look at little Seto here. The boy is already bored. Seto duels on the edges of cliffs...he doesn’t care about the freakin dark.

We had a guy who killed everyone on the planet last season, and this season we have a little fashion gremlin standing in the corner and flicking the light switch going  “wooooo you never catch me!” and it’s like...

...I’m starting to think this guy isn’t a witch.

Like we’re at Episode 6, there’s still time for this guy to be a witch...but I really am starting to think this guy is just...straight up not a witch. It’s everything Seto wanted, a rival who isn’t a freakin magic person...and sets Joey only fake on fire instead literally on fire like last time...

and Seto is just completely unhinged by it.

Anyway, I’m off to go drink a bowl of soup and pass out. If you’re new here, this is a link to read these in chrono order.

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

[renegadesrpg]

Blood Moon Rises: Coming to terms. Solo- Cole.

SL with @HerLipsDon’tLie

*Angrily, I sat back on my haunches and howled at the moon. My wolf was in total agreement with my emotions and was arguing heatedly in my brain.

‘You cannot risk our mate! She is ours to protect!’

“She’s also the key to this. Dad’s right. I didn’t want him to be, but he is.”

The planning session had gone smoothly initially. We’d ID’ed our insertion point and our scouts had gotten the Plains packs security routines down. Our tech people had hacked into their system and could shut down their security, power… pretty much everything in the entire compound on my command. The Plains pack was neither as rich, nor as tech savvy as we were. Their security was minimal, and while their compound was fenced, there were no barriers other than that on all four sides. And the fence wasn’t even electrified. They had guard towers located on the corners of the fence and a central communications station. Even with the guard towers, that much exposed fence required guards to walk the perimeter all the way around, and after the raid on our compound, their security team was running short. They couldn’t man all their towers or put more than one team on the ground. Their Beta had tried to compensate by having one team walk the perimeter and placing security cameras at regular intervals, but it took the team 47 minutes to complete one rotation in human form and my e-people could hijack their cameras, recording a tape for each and putting it on a loop to give us time to cut through the fences. From there we’d take down the towers and the main guard station at the gate. After that, we’d shut down power and take the Alpha and his family.

While my boys – I guess I should say team, because my top e-man at the moment was a female that had come in from Blood Moon Communications in Charleston after the raid with the rest of the normally off-site pack members – while my tech team had been in the system they’d also hacked the packs’ emails and financials. There was indisputable evidence that the Alpha had planned the raid on our compound with the clear intent of abducting Scarlett and killing as many of Blood Moon as they could in the process as well as emails implicating two other packs. The old bastard hadn’t intended to keep my mate. He had been in the process of selling Scarlett to the highest bidder. I’d felt that alone should be enough evidence to present to the other Alphas and justify what I intended to do next, but dad had other ideas.

My dad had been the Blood Moon Alpha a long time before stepping down. The wisdom and experience older pack members, former alphas in particular, bring to the table was one of the reasons I wanted to stop the practice of killing off our older members in all the packs, but Goddess dammit, I’d remembered how afraid Scarlett had been when we’d talked about this raid. How the memories had shaken her, and I’d argued against his proposal. My father was no longer Alpha, and I knew he’d accept my final decision but he’d made too much sense. In the end, I had to come to terms with my need to protect her and agree with him. If I wanted to establish that executing the Plains Alpha and his son was just, as well as root out any of his fighters who would work against me and by extension lay the foundations for some major changes in Wolfen culture, Scarlett was the only way.

We’d worked until late into the night. When we’d finally finished it’d been after 2 a.m. and I’d been so pissed off that I’d texted Scarlett to get some sleep, that I needed a run to clear my head and I’d be home by dawn.

I’d run to the top of the mountain. Deciduous trees had turned to pine and then to rock as I’d reached the peak. The snows were gone now, but a cold wind still ruffled through my thick black fur, as though it’s trying to cool my temper as well as my body. Out over the horizon pink starts to light the sky and I remember my promise to be home by dawn. Even though I’m not as calm as I’d like to be yet, I start back, knowing if I don’t make it by the time the sun’s up I’ll be worrying my mate needlessly. Stretching my long wolf body out, I take the mountain slope at a gallop, heedless of slick rock and slippery pine needles. The compound is hidden in a valley halfway down and it doesn’t take me long to reach it. The sun is just starting to peek above the horizon as I run through the gates and shift back to human form in front of the security offices. Unabashedly naked, I walk through the doors to Ethan’s office to retrieve my clothes and phone only to find him looking at it and mouthing “oh, shit…” and then he sees me. Smirking, he shoves the phone at me.*

“I didn’t really look when I realized what it was, but man, even without her gift, it’s no wonder the other Alpha’s want Scarlett for their Luna.”

