#Now I want an acoustic version.... | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

enhaven · 5 months ago

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all night | pjs (m.)

pairing ⇢ jay x reader

genre/au ⇢ fluff, smut, established relationship

wc & rating ⇢ 2k+ | 18+ (minors gtfo)

summary ⇢ all Jongseong wanted was to put you to sleep but you're more than awake to play along with his melodies.

warnings ⇢ cursing • unprotected sex • riding • handjob • fellatio • pet names • praise kink kinda? • aftercare

song ⇢ i love you 3000 - stephanie poetri

a/n: happy national boyfriend day to my main man! i didn't realize that i had an est. rel wip whipped last feb lmao. it's been sitting in my drafts for too long so might as well ^^

the dim lights and the strums of guitar strings are lulling you to sleep.

that's what Jay's been hoping to accomplish anyway after noticing you getting fussy as soon as you arrived earlier. it happens when you’re very tired so he'd love for you to sleep right away after dinner.

now you're plastered on your shared bed, brows scrunching as you try to make yourself comfortable. you look so adorable, just like when you complain about how bright it is every time the lights are on due to your sensitive eyes.

it's a good thing Jay knows just what you need. he turns off some lights but leaves a lamp on so he can still see around the room. walking towards his closet, he grabs his guitar from the inside which you didn't notice. then he sits beside your lying form before placing the body of the guitar on his propped leg.

smiling at your sleepy state, Jay starts tuning the guitar, some random melody already emerging in his mind to play for you. he made it a goal to himself to help you sleep after finding out that it didn't come to you easily.

the sound of your boyfriend plucking the strings was making you sleepy until you looked up at him. the sight made you gasp inwardly, the sleepiness leaving your mind as you watched Jay playing his guitar.

he's always been gorgeous but the silhouette of his face looks so defined from your line of vision. the few loose strands of his hair provided some extra flair with his shadow that you'd love to sketch sometime.

but seriously, how the fuck is he this beautiful even with the lights are low?

"baby can you sing for me?" you ask him softly which brings his attention to you. the request made Jay pause in playing, his face now slightly confused which is so cute.

"sing? but i thought you were sleepy that's why i'm playing"

and this is why you fell in love with him. not because of his physical attributes but of his thoughtfulness and how sweet he is. your heart swells that he's trying to help you sleep this way. you’ve been more than grateful that he became a part in your life.

"i wanna hear your voice" you sluggishly reply, burying yourself further in the comforter while your legs nuzzle the huge pillow between your thighs.

since Jay loves you so much, he accepts your request. he chooses to sing an acoustic version of a song that you often play in the background when cuddling him sometimes.

he thought this was it, that you'll finally fall asleep but you’ve started humming along instead, adding harmonies to the song which he didn't really mind since he loves hearing you sing.

"baby" he paused his singing but not playing so it served as an instrumental to your melodies.

"hmmm?" you feigned ignorance with your eyes closed as your hand started to caress his thigh, syncing it with his strumming.

"what are you tryna do?" he queries though he knows what you're doing. if that small quirk in your lips should tell Jay otherwise. your eyes are back on his face when he nudges you, a wolfish smile forming on your lips as your hand creeps closer to his upper inner thigh.

it's out of nowhere but your man's too fucking fine and you're getting horny just by watching him playing his guitar. you can't be blamed for that though, anyone would be if they were in your place.

"can i actually suck you off?" you asked, looking at him sheepishly with those puppy eyes that he couldn't possibly say no to. even without those, he'd say yes, wanting to give you whatever you want.

"come 'ere" he beckons you with one hand after placing his precious guitar by his side. it's at a safe distance thanks to your boyfriend's spacious bed so you have nothing to worry about but still. it's one of his collections, an expensive one so you don't want your clumsiness to damage it. but even if that were to happen, he wouldn't mind really. he can always get it repaired or buy a new one instead.

carefully crawling closer to Jay's lap, you place an arm on the mattress to support your upper body. he's surprisingly hard when you start palming his clothed length, squeezing it briefly which earned a small groan from him.

"oh you are so cute" you giggle, doing it again to watch his reaction.

"don't tease" he huffs, a small pout on his lips.

you might not be able to see his face clearly this far but you know he's struggling to contain his moans. he's fisting the bedsheet so you pull down the hem of his sweats at once, happy to hear the sigh of relief escaping his lips.

his rigid cock slaps against his clothed tummy and you're salivating to have it in your mouth. pumping his dick for a bit, you eventually lowered your head to wrap your lips around its tip. you're thinking of teasing him like you always do but not tonight, it's you who wants his cock in every way possible.

you feel one of Jay's hands on your head once you take him all in, petting your hair and it prompts you to swallow him deeper until his tip hits the back of your throat.

"fuck i love your mouth" his deep groans are sending shivers through you, moaning around his dick which drives Jay insane. he gathers your hair while you continue to suck him off, bucking his hips up when you hollow your cheeks. he didn't mean to but he can't help it, you're just too good at this.

reaching the back of your nape, he pulls you closer as your hand pumps the rest of him that you couldn't fit in your mouth. the warmth of your mouth is pushing him closer to his orgasm but you release his dick all of a sudden, causing a small whimper that he didn't plan on making.

“shhh” you smile teasingly at Jay and he curses, moaning louder when your tongue starts licking the undersides of his cock down to the base.

although it was you who initially started this, he's the one desperate to fuck you right now. he’s been wanting to cum but he tries to hold it back, preferring to do so inside you.

“can you fuck me baby?” he rasps, his hand patting down your head as he closes his eyes. you look too hot sucking him off that he might burst his nut on your face, not like he didn't before but he's craving for your pussy this time.

“m’kay” another giggle escapes you after hearing Jay's request. you did plan on fucking him and you were excited as soon as he let you suck him but you didn’t think he’d beg first tonight.

lifting yourself up from the bed, you took the rest of your clothes off. nothing much since you were just wearing a loose shirt and matching thin sweats along with your underwear.

“these fucking tits” you hear Jay mumble quietly as he reaches for your bare breasts. one thing he loves secretly is how you’re always braless once you’re home. it's easier for him to play with them with his hands or mouth.

a needy moan escapes you when he pinches your nipples before you scramble to straddle him. he proceeds to rid his shirt as well, pulling off his sweats completely so now you’re both completely naked.

looking at each other fondly and you really couldn't stop your intrusive thoughts from coming out.

“you’re so fine what the hell how did i get so lucky”

you say softly as you start grinding against his slick cock, cupping his face with both your hands and you can feel his skin warming up at your words. he averts his eyes from yours once he sees that pretty smile on your face.

"i'm lucky to have you too baby" he responds before his hands hoist you up, grabbing his cock to align it in your soaking entrance.

“are you blushing? awe-ahh..”

yes, Jay is and he has no idea how you can even see it with this dim lighting and your uneven vision. he knew you were gonna tease him like you always and he usually doesn't mind. it's just that all he can think of right now is your pussy, fucking it a lot until you're all spent.

he hasn’t prepped you with his fingers but you love the stretch each time your pussy takes his cock. at first, he was hesitant since he’s always wanted to make sure you’re always ready before sex but you're determined and eventually, you managed to convince him.

“tight..fuck, i’ll never get used to this ugh” he hisses, spewing more praises at how good you feel around him and you’re leaving kisses around his handsome face in return.

“i think i can move now baby” you reassure him, circling your hips to test the waters.

his hands are on your waist, his grip tightening when you start bouncing on him.

"g-gorgeous.." he whispers. "you're so gorgeous my love" he adds quietly and you clenched around him as a result. watching your boyfriend struggle to hold himself because of you boosts your confidence.

the way he reacts to everything that you do encourages you to do it more, wanting to see how good you make him feel.

"j-jongseong.."

it's taking a toll on your legs but you can feel Jay so deep that it's overpowering it. he can feel it though, your waning energy so he sits up before laying you gently on your back without removing himself from you.

"fuck baby, i'm close" he speeds his thrusts once he feels your legs tighten around his waist.

"close, close, mhmm" you're slurring your words, dazedly looking at Jay that he falters in his pace. you're too pretty like this, sprawled under him while he's making you feel so good. there's nothing in this world that makes him happy aside from this.

it pushes him to reach his peak, filling you up like you always wanted.

"you good babe?" he prods, stroking your warm cheeks with the back of his fingers.

"yea..so good.." you're breathless when you respond but your boyfriend's looking at you lovingly. the subtle thrusts of his hips soothe your walls despite the sensitivity, always have been when you're both riding your high.

his deep chuckle reverberates in sync with your heavy breathing, whining when he pulls out of you. he urges you to stand up so you both can clean up at the bathroom, and comply reluctantly. being the caring person that he is, Jay solely cleans you up first even when you keep fighting him off.

you're clearly sleepy now so he helps you in putting on a fresh set of clothes. the entire time that he briefly left you, he was changing the sheets and put your clothes to the laundry so you'd be ready to sleep as soon as you're done.

lying down, you nuzzle the comforter while waiting for your boyfriend to join you in bed. you're dead tired though but he's still in the washroom so you're gonna close your eyes for a bit.

"i love you" you call out to him, the sleep waving over you but you're trying to stay conscious.

"i love you too baby" he responds as he finishes up, eager to join you since sleep's coming to him as well. however, when he came out of the door, he finds you already sleeping.

jay didn’t mean to fuck you to exhaustion but watching you sleep soundly tugs his heart a little. you finally look peaceful unlike the weariness in your face that you tried to hide earlier. all because of him and he's more than happy to do it again, anything for the person he loves the most.

e/n: it's been ages lmao and i realized i had this last min 💀. summer and september were so busy for me and i tried writing whenever i can. but now it's October and i'll be more busy? (i go out/party almost every day/week when i'm not working) so i'm gonna focus on my Halloween/scary fics since yk i can only post them this month.

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cityofmeliora · 24 days ago

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TRANSCRIPT: Terzo talking about the Nameless Ghouls during "If You Have Ghosts" (acoustic version) interlude 🎸🎸🎸

this is a compilation of Papa III's speeches after the guitar solo in If You Have Ghosts. these speeches are notable for being the source of many popular clips where Terzo says a bunch of horny stuff about Omega, Alpha, and Water. he also introduces Earth and Air before the song starts, but i did not include those parts.

here are some highlights / notes:

All that horny stuff Terzo says about the Ghouls was him joking about things he allegedly heard the audience saying.

Omega was originally just called Aether / Quintessence, and Alpha was originally just called Fire. 'Omega' and 'Alpha' were nicknames given to them by fans, and Terzo was initially confused by those nicknames because he did not call them that.

Terzo describes Alpha receiving his nickname as him being christened at one concert and 'un-christened' at a different concert 😂

Terzo's nicknames for Omega include 'Mister Quintessence' and 'The Giant from Gistad', referencing Omega's (real-life) place of origin, Gistad, a locality outside Linköping.

Terzo called Water 'A Nameless Ghoul Called Water' as if it was Water's full name, which is very funny.

Terzo accidentally called Alpha 'Omega' in Indianapolis and then awkwardly pretended like he didn't just do that.

Terzo seemed to think that 'stage right' and 'stage left' was a difficult concept for the audience to understand.

Terzo repeatedly notes that Water was in fact the best six-string guitar player in the band, despite his role as the bassist.

