#I'm in love with Verona i swear

[ladylokianna]

Verona & Villafranca di Verona, July 2024

[ledgerserious8]

Shoulder To Cry On | Patrick Verona & Reader

Warning : Don't copy my writing Don't steal my writing. All rights are reserved for my writing

Genre : High School Christmas Eva Love Confession

Summary : After you get your bag from stealing you find something into it..

Word count : 1.4k

You was looking at the light of the moon it's was one of Christmas nights and you was breathing slowly trying to get a free moment

The air from the sky coming towards your window and made your shiny hair started moving slowly the light of the moon on your face making your expression more clear

And you smiled to yourself..

Because you can handle yourself this morning and get your black bag after someone unknown in the high school steal it

You was happy that you was strong because that's how your parents teaching you to be

However you was smart person and you was the only one who ignoring Patrick Verona the bad boy of your high school

A lot of girls was having crush on him especially your bestfriend Katarina "Kat" Stratford the girl with blonde hair

She had always talking to you about Patrick and sometimes explaining her love feelings for him to you

But you was a lot different from her you was having dreams and future you didn't care about getting love and be loved

...because you never fall in love before

Sweetie don't forget to eat dinner - your mother explained she in the living room but you still can hear her

Yes mom don't worry - you replied calmly as turned your head to your room noticed your objects

And your black bag on the table

You get curious feelings into your heart because you didn't open your bag from the morning after you get it back

Your foots walked and you sit down on the chair your fingers grabbed the zip of the bag and somehow you felt nervous from opening it

Come on y/n there's nothing wrong - you thought into your mind trying to calm yourself down

Your fingerstips pulled the zip down to be off and you opened your black bag you signed in relief after seeing there's nothing wrong

But suddenly..your eyes catch a letter was hiding into the bag

It's was a love letter..

You grabbed the letter and looked at it trying to study it but there's no signature and that's made it hard to you to know who

Let's see - you whispered to yourself as opened the letter by your fingers

'My dearest Y/n..

"My beautiful darling. I don't know where to begin..

"I just want you to know that I love you, and I don't know where I would be right now, if it wasn't for you.

"I am nothing without you. And i Swear to"

"I want you to know that I think about you every day. While everyone think about me

'Baby it's you into my heart my mind and my soul"

"I can be the shoulder you will cry on just by simple word from your sweet mouth..."

'That mouth that I'm dreaming of kissing it every night"

"I know that I'm probably not good enough for you... But I hope that you can find a way to love me back.

Your.....

Your eyes was shining as your heart was beating faster than before you could feel there's butterflys into your stomach it's was weird feeling but..

It's was so beautiful and good..too good to be true

You felt high on your cheeks because you was red like tomato but when you heard the steps of your mother coming to your room

You hided the letter into your bag again..

Come on sweetie we're waiting for you - your mother explained calmly after opened the door and looked at you

Yes mom i was just busy cleaning my bag - you lied and smiled because you noticed she believed you

Darling you need to eat and rest come on join us let's enjoy our Christmas nights - your mother explained tenderly as grabbed your arm gently

I know mom i know - you replied calmly as smiling while your eyes was shining

You smiled as standing up and walking with your mother leaving your room for dinner and making it empty for some time

But you will never know the handwriting was from Patrick Verona the bad boy of your high school

But as he wrote into the letter while everyone was thinking him..you was the only person into his mind

He want to be your boyfriend your man the one you put your eyes on and the happiness of your heart

A simple from your mouth will make him..

Shoulder To Cry On

[theragethatisdesire]

quick bright things - eren jaeger x afab!reader, 18+!!

okay hi. after my many-months writing hiatus, i am offering up this humble creation. welcome to the world of quick bright things, caught somewhere between a fairytale and a shakespeare play and a priceless piece of jewelry. this was inspired by....a lot of things, from midsummer night's dream to saltburn to the secret history to romeo & juliet like, you name it and i've probably crammed it in here. eren is a lot different than i normally write him (or read him, for that matter), i hope you all find him as lovely as i do! this will be 2 parts (for now...), i'm not sure what else to say except i'm happy to be back and i hope you all love part 1 ₊˚⊹♡

pairing: eren jaeger x reader

wc: 10.4k

DISCLAIMER: this post contains MATURE CONTENT that is intended only for those over 18. if you are a minor, please do not read below the cut.

cws: alcohol, swearing, smut, fingering, reader has female anatomy, wet dreams, allusions to cannibalism (idk that's a stretch it's more of a metaphor), exhibitionism, cum-eating, creepy stepsiblings, rich assholes, throat-closing amounts of sexual tension, i honestly don't even know what to put here

without further ado...

-

"Last year I abstained / this year I devour / without guilt / which is also an art."

“Now don’t forget: university is for discovery, for adventure.” Your mother tucks the front of your shirt into your skirt, tugs at your collar until it’s sitting prettily against the cliff of your collarbones. It’s not a good fabric, this shirt; it’s cheap and scratches uncomfortably at the summer sunburn still lingering on your chest. “It’s for finding your passions, your life path, yourself…”

“Darling, you’ve been philosophizing since breakfast. You’re going to give the poor girl a conniption.” Your father chuckles lightly, swinging the hammer at the wall of your dormitory and finishing the hanging of one of your many posters over your creaky, lofted bed. The posters are bright and colorful, almost garish in the pristine, ancient light pouring in from the windows. With a slow blink, you realize you’re going to take them down later, that they feel incongruous with the dust particles and the oak furniture.

“It’s alright, really.” You manage a smile of compromise, lips clamped tight to hold the flutter of nerves in your throat at bay. “I think I’ve got it from here.”

There’s an expectedly teary goodbye, a small monologue from your father about how much you’ve grown, and a few reminders from your mother to separate the darks and the lights when you do laundry, to focus on your studies. Just before she slips out behind her husband, she grabs you by the shoulders and presses her lips to the side of your head, kisses a blood-red print into the shell of your ear.

“Don’t forget. Find something.”

᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃

Whether it started with that conversation or with the buildup that accompanied the thirty-six months of monotonous paper-writing and numb boredom of your first three years at Oxford, you can’t be sure. In truth, maybe your first three years weren’t all that boring, and they only seem so by comparison of everything that came after, but you can’t be entirely sure of that either.

What you can be sure of is that something down the line—between meeting Sasha in that class on Milton and squeezing her hand as the plane landed and the dozens of bottles of champagne you’ve consumed over the last weeks—something led you to this moment, standing in this kitchen somewhere outside Verona with your bare feet against the hot clay tiles, staring at the sharp angle of an unfamiliar, tanned collarbone. 

He’s coated in linen: a half-unbuttoned, burnt-orange drape of a shirt is rolled carefully up around strong forearms, and one large, boyish foot peeks out from his baggy jeans, propped up on its throne upon the opposite knee. A golden cross winks at you from his chest, nestled in the sparsest dusting of chest hair and dripping with the same peach juice that’s sliding down his Adam’s apple, from his strong chin, from the crooked smirk that’s pointed at you like a knife.

You recognize him before he speaks– this must be Eren. Sasha’s mentioned him enough times: the shock of rich, dark hair, the lakewater eyes, the way he leans back in his chair like a king and cocks his head like a trickster. This is Eren, and you tell him so.

“Guilty.” The sun compliments everything about him but his smile, a little too sharp with too much danger behind it. It’s a smile made for moonlight. “And you are?”

A memory surfaces in your mind, a cautionary childhood tale. “You can never let a fairy know your name,” Emma tells you, graver than death, crouched in the bushes beside you, “or they steal you away, and you can never be human again.”

“Well?” Eren says expectantly, head leaning even further to the left. He’s studying you, the baggy linen pants pooling around your toes and ruby-studded ears poking out of a fray of frazzled bedhead. You feel naked, feel a wild urge come over you and wonder how his eyes would glow at you if you were. You shiver, goosebumps raising in the stuffy summer air. When his lips twitch, you realize Eren’s noticed; you feel feverish.

You mumble your name at him, as if it’s something given unwillingly. Waking the espresso machine seems like the right thing to do with your hands, and you’re grateful for the noisy mechanical sounds it provides to shatter the still morning. You bring an absentminded hand to rub over the tip of your ear, feel if it’s grown to a point yet.

“We haven’t met, have we? I feel like if we had, I’d remember.”

God, you wish he’d stop talking.

“Well, do you go to Oxford?”

“Sometimes.” You roll your eyes, and he laughs, little bells and glass shattering. “I’ve been abroad for the last semester. I flew in from Egypt a couple of weeks ago.”

“Hm,” you hum to yourself, choosing a small red cup for your morning coffee. You aren’t sure what to say; the most exotic place you’ve ever visited was a seaside town three hours from your house.

You can hear his newspaper crinkling; the sound of him putting it down betrays his arrival behind you, but you still don’t expect the puff of warm breath over your shoulder. He comes into your space like he belongs there, like there’s never been a door that wasn’t held open for him to stride through. “Are you still asleep?”

Before you can answer, you hear a shriek from down the hallway, and you breathe a little sigh of relief, thanking whatever ancient gods that belong to the hills you’re in for the interruption. Venus springs to mind, and you swat her and her entourage of Graces away from you with a huff.

“You absolute asshole!” Historia comes barreling into the kitchen, dramatic, fluffy dressing robe spilling out into the unrelenting summer heat behind her. You realize that in the three weeks you’ve spent with her, you haven’t once seen her in the actual kitchen, watching the way the breakfast chef’s eyes widen at the sight of her as he hurries by with an armful of eggs.

“Stori!” Eren elegantly catches her best attempt at a tackle with the good grace you assume he does everything with, breaking out into a warm peal of laughter. “Since when do you not love a surprise?”

“Since always.” Historia’s face is scrunched up where she’s buried it into the crook of his neck, forehead red with the effort of squeezing Eren as hard as she can. “You could have at least called, I mean– ugh, I didn’t even get the chance to get your favorite–”

“Relax.” Eren urges her, rubbing soothing circles into the small of her back. He carries them both over to his seat, plopping down and curling her up in his lap like a child. Eren holds his cup of coffee to her lips temptingly, and Historia shoves it away with another scowl. You hide your giggle at her antics behind your espresso, not wanting to remind them of your presence, but enjoying the show all the same. “Brat.”

“Ow,” Historia hisses when he pinches her thigh, expression lightening when she catches sight of something on the wall. “I always forget how pretty the kitchen is here.”

“Where’s your brother?”

“Still getting dressed.” Historia’s blue eyes turn to the frescoed ceiling with an irritated huff. “You know he can’t stand to be seen in his pajamas.”

“That’s because he doesn’t wear any,” Eren remarks with an eye roll of his own. “You could have called to let me know we’d adopted such a pretty houseguest for the summer.”

Your face burns with acknowledgement, and you can feel your toes curling into the clay bricks of the floor hard enough to scrape the tip of your pinky. Eren seems satisfied at your bewilderment, letting his eyes drag over your hardly-covered chest lazy as a wandering mouth.

“Why would anyone wear pajamas under those heavy duvets? It’s almost thirty-two degrees out.” Armin breezes in in a feigned display of nonchalance, but you can see the way his eyes skim over Eren like a ship narrowly avoiding an iceberg. The Titanic was inevitable, and so is the gravity of Eren sitting golden on the other side of the room.

“You look good, Min.” Eren squints his eyes at Armin’s shirt, nearly identical to his own. “Where’d you get that?”

“You left it last summer,” Historia hums, tucking her head under Eren’s chin and nuzzling into his chest more completely. Armin makes a soft snort of irritation, grabbing for a fig in the bowl of fruit on the counter and beginning to rummage through the cabinet drawers.

“Do you want half a fig?” Armin’s cool gaze slides to you, and you shake your head, feeling a little underwater as two lifelong relationships unfurl in front of you, your mind still fuzzy from last night’s wine. “Historia?”

Historia says no as Eren says yes, and Armin makes his sound of annoyance again before continuing his rummaging, muttering about the inconvenience of finding a knife.

“Do my eyes deceive me?” Sasha, still disheveled with sleep and grinning bright as Christmas morning, pops her head around the doorway. “Shouldn’t you be overseeing the construction of your pyramid?”

“I’m not dead, Sasha,” Eren laughs—it really is distracting when he does that—pulling Sasha onto his other knee, ignoring Historia’s grumbles of discontent. The NYU Men’s Lacrosse t-shirt that Sasha cropped too short rides up, exposing the swell of her breast, but no one acknowledges it. Eren’s hand tucks in snugly around the curve of her hip, easy and natural, and you wonder if his fingers have ever itched to travel up under the hem of her tiny sleep shorts.

“Not dead yet.” Historia glares up at him venomously, reluctantly making room for Sasha to pile onto Eren and smother his face with kisses. Sasha pulls away from him suddenly and frowns.

“Peaches?”

“Where are the knives in this fucking kitchen?” Armin’s growl of frustration is loud enough to make you jump, and Sasha giggles at you.

“Jesus, Armin, you’re going to kill her, and it’s not even noon.” Sasha slips off of Eren’s knee, practically bouncing over to where Armin’s viciously jiggling a locked drawer. She slides open the drawer next to him and draws a long, wide knife from it, passing it to him with the blade extended and her eyes on you. “Did you meet Eren?”

