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saffusthings · 6 days

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It's Written All Over Your Face

oscar piastri x personal assistant! reader

summary: the one where they learn feelings can be messy. and weird. word count: 15.9k (...) warnings: abuse aftermath, a sprinkle of angst, don't try this at home kids, poorly edited writing a/n: i have a love/hate relationship with my writing of this chapter, but it seems alright. but it's got a couple scenes i'm excited for y'all to see :) also mc is a Hot Mess but i love her sm

Part 1 | Part 2

“O- Oscar,” she trembles, too busy to be bothered to be professional. “I think s- something’s wrong…”

He pulls her in tightly, letting her head rest against his shoulder.

"Shhh," he whispers. "I'm here. It's okay."

He's trying to be strong for her. He knows that she needs it right now, and even though something inside him is vibrating with fear.

She covered another cough with her hand, only to find it smeared a deep red.

Oh, that's blood.

"Y/N, what happened?" He finds himself asking, even though he already knows the answer.

“I don- I don’t know,” she wheezes.

It’s been a few minutes since Oscar went into the bathroom. Lando also doesn’t hear any of the tell tale signs of two people… well, getting it on - so tentatively, he calls out for his teammate. “Everything alright, Osc?”

"No" Oscar finally manages to get out, his voice choked and thick. "Things don’t look too good. Can you… Can you go get help?"

“What?” Lando rushes in at the first sign that something is not right.

He turns to give Lando a panicked look, his eyes wide and desperate. "I don't know what's wrong - just go get help or something!" he demands, desperate for someone, anyone to help them.

He wants to run his fingers through her hair again - wants to be able to soothe her - but he's worried he'll make it worse somehow.

This can't be happening. This isn’t fair.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come t-to lunch. I was g- going to, b-but…”

Her hands feel cold. Why are they cold?

"No, no," he says, giving her his most convincing smile. "Don't talk, don't apologize - just breathe. Breathe."

He's saying the words just as much to himself, he thinks. His mouth has gone completely dry, and he's sweating profusely. He can't tell if it's from the heat or terror or both.

Lando grabs his keys and reappears in a moment. “We’re going to the hospital. I’ll drive.”

He nods numbly, before forcing himself to think straight. This is not the time.

He tries to figure out how to do that. He's going to have to do most of the work here, but she's already weak as it is. He's going to have to try and carry her. When they finally reach the car, what feels like months later, Lando gestures for Oscar to ride in the back with her.

“Think she’d want you with her,” he explains quietly, before opening the driver’s seat and getting in. Oscar gives the older man a nod, climbing into the back of the car.

She's so out of it now, his efforts to sit her up only causing her to cough harder. He tries to keep his hold on her strong, trying his best to keep her upright on his lap so she'll have an easier time breathing.

"It's okay," he keeps whispering to her, countless times. "It's okay."

“It…” Her speech is getting more and more strained as time passes. “Hurts.”

He gives her a pained smile, trying to hide how absolutely horrible this is really going.

"Hey, I know it hurts right now," he says quietly. "But it's all going to be okay. We're on our way to the hospital now, okay? You've just gotta hold on. You can do that, can't you? Hold on for me, I know you can."

She wraps one of her hands around one of his. The touch is soft, gentle.

It takes him a few minutes to realize that it’s meant to be a firm grip on his hand.

He feels completely useless - more useless than he's felt in his life. He wants to be able to do something, help her out in some way - but he can't. He's helpless here, completely at the mercy of whatever is happening to her right now.

That's something that makes his stomach turn in terror. He's never been this scared for someone else's life before - and he doesn't like it.

As her eyes become half-lidded, he turns to face Lando.

“What do I do? Something is wrong with her, and I can’t tell what the fuck it is,” Oscar asks, frustrated, an undercurrent of panic in his tone.

"Hey, hey, just concentrate on getting her to stay awake, okay? She just needs to stay conscious. Just keep her talking, just anything. Doesn't matter what it is," he reassures him - although honestly, he's feeling just as scared, just as anxious as Oscar. His friend is coughing up blood in his backseat, and these cars ahead just won’t fucking move. In his mind, all he keeps hoping for is that they'll make it just one damn minute closer to the hospital. Just one more minute.

He starts to rub her sides gently - trying to get her to focus. His face is the picture of calm, a soft small on his lips as he soothes her.

"I'm sorry I got grumpy at you earlier. You didn't deserve that. I'll make it up to you later, I promise," he says.

“…Yeah?” She smiles weakly, trying to make him feel a bit better.

"Yeah, I will," he says, trying to sound brave.

Once they reach the hospital, Oscar wraps her arms around his shoulders as he works to prop her up, supporting her weight. He ends up looping an arm underneath both of hers, before he practically drags her along with him. They inch towards the doors of the emergency room, Oscar hoping against all hope that she's still conscious.

He can manage anything - he'll work through absolutely anything if she's okay.

There are no clear images - the entire rush of the hospital sounds like it’s happening… underwater?

She can vaguely register that she’s in someone’s arms - probably Oscar’s. The ceiling lights look more like blurry blobs, disfigured and unclear. She tries her best to keep her eyes open.

Oscar is the one to spot a couple of nurses walking out of the double doors, and instantly, starts striding up to them in a panic. "Excuse me? Help, please!" he calls out desperately.

He's trying to keep his voice from shaking, trying to get her to a hospital bed - and fast. His voice draws the gaze of the nurses, who look at them in astonishment, their eyes widening at the sight of the blood on her shirt. Immediately, they snap out of their stupor and get to work.

"Bring the gurney over!" one of them cries out, as they push one the double doors open, allowing him to rush into the hospital - the girl now limp in his arms.

“…O-Osc?”

He hears the sound of her small voice, the word coming out broken and barely there. She’s speaking, barely, and for now, this is enough assurance for him that she's okay.

"Oh, hey - it's okay, we're at the hospital now. You're gonna be okay, okay? Just hold on to me a little longer. We're gonna get you to a doctor, and it's all gonna be good - you'll see," he tries to reassure her, his hands gripping her shoulders gently - keeping her in his arms.

“I can’t-“ she wheezes out. “Can’t–“

He hears the sound of her labored breathing, and his eyes widen in panic.

"Shhh, shhh, it's okay,” he coos gently.” You don't have to talk - just keep breathin’, alright? You just have to keep breathing," he tells her, voice straining to stay even, his knuckles going white with how hard they're gripping her.

“Can’t breathe–“ she finally manages to get out.

His eyes search desperately around for help, for a nurse, a doctor, somebody to come and help her. He’s just about to resume shouting for help when, like a breath of fresh air, he hears the clatter of the gurney being wheeled in, and two nurses pushing it up to him - ready to load her into the gurney.

"Just stay awake," he tells her desperately, his face going deathly pale as she is shifted from his grasp. He only just manages to keep the sob of relief in his throat as he watches them wheel her away from him, towards a trauma room.

The sound around him feels like it fades in and out - distant shouts for an IV, for blood, about a fracture causing a lung puncture leading to internal bleeding. Time is too slow and too fast all at once.

When something pulls at the corner of his mind, it’s only then that Oscar sees Lando trying to get his attention. He feels Lando gently nudging him again, trying to pull him away from the trauma room door - and his head snaps up, almost as if he's been woken up from a deep sleep.

"Huh?" he repeats back to Lando blankly. He blinks and shakes his head, feeling the fogginess in his mind start to clear a little. "What'd you say?"

He feels a little lightheaded - and it takes him a moment to realize it's from the fact that he's still not breathing right, too busy trying to listen to the nurses talk to the doctor through the door. Lando looks at him with a sympathetic expression, pulling him further from the door. "Come on, mate. She's gonna be alright. They've got it handled."

He lets Lando shepherd him towards some of the waiting room chairs - a little bit further away from the door - as he listens desperately, trying to get some hint of what was happening from the murmurs inside.

The only things that actually register in his mind is what he's pretty sure is the sound of beeping heart rate monitors - and the sound of the nurse informing the doctor that there's more bleeding somewhere then they'd originally thought.

For a second time, Lando's voice is what breaks his train of thought.

“I don’t mean to overstep,” he starts cautiously, afraid of setting off an emotional trigger of some sort. “But… do we know what happened?”

He blinks, and tries to focus on Lando, and not the faint sounds coming from the trauma room a few feet away. "I don't know," he tells Lando honestly, his eyes going cold like he's about to say something that he really just doesn't want to admit. "… But I'm betting it had something to do with her parents."

Lando’s not sure he understands. While he doesn’t know the exact nature of whatever is going on between Oscar and his assistant, he knows there’s something there. And he’s willing to bet that that means Oscar is the one who probably knows the most here.

His brows furrow. “What, like she’s sick?”

The younger man nods, his jaw tightening slightly. "Yeah, you could say that."

"I'm fine, Lando," he says quietly when Lando seems to continue to hover nearby - because he thinks maybe Lando's concerned about him, and he needs his best friend to understand that right now, he's okay. "I'm just worried about her."

“And why’s that?” Lando asks knowingly.

"Because she-" he stops himself again, realizing that the one thing he doesn't want to say about her is exactly what he's just about to blurt out. But before he can utter another word, their attention is stolen by commotion in the trauma room.

His head immediately snaps up, eyes wide as he takes in the noise. The heart rate monitor sounds different - the rhythm of the beeping is somehow even more intense. It makes a strange sense of panic encroaching across his chest - the way suspense music in horror movies are meant to, except a dozen times worse.

He can make out the sounds of nurses shouting different medical directives and things to each other.

What the hell is going on in there?

His throat tightens as he takes in the noise. There’s shouting - they're commanding each other to do things, and it sounds like discord. It sounds too hurried, and incessant beeping of the heart rate monitor doesn’t ease up either..

Lando spares a quick glance to check on Oscar, worried for him. He knows this cant be easy for him, and yet, Oscar's face has the serenity of a blank slate. He then turns his attention back to the room, trying to observe and figure out what’s going on through the small windows on the doors to the trauma room. Oscar, of course, does the same.

He can barely see anything through the little window.

It's all flashes of movement, and he's not even sure which colours belong to who - but whatever is happening, it's happening really fast. The nurses are still shouting and the heart rate monitor is still beeping furiously and no-one has come out to tell him what's happening, and nothing about this seems remotely okay.

This isn’t real.

This isn’t real. It’s all he can think, feel - over and over again. This isn’t real. This isn’t real.

When Lando turns to look at Oscar, he’s gone pale.

Paler than usual.

“Oscar?” Lando’s voice sounds far away. “Osc? Hey, mate, I need you to look at me, okay? You need to breathe, yeah?” He feels Lando's hands on his face, gripping his chin and turning his head towards him.

He opens his eyes slowly - they're wet.

When did the room start getting blurry for him?

God, this feels like his worst nightmare is coming true.

If Oscar thought he was scared before, when the commotion started?

Then his heart stills in his fucking chest when the commotion is no more.

No.

No, no, no, no.

The silence feels all-encompassing - like it's drowning his senses. His chest feels impossibly tight. The room disappears - the noise around him mutes into a dull roar, and he can't breathe right now. He can't even feel his own fingertips.

“Sir?” A young man tries, attempting to get Oscar’s attention.

His head snaps up at the word, eyes blinking back into sharpness and his vision sharpening in an instant. He looks around, the sound of the nurse's voice bringing him back to his senses.

“Are you…” the young resident checks his clipboard. “… Mr. Piastri?”

The Australian nods quickly, swallowing hard before speaking.

He knows his voice is shaky right now. It's obvious that he's freaked out right now - everyone who walks by him is looking at him like he's going to fall apart, and he would if they'd just tell him what happened to her.

"Y-yeah," he manages, "that's me. That's me. Can you tell me what's going on?"

“Could you provide a valid form of identification? It’s all procedure - we can’t release medical information to anyone except to the emergency contact we have on file,” he explains.

Right. Right.

Provide information. Valid form of ID. Procedure.

It's all very logical. It's all very reasonable.

Oscar nods, reaching for the wallet on the other side of his back pocket. His fingers are only shaking a little, but it takes him an absurdly long time to pull out the card - because he can't remember where he keeps his ID and when he finally does find it, his hands feel some degree of numbness.

Lando puts a warm hand on his. “Mate, breathe,” he whispers, trying to get him to calm down. He’s just watched Oscar fumble with his ID four different times as he fails to slip it out of his wallet.

Lando gives him a small smile that he hopes is at least a little reassuring.

He takes a slow deep breath in and out - his fingers still shaking. Come on, Piastri. He tells himself - but the words ring false in his mind right now when he doesn't feel like he's really fully himself at this very moment.

Someone needs to tell him what's wrong with her.

“Mate, he needs your ID,” Lando grounds him gently.

"Right. Right. Yeah," he agrees, trying to compose himself. It's impossible. He can't think straight.

He finally manages to pry his ID from his shaky fingers, handing it to the man in the powder blue scrubs without another word. The assistant, after taking a moment to confirm, returns his ID and checks his notes before eyeing Lando warily, unsure if he should provide Y/N’s medical update in front of the third party.

He’s not looking to get fired, after all.

When all he gets in turn is a nod of confirmation from her emergency contact, the assistant swallows, and then starts to speak.

"Based on the X-rays and MRI tests, we’ve been able to conclude that Ms. L/N has suffered an extensive lung injury. That's most likely the cause of the bleeding. We've also taken her to intensive care for urgent treatment."

The man in the lab coat hesitates before ultimately continuing.

“Right now, the doctor suspects the cause to be an untreated fracture of her ribs,” he reads off his documents before looking up at Oscar. “We believe that the cracked rib or ribs placed pressure on the lung, causing a puncture and the subsequent internal bleeding.”

Cracked ribs.

He wants to throw up. He thinks he might even dry heave for a second, but he stops himself. "I don't- I don't understand," he tries to say, his voice thick.

Lando watches the blood drain from Oscar's face. He needs to get Oscar out of the situation - out before the dam breaks. So he takes a small step closer and rests a comforting hand on Oscar's shoulder again.

"C'mon," he says gently. "Let's go take a walk, yeah?"

Lando’s caught off guard when Oscar plants himself in that spot, his body resisting the older man’s hold.

"No." he forces himself to say. He can't think straight right now, but he doesn't want to move from the exact spot he's standing in.

He stares at Lando, his jaw clenched, "I'm not leaving until I see her."

“Oscar-,” Lando tries, gently yet firmly using his arm to usher Oscar in the direction of the door leading outside.

He knows what Lando's trying to do - he's trying to help him not freak out in public, he's trying to keep him from falling apart in front of the nurses.

Goddammit, Lando. Leave me alone.

He shakes his head, his hands subtly clenching into fists, "No! I'm not- I don't need to go outside, okay? I'm fine! Just let go of me!"

He glances at Lando, his face desperate, before he repeats his plea, trying to focus on the one thing he wants right now.

"I'm not leaving until we see her."

Lando’s hands come up to both sides of Oscar’s face. They don’t shake him, but they do hold him - Lando’s hands a warm and firm pressure against him. “Mate,” Lando says slowly, evenly. He makes it a point to look him directly in the eyes. “You’re not talking sense. I need to know what’s going on, yeah?”

Oscar meets Lando's eyes, taking a steadying breath. "I just… I need to know that she's okay," Oscar whispers, his voice rough and hoarse.

“Okay,” Lando nods, trying his best to be understanding. “Yeah, I’m with you there.”

Lando’s eyes search his face for any indication of what he’s thinking.

"I like her," Oscar says quietly, finally managing to meet Lando's eyes, "A lot more than I should, and I'm afraid she might…"

Oh.

That wasn’t what Lando was expecting. But I can work with that, Lando thinks.

Lando nods, and he understands and for some reason, Oscar feels like he might start crying in sheer relief right there. That, of course, would be horribly embarrassing. His pride won't let him do it, so he holds back. But he thinks he can start breathing a little bit easier, knowing that Lando gets it.

He swallows hard, his eyes closing for a moment as he forces the words out, "With her, it's just… it's different, y’know? Like someone who speaks your language in foreign land, she just-"

He cuts himself off, choking on the words.

“Yeah?” Lando teases good naturedly. Sue him for having a little fun with it. “Sounds like she’s special.”

Oscar nods. "Yeah," he says softly. "She is." He looks up to find him wearing a small smile.

“Say, how’d you bag an assistant like that anyway? No way she came ‘cause of your stats,” Lando shrugs, something smug brewing in the curve of his lips.

Lando sounds genuinely curious as he asks, and it throws Oscar off a bit.

"I…" He stops, trying to force his mind to work right now. "She started out as a junior assistant at the team," he continues, trying to focus, but the memory of her at the beginning - her shy smile, her quiet, gentle nature - it's all flooding his mind again.

"She was… shy. More than shy - she didn't really talk, but- she was so quiet. The others-... they’d crack jokes about it, snide remarks and the like.."

"But when she did talk, she was... she was just so smart. And know how her sense of humor is - hers are the jokes that are actually funny.”

“That so?”

"Yeah," he says, the memory still fresh in his mind. He'd watched, completely entranced.

He'd never thought of taking the assistant out for a drink before, but he'd somehow found himself offering her one that weekend.

"She didn't agree to go," he remembers, his mouth curving into a bitter smile. "I think she thought it was like, a joke or something. Like I was doing it to make fun of her."

"She was pretty wary the first few times," he continues, his voice softer now. She'd always been shy and quiet as his assistant, but once he'd begun to earn her trust, slowly but surely. It was only then he'd seen a different side to her - the confident, sweet, gentle persona that only he was privy to.

"But then she got a little more open, a little more herself- god. It was this beautiful thing."

The idiot’s in love, Lando thinks. But some self-preservation instinct tells him that if he’d like to keep his body and his car intact, then he should keep his mouth shut.

At least this once.

They cross the threshold into the room, the sight of her broken body in a hospital bed greeting Oscar immediately. The room smells overwhelmingly of hand sanitizer, paper products and latex gloves. Fluorescent lights are dimmed, a couple of them on across the tiled ceiling.

She lays there, still and silent - not unlike the way she’d been asleep in his bed just last night. But like sand slipping through his fingers, that image gives way to the one before him: the present.

There’s dried blood on her lips from when she’d been spitting up blood earlier. She’s connected to all sorts of machines - the IV, the heart rate monitor, a couple other things Oscar’s sure must also be important. She’d hate this, he finds himself thinking.

Instinctively, he steps closer.

He’s almost frightened to get too close to her, too scared to make the wrong move somehow as he stands by the edge of the bed. She’s always had an elegance - a grace - about her that’s always commanded his attention. But right now, it’s all gone.

“They had to put her under to stop her from trying to speak or move,” an attendant pipes up, from where she’s been noting down her vitals in the corner of the. “Because of the fracture in her ribs.”

Oscar's face remains the picture of neutral, dancing somewhere between stoic and lost.

“She can still hear you,” he informs him quietly.

He reaches forward, resting his hand carefully on the top of her head, his fingers gently smoothing down her loose strands of hair. “I’m here now,” he murmurs quietly, his voice cracking with an emotion he can’t place. “You’re okay - you’re okay,” he repeats, more to himself than to her.

He watches her for a moment again - she looks more peaceful now, now that he’s standing here, talking to her. His fingers move through her hair, the way he sometimes did when she’d accidentally fall asleep on his shoulder.

“Do you think she can feel too?” he asks aloud, directed towards no one in particular. The attendant has left the room a while ago, but minutes blend together into one long indiscernible stretch of time.

Lando seems to consider the question thoroughly, his brow furrowed.

“I’d say so,” he answers, quietly. “She might not react to it, because of the drugs, but her brain would register the touch regardless. I don’t think there’s anything that would stop her from feeling it.”

He takes his free hand, carefully wrapping his fingers around her much smaller, bruised one.

Lando briefly wonders if his mind is playing tricks on him when the beeping of the heart monitor speeds up by a fraction of a second.

Oscar, on the other hand, remains focused elsewhere. It’s the oddest thing, he thinks - how he was dying to be near her and now that he is, he’s not sure what to say.

Say something, he thinks to himself.

But he’s drawing a blank. Everything he thought he’d say to her in a position like this vanishes from his mind and he’s left standing here, still holding her hand, a complete and utter blank.

He looks down at her face again, studying her. He can make out a scratch on her forehead that seems to disappear into her hairline, and he carefully runs his thumb over it. He stays like that, running his thumb over her forehead, over her eyebrow... until his eyes finally move down to her mouth.

He pauses, watching the slight part of her lips, her lower lip still caked with the dried blood.

He doesn’t quite know why, but all of a sudden the idea of her being dirty, of being covered in blood - of looking so unlike her - feels like venom in his veins.

His gaze is fixated on the dried blood stuck to her lip, and on an impulse, he grabs the tissue that’s resting nearby and reaches forward to clean it away. His touch is so gentle as he brushes the tissue over her lower lip, the dried blood coming off on the tissue.

He wants the image of her, bloody, dirty, to stop plaguing his mind - he wants her to look like herself again.

He continues wiping carefully, his touch feather-light, wiping away the dirt that’s stained her face. She deserves to be clean, to be safe, and so he keeps gently wiping at her lip long after the blood’s gone from her face.

“Osc,” Lando calls tentatively, trying to bring him back to the present from wherever his mind has gone. “It’s alright, it’s okay. She’s clean.”

He snaps out of his reverie at Lando’s voice, stopping the repetitive brushing of the tissue against her lip.

“I miss her too, y’know,” Lando pipes up. He’s not sure whether that’s helpful, but he says it anyway. The younger man doesn’t turn around to look at Lando, eyes still fixed on her face, afraid to miss anything if he loses focus for just a second.

“I know,” he murmurs, his voice almost lost as he continues tracing mindless patterns on her palm.

“I’m not saying it’s the same,” Lando corrects gently. “I know that this… this is different. I’m not saying I don’t care about her, but anyone with eyes can see. “With you it’s different. You and her… it’s different,” he finally shrugs.

He doesn’t say anything, but he nods - his only acknowledgement of Lando’s words, not wanting to make a sound in case it disturbs her - in case she’s listening.

“She came to me.”

That makes him lift his head up for a moment, surprised by the statement, and he looks over his shoulder at Lando.

“She… what?” he questions, confused.

He nods, a fond smile on his lips as he reminisces.

“Yeah. Asked me a whole bunch of questions, all about you - what you like to eat, where you like to eat, what kind of gifts you like.”

He shakes his head in disbelief and mutters, more to himself than to Lando, “I have no idea where the hell this girl manages to get so much energy from.”

Lando’s reply is simple, like it’s obvious. “You.”

His brow furrow. Huh?

“Me?” he all but echoes, confusion clear on his face.

“Can’t you see it?”

He can’t figure out what Lando’s hinting at, so he shakes his head.

“I- I’m lost, mate. What d’you mean?”

“It’s… she’s different with you, mate. With everyone else, she’s more guarded, more reserved, more sarcastic. Not that she isn’t charming, but…” he trails off, trying to figure out how to put it into words.

“I don’t think she notices it either. She comes alive whenever you’re around.” For a moment, Luisa flashes in his minds eye.

He turns back to look at her again, his eyes scanning over her face, and then shifts his gaze to their hands - to his fingers, still tracing mindless patterns against hers.

He’s never noticed it - he thought that she always had this energy, that this was just who she was. But different? Oscar isn’t too sure about that. He looks down at her again and wonders why he never noticed anything himself before.

“She’s friendly, always. But anytime it’s the three of us, it’s like I get to be the third wheel to the most awkward and embarrassing old married couple ever,” Lando jokes.

For a split second, the joke makes him smile - a real, proper smile that’s genuine and not forced for any sort of public appearance. And, in that second, he almost imagines what it would be like if they were a married couple - like it wouldn’t be so bad.

“You guys finish each other’s sentences,” he deadpans.

“She’s just good at reading between the lines,” Oscar explains.

But he can’t deny that in spite of that, Lando’s not entirely wrong. Even in all their time alone, they’d fallen into a certain sort of rhythm - an easy flow, like they both just instinctively knew what the other one was thinking at almost all times.

“It makes work easier,” he adds on, trying to downplay it.

“Yeah. Work.”

He ignores Lando’s sarcastic tone - he’s too focused on something else right now.

“She should be awake by now, right?” he blurts out, looking back at Lando.

“I don’t know,” his teammate says quietly.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” he presses, his tone harsher than he’d intended.

He takes another glance at her face, hoping for some sign of change, some sign of life.

Nothing.

“Just talk. Whatever you want to say to her, anything - you can just talk,” Lando suggests awkwardly. It’s often that Lando finds Oscar a bit difficult to read, but now it’s impossible to know what will help and what will set him off..

“Right, okay, yeah,” he mutters, nodding.

He turns back to her, silence filling the room while he thinks. There’s something he really wants to say, a phrase that’s been on the tip of his tongue for weeks now - but the timing is awful.

He decides to start with something simpler instead. His voice sounds shaky when he speaks up again.

“Hey,” he calls out softly. “…Hey.”

He waits for a response, any response - a word, a twitch, a blinking of the eyelashes - but nothing comes. He takes another deep breath before he continues.

“You’re really stubborn, you know,” he chides. “Stupidly stubborn.”

“Just… just wake up, okay?”

He takes a glance at Lando, who’s standing off to the side and observing silently, before looking back down at her face. But she’s still the same as before - no response, no movement, no sign that she’s even heard either of them.

“Oscar…” Lando starts cautiously.

He has a feeling he knows what Lando’s about to say.

It’s not what he wants to hear.

“No,” he cuts him off before Lando even utters a word. “No, not yet. Just… give her a minute, okay?”

“Oscar…”

“No, stop,” he pleads, his voice cracking for a fraction of a second.

“Os-“

“I said stop,” he snaps back, turning to give him a pleading look. “She just… just give her a minute.”

Lando takes it upon himself to try to limit the damage. He’s already got one friend laying motionless in a hospital bed - he is not going to let Oscar lose it now.