TF would frequently get mixed up about the timeline / whichcharacter he was playing at what time

this transcript includes 21 concerts and ended up being over 7k words, so the full text of this post is under a cut:

PAPA EMERITUS III: Magnifique! Yes! Now what? These guys are Nameless, right? That's how it all started. 'A Nameless Ghoul.' Then people picked up on the fact that they had little things on them, on their clothes. Okay! So uh, then it ended up being that they picked up on the fact that they had been given the elements. You know, you remember Earth and air? But this wasn't enough. Apparently, two of the guys, they have other symbols, too. Especially the girls saw that, because after a while the girls had their favorite ghouls and they wanted to be Ghoulettes for their favorite Ghoul. So let me introduce to you the Nameless Ghoul who just did a solo for you. All of a sudden, we can hear the girls in the front over here saying "Alpha… Alpha!" Ladies and genitals, Alpha! 'A Nameless Ghoul', my ass! What we got here in the middle is a curiosity, I tell you that. He happens to play the guitar! Normally you see him fingering the bass. And I know you wish you was the one he was doing it to, right? Not tonight. Especially not now, because he's doing the axe right now. Because you see, every day we get it smeared in our face that out of all the guitar players in the band, he just happened to be the best fucking guitar player in the band. So please, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul named Water! About here, geographically, there are usually girls standing, looking this way. You see stomps. So usually I hear from here, this part, "Omega... Omega…" Also quite a good guitar player. Please, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul named Omega! So there you have it! Now you have Ghost. We are Ghost. How 'bout that? Eh? Rouen, France (February 5, 2016)

PAPA EMERITUS III: Right on! It is... Alright. The guy who just did a very good solo– technically, he's referred to as 'Fire'. [APPLAUSE] Don't clap too much yet. That was a big one. It just so happens that on his other guitar, there's a little symbol. And fans –especially female fans– paid attention. So we were out touring. All of a sudden, from this side there were voices: "Alpha… Alpha… Alpha!" the girls screamed out. So ladies and gentlemen, he became 'Alpha'! Not bad! Now this fellow. Usually, he plays –he fingers– the bass. [AUDIENCE: IT'S SEXY AS FUCK!] Yeah! And he does so very good. Now ladies, if you find yourself at the show feeling your bottom, like, moving like this, it's because of the bass and the drums. That's where it feels, y'know– here. He's also one hell of a guitar player, to the annoyance of all of us. Please, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul named Water! Over the years, on my right, here, I started hearing another word that– I knew the word,but I didn't truly know the meaning of it until I heard it loud and clear from female voices: "Omega… Omega! I want you, Omega! I want to be your Ghoulette, Omega!" And for me, I was like, eh? Omega? I don't know you as 'Omega', but fine. On the axe here, please give it up for Omega! La Rochelle, France (February 6, 2016)

PAPA EMERITUS III: Right on! He's a pretty able guitar player, isn't he? Yes… Bon, bon! Let me tell you a little story. Obviously, the band is supposed to be nameless. For some fucking reason, I have a name– there was no way around that. But first off, it was 'a Nameless ghoul, a Nameless Ghoul, a Nameless Ghoul, a Nameless Ghoul', and so forth. You had to have something, so they all were wearing signs: Earth, Air, et cetera. So there was this guy who played guitar. His name was Fire. But he also had a little sign on his guitar. And once we had been on tour for a while and we were starting to get a little bit popular, so there were peoples on our shows and there was a lot of girls on the shows. You can hear from that corner there: "Alpha! Alpha… I want to be your Ghoulette, Alpha!" So apparently, here we have a Nameless Ghoul named Alpha! You see… usually this guy in the middle here fingers the bass, the four-stringed instrument. That is the thing that you feel in your crotch and in your ass when we play. You know the boogie-woogie? Bass. That's the trick. But see, this is not a fucking bass he's handling right now. It's a guitar. It just so turned out –he likes to point out every day– he sort of smears it in the faces of everyone, how fucking good of a guitar player he is, too. Not only does he make the asses move, he also plays the guitar like a devil! Please, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul named Water! Around the same time when we heard "Alpha! Alpha!" sounds from over there, amongst the stomping, which I heard, obviously, I also noticed something else from that corner: "Omega… Omega! Omega…" Eh? Alright. It was the women calling out: Omega… Stomp me, Omega! Treat me like you treat your guitar." So he did. Please, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul named Omega! So there you have it: Ghost. We are Ghost. Fantôme! Grenoble, France (February 8, 2016)

PAPA EMERITUS III: Word! What a good solo, right? Yeah. I'm uh... I'm gonna stop fiddling with my pants now. You know we started with the idea of being completely nameless. You know… it was such a good idea on paper. It didnt fucking work at all. It didn't go into people's psyche that you can have something that you cannot name. Okay. Let's have names. Okay so we had Earth and Air. That's a good start. So, y'know, we came up with, like, 'Fire'. Fire! That's good. So everybody got their little element, right. It makes things easier. You can sign something– if someone wants your autograph you can just like, [DRAWS A TRIANGLE IN THE AIR]. Good. Autograph. But then uh, this person on stage that I'm referring to also had a little symbol on his guitar. So he's standing here in the middle, most of the time, and I was standing there and I was thrusting and I was dancing and ehhh and I hear, over here: "Alpha…" Eh? It was the ladies in the front, around here, saying "Alpha.. I want to be your Ghoulette, Alpha. Alpha…" So let me introduce to you… a Nameless Ghoul called Alpha! Now… the tormentor of the bass… busy fingering, for one-and-a-half hour every night, the bass. The bass is the four-stringed instrument that makes your ass move, together with the drums. But it is a very, very important tool if you want people to dance– it's the bass. if you want to be a guitarist that's cool but the bass. and the drummer… That's it! This bass player happen to be also a very very good guitar player, to the annoyance of everyone else. That's why he's playing the guitar right now, but he's holding back because he's a tormentor of the six-string too. Ladies and gentlemen, a Nameless Ghoul named Water! Around the same time that I was standing there in the middle, I was doing my mating dance, singing all female-like, being a little bit too shorter than people thought as soon as I took my hat off– thank you very much, I also noticed another sound from that part of the audience: "Omega…" Eh? What? What, what, what, what? What was that? That was the ladies here in the front. They were saying what? [AUDIENCE: OMEGA!] Yes. And they were flashing and they were sweating profusely, in… in heat! and they were flashing it for… Omega! Bordeaux, France (February 9, 2016)

PAPA EMERITUS III: Good solo, eh? You might know… that we are –or let's say they are– supposed to be nameless. But uh, you know, why make things difficult? Maybe they can have signs so they have something to sign if someone wants an autograph. Okay. Alright, let's do that sounds like an interesting idea. So obviously, y'all already know Earth and Air. Simple triangles. So does the other guys have symbols too, so they can sign shit. But the guitar players here on the sides, they also had small sign– things on their guitars. And y'know, we have Fire… And that was good. But I was standing here in the middle doing my charade. I was dancing, I was singing, I thought I had it going. And I heard an occasional "Papa! Papa!" But I heard from over here, the girls whispering "Alpha… Alpha… I wanna be yours, Alpha. Make me your Ghoulette!" Okay! So uh… here he is– a Nameless Ghoul named Alpha! Are you familiar with the bass? It's four strings. the thing that you finger.. you can pick it too but if you finger it it feels even better. The bass is the thing that makes your ass move. That is the part you feel. No rock and roll without the bass. Here we got a bass player. He's doing a really good fingering on it. But it just so happens that he's even better at playing guitar, as you can see. Yes. Ladies and gentlemen give it up for a Nameless Ghoul named Water! About the time when I was standing here doing my mating dance, I thought I had everything and I was expecting someone to yell "Papa!" I hear from over here… something different: "Omega… Omega… I want to be yours, Omega! Omega! Omega man!" Was surprised! Eh? Omega. So here you have it: a Nameless ghoul named Omega! There you have it. Now you have Ghost. We are Ghost. Thank you. Nimes, France (February 10, 2016)

PAPA EMERITUS III: So we started out as a nameless band, except for myself, who was given a name. We thought that everything would be okay, but we came up with something that would not work very well, and that was, 'what if they ask for an autograph?' OK, well maybe every member of the band can be the elements, yeah that makes sense, that's smart! Uh-huh. OK, so you've met Earth and Air yeah? So the other ones gotta be similar, right? Fire, yes? Easy. But the little thing is that Mister Fire here had a little 'A' correlating with something else on the stage. One night, a little bit into our career, we were getting a little popular. Girls liked us. There were many girls over here. And I was doing my dance and I was flirting and I was thrusting and I [THRUSTING NOISES]. I was doing everything I could and then I heard over here: "Alpha… Alpha… I want to be your Ghoulette, Alpha!" Alpha? Alright. What happened to Mister Fire? So now, ladies and gentlemen, on the solo guitar, here… give it up for a Nameless Ghoul named Alpha! Ladies, do you know what the bass is? That's the four-string instrument that makes your ass move sideways… frontways… feels good. Unfortunately, we have no bass on the stage right now because it just so happens that the guy who fingers the bass is also one motherfucker on guitar. So please, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul named Water! Wasser! About the same time as I was standing here thrusting and doing everything I could in order to get somewhere, I heard another sound from over here. For me, I recognized the word but I didn't really fucking– What are they saying? Do you know what they said? Anybody had an idea? "Omega… Omega… Take me right here, right now, Omega…" Eh? Okay! Mister Quintessence here, the giant from Gistad, Ostrogothia, outside Lincopia. Give it up for a Nameless Ghoul named Omega! There you have it. Now you have… Geist. Dresden, Germany (February 19 , 2016)

PAPA EMERITUS III: Right on, man! Not a bad solo, no? It's a good one! Very good. You know, maybe you already know the story, you have figured it out, but y'know, we started out as a somewhat ehh– it was supposed to be nameless. Well, my brother who was in the band obviously, he got a name but uhh, oh wait a minute, it was the guy before that. Fuck it. Anyways– [SHUSHES THE AUDIENCE] I'm gonna tell you a story. Thank you for the enthusiasm, though. We figured that if we were nameless, all would be okay. Then rose a problem: what the fuck are we gonna do for autographs? Not sign it? Heh. It's a funny idea but it didn't really translate very well. So we figured that well all the members are like cornerstones, like elements. A-ha! Elements! We can use the elements and they can sign it with elements. Oh, what a fucking brilliant idea! That is perfect. Alright. Said and done. So you all met, obviously, Earth and Air. So on. So we did like, Fire. So there was this guy, Fire, but on his guitar there was another symbol, too, to correlate with another guy on the other side of the stage. So one night in our career, we had just gotten to be a little bit popular. There were girls coming to our shows. And they made sounds. I couldn't really hear what they were saying, but one night I heard, over here, something along the lines of "Alpha… Alpha… Alpha! I want to be your Ghoulette, Alpha!" Were they talking about fire? Ah-ha! OK then. Please, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul named Alpha! Ladies, do you know– Yes, you. Ja. Say 'ja.' That is the four-string instrument that make your ass, like, move. Like a… Maybe you didn't know that before, but it is the bass. We happen to have one bass player who normally fingers the bass very well. but he just so happens to be a very, very good guitar player, too, to the annoyance of everyone else because he's so fucking good. Please, give it up for our eminent bass player, a Nameless Ghoul named Water! Wasser! Yeah man, you rock! About the same time when I heard that Alpha stuff over there, I also heard another noise coming from this side. And it was stomping like a [STOMPING NOISES] But also something from the crowd. Do you have any idea what they were saying over here? What do you think? Not a clue. Is it "Omega?" Yes, "Omega… Omega. I want to be yours, Omega. Look at my… Just look at me, Omega… Omega…" So apparently, the guy over here had changed names into something else. So I give to you here in Herford, the giant from the Ostrogothian fields, from Gistad outside Lincopia, Omega! There you have it: a nameless band. Now you have ghosts. Herford, Germany (February 20, 2016)