“Careful of his hand!” Historia squeals, shooting an arm out towards Armin as if she can deflect the tip of the blade from across the room.

“It’s fine, Stor.” Armin’s voice floats across his nearly-bare shoulder, mild and careless as it grazes the collar of the too-big button down sliding off of his slim frame.

“That knife’s a little big for a fig, Sasha.” Eren stands, placing Historia on the table and pinching her cheek when she scowls at him.

“There’s no such thing as a too-big knife– listen to me. Did you meet Eren?” Sasha’s fingers are gripping into the flesh of your arm– hard. Your eyes widen in surprise at the urgency in her eyes, like if you haven’t been introduced to Eren, there’s grave danger afoot.

“We met.” It happens quickly and easily, the slide of his heavy arm around your shoulders. You can feel your body tense under the lazy weight of him, big hand wrapped around you like it belongs there. “I don’t think she’s particularly fond of me.”

Eren shoots you a wink that you’re sure is intended to mean something, a reference to an inside joke that you have yet to establish, maybe.

“I didn’t say that,” you say in your own defense, wanting to yank Sasha to the side and demand to know why she hadn’t warned you that Cupid himself was going to greet you in the kitchen this morning. Armin slices the fig neatly in half, a strangely practiced motion performed by small, soft hands. He offers it to you again insistently, and frowns when you shake your head.

“I said I wanted it, ‘Min,” Eren says with a hint of red to his words, snatching the halved fig from Armin’s hand and biting into it voraciously, little pieces of the flesh spattered around the corner of his mouth.

“You’re such a brute,” Armin scoffs, picking the meat of his half out gingerly with an oyster fork that you don’t remember him grabbing from the drawer.

“Why don’t you like Eren?” Sasha pouts at you, grabbing the hand that’s squashed between yours and Eren’s hips. Your palm feels hot against her fingers.

“I said I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t say much of anything, to be fair.” Eren’s got the fig pressed to his mouth, digging his teeth and tongue around in the husk of it obscenely enough to make your cheeks warm. Being so close to him is filthy, that cross around his neck is looking you straight in the eye to make sure you feel it. 

“Eren’s always a pest,” Historia provides from her perch on the kitchen table, picking at her perfectly manicured toenails, “why would she like him?”

“You like him plenty,” Armin says, not looking at her. It’s not the first time that’s been brought up, if Historia’s answering sneer is anything to go by.

“You’ll love him if you give him a chance.” Sasha smiles hopefully at you, nodding.

“Yeah,” Eren grins down at you, teeth colored with fig, “give me a chance.”

“Eren, you’re going to scare her off,” Armin says with a roll of his eyes, peering around Eren’s broad shoulders to look you up and down. The way his eyes drag over you makes you feel like there might be a stab wound somewhere on your person that you don’t know about yet, the adrenaline of the moment keeping you numb.

“Back off her, Eren,” Historia echoes, “she’s fun, I don’t want you to make her leave.”

“She’s not going to leave.” Eren looks directly at you as he says it, something in his smile growing imperceptibly darker. A dare. How much will you let me get away with?

You stare and stare at him, ignoring the continued bickering of Armin and Historia in the background. He’s golden and blood-red, oil smeared on his forehead and a crown of thorns nestled in his dark thatch of hair if you look close enough. If you’re not imagining it, his hand might be tightening around your shoulder, maybe he’ll leave a purple bruise on it.

“Of course not,” Sasha interrupts your thoughts, thumbing at your cheek affectionately, “she belongs here. With us.”

“She’s our little fairy,” Historia giggles dreamily, referencing the long-winded fairy tales you drunkenly make up every night, casting each other as heroines and knights and dragons.

“Right,” Eren agrees, not breaking your gaze, “our little fairy.”

The only thing that comes to mind is your childhood friend, Emma, looking on at you sadly with her muddy toes, watching the wings sprout from your back.

᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃

Days lug themselves by, barefooted and dragging their heels, and most of the time, even the monotonous rise and fall of the sun doesn’t help to differentiate one calendar block from the next. Like a bat, or maybe a slinky, silvery fish in an underwater cave, you rely on your other senses to track the passage of time.

For example, today, you know it’s a Wednesday because Maria, one of the three house chefs, brings fresh peaches up from the co-op down the hill every Wednesday. Sasha’s spent the last thirty minutes hand feeding you peach flesh as you lounge by the pool, insisting that you suck her fingers clean of juice and feeding you little sips of champagne each time you sober up enough to tell her that that’s lewd. Historia swats at you and giggles at the smacking and slurping sounds you make around Sasha’s fingers, oiled-up palm landing on oiled-up hip with a wet slap; Armin admonishes her quietly from his seat beside her, insisting the girlish noises emanating from the three of you are tearing him from his book. You can feel Eren watching, too– that’s all, though. Always just watching.

You wonder how opaque the lenses of Armin’s sunglasses are, perched haphazardly on your nose, wonder if they’re doing a good job of masking the slow lick of your gaze over Eren’s skin, wonder if you care. Maybe the champagne is finally getting to your head.

“We should go in soon,” Historia sighs, a hand tossed across her forehead. She’s a little movie star, built for the golden age. “It’s so hot.”

“It’s always this hot,” Sasha argues, and you can practically hear the furrow in her brow, not willing to take your eyes off of the trickle of sweat running down Eren’s chest to see it for yourself. You’re really getting the hang of it, this opposite-sense thing. Everything’s upside down here in the heat.

“She’s getting hungry,” Armin supplies, wiping the sweat off his palms to reach up and turn the page of his novel. Brideshead Revisited. A little on the nose, isn’t it?

“I am not!” Historia hates when people point out her appetite, but not really. She kicks up a fuss because it’s “ladylike”, and she’s advised you to do the same.

“You are,” you sigh, really feeling the heat sink into you even with the heavy, lazy movement of lolling your head to face her, “you always get hungry around this time.”

“What time is it, then?”

You don’t reply– you don’t know the answer.

“I think we’re all hungry,” Eren, ever the peacemaker when he can find the time to be so, sits up, letting the shirt that’s been shading his face fall into his lap. Your eyes track its descent– even that seems slow. He says something to you, managing a crooked grin while he squints in the heat of the sun, but you don’t hear it.

“Huh?”

“Everyone except you, anyway,” he repeats himself, reaching over Sasha and smearing his thumb through the peach juice collected on your chin. Eren’s thumb disappears between his pink lips, and when he sucks on it with a satisfied hum, your jaw clenches hard enough to hurt.

“I guess it’s getting close to dinner,” Sasha says regretfully, picking her wristwatch, a priceless Braus family heirloom, up from a puddle of orange juice and tanning oil. “We should probably clean off.”

“I might even shower twice,” Armin rubs a hand over his belly with a grimace, “this tanning oil makes my skin greasy.”

“I feel disgusting,” Historia agrees, sliding red toes into her sandals and standing with a dramatic stretch.

“Filthy,” Eren murmurs in agreement. He’s still staring at you.

“I’ll be in soon. I’m so close to the color I wanted for today– I just need, like, ten more minutes.” You peel down the strip of bathing suit stretched over your hip, showing off the distinct mark of yesterday’s color and today’s tan.

“You’re crazy,” Sasha scoffs, throwing some designer sarong her mother lent her over her shoulder, “I’m melting.”

Armin and Historia pause their bickering over who gets to wear Armin’s Cucinelli belt to dinner—Armin wants it for his trousers, Historia for her maxi dress—just long enough to offer a momentary goodbye, breezing along into the house with Sasha. You settle back into your chair and take a deep breath, letting the sun sink into you just long enough to forget that you’re not alone.

“Open up.”

You’ve been enjoying this game of trading one sense for another, and you keep your eyes shut firmly, letting your jaw fall open and your tongue hang out. A piece of peach, fleshy and dripping with juice, finds its way onto your tongue, pinched too roughly between strong fingers. When you close your lips around the fruit, the fingers stay with it, frozen in their pinched position and forcing you to suck the peach from them, to swallow around them, to run your tongue along them and get as much of the meat as you can. When the fingers withdraw from your lips, you open your eyes and gasp quietly.

Eren’s leaning over you, a solar eclipse that smells like tan skin and sounds like Campari, and in the silhouette of the sunlight, you think he’s smiling.

“You’re still hungry,” he says, a question that’s left its punctuation mark behind. You think of Historia, of the improper shame of revealing your appetite. You dodge.

“I’m never hungry.”

“Never?” Eren crawls over you to kneel between your legs, propping one of your ankles up on his shoulder. The game you started is ripped out of your hands, chess pieces flying into the pool, scattering across the table, knocking over bottles and matchbooks. It’s so silent out here in the sun it hurts, and you almost miss the constant buzzing horseflies of early summer.

“Never.”

“If you’ve never been hungry,” Eren muses, tilting his head so that his cheekbone fits into the sensitive arch of your foot, reaching a hand down to splay it wide on your belly, “you’ve never been full.”

“How do you figure?” Your words come out throaty, waterlogged.

“Can’t have one without the other.” Eren shrugs, turning his head to the side. His lips brush against your heel, your Achilles’, the swirly seashell dangling from your anklet. You dig your teeth into your bottom lip, toes twitching behind his ear. “I don’t believe you, anyway.”

“No?” You try to tilt your head coyly, like your heart’s not clawing and scratching against your throat to get to him. Hungry, indeed.

“You wouldn’t stare like that if you didn’t want to.”

You’re taken aback, but not enough to fall out of the moment– Eren’s lips closing around the knob of your ankle slowly, like the pit of a fruit, make sure of that.

“Didn’t want to what?”

Eren’s hands meet the cushion on either side of your head hard enough to rattle the chair, his long, tanned body stretching over yours. He’s close enough to brush his nose against yours, but you can still see the hazy green of his eyes flicking here and there on your face: from your eyes to your lips to the beauty mark on your cheek. Your poolside lounge feels more like a butcher’s block under your taut spine.

Sasha’s told you about the wolves in these hills, that they howl murder at night, but they’re sleepy and indulgent in the heat of the sun. One of Eren’s canines catches the light and glints at you as he grins.

“Eat yourself sick.” He practically spits it into your mouth, one thigh pressed into where you’re sticky and sinful, and he chuckles under his breath when you shudder under him, feverish in the late-afternoon heat.

Before you can even think of biting back, Eren’s off of you, picking your sandals off of the ground and sliding them gently onto your feet, stopping to run his palm from your ankle to your kneecap with an appraising hum. 

“We should head inside,” he says evenly, offering a hand to pull you to your feet, “I’d hate for us to miss dinner.”

You don’t have anything to say back to him, letting him lace his fingers through yours like lines in a play, interspersing seamlessly with the summer scenery. Eren leads you through the kitchen, waits patiently for you to take your sandals off, and waves you on your way up the stairs, saying he needs a cigarette. As the distance between you grows, your mind grows clearer, and you turn on your heel, calling down to him from the top of the stairs.

“Eren? Eren? Where are you, Eren?”

“Call me something else,” Eren pokes his head around the corner, smoke pouring from the grin on his face, “whatever you want, really. Make your own name for me.”

“You stare at me, too,” you say, tearing through his impishness. Eren cocks his head, unperturbed, smile growing wide as he nods.

“I do.”

“So you’re…” You can’t bring yourself to say it, not where it might echo in the cavernous hallway, where it might take the form of a confession. You scamper down the stairs, nearly sliding on bare feet, almost crashing into Eren when he appears at the foot of the staircase, catching you with two broad palms on either side of your ribcage. You pluck the cigarette from his mouth, stick it between your own teeth, narrow your eyes accusingly, and whisper: “You’re hungry too.”

“For every man hath business and desire, Such it is.” Eren takes the cigarette back, pulling on it and making a clear show of trying to hide a smirk.

“Hamlet?”

“A woman with teeth and a brain,” Eren tilts his head at you, “aren’t you something?”

“Do you always quote Shakespeare when you want to fuck somebody?”

“Only when I want to fuck you.” Eren stubs the cigarette out on the ancient oak of the staircase railing, grins up at you brilliantly, smiles brighter when he notices how obviously flustered you are.

“I need to go take a shower,” you say hurriedly, choking on the remnants of your shame and your confidence as they burn out in your throat, making an attempt to back up the stairs away from him. Eren laughs at your attempted escape, catching you by the wrist and pulling you close to him, close enough to dizzy you on the tendrils of smoke still sticking to him. Your breath stills, your heart slows as Eren wraps an arm around your waist, pulling you together, skin on tacky skin.

“Oh, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?” Eren coos to you, mouth moving against your cheekbone. “C’mon, just one bite.”

“He that is proud eats up himself,” you hiss a quote back at him in response, ripping yourself from his grip and scrambling up the stairs, heart pounding and cheeks burning. You can hear a lovesick sigh follow you up to your room, and hope that the slam of the door behind you is enough to keep it from touching you.

᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃

The murky waters of your vision ripple out into clarity, and you’ve found yourself in a forest. You’ve been here before, you recognize the tall, thick trunks and the bed of fallen leaves under your feet. You’ve been coming here since you were a little girl, been wiggling your toes in the greenery since before you could remember. You never come alone.