“I just don’t think that that yelling at her will do-“

“I wasn’t yelling,” he bites back, though he knows that the volume of his voice was edging towards it.

“Oscar,” Lando commands, trying to get Oscar to listen.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, lifting his head to look back at her. “Sorry, I just…”

Lando’s face molds into a sympathetic expression. He’s usually more comfortable in joyous environments, always the one to crack a joke or make things more relaxed. But here, he forces the discomfort down. Lando Norris is not one to let someone suffer alone.

The Australian knows what he wants to tell her - has desperately wanted to tell her, wants to say it so badly that it’s taking all of his willpower to not blurt the words out.

But the timing still feels wrong - the circumstances around them feel completely off and he can’t bring himself to do it. He looks back at Lando for guidance, Like there’s something the man can do that he can’t.

“She’s easy to talk to, isn’t she?” Lando remembers gas station runs, forbidden slushies and the dark of night as accessories to conversations that never seemed to end. Y/N is eloquent - there’s no doubt about it. Her words can command a room, can simplify the most

“Yeah,” he replies automatically.

“Then just talk to her. She was your assistant, our friend - before she was ever anything else to you,” Lando says indignantly. “Talk to her. Tell her what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling. This might be the onl-“

“Don’t.” Oscar is quick to cut him off. “Don’t say that.”

Lando’s lips press together into a straight line, falling silent.

He turns to look down at her again, his mind working overtime as he tries to figure out what to say. Oscar says the only thing he can, sparing no time for niceties or lighthearted anecdotes.

“You have to wake up, okay?” he mumbles, almost to himself. “I need to tell you that you were right about the error in our tyre deg numbers.”

He laughs softly, in spite of himself, as the memory of her being the sensible one for once comes to mind.

“And… and while we’re on the topic, I just need to say that you were also such a pain in the ass during flights, alright?” he continues. “You’re always so difficult with me when we fly together.”

“And don’t get me wrong, it’s almost endearing when you’re all bossy and sarcastic -” he’s talking faster now, his mind speeding through all the things he wants to say to her “- but it makes me want to strangle you sometimes. You drive me absolutely mental sometimes.”

“But at the same time…” he hesitates. Oscar’s never really been a man of many words. He thinks a lot more than he speaks.

He hesitates because it’s the truth - she drives him crazy, in some of the best and worst ways.

“At the same time, I don’t think I’d be able to do this without you, somehow. Despite all the insane, impossible things I put you through, you’re always here for me, always taking care of me, always by my side.”

Her first thought feels like it’s a distant memory, located in some faraway room that she can only think of if she tries with all her might not to let it melt away.

She can feel her fingertips.

He’s rambling, the words tumbling out faster with each sentence, and he doesn’t even notice that her fingers twitch against his hand.

“And I know you never ask for anything in return, I know you don’t expect anything in return, I know you just want me to be happy and healthy and I don’t even know how you just-“

The next sensation she registers is much less kind.

Before she can settle into the moment of unexpected peace, a sharp, stabbing pain pierces her side. She feels like molten lava dunked in ice cold water. She feels painfully cold and burning hot simultaneously.

It’s the way her body suddenly twitches involuntarily, so fast and hard that it jolts him out of his rambling, that he realizes something’s wrong.

“Hey,” he says, gripping her hand a little tighter to get her attention, “hey.”

Her hand twitches once again, but they barely have time to pay any attention to it because suddenly the monitor spikes, sending off alarms, the loud sound blaring through the room.

A cold chill runs down his spine, and his grip on her hand tightens without him even realizing. The next thing he knows, a swarm of doctors are rushing into the room. Instantly, her hand is being ripped from his and he’s looking at Lando with wide eyes.

He jumps up to his feet instinctively, wanting to follow where they’re taking her but being pulled back by Lando.

“Wha-“ he asks, his voice carrying an uneasy pitch, his heart threatening to break his rib cage with how hard it’s beating now. “Will someone tell us what’s going on?”

The words would have been loud, but the alarm bares over them. Everything’s happening faster than they can keep up with - one moment ago he was trying to think of a way to say how much he cares about her and the next she’s being pulled away and the machinery around her is going crazy.

There’s a man in a white coat suddenly ushering them both out of the room.

“Why?!” he demands as he attempts to wriggle out of Lando’s grip, trying to dig his feet into the floor to prevent himself from being thrown out. “What’s going on?!

“No,” he protests, resisting Lando's pulling, “No, I need to see her-”

“Sir, you can’t be in there-“

“Why not?!” he demands, his voice rising in volume. “Why can’t I be in there?!”

Lando has his arm around Oscar's shoulders now, trying to physically pull him away. “Mate, we don’t want to get in the way-“

“No! I’m not-“

He stays frozen there like a historic statue, but the man is physically stronger and he’s not able to break free. It only serves to make him feel more claustrophobic.

Lando sighs. He never thought he’d need to wrestle Oscar. That kid’s got some serious fight in him.

He proceeds to put all his strength into holding Oscar back, trying to usher him into the waiting room. He can’t let Oscar thrown out of the hospital for not cooperating because forget the media circus - he’s not sure Oscar will be able to take not being able to see her.

Lando feels like something in his chest is cracking at the sight of seeing his teammate, his friend, practically his brother - the calm and rational one of the duo - fall apart.

Instantly, when he feels Oscar shift, Lando’s muscles tense in anticipation of holding him back as he tries to break free.

Except he doesn’t.

Lando looks down to find Oscar shaking.

He’s crying.

Oscar’s head is suddenly hung low, and his shoulders are hunched forward.

He’s practically shaking, on the verge of breaking down completely. And it probably shouldn’t be such a surprise - he’s been running on adrenaline the past few days, and it finally feels like his body is finally crashing. He’s leaning heavily against Lando, and it’s the only reason he’s being held upright.

He can’t help but think there’s a chance that while he’s out here, he’s losing one of his best friends.

That could be the last time he’d get to see her.

The possibility of that just makes him cry harder, his shoulders shaking violently despite his best efforts. He’s slumped against Lando now, practically being held up by his best friend. He buries his face in the crook of Lando’s shoulder, not even trying to fight any more.

“It’s okay, mate. You’re okay, you’re alright, yeah?“

The words help somewhat - Lando’s familiar voice, and the firm embrace - but he can’t help the broken sobs. His brain is running through the last few days, the last few hours, over and over.

“I can’t do this,” he rasps suddenly, his voice shaking. “I don’t know how to do it without her.”

“I know, I know…”

“I’ve never even…” he chokes out, shaking his head. “I’ve never even told her-“

“You’ll get to,” Lando winces, trying to console his friend. He inhaled deeply, internally praying to any deity that exists that he isn’t lying to him.

“You will. Breathe, mate.”

Lando stands there, arms locked around the younger man for what feels like forever. He’s not sure if it’s because he’s afraid he’ll hurt himself somehow or collapse to the floor. It’s a while later when his body finally loosens up a bit.

“I’m tired,” he mumbles over Lando’s shoulder, his voice still shaky.

“Yeah,” Lando breathes shakily. At least he’s talking. “Yeah, o’course. Let’s get you sat, yeah?”

He nods his head weakly, allowing himself to be guided over to some of the nearby seats. He collapses onto the chair. His head is in his hands, his elbows on his knees, and takes several shaky breaths as he tries to regain some sense of control over his own body.

Get it together.

Lando is awoken a few hours later by the sound of approaching footsteps.

He’s startled and disoriented when he’s suddenly woken up, and he has to spend a couple seconds piecing together where he is. He always did appreciate a good nap.

He tries to process the time - it’s dark outside. He’s in a waiting room chair, and Oscar’s in the seat beside him, sleeping with his head propped up on the palm of his hand.

His eyes instantly lock onto the person approaching them, and he blinks a couple times before recognizing the doctor from earlier. The woman seems nice enough with deep smile lines and warm auburn hair. She speaks quietly, presumably in an effort not to wake the sleeping man beside him.

“Mr. Piastri?”

Lando gives a quick nod, silently gesturing to Oscar as he does. He’s the other one.

He looks over, gently shaking at Oscar’s shoulder. “Hey, wake up, mate. It’s the doctor.”

Oscar’s eyes instantly shoot open, and he sits up quickly, any remaining drowsiness from sleep disappearing instantly. He’s instantly alert, his body tense, and a hopeful sort of fear in his eyes.

“Mr. Piastri?” she tries again.

“Yes,” he acknowledges, his voice coming out a little shaky. All the fatigue and tiredness from before seem to have left him at the doctor’s approach.

“Oscar Piastri?” she confirms.

“That’s me,” he nods again, watching her carefully. He’s trying to judge her expression, figure out what kind of news she’s come to give him. His heart is skipping beats, playing some sort of sick game, as he holds his breath.

“She keeps asking for you.”

The words immediately have the tension in his body dropping.

“She- What?” His tone is disbelieving, but there’s a part of him that feels lightheaded with relief.

The doctor smiles warmly at him, happy to be able to give some good news. “We’ve been successful in artificially resetting the bone in her ribs as well as patching the lung puncture.”

Pausing before she continues, she tells him, “In fact, you were very lucky to catch her when you did - if the nurses hadn’t seen her then, she likely would have choked-“

“Is she okay?” He swallows hard, trying to hide his voice shaking. “That means she’s well then, right?”

The doctor nods. “She’s still healing though, of course,” she reminds him, with a hint of an accent filtering through. Scottish, perhaps?

“I can see her?” he asks hopefully, already getting to his feet. “I can go in?”

The doctor nods in confirmation, before flipping a page up on her clipboard. “Just a few things before she has any visitors:

No outside food for the patient, and we wanna be as gentle as possible with her. Let's also try to avoid anything that would cause her stress - she’s just come out of surgery and we want her to recover nicely. Alright?”

He nods quickly, not even really caring what she’s saying to him at this point as long as it means that he can see her.

“Yes, of course. No stress. Gentle. I’ll do whatever you say.”

The doctor shoots Lando a wary look. Lando gives her a weak smile - He's harmless, he tries to tell her. “I need to see her,” Oscar explains, like it's the most obvious thing.

“He just wants to see her,” Lando reassures her. “Let him, yeah?”

Oscar shoots Lando a grateful look, before turning back to the doctor, his eyes practically begging the woman to let him in. She smiles kindly, turning around to guide the young man to Y/N’s room.

"That's funny,” she smiles, the kind that even has her teeth on display. “She said the same thing about you."

For the first time in what feels like so long, he starts to allow himself a spark of hope, and it makes his heart beat a little faster. His eyes roam over the doors on either side of them as the doctor leads him closer and closer to her room, his heart in his throat.

“When she was asking for me,” he asks, aiming for casual. “What did she say?”

The woman glances back at him and gives him a knowing look, like she knows something he doesn’t.

“That she wanted to see you,” she tells him as she stops before a door halfway down the hall. “She kept asking to see if you were here or around - likely to reassure herself.”

She chuckles, a deep, hearty laugh. “But she was quite determined - nearly told off a nurse before we finally calmed her down.”

The thought of her asking about him, and asking to see him, soothes a part of him that he wasn’t even aware was aching.

He lets out a shaky exhale of relief, his entire body relaxing as the doctor stops in front of a room. His gaze locks onto the door, and then back at the doctor, his eyes wide with anticipation.

"Don't worry," the doctor reassures kindly. "Your girlfriend is quite brave. The hard part is over, - she'll be okay."

“She’s not-“ He clears his throat, forcing himself to speak again. “Can I go in?”

"Of course," she replies softly, opening the door for him to enter before turning away to leave them be.

He gives her a short, grateful smile - before finally turning back to the open door. But then his eyes land on her figure on the bed and his breath catches in his throat.

She seems so small, so silent and peaceful. She’s covered in cuts and bruises that look fresh, dark purple and red marks covering her skin. And there’s an IV on her arm and god, he’d tear this place to pieces if he thought it’d bring her any comfort.

His eyes scan over her body, taking in the injuries on her, the way the bruises and cuts are scattered along her skin. His stomach clenches, bile suddenly threatening to rise up and overtake him. It’s more than he’d been expecting - more than he could ever be prepared for, the thought of her in this much pain-

He forces himself to take several deep breaths, steadying himself before continuing to approach the bed - slowly, carefully, like a scared animal.

“Y/N?” he murmurs under his breath. She barely stirs.

He gently places a hand on her shoulder, gently - so gently, mindful of the cuts and bruises scattered across her skin as he tries to shake her shoulder.

"Wake up,” he whispers under his breath, his fingers trembling. “Wake up, c’mon.”

She's disturbed from the thick haze of sleep by the feeling of warm fingers touching her skin.

Huh?

He feels her wake up, her body stirring as he keeps his hand on her shoulder, trying to soothe her and reassure himself all at once.

“Hey,” he murmurs, as she starts to open her eyes. “Hey there-“

Eyes still bleary with sleep, her mind races to figure out what's going on. "O- Oscar...?"

She looks tired and disoriented, and it makes something in his stomach clenches. But the sound of his name from her lips is like a cool mist, soothing and familiar all at once.

“Yeah,” he confirms softly, his fingers gently tracing the same circle on her shoulder. “Yeah, it’s me.”

Hearing Oscar’s voice after so long makes something in her chest feel weird and warm and-

“Oscar.”

He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he murmurs, his fingers running gently through the strands of hair at the nape of her neck as his other hand traces small circles at her shoulder.

“I’m here,” he reassures, his tone as gentle as possible. Unsure of what to do or how to approach this, he resigns to standing there awkwardly. “I’m here. You, uh- you asked for me?”

Before she realizes, her face is wet with tears. Warm droplets trickle down her cheeks, dripping off her chin and onto her neck. She can barely see Oscar through her blurred vision.

“Whoa, whoa, shhhh,” he murmurs, trying to soothe her. “Hey, s’alright - shh, it’s okay. It’s okay, you’re okay, I’m here.”

He reaches forward, gently brushing the tears off her cheek. As the sniffles finally subside and Oscar takes a seat by her hospital bed, she turns her head toward him, taking in his presence. Every detail is one she’s trying to commit to memory - the swoop of his hair, the warmth of his eyes, the freckles that decorate his skin.

He tries to keep his expression encouraging, reassuring as she stares at him, but he’s sure that he looks as terrified and devastated as he feels. Instead of commenting on his own state of mind, he tries his luck. “Is it okay if I hold your hand?”

“Can we go?”

He tilts his head, not entirely registering what she’s said.

“What?”

She blinks once, slowly. “I want to go. Can you take me-“

“No,” he replies abruptly - before catching himself, mentally scolding himself for the sharp tone he’d used.

Instead, he tries to soften his tone as he gently adds, “No, Y/N. You need to stay here - you’re hurt, and you need medical care. They need to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine now,” she tries. Whether it's the medications or the sleep or whatever the hell is supposed to be in that IV, she has to find her thoughts through a haze. “They fixed me, remember? I can-“

“No, sweetheart,” he replies gently - but his tone is still firm. “You’re not leaving. Not until you’re properly healthy.”

She turns away, cross.

“You might feel fine now, but you- you were really hurt. You need to recover, and these people know how to take care of you,” he tries to explain.

“Whatever.” The syllables slur ever so slightly, making it sound more like whud-ever.

“It’s not fair of you to be mad at me for this,” he argues.

Her words are icy cold. “You can go now.”

His jaw clenches again, as he feels irritation stirring along with it.

“No,” he retorts, his voice still firm. “I’m sticking right by your side.”

“What if I don’t want you here?”

He falters at her words, something in his heart clenching.

“That’s not fair,” he retorts, the hurt clear from his voice. “You’re mad at me for no reason.”

She turns over, and continues her silent treatment.

His irritation boils over, and he grits his teeth for a moment, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath to settle himself down.

“Hey,” he murmurs, fondness bleeding through his voice inadvertently. Placing a hand on his shoulder, gently trying to turn her towards him. “Don’t be mad at me. Just- just talk to me.”

“I don’t wanna,” she mumbles gruffly. “I want to go home.”

He swallows against the painful lump in his throat that forms when he hears the word “home” from her lips.

“I know you do,” he answers, his voice gentle. “And I know you want to be out of here, but they’re trying to take care of you, yeah? This is the best place for you right now.”

She keeps ignoring him, hoping he’ll eventually go away.

He can feel his irritation rising as her silent treatment continues - trying to drown out the voice in his head telling him that she’s just scared and confused, and that she doesn’t really mean it.

“Stop it,” he tries again, his patience starting to run thin as he grabs her shoulder, and turns her towards him this time. “Don’t be like this. You have to know I'm trying to help.”

He’s only greeted by more silence.

He’s silent as well for a moment, his eyes still fixed on the heart monitor, watching the steady rise and fall of the screen, the steady, slow beeping that tells him she’s okay, she’s okay.

He tries to keep his voice quiet and steady, to avoid letting his frustration show. “Please just say something. Don’t do this.”

The silence is deafening, and he hates every second of it.

With a small noise of frustration, he reaches out to grab her shoulder, his fingers wrapping gently around it as he tries to pull her towards him. When she’s forced to turn, he finds she’s hastily wiping away tears.

All of the irritation and frustration and even a little bit of anger immediately evaporates, leaving only the urge to pull her into his arms and hold her until she feels better. Without thinking, he gently uses his hand on her shoulder to pull her towards him, helping her up into a sitting position and then gently pulls her against his side, wrapping a secure arm around her.

He’s quiet for a moment, just holding her close to his side as he feels her body shaking against his. He moves the hand that’s wrapped around her, sliding his fingers gently into her hair, gently massaging her scalp in an attempt to help calm her.

“You can cry,” he murmurs gently against her head, placing a gentle kiss against her hair. “It’s okay, s’alright.”

“M’not,” she mumbles. “I don’t want to be here.”

“I know. I know you don’t..” he sympathizes. “But you need to be here for a while - you need to rest.”

She plays along. “Yeah,” she sniffles. “I s’pose so.”

His hand moves without consciously meaning to, wrapping a gentle hand around her other shoulder and pulling her entirely into his side, so that she’s practically falling against him, leaning heavily against his torso.

“Right,” he murmurs, resting his chin on the top of her head. “Just rest, okay? Rest - I’ve got you.”

He keeps her close against his side, still absently moving his fingers through her hair as he tries to keep her calm and settled. But what comes out of his mouth is, “You’re still mad at me, huh?”

“Actually…”

He lifts an eyebrow, his hand briefly stopping the soft massage, his heart briefly stopping when it does. “Actually?” he prompts gently.

It’s a wonder that Oscar doesn’t comment on how heart is thudding against her chest. Maybe its because he’s being polite. Yeah, he seems like the type to do that. Or maybe he doesn’t have good hearing. Stallard should probably know about that-

Her mental rambling is only cut off when somehow, words tumble out of her mouth, seemingly of her own accord. “I was gonna ask if you wanted to lay in the bed,” she mumbles, except the words come so rapidly that they’re barely understandable.

Immediately, she goes to backtrack. “Or not! It’s fine actually-“

For a moment, she watches as he just blinks at her. It’s a little disconcerting, really.

“Move,” he instructs her softly, gently maneuvering her so that he can climb in the bed beside her. Eh, he figures. They’ve been in worse situations than this.

Once he’s settled behind her, he pulls her back closer to his chest, tucking her tight against his side, her back against his chest, and wrapping an arm snugly around her waist. He closes his eyes, his chin resting on the top of her head. “Better?”

“Mhmm,” she hums contentedly.

He can feel himself smiling as he relaxes, his body melting against hers. He feels her relax against him as well, her shoulders losing some of their tension, and his free hand moves to rest gently on her stomach.

It’s over two hours later when Lando starts getting fidgety - the man is not exactly known for his ability to sit still. It’s been a while since he’s heard from his teammate, and he hasn’t heard any updates. Once Lando reaches his third round of pacing, his phone finally lights up with texts from Oscar:

She's okay

Doctor says she'll be alright

But we're both tired, so I'm going to stay the night.

Oscar glances down at where Y/N is resting against his chest, and he feels some of the tension leave his shoulders.

Lando successfully forces sends Oscar home to get some real rest before tomorrow’s free practice - only after Oscar makes him swear on his favorite golf club that Lando’d call him immediately if anything happened. He grabs an extra chair and pulls it over so that it sits right by her bedside, and he sits down on it, watching her.

The sight of her like this feels incorrect, like those AI images that distort reality. The hospital room, the tubes, the bandages and the bruising and the cuts - none of it looks right. His mind struggles to wrap itself around how her parents could have done this to her.

He’s lost in thought, his knuckles absently running up and down the back of her hand, when suddenly, her eyes flutter open.

“…O- Osc?”

She’s disoriented when she first opens her eyes, confused to find herself still in a hospital room when she’d fallen asleep beside Oscar. But then she looks up, and she sees Lando’s face.

“Hey… hey,” he says softly, smiling gently down at her as he keeps his voice quiet. “It’s me.”

“Oscar? Where’s Oscar? He was just…“ She looks around, confused. How much morphine have they been giving her?

“He’s at home,” her companion corrects eagerly, his voice gentle. “He had to go home, get some proper sleep. But he let me chill here and hang out with you.”

“He left?”

“Yeah,” he says gently, still speaking softly. “Only for the night, though.”

He keeps rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand, trying to soothe her before she gets more upset than she already is.

“Oh.”

Lando’s heart clenches with pity when he notices the look on her face, her expression fallen, and his voice drops even further down to a whisper.

“I know you’re disappointed,” he consoles quietly. “But believe me when I say he needs the rest. You’ll see him again soon.”

Lando takes a moment to examine her in the hospital bed. He doesn’t need to be a doctor to notice how small she looks in the hospital bed - she always is in comparison with him and Oscar, but this just highlights it even more.

“How are you feeling right now? Are you in any pain?” he asks, his voice still lowered.

“I’m… feeling much better, actually,” she says carefully. If she lays it on too thick, Lando won’t believe her. “The meds have been helping.”

“You sure?” he asks, his voice doubtful, looking at her in a somewhat skeptical manner. “You’re really not in any pain?”

“Just a bit of discomfort, but that’s it,” she lies through her teeth. In reality, any real jostling of her midsection sends a searing pain through her side.

Lando gives her an uncertain look, still not fully convinced by her reassurances. His eyes search her face for any kind of hint to her real pain level, but she’s gotten too good at hiding it over the years for him to tell now.

He sighs. “Okay, fine. But if that changes, you’ve got to tell someone, alright?”

“Of course,” she smiles.

He gives her a look that says he’s still not convinced, but decides not to press the issue.

He returns the smile, gently squeezing her hand.

“Good.”

A beat.

“Are you hungry, thirsty? Or… or something?”

“I’m alright,” she answers, but is immediately interrupted by the sound of her stomach grumbling.

He smirks, raising an eyebrow. “Mmhmm. ‘Alright’, huh?”

He takes the hint though, standing up straight and offering her a smile. “You stay put. I’ll go find a nurse and see if I can get you something to eat or drink.”

Like she can go anywhere. “Lando?”

He’s halfway out the door already, but he pauses in the doorway, turning back when her voice calls out to him. “Yeah?”

“Think the cafeteria has mac n’ cheese?”

“Macaroni and cheese?” He repeats, sounding amused, but he’s still somewhat confused by it. “Like, mac n’ cheese, specifically?”

“Just a craving,” she mutters sheepishly.

“You are… something else,” he chuckles, shaking his head. Bringing his hand to his forehead in a mock salute, he declares, “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you! You’re the best!” she whisper-yells after him,

He turns to head into the hallway again, and he throws a smile at her over his shoulder before disappearing out the door.

He returns to the room about fifteen minutes later, a large mug of hot tea and a bowl of what smells like shepherd’s pie in his hands. “Made you a cuppa,” he informs her, before her gaze lands on the fresh goods.

“Is that-“

Lando holds the steaming box out to her with an amused smirk, clearly proud of himself for his accomplishment. “Shepherd’s pie,” he confirms confidently, giving her a smile. “Just as you ordered, madam.”

“You didn’t.”

He grins, holding it out to her - he actually went and did it.

“I did indeed.”

“Wasn’t it closed?” she asked as she brought the tray table closer to herself, eyeing the comfort food with delight.

The first bite is so good she has to close her eyes to savor it. The warm, hearty food feels like manna from heaven for her weakened body - she could cry tears of joy. There’s no way this food was made in a hospital cafeteria.

Lando sets the tea on the table, watching her as she tries the food, and can’t help the smile that spreads on his face when he sees how pleased she is with the food he chose.

“Closed, yes,” he says, sitting back down on the chair he’d previously been in. “But I’m very charming and persuasive.”

“So you ordered it from a shop.”

He grins.

“And who’s the smart one?” he asks, watching her eat. “Turns out the place next door does a pretty amazing Shepherd’s pie. Who knew?”

She’s too happy at the food to be bothered to tease him back. “This is amazing, dude. You’re the best.”

He can’t help but smile again, watching her enjoying the food he got like it’s the best thing she has had in years. He’s happy to have done this one thing to make her happy - he can’t help but tease, though. “Well, you know…”

He sits back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest.

“I am pretty great.”

“Alright, alright,” she says, waving him off. Now that she’s gotten a few bites in her, she gets a bit quieter. Eating and chewing is a surprisingly exhaustive task for someone who’s still on the mend.

She wipes the corner of her mouth, before finally turning to Lando.

“How is he?” she asks quietly.

He’s a bit surprised when she shifts the conversation, turning to ask about how Oscar is doing now, but he still answers willingly.

“He’s…” Lando hesitates a moment, searching for a word that would most accurately describe the situation .

“He’s… not great right now,” he says at last. Might as well be honest. “But… I think he’ll pull through. He’s a bit of a mess, but he’s… alright.”

“Yeah,” she sighs softly. She doesn’t look at Lando as she says it, feeling too responsible for his predicament. Instead, she tries her best to clean up after her meal - wrapping away the leftovers that feel like too much work to eat right now.