PAPA EMERITUS III: Right on! That was a good fucking solo. Very soulful. This band started out, once upon a time, with the idea of not having names. Um… But my predecessors had a name. My brother had a name, now I've got a name. But the other ones– Nameless Ghouls. One day rose a problem. What if people want an autograph? Ah! Now, there was this smartass who came up with "Maybe all the different members can be elements!" I said that seems reasonable and it's a simple sign and it will be quick. Great. OK, so you've already met Earth and Air. You know the other ones, yes? So we have Fire. But this Fire guy– on his guitar, there was a sign, obviously, that sort of correlated with the other guy on the other side. So people picked up on that. One night in our successful career, I was standing here in the middle. I was thrusting and I was dancing and I was doing everything I could do to get the– the meows, eh? Then I heard, from the– my left– I heard female voices that yelled… whimpered "Alpha… Alpha… I want to be your Ghoulette, Alpha!" Alright! Well, my buddy Fire here has a new name, apparently. So please, on the guitar, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Alpha! Ladies, do you know what a bass is? I know you do. Four strings. And that is usually the thing that makes your ass wobble like that when you hear music. That is the good part, actually, the bass. Normally fingering the bass, but currently playing guitar– very good, actually, just to insult us, the rest of us. Give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Water! About the same time I was standing there in the middle and I heard that Alpha crap, I also heard something else from this side of the stage. It was women– busty women, who said something I hadn't really heard before. Can you guess what they were saying? Yeah. "Omega… Omega… I want to take you home and rip you apart, Omega." That's what they said, actually. It's weird. But he has a way to not leave one seat in the house dry. Please, from the Ostrogothian fields, from Gistad outside Lincopia, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Omega! Alright, there you have it! Now you have Ghost. Thank you. Malmö, Sweden (February 25, 2016)

PAPA EMERITUS III: Yeah! What a good solo! I'm telling you a story. When we started out, the idea was for us –except for myself and my predecessors, obviously– to be nameless. We thought that would sort of work with the human psyche, but it did not. And there was a practical problem as well, because people wanted autographs. Oh! And there was this smartass in the band who came up with this idea: "Maybe we can– here, the band, we can represent the elements, right? And then we hav a little sign that we sign." Problem solved! Voila! So, you've already met, obviously, Earth and Air, and so we went on with Fire, and so forth. But there were other symbols, too– heathen, clandestine. One was on one guitar and one was on the other guitar. The thing was, we were getting bigger. We started to attract girls to our shows. There you are. One night, I was standing here in the middle –or maybe it was my brother, I dont know, fuck it– and there was this noise, this sound that I've ever really heard before, coming form this side. It was girls saying "Alpha… Alpha… I want to be your Ghoulette, Alpha." Fire? Alright! It was the sign they saw– the alpha sign. So please, give it up, christened by our female fans, a Nameless Ghoul called Alpha! Do you know what the bass is? You do, OK, good. For the rest of you, that is the four-stringed instrument that makes your ass wobble when you hear good music. That is it. It is basically that simple– the bass… Normally tormenting the four-string axe, but currently insulting us all by being the best guitar player in this fucking band give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Water! About the same time I was standing here at the show, at that time long gone, there was also another sound that I heard from this side. Girls, do you know what I heard? Can you say it? "Omega… Omega…" Yes. It was the women, yelling out to be ravaged by… a Nameless Ghoul called Omega! And so the ravaging continues… So there you have it! Now you have ghosts. Uppsala, Sweden (February 26, 2016)

PAPA EMERITUS III: Right on! Good solo! We started out once with the idea of being nameless. It went so-and-so. One early problem that appeared is that, as we grew popular, people wanted their records signed. Well, I got to– Well, my predecessors got to sign shit. Fuck. You know how it is. Heh! But the other guys, they needed to sign something, too. So there was this smartass in the band who came up with the idea of "Maybe everyone in the band can be elements, right? That's a simple way to get out of that problem." OK, so as you already met Earth and Air, and so it went with Fire and such. Ehh. Problem solved. In addition to these symbols, there were other little details that was incorporated. As we grew a little bigger, people picked up on that, too, especially the signs that was on the two guitars. I was standing here in the middle, somewhere, someplace, in the middle of our successful career, and I was dancing and at this time, y'know, we were starting to attract not only dudes, it was a lot of girls at our shows, too. So it was beginning to be really funny, huh? And one night, I was dancing and thrusting and doing all the moves I could in order to get everybody in heat. And I heard something that I never really heard before, at least not at our concerts, and it came from this side. And it was –I guess mostly female– voices saying "Alpha, Alpha, Alpha, Alpha, Alpha, Alpha. Alpha, Alpha! I want to be your Ghoulette, Alpha!" Fire? OK? So Fire got a new name. So please, give it up, on guitar, for a Nameless Ghoul called Alpha! I am sure you're familiar with the instrument called bass. If anybody saw us in Utrecht last time, you might remember that we actually have a bass player who is one motherfucker on guitar, too. Remember that? When poor Alpha had to stand out on a show or two –I don't remember how many– where this dude over here played the guitar. So please, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Water! Looking sharp! Do you remember when I told you about when I noticed the whole alpha shit going on on the other side? Around the same time, I heard a new word coming from this part of the crowd. Yeah. All I could see, these big whoppers, women casting them forth, yelling something. Do you know what? [AUDIENCE: OMEGA!] Yeah… That was what they yelled. So please, peoples of the Netherlands and beyond, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Omega! There you have it. Now you have Ghost. We are Ghost. Thank you very much. Tilburg, Netherlands (March 1, 2016)

PAPA EMERITUS III: Yeah! Right on! Good solo! Y'know, originally, the idea– I'm not grabbing my ass, I'm adjusting my pants! Originally, the idea was for us to have no names. 'A Nameless Ghoul.' Except for myself then and my predecessors. One day rose a problem. People want shit signed. Alright. We can have signs! Each and every member of the band can have signs. Problem solved. Great. So they were the signs of the elements. And you know, you've already met those– you've met Earth and you've met Air, and then you get so on, y'know. But there was also smaller symbols around, especially two that sort of correlated on the guitars. People seemed to have picked up on that, because one night, I was standing about here. I was dancing and I was singing and thrusting. I heard a noise– female voices over at that side, saying something. Do you know what they yelled? "Alpha… Alpha…" So our multi-talented guitar player here, whose name is Fire, had a new name. Give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Alpha! You do know what a bass is, right? That's the four-stringed instrument that makes your ass wobble. It's easy as that. You need a good drummer, too, but if you have a good bass and a good drums that has their shit together, it really feels good. Our bass player is very multi-talented, and as you can see, there are– there's a six-string axe in his hand right now. Please give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Water! About that same time when all that Alpha shit was going on on that side, it turned into a murmur for me in the middle because there was– they were saying other things on this side. [STAMMERING] Do you know what they were saying here, neighbors of stage right, as they say? I saw whoppers all over the place, women screaming "Omega…" So please give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Omega! There you have it! Now you have Ghost. Thank you very much. Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, USA (April 14, 2016)

PAPA EMERITUS III: What a good solo! Yeah! Good work, dude! Y'know, we started out with our thing– They started out– fuck. This band started out with the idea of everybody, except myself and my predecessors, to have no names. It seemed like the right thing to do. And so far it has worked okay. One day, quite early in our career, we had gotten a little bit of recognition. We had an album out, and there were a few fans that wanted signings on the record. We do not have names, so uh… What are we to do? I said, "I dont give a fuck! I can sign it!" Again, where's my head here– obviously the other guy… Fuck it. Alright, there was this smartass who came up with the idea that maybe we can have signs, kind of like the elements, maybe. That's brilliant. I mean it's easy, it's fast, we can do stamps. Fantastic! Great idea! OK, so what do we have here? Obviously, we started here with Earth, and then we have Air and Fire and so on. So everyone had this little names and their stamps. Very good business model. But see, on their spare time, they also decorated guitars with other signs, very similar to the ones that we already used for them. So one night, when my predecessor was standing around here in the middle, he was thrusting singing and dancing and throwing kisses all over the place, there was a sound over at stage left. Confusing, eh? Stage left? Do you know what that sound was, over here? It was ladies' voices –and I guess a few guys, too– that said "Alpha… I want you, Alpha… I want to be your Ghoulette, Alpha." Eh? You talking about Fire? So Mister Fire had a new name un-christened by the girls in our audience. So please, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Alpha! We have a guy in our band who usually plays the bass on stage, but on his spare time he likes to insult us all by showing off how great of a fucking guitar player he actually is. Please, give it up for the multi-talented A Nameless Ghoul called Water! Around the same time I heard those noises from stage left, there was also a little murmur from stage right– that's your part of the audience. I saw voluptuous women… was heaving their breasts, and they were chanting the same word. Do you know what that word was? Yes… "Omega… Take me right here and right now, Omega!" So please, ladies and genitals of Long Island, give it up for the Nameless Ghoul called Omega! So there you have it: Ghost. Huntington, New York, USA (April 15, 2016)

PAPA EMERITUS III: Right on. Not so shabby eh? What a good solo. I'm gonna tell a little story. When this band started out, the idea was simply for the band to have no names. Well, one person needed a name, so myself and my predecessors could have a name. We never really thought we would be popular enough to write autographs, but when time came to write autographs we had a fucking problem. So someone came up with the idea that maybe we could have the signs of the elements to sort of symbolize the different elements in the band. [PAPA NOISES] Not so dumb, actually a little bit clever. So you've already met, obviously, Earth, the drums, and Air being like the ambience, huh? Right? See? Clever. And then we continue, like, with Fire and such. Everybody got their names, and in times of boredom they started doing shit. One thing led to decorating their guitars with, actually, the sign of Fire– triangle. And that was to correlate with the sign on the other side of the stage on the other guitar. But we will get to that. Bear with me. On one of our tours, sometime into our career –our successful career– we were attracting dudes, men, girls, and women. Everybody was having fun. I was having fun! I was dancing, I was singing –for the best of my ability– and I was thrusting, doing my best to scare you all. Then I heard this little noise. It was, I guess, mostly female voices here on this side of the stage. [AUDIENCE SCREAMS] It sounded kinda like that. But do you know what they said? [AUDIENCE: ALPHA!] Exactly. They said, "Alpha… Alpha… Alpha… Little triangle sign on the guitar, Alpha!" OK, so Fire had a new name, apparently. So, peoples of New Haven, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Alpha! Do you know what a bass is? That's the four-string guitar that makes your ass wobble. Good drums, good bass– that's usually the key to writing a good song. Our bass player likes to spend his time off stage by showing off how fucking great he is on guitar, to discontent of everyone. But please, give it up for the multi-talented a Nameless Ghoul called Water! Around about the same time we heard the Alpha nonsense over there, there was this murmur, lets just put it that way, over here. And then there was chests. Voluptuous women heave themselves against the railing. And they yelled what? [AUDIENCE: OMEGA!] Yes. "Omega… take me here, right now, Omega…" You're getting it. Right now! So please, Connecticut, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Omega! Are you not impressed? So-and-so. OK, we'll get to the good part now. New Haven, Connecticut, USA (April 16, 2016)