It appears just as you remembered: a blinding glimmer of light, a flame for a head, and ribbonlike wisps of energy that beckon you like arms, like love. One step towards it, and it disappears, vanishing into nothing with an echo that might be laughter. You think it’s happy to see you.

When it reappears a few feet away, you take your first steps, sighing at the feeling of the wild enveloping you, of the prickling of your skin, kissed by the chill winding through the trees. You wish you could explore this place, so familiar and so strange all at once, but you know you have to keep moving, keep following the lights as they lead you deeper and deeper into the forest. They won’t hurt you; you aren’t sure why that’s true, aren’t sure why you keep moving. You just know better than to stop.

They lead you over a familiar path, winding past a creek, over a bed of flat stones with an ice-cold creek running over them. You never tire here, legs pumping and arms working to push yourself faster. You’ve never caught the lights, and you aren’t sure if you ever will, but again, you know better than to doubt. It feels like hours, feels like minutes, feels like purpose, chasing these lights through the forest, but suddenly, something’s new.

There’s a little chirping sound, almost conversational and too high-pitched for you to understand; you’re not even sure if you recognize the language. It ricochets around the bones in your body, touches something ancient in their marrow. You almost jerk your head to the right to find the source, but you resist, pushing ahead on your path as the lights lead you deeper. You get the feeling that you’ve gone off-script somewhere, that this is a part of the forest you haven’t seen before, but the warmth in your bones shoos your doubts away. You’ve never been this far, but it feels like home.

A growl curls around the shell of your ear, plants fear right in the center of your chest. Your eyes widen at the light before you before it disappears; you frown at the next one, not daring to speak but demanding an answer anyhow. The lights will save you, won’t they?

Shrieks from overhead, guttural, animalistic calls, howls and chatters of excitement; you never presumed to be alone in this forest, but you never presumed to be in danger, either. The lights urge you on, vanishing and regenerating at an alarming rate, your feet drumming against the forest floor faster and faster. A sliver of moonlight begins to glow from the trees a ways off, an indication that there’s a clearing ahead, and you shove the bile in your throat down, swing your arms faster, ignore the frantic fluttering of your pulse in time with the bestial chorus ringing clearer and louder from the trees with each passing second.

You do, against all odds, manage to launch yourself into the clearing, and the moment you feel the soft cushion of moss under your feet, as opposed to the branch-littered, crunchy path of the forest, you nearly stumble to your knees as your eyes adjust to the sudden brightness of the clearing. The grumblings of the woodland entities have quieted, an almost awestruck silence settling in the open space around you.

“There you are.”

Your head snaps up comically fast– “You?”

“Me,” Eren says, that razor-sharp, moonlight smile lighting up his face. He looks…right here, as if the forest is extending a sense of belonging, as if he’s been here longer than the ancient trees themselves. Even the little crown nestled atop his head is fitting: a tangle of brambles and thorns and leaves tucked into his dark locks. Is that a throne under him, that mass of branches and leaves and some silvery metal you can’t place?

His eyes glow in the starlight, illuminated with a certain hunger that you can feel reverberating through your bones. It should be frightening, but it’s enticing. You feel welcome.

“What are you doing here?” Your tongue is slower on the uptake than your mind, and you can feel the suspicious expression folding your facial features, hiding the thrum of anticipation the sight of him brings.

Eren cocks his head pityingly, smiling at you in a way that would seem predatory if it wasn’t so entirely disarming, so entirely inviting. Your feet are bringing you closer before he even speaks— you know why you’re here before he says it.

“I’ve been waiting so long,” Eren beckons you onto his lap, firmly grabbing your shoulder and silently demanding you straddle him when you try to turn away from him, “you’re beautiful, so…alive here.”

He takes a bit of your hair between your fingers and rubs it, satisfaction flickering over his face. It’s then that you realize how little fabric covers you; really, it’s only a thin, wispy excuse of a dress, hanging in tatters around your body and leaving your skin free for the taking. Taking notice of your dress leads you to take notice of another pressing matter: Eren’s naked beneath you.

“Where are we?”

“Does it matter?” Eren reaches up to toy with your hair again, smiling gently. He tilts his head up, asking you for something you can’t identify, but that you already know you’re willing to give. Your soul, maybe.

Your lips meet his in a tentative brush, a motion that feels shy, but practiced. It’s a reflex, an instinct, to kiss him this way. Eren groans gutturally against your mouth, pressing into you deeper, digging his fingertips into your bare skin. The chorus of inhuman chatter erupts around you both again, and you jump, almost pushing away from him before he stops you with a firm hand against the small of your back.

“Sh,” he whispers, nipping at your chin, “don’t pay them any mind. You’re with me, remember?”

It’s difficult at first with the ever-growing hum of life around you, but it grows increasingly easier to melt into him, to lose yourself in the rhythm of him. He’s thick and hard underneath you, pressed right where you’re already slick and ready for him, and he’s got a tight grip on your hips, working you against him to make sure you feel it and oh– do you feel it.

A debauched gasp pours from your mouth to his; Eren sinks sharp teeth into your bottom lip with a grunt of approval, pulls you up to situate you over his twitching cock. You can feel the lecherous eyes of the woodland creatures, spirits, monsters, whatever they may be around you, looking in on the sticky, tangible arousal building between your bodies. The steady glow of Eren’s eyes, the prick of the thorns in his hair under your fingertips, the insistent weight of him pressing against the wet heat of you: all of it keeps you grounded, keeps your hips rolling into Eren like your life depends on it, like it’s what you were born to do.

“Are you ready?” Eren murmurs, quiet as the grave, stilling your hips and lifting you.

“I’m not sure, I–”

“I’ve been waiting so long,” Eren interrupts, “so long for you– you’re ready for me, I know you are.”

And with that, he’s sliding you down onto his cock, splitting you open, dropping your jaw. The cacophony from the forest grows deafening, but the glowing eyes in the brush streak and blur as your eyes flutter closed, a stuttered moan falling from your lips.

“Oh–”

“Knew you were ready,” Eren sinks his teeth into your collarbone, lets you wiggle and roll your hips until he’s situated comfortably inside of you. “You were born for this. For me.”

You can’t even bring yourself to disagree, to refute, to question. It’s godly, the way he fills you, the twinge of pain in the pit of your belly that doesn’t waver, no matter which way you squirm. The longer you sit, perched upon him– you feel something akin to divinity, akin to prophecy ringing through your bones. You were born for this.

“Eren…” It’s more of a sigh than anything, a confession and an admittance of guilt, a repentance. He likes the way it tastes, you can tell by the way his hands grip you harder, roll you along his cock faster with an urgency that betrays his calm, adoring gaze. He’s sinking his claws into you, bit by bit, and you’re better for it. You belong here, with the night on your skin and Eren nestled inside of you.

“Don’t ever leave,” Eren smiles gently, as if it’s a choice, “stay with me forever.”

The pleasure’s beginning to peak in your stomach, the howls swirling in the air around you start to feel more like a blanket, the moonlight like a crown. His hands are so hot they almost burn, his tongue licking up your neck feels like a baptism. Your back is arching, your blood is rushing, the stars are speaking to you– what are they saying?

Your fingernails have left angry indents in your throat where you’ve clutched into the skin in a desperate attempt to regain your breath, shooting up out of your slumber with a vicious jolt. Your head spins with the sudden movement, the antique furnishings of the room bleeding into candlelit blurs as you heave for breath.

“Sleeping?”

You nearly jump out of your skin at the gravel of Eren’s voice, having believed yourself to be alone. Some instinctual part of your mind almost remembers falling asleep on the loveseat in the glass-enclosed sunroom earlier, one too many martinis to thank for that, but you can worry about that later– Eren’s your priority now, shirtless and leaned against the doorframe with one eyebrow raised and a very telling flush rising to his cheeks. The chilly wetness between your legs brings your dream to the forefront of your mind. Had he heard, somehow?

“What are you doing down here?” You do your best to narrow your eyes into something convincing enough to pass for annoyance, unsure if you’ve managed to pull it off with the rapid rise and fall of your chest.

“Water,” Eren says simply, raising a glass you hadn’t noticed he was holding, “but it seems like you might need it more than I do.”

“I don’t–” He ignores you, crossing the room to hand you the ornate glass. Your throat is dry, and so you drink, eyeing him suspiciously as you sip.

“Dreaming?” The corner of his mouth twitches almost imperceptibly.

“Nightmare.” You push yourself up to sit, crossing your arms defensively over your chest. “How’d you know?”

A long pause, Eren’s eyes dragging over you slowly, your skin burning. “You were squirming.”

“It was disturbing,” you say truthfully, looking over your shoulder and half-expecting to see some horrible monster leering at you from the doorway, salivating over you and Eren, “but I’ve had this same dream since I was a kid. Part of it, anyway.”

“Need company?”

“No,” you say quickly, shaken by the dream and how low Eren’s pajama pants hang on his hips, “I just need to get to my real bed. I’m sure sleeping outside had something to do with it.”

“That’s not true.” Eren’s scooping you up into his arms before you can open your mouth to argue, as if you even would. This isn’t unusual for him; you’ve grown used to his tendency to touch you, to hold you close to his chest as though you belong there. It echoes in your head, you were born for this. A shudder wracks through your body. “Cold?”

“Mhm,” you hum, not trusting your own voice. Eren nuzzles your head deeper into his shoulder, lets you get a noseful of the scent of him. Dewdrops, mankind, a rotting forest floor. It gives you a disconcerting sense of deja vu.

“Sleeping outside is good for you,” Eren goes on, scaling the stairs with impossible ease, “my mom used to tell me that.”

“Is that so?” It brings a sleepy little smile to your face, despite yourself: the image of a messy-haired, fussy baby Eren, curled up in his mother’s lap and looking up at the night sky.

“Sure.” You can hear the nostalgia in his voice. “The stars can talk to you that way, through your dreams. They show you where you’re supposed to go.”

Your blood runs cold at that– does he know? How could he? He’s a man, not a mind-reader, not a mystic. Right? You let him carry you to your door in silence, the only noise being the padding of his bare feet down the Turkish carpet runner in the hall. When he gets to your door, Eren finally starts to move to let you down, and your mouth moves without your permission, voice small and echoing in the still nighttime air.

“Eren?”

He freezes, muscles locking you in place against his chest. “Yeah?”

“Was I talking in my sleep?”

Eren settles you on your feet before answering, leaving one lingering hand on your hip and bringing the other up to brush at your cheek. Your eye must have been watering– his thumb catches a stray tear. His smile is a little too sharp when he answers.

“No, why?”

“Just wondering.” Relief courses through your body, but your muscles stay taut under his touch.

“Okay,” Eren looks you up and down one more time, as if he’s making sure you’re all there, “goodnight, then. I hope your dreams get better.”

When he turns to go, the broad silhouette of him growing darker as he retreats, you remember something fragile underneath the floorboards.

“Wait, Eren! You forgot your water.”

“My what?” When he turns to face you, he’s still grinning– baring his teeth, more like. You think you’re imagining the glow in his eyes, too fresh from that dream.

“Your water. I think I have a cup in my room if you need it.”

“Oh.” Eren waves a hand nonchalantly through the air, catching a stray stream of moonlight. You can see the dust particles dancing around his hand, enchanted by his movement. “Wasn’t thirsty."

᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃

It’s a slinky, dazzling dress; Elie Saab, Spring 2005, maybe? 2006? Sasha had lent it to you, insisted upon you taking it, really. It’s got to be worth at least your years’ rent payment, dripping with Swarovski and cut low and square across your chest, and easily the most decadent thing you’ve ever worn but– it’s family dinner night. No expense is spared.

Historia sits across from you, reaching one dainty hand out for Armin’s negroni, nearly dipping the massive drop-pearl charm on her bracelet into the first course: a cold, cucumber soup. Armin nudges her meaningfully, scowling and handing his glass to her, glancing apologetically at the stiff-backed butler across the room, who wasn’t looking anyway. Sasha’s at the head of the table, working on Historia’s serving of the cucumber soup, dunking focaccia bread into it in a voracious manner that you’re sure wasn’t outlined in the etiquette courses she’d endured as a child. And he’s next to you, naturally.

His dinner jacket looks out of place on him, oddly enough: angular and overly formal, as well-fitting as it is. You wish it was a little greener, a little more playful, something to match the Eren you’ve gotten to know under all the glitz and glamour. It’s too human for him, really, but that thought makes you shudder faster than you can shove it to the side.

“Wasn’t that the girl from Luxembourg?” Sasha asks through a giggle, finally leaning back to allow the butler to collect the remnants of her first course. Historia frowns at her, gulps back nearly half of Armin’s cocktail.

“No, the girl from Luxembourg was a slut. He wouldn’t have touched her.”

Armin and Eren exchange a look that implies that, whoever the slut from Luxembourg might have been, she didn’t escape their clutches unscathed. Historia notices the guilty smile dimpling Eren’s cheek and smacks Armin in retaliation.

“Ouch, Stori!” Armin scowls right back at her; if you didn’t know about Armin’s father’s remarriage to Historia’s mother, you’d think they were actually related.

“She was a slut,” Historia sniffs, finishing the rest of Armin’s cocktail in a second swig.