She gives her friend a tired smile before yawning. “Do you think it’s okay if I get some rest?”

He eyes her carefully, noticing the exhaustion on her face. “Yeah, f’course,” he assures her, standing up from the chair. “You’ve had a long few days. You should rest while you can.”

He takes the leftovers and sets them on the bedside table, before pulling the blankets up to her shoulders.

“Thanks, Lan,” she hums, before her eyes fall shut.

Lando doesn’t know when his own eyes fall shut, but they do.

Oscar does not, in fact, return.

Over the course of the next few days, Y/N gets very familiar with the hospital’s jello variety. She decides that she likes fruit punch the most, but that isn’t much of a surprise. What does surprise her, however, is when she wakes to a beautiful bouquet by her bedside. It’s an elegant collection, a haze of lavender florals - peonies and chrysanthemums - beautifully framed by stems of baby’s breath.

She eagerly reaches for the gift, excited to examine it up close. There’s a note tucked into the silk white ribbon that ties the wrapping together - a small cardstock thing that seems to have something written on it. Carefully plucking it out with her fingers, her eyes drift across the angular scrawl, penned in black ink.

“Heard you decided to sit Silverstone out. Don’t worry, it

was boring anyway. You know it isn’t the same with you.

I’ll swing by sometime with bad puns and greasy pizza.

That’ll fix you up real quick, trust me.

Get well soon, Loser.”

A smile blooms on her face as she reads the thoughtful words. She searches the note, trying to find the identity of the sender so she can at least send them a message of gratitude. Turning the card over, there's a misshapen looking smiley face next to a familiar name.

Love ya,

Logan

She’s lucky to have a friend like Logan - another American on the paddock, one who’s taken up the role of annoying older brother. They’d met through Oscar, initially - back in those early weeks of their rookie seasons. But then the conversation went to whether or not pineapple belongs on pizza, and then the rest is history.

The card is returned to her bedside table as shuffles in her bed, turning over to get comfortable so she can take a nap.

Letting her head sink into the starchy fabric of the hospital pillow, she tries not to think of the feeling that rose up in her throat when the name on the card wasn’t the one she was looking for.

Lando wakes up to his butt uncomfortably numb. Someone seriously needs to work on a better replacement for these inconvenient contraptions disguised as chairs. Isn’t the hospital meant to make you feel better?

Lando’s fairly certain he was much better conditioned when he walked in this morning - at this rate, they may just have to wheel him out.

“-and this one you’re going to take orally 3 times a day, alright? So that’s every 8 hours, to help reduce pain and any inflammation.”

Lando blearily blinks at the noise, but the words slowly get his brain up to speed, and he sits up a little straighter. He glances at her, who looks about as sleepy as he does - her eyelids look heavy, and her voice is still a little hoarse from sleep.

“Okay,” she nods, taking the meds from the doctor, and putting them away in a bag by the bedside.

The doctor checks something off on her clipboard, before looking back up at the young woman seated on the side of the bed.

“Right then. And do you have someone with you at home who’ll be able to keep an eye on you these next few weeks once you go home today?”

Suddenly, Lando really doesn’t like the doctor or the way this conversation is going. He doesn’t like the idea of her being all alone for the next few weeks. With all the medication she’s on, she’s not going to be able to drive.

She nods. “Yeah. I do. I live with my boyfriend,” she smiles reassuringly. The lie is so good that it even has Lando confused.

She has a boyfriend? That she lives with?

Lando’s immediate next thought is, Does Oscar know?

But he keeps quiet as the doctor continues to finish up her lecture about Y/N’s instructions for care. Lando sits there quietly, not knowing what to think.

Boyfriend? That’s news to him. If she had a boyfriend that she was living with… wouldn’t he have known that?

He watches her as she quietly nods and talks with the doctor, and he’s left to wonder how long this boyfriend has been around. When the doctor finally leaves and the room goes quiet again, Lando lets out a little yawn and then turns around in his chair to face her. There’s a confused, almost suspicious look on his face as he regards the girl.

“So… you have a boyfriend?” Lando doesn’t know if he feels protective or betrayed, but neither make the conversation less awkward. In all the time the three have spent together, the young assistant has barely, if ever, brought up her dating life. Probably because she’s in love with her Google calendar.

“Hmm?” she says, gathering her things. Finally, free at last.

Lando can’t really blame her for wanting to get out of a hospital bed and away from the crappy food. But he also hasn’t forgotten about her boyfriend comment from earlier. He looks at her skeptically. “You said you live wit’ your boyfriend, do you?”

“Oh,” she shrugs. “Just told the doctor what she needed to hear so I could get outta here.”

Lando blinks at her - and he’s left with the sudden, weird urge to laugh for the first time all night. The Briton stares at her for a few more seconds, trying to sort out the mixed bundle of feelings running through his mind. Then, teasingly bumping his shoulder with hers and grinning like the cat who got the cream, he finally manages to ask, “So… Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No,” she says with a wave of her hand, like the mere notion is ridiculous. “Single as a pringle.”

“Yeah? That’s not what you told the doctor, though…” He sing-songs. If she is actually seeing someone, then Lando can’t help but be happy for her. He’d be even happier though if it was Oscar - then he could finally make good those on that cash from some of the other drivers.

Lando hums. He’s been meaning to add a new Richard Mille to his collection.

“She wanted to hear that I had someone at home in case something went awry. So that’s what I told her,” she explains simply. Once she’s done packing her things, she turns to Lando. “Ready to go? Oscar has a meeting soon and I’d like to be there for it.”

“So let me get this straight,” Lando says, no longer thinking of luxury watches. This time when he speaks, the tone of his voice is quite clear that he’s not happy with what he’s hearing. “You lied to a medical professional - told her you were living with a boyfriend - so you’d get discharged earlier… and there’s a meeting at work?”

“Yes,” she deadpans. “Now that you’re all caught up, can we go?”

When they arrive at the MTC, it’s business as usual. They each go their separate ways - Lando off to do whatever it is that Lando does, and Y/N to her office. She turns into the familiar space, dropping off her things, and taking inventory of the stack of papers that have accumulated on her desk in her absence.

Oscar’s sim session was okay. It wasn’t the greatest practice he’s had, but it wasn’t a complete disaster of a session either.

He tries not to think about the fact that he’s only semi-focused on the practice. His mind keeps wandering away from the simulator, and his eyes find their way to the office door that’s right across from the simulator room, where a familiar name plate adorns the door.

He shakes his head. His mind has been imagining her in this familiar setting - filling in the gaps where he’s used to her being. There’s been at least three occasions where he’s walking into her office, caught up in his theories or hypothetical to remember for a moment that she isn’t here.

A member of the janitorial staff saw him one of those times.

It was embarrassing, to say the least.

And yet his mind continues to picture her sitting at her desk. His brain supplies an image of her - a memory? - her, hard at work on her laptop or tablet, completely immersed, headphones on, chewing on her pen.

Except, when he blinks… the image of her is still there.

What the fuck?

“Good afternoon,” Y/N greets, trying to keep her voice as casual and even as she can.

He nearly jumps up at the sound of her voice - but it’s also a familiar, welcome sound. Before his mind can catch up to his brain, he lets out a blunt, “You shouldn’t be here.”

She flinches ever so slightly at that.

“Was discharged this morning,” she smiles professionally, trying to keep it light. She decides to leave out the part where she orchestrated her own discharge from the hospital so that she could be at work, because she has a feeling that her boss will not react well to that.

He wants to be relieved. He does. But he also can’t stop the feeling of annoyance at the idea of her returning to work within hours of being discharged from the hospital.

“Wait, let me get this straight,” he starts, and the irritation he feels is definitely showing in his voice. “You were discharged this morning, and you came here?”

Her lips press together into a straight line. He’s the one who’s annoyed?

“I am here now. Whether you choose to utilize my services or not is, of course, up to you.”

“That’s not an answer,” he counters, walking towards her. He’s definitely trying to suppress some feelings right now - irritation, relief at the sight of her, and something else that he can’t place.

“You’re supposed to be resting - not here,” he stresses, his stance and tone both authoritative.

“Oscar,” she hisses lowly. “I believe we have a guests.”

Y/N points her gaze in the direction of Zack and Andrea who seem to be making their rounds this morning, the CEO and team principal respectively. He turns to see both Andrea and Zack walking by and greeting people in the nearby rooms, handshakes and half hugs.

He can’t lose his cool now, even if what she’s doing right now is downright idiotic. He clenches his teeth, his jaw tight, but he manages to keep his irritation tampered down.

She can’t help but feel a little hurt by that. After everything, he could at least pretend to be happy to see her.

“Thank you, Mr. Piastri,” she says sarcastically, before plastering a fake smile onto her face. “Anything else?”

The too-tight smile she throws his way is unexpected.

He tries to ignore the fact that it makes him feel like the world’s biggest dickhead.

“Er… no,” he says, sounding a little unsure. “That should be everything.”

“Very well,” she nods curtly, before walking off to god knows where.

She sets course for her office. When she reaches the sleek door, she pushes against it with, letting herself inside.

Taking a seat on one of the armchairs placed by the coffee table, she leans her head back against the cushioned backing. Unshed tears of frustration stay locked in her chest, taking a deep sigh instead.

Why the fuck is she so worked up about this?

Everything is fine - she has no idea why she feels like shit. Oscar’s reaction to seeing her back from the hospital doesn’t mean anything.

It shouldn’t mean anything. Right?

He watches her leave his office, and the whole time - the whole time he feels like he can feel the disappointment radiating from her.

It’s unwarranted - she has no reason to be pissed at him when she’s the one who’s being an idiot, he tries to convince himself. But he doesn’t quite manage.

He knows he’s in for a long evening.

The nagging feeling in his gut leads him to her door. There’s no reason to be nervous, right? Y/N has been here for the good, the bad, and ugly - sleeve deprived rants and mood swing and one drink too many and even giving him a ride from the sheriff’s office that one time he caused a fender bender.

Before he thinks it over any more, he pushes again the elegant oak door.

Her office is some combination of elegant and cozy. To one side, there is a sitting area - cream coloured armchairs he’s been a frequent visitor of. Against the wall, navy bookshelves frame both sides of an art piece, the shelves of books punctuated by hand crafted decorations.

To the far end of the room is where her desk is, a large monitor displaying the McLaren logo adorning the glass wall. There’s a few picture frames oh er desk that he’s seen dozens of time’s before - a little boy at his first soccer game, friends at a birthday party, someone posing at the top of some rock formation. Her vase has been filled with dainty lilac flowers.

Her tall, black office chair sticks out, and it’s there he finds her, face illuminated by the glow of the computer she’s diligently working on. The clacking of keys is the only sound in the room, interrupted only when she turns to note something down.

She’s a vision. A beautiful, perfect vision, with her hair pulled back into a claw clip, loose strands framing her face. And he’s frozen in place, unable to do anything other than just stare.

His heart is racing out of his chest, and after seconds of just staring, he tries to get his mouth to work.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asks gruffly, surprised by how rough his voice comes out.

“Get lost, Lando,” she grumbles without looking. She’s not in the mood for Lando’s attempts to cheer her up - she just wants to be a miserable workaholic in peace.

He can’t help the chuckle that escapes his lips at that. It’s a quiet one, but hearing her think that he’s Lando amuses him.

“What, no time for me?” he asks, the tone of his voice teasing even though he��s feeling anything but on the inside.

Her eyes fly open in recognition, before she returns her attention to her desktop. Her eyes focus themselves on the facts and figures, making it a point not to pay him any attention.

“I’m not in the mood,” she mumbles, still upset from earlier. What is he even doing here?

The silent treatment, really? After he spent the whole afternoon worrying about her? She doesn’t get to just ignore him after he spent the whole day unable to function.

That thought makes him start to feel irritable. “I don’t care what ‘mood’ you’re in,” he snaps, not caring how harsh he sounds.

There’s something about the way she’s avoiding his gaze, ignoring him - she’s doing it on purpose. She’s making a point of deliberately looking away, looking elsewhere. It makes him frustrated, it makes him feel raw, like he’s suddenly vulnerable, out in the open.

“Look at me,” he says in an authoritative tone, his irritation seeping into his words.

“Don’t want to.”

His jaw clenches at her response. She’s being petulant, and maybe he does deserve it, but god does it piss him off.

He walks closer to her, stopping right before her and blocking her from moving any further away.

“I said look at me,” he repeats, his voice coming through gritted teeth.

With a roll of her eyes, she brings her gaze to his face.

He tries to resist the urge to immediately look her over - to make a visual catalog of each cut, bruise and injury on her skin, to catalog which specific shade of blue and red every mark is, to count how many stitches are on her forehead - to catalog the full extent of the damage that’s been done.

Instead, he forces himself to look into her eyes, his irritation turning into intense, barely concealed anger.

“You didn’t tell me you were coming back today,” he accuses, narrowing his eyes at her.

“Well, here I am.”

There’s more clicking, a shift in the color of the light reflecting her face as she switches between tabs. A beat of silence passes over the room.

“You done?” she says with a raised eyebrow.

Nope, he’s not done. He hasn’t even started.

“No, actually,” he shoots back, his anger bubbling up at her feistiness. “We’re not ‘done’ until we actually have a real conversation.”

“What are you on about?”

“You heard me,” he says, his voice more firm in response to her disbelief. “If you think we’re just pushing this to the side, and act like everything fair and dandy, then you’re very mistaken.”

Finally sparing him a glance, she tells him nonchalantly, “I don’t see much for us to talk about.”

His face scrunches, eyebrows pinching together as he holds back a scoff. “I’m the one over here who’s trying to fix whatever the hell this mess is,” he points out, gesturing with his finger between the two.. “I’m the one who’s actually worried about you, after what you went through -”

He breaks off abruptly, not wanting to go there.

She whips her head to the side when she hears that.

“Fuck off,” she spits, almost-tears in her eyes. “You don’t get to act like you care about me whenever you feel like it and then decide you don’t whenever you want.”

“Goddamnit - that’s not what I do!”

Anger is rising in his chest. Does she really think that he only cares when he feels like it? Does she have any idea how much time he spends worrying about her, how many times he has to hold himself back because he’s worried of crossing a line?

“You just don’t want to accept that I do care about you,” he accuses, his voice rising, his temper flaring.

Her reply is immediate, a pre-loaded bullet.

“No, ‘Hi, how are you?’ or ‘Glad to have you back.’ No, instead,” she scoffs, “the first words out of your mouth after you see me is, ‘You’re not supposed to be here?’”

That stops him in his tracks.

His eyes widen in realization as he’s suddenly hit with the realization of just how cold and shitty his first words to her had been.

No greeting, no ‘good to have your back’, no ‘glad you’re okay’ - just accusations. His heart clenches in his chest as he realizes it - how careless he must have sounded.

“You know,” she laughs humorlessly, like it’s an inside joke that only she is in on. “I can’t believe I was foolish enough to think that night meant something to you.”

Images of that night, what feels like years ago, flash in her mind - his tender touches, his caring whispers, those soft kisses they shared. The way he’d confessed how much he cared about her as he patched her up, how he’d come to her aid when she needed it most.

“But apparently not. Because apparently it’s really easy to ignore me for a whole week, to give me the cold shoulder all day, right? To make sure you have anyone else to replace the work I do for you every day?”

The words feel like a slap to the face.

He feels the anger in his gut subside, being replaced by immediate regret.

“That’s not what it was-” he stumbles over his words, his voice coming out more pleading than he’d like to admit.

“That’s not what any of it was,” he shakes his head emphatically, trying to make her understand, make her see that he didn’t mean to come off the way he had. “I was just- I was just worried about you, I-”

“Tell me you didn’t have Kelsey schedule your meetings then. Or have Hendrix manage your correspondence. Or, maybe you didn’t specifically ask for Annika to run your errands just so that you wouldn’t have to talk to me.”

His heart is in his stomach. When she says it like that - lists all his actions out in such a clinical way - it sounds so damn manipulative that he doesn’t have an immediate response.

“It wasn’t like that-” he tries to protest, trying to say something, anything to make her understand that no, that wasn’t him trying to give her the cold shoulder, that wasn’t him trying to get away from her.

She puts a hand up to halt his train of thought.

“Look, it’s one thing to disagree with a personal decision of mine, but to punish me for it professionally?” Her tone is as incredulous as it is hurt.

“I work very hard, and I am damn good at my job,” she states, certain. “There is a reason it takes so many people to fill in for what I do everyday.”

She takes a breath, trying to keep her voice even.

“So you do not get to insult me and my work this way.”

He takes a few steps towards her, his hands itching desperately to reach out and grab her. He wants to grab her shoulders, make her look at him - to just let him say something, but she’s right.

“I know,” he says quietly, his voice laced with shame, “I know you do good work. I was just…”

“I was just mad,” he confesses with a reluctant sigh. “I was mad that everything… everything happened, and I didn’t know what to do. And I know that’s a terrible excuse, but I didn’t- I was just feeling all these- feelings, and I reacted like an - an ass, and I…”

He runs his hand along his face, exhaling in frustration.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for how I acted.”

She continues to glare at him, silent.

He hates the way she’s looking at him - like the sight of him hurts her.

“Please,” he whispers, hating the pleading tone that crept into his voice. “Please, don’t look at me like that. Just- just let me make up for it, yeah? Let me make this right. Can you… can you at least…?”

He slowly starts moving closer to her - one, then two steps.

She moves back.

“‘At least’ what? What do you want from me now?”

He takes another step, the distance between them now a mere foot. When he’s standing just in front of her, he stops.

His heart is lodged in his throat.

“Can… can I touch you?”

“Why? You want me to be your charity case again? Something you can hold and try to fix to make yourself feel better?”

Okay, maybe that was a bit too far. But she was scared because she was this close to forgiving him, to letting all the anger dissipate like it never existed and letting him hold her like he did so many nights ago.

She shouldn’t forgive him so easily. She shouldn’t want to forgive him so quickly.

He shouldn’t influence her as easily as he does.

He winces, as if she’d physically hit him with those words. He hates the way she’s reacting - hates how she’s talking like she doesn’t know him.

“No,” he says shakily, the word coming out as a breath. “No, I… you’re not a charity case. I just-”

He’s desperate now, desperate to fix this.

“I want to hold you,” he says quietly, his voice breaking. “I just want to hold you.”

“Why?” she tries to sound demanding, angry, cross with him. But her voice cracks instead.

The sound of her voice cracking makes his chest ache.

“Because I care about you,” he says, the words coming out rushed. “Because I’m terrified that you’ll disappear. And because after everything that’s happened these last couple days, I… I just want to hold you in my arms and make sure that you’re real. That you’re here. I just want you.”

“Please,” he whispers. “Please just let me hold you.”

His heart is beating so damn fast that it’s making his head fuzzy, but he needs her to say yes.

She eyes him warily. This wouldn’t be the first time he acted like he cared about her like this, only to distance himself after.

“I’m not leaving,” he says slowly, his voice serious. “I’m not going to push you away. I swear. I swear to you, I will not push you away again this time, okay?”

He reaches out slowly, trying to seem as unthreatening as possible, and puts his hand lightly to her wrist - just barely keeping his touch there, like he’s afraid she’ll recoil away.

“Please,” he whispers, his eyes never leaving hers. “Please just… just give me a chance. Let me just have this one thing. Please.”

Still eyeing him, she gives him the barest nod.

She’s never been that good at saying no to him anyway.

Slowly, he moves closer to her, taking one small step at a time. His hands hover at her shoulders for a moment, pulling her to stand up, before he reaches out again and gently pushes her shirt sleeves up slightly, exposing her bare forearms.

She watches him curiously, wondering what he’s doing.

He carefully wraps his fingers loosely around both of her wrists, being mindful of a bruise, and gently guides them up and around his shoulders.

His hands settle on her hips, and then he hesitates. He knows she’s still upset. He knows that he’s still got to apologize and make it up to her properly, but right now, he desperately just wants her close. So he takes a deep breath and gently pulls her body closer, until he can feel her flush against him.

He rests his chin on the top of her head, and god, she feels so good in his arms. She feels so right, and he doesn’t even care that she’s hurt and angry with him right now - she’s here. She’s here, and she’s not pushing him away.

She inhales and that scent that’s so Oscar fills her senses.

She wonders why Oscar smells like coming home.

His hands rub up and down her body slowly - still as gentle as he can manage, not wanting to overstep. He feels her flinch when he accidentally brushes his fingers over a patch of bruise just above her hip bone, and he quickly moves his hand to other spots.

He just wants to hold her. He wants to be close to her.

“Do friends hug like this?” she whispers, not daring to look at him.

The question catches him off guard, and he freezes for a moment.

“No,” he says slowly, his voice barely above a whisper. He continues his slow rhythm of rubbing up and down along her body, tracing an invisible pattern of loops and circles. Silence falls over the room like a blanket of fog, the night sky a backdrop to the intimacy of two people.

“No, I don’t think friends do,” he says quietly.

“You kissed me. The other night, at your place - you kissed me,” she murmurs into his embrace.

He doesn’t move for a moment, absorbing the words.

“I did,” he says simply.

His hands continue to gently rub up and down against her form, his touch careful and calculated. It’d be so easy, so easy just to slip his hands beneath the fabric of her clothes, to just touch her - skin to skin. But not yet.

“And when I did, you kissed me back,” he says quietly.

Her breathing hitches - she wasn’t sure he’d remember.

“I did,” she admits quietly.

A warm feeling begins to take root in his chest and he tightens his hold around her. Pulling his head back, his hooked finger tilting up her chin, he tries to read her eyes.

“And if I were to kiss you again right now, do you think you’d kiss me back?” he asks slowly, his voice still a soft whisper.

She looks up at him, eyes meeting his.

“Only one way to find out,” she breathes.

He holds her gaze for a moment longer, searching her face for any sign of discomfort or uncertainty.

And then he’s carefully lifting one of his hands to her face, his fingers barely coming to rest against her cheek. He rubs the pad of his thumb across her cheek for a moment, just wanting to savor the brief feeling, before gently tilting her head up.

And then he’s slowly lowering his head down, until he can just barely feel her breath against his lips.

Foreheads pressed together, all she can see, feel, breathe is him.

“Don’t play with my heart like this,” she murmurs against his lips.

He swallows hard.

“I’m not,” he breathes quietly, his eyes closed. He can’t bring himself to open them now - he’s scared of what he’ll see in her expression.

He hesitates. He wants to kiss her, wants to kiss her so bad, but he’s not sure she’ll let him. He’s not sure she trusts him again yet.

He moves his head slightly, his nose just brushing against hers.

“I won’t,” he says quietly, this time with more conviction - more force. “I swear I will never hurt you again. I’ll prove it, I’ll show you-“

His words are interrupted by a knock at her door.

They have the worst timing.

#formula 1 fic #oscar x assistant!reader #oscar piastri fic #oscar piastri fanfic #oscar piastri x you #oscar piastri #oscar piastri angst #oscar piastri x reader #please read and validate me #saffu's works

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sissylittlefeather · 10 months

Text

How the Web Was Woven: Chapter 2

A/N: Time for the second chapter in this time-traveling/soulmate AU! This is a reader insert Elvis x fem!reader. I had an absolute blast writing this chapter. I really hope y'all enjoy it!

PS- thanks, as always, to my besties @ccab and @elvisfatass for listening to me scream about this series and helping me when I ask!

Need to catch up? Here's my Masterlist.

Warnings: 18+ minors DNI! Drinking alcohol, lots of kissing, cussing, erections, fingering, oral sex (f receiving), p in v penetrative sex, unprotected sex, creampie... I think that's all.

Word count: ~5.5k

Maybe he'll just stay with you forever.

******

When you get back to the dorm, Elvis is all in a tizzy over your music. He wants to hear more, so you give him your iPod.

"What is this?"

"It's music. Here." You put the headphones over his ears and push play.

"Your records must be tiny!" He hollers over the sound of the music and you laugh.

"No records. The music is digital."

"Digital?"

"Oh man. How do I explain this? Just trust me. All the music is saved inside this thing."

"How many songs are in it?"

"It holds, like, thousands, but I think I have around 500. I don't buy as much music as I should." His mouth drops open and he looks down at the iPod.

"Can I take this back with me?"

"Absolutely not. But you're welcome to use it while you're here." He has another wave of hoping he never leaves.

"I love this." You can't help but smile at how excited he is.

"Okay, I need to get ready. I'm going to a friend's house for a game night tonight. Do you want to come with me?" He can't hear you over the music pumping through the headphones. You tap on his shoulder and he uncovers his ear.

"Huh?"

"Do you want to come with me to a friend's house for game night?"

"Oh, sure. I don't want to stay here by myself." Truthfully, he doesn't want to spend a minute away from you.

He goes back to listening to his music while you get ready. Watching you fix your hair and do your makeup is endearing to him. You realize he's staring as you swipe on your black eyeliner pencil.

"What?"

"Nothing. You're just real pretty." You feel your cheeks get hot.

"Thanks." You smile nervously. They definitely didn't exaggerate about how charming he is. Still, his presence is comforting for some reason and you'll miss him when you finally figure out how to get him home. That'll be your project tomorrow, though. Tonight's challenge will be introducing him to your friends without him finding out too much about himself.

When you're ready, you look over him to make sure he's not going to stand out too much. You get to his hair and frown.

"We need to do something about your hair."

"I can tell you right now what we're going to do. Nothing. My hair is fine." He moves his hands to his head protectively. He used half of your can of hairspray this morning fixing it. He's not going to let you touch it now.

"Okay, but no one does their hair like that anymore. You need to make it do this." You gesture to a poster on your wall of Joe Jonas with his hair in his face.

"No. Not happening." You laugh and reach up to tousle his hair and he grabs your wrists, laughing with you and hollering, "NO!"