PAPA EMERITUS III: Yeah! Very, very good. I'm gonna tell you a story. This band started out with the intention of being, as far as the members went, nameless. Which didn't pose a big problem until the day came that we had a record out that people liked, so they wanted names to be written on the record. Well, maybe we can have like signs. Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, we can even have signs that are representative of the elements. Ah! Great! Fucking brilliant! [PAPA NOISES] Simple, too. Maybe it can even have stamps and we can save a lot of time. Said and done. So I know we had Earth, air, and Fire, and so on. So it worked like a charm. On endless treks around the world, with nothing to do but work and roll, we did other things too. Well, they did other things. So they started decorating their guitars. One with the sign that also says fire. But it also correlated with a sign on the other side of the stage, so that makes it seem something different. Hold on there. One night in our ever-so-prosperous career, we had started to attract a lot of ladies. I was standing here in the middle doing my spiel and I heard this noise coming from stage left, as we say in the business. It was ladies who said– what do you think the ladies of stage left said? they said, "Alpha… Alpha… I want to be your Ghoulette, Alpha." So Mister Fire had a new name, because of the sign on his guitar. So, ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Alpha! We'll get to the other symbol on the other guitar very, very shortly. But speaking of another guitar… Holding in his guitar, right now, a six-string axe when he's actually supposed to play something that has four strings on it, but he likes to insult everyone with the idea and the fact that he's a better guitar player than all of us. So please, give it up for the multi-talented a Nameless Ghoul called Water! About the same time when we heard that Alpha nonsense over there, I was thrusting here. I heard something else from stage right. There was a murmur. It came from voluptuous women.. who'd put their whoppers on the rim, and they'd say something very very strange for my ears. "Omega… Omega… Take me right here, right now, Omega!" So please, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Omega! Thank you. Niagara Falls, New York, USA (April 17, 2016)

PAPA EMERITUS III: My god, what a shredder! Alright… You've already met Earth and Air, so you get it, right, yeah? Elements, and so on? Fire? But some of them goes by additional names. Do you know what they usually yell, mostly female voices around here? [AUDIENCE: ALPHA!] Yes… So please, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Alpha! This tormentor of the axe usually torments the bass with his fingers of doom. Have you seen what his fingers can do? I'm sure you wish you were the one he was doing it to, huh? But now he's playing guitar, so please give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Water! Ladies of stage right flank, what do you usually say over here? What I usually hear over here is "Omega.... Copulate me right here, right now, Omega." But unfortunately, ladies, he's occupied playing the guitar. So please, ladies and genitals, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Omega! Houston, Texas, USA (April 27, 2016)

PAPA EMERITUS III: Yeah! Look at Mister Guitar Guy, here. Alright… I guess you smatasses understand what it's all about, right? Earth on the drums, Air on the keyboards, and so on. Do you know what ladies over here usually yell during our shows? Do you have a clue? What is your guess, darling? [AUDIENCE: PAPA!] Some of them yell 'Papa' too, but they usually yell something else, too. Are you clueless, all of you? "Alpha…" [AUDIENCE: OMEGA!] No, say 'Alpha', you stupid! There you go… They say "Alpha… I want to be your Ghoulette, Alpha!" So please, people of Alabama, give it up for a Nameless ghoul called Alpha! You know what a bass is, right? However, that is no bass. I assume that you know. This guy perfectly knows that he's not playing the bass right now. Because you see, he is very multi-talented. His fingers can do magic to basses, guitars… you tell me. So please, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Water! Alright, let's see if, uh, peoples of stage right is smarter than people of stage left. What are you yelling? [AUDIENCE: OMEGA!] Yes! It's usually accompanied by "Take me right here, right now, Omega!" Is that what you're saying? I see. Ladies and genitals of Alabama, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Omega! Birmingham, Alabama (May 2, 2016)

PAPA EMERITUS III: Yeah! Alright, have you understood the drill now? On the drums, Earth. On the keyboard, we have Air. And so it goes on according to the elements… correct. However, usually around this time of night, we hear women in heat from this side of the stage, and they're yelling out a name that doesn't really fit into the chemistry lesson, but it belongs on a campus– usually between the sheets. Do you know what these girls are yelling? [AUDIENCE: ALPHA!] Yes… that's exactly what they were yelling. They say "I want to be your Ghoulette, Alpha. Don't do the show, just come down here with me and make me happy." Please give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Alpha! We do have a bass player in the band, but he's kind of an overachiever, so he likes to spend his days in front of us playing guitar because he's really good at it. Please, people of Tennessee, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Water! When I look to my right, because confusingly that is stage left and that is stage right – for us– so when I cast an eye on stage right, I usually see big, big, big, big boppers. And they're yelling something… You girls know what that is? [AUDIENCE: OMEGA!] Yes… Yes… "You can breastfeed on me, Omega!" That is what they say! All of them! For some reason. So please, Tennessee, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Omega! Knoxville, Tennessee, USA (May 4, 2016)

PAPA EMERITUS III: Yeah! Alright… I know you have your heads screwed on here in Maryland, so I take it that you figured it out by now, right? It's the elements. Earth, Wind– Air, yes, and so on! But somehow… I heard different things coming out of the crowd every night, usually about here, the so-called stage left, because we see it the other way around, so we say stage left. There is a sound coming from the female parts of the audience of stage left. What do you think they say? Eh, no, they actually say something else. Can you try it again? You say "Alpha… Alpha… I want to be your Ghoulette, Alpha." "On the floor, right now," they say. "Come down here. Fuck that guitar shit! Come down and make me happy woman." So what do they say? [AUDIENCE: ALPHA!] Ladies and genitals, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Alpha! Our four-string axe tormentor… is now tormenting a G string. He does it very well. Please give it up for the multi-talented Nameless Ghoul called Water! Usually there 's murmur over at this side, too. You know what they're saying over here? Busty women, you say– what do you think they say? They're saying "Take me right here, right now, Omega," they say. Can you say that? Once more, give me one more try! [AUDIENCE: TAKE ME RIGHT HERE AND NOW, OMEGA!] Yes! That's what they say. So Baltimore, please give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Omega! Very good. Baltimore, Maryland (May 8, 2016)

PAPA EMERITUS III: Yeah! Eureka! What a fantastic solo! Alright… It is early in our relationship, but I think it's time that I test your mental powers. You're a smart bunch! By now, you figured it out, right? Earth, Air– elements, yes! Hon hon hon! Yes! Fantastic. However, to my confusion, one day I heard another name from this part of the stage. Do you know what they were calling out from here, stage left? Do you know what they say, what they yell, the females to our guitar player standing here? What? [AUDIENCE: ALPHA!] Yeah that's half of it. They say "I can take both shlong and balls at one time, Alpha! Just drop that guitar and give it all to me, instead." That's what they're saying, collectively, to my confusion. Richmond, Virginia, please give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Alpha! You're such foul mouths! I'm trying to keep it decent here. And speaking of nasty things, just look at this fingerwork! Not your fingers, your fingerwork. Our bass player here, who usually plays with four strings, he can handle six, he can handle 12… as if it was a vagina. Give it up for the multi-talented a Nameless Ghoul called Water! Magical fingers… What makes things even more confusing for me is hearing different things in my ears. Do you know what they're saying at this side of the venue –stage right, for us– do you know? You know what the whole sentence is? "Impregnate me right here, right now on this floor, Omega!" And that combined with the other sentence at the same is just fucking grief to me. Sounds fucking weird. But ladies and genitals, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Omega! Richmond, Virginia, USA (May 9, 2016)

PAPA EMERITUS III: Yeah! Alright see how smart you are… Have you figured it out now, then? If we have Earth and Wind, how do we continue? Those are the elements, yes! And you've already met Earth and Wind –or Air, if you want– and Fire and so on, yeah. But do you know what –especially the ladies here of so-called stage left– what they are yelling most of the time? What's that, honey? [AUDIENCE: ALPHA!] That's half of the sentence. They usually yell: "Omega, why don't you drop this rock business and just come down here on the floor and impregnate me, right here, right now?" That is what they yell. So uh, can you all yell that? [AUDIENCE YELLING] Alright, that's close enough. But ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Alpha! Ladies, maybe you noticed that, uh, up until now, your ass has been shaking and wobbling like this. But now it's sort of stopped. It's because of those four strings that are not represented on stage right now, because the guy who usually makes your ass wobble is right now playing a guitar. So please give it up for the multi-talented A Nameless Ghoul called Water! So, ladies of stage right, what are you usually yelling? [AUDIENCE: OMEGA!] Again, that's just part of it. You have to learn the whole line: "Why don't you jizz all over my whoppers, Omega, right now?!" That is what they say. So say it! "Why. Don't. You. Jizz. All. Over. My. Whoppers. Right. Now. Omega?!" [EXACTLY ONE GUY IN THE AUDIENCE REPEATS IT] Right on, dude! Good work! Alright, Indianapolis, give it up for a Nameless Ghoul called Omega! Indianapolis, Indiana, USA (May 19, 2016)

#😭😭 THIS TOOK ME 3 DAYS PLEASE REBLOG THIS #papa emeritus iii #terzo #nameless ghoul #radley post #the band ghost lore #quotes

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edamameimei · 6 days ago

Text

exactly what i need

"she's so beautiful, sometimes i stop to close my eyes."

pairing: sophia laforteza x singer!reader

synopsis: you're an up and coming artist who was lucky enough to be chosen as the opening act for katseye's tour. throughout your time traveling with the girls, you start becoming closer to their leader.

just a fluffy fic with some suggestive themes! some angst near the end, i couldn't help it. but it's a happy ending! lowk love the idea of oblivious!reader and jealous!sophia hehe. CW: kissing, swearing, and some suggestive themes like i mentioned before.

a/n: as someone who learned to play the ukulele just for this song, i HAD to write something based off of it. and it just had to be about sophia!!! as always, i want to put out there that this is not a REAL portrayal of the people mentioned in this fic. all events are fictional and are for entertainment purposes only.

wc: 3890 words

now playing: lemonade - jeremy passion

Lara: HEYYYYY BESITEEEE

Lara: do u wanna open up for us on our tour

Lara: ofc u do ill let our managers kno u said yes

You: bruh i just got out of the shower

And that’s how you find yourself backstage, preparing for yet another soundcheck. Although you’ve done concerts before, they were never quite like this. Before the Katseye tour, you’ve only ever performed in small venues, being a new up-and-coming artist. But as you stand backstage at yet another concert hall, you can’t help the nerves that slowly build in your body. You feel your hands shake as you struggle to put in your in-ear monitor, cursing every time the wire gets caught in your hair. You’re about to ask one of the sound technicians to help you, but you feel someone’s hand wrap around your wrist, tugging you gently. You look over to see Sophia smiling at you softly.

“You need help?” You can’t help the shy smile that forms on your lips as you nod sheepishly. The leader of Katseye giggles, assisting you with the in-ear monitor. As she does so, she makes light conversation with you. “How are you feeling?” What you want to say is, ‘nervous as hell,’ but knowing Sophia’s tendencies to over-worry, you decide to keep that to yourself. You instead opt for a more positive response. “Great! I feel really good about tonight.” It’s what you’ve said in the last three cities you guys were in, but it’s not like it isn’t true. You do feel good about your performance, it’s the before that gets you feeling overwhelmed.

The Filipina smiles at you, her lipgloss shining in a way that makes your heart flutter. When she’s done assisting you, she pulls you into a tight hug, rubbing your back comfortingly. “You’re gonna kill it. Like always.” The way she says it makes you melt into the floor. You think it's silly, the way Sophia makes you feel. But it’s just another one of your infatuations, another girl you find attractive and will never tell to their face.

Surely that’s all there is to it.

Your part of soundcheck consists of you singing an acoustic version of your songs and the songs you have chosen to cover for that night. It’s also a chance for you to engage with your fans and Eyekons (whom you hope by the end of the night will also become your fans). You’re in the middle of finding another song to cover when you hear a random voice in the audience asking what your favorite color is. You couldn’t help but laugh loudly at the random question. You look into the audience, searching for the person who asked the question. Once you find them, you speak into your mic while raising an eyebrow, “Did you just ask me what my favorite color is?” Your incredulous tone causes everyone in the audience to laugh.

The person nods their head excitedly, happy to be noticed by you. You smile back at them and begin to think about their question. You notice that the person’s nails are painted a very pretty shade of blue. You bring the mic back up to your lips. “I like the color of your nails. That’s my favorite color I think,” Quickly, you add, “I mean that genuinely. Like, I’m not trying to flirt with you… Unless?” You take the opportunity to wink at the person in the audience and the crowd begins to ‘ooo’ at your words. You laugh shyly, looking away.