“It was Eren’s idea– you’re always punishing me for what he does.” When the staff place the second course, some sort of ceviche, in front of him, Armin crosses his arms over his chest and looks away like a huffy child. Sasha laughs and swats at his shoulder.

“Don’t pretend you don’t have your own hand in things. You can’t blame everything on Eren.”

“Maybe he can,” you shrug, the champagne going to your head. You’re feeling impish, feeling like one of them. Wildly, you reach a hand up to pinch at Eren’s cheek, smiling to yourself when you feel it turn warm under your fingers. “I mean, just look at him. He’s a devil.”

“Am not,” Eren scoffs, slapping a hand on your leg and shaking it playfully, “you weren’t there anyway. Min’s very convincing when he wants to be.”

“I am.” Armin smiles at you, head tilting intrepidly. “I can get Eren to share anything I want, I bet.”

It feels loaded, like a challenge, and Eren’s fingers tighten where he’s gripping your leg. When you chance a glance to the side at him, his jaw is tense, gaze focused on Armin like a threat, like a predator.

“Not anything,” Eren says, voice low and dangerous, more somber than you’ve ever heard him. Armin’s face falls for a millisecond, scrunching his nose at the murderous glint in Eren’s eyes, before he clenches his jaw and glances between the two of you with a haughty smirk.

“Est-ce vrai? En êtes-vous sûr? Tu l'as dit toi-même - je suis convaincant quand je veux quelque chose.”

“Ne commencez pas avec moi, pas pour ça.” It’s hardly louder than a murmur, but the threat carries all the same. You look to Sasha with widened eyes, hoping for a translation, but she’s chewing slowly on a bite of her ceviche, looking at Armin, Eren, then Armin again with a strange expression you’ve never seen before.

A heavy silence settles over the table, Eren’s fingertips leaving sore spots through your dress where they’re digging into your thigh, and Armin’s eyes dancing over Eren’s face, that same smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. Daring.

“You two are so in love,” Historia gripes with a roll of her eyes, smashing the carefully-cubed ceviche on her plate into a mush. You eye the smear of meat on her fork disdainfully and set down the bite you had been about to pop in your mouth, opting for your glass of bubbles instead.

The jokingly grumpy lilt of Historia’s comment seems to cut the thread of tension that had grown taut between the two men, as Armin allows Sasha to pull him away from Eren and back into his corner of the table with her and Historia. Their conversation drones on, the ethics of Eren and Armin’s tendency to tag-team women fading into the background as you wait for Eren’s hand to slip from your thigh. It doesn’t.

His thumb rubs idly over the slit of your dress, brushing it back and forth over your bare skin for just long enough to get you used to the pressure of his palm beaming heat through the thin fabric, get your guard down. And then his fingers slip underneath, grabbing into the hot flesh of your thigh.

You jump ever so slightly, flighty as a fawn, and Eren chuckles under his breath beside you when you choke a bit on your champagne. He’s cool—stoic, even—as he bashfully bats away the scandalous insinuations of Sasha and Historia’s storytelling, the lewd raise of Armin’s eyebrows at the mention of a certain leggy redhead in Prague. His hand stays steady, possessive and permanent on your leg. When Armin and Historia start arguing over yet another of Armin’s alleged missteps with one of her college friends, Eren takes the opening to lean into you, murmuring into your ear.

“What’s got you so jumpy?” His breath puffs out hot and sensual against the shell of your ear, and you can feel your earring lifting with the movement of his lips. He’s so close.

“Not jumpy,” you answer under your breath, trying to keep your composure.

“Hm,” Eren hums, leaning back just enough to study your profile, “wasn’t sure if you’d dozed off, started dreaming again.”

Your head whips towards him in what is surely an uncouth accusation of insinuation, borne of shock, but luckily, Armin’s too busy being hand-fed ceviche by Sasha and scolded by Historia to notice. Other than his eyes, Eren’s stiller than death, watching over the antics with the littlest smirk pulling at the corner of his lips. His eyes, though, flick down to you, glinting like a dare.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means something?” It’s a challenge, and you realize too late that the rope around your ankle has cinched, and you’re caught in his trap.

“No,” you say, hoping for more conviction in your voice, but it comes out as a breathy whisper. The corner of Eren’s mouth twitches, and it pulls an irritated huff from you.

“Tell me about your dream. The one that woke you up the other night.”

“Tell you– w-what? Here?”

“Yes, here,” Eren repeats you, quiet and calm, keeping one eye on your bickering friends to ensure you’re kept all to himself, “unless it’s something you can’t share.”

The blanching of your face tells him everything he needs to know, and that sickening admission almost overshadows the fact that he knows. He undeniably knows, now; maybe not the specifics, but enough to know that you had woken up sticky and gasping after a sinful dream. Maybe he even knows it was about him. 

You’ve given up on trying to understand the otherworldly elements of Eren; the way he seems to appear at inopportune moments and know what you’re thinking at every turn, but this is too much. You quickly realize that while you’re not sober, you’re certainly not drunk enough to deal with him, and you finish your glass of champagne in a single gulp.

“You’re one to talk about sharing,” you hiss at him, trying to will away the goosebumps prickling your arms as his fingers inch higher, skating along soft skin. Eren’s demeanor falters, if only for a moment– he looks frustrated.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Eren leans into you, brows furrowing. “I don’t share just anything, and especially not just because ‘Min wants a taste.”

“Am I yours to share?” That heavy swig of champagne has gone straight to your head it seems, as you turn your face up to him defiantly, finally saying the quiet part out loud. The weight falls off your shoulders like a head, and you can almost feel the itch of the guillotine at your neck as the words leave your mouth. Eren, ever the gentle executioner, only lets the calm fascination return to his face, brings his fingers further up your thigh.

“Tell me about your dream, hm? They’re not listening, it’s just you and me.”

He’s only inches away from where you’re already beginning to grow hot and wet– he hasn’t even done anything, and you want to chastise yourself over the undeniable need beginning to bubble inside you. Eren’s smiling so sweetly, as if he’s lulling you into a sense of complacency, and your tongue hangs heavy in your mouth, eager to spill your secrets.

“I…I’m scared.”

Eren’s eyebrows raise and his smile grows a bit toothier, disbelief written plain on his face. “Of me?”

“Sometimes,” you say, small and honest as the grave, “it’s like you aren’t real.”

“I’m very real,” Eren insists, two fingers pressing against the damp silk of your panties, his eyes lighting up when you stifle a gasp, “doesn’t that feel real?”

“Wait–”

“The dream,” Eren says again, increasing the pressure of his fingers, “were you scared of me there, too?”

“Yes,” you whisper, ashamed and painfully cognizant of the feel of him between your legs, “I was in a forest, running after the little lights, they– I’ve seen them for a long time.”

“Since you were a child,” Eren repeats your confession from the other night. He’s reading you, you realize, not like a book, but like a poem. You couldn’t put the difference into words if you had to, but there’s a certain melody to the flickering of his gaze over your hot face.

“They’ve never led me anywhere before,” your words hitch in your throat, stopped dead when Eren’s fingers start rubbing circles over your swollen clit. The silk is thin and soaked, and his fingers slide over you in a way that feels god-given. Your jaw hangs ever-so-slightly, the butlers coming to change the course. You wait for Eren to slip his hand out from under your dress, fearful of the staff watching as he toys with you, but he only nods encouragingly.

“Keep going.”

“Um,” you stammer, swallowing thickly and glancing at the plate of bleeding, rare filet in front of you, “they took me to a clearing in the forest. There were creatures, ones I’ve never seen before.”

“Did they hurt you? Any of them?” A furrow appears between his eyebrows, deep and concerned. Some small part of your brain, muted since Eren’s hand slid beneath your dress, worries itself with why Eren seems so disquieted with your dream– it’s not like you actually could have been hurt, it was only a dream. Wasn’t it?

“No, they stayed away. They just made a lot of noise, but they all got quiet when…”

A knowing smirk. “When?”

“When I saw you.”

Eren pats your thighs gently, urging them apart; he looks relieved, exhilarated, unreal. If you didn’t know better, you’d think his eyes were glowing in the candlelight. Armin, Historia, and Sasha’s clamor across the table grows louder with each passing second, but as soon as you begin to wonder if you should be doing a better job of hiding what’s very clearly happening under the slit of your dress, Eren’s fingers have wiggled their way beneath the fabric of your silk thong. Your teeth dig into your bottom lip, eyes widening.

“I was glad to see you,” Eren says quietly, “in the dream, I mean.”

“You said you’d been waiting for me,” you whisper, keeping your voice low to hide the whine scratching at the back of your throat, “that you’d been waiting a long time.”

“I bet I was,” Eren hums thoughtfully, grinning viciously when he sinks a finger into you, clearly relishing the way your fingernails tighten into his wrist. “I never lie.”

“Even in a dream?” You feel fuzzy and warm, blinking moony, worried eyes up at him. Eren shakes his head in confirmation, curling his finger and making your thighs clench. “You put me in your lap, and–and, you had a crown. It was nighttime, I think, and the moon was really bright. You were inside me.”

Eren slides another finger in to match the first, and you’re hardly able to stifle a moan when it comes fluttering through your teeth, a breeze of a sound compared to what you’re struggling to keep captive in your chest. Eren’s other hand reaches forward to grab a small piece of the carved steak, brings the meat up to your mouth and brushes it over your lips.

“Eat,” Eren instructs, smiling placidly as you mindlessly obey, biting into the red meat, “but keep telling me.”

He waits patiently for you to chew around the bite of steak he’s offered you, eyes searching you for something– what it is, you can’t be sure. Your mind is wobbling around the flashes of memory of your dream, distracted every few steps by an overwhelming rush of pleasure from between your legs, Eren’s fingers curling incessantly against your walls. You swallow, never taking your eyes off of him.

“You fucked me.” The confession is breathless when it leaves you, and even through the haze of what you pray isn’t a rapidly-approaching orgasm, you don’t miss the way Eren’s shoulders stiffen, the way his eyes flash. 

“Did I fuck you, or did you fuck me?” Eren murmurs back to you, mischief in his eyes and a tense gravel to his voice. “You said you were in my lap, after all.”

“I—oh, god—I don’t know,” you’re barely able to keep your voice low, a little whimper interrupting you, “Eren–”

“Keep going, it’s okay,” Eren’s fingers don’t slow– in fact, they begin to move more harshly, “you’re safe with me, you know that. I showed you in the forest, didn’t I?”

“Mhm.” You can’t stop your forehead from falling onto his shoulder, teeth digging into your lip so hard you aren’t sure if that coppery taste is from the steak, or your own blood. The conversation in the room, despite being made by only three people, feels like a deafening rush in your ears. 

The realization hits home that Eren’s going to make you cum all over his fingers in front of your friends, the staff, and your dinner, and he’s going to wrench it out of you in a matter of seconds, if the tightening of your gut is anything to go by.

“What else?” Eren practically growls in your ear, low and hoarse. “Is there anything else?”

“You asked me– fuck, you asked me something.” Your hips are canting forward into his palm, your face tacky and warm thinking about the couture fabric under you, now drenched in your cum and sweat. “Eren, you have to slow down, please–”

He’s merciless, pumping his fingers into you ceaselessly, rendering you a lost cause. “What did I ask you?”

“You asked—oh, my god—asked if I, if I would stay with you forever.”

“What was your answer?”

You can’t respond, not with the way you’ve stopped breathing to swallow down the debauched moan bubbling in your chest. Your entire body tenses, strung tight as a bow around Eren’s fingers as the knot in your stomach unravels, cool, inevitable release finally crashing over you. Eren works you through it, murmuring little hushes into your hairline, and placing a comforting hand over your fingers that are digging into his wrist, smiling against your forehead as you slide your hips back and forth over his hand.

You manage to pull the whole thing off impressively subdued, no more than a tinny whimper leaving your lips, only to be absorbed by the sleeve of Eren’s dinner jacket. When you dare to sit up, to meet Eren’s eyes, he’s still looking at you expectantly, as if that wasn’t enough.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” you whisper, waiting for Historia to chastise you, or Armin to make a lewd comment. The three of them are still arguing, Sasha stealing bites from Armin’s plate each time he turns to snap at Historia, who’s now sitting amongst a crowd of empty crystal glasses.

“What was your answer?” Eren says again, pulling his fingers from you and smirking at the glisten that stretches down into his palm.

“I woke up,” you say with shaky conviction, trying to glare at him.

“Are you still scared of me?” Eren asks innocently, picking up a piece of his steak with his hand and feeding it to you again. Your cum mixes in with the flavor of the steak, gives it a certain tang and salinity that makes your heart beat faster, even though you’ve just floated back down to consciousness.

“I– I don’t think so, but…” you trail off, looking down at the plate. Eren brings another piece to your lips, letting you bite half and giving the rest to himself, not missing the opportunity to suck on the tips of his fingers. Your thighs press together when his eyes flutter shut, knowing what he’s tasting and watching him revel in it.

“But what?”

“I don’t think I understand you,” you confess breathlessly, “I think that’s what scares me. I spend all day looking at you, and I never feel closer to understanding you, to really touching you. It’s like you’re not…” you trail off in search of the right word.

“Real?” Eren cocks an eyebrow at you.