*Growling, I snatch the phone from his hand and look. My loving Luna has sent me a photo that immediately has my body responding rock hard even as my claws come out in an automatic reflexive need to destroy the male who’d seen my female nearly naked. With an effort I shift them back and snarl,*

You’re lucky I need you on this op or else your mate would be looking for a new male about now.

*Totally unperturbed, he responds to me,* “Alpha, you know my life is yours to take. But it would be wiser to let me give it up on the mission.”

*Grumbling, I grunt as I slide my jeans over a straining erection,*

You won’t be giving it up there either. I need you to help me rebuild that pack when I’m done breaking it down. I can’t be both here and there so it’s got to be either you or Dad and I won’t risk one of the old Alpha’s loyalists sneaking by security and assassinating him. You, on the other hand, I can live without.

*Yeah, it sounds harsh if you don’t understand we’ve been best friends since we were pups and Ethan’s always had my back. He just snorts,*

“I still don’t like you being without a Beta indefinitely. With Scarlett the loyalists aren’t likely to survive. “ Knowing I won’t change my mind, he shrugs and adds, “You better get to your mate. I don’t think our Luna likes waking up alone in that big bed of yours.”

*I narrow my eyes at him and act as though I’m going to cuff the back of his head but instead pull his forehead to mine, our heads bowed*

You are my Beta, but more, my most trusted friend. We fight together and if this battle goes wrong, we die together. But look at my mate again and I’ll tell Teresa and let HER take care of you.

*He blanches noticeably as I release him. His female has a reputation for not taking roving eyes lightly. Nodding, he mutters,* “That’s just playing dirty, bro.”

*Barking a laugh, I sling my shirt over my shoulder and head home. A light burns dimly from our upstairs bedroom window and my breath catches as I see her silhouetted against the shade. Why this female is my fated mate, I will never know, but I will never stop giving thanks to the Goddess for making that so.

Quietly, I open the front door and ease myself in. As with most nights since the raid there are a number of pack members and pups who’ve chosen to sleep in the Great Hall, feeling more secure here than in their own homes. Once the Plains Alpha has been put down it should put their fears to rest but until then any and all are welcome here. My home also functions as the pack house, the pack mess just adjacent to it. We meet here monthly when the weather prevents us from doing so outside and anytime in between that it’s needed. I’m lucky to have a mate that isn’t irritated by that.

*A pup opens sleepy eyes and pops up her head.* “Alpha….”

Shhhh, *I move to her, deftly making my way around her sleeping mother, and pat her head as she snuggles back into her bedding. I whisper as I tuck her back in* Go back to sleep. Don’t wake your mom and I’ll make sure Magda has waffles for breakfast in the mess.

*She gives me a sleepy smile and nods as she closes her eyes and rolls to her side. With a last look to be sure she stays down, I turn and make my way up the curved stairs to the second floor. Mom and dad moved out to the A-Frame when it became obvious they were going to need to stay for a while, but Noah’s room is next to ours. Pausing, I ease the door open and peek inside. He’s snoring softly, wrapped around a stuffed wolf Scarlett had given him. Shutting the door, I cross the hall to our door and open it. My beautiful mate, fresh from a shower and wrapped in a towel, is sitting on the edge of the bed engrossed by something on her tablet.*

Baby, I’m home. We need to talk.

#TBC.