If there’s one thing about you that your fans know, it’s that you love to flirt with them. You find it hilarious and it’s a bit that you find yourself doing continuously. Also, your fans love it just as much so who are you to deny them the titillating banter? You stand up from the stool you’ve been sitting on, looking back at the person with a raised eyebrow while gesturing to yourself and then to them. You say into the mic, “What are we?” And you once again hear the audience laugh at your response. It brings you joy– the attention. You can’t deny it.

Although, someone backstage wishes you’d direct that attention somewhere else.

Sophia had always been a big fan of your music. Lara was the one who introduced the girls to your music, telling them how talented you were. Since then, Sophia always had your songs on repeat, even playing one of them during a live. When one of your fans noticed, they immediately reported it to Twitter which caught your attention.

In response, you tweeted, “Huge honor to hear that katseyeworld listens to my music! I'm a big fan myself :)”

Your mention on Twitter was all Lara could talk about. At some point, you and the Indian girl exchanged numbers, talking constantly. And soon enough, you and Lara were hanging out often, quickly becoming best friends. Sophia was excited about Lara becoming your friend. However, seeing photos of you two together out and about in LA stirred jealous feelings within her. The feeling intensifies when Lara brings you over one day and the whole time, you are attached to the girl’s hip. Sophia found it quite endearing how shy you were at first with all of them but God, she wanted to be that close to you.

So, when the conversation about opening acts comes up while talking about their tour, Sophia quickly suggests you. She explains how you mesh well with the girls. She mentions how your vibes are very similar to Katseye’s concept. Of course, Lara lights up at the idea and quickly texts you about the opportunity. Sophia can’t contain her excitement when Lara announces you accepted the invite to tour with them.

A chance to spend three months with you? That’s more than enough time.

To do what? Only time could tell.

Unfortunately, at one point on the tour, you end up feeling sicker than you ever did before.

You lay in the bed of your hotel room, tissues stuck up your nose and constantly coughing up a lung every two minutes or so. You made the announcement just five minutes ago that you will not be performing tonight and you can’t help but feel even more terrible than you already do. You hate to think about letting people down, especially your fans. That’s why you’ve kept your phone on ‘Do Not Disturb’ so you won’t experience the chaos in real time.

Also, the constant vibrations of your phone would increase the pain you’re experiencing in your head.

You sadly continue watching whatever show you put on your laptop, covered in blankets with a pout on your face. Suddenly, you hear a knock on your door. It causes you to groan quietly, having no energy to open it. You then hear a familiar voice through the door. “Y/n? It’s Sophia!” It’s embarrassing how quickly you jump out of bed, nearly tripping all over your clothes and luggage as you get to the door. You open the door to reveal a very pretty Sophia Laforteza holding two full plastic bags. You tilt your head in curiosity. “Hey... What brings you here?” Sophia holds up the bags in her hands with a wide smile. She hands them to you as she speaks, “I wanted to stop by and give you these… It has cold medicine, cough drops, different teas– I wasn’t sure what kind you liked so I got a variety…” You look at her in disbelief, you couldn’t believe someone could be so kind. You smile at her with sincerity in your eyes. Your voice is slightly hoarse as you speak. “I… You didn’t have to do this.”

Sophia shoves you lightly, a teasing smile on her face. “Of course I did. I gotta make sure our rising star gets better for the rest of the tour…” She winks at you, causing you to blush. You set the bags down on the counter and look back at her with an apologetic smile. “I’d hug you right now but I can’t get THE Sophia Laforteza, leader of Katseye, get sick in the middle of her tour. I’d have Eyekons banging on my door…” She laughs, her eyes turning into crescents. You mentally pat yourself on the back, feeling pride in making her laugh so hard. She shakes her head and waves you off. “Oh, I’m sure Eyekons would be banging on your door for a completely different reason…” Her comment makes you raise an eyebrow. You let out a nervous chuckle as you respond, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The smirk that forms on her glossy lips causes your knees to go weak. She tilts her head, responding in a low, teasing tone. “I’ve seen the tweets on Eyekonville… They can’t get enough of you.” She giggles at the way your eyes widen at her words. She crosses her arms, taking a step back. “Well I’ve gotta get back to my room but when you start feeling better,” she gives you a playful smile, “let me know so we can hang out.” You wordlessly nod your head in response. The Filipina sends you one last smile before walking away, leaving you speechless. You’re not quite sure if you feel hot because of the interaction or if your fever is getting worse. At this point, you’re not even sure which one would be worse.

You’re in the East Coast part of the tour when Sophia’s words seem to make more sense.

After a few long hours of practicing, writing new songs, and filming with the girls for their tour vlogs, you finally get a few moments of peace. You decide to stroll around the city to get some fresh air and explore before you get too busy again. As a new artist, you’ve never had issues with people coming up to you randomly. It’s somewhat of a privilege to keep your privacy like this.

That’s why it catches you off guard when a group of girls find you on the street and ask for a picture with you. And how could you say no?

PopBase: Y/n L/n, the opener for Katseye’s tour, was seen walking around Charlotte and talking with fans, per several X users.

User01: met Y/n L/n in Charlotte! they were so sweet )):

User02: SAW Y/N IN DOWNTOWN CHARLOTTE!!! They had me blushing and kicking my feet a lil im ngl

User03: all these Y/n stans and Eyekons saying Y/n was flirting with them. When will it be me????

User04: Y/n said I looked hot today I stay winning in life methinks

Back at the hotel, you find Sophia standing by your room, scrolling through her phone. She looks up when she hears your footsteps, beaming when she spots you walking closer. She waves with a wide smile on her face. “Hey! I was looking for you…” You can’t help but blush at her words, your heart doing flips at the thought of Sophia waiting specifically for you. You put your hands in your pockets, trying to seem as nonchalant as possible. “Yeah, I was just taking a walk around the city.” She nods in response, pointing at her phone. “I saw it on Twitter. You met some fans?” You let out a loud laugh and shake your head, feeling embarrassed by all the tweets floating around since you were discovered wandering around downtown.

You look down at your feet as you respond. “I did. It’s the first time anybody has ever noticed me so it was… Cool.” You feel the Filipina place a hand on your arm, squeezing it. You look at her with a shy glance, your heart beating faster with every second that passes. She gives you a sincere smile. “You deserve the attention. You’re so talented.” Her hand moves from your arm up to the collar of your shirt. She moves her other hand to your collar and begins to fix it. There’s a playful smile on her lips. “It looks like you were giving them a lot of attention too.” She tugs at your collar causing your breath to catch in your throat. You look at her, wondering if the building tension between you two was in your head. She lets go, stepping away from you. She bites her lip and your mind must be playing tricks on you because is she checking you out? Sophia grabs your hand, pulling you away from your room. You allow the Filipina to do what she pleases because you’d be stupid not to. “Where are we going?” She pulls you towards the elevators, pressing the ‘down’ button. She looks at you with a twinkle in her eyes. “Giving you my attention, come on.”

You’re sitting on one of the couches in the lounge, waiting to be called for soundcheck when Sophia sits next to you, laying her head on your shoulder.

The action causes you to freeze, your mouth becomes dry. You’re overwhelmed by the scent of her perfume and you are hyper-aware of her hand resting on your thigh. In the last few cities, you’ve noticed the Filipina becoming much more touchy with you and you’re trying your hardest to stop thinking about it. She’s naturally a touchy person, you’ve noticed that about her. With her members, she’s quite attentive, always making sure they’re doing well and supporting them when need be. You tell yourself that’s what she’s doing for you.

It’s here in New York that you realize how much of a problem it is for you. What you initially thought was an infatuation has become much more, and you’re not really sure what to do with that information.

You feel Sophia shift next to you, suddenly wrapping her arms around your torso, pulling you closer to her body. She nuzzles her head into your shoulder, letting out a content sigh. Your hands stay in your lap, feeling shy about the proximity. You can feel her take a glance at you and you hear her let out a small giggle. She pinches your cheeks, cooing, “Are you okay?” You nod in response, feeling your cheeks heat up at her words. Your voice shakes a bit when you talk. “Yeah. A little nervous.” She pulls away slightly, looking at you with concern written in her expression. “Nervous? About the show? You’re gonna do great.” She places a hand on your cheek, her thumb caressing it gently. You wonder if she can feel the heat radiating from your face– if she notices how much redder you’ve become with her simple touch. She tilts her head, leaning in closer towards you. She whispers, “Relax…” But you can’t relax. Not when Sophia Laforteza exists.

When they finally call your name, you immediately stand up, almost stumbling on your feet. You hear Sophia giggle and it makes you blush even more. You speed walk away, needing to be out of this situation as quickly as possible.

It is now the last leg of the tour and you have accepted your fate. You like the Filipina a lot more than you anticipated.

Through all the not-so-subtle touches, glances, and small flirtatious remarks, you also got to know Sophia on more of a personal level. She always ends up in your hotel room somehow, staying for long periods to talk about everything and nothing all at once. You find yourself listening for most of it, but you don’t care. You’re mesmerized by her voice and how animated she is when she talks about something she’s passionate about. At some point, you also begin divulging your details, telling her things you haven’t said out loud in years. You tell her about your life before becoming an artist, about your family, things you’d rather not speak in detail about.

This night is no different.

You exit the bathroom, drying your hair with a towel as Sophia lays on her stomach on your bed. She is looking for something to put on the TV for you two to watch for the night (or, more specifically, have it in the background while you two have yet another yap session). When you sit down next to her, she immediately scoots over, leaning her head against your leg. Even though you’ve gotten used to Sophia’s need for physical touch 24/7, you still can’t help the nervousness you get every single time. You hear her sigh dramatically, throwing the remote behind her. You giggle as you watch her roll onto her back, maneuvering herself so she can lay her head in your lap. You instinctively move your hand to her hair, playing with the soft strands. She closes her eyes, a soft smile forming on her lips.

“Have you ever been in love?” You halt your movements, your eyes widening at the girl. You’re completely caught off guard by her question. She whines when she feels you’ve stopped playing with her hair and swats at your hand, telling you to continue. You clear your throat, obeying her command. “Umm… I don’t know… I’ve never really been in a relationship before…” Her eyes snap open at your sheepish confession. She gapes at you in surprise. “Really?” You shrug, suddenly feeling embarrassed by your lack of knowledge in the love department. “Yeah… I mean. I’ve talked to people but I’ve never… Gone farther than that.” The Filipina covers her mouth in shock causing you to look away. Your cheeks burn hotter than they ever have. You feel Sophia remove herself from your lap to sit up, grabbing your shoulders. She continues looking at you with a surprised expression.

“But, you’re always flirting with your fans and Eyekons, you really never dated someone?” Her statement causes you to look back at her with a raised eyebrow. You chuckle, shaking your head. “That’s different. That’s just for fun. Sometimes I flirt with people as a joke.” The moment your words leave your mouth, Sophia immediately detaches herself from you, scooting away. You look at her with a confused look. Your confusion turns into panic when she stands up from the bed with an unreadable expression. You stand as well, worried. “You good?” She nods, looking towards the door. She speaks softly, “Yeah… I just remembered the girls and I planned to do something tomorrow morning so I should probably get back so I can go to bed.” Before you can respond, Sophia makes her way toward the door. Before leaving, she turns to look at you with what looks like a sad smile. “Goodnight, Y/n.” You feel frozen in place as you watch her leave the room without another word. You run your hands through your hair, wondering what went wrong.

“Fuck.”

Lara: bro whatd you do

You: IDK U TELL ME!!!!!

There are four cities left in the tour and Sophia still isn’t talking to you.