“Human,” you say without entirely meaning to, widening your eyes at him in apology. “I’m sorry, not in a bad way necessarily, but– you feel…like you’re above me. In a sense.”

“Above you?” Eren frowns, forgetting his dinner entirely and looking straight at you with rejection written all over his face, wrinkles you want to smoothe over with your thumb.

“I just…” you sigh, finding it harder to meet his gaze by the second, “I don’t understand what you want with me.”

“Still?” Eren tilts his head. “Even after that?”

“The dream?” You nearly chuckle in exasperation. “It was just a dream, that’s all.”

Eren frowns a little, reaches for your glass of champagne– oh, god, when had that been refilled?– and hands it to you. He watches you take one sip, and then another, that concentrated pull of his eyebrows never ceasing until you reach a shaky hand out for your fork, beginning to feed yourself small bites of steak. His perplexed expression ripples out into one of contentedness, smiling gently as he watches you take care of yourself.

“All days are nights to see till I see thee, and nights bright days when dreams do show me thee,” Eren finally says, looking at you very much like you’re supposed to be parsing something out from his quote.

“On to the sonnets now, are we?” You cock a playful eyebrow at him, despite your tired, slouching posture and your repeated attempts to keep your guard up. Eren grins mischievously, leaning in as if he means to press the tip of his nose to yours.

“I know no ways to mince it in love, but directly to say–”

“If it be love indeed, tell me how much?” You’re quicker than him on this one, a vicious little smirk cutting across your face when you manage to cut him off. Eren’s eyebrows raise, impressed, but you don’t keep him down for long.

“There’s beggary in love that can be reckoned,” Eren finally says, twirling the ring on your pinky absentmindedly. You don’t even remember when he laid his hand atop yours, but it feels heavy and comforting, and so you let it lie there, just for the time being.

Your post-orgasm exhaustion hits you like a train, the temptation to slump against Eren’s shoulder winning out over your propriety. You’ll sit back up by the fourth course, you tell yourself, nibbling on a large piece of parsley that had come as a garnish on your plate. Eren doesn’t seem to mind the weight of your fuzzy head nodded into the cotton of his shoulder; in fact, he seems to adjust himself so you can nuzzle closer, eyes blinking owlishly as you reach for your glass of bubbles. You’re teetering dangerously close to the edge of unconsciousness, and you almost wouldn’t care, until something catches your eye.

Over the rim of your glass, Historia is staring at you. It’s not a look of admonishment, but more…caution? Concern? Pity? All you can discern for certain is that Historia must have seen everything Eren did to you, everything he’s still doing to you, taking a caviar bump off the back of his hand and laughing at Armin, shoulder shaking under your cheek. Historia’s brows furrow at you, her bottom lip wavering slightly.

You sit up suddenly, ignoring the way the room spins with the speed of your action. Eren turns his head to you, surprised, only to follow your gaze across the table to Historia. You’re trying to keep from looking at him, but you can’t help yourself, watching his expression crumple into something stern and disparaging.

Historia withers for only a moment, before narrowing her eyes at him threateningly. Eren squeezes his hand around yours. Sasha shoves Historia admonishingly for not listening to her joke. Armin’s eyes focus in on where your fingers grip your champagne flute hard enough to turn white.

You think you see a few pairs of familiar, glowing eyes in the bushes outside, peering in on the scene at the table. You think you need to go to bed.

[disasterbuck]

Hi Luna!! Choosing was so tough! How about...

🤖 💻 👈 🤪

Happy writing!

thank you so much! 🥰 (& sorry for the delay!) I didn't end up writing any more for eddie's online friend... it simply did not spark joy 😔 BUT I'm now REALLY CLOSE to finishing 'who's got a crush' and 'touches'!!!!!!! 🥳🥳 and once again I cannot be constrained by word limits

🤖 - who's got a crush

"Did Chris put you up to this?" Eddie asked cautiously, glancing at his son.

"In a way," Buck admitted. "But not… I mean… I want this. Chris just encouraged me to tell the truth, that's all."

The truth. That Buck liked him and wanted to go on a date with him.

"Wow," Eddie breathed.

"Good wow?" Buck asked.

And suddenly Eddie realised just how nervous he looked, like he really had no idea what Eddie was going to say in reply. Which was ridiculous, because of course Eddie liked him as well and wanted to go on a date with him! Eddie was terrible at hiding his feelings!

He'd honestly assumed that Buck already knew.

"Yes," Eddie said, feeling his lips curving into a smile. "Buck, I would love to go on a date with you."

"I told you!" Chris crooned smugly. "I told you he liked you too!"

👈 - touches

This is a really short ficlet I'm working on that's an odd writing style.

The next escalation comes one evening as they're curled up on Eddie's couch together. They're sitting in silence, just the two of them because Christopher's already in bed, and Buck's gently running his fingers through Eddie's hair when Eddie tips his head back and their eyes meet.

They have no need for words. They understand each other better than they understand themselves.

🤪 - clumsy

Thankfully Work Mode took over his brain once they arrived at the scene, carrying him through and enabling him to ignore all the times that Eddie looked particularly stunning: like when he stepped out of the truck, beautiful brown eyes blinking against the sunlight; or when he got that studious look on his face as he set to work; or when he pried loose a car door to save someone without breaking a sweat; and then once they were all done and he took his helmet off and ran a slow hand through his sweaty hair.

Buck ignored them, but he wasn't blind.

+ bonus scene from my notes

Eddie asks Buck a question and Buck replies with: "yeah you look amazing"

They stare at each other while Buck internally screams and swears at himself for being such an idiot! He quickly says, "Sorry! I mean, uh, yes I'm done with [appliance]."

Eddie smiles and says, "Thanks, Buck!" and pats him on the shoulder before walking off.

-

Hope you enjoyed!!

Taglist:

@dluoser @taketheplanspinitsideways @loudenthusiastic @wallywise @mxrcjqckspnchqsc

@therosesaredying @stillfuckingtired @classtrialguru @smolfunpenguin @mjthe14thdoctor

@awesome-igi @natnuszsstuff @olliesrants @crazyfangirlallert @delirium1995

@brah3280 @meanceclosetohell @anythingeverythingallofthetime @sunflower-eddiediaz

@darkrose6578 @veronae-buddie @steadfastsaturnsrings @inell

@spicyrottingbrains @gnoeltop @idealuk @donationwayne @lemotmo

@smilingbuckley @realpersonwithrealfeelings @superlock-in-the-tardis @strxwbereee

@idontknowwhatimdoing777 @ashleigh2658 @mari-lwyd-fannibal-blog @mineyneedsmoney

@spotsandsocks @unlifeira @pirrusstuff @buddiedaydreamer911

@littlevampireprincessuniverse @misshiss727 @i-put-the-star-in-bastard @hermioneindisguise @dangerpronebuddie

@specialbrownieeater @blue-winged-boy @bucks-daddy-issues @lightningmcqueer8

Let me know if you'd like to be added or removed 💕

[peeterparkr]

thus, with a kiss, i die| tom holland| 1.

chapter 1: strangers.

romeo & juliet modern au.

summary: the well known story of star-crossed lovers. Your local bar has two spots for bands, but only one spot for an opportunity to get a record deal. Your band, the Capulets and his band, the Montagues have been rivals long enough. But what happens after a night when you get to know their lead singer?

chapter summary: two strangers who have no expectations.

pairing: singer!tom holland x guitarrist!reder

warnings: swearing, alcohol mention

word count: 3.8k

this is literally romeo and juliet, it's one of my favorite stories, if you've read my other works you KNOW I love to quote it, and reference and eveyrhting. Anyway, this is my take on it. Modern world, hope you like it. I haven't written anything in ages so here goes.

character glossary prologue next chapter masterlist

wanna be tagged?

so, first chapter is finally here! I highly thank everyone who's been supportive of this :) i'm really happy to be writing again and to see people actually reading is making me go insane. Well, I hope you like it, I highly encourage to read the prologue to understand a bit more of the capulets and the montagues. This chapter is heavily focused on Tom and y/n separately. Again, this is my take on Romeo and Juliet, it's literally based on it with my modern twist but yes :) hope you like it, send feedback. Also, I have a playlist on apple music, I'm going to get it on spotify as well so I'll share that later.

The night seemed either too old or the light too young. Blurry, and messy seemed the evening before, a couple of drinks, two songs too many, and a gathering crowd that was too delighted. For his own good. 

Tom couldn’t recall what had been said, or done. Last thing he knew was he’d shown up, his bleeding heart puffing out of his chest as he continued to stab it under the spotlight. Making a show out of his broken heart.

Only Ben had asked if he could do it. 

“Yeah, yeah, I can do it with a broken heart,” he had pleaded. But could he? 

“Enjoy the spotlight,” had been the advice he had received from Monty. And although he wasn’t referring to the light, Tom later understood it meant the several attempts that were made to flirt with him.

He had given in, eventually. What else can you do with a broken heart? 

And as he woke up early from a cold bed, slightly too crowded, with a hand up on his chest he growled, leaving an empty trail behind him and a headache that would last. 

He didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t have to. The poor girl had probably just been a victim of his attempt to forget a broken heart. 

He’d left his motorbike at the bar so he had to clumsily and shamefully walk back to Verona. Thankfully he was now alone with his melancholic thoughts, an endless path full of misery and tears that were waiting to trace a map back to his pain. An unfurnished heart and his sudden questioning of what love was and if he’d truly felt it was going to keep him busy all day. If it hurt this much then he guessed he had felt it. But had he? 

He felt like he’d walked for hours. He wondered why it wasn’t raining yet he felt like it was pouring down on him. 

He’d heard much about love. How wonderful, a very splendid thing. Butterflies and unusual symphonies. He’d heard about love. But he didn’t know much about it. 

He’d heard little about love. 

Falling in and and falling out. He’d heard about hate, too. And how it was the absence of love. He disagreed much with it. For what he was feeling right now wasn’t hate. He felt empty. 

Falling out of love hadn’t made him turn towards hatred. Falling out of love was like losing air, like the sun wasn’t coming out, life didn’t continue and the whole world was meant to stop.  And the worst part of it was it didn’t. The sun came out, the birds were chirping and no one saw or cared he hurt. How dare the world continue when it had stopped for him? 

Maybe it was hate. Though, he didn’t know much about hate either.

 He’d searched for more love the night before or whatever was similar to it, perhaps that’s why he’d searched for some other lips for him. 

“Tom,” someone had interrupted his current inner monologue. His mind wandering had been brought back to reality all of sudden. Tom turned around to find Ben. 

Tom only raised his eyebrows  as he walked to his helmet. “Ben.” 

“You’re here early.” Ben commented. 

“It’s not early.” But it probably was. 

“It’s barely 9,” Ben declared as he stared at his watch. Ben worked the early shift at Verona, cleaning tables and getting ready for the day, so it was early. 

Tom groaned , “fuck.” Barely 9 and he had already died 7 times. 

He looked back at Verona that kindly had a sign which read ‘NO MONTAGUES ALLOWED TONIGHT.’ 

“What?” Ben questioned. “A few days ago you were in pain because you were falling in love.” 

“Out of love,” Tom corrected. “What happened last night?” He asked. 

Ben amused, chuckled. “Oh, darling,” he mocked his accent.. “You don’t remember?”

Tom rolled his eyes. “I know, I meant before,” he pointed at the sign. “Where the fuck am I supposed to drown this sorrow in alcohol instead?” 

“Ah,” Ben pressed his lips in a thin, thin line. “Well, the Capulets—“

“Piss off, I’m tired of that,” Tom rolled his eyes. “I have enough problems trying to understand why Rosie dumped me.” 

“And why did she?”

“Beats me,” Tom said. “She said I was too romantic. What the fuck does that mean? She said she didn’t want anything serious and that she wanted to have fun. Am I not fun?” 

Ben watched his friend with pity. “You know what?” He sighed, “I’ll take the day off, I’ll cheer you up.” 

Tom didn’t want that. 

But it didn’t matter. Not far from them Billie was cheering herself up, knowing that the night would be grand. It held the promise of the sun finally coming out for them. 

Billie had been waiting for a chance like this, and she knew her new friend Paris would help out. 

Paris, Billie thought his name to be ridiculous. For him only, ironically. Though it worked, she guessed. Cap had always thought they were meant for something greater than this. 

She often wondered what it could’ve been. 

She knew what they had set each other up, Capulets and Montagues. But she had her reasons. And her falling with Monty was something she often ignored and blamed him for. Monty was definitely at fault. He’d been the one to play with fire, he’d been the one to absolutely ruin everything. Which was a story for another time. Cap didn’t like to think about it so the reason will be kept secret. Let’s not get ahead. 

However Cap did like to think about how she’d ruined it herself. She had a marvelous time. 

People often called Cap a no brain woman. She took pride in that, although she didn’t agree. Although her last night with their initial band with Monty, “Shaken Spears”, was ine ti remember, she’d destroyed the whole place and humiliated him.  

It was fun. 

But now they were struggling because often bands are followed by popularity and Tom had given them just that. 

However she knew she was technically cheating. 

“So tonight’s your big night,” said Paris. Paris was more than just a bartender. His father owned Verona. And although Skylar owned the place she didn’t actually own it, and it was always Paris’ last call. 