He wrestles your hands back behind your back and pins you up against him. When he looks down at you, breathing heavily, you both stop laughing. The air between you is electric and he starts to lean in. His lips are almost to yours when there's a knock on your door.

"Y/n! Are you ready?" Katie busts through the door and Elvis lets go of you quickly. "Oh, God, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were still here."

"Yeah, he's gonna be here for a bit. Is that okay?" You look at her with an awkward smile.

"Fine by me, as long as you two aren't too loud. These walls are thin, you know." You and Elvis both blush and she laughs. "We better go. I need to stop by the liquor store on our way there."

You nod. Luckily, Katie is 21, so you never have to worry about how to find alcohol for your parties. She walks out of your room and you look back at Elvis.

"I don't really drink." He shrugs.

"I know. It's okay. I hope you don't mind if I do."

"No it's- wait, how do you know?" You smile awkwardly again.

"I might've understated how much of a fan my grandma was. I know... things... about you."

"Like what else?!"

"Don't worry about it." You try to ignore your almost-encyclopedic knowledge of him.

"Come on, lovebirds! Let's go!" Katie hollers from the living room. Elvis takes your hand and you head out there to her. He's nervous, both to meet your friends and because you seem to know more about him than he does.

******

"Guys, this is John. We met in Tupelo. He's staying here with me for a while. Be nice, please." You say sternly as you look around the room at your friends. They introduce themselves and shake his hand. Your friend Ashley doesn't waste any time noticing his appearance.

"You look just like Elvis. Man, y/n, you have a type, don't you?" You laugh awkwardly.

"Yeah, John is a big fan of Elvis too. Hence the hairstyle." Elvis soaks in how commonplace it is for these people to talk about him. How do they all seem to know him?

You quickly change the subject before someone says something about him that he doesn't need to hear.

"So, games? I need a drink." You walk to the kitchen with Elvis in tow to fix yourself a beverage. He watches as you look through the liquor bottles.

"What are you looking for?"

"I'll know it when I- ah ha!" You settle on a bottle of Malibu coconut rum. Then, you open the fridge and pull out a bottle of pineapple juice and mix them together in a Solo cup. You take a sip and revel in the sweetness and he just watches you curiously.

"Can I try that?"

"Thought you didn't drink?"

"It's 2007. I think I can live a little." You hand him the cup and he takes a gulp and then looks at you wide-eyed. "That tastes like dessert!"

"You like it?"

"Yes. This one is mine." You laugh and make yourself another drink. This could get interesting.

Katie calls to you from the living room that it's time to start the first game. The evening passes and you play through a board game and a round of charades. He has you make him two more drinks and you notice his laugh gets louder and he touches you more. He's not drunk, but he's certainly feeling a little relaxed. You're not complaining, though, because you've had the same number of drinks and he is looking more and more irresistible.

You settle in to be a team for a trivia game and he wraps his arm around your shoulders and kisses your cheek. You giggle a little and lay your head against him. Katie watches the two of you and smiles. She knows how you've been alone for a long time. It's nice for her to see you happy, even with this stranger you picked up mysteriously in Tupelo.

"Oh, this seems unfair. It's a pop culture card." Your friend Brandon holds up a card with questions to ask the two of you. "Topic is Elvis Presley." Elvis whips his head toward you and laughs. He can't believe he's a whole card in this game. You don't think much of it when Brandon reads the first question.

"What year did Elvis buy Graceland?" Elvis sits up and hollers.

"1957!" Then, it hits you that there might be something on that card that he shouldn't know. Suddenly, you dive across the table and grab the card from Brandon, sending game pieces flying, before he can read the next question.

"Hey! What the hell?" Brandon yells.

"It's uh, an unfair advantage. Just pick another card."

"Seriously? Come on, y/n."

"Pick another card. Please." Elvis looks at you strangely and tries to take the card from you. You shake your head and put it in your pocket. The game continues and you try not the think about the fact that he almost had to answer a question about the year he died.

At the end of the trivia game, you decide it's time to head home. It's after midnight and you're not sure Elvis should have another drink. Katie agrees since she has to drive home. As you're walking to the car, Elvis wraps his arms around you from behind and kisses your cheek again.

"That was fun. 2007 is fun." He whispers in your ear. He's obviously a little drunk, but so are you, so you don't argue. Instead, you turn to face him and throw your arms around his neck, stumbling backwards.

"We have a good time." When you get to the car, he presses you up against it with his body and looks down into your face. He leans down and presses his lips to yours gently. It feels like someone has lit your insides on fire in the best way possible.

"Get in the car, lovebirds." Katie yells at you from the driver's seat. He backs off of you and opens the door for you to slide into the back seat together. It doesn't take long for him to pull you into him and kiss you again. This time, it's an open-mouth kiss and his tongue dips in to move against yours. You begin to make out pretty heavily, his hands moving over your body.

"Hey! No sex in my backseat!" You hear Katie holler from the front. You both start to laugh and he kisses down your neck, muttering.

"No promises." Luckily, it's a short drive back to the dorm, so he doesn't get much further, but the elevator ride is not very much fun for Katie. Finally, you're back to your room and you stumble in laughing and kissing in turns.

"Elvis, wait." He pulls back and looks at you with his heavily-lidded bedroom eyes.

"Yes, honey?"

"Nothing, I just... I'm gonna go to the bathroom." He sits on the side of your bed and watches you walk away.

In the bathroom, you go and then stare at yourself in the mirror. You have an opportunity here to live a dream you've had since you were old enough to know what sex is. But it feels wrong to do it like this, with both of you drunk. You steel yourself for how you're going to tell him no and then open the door.

It turns out you don't have to worry about it, though, because he's fallen fast asleep on your bed, fully clothed. You sigh and then go to take his shoes and his belt off. You change into pajamas and climb into the bed next to him, taking a minute to just look at him. He really is as beautiful as you thought he would be. Pictures didn't do him justice. You reach out and run your fingertip across his brow and down his nose. This is a miracle.

Just then, he rolls over and puts his arms around you, pulling you in close to him. He kisses your forehead and whispers.

"G'night, honey."

You settle in for another night in his arms. Tomorrow you need to try to find a way to get him home, but tonight, he's yours.

******

When you wake up in the morning, Elvis groans and pulls you in close to him.

"Good morning." You say quietly. He groans again and you realize he must be feeling his drinks from last night. You go to roll out of bed and he grabs you and holds you tighter.

"No, don't leave." He whines.

"I'm going to get you some water. It'll make you feel better; I promise." He nods and lets you go.

When you come back with the water, he's sitting up on the side of the bed with his head in his hands.

"Thank you." He takes the water and gulps it down.

"You'll feel better after some food. Take a shower and let's go get breakfast." He agrees and makes his way to the bathroom. You have a half-second fantasy of asking if you can get in with him, but you shake your head and get rid of that thought. You need to focus on trying to find a way to get him home.

******

After eating breakfast, you both feel a lot better. You start to brainstorm ideas for what to do.

"What if we go back to where you showed up?"

"That's an idea." He looks down at his hands. He doesn't want to tell you that he'd rather stay, at least for a little while longer.

"Okay, well, let's try that today. You'll need to put your suit from the concert back on. You can't wear these clothes in 1957." He nods and you notice how quiet he is.

"You okay?"

"Yeah. I just... I'm not sure I'm ready to go back."

"Elvis, you have to. You don't have a choice." He nods again and looks up at you, reaching across the table to put his hand on yours. He rubs small circles on the back of your hand with his thumb.

"Do I have to go today?" The way he feels about you makes him never want to go.

"We don't know how long we might have to get you back. We need to try."

"Okay." He gives you a sad smile, pats your hand, and stands up, stretching and yawning. You make your way back to the dorm for him to change before you head to Tupelo.

******

When you get to the fairgrounds, you go back to where you were when he ran into you, or at least to the best of your memory.

"Now what?" He looks at you anxiously.

"I don't know. I've never done this before. You're the one who time-traveled. What did you do?"

"All I did was come down the stairs of the stage and try to find a place backstage to... well... I was backstage."

"Okay, but was there anything different about this show that hadn't happened before?" He blushes and thinks about the massive erection he had when he came off the stage. Surely that's not related.

"Not really, no."

"Nothing at all?" He looks at you exasperated. You have to remember.

"There was one thing. You really don't know what I'm talking about? Please don't make me say it."

"Oh! Oh my God. Yes. I remember." You laugh out loud and he rolls his eyes.

"I don't think that has anything to do with the time travel." He mutters.

"We don't know that. What if it does?"

"That makes no damn sense, y/n." He puts his hands on his hips.

"Okay, but we need to try to perfectly replicate the circumstances. So, y'know, get after it." You gesture to his crotch and try really hard not to laugh as he stares at you.

"I can't just make it happen!" His face is bright pink and you're about to die from suppressing laughter. You stand and stare at each other for a bit, not sure what to do next.

"Well."

"You could help me." He gets a devilish look in his eyes and you shake your head frantically.

"Noooooo, that's, I can't..."

"You had no problem last night getting me there." Now it's your turn to blush.

"Elvis!"

"It's true! This is your idea!"

"Okay? Never mind. You're right. This has nothing to do with the time travel."

"Now, we don't know that. We have to perfectly replicate the circumstances. That's what you said." He takes several steps towards you and you feel the energy build between you. You look up at him as he gets closer and puts his hands on your hips. "We have to try."

He leans down and kisses you gently a few times before the passion takes over and you throw your arms around his neck and slide your tongue into his mouth. Before you know it, you're both locked in a tight embrace, kissing deeply with your bodies pressed together. After a few minutes you pull back, breathing heavily.

"Is it working?" He shifts his hips and presses his erection into you.

"What do you think?" He kisses you again with a new desperation. There's a big part of him that starts to get worried that this will work. It definitely feels like you're on the right track, even if neither of you can explain it.

But other than a slight electricity and buzzing sound, nothing happens.

You get to the point where if you keep kissing, he's going to lay you down on the ground and have his way with you right there, and he almost does, but another group of tourists comes into view.

"Shit." He hisses and fixes his dick so that it's up under his belt again. You breathe deeply and smooth your hair.

"Let's go. This isn't working." He says a silent prayer of thanks and nods. You head for your car before the group of tourists can spot him and ask to take pictures or something, assuming he's the most effective tribute artist of all time.

In the car, he looks over at you from the passenger seat and smiles.

"So now what are we doing?"

"I have no idea. I'm supposed to go out with my friends tonight. I'm not sure you should come."

"Why not? I promise I won't get drunk again."

"No, that's not it. I just... we're going to a club. I don't think it's going to be your scene."

"What kind of club?" A nightclub doesn't sound so bad to him.

"A hip-hop club."

"Hip what?" You roll your eyes and laugh. Sometimes he sounds like your grandpa.

You rifle through the cds on your visor and pull one down that's labeled "rap mix" with some doodles drawn on it in sharpie. When the bass beat hits, he looks at you with his eyes wide.

"Is this-"

"Music made by Black people, mostly." You cut him off before he can say something indicative of the time he came from.

"And you listen to it?"

"Oh yeah. We don't really... separate... like it used to be. Things have changed quite a bit..." His eyes light up.

"I wondered, since your friends were... not all white..." You forgot that it might've been a little shocking to him to see how diverse your group of friends was last night. Still, he seemed to take it in stride.

"Anyway, we're going to a place where they play this kind of music and people dance."

"I like to dance."

"This is gonna be dancing like you've never seen before."

"Everything here is like nothing I've ever seen before."

"You promise you won't get all weird and judgy?" He puts his hand on his heart.

"I promise. How bad can it be?" You think to yourself that it might actually be better if he has a few drinks first and then put the car in drive.

******

A couple of girls come over to get ready with you and Katie and pre-party before the club. They fawn over how cute "John" is and mix up some Malibu and pineapple. He looks at you sheepishly.

"Can I have one? I won't have as many as last night."

"I'm not your mother. Have as many as you want." You laugh. He grabs a cup and takes a sip, smiling. He stays in the living room on the couch marveling at how many channels are on your tv while you go in the bedroom with the girls to get dressed.

"Y/n, he is SO CUTE. He looks super familiar, though. How did you meet him?" Your friend Nicole remarks.

"It's because he looks like Elvis Presley." Ashley chimes in with her observation from last night.

"Yeah, I guess he kinda does in the right light. I met him when I went to Tupelo." You try to downplay how much he looks like Elvis because he is Elvis. Now it's Katie's turn to jump in.

"I'd love to hear the story of how you met. Because you were only in Tupelo for a few hours. And somehow you came back with this perfect guy."

"Oh, well, I went to the fairgrounds and we just sorta bumped into each other." You leave out the time-traveling bit.

"Shit, maybe I need to go wandering around Tupelo too." Nicole laughs and you pull an outfit out of your closet. You squeeze into the hot pink bodycon dress and slide the black vest over it, fastening the single button up under your boobs. You finish teasing your hair and put on a pink headband with a tiny bow. Your eyeliner is perfect and you're excited for Elvis to see you so dressed up. Once everyone is ready two drinks later, you make your way into the living room to grab Elvis and head to the club.

When he sees you, his mouth literally drops open. Up until now, you've had on jeans and a t-shirt or pajamas. This outfit shows off all of your assets and he's in awe. The other girls notice the way he looks at you and start to giggle. He sets his drink on the coffee table and walks directly to you, never taking his eyes off of you.

"This outfit is... wow." You look around at the other girls just standing and watching.

"Thanks. What?" He shakes his head a little.

"Nothing, you're just gorgeous, honey, that's all." You have the thought that you should just take him into your bedroom and let everyone else go to the club without you, but Katie speaks and shatters your daydream.

"Okay, lovebirds. Let's go. The club is waiting."

******

When you get to the club, there's a line outside but you can hear the thumping bass beat from where you stand. It's September, so the evening is chilly and you shiver in your sleeveless dress. Elvis doesn't think twice before wrapping his arms around you to keep you warm. You meet up with some of your guy friends and make it inside fairly quickly. You let your friends walk a few paces in front of you so that Elvis's reaction will go unnoticed. Once you get to a place where you can see the dance floor, you're glad you gave him some space.

"Holy shit." He looks around with his eyes damn near popping out of his head.

"Okay, you promised. No judgy bullshit." He turns and looks at you.

"This is amazing."

"Wait, really? I figured you'd get all shy and weird because, well, sex." He gives you a disapproving look.

"I've had sex before."

"Well, I know that, but still. I also know how and where and when you grew up."

"Looks like I finally know more about me than you do. Do you dance?" You're pleasantly surprised by his reaction.

"I do. I actually love to dance."

"Well, then, let's go." He grabs your hand and makes a beeline for the dance floor. Once you're out there, you turn to him.

"Are you ready for this?"

"Hell yeah." You turn around again and put your ass on him and begin to grind. He laughs out loud and puts his hands on your hips. It doesn't take him long to figure out how to move with you. This shouldn't shock you as much as it does, considering all the stage performances you've seen of his. You knew he could move his hips. The song ends and you face him, ready for him to say he's had enough, but the next song is one of your favorites. You put your hands on his shoulders and body roll into him.

"Yes, honey, I like this." He leans down and whispers in your ear as you continue to move together. You spend the next three hours either on the dance floor or taking short breaks at the table with your friends before he inevitably grabs your hand and drags you out to dance again.

By the time you leave, you're both so drenched in sweat that his shirt is soaked through and your hair is wild. On the way home, you sit in the way back seat of your friend's suburban and he wastes no time in wrapping himself around you and kissing you. Your friends laugh as you make out like teenagers and Katie hollers.

"Yeah, they do that."

Back at the dorm, you barely notice your friends as they continue the party in the living room and you tumble into your room with Elvis. You can still hear the bass beat from the music in the living room, so you push him into a sitting position on the side of your bed.

You turn away from him, putting both hands on his knees, and grind your ass against him. Then, you bend over in front of him and touch your toes, slipping your shoes off. He reaches out and puts both hands on your ass cheeks and grunts.

"Mmm, don't stop."

You turn to face him and unbutton your vest, sliding it off and throwing it to the side. He wraps his arms around your waist and buries his face in your cleavage, pressing his lips to the soft skin of your breasts. You unbutton his shirt and pull it off of his shoulders. Then, you pull your dress up and climb onto his lap, straddling him. You continue to grind against him to the beat from the living room, feeling his hard cock pressing against you as you do. He slides both hands up your thighs underneath your dress.

"Can I?" He looks up at you desperately and you nod. He tugs on the hem of your dress and pulls it up over your head and off. As he looks at you sitting on him in nothing but your bra and panties, he whispers.

"Wow." You lean in and kiss him deeply, skin pressed against his. He leans back until you're laying on top of him in the bed and then rolls over so that he's on top. He leaves a trail of soft kisses down your chest and reaches behind your back to try to undo your bra, but is completely confused by how different the clasp is from what he's seen before.

"What the hell is this?" You sit up and unhook it easily. He shrugs. "Okay, I'll figure that out later."

You laugh and he removes your bra, tossing it to the side. He goes back to kissing your chest, paying special attention to your nipples. You arch your back with the sensation of his warm mouth on you. He kisses down to your hip and then slips your panties down to your ankles and off. Going back to your center, he slides one finger into you and presses it in and out.

"You want me, baby?" He asks, voice dripping with lust.

"Use your mouth first." You respond breathlessly. He freezes and then sits up, looking at you.

"Oh, honey, I'm sorry, I-I-I've never..." He stutters nervously.

"Shit, I'm sorry, never mind. I forget how young you are."

"Now, wait a minute. I'm older than you." You don't know how to explain to him that you forget he isn't who he will become yet.

"It's okay. Just keep going."

"Tell me how to do it." You sit up on your elbows.

"It's really okay. You don't have to."

"I want to. Tell me what to do." A thought comes to you. Are you really the woman that teaches Elvis Presley this skill?

"Okay, well, just put your tongue here and move it around like this." You put your finger on your clit and rub it in circles and over the top, pleasuring yourself. You moan softly at the feeling and he nods and leans down, pressing his mouth to you. He starts to move his tongue and you moan a little louder. You feel him smile and he starts to get a little more bold with his movements. He slides his finger back inside you and continues licking your clit. He sucks on it lightly and then goes back to moving his tongue on you. It doesn't take long for him to figure out how to read your body for signs he's on the right track and you feel the coil of your orgasm tighten.

"Oh, fuck, Elvis!" You cry out as the coil snaps and you feel the waves of pleasure crash into you from every angle. He laughs as you come hard on his hand, feeling your walls pulse around his finger.

"Ha! That's never happened before. That was... wow." He looks at you with sparkly eyes and you breathe heavily through the high of your climax.

You sit up and push his pants down his legs and off, letting his cock bounce free. You stroke him for a bit and he leans his head back with his eyes closed and mouth open slightly.

"You want to fuck me, Elvis?"

"God, yes, y/n, that's all I want." You pull his hips down to yours and line him up with your entrance. He pushes into you slowly and rests his forehead on your shoulder until he's filling you fully. "Mmm, goddamn." His voice is husky and deep.

You moan softly as he begins to pump in and out of you with more speed. His hips slam against yours to the rhythm of the music still coming from the living room. You fuck like this for a while with him on top of you, but eventually you push him onto his back and climb on top of him, sinking down onto his cock.

"Fuck, yes, Elvis." You start to grind your hips against him, pushing him deeper and deeper and he groans.

"'M gonna come, baby. You feel so damn good." You nod and keep going and he pops his eyes open. "Do I-"

"I'm on birth control."

"What?"

"I'll explain later just don't stop!" He pulls you down to his chest and fucks into you from underneath until he can't stand it anymore.

"Fuck, yes!" He shudders and pumps into you weakly a couple more times. You lay on his chest for a bit trying to catch your breath. Then, you slide off of him and settle in the crook of his arm. He turns toward you and kisses you fully on the mouth. "That was incredible! I've never done it like that before!" You giggle at his enthusiasm.

"Like what? With the girl on top?"

"Yes and without pulling out."

"Oh. Yeah it's a miracle of the modern age."

"Well, I love it. Goddamn, I'm in love with you now." He laughs and kisses you again. You're not sure he's kidding, even though he laughs.

That's when you hear it. The buzzing sound gets louder and louder and you notice that there's a spot next to your bed where the air looks wavy.

"Elvis, look!" He sits up and looks where you're pointing.

"What is that?"

"I think it's how you get home!" His face falls and his heart drops. He wasn't kidding about being in love with you. He can't go now, not after what you just did together. "Get dressed! You have to go!"

"No, I don't want to."

"Elvis, you have to. You can't stay here forever. You have to be... you." You jump out of bed and gather his suit. "Come on!"

He gets out of bed reluctantly and gets dressed, looking at the mysterious portal with disdain. You throw on your robe and sit on the side of the bed. Once he's fully dressed, he pulls you into him and kisses your cheek.

"I'm not ready to leave you." All of a sudden, tears gather in your eyes and a lump forms in your throat.

"I know. But you have to." He pulls back and looks you in the eyes.

"I wasn't kidding about loving you. Come with me!"

"I can't! Elvis, please just go. This isn't going to get any easier." He sighs and runs his hand through his hair. He grabs your face and kisses you one last time.

"I'll never forget you, honey." He caresses your cheek and then turns away, walking through the wavy air. He disappears and there's small pop as the portal goes away too.

You sit on the side of your bed and cry, tears falling into your lap as your shoulders shake.

You love him even more than you did before. Now he's real and you'll never forget the days when he was yours.

******

A year later, you go to Graceland for the anniversary of Elvis's death. You never stopped looking for him after he left, but you're starting to lose hope that you'll ever see him again. You do an evening tour and somehow manage to find yourself alone in a corner of the house. You break down crying, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. You miss him with every fiber of your being.

And then you hear it. The buzzing sound. And the air gets wavy in front of you. Could it be? It has to be. You jump up and walk slowly towards the portal, your heart beating wildly in your chest...

******

Chapter 3 coming soon!

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Taglist:

@ccab @elvisfatass @elvisalltheway101 @aliypop @18lkpeters @dkayfixates @ashtag6887 @your-nanas-house @deniseinmn @joshuntildawn13 @lookingforrainbows @60svintage @littlehoneyposts @epthedream69 @that-hotdog

#elvis presley fanfiction #elvis presley #elvis fanfic #elvis smut #elvis presley fic #elvis presley x reader #elvis x reader #elvis presley x y/n #elvis x y/n #elvis x you #elvis presley x you #elvis presley smut #elvis presley fanfic #elvis fic #elvis fanfiction #50s elvis #how the web was woven

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humanitys-strongest-bamf · 10 months

Text

"get me a damned matcha" | Chapter 25: June III

{{ Chapter 24: May II | Epilogue }} Chapter Directory

I for real feel like I'm grieving! This was my first published and completed fic in a VERY VERY long time and, as frustrating as it was sometimes, I'm so glad that y'all took this journey with me 😭

✧ pairing ➼ levi ackerman x fem!reader, college x coffee shop x roommates!au ✧ summary ➼ After you find yourself plagued with misfortune due to struggles in your personal and family life, you find yourself needing to move last minute. As a junior in undergrad with little money and little social support, you considered yourself lucky when you found a sublease that was close to campus and was relatively cheap. Unfortunately, it seemed that your roommate did not seem to be so excited regarding your presence. ✧ content/warnings ➼ fluff, alcohol, reader finally coming to terms with herself ✧ word count ➼ ~5.2k

School was over, but it didn’t mean you were entirely free of responsibilities.

Paradis University hosted a graduate banquet every year, specifically to feature students that excelled academically or contributed to the community.

You didn’t originally want to go. Your grades weren’t the best and you didn’t feel like being surrounded by your classmates that would no doubt boast about their near perfect GPA’s. However, you did start the Honors Society and it had taken off within the past few months, so you felt the need to attend since you participated in an important extracurricular. Sure, you could have just dipped out on it, but it could have been a chance to network if you decided to go down that route.

You couldn’t see it happening in the meantime. You just wanted to focus on your book, but if the opportunity arose to network, you told yourself that you’d take it.

You were dragging Levi to the banquet with you, which was met with surprisingly little resistance. The idea of spending the night wearing a formal outfit and being surrounded by people didn’t sound great to either of you, so you were more than surprised when Levi simply responded with a “sure” when you half-heartedly asked him if he’d be your emotional support throughout the night.

You were currently trying to focus on just the next hour or two to keep your mind off the banquet. The tickets were paid for and the outfits were bought. Even if you really wanted to skip out on it, you had already spent time and money preparing, so to have that go to waste would feel just as bad as forcing yourself to go for the night.

Sighing, you looked down into your bag, double checking that you had picked up both sandwiches that you had ordered. You were dropping off lunch for Levi before planning to hang out in the cafe for the rest of his shift before heading home to get ready for the banquet.

Your head shot up as you saw something orange moving out of the corner of your eye. It was small and barely drew your attention, but you looked off into the distance and your eyes fell on a nearby dumpster. You saw something shuffling around near the corner before disappearing under it.

Any intention for you to shrug and move on disappeared as soon as you heard a meow.

Your eyes widened as you immediately set your bag down on a nearby bench and headed directly towards the dumpster, doing your best to ignore the subtle foul smell coming from the opening. You got onto your hands and knees and knelt down to peek underneath the dumpster, a small gasp coming from your lips when you saw a lone kitten squatting in front of you. The kitten was thin, but didn’t look like it was starving. They were definitely dirty and you could already imagine Levi’s face if he was the one staring at the kitten. Some of its fur was matted and the dirt covered what you assumed would have otherwise been a vibrant orange coat.

It didn’t seem actively afraid of you, so you reached out your hand towards it without fully extending your arm, to offer that you were friendly but to not be too intrusive or scare them off. It made eye contact with you before gradually approaching you, tentatively watching you before deciding that you were a nice human and immediately crawled onto your lap.