After that night in the hotel, she has been avoiding you. The Filipina doesn’t even try to hide it. Every time you walk into the room, she immediately leaves. When you two are told to vlog together, she does as she is told, but once filming is over, she is gone before you can say a word to her. It sucks. And you still don’t know why.

You think about your conversation with Sophia over and over again, trying to find at what point it went awry. But it only leaves you more confused than before. It wasn’t like you two were talking about anything that substantial.

That is until you recount the events to the leader’s members.

They all sit on your bed, looking at you with deadpanned expressions. You groan because you didn’t realize you’ve fucked up this badly. You wave your hands wildly, giving them a pleading look. “Well! Tell me what I did so I can fix it!” Daniela sighs, crossing her arms. She speaks as though her words were obvious. “You said you flirt with people as a joke, Y/n.” You look at her, still confused. “What does that have to do with anything?” Manon groans, throwing a pillow at your head that you unsuccessfully dodge. It hits you like her words.

“You dumbass! You two have been flirting with each other for the last like three months! She must think it’s been a joke to you this whole time!”

Another city, another sound check.

Except this time, you feel more nervous than you usually do.

Since the girls intervened with you, you’ve been trying to figure out how to win the Filipina girl back in your life. You can’t believe how oblivious you’ve been the last few months. You’ve been so busy overthinking your feelings that you didn’t even consider Sophia’s. There couldn’t have been a chance in hell that Sophia Laforteza would see you the same way you do. But, as you reflected on the past few months, you realize that all signs were there.

And now you’re gonna try to make up for it. Try is the keyword.

You are in the last few minutes of your soundcheck when you decide to finish with a cover that you’ve been shamelessly practicing for hours the night before. You run to the other side of the stage, grabbing your ukulele. Its appearance makes the audience cheer and you feel your cheeks heat up. For some reason, holding a ukulele embarrasses you. But you can’t back away, you’ve gotta see this one through. You place your mic on its stand, clearing your throat. You speak into it, your voice shaking slightly. “So. I think you guys and I have been getting pretty close the last few months…” You hear more cheers from the audience, agreeing with your statement. You chuckle nervously. “So, I’m gonna tell you guys a secret.” Once again, everyone cheers in response. You hear individual voices saying things such as, “What is it?” or, “Tell us!”

You strum the ukulele, the random chords reverberating throughout the concert hall. “I really like someone… And I really fucked up– pardon my language,” Everyone laughs but quickly becomes silent, wanting you to continue. “And so, I dedicate this song to them. I hope they listen to it and I don’t know… Consider giving me another chance?” The audience screams a collective ‘Yes!’ When everyone finally quiets down, you begin playing the chords to the song, hoping a certain Filipina is standing backstage listening in.

“She’s my sunshine in the rain…”

After saying your goodbyes to the audience, you quickly run off stage, looking around frantically. Disappointment begins to settle in your chest when Sophia is nowhere to be seen. However, a familiar hand grabs onto yours, pulling you into an unknown direction. You can’t help the smile that forms on your face being pulled by Sophia. Once you two are alone, she wraps her arms around your neck, pulling you into a deep kiss. You respond immediately, wrapping your arms around her waist. After a few moments, she pulls away slightly, resting her forehead against yours. She whispers teasingly. “You’re only flirting with me from now on, okay?”

You kiss her again, relishing the way her lipgloss tastes. When you pull away, you respond, breathlessly, “Got it. Totally noted.”

a/n: i hope you guys enjoyed, let me know what you think! this one was rlly fun to write and it helped w my sophia brainrot lately. my inbox is open for requests and any thoughts so send them if you wanna :)

#katseye x reader #katseye imagines #megan skiendiel #daniela avanzini #manon bannerman #lara raj #sophia laforteza #jeong yoonchae #katseye #sophia laforteza x reader

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taylornation · 1 year ago

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We can see you guys had a lot of fun watching Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour (Taylor's Version) with us last night! 🕵️💜

Here’s a clip of I Can See You, the fourth and final acoustic song added to Taylor’s Version of the film. Stream it now, later, or whenever you want on Disney Plus! 🤗

#Taylor Swift #TS The Eras Tour (Taylor's Version)

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 6 months ago

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Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 13: The Regrets Are Useless] [Series Finale]

A/N: Below are your final predictions. Let's see how you did... 🥰

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes.

Series title is a lyric from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “Whatsername” by Green Day.

Word count: 6.1k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Rain pours outside the cabin, mist-shrouded pine trees and still dark water, a place in southern Oregon called Lake of the Woods. The twin-sized bed with a thin foam mattress was once used by kids attending summer camp, capture the flag and s’mores, hikes and scary stories, but now the children are ghosts and the monsters are real, stumbling down streets and lurking in dark places, licking blood from what’s left of their lips.

Aemond is here but he’s also not, a castaway on an island where the world never ended, his hands in your hair as you straddle him, your hips moving tentatively, his lips and teeth at your throat, the sharp points of his canines like fangs.

“Am I doing this right?” you murmur doubtfully. “I feel like I’m definitely not doing this right…”

“Shh, you’re great, you’re incredible.”

“I’m sorry I don’t know how to do everything already, I’m sorry you have to teach me—”

“Stop,” Aemond commands, a sharp sigh through your hair. “I love this. I love you. I want to teach you things until the day I die.”

The nervous tension in your muscles unravels—peddles thrown into water, campfire smoke vanishing into indigo night—and now his hands are on your hips, steadying you, guiding you. You link your fingers around the back of his neck and try to find a cadence that isn’t uncomfortable, ungainly, effortful. You wanted to try this. You want to experience everything with him.

“Take your time,” Aemond is saying like it’s difficult for him to keep a train of thought, his eye closed, his cheeks flushed, blood-colored blooms like a dusk sky. “I’m fine down here, don’t worry about me…”

Rain drums against the windows; lightning flashes in the sky and thunder growls. From the front porch of one of the other cabins, you can hear the indistinct droning of conversations and Aegon strumming the acoustic guitar he brought from the beach house. It’s something you’ve overheard him singing before, one of his strange midcentury darlings, a song that should be too old for him to know the words to.

“All you big and burly men who roll the trucks along

Better listen, you’ll be thankful when you hear my song

You have really got it made if you’re haulin’ goods

Any place on earth but those Haynesville Woods…”

Your skin gleams with a cool sheen of sweat; there is a draft through the cabin walls that makes you shiver as you cling to Aemond. You roll your hips a certain way and he moans—suddenly, involuntarily—and you know you’ve found the right rhythm.

“It’s a stretch of road up north in Maine

That’s never ever ever seen a smile

If they’d buried all them truckers lost in them woods

There’d be a tombstone every mile

Count ‘em off, there’d be a tombstone every mile…”

Aemond is kissing you deeply, desperately, trembling hands and gasping shallow breaths. And there is not just euphoria written into the lines of his face; there is disorientation, there is wonder. He barely manages: “Alright…um…if you want me to last longer than about thirty more seconds, you should probably slow down…”

“No,” you tease, grinning as you bite at his full lips.

“When you’re loaded with potatoes and you’re headed down

You’ve got to drive the woods to get to Boston town

When it’s winter up in Maine, better check it over twice

That Haynesville road is just a ribbon of ice…”

Aemond cries out, louder than you’ve ever heard him before—you’ve never had privacy, you’ve never truly been alone—and then again, a helpless ecstatic sound, pleasure so overwhelming it almost starts to feel like pain.

“Quiet!” you whisper, giggling, touching two fingers to his mouth. “Everyone’s going to hear you.”

“Oh my God,” Aemond says. He falls back onto the mattress and brings you with him, his arms wrapped around you, kissing your cheeks and your forehead as the two of you lie there panting and entangled, his blue eye astonished. “Okay, okay, I need a minute. I think I just burst an aneurysm.”

“I killed you?” you purr with feigned distress, basking in your conquest.

“You can kill me whenever you want. You can kill me five times a day.”

“When you’re talking to a trucker that’s been haulin’ goods

Down that stretch of road in Maine they call the Haynesville Woods

He’ll tell you that dying and going down below

Won’t be half as bad as driving on that road of ice and snow…”

Aemond stares up at the ceiling—a steep gable roof, a motionless fan—and now you can tell he’s thinking about his family again, discorporate screams, misplaced trust. Otto Hightower’s bones were found in the shower, meaning he likely died before or not long after their power failed and water would have run out in the municipal system. They were probably killed before you and Aemond ever met, distant galaxies lightyears away, remote long-dead stars. And so all the blood you paid to get to California was wasted.

“Do you ever think about the people you have saved?” you ask gently as your fingertips trace the ridge of his scar. “You stitched yourself back together. You healed Aegon’s burns. You sutured Cregan’s arm. You got me and Rio down from that transmission tower.”

“I guess I did,” Aemond says, but his voice is ambivalent, as if none of these things count. He has not found someplace safe for you yet. His job is not finished; his triumphs may only be temporary.

“Aemond…back in Pennsylvania…why did you decide to help us?”

“Luke spotted you guys, and we all talked it over. If it had just been Rio, honestly, I wouldn’t have taken the chance. A man his size, and possibly armed…could be trouble, you know? But I figured since he was traveling with a woman and you seemed to be with him by choice, he was probably okay. And then when we first met, he was so protective of you…didn’t want me touching you, didn’t leave you alone…I realized he had to be a good guy.”

“He was,” you say solemnly. I was supposed to remind him about the racks. I was supposed to warn him. But you didn’t warn Rio about what was waiting to kill him in that sand-swept grocery store in Winnemucca, just like you didn’t warn Jace about radiation or Baela about the way the rungs of the ladder that ran up the side of the grain bin were rusted and creaking, and maybe there is more than enough blame to go around.

“And then after Battle Mountain, as soon as we found the gasoline and ammo, I knew we had to go back for you. It hit me all at once. I couldn’t protect you by leaving you with Rio and Cregan. And I couldn’t let you go. I’ve never had something like this before. I didn’t know it existed. I told the others we were turning around, and Aegon said: Thank fucking God. Rhaena took off sprinting towards the car.” Then Aemond kisses you again, but tenderly this time, slowly, like you’ll have forever and there’s no need to rush. “I’m going to get you to Odessa. I’m going to take you somewhere safe.”

The rain is stopping; there are still a few hours of daylight left.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Hey, Chip Skylark. Check it out,” Aegon says, grinning at you from where he’s sprawled on the wet dock and smoking a cigarette, wearing his neon green plastic sunglasses, his left leg finally freed from its bandages and on full display. You’re all wearing the same things, stolen t-shirts and shorts, sweatshirts at night when it gets cold, sneakers you can walk hundreds of miles in; but Aegon won’t give up his Sperry Bahamas. “It’s nature’s tattoo.”

You sit down beside him and admire the scar tissue, red knots and white cords, jagged terrain like a mountain range, organic highways and bridges and trails. “It’s a roadmap.”

“That’s appropriate.”

You’ve been traveling on foot for two weeks since Criston’s white Tahoe ran out of gas and was abandoned in the town of Mad River, California. Now you are only about ten miles from Odessa, close enough to reach in half a day but too far to get into town before nightfall. This time tomorrow you’ll be there, and it will either be a haven or a wasteland, and if Rio’s parents’ community in Odessa has disappeared then so has your last idea for where to go. Absentmindedly, you skate your fingerprints over the bumps and grooves of Aegon’s leg like a blind man reading braille. He shifts and clears his throat; you’ve made him uncomfortable somehow. You lift your hand away.

“I’m sorry, does that hurt?”

“Nah. I can’t really feel anything besides pressure. The nerve endings got fried.”