So it did help that Paris had an infatuation with y/n, Cap’s younger sister, an incredible guitarist and a poet in her free time. Author of their best songs.

Or not really a poet, but someone who loved to poetize her sorrow. Same shit. 

“Yes, it is,” Cap smiled, “I’m glad we can prove we are better than the Montageeses.” 

Paris chuckled. “You are,” he agreed. “But they’ve got something.” 

“Yes, I know that British brainless brute,” she hissed. 

Paris nodded. “And he’s single now.” 

“Single now? Fuck,” Cap sighed. She thought Monty had probably something to do with it. Making the stupid hunk available would make them more appealing. 

“Yeah, and he already went home with someone,” Paris continued. 

Shit. This was even worse. 

“But I’m sure y/n will bring a lot of attention as well,” he cleared his throat. “I mean she’s incredibly talented.” 

“She is.” 

“Hope I get to—talk to her tonight.”

Although Cap was thrilled they’d be able to get more Saturday nights she wasn’t as fond for it to be at her sister’s expense. Although she knew she didn’t dislike Paris. 

Paris was a tall, handsome young guy. He had the brightest, bluest eyes. Y/N was fond of kind eyes. He was kinda cute, she guessed.

“Yeah,” Cap said. “I’m glad you want to befriend her.” 

Paris blushed. “I may—I may want more than befriending her.” 

Cap coughed, “you know, I’m not the one to make that decision for her. And if you want her to fall in love with you that’s your problem. You have to… woo her."

And she knew y/n to be sort of new to matters of love. Y/N was naive and stupid when it came to it. Her heart was an empty room ready to be filled. An open window letting the warm air in. Walls waiting to be painted. Her closet was full of dresses that were thrilled to be worn.  Y/N barely knew anything about it. She’d heard a lot about it, and spoke of it like a grand connoisseur. Words of someone who could imagine what it felt like. Romanticizing her lack of knowledge of love. 

“I know,” Paris said, “hopefully tonight I’ll get to talk to her, it’s the perfect setup.” He grinned to himself. “Besides, your idea to make it a theme night—“

“Shit!” Cap interrupted. “I haven’t given out these!” She took out a bunch of pink, blue and purple sheets, covered in constellations, stars, moons and suns which read: 

✨We are made of stardust✨ The Capulets invite you to celebrate the arrival of a new angel in their team.  Heaven, skies, signs and stars  mask themed party.  Greek goddesses, and mythic galaxies welcomed.   Costumes are encouraged. (Plus, you won’t have to pay cover if you’re dressed up )  Saturday 8 o’clock NO MONTAGUES ALLOWED.

Paris watched her. “I can get someone to hand them out.” 

And so he did, and before they knew it, a young boy was handing out the printed pamphlets. Nearby, some Montagues were sitting by. Getting a well deserved break. 

“You know the best cure for an old love is a new one,” Ben assured Tom, watching as the younger teenager who would earn a few bucks struggled to hand out the pamphlets. 

“I’d rather cut my own leg,” Tom rolled his eyes. “You know I just feel trapped it’s like this fucking emptiness is just spreading—Hello?” He turned to the kid who’d just interrupted them by approaching them. 

“Hi. Good heavens.” 

Ben and Tom shared a glance. 

“Can we help you?” Tom questioned. 

“Are you Montagues?” The kid questioned. 

“Who asks?” Tom raised his eyebrow, trying to get a glimpse of the pamphlet. 

“Ah, then you are,” the kid sighed and tried to keep his way. 

“No, we aren’t,” Tom grinned and then shot a death glare at Ben who frowned. “We aren’t, what’s that?” 

“The Capulets.” He handed it over so Tom could finally take a look. 

Tom smirked, “ah, their gig.” 

“You knew about it?” The kid asked. “You need the pamphlet thing to get in.” 

Tom glanced up. “If you didn’t want me to be a Montague I could only guess.” 

Ben glanced at Tom. “We can’t go.” 

“Sure we can!” Tom smirked. 

“I was told to encourage guys like you,” the kid admitted. He looked between them. “Apparently there will be a lot of pretty girls.”

“See? Didn’t you want me to get a new love?” Tom mocked his friend. “C’mon, let’s call Maverick, I’m sure he’ll be down.” 

“Didn’t you want to cut your leg?”

And someone else wanted to cut their own leg. Not too far from them, in an old apartment, full of vinyls, lipsticks, old bookds, half-written songs and stars, y/n was getting ready with her best friend, Nina, and Clara, Cap’s girlfriend. 

Nina was excellent at makeup and hair, even though she was just your usual case of a gril who dreamed with having her salon. Although, to be fair she mostly wanted it because she said it was the perfect place for other people’s gossip. 

“Can’t believe you’re finally joining the Capulets,” Nina commented as she was placing small stars and sparkles around y/n’s eyes. “Seems like only yesterday when you started playing guitar, and writing songs about books you read. ” 

“Why the hell are you being so emotional?” Laughed Clara, watching them, “you sound like a mom.” 

Y/N had always stayed far from the spotlight, she didn't like it. She didn't think she needed it for that matter. For her, she was just a wallflower, nothing too exceptional. No one really paid any attention to her so she didn't bother trying to get it.

“I am proud of my baby, that’s all, finally showing the world her talent!" Nina smirked, “you know she’s been begging Cap to join them since they were the Shaken Spears? And I was so sad when they split up.” 

“Why?” Clara frowned. 

“She had a crush on Monty,” explained y/n, and then nodded in agreement at Clara’s disgusted grin. “Uh-huh.” 

“We all have questionable crushes,” Nina defended herself. 

“Not me.” Y/N chuckled. But she'd never really liked anyone. Not that anyone fancied her.

Nina motioned a vomiting face. “Except y/n it seems, because she’s perfect,” she mocked, bringing her hands close to her heart. “She’s never dated someone who’s trouble.” 

“And I never will,” y/n laughed. 

“You’ve never had a boyfriend or girlfriend, have you?” Clara questioned. “At least I haven’t met anyone.” 

“Nope, not one!” Nina said. “Hopefully, someone will catch her eye and she can bring them home.” 

“I haven’t had the honor, or misfortune,” y/n answered Clara.. “However I don’t think bringing someone home implies a boyfriend.” 

“You know Paris likes you right?” Nina smirked. , blushing.

“I am aware,” y/n admitted. She knew partly his infatuation had given them the Saturday night gig. She smiled, for the first time she wasn't invisible as usual.

Clara laughed, “Oh, and do you like him?” 

“He’s easy on the eye,” y/n rolled her eyes, her cheeks were flustered. “But in all honesty, I don’t want to… I’m not looking for anything, you know, Nina here is the love of my life so I don’t need anyone else.” 

Nina grinned. “I am her soulmate, that’s true.” 

“Besides, I’m more worried about music, and music is my one true other love, I can’t focus on anything else.” 

And she really didn’t want to focus on anything else. Perhaps, it may have been because she’d never yearned for love. She’d never suffered a broken heart, and she’d never felt that spark. 

That was a lie. 

She could only imagine it. But she didn’t know how it felt. She had always wondered how it would feel, if there truly were butterflies and a tickle in your skin. She wondered if love sounded like a gentle guitar weeping. She wondered if the world actually stopped, all of sudden only with a smile. She wondered if time really stopped ticking when it was felt. Did it taste as sweet as honey? Did it taste bitter? What did love smell like? Was it soft? Was it rough? 

Y/N always questioned why love had always hidden from her. She wondered how long love would take, because it seemed late enough. She’d been asleep for too long. 

She always wanted to love, without thinking, that never ending, the kind of love that is brainless, that makes you foolish. Y/N wanted to laugh, to cry and to feel. 

She knew her heart was special enough. Did no one want it?

And she knew Paris liked her, but she knew he wasn’t love. And she wanted to have it, she didn’t want to imagine it anymore. She wanted to be proven wrong, or proven right. 

To feel naked and yet warmed with the sun. Y/N always thought love would feel like a sunset. To love so passionately. To feel like you might die if you’re not around. She wanted to give her heart, to wake up with the stars wrapping you around in a haze. 

She could only wish. But right now, she was no one. And she knew she'd stay like that.

Or would she? 

Later, when the shadows can no longer be seen as the moon is your only companion, Maverick, Ben and Tom waited outside Verona. A lavender smoke surrounded the air and it held a promise for luck. The gig was about to start, and it was a full house. 

Stardust was the correct theme for the night. People dressed in bright, nightly gowns, girls with stars around their eyes. Moons, stars, angels, devil and gods. Greek goddesses, euphoric galaxies. 

The three of them, dressed to the nines, with masks around their eyes, giving imagination a go. Maverick, one of Tom’s oldest friends, stood right beside him. A sturdy man, tall, and handsome. Blue eyed knight, some liked to call him. He’d dressed as a galaxy, a starry, blue, litmus shirt, and a black mask to accentuate the oceans in his eyes. 

Ben, on the other side, only wore a white blanket around, a greek god had been his inspiration. A golden mask posed on his nose. 

And then, Tom, who had decided to go for something completely different. He’d worn a black, satin buttoned up just halfway the chest. A black mask, with golden feathers on the corners, to combine with the golden, covered in dark ashed pair of wings on his back. 

He’d learned from Maverick that Rosie would be there, so eventually he had to show off. Icarus, he’d gone as Icarus. 

They’d blended in with another group, and were astounded by the transformation of the place. Stars and suns hanging from the city, glitter and stars on the floor. Pink, lavender and blue lights, as if stardust had really covered the place. 

A fortune teller on one corner, with a bright neon sign behind her. Wings, feathers, and fabrics. 

“Jesus,” Maverick said. “If they keep going like this, you guys are going to actually strip on stage next time to stay relevant.” 

Tom only glanced around. “This feels like a dream.” 

Maverick scrunched his nose at his comment and Ben only chuckled as he arrived with the drinks. Unfortunately they hadn’t recognized them so he could get a bucket of beer. 

“Just drink, buddy,” Maverick handed a beer. 

There was something in the air, Tom could feel it. “I’m serious,” he said 

“Oh yes, yes, the old dream fairy visited you and gave you a glimpse of your future.” 

“Fuck off.” 

Before he continued, they were interrupted. “Well, hello, hello! What a lovely scene!” Billie said into her mic,  her stand was covered with flowers. Everyone turned to the stage, a projection of stars fell on her face. She had a glass in her hand. “I’m so fucking happy everyone could make it, and y’all look so hot.” 

A few laughs, cheers, whistles and clapping. Tom watched her, she was dressed with a dark blue dress, covered in small, silver moons combining with her silver mask, with stars coming out of it, surrounding her head. 

“I’m so glad everyone stayed on theme, but I do see someone dressed as a ghost, not sure if it’s the right vibe, but you do you buddy,” she smirked. “Anyway, I’m so happy that you joined us tonight. So, some of you may already know us, you know the gist,  we will play fun tunes for you, while y’all enjoy a drink, and you can sing and dance along. Are y’all with a drink already?” 

A loud cheer. 

“Amazing, I have a drink here myself, so cheers,” she took a sip. “I’ll be joined by my beautiful comrades over here.” 

Louder cheer, claps and a room full of noise. Tom had never been to one of their gigs, and the vibe was different from theirs. Cap was better at crowd work than he was. Monty usually talked and turned on the audience, promising Tom would take off his clothes. He never did. 

Seemed, however, the Capulet’s fanbase was more intense and devoted, rather than thirsting for them. Although he could see some people in the crowd were certainly not complaining about Cap. 

“Alright, I’m so I see a few new faces over here, I’m glad to see you so I’ll introduce these beautiful ladies,” she smirked. “And tonight’s the first night one of them is joining so make sure y’all clap and have this loud ass cheer, okay? We want her to feel welcome, so I want you to fucking scream and lose your minds for her, okay? or else I’ll beat your asses.” Laughs. 

“So first, let’s welcome the love of my life, Clara, who’s on the bass,” Clara walked in to say hello. Cheers, claps. 

Maverick, Ben and Tom all stared at each other. They’d never seen this kind of crowd. 

The girls kept walking in, as the cheers got louder each time. “Amazing, then we have our sexy Georgia on the drums, our lovely cute Sam on the keyboard. We have this hot badass on the guitar, bass, and fuckin’ ell everything that we need her on, please welcome Theodora.” 

Tom bit his lip, expectant. Why were they leaving the last one for the end? 

The place was moving. 

“But we know why you all are here, tonight all of this is for our newest member. Who isn’t exactly new. She’s been behind the scenes this whole time, she’s written some of your favorites like… Milky Twilight,” Billie smirked. “Flowers for two… Table for one… Yeah, yeah I know, and so many more, like our fan favorite Star shaped heart.” 

Ben and Tom were panicking. They had efinitely heard those songs. One of them was even  recorded already, and they had heard a rumour that it would be on the radio. Star shaped heart was the Capulet’s song. They’d always believed that Cap had written them so to hear the actual mastermind behind those, was terrifying for them. 

“and I’m so fucking happy she finally is on stage,” Billie said. “Please, welcome my younger sister, the talented, beautiful and brilliant y/n!” 

And Tom felt like he had been hit by a car. The girl had walked into the stage to the warmest, loudest crowd. The entire room had gone absolutely crazy. 