Clearly more smitten with the kitten than you were disgusted by the amount of dirt and grime on its coat, you picked them up and brought them over to the bench, suddenly remembering your tuna sandwich. You carefully unwrapped the sandwich as the kitten watched you curiously, smelling the tuna as soon as you exposed the sandwich from its wrapping.

You scooped up some of the tuna with your pinky and extended your hand out to it again and it took all of your willpower to hold back the massive smile building on your face as you watched it happily lick at your finger. All that willpower was immediately thrown out the metaphorical window as soon as you heard it begin to purr.

You felt your heart ache as you stared at it, noticing that it wasn’t wearing a collar. You kept telling yourself that no matter what, you were not going to take it home with you, despite already being unable to part from it. You already knew that Levi was going to question why it took you so long to pick up the sandwiches, yet you couldn’t get yourself to get up and walk away.

You weren’t going to take the cat. You didn’t have the capacity to adopt it. You told yourself you wouldn’t do it.

~~~~~

You ended up taking the cat.

Your hands were full with your bag and the sandwiches, so you settled for placing the kitten in the hood of your jacket. Although he seemed to shuffle around a bit, your hood was large and sturdy enough that there wasn’t a risk of him falling out, even if he was wiggling around.

Once you finally arrived at the cafe, you let out an internal sigh of relief once you saw that there weren’t a lot of people inside. You opened the door to the cafe with your foot since your hands were occupied, making eye contact with your grumpy barista-turned-roommate-turned-boyfriend.

Levi was in the middle of making you your Matcha before looking up and seeing you slowly make your way inside, noticing that you seemed a bit more disheveled compared to usual. That, plus the fact that it took you as long as it did for you to pick up sandwiches from a deli shop two blocks away made him immediately suspect that something was up.

“You get lost again?”

It took you a second to respond and Levi could immediately tell that your attention was directed elsewhere.

“What?”

“Really took you 30 minutes to walk down the street?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Yep,” you immediately responded, somewhat avoiding eye contact with him. You were stiff and moving slowly, as if you were afraid of knocking something over.

The more he looked at you, the more suspicious Levi became over what the hell had happened on your little field trip to the deli shop. He watched as you reached into your bag and handed him a sandwich.

He eyed you skeptically as he took the sandwich from you, immediately grimacing upon opening it and smelling the tuna coming from within the loose wrapping.

“I didn’t order tuna,” he commented with a disgusted expression.

“You’re so extra,” you sighed as you rolled your eyes at him, swapping out the sandwich you grabbed for yourself after realizing that you accidentally gave him yours.

Levi grabbed the correct sandwich but then looked up as soon as he began to unwrap it. He had heard a certain noise coming from the back of your hood. Raising an eyebrow, he gave you a skeptical look and noticed that you were purposefully avoiding eye contact with him. If he didn’t know you better, he would’ve assumed that you were just focusing on eating your sandwich, but he knew that was bullshit.

“Did I just hear meowing?”

He saw you pause for a split second, making it glaringly obvious that you were hiding something.

“I don’t know, did you?” you asked innocently while still avoiding eye contact.

You couldn’t see it, but you could essentially feel the glare that Levi was shooting in your direction.

A meow came from the back of your hood again. It must have been the tuna.

Levi’s unamused expression turned into a full frown as you continued to awkwardly look away.

“Show me your hood,” he demanded in a stern tone of voice.

“What?” you asked, looking up at him, trying your best to maintain a neutral expression. “Why?”

His gaze was unwavering, and his expression was unchanging. You could tell that he wasn’t going to back down from his request.

After a few seconds of desperately trying to maintain your mask, you sighed and pulled your hood to the side and grabbed the kitten from within, having it rest on one arm while you used your other hand to poke at your sandwich, offering more tuna to your new furry friend.

“Really?” Levi asked with an exasperated sigh.

“What?” you responded defensively. “I found him underneath the dumpster. I think he’s orphaned.”

You looked up towards Levi and saw an expected look of disgust appear on his face as soon as you mentioned the dumpster. His eyes fell from you down to the cat, noting that its fur looked a little matted, but otherwise didn’t look completely filthy. He watched as it happily licked the tuna off your finger, noticing that it was purring.

“Please don’t say you’re taking it home.”

“Where else am I supposed to put him? Back near the dumpster?” you responded nonchalantly, indicating that you had already made up your mind about adopting the dumpster kitty. “Look how much he loves the tuna.”

Levi had moved on from glaring incessantly at you to having an intense staring contest with the cat, adamant about not allowing it to come home with you. It got harder and harder to keep that frown on his face once he saw you smiling endearingly at the cat.

“Fine ,” he grumbled with a groan, rolling his eyes as he brought his attention back to making your Matcha, “but you’re feeding him something other than tuna from a cheap deli shop.”

You tried to hide the shit-eating grin that was beginning to appear on your face as you finally heard Levi give in to your somewhat impulsive decision to adopt a cat. Seeing that the cat was no longer sniffing at your sandwich, you scooped him up out of your arm and back into your hood.

“He’s going to get our clothes for the banquet all furry,” Levi mentioned as he looked back over at you.

“Well, I guess we’ll buy a lint roller on the way home,” you rationalized, earning a quiet grunt to come from Levi’s lips.

You rolled your eyes.

“Full of problems today, aren’t you?” you grumbled. “Just get me the damned Matcha.”

He looked back up at you with a frown as he hesitated in sliding your Matcha over to you.

You stuck your tongue out at him as you reached for the beverage, your eyes widening once he moved it away from you so you couldn’t reach.

“Only if you quit being a little shit.”

You glared at him and reached across the counter, dodging his efforts to shoo your hand away, smirking once you finally wrestled the cup away from him, although he wasn’t trying very hard to keep it out of your grasp in the first place.

“You’re so annoying,” he scolded.

“And you’re a dick,” you retorted.

“You’re distracting me.”

“And you’re choosing to get distracted.”

He rolled his eyes at your response, but you saw the slightest hint of the corner of his lips tugging up as well as the presence of an amused look in his eyes. He was enjoying your banter, despite his multiple claims regarding how annoying you were being to him at this moment.

Levi eventually walked away to tend to his station since he was still on a shift, but it was next to impossible for him to take his eyes off you for the rest of the shift. You were doing nothing other than sitting at your usual seat as you made your way through your sandwich, occasionally throwing a comment back to your new fur child when you heard him calling from behind you, musing over potential names for him.

“Mr. Whiskers? No? Don’t like that?” you proposed, gauging the cat’s reaction as you muttered off a list of potential names. “What about…Mashed Potato? I think you can look like a scoop of mashed potatoes. Don’t like that either? If you ask Levi, he’d probably just constantly call you a little shit, would you prefer that?”

Levi snorted to himself as he watched the ridiculousness that was the conversation you were having with the small furry creature that was meowing at you in response.

“Marmalade?” you asked, your eyes lighting up when you weren’t met with a meow of protest. “Nice to meet you, Marmalade.”

Levi watched closely as you introduced yourself, saying your name and some random facts about yourself, before pointing at Levi and introducing him as the one Marmalade will have to answer to if he leaves too much fur on the furniture.

You looked up, making eye contact with Levi again, realizing that he was listening in on your conversation.

“Levi might still refer to you as a little shit regardless, so I guess we’ll have that as your backup name.”

~~~~~

You were in a rush to the banquet. You had stopped at a pet store on the way home, buying a comfortable kennel, a litter box, a food and water bowl, and some kibble and canned food, although Levi was mumbling about being unsure if the kibble was good enough for Marmalade, clearly indicating that he was going to take this cat dad thing seriously. After taking Marmalade home, giving him a quick bath so that he wasn’t tracking dirt all over the apartment, and setting everything up for him, you were more than pressed for time.

“Told you he was going to get fur all over our clothes,” Levi grumbled from the driver’s seat as you picked off some stray strands of fur that the lint roller had failed to catch.

The drive to the banquet was relatively quiet, likely due to your nerves regarding having to be around that many people, but Levi’s brows furrowed together as he heard you incessantly squirming around in your seat. His eyes flashed over towards you and he saw that you were fumbling around with a waist-clincher that you were wearing underneath your dress. It looked more than uncomfortable and you kept on adjusting it in an attempt to make it more bearable to wear.

“Tch, just take that damn thing off,” he scolded. “You look fine.”

You paused, holding still without further adjusting it or taking it off, hesitant to fully remove it. You haven’t ever worn a formal dress without it, although you knew that it was due to lingering traces of that facade you had spent the past few months trying to unravel.

Realizing that it wasn’t worth the discomfort, you unbuckled the back of the waist-clincher and tossed it into the backseat, immediately feeling better and like you could finally breathe after taking it off.

Levi was right. It was unnecessary and barely made a difference. Even if it did, you realized that you really didn’t care anymore.

The amount of students that showed up to the banquet wasn’t terrible, but given the fact that most of them brought someone with them, you began to feel cramped fast. Most of the students walked in with their parents, with some that were like you, bringing their significant other instead.

The general expectation was to bring family and Levi was the closest person that you could realistically call family. You had cut your aunt off and had no intention of reconciling with her. You vaguely recalled a phone call two weeks ago from your aunt to chat about ‘future plans’. The question itself was innocent enough, but then she started going on about how writing isn’t an ‘actual job’ and you finally decided you had enough. You remembered snapping at her about how it was none of her business and then hung up. You haven’t responded to her since.

By the time you sat down at the table after finally locating your placecard, you were already beginning to feel overwhelmed from the amount of people cramped into a small conference room.

“This was a mistake,” you grumbled.

“Was it?”

Levi took a seat next to you and adjusted the tie that he had neatly put together about an hour prior when you were in a rush to leave. You watched him closely, paying particular attention to how his dress shirt seemed to fit his shape perfectly, with the color of the tie further accentuating his eyes. His fingers neatly dug into the collar of his shirt to adjust his tie, and you found your mind immediately wandering elsewhere as you became fixated on the dexterity of his fingers.

Feeling your cheeks heat up, you immediately ripped your eyes off him and shook your head a bit, sipping on the glass of water in front of you to keep yourself from feeling a certain way that would have made getting through this night even more difficult than it was already going to be.

“Oh, you came.”

You looked up as you saw Petra’s somewhat skeptical expression. Her tone of voice indicated that she legitimately did not think you were going to show up despite the fact that you turned in your RSVP and had a table card.

“Did you expect me not to?” you asked with a frown.

She shrugged as she sat down, hanging her purse off the back of the seat as she got settled.

“You just sounded pretty disinterested when we were chatting about it. That’s all.”

You took a second to recall that conversation that you vaguely remembered. It was a few weeks ago, roughly around the time that you had spent on figuring out how to move forward with properly grieving your parents’ death. This banquet was the last thing on your mind.

“Was distracted,” you eventually remarked. “Sorry.”

Your eyes shot up as you watched some other students sit down at the table with their family members. With everyone taking a seat, the crowd seemed a little less chaotic, so that was a plus, but you’d be expected to maintain one-on-one conversations now, which seemed just as draining.

“Honestly, I probably would have run it differently.”

“Hmm?” you said as you looked towards Petra, her comment pulling you out of your thoughts about how dreadful these next few hours were going to be. You knew she was referring to the Honors Society, since that’s what you were specifically invited to this banquet for. You already knew that she was going to say one of her comments that were genuine and did not come from a place of malignant intent, but always seemed to rub you off wrong.

She began giving examples of some things she would have done differently had she been the one that started it and you felt yourself getting increasingly irritated the more she spoke.

“Like any financial issues could’ve been mitigated through having member dues-”

“Should’ve run it yourself then,” you finally snapped as you scowled at Petra, whose eyes widened at your sudden remark.

You didn’t even notice the upturn of Levi’s lips that appeared as soon as you snapped, no doubt proud that you were finally standing up for yourself. You stood up, grumbling under your breath about how you were going to need a drink if you were going to have to deal with this type of thing all night, and headed straight for the bar.

It was the subpar university catering service, so you were less than impressed with their cocktail options, electing for the first fruity one that you saw. It tasted more like watered down juice than anything else.

You took a sip through the straw, looking over to the side as you saw Levi take a seat next to you.

“She send you to talk me down?” you asked dryly.

“No,” Levi said as he motioned for the bartender to get him a glass of whiskey. “Was too surprised to say much of anything.”

You kept your gaze fixated on your drink, watching the ice spin around as you stirred the liquid with your straw. You had known about how much your friendships were lacking for quite some time now, but you really did question why you kept all your friendships at surface-level. You legitimately couldn’t think of a reason as to why, other than maybe falling under the influence of your shitty ex-boyfriend.

Clenching your jaw, you let out a frustrated breath. You were going to resolve to do better and set boundaries when needed, instead of being the person that tedious tasks got thrown on to. You were going to be seen as a person and not as a means to an end.

You knew it was going to take a while. This part of you had been deeply engrained into you ever since high school. You’d have to fight back against any instincts you’ve developed since then, and then unweave all of the relationships that you had made based on this facade.

It was going to be hard and take a long time, but you knew that it was what you needed to do to continue moving forward.