“Oh.” But now you don’t know what you did to upset him. Aegon doesn’t provide an explanation. Down the dock a ways towards the shore, Rhaena is reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and listening to the pink Sony Walkman formerly owned by a little girl named Ava. Inside whirls Green Day’s 2004 album American Idiot, which Aegon took from his bedroom at the beach house to add to his CD collection, a cultural archive, a gift for posterity. Cregan is teaching Daeron to fish with poles he found in one of the cabins; Helaena is bringing them worms. Aemond and Luke are gathering things dry enough to burn—books and wooden chairs from inside the cabins—and piling them up so Cregan can cook dinner once it’s caught.

“So,” Aegon says, changing the subject, scrutinizing you as he puffs on a Marlboro Gold. “Everything going okay?”

You know what he means; he must have heard Aemond earlier. “Yup.”

“Got it all figured out?”

“Sure did.”

“Great. I’m happy for you,” Aegon says, and yet there’s a twinge of melancholy he’s trying to hide. It must be hard for him; he and Daeron are the only single ones.

“We’ll find you some suitable candidates for your harem when we get to Odessa.”

He chuckles. “Oh, come on.”

“Guys, girls? Do you have a preference?”

He’s smiling wistfully down into the water, a dark rippling mirror. “I have too specific a preference, that’s the problem.”

“Yacht girls in bikinis. Golf cheerleaders.”

“There are no cheerleaders in golf, you yokel.”

“Okay, well…I’m sure you’ll be very popular with the lonely, traumatized, widowed women of the apocalypse.”

Aegon gazes morosely out over the lake. He pitches the end of his cigarette into the water, and your eyes catch briefly on the black ink of the tattoo on his forearm: It’s not over ‘til you’re underground. “I don’t know. I’ve been sober for two weeks and now everything is annoyingly clear.”

“What’s bothering you?”

He waits a while before he answers, evasive. “I’ve never been good at anything.”

“Everyone feels that way sometimes. Luke thinks he’s not good at anything either.”

“But Luke’s nice. I’m a rat bastard.”

You laugh. “You’re kind of nice, Aegon.”

“Yeah right.”

“No, seriously. I like being around you. You make me feel better. You’re like…” You ponder how to word it. “I feel like I could tell you whatever and not worry about being judged for it.”

He snorts. “As if you’ve ever done anything judgeable.”

You shrug, peering out over the lake. “I abandoned my family. I stopped sending them money, I stopped calling. And when everything happened…the zombies, the world ending…I didn’t even consider going back to Kentucky to try to help them. I went west with Rio instead. And now they’re probably all dead and it’s my fault. That’s evil. I couldn’t have gotten away with that level of betrayal. I must be cursed.”

Aegon is watching you, eyebrows raised. He has never heard this before. “But your family sucked, right?”

“Yeah,” you admit. “I think it would be hard to argue they didn’t.”

“So fuck ‘em,” Aegon says simply.

You smile at him, touched, grateful. “Okay. Fuck ‘em.”

“I’m relieved my family’s gone,” Aegon confesses, something so brutal he’d never tell anyone else. “I mean…I feel kind of bad about my mom and Criston. But as long as they were alive, I’d always be the person they raised. And if I could bring someone back, it wouldn’t be any of them. I’d pick Rio.”

“I would too,” you say softly, staring down at the faint burn marks on your palms from when you were stranded on that transmission tower with him, talking him out of suicide, so adamant that both of you were going to make it to Oregon. And you were wrong.

“So if you’re cursed, Pita Chips, sign me up because I’m right there with you.”

Rhaena pulls out an earbud and says to Aegon: “I don’t get this album.”

“What?!” he exclaims.

“It’s so good!” you concur. On the shore, Cregan is spearing several gutted rainbow trout on sticks so they can be roasted over the fire. Ice is gleefully gulping down fish organs.

Aegon continues: “Whatsername! St. Jimmy! Jesus of Suburbia!”

Rhaena blinks, glancing between you and Aegon. “But neither of you grew up in the suburbs.”

“It’s not about the suburbs, Rhaena!” Aegon replies with frenetic hand gestures. “It’s about being disillusioned and angry and failed by all the adults in your life, and self-medicating, and losing love every time you get a taste of it, and wanting to burn everything down and start over. It’s about hating the world and the world hating you back.”

“Okay, sure. I still don’t get it.”

You say: “You might have had too happy a childhood.” And you and Aegon burst out laughing.

“You guys are so weird,” Rhaena says, but she’s smiling. She stands up, gives Aegon back his Walkman, and walks to the end of the dock where Cregan is cooking the rainbow trout. Aemond and Daeron are gathering up the aluminum buckets found at the campground and set outside earlier today to collect rainwater. There is one five-pound bag of trail mix left to share, and then all the food is gone. If Cregan doesn’t kill something, you won’t eat.

“We should go help them with dinner,” you tell Aegon.

He groans. “Should we really?”

“Yeah. We should.”

“Fine.” He takes your hand when you offer it and struggles to his feet. Then you inhale a lungful of the scent of roasting trout, and startlingly powerful nausea punches through your stomach, so repellant you have to clamp a hand over your mouth to stop yourself from retching.

There has to be something wrong with the fish. It’s never smelled like that before.

Aegon seems baffled. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Does the trout smell right to you?”

Aegon sniffs the air like a labrador. “I guess…? I barely smell anything.”

“Well you probably destroyed your nose cells with all the coke.”

“That’s discriminatory. Addiction is a disease.” But his brow is furrowed with concern. “Seriously, are you okay? You look awful. Not like that. You know what I mean.”

“I’m fine.” You don’t feel fine; but everyone down by the fire is chatting and joking around nonchalantly, and surely if there actually was something wrong they would have noticed. “I’ll be back in a second.”

“Sure,” Aegon says, perplexed.

You hurry past the others and take refuge in the cabin you’re sharing with Aemond. Inside the trout smell isn’t so strong. You sit at the edge of the bed and suck in several deep breaths, trying to calm down, willing the confounding wave of nausea to pass.

Did I eat something bad, did I get bit by a spider or something…?

You are checking your arms and legs for little raised bitemarks when Helaena enters the cabin and shuts the door behind her. When she opens her burlap messenger bag to root around inside, you glimpse photographs she must have taken from the beach house, the frames left empty on the mantle of the fireplace. Then Helaena pulls out a pregnancy test, just one, Clearblue.

You gawk at it. “What are you doing?”

“You look sick,” Helaena says matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, but I don’t think it’s that.”

She is puzzled, wide innocent blue eyes. “Why not?”

“Well…I mean…that would be freakishly quick, wouldn’t it? Like…quick as in immediately. People can’t get pregnant the first time they have sex, right?”

“Huh. They really don’t have sex ed in Kentucky,” Helaena says, and leaves you alone with your pregnancy test. You don’t feel so nauseous anymore, but you sneak around the back of the cabin to take it anyway, because now you’re thinking about the possibility with a vividness you’ve never experienced before: a round blossoming belly and tiny handprints and Aemond cradling his child in his arms. And by the time you get the result, you aren’t even shocked. It feels like something that’s supposed to happen.

You and Aemond don’t have a moment alone together until after dark, sitting on the porch swing outside your cabin for first watch, everyone else asleep, Ice dozing serenely by your feet. The only sounds are the breeze through the pine trees, cool and damp, and the hoots of owls, and the chirping of crickets and cicadas.

“So guess what,” you say casually as moonbeams float rippling and fractured on the surface of the black-glass lake.

Aemond smiles drowsily, not expecting anything. “What?”

“In approximately eight months, I might be having your baby.”

At first, he doesn’t speak; he only studies the test when you hand it to him, and then looks at you like he’s not convinced you aren’t angry, like he can’t quite bring himself to believe that you’d want this with someone like him. “Are you afraid?”

“No,” you answer honestly. Maybe you should be, but you aren’t. “I’m hopeful. I feel like as soon as I realized it, everything got brighter. And now I’m thinking about the future instead of the past.” They’re not going to grow up like I did. They’re never going to think they aren’t loved. “What should we name it?”

“Not Otter.”

You laugh, trying to muffle it so you don’t wake anyone. Ice lifts her head and stares at you curiously, her shaggy grey ears straight up.

“I don’t know, I’m terrible with names,” Aemond says; and now he’s smiling again, a wide radiant smile, and you know he’s thinking about the future too. “Hope or Peace or something. Something happy. Something about starting over.”

You take his hand. “I can’t wait to start over with you.”

“Just one more day,” Aemond says.