#ComingToTerms #BloodMoonRises #Renegades #RRPG #AU #BDB #Reapers #Angels #Vampires #Wolfen #Ghosts

[rockonlavender]

Random late night svu19 thoughts 💭

Alright, here is some nonsense bullshit I am writing about this season regarding Olivia drama/ Rolivia because apparently I have nothing better to do with my time. Obviously, as we all know that Olivia is being investigated for child abuse. Brian stopped by for “coffee”, which lowkey I think ‘coffee’ use to be their code word for sex back when they were fucking around. Just sayin’. So Brian was trying to get some pussy before breaking the news to her but Olivia was like ‘ eh bro, right now is not a good time. My kid is up and I promised his little ass some ice cream after dinner..’ Also, does Olivia let this little boy eat whatever he wants because both strawberry ice cream and syrup were gone? Idk! Anywho. So Brian basically is like ‘ well retirement isn't for me’ and Olivia is like ‘ ya bro I feel ya in that.’ Brian then tells her he is working for the DA as an investigator and six weeks into the job he caught a child abuse case, that svu had to recuse themselves from. And Olivia is all like ‘ uh that's weird!’ And Brian is like ‘ uh ya not really cause we're investigating your bitch ass.’ Dun dun! Next episode according to the promo, Olivia gets interview by this lady who I am guessing is another investigator and asks Olivia if she beats her little boy. Olivia all shock and shit, and then we get that infamous scene where she is leaning closer to the chick is like “I TOOK MY EYES OFF HIM THAT'S WHAT I DID WRONG!!” Clearly they ask her more than one question regarding the situation cause Olivia is in tears. This lady making Olivia feel like she's a shit of a mother. We also we scene where Amanda is in Olivia's office and says “ the DA is investigating you”, the tone was like she was telling her and Olivia looked all shock. But Brian had already told her, so why would she be surprised? MAYBE they interviewed Amanda as well. They realized and noticed that her and Olivia have been spending more time together outside of work with there kids, and Amanda would be the next best person to question regarding Olivia's parenting skills and what not. Also I think they could have mentioned to Amanda the possibility of removing Noah from Olivia during the investigation for his safety. Amanda tells Olivia which gives her the surprise look we saw in the promo.

The DA has Olivia file on hand and know all the shit that Olivia had been through during her time in the 16th. She dealt with a lot of bullshit from her brother to Lewis to the townhouse hostage to Mike's death, just to name a few. Olivia never really got full closure ( I mean who does really) but everything that she had went through and her choices can set off a red flag as a consider. Anyone who doesn't really know Olivia and just goes off by what her files says, they will think that she will snap at any moment. So to them she is danger to Noah, especially now with the school filing a complaint. With that being said, I can see them wanting to remove Noah from Olivia's care until the investigation is over. And since Olivia does not have any family members that Noah could go to, he will be put into a foster home. This is where Amanda will step in- she will either go to Brian or to the judge and offer her home to Noah. She will say that Noah already knows who she is and is close to her daughter Jesse, and is comfortable at her house and with them, that it's only right for Noah to be with people he knows rather than stranger’s home- Amanda is not family to Olivia but they are all she has. If anything I can see her telling Brian this, and since Brian still cares for Olivia, he will agree to give the recommendation to whoever is making the decision. This will be a huge step on deepening their friendship. Taking in your friends kid into your home while in the time of crisis is a huge step and test in their friendship and trust. This will be step into the direction that will elevate their friendship.

Now, Brooke Shields- in an interview she had done, she was asked about her character in show and one of the thing that stuck out was “ my character is a character that Olivia needs to coexist with.” My only guess that she will either play Noah’s grandmother or Aunt from ( either mother or father side but something tells me daughter side) and she going to want custody of Noah, which will add gas into the already largely alighted fire. If this the route they are taking, how are they even going bring it up? The entire time Noah was an infant, they had the chance to claim him as their own. So why now, how did they find it about Noah? Where the hell did they come from? Also, if Noah does go under Amanda's care, will that mean Noah will be remove from Amanda and be placed with his estranged grandmother or aunt? Considering that since she will be Noah's blood relative, I would assume they favor her over Amanda. Who knows, I may be totally wrong about this and my mind is running wild. Olivia has a lot of proving to do this season when it comes to motherhood. Before she was able to slide right through because Noah was infant and toddler who could barely speak, and now little Noah has a mouth on him ( smart one) and is able to speak for himself, which clearly can cause problems. She needs to learn to put motherhood first and work second. Olivia needs to balance out home and work life. Noah comes first, not second, not third but FIRST. And your work is second-always when you have a child. Also, I want to add that it didn't help Olivia when she hung up on school principal when she saw Fin bring in Bryon Marks..just sayin’