Yet, Tom felt the most calm, as he laid eyes on her. The whole world had stopped. Like an angel had flown over. A golden, long gown, folded, falling down all the way. As if sun rays were coming out of her, she was the purest light,  brighter than the sun, prettier than any of the skies above. Like she was floating above them all, flying. She was the sun.

Tom held in his breath as he watched her. It was a dream, it had to be, what else could it be instead? Maybe a wish, of one of those you wish upon a star.

“Okay, okay, so you guys all know us,” Cap said. “I’m Billie, but y’all can call me Cap. We’re The Capulets!” 

And they started to play. And Tom’s eyes could only be on her, her. And her name was roaming in his mind, the sweetest melody. A diamond. With a guitar covered in star stickers

The played a few songs and Tom finally tried to approach the stage as soon as Billie announced they’d get a break. He had actively avoided and ignored Ben’s and Mavericks comments. They continued to drink. 

Tom was in awe,and he couldn’t even hide it. 

Someone had noticed it. 

Theodora approached Billie. “We seem to have a stowaway,” she warned Cap, motioning to the stupid kid. 

Cap turned and saw him, lost and confused, watching them with veneration. 

“I’ll beat the shit out of him if you need me to,” Theodora said.

“Is that Tom?” Cap questioned, she’d never seen him here before, and honestly, she was too happy to care. “Ah, don’t bother, he is no trouble.” 

“But--” 

“We can’t have trouble, Theo,” she warned. “If we cause any mess Skylar will kick us out, alright?” 

Theo wasn’t pleased with that answer. They both were left too busy to see Tom had finally approached the sunlight herself. Who was currently by the bar, attempting to get a drink.

And so Icarus made his way to the sun. 

He only knew he wanted something, one kiss. That’s all he needed. But he couldn’t start with that. But there she was, alone with what seemed all the spotlights and yet no one approached her. How could they not?

He followed after her, as she was making her way out the backdoor. He guessed she thought no one was following her.

“Hey," his voice was soft.

The girl turned around, slightly startled, and it had been as if she’d been hit by the same bus as him. “Oh, hi.”  

-

wanna be tagged?

i'm tagging some friends and some who asked, if you want to be added to the taglist tell me if you want to be removed, no worries tell me as well! :)

tags: @lnmp89 @blondygwendy @dangerousluv1 @love-granger @kikiwritesfanfics @astoldbydanid @erodasghosts @peterdarlingg @hollandweather @annathesillyfriend @mannien @sukunababe @adoredire @whosyourgnomie4

character glossary

prologue

next chapter

masterlist

[kasmusser]

Pale regency romance AU go

Lady Lucille 'Lucy' Ellingson (plus her friends, Lady Verona & Lady Aver) and Lady Liberty Tedd debut the same summer, both chaperoned by their singular living parent. Jasmine because her territory is small, Anthem because he is that girl dad & wants to be their for his daughter & pick out the most optimal husband/wife for her.

Jasmine and Anthem bond over being widows and miss the massive amounts of gay girl drama Avery, Liberty and servant girl Nora (Oh how scandalous, class difference!) get into before settling into a polycule. Anthem is so distracted by falling in love with Jasmine over stupid shit like shared trauma & relatable experiences as single parents.

Anyways, Anthem is the last person to find out about the three way engagement so he decides that a trial by combat is the best way to test his daughter's girlfriends. Avery accepts on her own behalf because she's good at hitting people with sticks & Lucy accepts on Nora's because she can see how happy this will make her friend. Avery & Lucy win enough points in the duel that Anthem accepts the engagement. Lucy goes from girl who no one is approaching because no one knows her to girl no one is approaching because she is too cool. Being Lucy is misery.

Lucy also ends up to be the last one to know about Anthem and Jasmine's engagement. She finds out through Liberty walking over to her & going: "I think you're really cool, but I'm not going to call you sister off the bat, sorry" & Lucy has to play catch up quick to find out that the dude she just fought is going to be her step dad.

At some point during all this mess Verona & McCaughleigh start hanging out and planning to elope to run away from their sucky fathers together. Originally they plan on swearing an oath of sisterhood, but they read a few bylaws & figured out a few bits of how people interact & noted that they'd be more respected socially & protected legally if married so they run off into the woods one day to get hitched (platonically (mostly(but not romantically))).

[melis-writes]

hello !!! i’m a very huge fan of your fic moth to flame and i have just finished reading all of it in one sitting on ao3 😭. i just wanted to share that in one of your alternate endings for the last chapter of part 1 where you showed a grown-up niccolo, i don’t know why but i pictured him as alex turner (idk if you know him or anything) bc alex turner resembles michael corleone in a weird way that my brain just... pictures him as grown-up niccolo bc you have always described him like the mini version of michael 😭

i wanted to know if you have a specific face claim for both niccolo and verona – and if you have, i probably haven’t seen it yet bc i just downloaded tumblr and have yet to stalk your account !!

anyways, i really really really love your work and i just admire the way you write. your writing style is immaculate and absolutely beautiful i just can’t keep my eyes away from the screen once i started reading. lots of love <3

Oh my gosh, hello!! 🥹❤️ You read that ENTIRE fic in just ONE sitting?!? 😭😭 THE DEDICATION. That's amazing!! 🥹 I hope you loved every bit of it hehe.

I do have a face claim for Niccolo!! I swear I think I've heard someone say Alex Turner before, he kinda reminds me of a faceclaim for a bad boy in the 60s. 🤭 I can't unsee an '80s Hugh Grant being an older Niccolo! ✨ He just seems like the perfect faceclaim for Niccolo tbh!

For Verona, I don't have a faceclaim yet nor can I come up with one for some reason 😭😭 but with every character, I'm open to all ideas and suggestions for faceclaims always! 💓

Thank you so much for your sweet and kind words!! 😭❤️😭 That means so much to me! Lots of love right back to you, sweet anon! 🥰

[pollywiltse]

I just had this epiphany which I hope to God I'm wrong about. Please please please tell me that D. A. B. Ronald did not logic out that André and Anna Seward must have met at a Shakespeare masquerade ball where John went as Falstaff from The Merry Wives of Windsor and Anna went as Julia from Two Gentlemen of Verona because of the bit in one letter where John tells Anna that he's worried that what he's just written will remind her of Falstaff's letters to Mistress Ford and Mistress Page and the fact that he calls her "Julia" in all of his letters respectively.

Because absolutely nothing about that paragraph had sources, and Ronald claims that those parts of André's letters are references to the supposed masquerade ball, even though I know that Falstaff bit is definitely not, because that letter is readily available online and I've read it, and also I am at least that familiar with The Merry Wives of Windsor to understand his actual reference. (And you can be too, if you spend five minutes reading the Wikipedia summary. But also people in my high school Shakespeare class did the scene where the title characters are like "lol Falstaff sent us the exact same love letter. Let us troll him elaborately".) (Also I swear to God I read somewhere that "Julia" was not an André-specific nickname for her and it was from a Rousseau novel, but I can't for the life of me remember where, so it may also have been from a batshit insane source.)

As hilarious as the mental image of a delicate nineteen-year-old dressed up as Falstaff of all people is.

The Daigler book sucked, incidentally.

[wahlpaper]

Some Girls Do Review

Some Girls Do by Jennifer Dugan

CW: Abusive Parent, Emotional Abuse, Physical Abuse, Homophobia, Queerphobia, Legal Struggles, College Admission Struggles, Money Problems, Swearing, Underage Drinking, Blood, Violence, Discussion of Sex, Mentioned Transphobia, Outing, Bullying, Domestic Abuse, Misogyny, Classism, Slut-Shaming

5/5

Sometimes a book will give you something you weren't expecting. In my case, Jennifer Dugan's Some Girls Do gave me closure for Hayley Kiyoko's Girls Like Girls novel. They each have a relationship with a similar dynamic, even though they're set 15 years apart. It's what Kiyoko's book should have been. Some Girls Do also made me understand why I still had a draw to Dugan's writing despite her other books (more on this later). This novel was so sweet and well written, and it also understood how to handle the heavy material included.

Some Girls Do starts when Morgan transfers to a new school near the end of the school year in her senior year of high school. Ruby runs into her that day, almost. Despite their rocky start, these two girls can't help but be interested in the life of the other. Morgan is facing a legal battle with her old school, which had discriminated against her for being a lesbian. She's a track star, but this is leaving her future in question. Ruby is seen as white trash because she's poor and does pageants at her mother's request. Except she doesn't have much control over her life at all. What she wants is to fix cars, and she might have a plan to do that. Will Morgan and Ruby be able to help each other or will they make things worse?

My first introduction to Dugan was Hot Dog Girl. I liked the book well enough, I even recommended it to a few people. Ultimately, the relationship didn't really work in it. The love interest deserved better than the main character. I tried Verona Comics next. Shakespeare, comics, and a bi dude? That absolutely sold it! Unfortunately, the relationship was so toxic that I'm not sure how I made it through the book. Despite only having read these two books by Dugan, I never swore off her writing. Her books have been on my radar. I can tell they do well because there's always a line on Libby. I'm careful about putting books on hold because I don't want them all to come in at once, but I finally put two more of Dugan's books on hold (look out for Love at First Set in the future!). I'm glad I did, as I was enamored with Some Girls Do the whole time.

It should come as no surprise by this point that the thing I valued the most in Some Girls Do was the relationship between Morgan and Ruby. Only one was out and both were experiencing queerphobia within their communities. Morgan had recently left a bad relationship and Ruby didn't feel safe enough to commit to one, no matter the gender. There were a lot of chances for their relationship to not work, but the book explored what they could do about that. It never felt like Dugan was asking us to accept a situation that felt toxic as romantic. She learned, for sure. She also included a range of queer experiences and showed the importance of queer spaces for teenagers. Other queer identities included in this novel were trans, non-binary, and pansexual. Different experiences and situations were also explored. Not everyone has the same queer experience, but we can still be stronger and safer together. 

One thing I enjoy about Some Girls Do is that not everything has to be neatly tied up or turn out the way you expect for the characters to find happiness or a good future. The book absolutely has an ending, but there's the suggestion that the story is still ongoing for Morgan and Ruby. They still have things to face and enjoy in the future, but we got to be there while they went through this part. Although the pacing was confusing at times it didn't affect my appreciation of the novel. Dugan is great with plot and world-building, and now characters too. This book was released back in 2021, so I'm excited to see how she's grown since!

If you're looking for a heavy but wholesome queer teen love story, Some Girls Do by Jennifer Dugan is a great option. You'll get rewarded with 2 whole instances of the title being said by characters, relatable queer thoughts, and lines that make you laugh out loud. Go on and give the book a try, you know that some girls do!

[anotherhawk]

Mechtober day 8 - movie night

The planet behind them was nothing more than a smoking cinder and for once they hadn't been even indirectly involved. There had been stories there, ones worth telling maybe, but they had all reached a premature conclusion when the power plant at the planet's core unexpectedly exploded. Maybe there might've been a story there too, but now no one knew it, and the tale Jonny had been watching unfold, a doomed love story between the heirs of the Montague and Capulet private armies, had ended in unforseen mass tragedy, rather than the tragedy he had very much forseen. And as if that wasn't depressing enough, in their rush to get off planet he'd left behind the new coat he'd got himself, which had been the perfect weight to swoosh dramatically.

"Stop sulking," Nastya told him, throwing a wrench at him. It only glanced off his shoulder so evidently she wasn't too annoyed with him yet.

Nevertheless,  he glared at her. "I'm not sulking, I'm contemplating the futility of human tragedy."

"You are a human tragedy," Tim said cheerfully, walking by with his arms full of the guns he'd purloined from the Montague armoury. Because apparently Raphaella had warned some people in plenty of time for them to grab their stuff before they bugged out. 

He couldn't even be bothered to shoot him.

"Right," Ashes voice echoed from some distant part of the ship. "First night back on board. You all know what that means - movie night! Nastya, Ivy, try and actually show up this time. Tim, no more Buster Keaton, I swear to god. Toy Soldier - "

" - I Will Make Popped Corn!" it interjected, somehow coming up behind Jonny even though he had been slouching against the back wall.

"Fuck, I thought we'd lost you."

"Fortunately You Had Not."

"Jonny, quit sulking."

"Right," Marius agreed, advancing towards him, arms outstretched. "Because nothings going to cheer our Jonny up like movie night in the bosom of his dearest - "

Nastya hit him over the head with a wrench before Jonny could shoot him. "It is polite to seek permission before hugging."

Marius blinked up at them from the floor. "So murder is fine without consent, but not hugging?!"

Jonny and Nastya looked at each other. 

"Yeah."

"Yes."

*

Movie night on the Aurora was always held in the rec room on level 3. It didn't have the largest screen, but it did have the longest, comfiest sofa, on which Raphaella, Tim, Ivy and Ashes were seated, with Marius lying lengthways along them, his head resting comfortably in Ivy's lap. Brian, who was weird and liked a straight back seat,  had dragged a dining room chair into the room but brought it close enough to the sofa that Ashes could throw their feet in his lap, and he could paint their toenails, while Tim did their fingernails. Jonny, physically incapable of just sitting and watching a movie, was slouched sideways in a beanbag chair, a pile of mending in his lap. The Toy Soldier, wanting to be useful, was sitting confusingly beside him, holding spare needles and thread, its head on his ankle  its feet twisted round Brian's. Above them, Nastya was lying down on her front, leaning out of the vent, one hand clasped around one of Aurora's terminal screens, the other reaching down and playing with Jonny's hair. 