You had to find out who you really were and how that ultimately changed the relationships around you, taking apart each superficial thread one by one until people began seeing you for who you really were.

~~~~~

Even after you gathered yourself and conversed your way through the dinner and beginning speeches, you got quickly drained again and found yourself back at the bar. You were more than annoyed, with the crowd being a bit more scattered as people began to socialize amongst each other.

You noted that Petra was chatting with the dean, likely doing some sort of elevator pitch to get into medical school, and that Oluo was chatting with Shadis, likely to ask about Shadis’ graduate program. This was essentially what all of the students present were doing: networking.

Now that you were here, you realized that you couldn’t really care for networking. You had no plans. You had no elevator pitch to give, and you were over pretending to be someone you weren’t.

You quietly groaned to yourself as you sipped on your cocktail, having ordered another one from the menu in hopes that it was better than the first one. It wasn’t. You grimaced upon tasting the liquid. It was too bitter and the ratio of alcohol to mixer was off. You’ve had better drinks at fraternity parties than whatever it was that the university catering service decided to deem as quality alcohol.

“Wanna get some air?”

You looked over as you saw Levi approaching you again after he went off to converse with Erwin, who was there to recruit more potential students for his lab. The extra personnel was much needed. Your eyes immediately lit up once you heard the offer.

“Please ,” you responded, although it sounded almost like begging, indicating how desperate you were to get out of that stuffy and noisy room.

Levi led you through the crowd and out one of the side doors that led to a balcony overlooking the downtown area. He shut the doors behind you to dampen some of the noise from within before leaning on the balcony railing next to you. It was much quieter outside. There were a few stragglers, but most of the guests had either gone home or were inside socializing. As far as you were concerned, it was only the two of you here, enjoying the cool night breeze and the beauty of the downtown lights below you, the street lamps illuminating up the street in a way that made you almost want to leave the building entirely just to walk underneath those lights.

You sipped on your drink again—likely just out of instinct since you still held the drink in your hand—and immediately grimaced again, being rudely reminded of how shitty it tasted.

Levi grabbed the glass by the rims and placed another drink in front of you. While yours was clear and flat with an orange slice inside it, the one he just handed you was bubbling from the carbonation and had a pretty mix of red and orange colors leading to the bottom of the glass.

You took a sip, not being all that surprised when it tasted much better than the one you previously had. Whatever he ordered tasted more fruity than it did alcohol, while still providing that slight kick. Realizing that he likely customized the drink instead of directly ordering something from the menu, you eyed him as you sipped on the thin straw.

He knew your flavor profile. It wasn’t that surprising to you. After all, he had been making you your drinks for two years while also living with you. The drinks that he made were clearly very different from the ones served from behind a traditional bar, but he knew your likes and dislikes enough to craft you a cocktail you’d actually enjoy.

Levi sipped on your old drink, underestimating how bad it actually was, immediately scrunching up his nose in disgust upon tasting it.

“Really?” he questioned as he shot you a skeptical look.

“It’s what they had on the menu,” you said quietly, your cheeks slightly heating up in embarrassment.

“And by ‘they’, you mean the shitty university catering.”

It was the graduate department that was hosting the event, so their catering events included alcohol, but it was still university catering, which usually resulted in their menus being written from a more economic standpoint instead of one designed to provide the guests with satisfactory food and drinks.

You shrugged in acknowledgement, having accepted that you probably should have just tried to mix something up yourself. Still, the fact that Levi went out of his way to get you a drink you’d like brought a small smile to your face.

You swirled the drink with the small straw for a while before sipping at it again, looking over towards Levi afterwards. He had turned around to set your old drink down onto the mini-table behind you, and was now headed back towards you.

As he turned to face you, you couldn’t help but notice how his hair moved about in the wind, revealing his undercut, or how his dress shirt had the two top buttons undone, showing off his collarbones. He elected to also undo his tie and have it hang around his neck. His suit jacket was off due to how warm it was inside, and he had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Your eyes drifted down to his hands and you felt your mind wandering off towards your memories of how his hands felt on you, recalling some of the more intimate things he’s done with them to you.

You found yourself staring straight at him as your face rapidly heated up again as you desperately tried to pull your mind out of the gutter.

“What?” he asked, noticing the fact that you were just staring at him, ripping you out of your daze.

“Hmm?” you responded as you slightly shook your head to reorient yourself. “Nothing, just…”

You trailed off as you awkwardly shuffled from side to side, scratching at the back of your head.

“Just what?”

You took a moment to look directly into his eyes, noticing that they had softened in the past few minutes that he was standing outside with you. Part of you didn’t believe that this was the same person that pissed you off so much two years ago, but you were able to acknowledge that pretty soon after you moved in, he was there for you in a way that you desperately needed, but could never get prior to him.

“Just…thinking about how making me hate you was probably the best thing you could have done for me.”

That was not the answer that Levi was expecting, as evidenced in the way that he blinked at you as his eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“What?” he asked, bewildered at your response.

You looked down at your drink again as you tried to gather your thoughts into something that would make sense.

“...I remember how pissed I was those first few weeks of living with you,” you began, your voice gradually rising from a quiet whisper as you continued to speak. “Kept on questioning how I was going to survive even another week with you…but I think that it’s because I hated you so much that I was able to be myself around you.”

A gentle breeze blew through the both of you, as if it was trying to carry your words directly to him.

“...because I hated you so much, I was able to form something…real with you.”

His eyes softened again as he looked into your eyes, shifting his stance so that he was facing you more.

“Well, you were pretty easy to hate,” he mumbled nonchalantly, immediately earning himself a gentle shove from you in retaliation, the edges of his lips pulling up into a subtle smirk.

“I’m serious,” he continued after readjusting his positioning after you rudely forced him to move. “I remember dreading coming home because I knew your annoying ass was going to be waiting for me.”

“And I remember grimacing every time I heard the door open because I knew I had to see your cocky face again.”

He scoffed and flicked at your forehead in response to your comment and you swatted his hand away, rubbing at your forehead afterwards as you pouted at him.

You felt your face heating up again once you saw the affectionate look in his eyes as he watched you.

“...just strange…”

“What is?” he asked, slightly tilting his head, never taking his gaze off you.

“...that within the span of two years,” you spoke quietly, “I went from hating you…to loving you.”

You felt your breath get caught in your throat as you realized what exactly you had just said and admitted to—that you loved him. You felt your heart beating through your chest as your entire body heated up in embarrassment—but there was also truth to the sentiment. You really did love him. He had been there for you in ways that no one ever had been before. He pulled you out of the shitshow that you found yourself drowning in and helped push you forward, even if he was being a bit of a dick at times.

You thought back to how sneakily he had snuck up on you, and how devastated you were when you thought you had lost him. Even through all the fighting you had at the beginning and how difficult he was as you tried to sort through your feelings, you’d be willing to go through them every single time if the result was you standing here next to him in this moment.

“...love you too, brat,” he whispered, gently running his fingers down the side of your face, before pulling you into a gentle kiss.

You pressed your lips up against his, smiling into the kiss as you ran your fingers through his undercut, stepping closer to him.

Once you finally pulled away, you looked directly into his eyes, the two of you now being close enough that your lips were just inches apart.

Nothing else mattered to you right now except for him. Being able to hate him, meet him, and fall in love with him made going through undergrad worth it, even if it didn’t feel like it at first. You’d do it over and over again if it led to this conclusion.

You parted your lips to speak, your voice barely audible as you whispered to him.

“Thank you for being my found family.”

#: @levisbrat25 @gothgril69 @sckerman @berrijam @notgoodforlife @meowjaa @averysmolbear @roseofdarknessblog @bejewelledd @hhighkey @ayame236 @sad-darksoul @velouria17 @kamyru @l1zk4 @layenacreates @lamees004 @whoami-72 @highgoon69 @chaotic-on-main @levishotgf @nube55 @chosos-mascara @heichoucleanfreak @svftackerman @v4mp-wife @moonchild-angel @astri-ackerman @auriuswolve @noctemys @you-always-made-me-blush @raginginferno267 @sugurusdiscordmoderator @jennamelinda12 @noodlejitsu @nalu-trashytrash @creigh-h @gina239

#cw: alcohol #levi x reader #levi ackerman x reader #levi heichou x reader #captain levi x reader #levi #levi ackerman #levi heichou #captain levi #fics: matcha #modern!au levi #coffeeshop!au levi #college!au levi #attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #snk

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hwasshvur · 3 months

Text

Shadowed Obsession ( Chapter two )

summary: when Y/N a normal girl who worked at a library or bookstore and tried to get through college helped a male get a 'gift' turned into her nightmare.

Nasia's Note: OKAY! thank you for all the likes on chapter one and the preview of this chapter. I have the biggest writer's block so I apologize for the terrible chapter but this chapter is DARK!

TW/: Yandere, threats, death mentions, angst, stalking, kidnapping, death threats, drugging, torture (carving his name on you with a pocket knife)

pairing: Wooyoung x female reader

WARNING: This story does NOT portray Wooyoung or any other idol mentioned in any way this is strictly for the plot.

You looked around and made sure everything was still in place before you walked to your car when you got a message from your brother.

sung <3: are you home yet?

You: no sadly, I'm just ensuring everything is in place for Cara tomorrow.

sung <3: Ah okay I'm going to a party with Jay tonight so I'll be home late. I'll bring some food home!

You: okay! Have fun! and don't drink too much.

sung <3: okay and I won't Mom.

You rolled your eyes at his smart remark and proceeded to turn off the lights grab your tote bag and walk to the parking lot where you spotted your car and another car you assumed it was a college couple making out and walked to your vehicle. unlocking it and driving home. You made it home safe ( shocker ) got in the shower and decided to watch Netflix to kill a little bit of time when you swore up and down you heard someone call your name in the distance. You weren't stupid enough to walk out and investigate instead you turned your TV off laid down in your bed and tried to go to sleep, you closed your eyes and heard faint footsteps walking in the hallway of Heesungs and your shared apartment. You knew it wasn't Heesung he would've called stating he was on his way home and that he brought your food. Someone had to be in your apartment but who? and why? Your bedroom door slowly opened. Your heart was beating out of your chest but you pretended to be asleep maybe whoever it was would leave instead of murdering you. What did this person want you and your older brother were literal college students living in a crappy apartment that y'all college provided for students who didn't want to live on campus, Y'all worked at the community library nothing is exciting about that unless you really loved books. "My angel... I know you're awake" Wait... That voice sounds so familiar but you heard so many voices today that it's hard to decipher who it was. A cold hand came and caressed the side of your face. "Come on Y/N open your eyes. I'm not stupid" You gave in and opened your eyes looking straight at ... "Wooyoung?" your customer from earlier why is he here? "Why are you in my home? How did you get in? How did you even get here?" you asked him obviously scared shitless as you slowly sat up and slowly reached for your phone behind your back. "You ask too many questions. Move your hand." Wooyoung replied grabbing your arm. "You're not calling the cops on me I waited too long and worked too hard for this," Wooyoung said forcing you to stand clearly getting upset, and dragging you out of your room. "NO! STOP!" You screamed trying to throw yourself around. "It hurts me I have to do this" Wooyoung said as calmly as he could as he pulled out a tranquilizer stabbed your neck and injected it. Your squirming came to a halt as you collapsed in his arms. "It's okay baby... I'm taking you home now."

Wooyoung took you back to his house and gently placed you on the bed he built for you. he tied a rope around your wrist, proceeded to walk upstairs, grabbed your phone, and texted your brother.

You ( well wooyoung): sung, I'm going to one of my male friend's houses!

Sung <3: Who? And this late why?

You: His name is Yeosang and he asked if I wanted to play games and hang out since he wasn't going out tonight.

Sung <3: Oh ok. Be safe <3

You: Thanks love you <3

Wooyoung smirked to himself and turned off your phone he thanked yeosang for becoming your close friend and also letting wooyoung use his name as an excuse. Sometime later you woke up to a dim yellow light and a comfortable bed the walls were black and a quiet humming was heard. You tried to rub your eyes but your hands were tied up there was a sting in your neck from where wooyoung injected the tranquilizer. You started screaming for help praying that someone from outside would hear you and call the cops but you know that chances are slim. You heard heavy footsteps walking towards the basement and that's when Wooyoung came into sight. "You're up angel," Wooyoung said tilting his head to the side with a smirk. "You're going to kill me aren't you?" You asked looking down at your legs. Wooyoung swore his heart almost broke completely in half. "Kill you? NO. I want your heart Y/N. I want to actually love you and show you that all men aren't as shitty as your ex-boyfriends, I want to cherish you and show you that I'm the only one you need." He says walking towards you and caressing the side of your face. "Cherish me? you want to cherish me but you kidnapped me..." You moved your face away from his hand. "And I would never date you. even if we were the last two people on earth and we needed to repopulate I would never ever EVER be with you. So get out of your head and ignore this stupid fantasy that you got going on in your head." Wooyoung's jaw dropped. Did you really mean the words that came out of your mouth or were you just trying to make him upset. His jaw clenched and he gripped your chin. "Fine if you want to act this way then I'll show you where it gets you" Wooyoung let go of your chin walked upstairs grabbed his pocket knife that was on the living room table and walked back downstairs to the basement. "You see this?" He said opening the pocket knife "Don't worry about apologizing because I'll make sure you know. You are mine and I will treat you better." He grabbed your leg and held it down. "What are you doing?!" You start trying to kick your legs. "Marking you," Wooyoung said before he started to carve his name into your thigh. You started screaming and crying trying to throw yourself around but Wooyoung had you in a tight hold making sure you didn't move. "There!" Wooyoung said with a smile. You looked down to see 'Wooyoung' on your thigh. Tears streamed down your face and you started screaming about how much you hated him. Wooyoung just smirked and walked upstairs leaving you there to tire yourself out. Soon you did laying there with puffy eyes and his name with dried-up blood around it. Wooyoung came back down to the basement and started to clean up the wound.

#hwasshvur #wooyoung #wooyoung x reader #ateez x reader #ateez wooyoung #ateez scenarios #wooyoung x y/n #yandere kpop #yandere ateez #kpopidol

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inkblot-inc · 5 months

Text

Where's Don Lino?

Summary: Our trio have some time to themselves since they're left to their own devices while Their presence on the living island gets is bring discussed.

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x Mutant!TigerShark!Reader

[AU Masterlist] Arc 2: [Part 1] [Part 2] This is Part 3

Warning(s): Getting into some more subtle notes of discrimination, but no violence....and strong language I'm pretty sure.

Note(s): We got another chapter for Arc 2 bud! Reading this back, I just think it's funny that every single body is uncomfortable with this situation except for Jaws. They're just vibing and going with the flow. Except that doesn't really work when the situation surrounding them requires Jaws to be more cognizant...Anteeways, I hope y'all enjoy :3

Word Count: Pretty sure we're approaching 2k

*squints* I give NO ONE permission to repost or translate my work. Make your own shit!

Once you, Natasha, Wanda, Sienna, and the others make it to the heart of Enoka, you all are immediately taken to Sienna’s office.

It turns out that Sienna is now one of the “acting leaders” on the island, specifically the one in charge of the security of it.

Enoka essentially runs itself, she just has a number of people in charge of the maintenance of the island and the people living on it.

These acting leaders were going to take time to deliberate and come to a course of action in terms of your presence on the hidden isle.

The “acting leaders” make up something called the Council of Nine, which is basically their government on Enoka outside of Enoka herself.

With a warning from Sienna to stay out of trouble in the meantime, the three of you left the council room while she stayed to explain the situation in full to the others inside. Natasha’s gait was unusually hesitant as you walked. “So the island is…alive?”

You chuckled as you reached for her hand in a soothing gesture. “You can relax, Natty. Enoka hasn’t physically moved in centuries. Once we’re born, we’re taught that she uses all of the plants covering the land to speak to us, kinda like mini speakers everywhere. The council of Nine just carry out her will more directly.”

Natasha’s shoulders relaxed slightly as the three of you made it back out into the open air. It was a relief you were able to convince Sienna to let the three of you leave on your own without an escort. This way, the three of you could spend time together and actually make use of your vacation time.

You briefly squeezed Natasha’s hand before you took it upon yourself to put the wind back in all of your sails. “Now who wants to see some real cool shit?” Wanda nor Natasha were definitely more receptive to the lighter turn of events, what with your enthusiasm being as contagious as it was reassuring.

Even with all of the visible changes to Enoka, you are actually excited to show Natasha and Wanda around the parts that you do remember.

Remember the core of the cruise/expedition/vacation was based around getting closure on your previously thought to be GONE home.

So in a way we’re doing that just with extra steps-

The natural energon produced by the Enoka herself contained in all of the foliage is used as a medium for the living island to communicate through. Kinda like mini speakers all over the island.

You simply have to start listening…

Speaking of, there was fuzzy gibberish that Wanda was able to pick up on. The tone of it led the brunette to zone out from time to time as she attempted to understand what she was hearing.

You took them up to one of the summits called the Hollow Point, that has a cavern on the side of it. Inside the Hollow Point are a series of mines for iron, but the biggest area has a ceiling of glittering quartz geodes.

Once your stomachs began protesting the long exploration the three of you were on, you wound up being led back to the more populated area of Enoka to get something to eat.

The only problem with going further into the localized area of the island is that there were more eyes on the three of you.

Enoka is an island full of people with extra abilities and features, people born like you and Sienna; an island exclusively of mutants.

The citizens of Enoka see Wanda and Natasha as outsiders, yes, but they can also immediately tell that Natasha specifically is human.

Sienna was also not afraid to remind her of this on their way to Enoka.

You came across one of Sienna’s guardsmen as you walked down the beaten path. She seemed to be heading in the same direction the three of you were walking in. The woman was clearly still on duty with her silvery blonde hair and suntanned skin mostly hidden under her armor.

Wanda took the initiative to start a conversation by waving her hand in the other woman’s line of sight. “Excuse me,” The blonde glanced in Wanda’s direction, but didn’t really look at her. “Did you need something?”

Her accented voice was softer than any of you expected, but Wanda continued undeterred, “Is there a place to eat down this way?”

The guardsmen didn’t respond right away, “Assuming that you want something on the surface,” She briefly eyed Natasha, “There’s a Brine-Baker down this trail on your right. You cannot miss it.”

Wanda gave a small smile, “Thank you…I don’t think we got your name before.”

The woman simply stared at Wanda before squinting. “I didn’t give it.” There was a small upturn in her lips, “It’s Zal.” She turned to face forward again before taking her leave, effectively ending the brief conversation.

With the three of you making your way down to the Brine-Baker, your eyes widened at the building. “That’s what she was talking about. Come on, this stuff is great!” You almost dragged Natasha and Wanda into the establishment in your haste to get food to eat.

The BrineBaker’s hut was on the smaller side, but it was comfy enough. You found an empty booth for the three of you to sit at before looking at the menus that were already set in each booth. There were options ranging from saltfish, mussels, crab, shrimp, octopus, and even hagfish, to pretzels, salted caramel pies, dark chocolate tarts, and peanut brittle.

Natasha looked away from the menu, “I take it all the salted foods are why it’s called Brine-Baker?”

Having already chosen what you were going to get, you set your menu down. “Brine-Bakers are seafood shops/diners that specialize in serving dishes made with their harvest from the brine pools under Enoka in the deep sea. Brine Pool Farming is actually a profession here as far as I know, since you had a good few people on the island that were unaffected by the pressure of going so deep underwater.”

Natasha took another look at the menu with that explanation. “All these creatures get put in these brine pools? They have to be pretty big I imagine,”

You nodded along, “Sea creatures get big as hell the deeper you go, but they don’t last long in the pools, since they’re even bigger. We weren’t allowed to play anywhere near them as kids cuz we’d probably fuck around and ‘get stuck and die’.” You briefly chuckled at the familiar threat you heard as a child. “Once they’re in the brine pool for long enough, the salt forms a shell coating around them, preserving the creature inside. You just gotta pay attention when they’re ready to be taken out. It’s not as salty as you’d expect though, it’s just the way it’s prepared.”

Wanda closed her menu after picking what she wanted to eat. “Well, you learn something new every day.” She stacked all three of the menus on top of each other, “So are we all ready to order?” With the three of you ready, you called over an available waiter to take your order...

Not gonna lie, that food was scrumptious. And very filling.

After the three of you ate, you walked around the more isolated parts of the island since it seemed that you were still left to your own devices.

You were currently making your way through one of the denser forests. You wanted to see if there were any remaining flower fields on the surface that you could show Wanda and Natasha.

The fuzzy noise Wanda was hearing was louder around her as she zoned out once again. You and Natasha noticed this once again before both of you asked what was going on.

Wanda’s eyes focus on one of the thicker trees with her eyes slightly squinted. “I haven’t stopped hearing this faint gibberish since we got here…”

Natasha stopped to listen out for said gibberish, “I don’t hear anything, and no one else seems to be around.”

You turned to look at the brunette with your brows slightly furrowed, “What kinda gibberish is it?” Rather than try to explain what she was hearing, Wanda just mentally projected it to you as best as she could.

{Solt hclid, --rwe ve-- u-- en--. Solt hclid, Y 'ml---- --o rhee}

“Well It makes sense, since you can read minds and all…” The partial translation you were able to get just made you confused as you tried to piece the rest of it together. One thing was clear though, “Enoka’s calling out to you. She doesn’t project very often, since I don’t think there are other telepaths on this island that can reach her by themselves,”

Wanda attempted to digest what you’d just explained. It was one thing to have someone mentally project to her, as she hasn’t come across anyone else with telepathic abilities, but for it to be an entity that they were currently standing on threw her for a loop. And it presumably wanted her to respond.“Why would the island be calling out to me?”

To you, there were a few other things to consider, but you continued your musings aloud. “You’ll have to meet Her in person at some point. Both of you will probably,”

“Both of us?” Natasha watched as you gingerly picked a flower off of one of the taller exposed stems on the path.

“It’s cool that Wanda can hear Enoka directly, but neither of you are able to understand Her or anyone else on the isle because she hasn’t gifted you with her energon. All Enokan plants have it, but the sap from her main vessel should allow you to speak and understand the mother tongue. We should’ve brought you there first, really.”

Wanda and Natasha shared an uncertain look with each other before Wanda spoke up. “I don’t think that that’s a good idea, gup.”

You look back at them, confusion plain on your face. “Why not? You need to understand what’s going on if we’re gonna spend any amount of time here, and I can’t teach it to you two until you have that foundation. I don’t think you want me playin’ translator for all three of us.” You chuckled at that idea before you realized you were the only one laughing. “What’s up with you two?”

To you this was a simple problem with an even simpler solution:

Natasha and Wanda are suffering from a language barrier, you know how to get rid of said barrier, so that’s what you should do.

Your excitement is what blinds you to most of Natasha and Wanda’s trepidation at even being on Enoka.

But why are these two so standoffish to be there even though they were just as adamant to go on this vacation? WELL there’s a number of reasons:

This was not originally part of the plan.

While they’re glad to actually visit your home, Natasha and Wanda exclusively have not had the most warm welcome from, not only Sienna and her troops, but also from the other citizens of Enoka.

The Enokan language is not just a cultural difference in language, but it also acts as a security for everyone that lives on this (again) hidden island.

Freely giving Wanda and Natasha a clearly exclusive buff is not a good idea, nor would they probably be allowed had that idea reached the ears of anyone else…

** footnote: I wanted to use a completely different script for the Enokan language being spoken, but I couldn’t find a way to import it so that it was shown, so instead I made a simple code using typoglycemia (aka just unscramble the letters of each word). To make it so that it didn’t look as clunky, I sometimes replaced (i) with (y). Some words that end with vowels may have an apostrophe that takes the place of the vowel. Apostrophes can also be found at the beginning of words with vowels for fluidity’s sake. I didn’t think swears should be scrambled cuz that just *looks* off to me. The point of these changes is to have this resemble a spoken language more than it is a blatant tactic to confuse you.

Here's a word unscrambler in case you need it

#jaws au #jaws: arc 2 #marvel #marvel fanfiction #black widow #natasha romanoff #scarlet witch #wanda maximoff #mutant!reader #black widow x reader #natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff x you #natasha romanoff x yn #jc inkworks #ink.nat #ib-jc.

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charlotterhea · 5 months

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I'm thinking about leaving the English Fandom

At least as a writer.

I've just finished posting the translation of one of my longest fics and... Boy, the feedback is depressing. I've planned to start translating the next long thing but I seriously lack any motivation to do so. Yk, translating is exhausting! I already wrote that story once, I went through it several times, and now I am supposed to engage with it yet again only for that sad outcome of verbal engagement I get in return?!

There is a lot I dislike about the German fandom and the way the German archive works, but the comments... the comments!

And currently, ISEM gets translated into Russian and I sometimes take a look at those comments as well and honestly, almost every poorly translated Russian comment excites me more than the majority of the English ones I get.

Why the heck is that? What is wrong with you English folk that you are so notoriously unable to write some decent comments nowadays? I know this has been different! There were authors writing oneshots for the writer of every 1000. comment they got on a story! 1000!!! I didn't even reach 600 for a 70-chapter-long story! WTF?!

I know, I know, I sound very ungrateful right now, but I'm done with being humble and grateful for a bunch of emojis that get thrown my way. I sit at my desk for hours and hours on end, pour my heart onto empty pages, and bring characters and bad-ass-long plots to life - resulting in stories longer than a couple of the HP books combined! -, and a considerable part of what I get in return is some emojis and a generic thank you?! No! I refuse to be grateful for that any longer! There are enough sympathetic posts around trying to encourage readers to at least leave an emoji or a key smash as a comment and yet I have this story that got over 1300 kudos and has more than 500 subscribers and not even the last fucking chapter, not even the finale gets me more than ten comments!

'Oh, but maybe there will be more soon!' you might say but I assure you: No. Most likely there won't because y'all started treating AO3 like fucking Instagram and the likelihood of somebody commenting on a story older than three of four days is LOW! If I don't churn out story after story after chapter after story I just get no feedback at all anymore although I already wrote all that stuff that is right there waiting to be fangirled about!

And the worst thing is: Those old stories are fangirled about! But not in the comments. When did you begin excluding authors? When did you begin seeing us as some bunch of untouchables instead of the dude next door who is just as insane about the same two to ten blorbos as you are? When did you begin to squeal about stories far away from the authors instead of with them in the comments? Y'all are acting like old stories are lava when it comes to comments! The only way I see that old stuff actually still gets read is by the daily kudo mail.

Really, I wish AO3 would turn off kudos. Kudos are such an easy way out of commenting, and all the 'Let me give kudos for each chapter!' posts are a testament to that. Honestly? No! You don't deserve to give kudos for every chapter. You don't deserve to feel like you've sufficiently done your duty by pressing a fucking button! You deserve to be ashamed of reading amazingly crafted stories for fucking free and not even having the decency to cobble some lousy sentences together when you're done consuming!

Oh, you are shy? Well, Brenda, guess what! I was shy about posting that story as well and yet I did so you had a good time after work! Suck it up! Nobody knows who you are anyway! Fuck, log out and write a guest comment if you really have to!

You don't have time? Well, you bloody well did have time to read the 6k+ words I churned out, so stop whinging about the five minutes it takes to write three sentences of gratitude!

You don't know what to say? Honey, you just read 6k+ words and there is not a single thing on your mind to say about it?! There was not a single line you could copy and say something like 'I laughed out loud at that!' or 'You had me in tears about this!' or 'I couldn't believe he fucking said that!'? Then why are you even reading the story?!

Stop those lame excuses and start commenting on fics! Start showing some fucking gratitude for the work writers do just for you to consume it like a bloody Netflix series! We don't get a single penny for the hours we spend in front of a screen! We cannot earn money with fanfiction! We cannot open commissions to get our rent paid! All we get are comments and most of them are a fucking shame considering the amount of work they are supposed to show appreciation for!

So, if in 2024 you still silently consume stories or keep chicken out of writing a couple of cohesive sentences by throwing some heart emojis in the writer's vague direction you deserve to be robbed of the kudos button and to be ashamed of yourself because you're actively supporting the death of fandoms and with that one of the few free sources of joy we still have. One of the few spaces no corporation uses to squeeze some money or data out of us and I cannot believe that this still has to be spelled out. Fandom is a group project and nobody likes the idiots sitting by, contributing nothing, and still getting all of the benefits.

Phew. I needed to get that out of the system. And now I'll go and contemplate translating another story. But after posting this I probably won't get comments anymore anyway because it's always the wrong people who feel addressed by shit like this.

Well, whatever...

#me ranting #fanfiction #writing #comments

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temunitu · 2 years

Note

Do you have any good Mike or Raph fic or anything? Could be any version but I think it would be nice to read about the other half of the turtle boys. That and I just want to read more Mikey fanfic…

here’s my list with a quick rating and summary to help you find exactly what you want! some of these are just on my reading list but i’ve heard good things about them, or they sound interesting.

this list is mostly mikey because that's my boy right there. i haven't seen many raph and mikey fics unfortunately. someday i'll complete mine.

as usual, if any of y'all have read any good fics and want to recommend some, feel free! we love and appreciate raph and mikey on this blog.

fics i have read:

(Rise Mikey) Going Under - 12/10 i was on the edge of my seat. the boys are facing a new villain and mikey gets trapped underwater. made me cry

(Rise Mikey) Sometime I Get Lost Under The Painted Sky - 12/10 post rise movie mikey tries out vent art for the trauma he got from the kraang. love the way the author describes the paintings of kraang and mikey's feelings surrounding it. sent chills up my spine.

(2003 Mikey) A Simple Act of Kindness - 10/10 very cathartic, also made me tear up. an accurate depiction of what the next battle nexus would look like and how mikey would react to losing.

(2003 Mikey) Better Genes - 9/10 i’ve been obsessed with this prompt ever since i found out about it. it’s a simple rewrite of if mikey was infected instead of don during the 2003 good genes arc. has a lot of references to 2003 and a few to 2012. the chapter “journey to the center of mikey’s mind” is beautifully described and really captures the mystic feelings 2003 has.

(2003, all) Dissection - 14/10 much needed talking through what happened after the space arc. very in character. made me chuckle AND tear up.

fics i'm reading:

(Rise F!Mikey) Mystic Hands - so far, the writing is so eloquent and rich. it's about mikey travelling back in time instead of casey jr. iconic peepaw, he travels back in time and immediately takes a nap. couldn't agree more.

(Rise F!Mikey) Too Lucky To Count - another future mikey goes back in time fic! (can you tell i have a niche interest?) so far, the writing is so gripping, talking about how each character died in the apocalypse. f!mike seems to have a dry, dark sense of humor from what i can tell which should prove hilarious.

fics on my to-read:

(Rise Mikey) Stranger Danger - rise mikey and 2012 mikey swap places! sounds like a really interesting concept.

(Rise Mikey) Portal Chaos - an au mikey (inspired by the last ronin) gets transported back in time. the author has a LOT of fun art for this one.

(2003 Mikey) Pretend That I Never Left - alternate fic where mikey is thrust into the world of horizon: zero dawn instead of reality check. i've seen the artwork and i'm excited to read this.

(2003 Raph) From Ruins - takes place in the SAINW timeline. looks exceedingly interesting, and the authors have illustrations to go with the story (can you tell i love art?)

(Rise Sunset Duo) Hold Him Tight (And Never Let Go Again) - "Mikey never realized just how much it hurt that he and Raph drifted away, until he ends up with an unconscious Raphael, trapped in a collapsing building, and unable to reach his brothers." i'm gonna cry so hard when i read this one, aren't i?

(Rise Raph) Elegy of An Older Brother - explores raph's feelings post-movie and how he's coping with no longer being leader.

(Rise Raph) Glass Heart - post movie, the others treat raph with more care after he got infected. i think it's a bunch of oneshots of raph bonding with various family members? sounds cute.

(Rise Raph) Unfavorable Ramifications - post-movie, raph dealing with the loss of his eye and getting comforted by donnie and mikey. skimmed through it and it seems in-character, like a fun read.

i'll add more whenever i come across them

#fic rec #rottmnt #rise of the tmnt #rottmnt mikey #rottmnt raph #sunset duo #rottmnt sunset duo #tmnt 2018 #tmnt 2003 #tmnt 2003 mikey #tmnt 4kids #fanfic recommendation #future mikey #rottmnt future mikey #post rottmnt movie #rottmnt movie

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newfrontierbackstage · 6 months

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1,000 views Milestone and more

Hello everyone. Today I have come to talk about the most important milestone the fic has ever reached. A little bit ago, New Frontier reached 1k views on Ao3 and it honestly made me so proud, happy and satisfied with seeing such a number, even after months of hiatus and inactivity. The support that this fic has received is... honestly something I never expected.

If I may go off character for a bit, I want to tell you guys a few guys. I created this fic just for myself, for my own sake and to show the fandom some cool stuff, some action and my type of writing that I tend to like and go for. The first version was very much a showcase of inexperience and lack of understanding for a lot of things when it came to writing, but it was still the most fun I had writing the fic.

Then I went to reread what I had created and written... I started to see the cracks, to see that what I had put on the paper just wasn't as amazing as I first thought it was. So with that in mind, I decided to start going back and rewrite previous chapters, as it felt necessary and I felt it could elevate the story to higher levels and although that was pretty fun at first, it started to drain me pretty bad in the lenghtier chapters. It started to feel like a job.

The chapters have absolutely improved and I feel the fic's direction is in a much better spot, but I had to fight myself to get the motivation to keep going. Being honest, I was very much considering the possibility of dropping the fic on its entirety. as it truly felt that draining and boring to write. I wasn't doing new stuff, I was just rewriting older stuff and noticing my many mistakes!

My friends like CharmmyColour and LonelyLittleShips adviced me to write other parts of the story that were more exciting or thrilling. I honestly didn't think that was going to work out and I still tried to write through Chapter's 5 and 6 with a pessimistic and saddened state of mind.

That was until GoldenTulipLynx (my current cowriter) came into my life a year ago. We started to discuss more of the fic and he actively encouraged me more and more to write a few months ago. He told me to do so at least once a week to get some progress done and I did. It wasn't a perfect process, but it definitely led me to write more. Then he suggested me to write something exciting and for the first time, I actually listened to that advice and...

It worked. It gave me my inspiration back somewhat and it made me want to get writing more and more. If it wasn't for his inspiration and also the encouragement from my other friends, I may have cancelled the fic as a whole, so for that I'm truly grateful to them.

What I'm also grateful for is have fans and followers that have been patient, loyal and comprehensive towards the fic's state and progress. This took so long because I wanted to give you guys something worthy of that much of a wait and also have fun while doing so.

I really wanted this message to be special, as I felt the ocassion was the perfect time to do so. Truly, thank you guys. Thank you for still being here and I hope you look forward to what else I have cooking up.

And because I knew this was such a special ocassion/milestone, I also wanted to give you guys something exceptional, so with that in mind... I commissioned some art for New Frontier as a treat for you guys, one that displays Cavendish with his rifle in a wonderful forest, one that's going to be the usual hangout spot for him and Dakota.

This is my gift to you, everyone. Hope you have a good day/afternoon/evening/night and I'll see y'all down the trail!

With love: hypersonicJD

Edit: I have removed the background of this piece as I have found out it was been AI generated. I do not condone anything AI generated and thus, the commissioner's credits have been removed as well and I would like everyone to reblog this new version of this post.

#milo murphy's law #au #space western #balthazar cavendish #fanfic #new frontier #mml #space cowboys #a new frontier #1k views #Ao3 milestone #sci-fi forest

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satans-helper · 1 year

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Reaching for Stardust - Part I

Read Looking for Space here.

Listen to the LFS playlist / RFS playlist (all fic playlists get updated even to this day!!)

Word Count: ~3300

Warnings: none

A/N: Y'all...I'm so happy to be here, immersed in this new series. I began writing this back in April after I, seemingly out of thin air, came up with a foundation that seemed solid enough to even attempt writing a sequel to my beloved LFS. Ever since I finished that fic, I thought that one day, I might return for more. I have a very hard time letting any series go and LFS was truly a momentous project in my life--the fact that so many people have read it and continue to read it brings me so much joy, I can't even tell you.

Having been a fan of GVF for about five years now, I do feel a lot of sentimentality and nostalgia surrounding the band, the music and definitely my own fics, too, particularly all my series. I can still remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I was mapping out certain pieces of them in my mind. I felt a huge rush of nostalgia recently when I revisited my city's planetarium for a star show, which was a huge source of inspiration for LFS, and I realized that it was literally this same month, August, in 2019 that I was just finishing up the first 8 chapters of LFS, not even planning on making it a 30-something part series (LOL!). You'll see, if you read, that some of these feelings find their way into RFS. This isn't because it's a self-insert fic, rather that's inspired by how much this fandom has seen, experienced and grown over the years. I imagine my friends and readers who were back there in the pre-pandemic GVF era can relate to some level of nostalgia. A big theme in RFS is change. I think we all can absolutely relate to that, too. One thing remains the same though--this is a love story, through and through.

This probably seems like major overkill to introduce fan fiction but this is how I feel. Many of my old GVF friends have moved on in some way or another and I've often felt alone the past few years with still being so tethered to this group of beautiful, silly, fascinating boys that spark so much joy and fantasy for all of us. So, as always, thank you so, so much for reading my fics. I really hope you enjoy

P.S. I am cross-posting to wattpad (comments bring me life!)

---

I was getting lost in the pictures of Alaska–deep, shiny blue water, towering, white-capped mountains, a vivid stream of neon green in the Aurora Borealis, lush green forests. Even enormous, graceful whales surfacing, their tails nearly popping out of my screen as I unconsciously leaned in closer, hovering over my desk. I blinked hard as I turned my attention to the next picture that had been emailed over to me–a huge white ship, lined with windows that seemed endless–and huffed, shifting in my squeaky second-hand office chair. I didn’t even have a true desire to go on a cruise or even go to Alaska, but the neverending research into foreign lands nagged at me, reminded me that it felt like a very a long time since I’d been anywhere new. At least not anywhere exciting, really.

I grabbed my phone and opened the gallery to scroll through the last trip Josh and I had been on. It’d been a long weekend about nine months prior, which reminded me that it wasn’t all that long ago at all but it still felt like ages since returning to the normalcy of day to day life. It had been a gorgeous summer excursion where we’d had a comfortable, clean hotel room, a warm pool and three nights out all to ourselves, and I found myself yearning for that freedom and escapism again. Plus the sunshine and heat. Michigan winters persisted, long and brutal, and we hadn’t broken through into any real spring weather until just the past week, which had at least given Sam a nice birthday. Josh and Jakes’ birthday was coming up fast. I thought it’d be nice to do something for them, with all of us–go somewhere for real again, all four of us, run amok in a hotel or airbnb. Or just have a nice dinner together followed by bar-hopping. Whatever the twins wanted, really.

The picture I’d secretly snapped of Josh in our hotel room wandering out of the bathroom completely naked save for a towel twirled around his head came up after a dual selfie of us at the pool and I laughed loudly to myself, throwing my hand to my mouth. I’d nearly forgotten about so many of the little moments. It was so easy to forget when time kept slipping by like the wind, each good moment gone in the blink of an eye and each bad moment suspended in the air until something else came along, and the minutes turned to days and the days turned to weeks and months and before I even knew it, years had gone by and it felt like nothing and everything had changed all at once.

Next I scrolled to a picture of the best breakfast I’d ever had, this amazing brie-stuffed French toast with a warm berry compote and housemade whipped cream, then the picture of Josh’s breakfast, which had been a skillet full of chorizo, bell peppers, eggs and queso that he’d deemed to be “orgasmic.” My stomach clenched in response and I looked at my phone clock, suddenly eager for dinner once again. My hours were almost up with 5 p.m. creeping on me and my mind turned its attention to Josh and I’s relatively new Friday night ritual–binging on Chinese and watching the most obscure, nonsensical horror movie we could find. With that, I swiveled around to stretch my legs in the sun through the window and pulled up the menu on my phone, trading pictures of Alaskan mountains for pictures of fried dumplings and greasy lo mein; a few seconds later, a very appropriate text popped up:

Hey mama, I’m gonna be a little late tonight. Want me to pick up dinner on the way home?

Yes please. What’s your ETA?

8ish? What’s on the menu tonight?

I’m gonna do the orange chicken and an egg roll. Wanna share some crab rangoon?

yes I do. What about dumplings?

obviously!

;) see you soon

I’d need something to hold myself over until Josh got home, though I was glad to have this part of our routine to look forward to. Stability was important and even Josh had come to understand that more and more. I turned my attention back to Alaska, mulling over the images and cycling through words in my head that I could bring to the page and entice people with, as if cruises needed more promotional materials and marketing to bring in profit. They were relatively cheap, all-inclusive and easy for people to handle and reminding myself of this made me bitter all over again–why couldn’t my company make one of their perks a free trip for employees once a year? I didn’t know their exact state of finances but I bet it could be done. They just didn’t want to. And the irony was that they didn’t pay most of their employees enough to take extravagant trips of their own.

Whatever. There were other, more important things I told myself, getting up to stretch and find something from the fridge or snack cupboard. In 32 more minutes I could clock out and put these wild places out of my head for a bit–the weather called for a long walk somewhere.

It was the nicest day we’d had so far, which I fully realized once I was driving and headed out to a familiar, easy forest trail Josh and I often did together on the weekends. But we had a busy weekend coming up, actually. We desperately needed to stock up on groceries–my most recent find of an old packet of peanuts as my last snack was testament to that–and then the boys had a show at Waterstreet. Sunday wouldn’t be as fun–my sister was repainting the entire interior of her new house and had somehow roped Josh and I into helping, in part because we were just that nice, according to Josh anyway, and also because she let each of us pick one color for one room each. Josh had chosen a shade of dusky desert red for the den and I’d chosen something called “spring morning,” a pale lilac, for the powder room, which seemed pretty fitting for the time of year she was making these renovations.

The trail was bustling, which I wasn’t surprised by, and much of my walk was spent nodding and smiling to other people passing by. The break in weather was infectious for all of us in the area–everyone seemed to be in better moods finally, myself included even despite the gripes I had with work and money and everything else. Sometimes it felt like just yesterday that Josh and I were lying on our backs in the deep black night, gazing up at infinite stars and trying to come up with material for that poetry class that had been the catalyst to bring us together. The warm sun above me while I continued down the dirt path also reminded me of days past, of the first hike Josh and I ever had together when we both stripped down to our feelings, laughed, kissed through sweat, and had decided that was it. We’d made a lot of decisions over the years, so many that I felt like I hadn’t even noticed some of them, but I’d never decided to let fog cloud my memories. I hated that it happened regardless. And sometimes I absolutely hated what changes all the decisions had led to. I wanted to go back in time every once in a while to relive those moments and those days and it made my heart ache to know I couldn’t. Josh would assure me that the future would be just as good–and sometimes even better–than what those memories had to offer.

And he was often right. Life was good, and I reminded myself of that as I narrowly avoided tripping over an obtuse rock sticking out of the dirt, it was just more challenging now. There was no school to fall back on–I hadn’t realized how much of a safety net that had really been at the time–and less free time. There were more financial worries. More pressures in life. But if nothing else, I had the best people in my life possible; if nothing else, Josh and I were rock solid. He didn’t let a week go by without reminding me that we were soulmates and I agreed wholeheartedly–no matter what might happen, we’d have each other.

After my walk, I thought about running our necessary errands on my own but ultimately decided that’d be a deviation in routine I didn’t want to make. Josh was the best person to go grocery shopping with, being surprisingly focused and deliberate in his choices. He also was the best at picking out produce, somehow always able to discern which fruit was just the right amount of ripe, and he was good at finding the best deals. He was the coupon cutter, which always made me laugh, and I was the one who followed instinct more than the list we mutually made the day before. I would get caught up in being frivolous, more often than not tossing special treats into the cart that I couldn’t excuse beyond something like, “Come on, you like them too” to which Josh would agree with his cheeky little grin.

And that same grin was on his face later that night when he came home with the bag bursting with Chinese takeout. His voice and the smell of soy sauce and that syrupy orange stuff made me hop up from the couch, excited for all the things, but mostly him.

Josh gave a little groan as he headed into the kitchen, his backpack still over his shoulders while he carried the white plastic bag in his right hand and his keys in his left. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, shuffling and rustling all the way out of my sight. “Stephanie needed extra time–she’s having trouble with the new cameras. And to be fair, they do have a steep learning curve. You remember how much trouble I had with them last week?”

I followed him in, taking the bag out of his hand so he could zip back out and discard his keys and backpack. “Which one is Stephanie again? The one who’s obsessed with ‘film noir?’”

Josh chuckled from beyond the walls before appearing again, pink-cheeked and smiling. “Yeah, that’s her. And that’s another thing–I’m gonna have to review how these cameras even film in black and white because for the life of me I can’t remember right now.”

“Does she have any movie recs?” I asked as I opened a cupboard to get plates. “We gotta figure out what we’re watching tonight.”

“What about Night of the Reaper? You haven’t seen that one yet.”

“Yeah, but you've seen it,” I replied, wagging a pair of chopsticks at him. “That’s like, cheating. We gotta watch something we both haven’t seen.”

“We’ll find something.” Josh moved in close and pressed a quick kiss to my cheek and my heart fluttered–it always did. “What about you? What’d you get up today in my absence?”

“I went to the Hemlock Trail. It was busy,” I told him while we both plated our respective dishes, my stomach growling. “It was nice though. Looks like we’re gonna have good weather for your birthday.”

“That would be ideal but I’m going to be cautiously optimistic. Last year we had snow, remember?”

“Yeah, like a dusting,” I said with a little laugh, purposefully knocking my hip into his. “I’m gonna be blatantly optimistic and say it’ll be good. And we still gotta figure out what you wanna do.”

“We'll figure it out, my love.” Josh led the way to the living room and sank into the couch which we could have probably done with replacing; he set his can of sparkling water on the end table then grabbed the remote. “I’m so excited for these dumplings. I don’t care if it’s cat food.”

“They do kind of taste like cat food, don’t they?” I concurred, settling down on the other side of the couch. I put my plate on the coffee table in front of us and pulled it closer.

“They smell like cat food, too,” Josh said, picking a dumpling up between his pair of chopsticks. “I don’t mind. They’re fucking delicious.”

“I really don’t get how you’ve always known how to use chopsticks,” I remarked, opting for a fork instead to pierce my own dumpling while Josh fished through the cushions for the remote as he chewed. “It’s not fair.”

“I’ve tried to teach you, doll.”

“And I haven’t learned, so either you’re a shit teacher or I’m a shit student.”

Josh laughed and swatted my arm with the remote. “Hush! I’ll have you know that my students love me.”

I nodded, chewing. “So I’m a shitty student after all.”

“You are not. There’s a learning curve to chopsticks too, ya know.” Josh took another bite of his dumpling then leaned forward, peering at the TV. “Okay, so–what’re we watching?”

I followed his scrolling through our shared list of choices while I tackled the orange chicken. “What about that one?” I asked when he paused on the title Devil’s Ground. “It looks pretty obscure. 1983, a director I’ve never heard of, looks grainy and weird.”

“It’s been on our list forever,” Josh said, clicking the play button. “Let’s give it a shot.”

The movie really did turn out to be obscure–the protagonist was a teenage girl who finds an old well in the middle of the woods and climbs down into it, for some reason believing that her missing brother would be down there. Josh and I chided about the already well-known fairytale parallels, except in this movie the girl encountered creatures in the world beyond the well even weirder than those in Alice in Wonderland or Labyrinth, and ended up having to get betrothed to some menacing demon, played by a giant puppet, to save her brother. Then she and her brother kill the demon and find their way out of the strange world and back in their world.

Josh laughed loudly as the movie came to an end. “That was ridiculous. One of the best ones we’ve seen so far.”

“Those puppets were something else,” I commented, watching the credits roll and hoping everyone on that production went on to do better things. “The little blue one with teeth was my favorite.”

“Why didn’t they just get a real actor for the demon?” Josh asked, shaking his head. “Good god. It was a travesty but also kind of brilliant. I could show this to my students to demonstrate the use of close-up shots.”

“The close-up on the puppet demon when he was being slaughtered seemed unnecessary.”

Josh got up and stretched, gathering all of our plates and silverware and his chopsticks. “It really was. You want me to do the dishes?”

I turned the TV off and followed him, carrying in our empty drinks. “I thought another part of our Friday night tradition was saving the dishes for the next day and we can argue about it then.”

“No argument. You get to do them since I got the food,” Josh said as he set the plates into the sink with a clatter, then pinched my side. “Deal?”

I giggled, shrinking away from his ticklish touch. “Deal.”

“Anyway, my darling,” Josh began to say, twirling away from me and to another kitchen cabinet. I watched, amused at how he always struggled to reach far enough up to get the wine glasses. “There’s a full moon tonight. Let’s go see it.”

“What? There is?” I asked, trying to peek at wherever it may have been through the kitchen window, our third-story apartment giving us a halfway decent view of the sky most of the time. That was one of the few perks of this place–we’d moved in last year, sizing up so I could have my “office” and enough space in general for both of us to not be completely on top of one another–though Josh never complained about that–but the building was old and lacking a number of things, namely outdoor space. Our little balcony was all we had anymore.

Josh trailed out, wine glasses tinkling in one hand while he held the mostly full bottle of red wine in the other, and I followed again, feeling a sense of eagerness for the night sky which I hadn’t felt in, well, about a month. Our life together was full of tradition, I had come to realize in time, and a viewing party of the full moon whenever possible was certainly one of them. I’d just been too wrapped up in Alaskan cruises to remember this one on the calendar.

The night air was chilly–a tingle ran down my spine and Josh noticed this as I sat down next to him on the cushioned bench we’d garbage-picked right after moving in. He skillfully and quickly poured each of us wine, set the bottle down and wrapped his free arm around my shoulders, pulling me in close.

“It’s gorgeous,” he declared, his voice as rich as ever but a softness brushed through those words. I always loved whenever he got so starstruck over something that he couldn’t help but be concise.

“It really is,” I agreed, pulling my gaze away from Josh’s equally–if not more so–gorgeous face to take in the huge globe of bright cool white above us. “I can’t believe I forgot about it. Sometimes I feel like I don’t even know what planet I’m on.”

Josh laughed, light and affectionate. “You’re on planet earth. It’s disappointing sometimes, I know, but if we weren’t here, I’m not sure we’d be able to see the moon and the stars like this.”

I took a drink, already lulled by Josh’s voice and his warm, strong arm around me. He’d always been strong, considerable muscle secure beneath silky tan skin, but he’d gotten stronger still; the muscles had become even more obvious and I sometimes poked fun, and a little bit of envy, at him for being a “hard-body” because, well, he was. I’d learned to memorize the curves and lines of his body throughout the changes, tracing every plain and valley with my fingers whenever I had the chance.“Probably not, no. We’re really lucky after all, aren’t we?” I said, reaching up to stroke his hand over my shoulder.

“I think we are. Especially if we can see the stars wherever we go.”

“Speaking of–earlier I was thinking about how it’s been a while since we took a trip anywhere.”

“Yeah? Well, where would you want to go?” Josh asked, bringing his wine to his lips. “Not Alaska, I assume.”

“No, not Alaska. But I don’t know, Josh, I feel like we should go somewhere soon.”

Josh took another drink, looking ahead through the darkness that was interrupted by various porch lights from the other apartments rather than up at the jeweled sky. I’d expected enthusiasm–he’d have more free time soon with the semester coming to an end and I still had a lot of vacation days left, making the whole thing easy in theory–but he was uncharacteristically quiet.

“What?” I prodded, tugging at his wrist.

“No, nothing,” he assured me, coming alive again with his body squirming beside me, his hand grabbing mine in reciprocity. “I was just thinking about it. We should both think about it some more.”

I returned my attention back to the moon and the stars and a memory overcame me so viscerally it actually hurt–the abandoned barn, the vast field, the endless sky hanging overhead the two of us. “Alright, let’s think about it,” I concluded, wishing that the place we could travel to was back in time.

Josh sighed and curled around me. “I feel like a dumpling,” he said, lifting a hand to pat his stomach, and I laughed right into the night along with him.

---

Tagging no one because my list is so outdated that none of those people are even in the fandom or use tumblr anymore LOL please let me know if you'd like to be tagged in this series!

#josh kiszka #josh gvf #greta van fleet #gvf #gvf fic #josh fic #josh kiszka x reader #jake kiszka #danny wagner #sam kszka #sam gvf #danny gvf #jake gvf #lfs #rfs #I'M BACK!!!!

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memberment · 2 months

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Genesis

I forgot to say good morning but it's 7:38 and I'm at 53.5k. I need to figure out WHAT TO SAY for 1k to finish sixteen, but writing fluff only serves to kill me. WHY IS THIS SO HARD?! I was like the fluff queen like not even two business weeks ago!!!!

But I will push through. Because then I get to write something wicked this way comes!! AND THAT IS MY FAVORITE CHAPTER. It's not the best chapter, but it's when so much stuff comes together and so many secrets come to light. Which I am very excited about.

And I'll probably break off to draw the art for that chapter. BC THAT ONE HAS AN IN CHAPTER ART.

9:56: and we are at 55.1k. SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES IS BEING WRITTEN AND THE BEGINNING IS HAUNTING. GOD BLESS.

12:15 haven't gotten much done but I'm playing around with Kevin and Red's dynamic in my head ever so slightly but also I wish I could actually animate bc y'all don't know how bad I wanna make a 'they both reached for the gun' edit with Leslie and Craig and Tweek as the gun LMFAOOOOOOOO

4:24 holy shit guys I just broke 60k. I'm working on 19. I have to go back and tinker with a flashback and write a single paragraph back in 17 because I took it out of 18, but THAT'S IT!!!! Oh my god, I hate it here. Things are getting good, and by good, I mean interesting, but also really fucking bad. This hurts. GOODBYE.

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clatoera · 7 months

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Picket Fence is Sharp as Knives Chapter 6: Not trying to fall in love but we did like children running

Hi my loves! So. I absolutely hate this chapter. I hate it. I think it's because I liked last chapter SO much and it was so important and this feels so...bleh. Idk. BUT I wanted to post something today for two reasons

It is exactly one year since I posted ARWBFB! Happy birthday ARWBFB, how far we have come! I wanted to go back to the OG roots with this chapter in honor of that, and do something that is just so quintessential Cato and Clove and thats what this is supposed to be!

This is the last chapter for about 2-3 weeks! I have a really stressful couple of weeks ahead where I find out if I have a job or not and will simply be too anxious to write in the mean time! So this is a little Clato-centric treat to hold us all over until I get back to writing in a couple of weeks!

Title from The Very First Night (taylor swift of course)

AO3

Masterpost

As always thank you to the besties who get me through. I quite literally hate this chapter and i'm not happy with it but I put it into the world anyway and it's for y'all. @bodyelectric77 as always, thanks for putting up with my pouting in the DMs. @kentwells I hope this satisfies your cries for Clato content. @ohhowwehavefallen you just get tagged at this point even if you don't want to be sorry not sorry.

Okay! Here we go. Happy birthday ARWBFB you will always be famous to me.

“Why are you all excited?” Clove teases, reaching her arms above her head so she can tighten her smooth ponytail, swatting his hand away as he goes to flick the ends down into her face. “You act like we’ve never done this before.”

“Clove, it's been literal years since we’ve got to do this. We were teenagers.” Cato slides his fingers under the strap of her sports bra and snaps it against her shoulder, something that years ago he learned would make her jump and give the cutest little scowl. When they were fifteen it was accompanied by a knife whirling past his head, but today it was met with a sharp fingernail jabbing his ribs in the same place she stabbed the day they met. “Besides…don’t you remember Enobaria telling us she was never letting us step foot in this new training center? What did she say we were going to do to it? Defer it?”

“Defile it.” Clove corrects, smiling just a little to herself at his enthusiasm. Yeah, maybe it was not the kind of training they had grown up with, but Cato’s excitement was borderline contagious. And yeah…maybe she was a little excited too. She had plenty of pent up aggression with no outlet other than a steak knife and a tree in the back yard these days. “This isn’t training like we’re used to, you know. These aren’t special kids like we were.”

They clearly were not the first choice to take this class, gathered by the disgruntled and last minute request of Brutus earlier this same morning. Apparently the usual teacher canceled earlier this week, but Enobaria had been distracted by some sort of Cashmere related crisis (and if they understood from her vague but uncharacteristically flustered call, it was a Cashmere-Finnick-Glimmer kind of crisis and no one could blame her for her properly placed priorities) and she forgot to find a cover. It was a very hesitant Brutus who offered them the afternoon class followed with the promise of free reign of the athletic facilities afterward to do with as they pleased.

“I haven’t even worked out like that in forever..” Clove continues her internal thoughts out loud, speeding her steps up just a little to keep in time with Cato’s much longer strides. “I can run, yeah, but I don’t even know if I could still do like..a pull up.”

“You’re still pretty flexible, at least.” Cato easily wraps both hands around her waist, before flipping her over his shoulder and tossing her just slightly into the air before she lands back in his hands. The way she kicks at him to put her down is not foreign, and his arms are long since trained to hold her steady despite her flailing tantrums. “And lightweight.”

“Cato, put me down!” Clove demands through gritted teeth, staring indignantly at the ground behind him. She wants to beat her fists against his shoulder and his spine, but experience has taught her that is no use. She is at his will until he decides otherwise.

“Ask nicely…” He taunts her, and she feels a firm squeeze at the top of her right thigh, causing her to squirm in his arms yet again. It is after this that he sets her down, but she realizes when her feet hit pavement rather than grass that it is not because of her own indignity.

The building is not on the remains of what was once their academic and educational home, but rather a much smaller, independent center. It’s much nearer the school where Cato’s mother teaches rather than a pillar of status in the center of the district. It’s no grand home of future victors with the best weaponry district money can buy. No…it’s just a building with a couple of sports fields and some sort of indoor recreational area.

In short, it’s the kind of place Cato and Clove would have seen as the loser training center, back in their childhood.

He slips his littler hand into his, and gives her hand the littlest squeeze of confidence, before be absolutely pulls her inside, betraying even more interest than he had let on in their walk here.

Even as they enter through the double glass doors, they simultaneously notice that it’s so incredibly different than the type of athletic training they had been exposed to in their youth.

There’s about twenty four shoe cubbies on the wall underneath a coordinated number of hooks, all littered with various little child-sized rain coats and backpacks. There are windows all around the top of the room, pouring in natural light, that are open just enough to allow the air that hints of spring to filter in as a refreshing reminder of the impending warm weather and longer days.

It’s such a staunch difference from what they grew up with. Now, the only way Cato can think to describe the center of their youth is dungeon like; no windows, fluorescent lights that fucked with the circadian rhythm of their adolescent bodies. Treating time outside and fresh air as a reward was probably some psychological trick to keep them hyped and excited for the games– arenas were almost always outdoors.