"I managed to pick up a fair representation of Verona's cinema before its untimely destruction," Ivy said, holding up a datapad. "I've highlighted a few that I calculated would appeal to the greatest number of us while causing the least number of fights." 

Marius grabbed the pad out of her hand. "'Andronicus the Butcher'...uh oh, it's recent and based on a true story. Jonny? Tim? Ashes? Anyone want to own up to this?"

"Um, actually that one was me," Brian said awkwardly.

They all looked at him. 

He rubbed at the back of his neck. "There was a really good reason?"

Tim grinned. "Okay, now I want to see it."

So did Jonny, to be honest, but still. "What happened to the old rule?" he objected. "Stupidest death gets to choose the movie."

Ivy sighed. "When we do it that way, ninety-three percent of the time the victor is either you or Tim, with Raphaella accounting for most of what remains."  

"She makes a good point," Ashes said. "Not all of us are stupid enough to die stupidly."

"Though I did die while trying sword swallowing this time out, so I'm willing to throw my hat in the ring," Marius said cheerfully, rolling onto his back and immediately getting into an elbow battle with Tim. 

"I choked to death on the frog I was dissecting," Raphaella offered.

"I lost a bet and had to eat a tree."

"I Did Not Die But I Had To Saw My Leg Off In Order To Make A Raft."

"Wait...you're made of wood, don't you float?"

"Yes?"

"...nevermind."

"Well, I was killed by a swan."

Once again everyone looked at Brian.

"Is that going to be in the film?" Jonny asked, wavering.

Brian looked resigned. "Probably."

"Alright then. 'Brian the Butcher' it is."

[usagiblackrose]

💜 Honeymoon Volume 1: Track 6 💜

Drama CD. Honeymoon. Volume 1

[VA: Daisuke Hirakawa - Hanamori Yuuto]

Country: Italy

Audio

Note: I'm only the poster of this translation. The original translator wishes to remain anonymous.

[1] - [2] - [3] - [4] - [5] - [6] - [7] - [8] - [9] - [10] - [11]

Translation under the cut

~Track 6~

Milan, where we stayed yesterday was an urban and fashionable city. Yes, this is a present from me.

*giggles* It’s the handbag you saw at the boutique in Milan, I secretly bought it.

*giggles*

It wasn’t hot but it is our honeymoon, and it suits you well, so I really wanted to buy it, so please don’t hesitate to take it.

Good, please, I’m happy to see you smile.

Even so, the scenery of Verona is different from the pleasant scenes of Milan, it gives it a sense of history.

While Verona isn’t as famous as Milan or Rome, I still wanted to come.

The reason to go to that place that I just saw in front of me.

This is Juliet’s home, which was the model for Romeo and Juliet and Romeo and Juliet was a play written in Verona.

You know about Romeo and Juliet right?

Romeo, the son of the Montague family fell in love with Juliet, the daughter of the Capulet family. However, they weren’t close due to the conflict between their respective families, that’s why they asked Lawrence, who had been instructing them, to marry them in secret.

However, Romeo’s best friend is killed by Tybalt, a member of the Capulet family, an angered Romeo killed Tybalt in retaliation, which lead to him being exiled from Verona. When Juliet’s father demanded that she marry another, she consulted Lawrence and they decided to carry out a plan using a poison.

However, the entire plan does not get communicated to Romeo, who believed that Juliet was dead. He took poison and killed himself. And when Juliet found Romeo dead, she too killed herself to join him, and the two families who now knew everything reconciled.

The end.

It’s a really sad story, even though they were generally in love. That’s right the balcony in this courtyard was the model for the famous balcony scene.

And in the back of it all was Juliet. There’s a lot of letters on the walls of the house and they are letters addressed to her by her love-stricken visitors. And it’s seems that Juliet’s people will write a proper reply to a love consultation letter.

Hey, why don’t we write a letter to Juliet? It should be okay to write a letter even if you’re not in love. I’ll write about you, so you won’t write about me.

All right. It looks like you also hang it, so I’m going to put our letter on the wall.

Eh? You thought of me that way?

It’s kind of embarrassing. I’m sorry, couldn’t you go if I’m called? I was curious about how you wrote about me. Of course it’s okay, I’ll read the letter I wrote.

”Dear Lady Juliet, I’m very happy now, I was able to meet and bond with someone I love from the bottom of my heart. I swear to you that I will love her for the rest of my life no matter what.”

This is how I feel about you. Did it touch you? It was good. I love you and I want to embrace you forever.

[End Track 6]

[the-far-bright-center]

#like the things is that the fact Anakin could love so deeply was one of his virtues!#not just love but his anger at injustice! I love thinking about Anakin swearing he'd free the slaves#and Anakin's love and his anger are traits Luke AND Leia both share! they're foundational to who they are!#the difference is both of them had the tools and environment to process and use those emotions properly#the Jedi were unequipped to deal with someone motivated by love and anger. Palpatine was also grooming Anakin and it's insane#that anyone would give some old man unsupervised access to a child in their care but maybe that's just more proof#of how fucked up the Senate is that that behaviour can go unremarked#but my point is that love and anger are both considered virtues in the Original Trilogy#I also wonder if maybe part of it is because most people focus on love as Anakin's love for Padme which is romantic?#like people get weirdly dismissive about the power of romantic love on tumblr sometimes#but while Padme is certainly the major one because she's the one he can express love freely with and have it reciprocated#Anakin also loved Obi-wan but they can only say it when fighting to the death#hell Anakin fucking adored his mother and he can only see her on her deathbed#the issue isn't that Anakin loves (or gets angry). it's that he's has an upbringing and is in an environment and has experiences#that make it incredibly difficult to love healthily#like the point is that Jedi can certainly feel love but you get the sense they're not supposed to express it towards each other#ANY kind of love. not just romantic#compassion yes. respect yes. but not love#but love is what keeps us grounded where compassion fails to I think#it's messy and not always right but it's very human and necessary where larger systems and ideals fail#you can't just remove fallible but powerful personal relationships from how society functions#not to mention if Anakin wasn't motivated by love... do you think that'd stop Sidious? I'm sorry but ideology can be just as#easily manipulated as love or anger#anyway this is a story with a Cosmically Correct Answer and the answer is Love#the Jedi were not evil. the Jedi were overall good. what happened to them was evil. but they were still wrong#the narrative SAYS THEY WERE WRONG#like the prequels are literally a tragedy the Jedi can be both wrong and have failed and still be good people#who didn't deserve what happened to them#this is a space fairy tale. a greek tragedy combined with the hero's journey. it doesn't have to make real world sense (via @in-fair-verona-we-set-our-scene)

Great tags! And yes, it’s important to note that it wasn't Love (romantic, platonic, or otherwise) that caused Anakin to fall, but rather his Fear of Loss. That oft-quoted line 'beware your heart' is not saying beware of loving people, it's saying beware of 'the dragon of that dead star', aka the fear and the doubt that creeps into Anakin's heart and mind, and which Sidious exploits. And yes, Anakin's ability to love deeply (and to feel righteous anger through that love!) is his STRENGTH. In another version of events, the Jedi would have realised that the fact their Chosen One had been born a slave and had experienced injustice personally actually made him the ideal person to free the galaxy from its chains. The fact that Anakin feels so deeply means he empathises with the plight of the downtrodden peoples of the galaxy in a way that the remote Jedi high in their ivory tower (who have removed personal connections from their lives) simply cannot. We're supposed to see that the Jedi failed to appreciate this aspect of him, because they didn't understand the true meaning of the Chosen One prophecy or HOW it had to be fulfilled (aka through an act of self-sacrifice performed out of love, the only way to break the cycle of retaliatory violence). They thought Anakin needed to be a 'perfect' Jedi in the Old Order's definition of one, when what Anakin needed was simply to be permitted to LOVE and BE LOVED, and to have the unconditional love of his family. Love and family are two things clearly forbidden to the Prequels-era Jedi, and yet these are what saves the galaxy.

I think there’s something rather strange going on with all the folks who insist that the Jedi Order in the PT was right and didn’t forbid love and Anakin should just have followed their teachings when the whole point of the prequels is that they are prequels. They come before the OT, and the OT proves the Jedi wrong. They literally do not make sense if they don’t do that.

Luke, in the original trilogy, gains his ultimate triumph, his ultimate victory, because he loved in defiance of the teachings of the old Order. He quite literally had the ghosts of the past telling him, explicitly and without ambiguity, that he has to put his love for his father aside and kill him, as is the duty of a Jedi. Luke has the weight of millennia of teachings weighing down on his shoulders, telling him they knew and know better than a young, inexperienced man barely out of his teenager years. That he should follow their teachings or be destroyed. That is an immense weight to carry, and many people would and explicitly have given in to it in-universe. What are your feelings and ideals in the face of such immense legacy, after all?

But Luke doesn’t give in.

He doesn’t bend.

He says “I may be young, and I may be new, but I believe to my heart and soul that love matters more than this legacy. Matters more than your teachings.” And he says this to the ghosts of his mentors. That is such a powerful moment and one I can’t believe George Lucas didn’t create it deliberately for even a second. This young man, being told he has to kill or die trying for a system that is dead or dying itself, that couldn’t survive itself, and refusing to do so. He is the living refusing to continue the violence of a dead generation. He is the young man refusing the draft into a war the old generation started, saying “peace and love matters more than you being right.” He is the embodiment of breaking the cycle.

And the movies vindicate him.

The main villain vindicates him with his last dying breath.

Darth Vader, dying, says “You were right.” and admits he and his were wrong. The main antagonist, Luke’s nemesis, in the face of his son’s immense, defiant love, gives way and does the impossible: he comes back to the light and dies a Jedi. The very thing the old Order says was impossible.

They were wrong. They have to be. The narrative demands it, the movies don’t make sense without it.

The solution was never to continue the cycle of the old Order, or Luke would have failed there, would have failed when he said “I am a Jedi, like my father before me.” And claimed that defiant, deviant, condemned definition of being a Jedi over the one presented to him by the Grandmaster of the old Order. If the old Order was right, Luke would have to be wrong. Be wrong about love, be wrong about laying down the sword, be wrong about refusing to fight. He would have to be wrong.

But the old Order is dead, explicitly killed by a monster, in some part, of their own making. It’s members only existing as bones in the ground or ghosts speaking from beyond the grave. They did not deserve it, it should not have been inflicted on them, but the narrative is clear on this: “The old way is dead, and was dying for a long time before that. Long live the new.”

Luke is that new. Luke is the breaking of the cycle, the reforging of swords into ploughs, the extended hand. Luke says “I don’t care how much I was hurt, I refuse to hurt you back, and you don’t need to hurt me either.”

“We can end this together and choose love instead.”

And Darth Vader, killer of the Jedi, End of the Order, lays down his arms as well, and reaches back as Anakin, saying “You were right.”

It wasn’t Obi-Wan, Yoda, Mace, Qui-Gon, or even Ahsoka who achieved the ultimate victory in the end, following the tenants of the old Order. It was Luke. Young, inexperienced Luke, who saw that the age of legacy handed to him was only history, that the sword handed to him as his life was only a tool, and that the decrees of the dead were only advice. And he took it all, said “thank you for your experience, but I’ve got it from here,” and laid it all down to instead extend an open hand towards his enemy.

And his victory, his ultimate triumph, his vindication, was that he was proven right when his enemy reached back and became just another person. Just another person, just like him.

The Jedi did not deserve what happened to them, and they did not deserve to die. But the story is clear on this: the Jedi of old were wrong, and the Jedi of new, the Last Jedi, was right. No sword or death will ever end the rule of the sword or end the bloodshed. But love?

Love can ignite the stars.

[xbarrjallenx]

Hi hun! I'm curious about... 2, 4, 10 and 21!^^

Helloo lovely!

2. do you prefer spending your holidays in your country or travel abroad? 

- Let’s say that I have visited many famous cities here: Milan, Venice, Verona, Florence and Rome. They are amazing, historical cities, but I prefer travelling abroad.

4. favourite dish specific for your country?

- This isn’t hard! My favourite is definitely be pizza. My favourite pizza is either “Margarita”, pizza crust with only tomato sauce and mozzarella, or “Burratina”, pizza crust with tomato sauce, mozzarella, rocket salad, dried tomatoes and burrata cheese on top. Burrata is a full fat soft cheese made from Apulia, a southern region in Italy.

Many famous dishes are also from Italy, like pasta, risotto and tiramisù.

10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language? 

- Italian language is full of swear words. Sometimes, we use bad words to emphasize the phrase and we also use different gestures to express ourselves. The most heard word is “cazzo”, which means “dick” in english. We also use “merda”, which means “shit”, and “puttana”, which means “bitch”.

21. if you could send two things from your country into space, what would they be?

- Definitely a soccer ball and, i don’t know, a pizza? HAHAHAHA I don’t have any idea.

Thank you for the questions!

“Hi, I’m not from the US” ask set