On the other wall is a simple wooden desk, a stack of manilla folders, and an old pre-war desktop computer that had likely been repurposed from one of the many destroyed buildings in their district. There was a woman sitting behind the desk, with simple dark hair and matching eyes, typing absently as she inputs something into what they assume is an online system.

She looks up with disinterest, a monotonous voice welcoming them to the center. However, she must recognize them after a few moments of her typical spiel, because her head peaks up a little straighter. “Cato? Clove? I didn’t know you two were the replacements today?”

Clove recognizes her as a girl who was probably three or four years older than her, Selene if she remembers correctly. She had never even been a top three contender for the games; even if she had who would she have been killed by? Marvel? Annie? Johanna?

Funny, Clove thinks to herself, that she does not see this girl as someone who would have been a victor, but someone who would have fallen to one of her now friends.

“It was sort of a last minute thing, we didn’t expect to be.” Cato answers cordially, though the tilt in his voice told Clove he was trying to place this girl. “Selena, right? What are you doing here?”

“Selene.” The woman answers cooly, continuing the loud clicking of her nails against the keyboard.

Clove resists an eye roll at the evident offense she’s taken to Cato’s lack of recall of her exact name. Clove was called Clover for half her childhood– suck it the fuck up.

“I bring my son here,” Selene clips, slamming the keys a little aggressively, possibly more offended than she let on. “The quarry his dad worked in was one of the many destroyed in the war, taking him with it. I needed a job. The hours were good. Enobaria remembered me from back in the academy, she took pity on me.”

“You have a kid?” Clove asks, mouth risking falling open in disbelief. In her head they were still children, even if she had been older than Clove herself it was hard to believe she was old enough to have a whole child.

Cato raises an eyebrow, and something falls into place for him as to who this girl is even if he is sure not to betray that out loud. “I’m sorry..about his dad.”

“That's what happens to the rest of us, Clove, when we didn’t get to go to the games. We had to get jobs and go about our lives.” Selene responds politely, but the way her eyes flick to the clock behind them reveals she is trying to get out of this conversation as quickly as she can. “Thank you, Cato, He’s in the same class as your sister, I think. Oh look, there he comes now–”

A dinging bell, far less alarming than the whistle that used to be blown at them, signals what they can only explain as the end of the class, and children begin to pour out as parents begin to pour in from the outside.

Cato and Clove are relieved from the conversation when someone slams into Cato from the side, and Clove only has to slightly lower her gaze to see Cora clinging to his leg.

“Hey kiddo,” Cato immediately melts, his demeanor completely shifting as he pulls his sister onto his hip. “I didn’t know you were coming here today?” “Are we teaching your class?” Clove grins, suddenly a lot more enthusiastic at the thought of teaching when it came to Cora being involved.

“No, she actually just finished up. We come here twice a week.” Cato’s mom joins them, rubbing her son’s arm affectionately before she hands Cora her backpack. “You must have the baby class.”

The enthusiasm Clove just felt falls as fast as her facial expression, and her eyes go as wide as dinner plates at the thought. “What do you mean baby class? I thought we’d have teenagers. Or kids like..our age.”

“You aren’t kids anymore, my dear.” Clove’s mother in law reminds her with amusement in her tone, taking her daughter from her son. “The baby class is right after Cora’s. They’re all five and under. You mean no one told you what class you were covering?”

The hesitance in Brutus’ voice makes so much more sense now– of course no one wanted them responsible for babies. Okay, kids, but really really little kids.

“...Brutus just said we could have the space when the class ended.” Clove grumbles, crossing her arms over her chest as she watches parents of even younger children begin to drop them off by the door.

“At least it’s only a twenty minute class.” Cato’s mother tries, but firmly takes Cora’s hand. There's an smug amusement in her voice that she does not even bother covering, “Tell Cato and Clove you’ll see them tomorrow for dinner, Cora. They have a class to teach.”

“Byyyye,” Cora whines, and as she starts to head out with her mother, she whips her head back around to lock eyes with Clove. “Will you pleeeeeease take me to see Glimmer and the babies soon? You promised we could see them!”

“Soon, Cora. Soon.” Clove assured, giving her a little wave on the way out. Cora had demanded pictures of the twins every single time she had seen Clove in the couple of weeks since their birth, and practically begged to see them. Glimmer had been fine with it, and insisted it was okay to bring her during one of their many weekly trips to District One. Clove however couldn’t help but hesitate– weren’t school aged kids kind of gross to be around such new babies?

“...Twenty minutes, Clove. We can do anything for Twenty minutes.” Cato tries, but there's a unsure edge in his voice that does not comfort Clove. If either of them were going to be comfortable with kids it would have been Cato– his hesitance was doing nothing to ensure Clove this was going to go well.

As they brace themselves, slowly entering the general gymnasium area, Cato nudges Clove with his shoulder. “I finally realize where I can recognize Selene from.”

“Yeah, she was a couple years older than us in training–”

“No, no, not that. She was hooking up with my roommate when we were fifteen.”

“Delightful.” Clove responds, but the smirk on Cato’s face falls when he looks up and realizes it was not a response to his epiphany at all.

At some point the room had filled with about ten kindergarten aged kids, who were in various positions from sitting criss-cross to face down on the floor. The one that lies face down on the floor lets out a high pitched cry completely unprovoked, and Clove looks around in what can only be described as horror.

“What the hell were we thinking?” Clove hisses, low enough that none of the kids even looked over at her. She suppresses a gag as one of the little boys stuck his finger fearlessly down the throat of another, before the receiving boy chomps down on his invading fingers and he too joins his comrade in wailing. “Can these kids even tie their own shoes?”

As if the universe heard her question, one of the girls trips directly over her untied shoelaces and falls directly onto one of the other kids.

“This is a nightmare.” Clove grabs Cato’s arm, pulling him down towards her height. “What the hell do we do with these kids?”

“...do you think we pair them up?” Cato half-suggests half-asks, quickly counting them up. “There's five boys and five girls, could we pair them?” “And do what? Teach them to wrestle?” Clove snaps, but she has nothing better to offer. “Fine. Whatever. Maybe we make them warm up first?”

“Hey..hey…hey!” Cato tries three times before his booming voice earns ten little shocked pairs of eyes staring up at him open mouthed and wide, more than likely never having been yelled at by such a large man before. “Do you kids want to run a lap or something to warm up?” Cato suggests, trying to move on quickly before he scares them to the verge of tears.

A little arm shoots up from the same little girl who tripped over her shoes only seconds prior. Clove nods in her direction, but she continues to speak before Clove actually gets a chance to acknowledge her verbally. “What-sa lap?”

Clove stares, quite frankly a little dumbfounded. She was asking Enobaira to teach her to throw knives at this age– and these kids don’t know what a lap is? “A lap is when you run around the room in a circle.. You know what? Cato can show you.” She shoots him a smug smile, crossing her arm over her chest before using the other to gesture to the open gymnasium space. “Go ahead Cato!”

Cato can only glare at his wife, before he takes off in a half hearted jog around the room. Clove’s smug grin does not fall from her face until he returns in front of them, these kids still staring blankly up at them both.

Cato gestures to the open room again, gesturing down to the group of kindergarteners. “Okay..your turn.”

They are met with wide eyes and confused faces, and Clove and Cato exchange another look of confusion. “Are they dumb?” Clove whispers, and Cato responds with a light shrug before his arms cross over his chest.

“You guys can run..” Clove explains again, speaking much slower this time as if that will help betray her meaning to the group. “Run…”

The same little girl as before raises her hand again, and as before she speaks before she is even acknowledged. “My shoes are untied.”

“Me too!”

A chorus of “me toos” seems to come from the entire group of children, all who stick their feet out expectantly.

“Oh. And you don’t like..know how to fix that?” Clove questions, raising a dark eyebrow almost in disbelief. Did parents teach anything these days? “Why don’t you all just…take them off. Yeah. Take off your shoes and run like that!”

There’s a general mix of confusion from the children, but that is overpowered by the excitement of feeling like they are breaking rules as they all take off their little shoes and throw them casually to the side.

One by one they take off running, little legs not carrying them very fast around the full sized gym.

“They don’t go very fast do they?” Clove mumbles, rubbing her hand over the length of her face. “This should take up the next ten minutes at least. Then we only have to fill ten more.”

“Yeah! You have legs that size too and you don’t use it as an excuse–” Cato earns a sharp poke in his side for that one, but it does not take the smile off his face.

Every couple of steps one of the kids wipes out, the combination of socks and waxed floor no match for their underdeveloped muscle coordination. As a fourth thud is heard, Cato shakes his head in disbelief. “These really are the loser kids.”

“District Two doesn’t make ‘em like us anymore.” Clove agrees, watching the clock tick by as one by one the group of kids returns in front of them, thoroughly out of breath as some of them lay down on the floor. “How was that!”

“I want to go home!”

“Yeah, I want to go home too.” Clove whispers only for Cato to hear before she claps her hands in front of her. “Okaaaay. We are going to pair you up. Every boy is going to be with a girl-”

“Ewww girls!” Comes from one bratty little boy, who stomps his feet in a way that irritates Clove so deeply she wants to rip out her own hair.

“You won’t always say that.” Cato assures, and continues trying to make little tiny pairs of boys and girls, who immediately are separating. Some throw themselves to the ground, some cling to their friends. Either way it is not going well.

“I don’t want to be with a boy! Boys have cooties!” Another girl whines in protest, her little braids bouncing as she shakes her head back and forth.

“That will change… That will change.” Clove murmurs to herself again, before putting her hands up in defeat. “What happened to discipline! And honor! And skill!” She asks in Cato’s general direction, gesturing out in front of them. “Who is raising kids like this!”

“Our ex-classmates, apparently.” Cato retorts, but finally waves his hand to silence the room. “Fine. You have ten minutes left. Just. I don’t know, play or something? Don’t kill each other.”

“Even that, we would have been encouraged to kill each other, Cato. We TRIED to!” Clove watches as the kids generally disperse into the open space. “This is unbelievable.”

“We better make sure Cora isn’t like this. And we are not letting Glimmer and Marvel raise losers either.” Cato insists, rubbing a tired hand over his face as the room is filled with the sound of kids just playing. “Actually they may be a lost cause, Marvel was a fluke victor.”

Clove snorts back a laugh, digging through the bin of various sized balls and other semi-athletic equipment used by the other classes. There was nothing knife-like nor sword-like in sight. She settles on a tennis ball, tossing it lightly up and down in her hand, testing the weight of it.

Without warning she launches it at a target on the wall, and the sound of it smacking off the concrete brings the room silent for almost a moment. Clove ignores the ache that ebbs in her shoulder at the force, and goes back to find another of the same projectiles. “These aren’t even weighted properly.”

“You’re just that good.” Cato promises, wrapping his arms around her waist and letting his hands linger on the exposed skin of her abdomen a little longer. “I thought we were actually going to get to do something cool.”

“I thought I'd get to watch you take a cocky teenage boy down. I love when you put them in their place.” Clove teases, before she goes back to digging for a couple more appropriately sized tennis balls for her to throw. When she turns back Cato is no longer directly beside her, but has migrated to the mounted bar against the wall. She watches the muscles in his back and shoulders flex as he effortlessly pulls himself up and down in rep after rep of pull ups as if they were nothing. And for Cato? They absolutely were.

She stares at him for a few moments, and even though he’s mostly minding his business, Clove knows him too well. He’s absolutely showing off, and wordlessly challenging her to do the same (and it helps knowing that she most definitely is staring a little too long at his arms as he does so).

Cato knows his display paid off when the sound of rubber on the wall hits round after round around his head as Clove continues to never miss a target. “I miss knives.” She remarks with loud annoyance as the final ball hits the wall, and when Cato opens his mouth to respond he realizes there is an eerie quiet in the room of children.

He lets go of the bar, feet hitting the floor with agility, and when he turns around he notices ten pairs of eyes absolutely locked in on the two of them and their display of athletic dominance.

“Clove…” Cato says calmly, taking a few steps towards her as she gathers ammunition for another round of throws.

“What, you wanna show some actual skills other than flexing your arms-”

“Turn around.”

Clove furrows her eyebrows in confusion but does as he asks, trusting him more than she questions his motive. A sly smile creeps on her face as she sees the awed expressions of the kids they were supposed to be teaching, not ignoring, for the last ten minutes. “I think they’re impressed.. Nothing new. Who isn’t?” Clove begins, before she is cut off by the overly charming alarm that signaled class already being over.

“That was actually pretty easy.” Cato announces, as the barefoot kids quickly run to meet the waiting arms of their rightfully confused parents.

Not too long later, once the building is mostly empty save for the two of them, they sit side by side against the wall.

Cato audibly sighs, stretching his legs out in front of him as his arm drapes over her shoulders. She didn’t need to say it, but he could tell from the way she leaned into him that she was feeling a little bit of an ache from the overuse this afternoon.

“I didn’t think that would be so exhausting. I’m starving.” Cato admits, running his free hand over the side of his face.

Clove laughs, burying her face into his neck as she lets out a sigh of agreement. They didn’t even do that much. Just something about the whole situation; from the unathletic kids, to the whining, to the over competitive nature that their relationship would just never outgrow. “I think I have half a granola bar in my coat pocket. It’s no peanut butter and jelly sandwich but-”

“Damn, I was really hoping you’d peel all the white shit off a pomegranate with a knife for me like old times.”

“You don’t even like pomegranates that much.”

“Yeah, but you’re pretty hot with a knife.”

#arwbfb tag #clato #cato and clove #clato fanfic #arwbfb au #picket fence is sharp as knives tag #always remember we're burned for better tag #clove thg #cato thg

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chromatic-lamina · 2 years

Text

Chapter 1068 — She blinded me with science

Okay, I loved Stussy from the start and she continues to win my heart:

CP0 have invaded Egghead Island, and find themselves at the end (or cold front) of a non-meeting so chilly that Kaku fancies himself a cup of tea (it is also snowing).

We're reminded, from Shaka, I think, that G-14 is near by, so we're bound to see Smoker, Tashigi, (Doll) and Mocha again this arc. Not to mention Akainu's daughter.

CPO are having none of it and infiltrate (or invade, really) and Kaku launches into the sky to check out the upper reaches of the island.

Stussy's got prior knowledge of the system, but doesn't let anyone know until Kaku's

born the brunt of the beam. Rob Lucci's deadpan, "You should really mention this kind of thing beforehand," and a dusty Kaku letting Stussy know he's none too pleased.

"Well, at least you're not chilly anymore, right? <3" She's got a point.

The Atlas Vegapunk comes charging along. I thought the "Dr. Atlas! <3" was Stussy at first. Was it? It might be, as it seems to be speech tic to end her sentences with <3. So I guess she's as Southern Hospitality sweet as a madam running her brothel. Atlas. Shaka warned you.

Rob Lucci in zoan form! Oof. Poor Atlas.

Then look who comes in to witness or breeze past the carnage! Luffy and the Pigeon Guy got history. Gonna add Bonney's current supernova as luggage fate to another post. And are y'all excited about this?

First of all, Sentomau! I've always been interested in him (wish he'd been the her I first thought he was). And they're the seraphim we've seen: Boa Hancock, Mihawk and Jinbei. All of the shichibukai have animal themes, don't they? Crocodile, Gecko, Bear, Flamingo (?) and let's hope for an S-Seal or an S-Snow Leopard!

And did Kuma receive a call from Vegapunk, or is it a connection with S-Bear that has him launching himself to Egghead Arc (unless he's actually on his way to save Law, heh). Bonney obviously hasn't been a drawcard, for whatever reason, but maybe her being out cold triggered something.

King's wings. I'm sure we're gonna get a deeper flashback for both him and Kaidou (and maybe Big Mom), considering how involved, willingly or not, they are in the MADS experiments at Punk Hazard, and that King's DNA (and that of the shichibukai) is being used to create the seraphim (at least, I think so). AND

All of these panels.

1st. Luffy obviously doesn't talk all that much with Robin or Law, or their paths just don't connect when CP0 are lurking around.

2nd. They obviously didn't come across Jinbei's path at Wano.

3rd. RIP Izou. I guess that Nami and Usopp witnessed you saving them from the Beast Pirates, but not the interaction with CP0, right? And apart from Nami and Usopp, did any of the other Straw Hats have much of an interaction with him? They all knew O-Kiku. What a waste of a character's potential. Ah.

4th. Not might, but I guess Luffy didn't catch sight of the guy that interrupted his fight with Kaidou (I can't remember), and even if he did, didn't make the connection with CP0.

Anyway, I'm glad that the betrayed CP9 members are back, but I really did want to see more, feel more, of the menace of the Dressrosa/Wano CPO. Loved their designs. And I guess that Nico Robin is fair game again!

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nkirukaj · 9 months

Text

I Want You, Simon- Chapter 14

Pairing: Simon Petrikov x Fem! OC

Warnings: Swearing and implied sexual feelings

Genre: Angst and Fluff

Word Count: 2.97K

Chapter 13

Hey y'all! Just wanna thank anyone who's stuck around this long, and has been reading each chapter, probably thinking where's the stuff I'm looking for?! Well, if you're into implied sexual feelings, then the next chapter (not this one lmao) is a big surprise just for you! lol

Love you guys!

That night, when Simon was actually able to fall asleep (at around 4AM), he gave into the rest that his body so desperately craved, and when he opened his eyes again, he was at Sami’s house. Standing in the living room, and unable to move. He heard noise from the left of him, that appeared to be her bedroom, from which she appeared. She spoke no words, and he found that he was mute as well. He reached for her, and she only smirked in response, sitting on the couch in front of him. She stared up at him for a moment, and spread her legs open, the sound of her jeans stretching made his face turn red. She stared again, before grabbing her shirt by the collar, and lowering it slowly. Simon could not help but stare, his pigment getting pinker by the second. In the instant that he blinked, the setting did not change, but Samira was replaced with GOLBetty, staring down at Simon angrily, increasing in size and swallowing him whole before he even had time to react. For a few seconds it was empty darkness, but upon blinking again, he looked up, seeing a giant worm with a crown, pulsating and vocalizing, before the surprise of the vibrant face and ear piercing call of the Cosmic Owl.

Simon snapped awake, breathing heavily, once he had calmed his breathing down, he took a moment to listen. Hearing similar vocalzing to the giant worm in his dream. He ripped off his cover, seeing his legs and torso covered in smaller versions of that dream worm. He yelped, falling out of his bed.

______________

“Yes?”

“I didn’t even say anything!” she looks up from a book

“I know you, whenever there’s a bit of silence, you call my name and ask me a question.” He smiles at her

She shuts her mouth sheepishly

They spent the next month taking Simon’s advice and being friends. It was undeniable that these two had chemistry, however, Samira had learned her lesson, she treaded lightly with her flirting, and did her best to not let her feelings and her body take over her decisions. Although, this did not extinguish her interest in Simon and his thoughts, feelings, and his past. Especially the things he’s done. Or the people he’s done.

“So ask.” He sits and leans back. Looking at her with those eyes, smirking.

“Fine.” She pouts “I was going to ask if you’re willing to talk to me about your sexual history,”

His smile fades “What about it?”

“Like, are you a virgin?”

He doesn’t answer for a second “No.”

“Oooooh,” she seems impressed by this, although he was somewhat confused as to why.

“Why are you shocked?”

She shrugged “You seem so wholesome,”

“Oh you’ll learn,” he spoke in a flirtatious and somewhat threatening (this is to add to the flirting) tone

“Oh yes I will. I’m excited” she meows

His smile returns “Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“A virgin?”

“Oh of course not!” She laughs

“Oh why is it ‘of course not!’ For you? But you’re shocked for me?” He’s laughing

“Because…” she couldn’t really think of a reason “I’m…different.”

“Oh are you?” He lowers his eyelids halfway

“Yes? I don’t know, maybe?”

“You know, sometimes I don’t think we’re that different,” he lowers his pitch and tone, pulling his hands together, so his fingers interlock.

“How many people?” She asked him, his eyes widening then coming back down

“One.” He spoke solemnly

“Betty.” She stated, already knowing. He nods once in confirmation “Oh…” she trails off and looks away, somewhat embarrassed.

“Your turn.” He lands forward a bit to shore his interest. He didn’t want the conversation to stop, he wanted to know everything he could about her.

“Umm…” she paused, thinking about what counted as sex “Three…wait no, yeah three”

“Oh wow, not that much more than me”

“Were you expecting a large number Dr.?” She puts her hands her hips

“Well yes, the way you were talking yourself up,” he grins

“Ugh, I just.. ugh!” Sami pretends to be upset and crosses her arms. Simon leans back and smiles even wider. She smiled a little as well, she loved his smile.

“Um, I had a dream about you.” he blurted out

This piqued her interest. “Really?” he nods “Tell me,” she requests

“I’m not certain if it’s appropriate.”

“We’re friends right? So tell me.” Simon hesitates “Do you not want me to know?”

“It’s not that…”

“So then tell me!” she whined

Simon’s face was warm, but he kept it together enough to answer “Okay, well basically it was me standing…and then you were sitting…”

“Simon, please.” she stared at him with an incredulous face

“Well, you were.” he looks away from her

“Tell me the whole dream,” she tilts her head in curiosity

Simon loosens his collar “Well, you had your thumb on you lips, and…you um lifted your head back and showed me your neck, and put your hand around it, and then trailed them both down to your collar and…stretched it down to your…”

“Boobs?” she asked with a smirk

“I was going to say chest, but yes.” he chose not to tell her the rest of the dream, he thought it may have meant something, but he didn’t want to upset her.

She was smirking at him, and just staring.

“What?”

“I know what you’re dream means,” he saw a twinkle in her eye

“What?” Simon started feeling hot in his chest

“It means…you wanna get frisky.” she winks at him

Simon was too stunned to speak, his word kept getting caught in his throat “Well, I-”

“Mhmm, you wanna get frisky with me.” She’s nodding and smiling. She stands up and walks behind the couch that he’s sitting on “You know Simon, I could make that dream a reality for you.” She lowered her head down to his ear and wrapped her arms around him from behind “You just have to say yes.” she speaks in a sing-songy voice, while speaking directly into his ear. “It’s up to you, just say the word.” She hugs him from behind.

His throat got tight, as she put her face on his shoulder.

“Are you okay? Are you uncomfortable?”

“Only slightly,”

“Okay,” she removed herself from him and backed away. He turned around and stared at her.

“You don’t have to be that far away,” he murmured

Samira smirked and went to sit down next to him “Is that better?”

He nods “Yes, quite.”

“Okay, Simon.” she places her hand on top of his and he smiles, as does she.

Being Simon’s friend wasn’t really as hard as Samira assumed it was going to be. She wasn’t really able to read what may or may not be signals for her, but it was basically the same thing as before, but it did prove difficult to know when her behavior was approaching his boundaries, he never told her what they were, so it was just on her to know, somehow.

“Do you want to go on a walk with me?” She asked him as she was replacing book at the end of one of her library shifts

“Of course! I love walks,” he answered with pure enthusiasm

She smiled, slightly amused. Of course he would.

After leaving the library, walking through what was essentially a forest, Simon was as chipper as ever.

“Oh, Betty and I used to take long walks all the time. Oddly enough, all the adventurous things we’ve done together, it’s the simple walks that I miss the most,”

It was a harmless comment and just an observation, was what Samira had to keep telling herself to not start grinding her teeth. She’d never been a master at concealing her feelings, so she tried to twist the conversation to her advantage.

“But like what about her though? Like, what characteristics did she have that you like?” She turns toward him slightly when asking this

He looks surprised that she said anything, less asked for more. “Well, she’s….” His eyes softened thinking about her “Amazing.”

“Okay, but why?” Samira’s tone was flatter than before

“Well, she was kind, intelligent, compassionate, creative, very determined” he laughs at this descriptor, as if he was the only participant in an inside joke “And fearless. Unlike this old coward” he points to himself and laughs again

Samira purses her lips, still trying to turn towards Simon while he walks facing forward “But it’s not like just her specifically though right? Like you’re just attracted to those qualities?”

Simon takes some time to think “Well, I suppose so, but Betty was special. She understood me in a way no one else did.”

Samira pokes her lips out in frustration, she was losing steam. She wanted information, but she didn’t want to hear about how different Betty was, and how by implication, how different she wasn’t. This was very unlike her. She would normally never even consider comparing herself to someone who was no longer in the picture, but Simon was making it difficult here.

“So do you just like thos qualities in people? Or is it just her? Like, could you fall for anyone who had those qualities?” she trails behind him a bit

Simon turns around to look her in the face “I guess so. Why these questions? I know you like questions, but why these specifically?”

She stops in her tracks and stares up at him, not expecting to be probed for an explanation “Just…this stupid thing I’m writing.”

He put his hand under his chin “And it’s about how I feel about Betty?”

Samira blushes and panics internally “No!” she jumps to respond “It’s just a thing about, like romance or whatever” her words get quieter as the sentence goes on.

Simon stares at her for a moment longer before deciding not to pry further.

“Well I think you should show me your piece.” He commented “I didn’t know that you write, and you know that I love to read.” he smiles and Samira returns it.

Samira sat at the desk in her room, opened a notebook and jotted something down. She turned her pages to look over what seemed to be a poem. She thought of the things that she and Simon had discussed on their walk. All the wonderful things that Betty was. In fact, in replaying the conversation in her head, she realized that he had been speaking of her in the present tense. She reads over her writing then crosses it out, and rips out the page, dropping her head in her hands.

“Would you look for those qualities in any potential matches?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t looking for anything when I met Betty, we just found each other. I think it’s more beautiful that way.”

“So you’d never been in love before? Like before-” she gestures to replace the words she was intentionally not saying

“Not never. But not at all like with Betty.” His answers were light, if a bit curious

“Do you think that you could?”

“Could what?”

“Love again. Like with…her.”

Simon’s eyes darted across the room, while he thought. He scrunched his eyebrows and squinted his eyelids, which Samira loved seeing, because it emphasized his cute wrinkles. He thought for what he most likely believed was a few seconds, but was actually about 5-6 minutes. Each minute passing by, Samira's anticipation grew larger and larger.

“I suppose.” is what he finally said

Samira stared, waiting for more. A continuation? An adendum? A second sentence? Something?

“Wait is that it? Are you done?”

Simon looks around “Yes?”

“That’s it? You suppose, like you’ve never even thought about it?”

Simon gets slightly defensive “I’ve thought about it.”

“So then what else.”

He exhales a puff of air “Well, I don’t know. I’ve thought about it abstractly. It’s mostly theoretical.”

Samira growls in her throat,

“Why? Why is this important to you at all?” he’s no longer defensive, but he’s not condescending either. He’s mostly genuinely curious and confused about what she could possibly be doing with the information given by his answers to these questions.

She really didn’t want to give in to her frustration, but as aforementioned, she’d never been a master at concealing her feelings.

“Why are you pretending you’re not attracted to me?!” She blurts out, unable to stop herself.

Simon was stunned by the question. He places his hand on his hair

“I-I’m not,” he stammers

“You’re not what? Attracted to me? Or pretending?”

He inhaled deeply and licked his lips that were suddenly dry, with a tongue that was dry as well.

“I’m not pretending anything,”

“So you’re not attracted to me?”

“I didn’t say that!” He shocked himself with the intensity of his own response “I never said…that!”

“Well are you?!”

“Of course I am! Fuck!” He shut his mouth as quickly as the comment came out of it “I am so sorry.”

She grabs his arm “What about me are you attracted to?”

His chest and face got warm “I don’t think this is appropriate,”

She tightens her grip on his arm “You’re in my house and I asked you a question. Answer me.”

“Well…” His clothes suddenly felt tight “I mean look at you, you’re gorgeous! Your face and your body….” He looks down at her pink flushed face, her eyes searching, begging for more. He had to fight his urge to snake his arms around her..caress her soft looking skin.

“What about my body?” she was practically panting and on her knees at this point

“You’re so….thick” He bites the corner of his lip

“Thick?” She bites her lip in response to him “How thick am I?”

“So thick….”

“Do you think I’m sexy?”

“Yes,” he exhales

She reaches out and clutches his thigh

“Then please, kiss me Simon,” she leans in and he grabs her shoulders, stopping her from coming closer.

“I’m sorry but, I just can’t. My-“

“AHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Samira breaks in front of him. Her head falls into her hands “I KNOW! YOUR EX! IT’S ALWAYS YOUR EX!”She pulls away from him and to the other side of the couch facing away from him.

He reaches for her “Samira?”

Before his fingers could reach her, Samira let out a sob so intense that Simon swore it shook the room.

“It’s never me. Why is it never me?”

He pulled his arm back “What?”

“It’s always someone else. Why is it never me?”

He fixes his jacket “I don’t understand,”

“What am I doing wrong?”

“You’re not doing anything wrong”

“SO WHY IS IT NEVER ME?!” She whips over toward him with fury in her eyes

His face is full of confusion and concern.

“I’m sorry,”

There’s a beat of silence where Simon stares at Samira with worry plastered on his face. Samira’s expression changes from rage to shame. She wipes her eyes and her forehead with her palms. “Oh my glob. Oh my glob, what am I doing?” Samira moves to the other side of the couch as Simon continues to stare.

The silence continues to exist.

After a moment that felt like an eternity, Simon cautiously wrapped his arms around her as she sat in the fetal position. She had never felt so small to him before. She had always been so strong; but now in this moment, he was the one who had to be strong; for both of them.

“Hey,” a small smile appeared on his face. “Isn’t it wash day?”

She looks up at him through her arms.

“What?” She asks weakly

“Wash day?”

Samira scoffs “Simon, I don’t want to wash your hair” she sounds disgusted.

“No! I meant- I want to wash your hair…if you’ll allow me to.”

Samira stands, wipes her face one more time and sighs.

“Okay.”

She lays down backwards into her hair washing sink, her face and eyes still tinted with red. She sniffles as Simon rolls up the sleeves on his sweater and ties up his hair in a ponytail, the gray left out and tucked behind his ear. She laughs a bit.

“You don’t have to wash my hair,” she says

“Well, I know I don’t have to, but I want to.” He turns on the water and begins to shampoo.

As he massages the shampoo into her scalp, she begins to moan slightly from the sensation. Simon blushes as regards the position that they’re in. Him, standing over a beautiful woman, who’s leaning back with her neck and chest exposed. He rinses off the soap. She sits up, her hair still completely drenched. He walks around to see her face. She looks contemplative.

“What?” He asks, his gray falling out from behind his ear

“I want a cut.”

With her hair dried and moisturized, Simon sits behind Samira with scissors in his hands feeling as nervous as possible.

“Um Sami” His voice shakes a bit “I do not believe I am qualified enough for this. Especially for your hair.”

“You’ll be fine Simon,” she reassures him “Just cut it right below the shoulder. You know where my shoulder is right?” She laughs

“Well, yes but-“

“You’ll be okay” She grazes his hand down near her thigh “Just don’t close your eyes”

He gulps in fear and anticipation, and carefully cuts at her desired length, when he looks back, he sees her swiping stray hairs off of her shirt.

“So?” He questions “What do you think?”

She examines her new cut in the mirror

“It works,” she flips and shakes her hair back and forth. “I like it. I just can’t wait for the hairs to stop falling all over me.” She laughs and he laughs with her, just happy she was no longer crying and no longer felt the purposelessness that he had known all too well.

Chapter 15

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