One more day.

~~~~~~~~~~

“So what am I going to do in Odessa?” Luke asks as the eight of you—nine, if you count Ice—trek eastbound on Route 140. You are about five miles from Lake of the Woods and halfway to your destination. It’s only 80 degrees and overcast, good walking weather, although there is a looming threat of rain, occasional rogue drops and far-off rumbles of thunder. “Everyone has valuable skills except me. Chips has great aim and can build things, Daeron has his compound bow, Aemond is basically a doctor, Rhaena is learning how to shoot guns and treat injuries…”

“Aegon has skills?” Cregan jokes, casting him a good-natured grin. Aegon acts like he’s going to whack Cregan with his golf club, which he’s spinning around haphazardly. Both his Marlin .22 and acoustic guitar are slung across his back. There aren’t many bullets left, but everyone has a few.

“Aegon can navigate,” Luke says. “And probably impregnate ten women a day. Very useful during a population crisis.”

“We don’t need that in the gene pool,” Rhaena notes.

“You wrote stories in college, right?” you ask Luke.

“Screenplays, yeah,” he says hesitantly. “But I wouldn’t say I was super talented or anything.”

Aegon claps him on the shoulder “Well I’ve got good news for you, kid. A big chunk of the world’s screenwriters are probably dead now. So you’ll look so much better in comparison!”

“Thanks…?” Luke says.

“What I mean is,” you continue. “You could write books for people to read, since there aren’t really libraries or Barnes & Nobles anymore. And you could interview people to get their life stories and then record them so they aren’t lost forever. The next generation should know what the world was like before the zombies.”

“Yeah,” Aegon says as he pets Ice. “Someone has to tell them about blue raspberry Icees, right Blue Raspberry Icee?”

“Maybe,” Luke says thoughtfully, and you notice that he’s smiling a little.

Ice begins whining, and there is a rustling in the woods to the north, low-hanging branches of bigleaf maple and dogwood and Douglas fir trees being forced aside. “Zombie!” Aegon announces, pointing. Immediately, Daeron nocks an arrow and then releases it, and the figure draped in the shifting shadows of foliage drops to the ground.

“Hey Aegon,” Daeron says after a few seconds.

“Yeah?”

“That was actually a zombie, right?”

“Totally,” Aegon replies, but he doesn’t sound certain.

Aemond turns to his older brother accusingly. “How sure are you?”

“Like…50%.”

“Aegon!” Rhaena cries, petrified, and everyone rushes off the road to investigate.

Blessedly, the felled creature is long-dead, a former park ranger whose tan uniform hangs in gore-stained tatters. The nametag reads: Underwood. The arrow pierced its soft rotting skull and remains lodged there until Daeron pulls it out to be used again, giving Aegon an impatient scowl as he does.

“Close call,” Aegon tells him. “Think they would have charged you as an adult?”

“Lord almighty, that gave me a scare,” Cregan says, chuckling. Helaena spies a blackberry bush and begins picking a handful, and Cregan goes over to join her. Rhaena and Luke are telling Aegon that he needs to be more responsible and should have waited for Luke to confirm it was a zombie with his binoculars. You exchange a glance with Aegon: he rolls his eyes, you offer a smirk of commiseration. Ice is already trotting back towards Oregon Route 140.

You haven’t told anyone else that you’re pregnant yet, but eventually they’re going to notice that Aemond won’t leave your side. He sighs and asks you: “Have you had enough of this little field trip?”

“Definitely.” You head for the road. Aemond walks with you, placing you not on his left side but on his right where he can see you. You ask, smiling: “You don’t trust me to watch your blind side anymore, huh?”

“I prefer the view the way it is.”

You are only a few steps from the black artery of pavement that cuts through the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, a 114,000-acre preserve of wilderness that somehow—although it is 2,500 miles away—reminds you a bit of eastern Kentucky, endless emerald forests, the omnipotent shadows of mountains. And because you are on Aemond’s right side, he can look down and see something just in front of you on the earth strewn with knobby roots and pine needles and dead leaves.

“Don’t!” he shouts, snatching your forearm and yanking you backwards, and he’s never touched you like this before—so forcefully, so violently—and you stumble and almost fall, and your arm burns and aches where he grabbed you, and people are asking what’s going on, and you peer up at Aemond with confusion, fear, mistrust.

“Why…?”

And then you hear it rustling from the same place where you were standing a moment ago. The others yelp and dash out of the way as the snake escapes into the woods, a drab spotted olive green, a rattling tail, an angular skull like an arrowhead.

“Aemond?” you say, because he hasn’t moved, hasn’t made a sound. He looks down, and your gaze follows his. On his right calf, just a few inches above his ankle, are two small puncture wounds from the snake’s fangs, each dribbling a thin river of blood.

“Northern Pacific rattlesnake,” Helaena says, her voice shaking, tears welling up in her horrified eyes. “Venomous.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Aemond has one arm draped across Cregan’s shoulders, the other over Aegon’s. He’s moving slower, or is that just your imagination? His steps are less steady, his breathing more labored. His leg is swelling, a deep blue phantom of a bruise spreading beneath his skin, so tight it looks like it might split open.

“We’re almost there,” you say; you keep saying it, because hopefully that will make it true. “We’re only a few miles from Odessa, and we’ll find people who can help us.”

“Aemond, you’re a doctor,” Luke says.

Aemond’s voice is weak, pained, hazy. “I’m not a doctor.”

“You know what I mean!” Luke yells, frantic. “How do we fix you? What can we do?”

“Nothing,” Aemond says listlessly. “There’s nothing you can do without a hospital. I’ll either get better or I won’t.”

“People in Odessa will know how to help,” you insist. “They’re outside all the time, they hike, they hunt, they fish, they’ve seen snakebites before. They must have. They’ll have treatments.”

“Aemond,” Rhaena breathes, and you turn to see there is blood running from his nostrils. You scream, and Aemond touches his fingers to his face and then watches as they come away bloody.

“Put me down,” he tells Cregan and Aegon.

“No—” you begin, but then his knees buckle and he’s on the pavement anyway, blood pouring from his nose and his lips, blood filling up his right eye. Cregan walks to the shoulder of the highway, his head in his hands. Aegon stays beside Aemond, and you’re kneeling there with him, both of you using anything you have to clean the blood from Aemond’s face: the corners of your shirts, your bare hands.

He’s covered in blood, you think. Just like Jace, Baela, Rio.

“Can’t clot,” Aemond is murmuring. “The venom causes coagulotoxicity. Internal bleeding too. I feel like…like there’s all this pressure inside…”

Rhaena is taking Aemond’s pulse like he taught her to, fingers on the underside of his wrist. “It’s really faint,” she says quietly.

You grab a plastic Gatorade bottle filled with rainwater out of your backpack and tilt it against Aemond’s crimson-stained lips. He manages to swallow some of it. “Aemond, listen to me,” you say as calmly as you can. “You’re so close. We’re almost there. I need you to hang on a little longer.”

He shakes his head, slow dizzy motions. “It doesn’t matter.”

“They might have doctors in Odessa.” This is a fantasy, but you can’t resist it.

“Even if they do, there won’t be any antivenom. And it’s too late anyway.”

“No,” you say savagely, a sob ripping through your throat. “We didn’t cross 3,000 miles so you could die here. I won’t let you. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not fair.”

“Aegon,” Aemond says, reaching for him, drained and fumbling.

Aegon catches his hand. “I’m here.”

His eye—crystalline blue corrupted with red, blood in clear water—drifts to his brother. “You have to get her to Odessa. You have to help take care of everyone.”

Aegon is weeping. “Man, it’s supposed to be you. How can I still be here if you aren’t?”

“You can do this,” Aemond says.

“I’ll try.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, Aemond,” Aegon says, then crawls away on his hands and knees and collapses on the pavement, gutted, inconsolable, hemorrhaging grief instead of gore.

Everyone is crying and touching Aemond—his face, his hands—saying goodbye, accepting tasks, and they come away stained with red, and rain has begun to fall from a dark sky growling with thunder. Rhaena takes his medical kit. Helaena takes his Glock and stows it away in her messenger mag. Then Aemond looks for you, and now you are alone with him here in the middle of the highway, two golden lines on black asphalt, and with your thumbprint you whisk away the rivulet of blood that is spilling from his eye.

“You’re going to be okay,” he whispers as his heart fails, as his lungs fill with blood instead of air, as his pores leak rust and ruin. “Odessa will be everything we hoped for. I just won’t be there with you.”

“You can’t leave me,” you’re saying as rain patters against the road. I left my family and now my family is leaving me.

“Love,” he sighs, almost too softly to hear. “I don’t want to.”

You lie down on the pavement with him and rest your head on his chest, feel it rise and fall beneath you as the rain descends in sheets. And then Aemond exhales, deep and rattling, and he never tastes oxygen again, never speaks, never touches you. You don’t move from where you’re lying. You’re there until you’re drenched to the bones with rain and the world is a cold mist of pine trees, of wilderness, and you can never go back to any of the places you’ve been before, you can never get back the people you’ve left there.

Aegon is shaking you. “We have to keep moving,” he chokes out through tears.

You reply without looking at him. “I’m giving up now.”

“No you’re fucking not. We have to walk to Odessa.”

“Everyone’s dead in Odessa. Everyone’s dead everywhere. I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to stay in a world like this.”

On the periphery of your vision, you can see Aegon glancing at the others, standing just off the highway and under the canopy of the pine trees. He seems defeated, he seems lost.

Then suddenly Aegon turns back to you. “Hey!” he screams, so loudly you jolt upright, your palms on wet pavement, rain dripping from your hair. “I’m still alive. You’re still alive. This isn’t over yet. I said I would get you to Odessa, so that’s where we’re going. Stand up. Right now.”

Aegon holds out his hand. Thunder booms, lightning strobes, and then you take it. He pulls you to your feet and hesitates, as if he didn’t think he would get this far. Then he throws his arms around you, a crushing desperate embrace, a wordless devotion, a silent vow, sobbing into the curve of your neck, tasting the copper and iron of his brother’s blood on your skin.

“We have to keep moving,” he says again, like an apology, like he understands how impossible it feels. “The storm’s getting worse. It’ll be too dark to see soon.”

“We can’t leave him alone like this.”

“That’s not Aemond anymore,” Aegon pleads. “Aemond’s gone. And he would want us to live.”

Now the others are here on the road too: Daeron, Helaena, Cregan, Rhaena, Luke, Ice whimpering and licking scarlet stains of blood off your hands. You’re all holding each other; you’re all any of you have left. Cregan carries Aemond off the pavement and on a patch of grass alongside Route 140, the seven of you cover his body with branches of pine needles and white petals from dogwood trees. Rhaena is the first person to begin walking again, heading east. One by one you follow her. The downpour is torrential; if you are attacked now, you are nearly blind. Aegon stays beside you no matter how slow your steps are. You think if he disappears, you will too; the strings that tie you to the earth will fray and unweave and your bones will turn to mist, your voice will only be the wind howling down mountainsides. You have no way of knowing how long you’ve been walking or how many miles are left. You wonder what will happen to Aemond’s child if there is nothing for you in Odessa.

The rain is stopping. Now you can hear crows, woodpeckers, formations of geese honking in a foggy sky and squirrels scrabbling up tree trunks. Falcons perch watchfully on dead power lines. Rare aisles of sunlight are breaking through dissipating clouds.

They rise up out of the verdant jungle, a tangle of Pacific ninebark and blue elderberry: four figures in green camouflage, two men and two women, all wearing tactical sunglasses and wielding assault rifles, M16s you’re fairly sure, automatic and with 20-round magazines. Daeron moves to nock an arrow and then stops when he sees you’ve put up your hands. The others follow your lead: palms empty, willingly surrendering.

It’s them, you think dazedly. The people in Odessa. They’re alive, they’re real.

“Please cooperate and hand over all your weapons,” one of the women says, fifties, muscular, alert hawkish eyes.

No one moves. Then you unholster your Beretta M9—received from the U.S. Navy almost exactly five years ago, a different lifetime, a different world—and hold it out to the woman in your open palm. And now everybody else is giving their weapons over too: Aegon and Luke’s .22s, Rhaena’s Ruger, the spare Ruger and Aemond’s Glock hidden in Helaena’s burlap messenger bag, Daeron’s compound bow, Cregan’s axe. Ice peers up at Cregan anxiously, her yellowish eyes wide, but she wags her tail when he runs one of his large, calloused hands over her rain-soaked fur.

Aegon is still clutching his golf club. One of the men stares at him, incredulous. “You can keep that, son,” he says.

The woman nods to the men. “Nick and Glen will escort you five miles up the road, and then return your weapons. We ask that you keep moving and do not turn around. We don’t want trouble, but we can defend ourselves. Don’t think you can double back tomorrow and try to loot us or anything. This is your only warning. Do you understand?”

Aegon nudges your hand with his knuckles, then taps you harder when at first you’re too shellshocked to notice. You have to explain. You have to tell them why you’re here.

“I…I…” You begin, unable to make the words leave your lips, rats from a sinking ship, plummeting bodies from a burning building. Here you stand on a precipice, and with so many other people to save. “I served in the Navy with Bryan Osorio. We left Saratoga Springs together. He told me it would be safe here.”

Now they are interested. Slowly, the woman lowers her M16. “You know the Osorios?”

“I do.” I’ve known them for half a decade.

“Could any of them identify you and verify what you’re saying?”

“His wife, Sophie. She’s blonde, and she likes elephants, and she had a baby recently.”

The woman is scanning the faces behind you. “And where’s Bryan?”

“He’s not here anymore,” you say, and now you’re sobbing again. Aegon is squeezing your shoulder, his head bowed. “I’m sorry. I wanted to help him get home. I was supposed to warn him, I was supposed to stop it from biting him, but I didn’t and now he’s gone—”

“Okay, okay.” The woman motions for you to calm down, but her voice is kind. “Who are these guys? Your colleagues, your friends?”

“They’re my family.”

“You can vouch for them?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll all submit to searches for bitemarks?”

“Yes.”

The woman turns to the men she called Nick and Glen. “Take them inside, will you? Get the ID verified and then we’ll process everyone.”

“Got it,” the older man says. And then, to you and your companions: “Follow me.”

Nick and Glen lead you into the forest, the canopy of pine needles so thick the daylight turns to dusk, and you think of lightning bugs, of firelight, of drinking Guinness on the beach with Rio on Diego Garcia. There are several patrols, groups of four or five, that approach to stop you until they see Nick and Glen and wave you through. Then the trees open into a meadow of buttercups and daisies and pink fawn lilies, and beyond that an immense village, some houses decades old, others currently being constructed with logs from pine trees. There are hundreds of people tending to livestock, hanging up laundry to dry on clotheslines, digging in gardens, making candles and soap and butter. There are children playing without fear, giggling as they chase after scampering dogs, challenging each other to games of kickball and Uno.

In front of one of the houses that predates the apocalypse, brick with a screened-in porch, there is a small blonde woman standing in a garden, smiling and chatting with a middle-aged couple. The baby she carries against her chest in a blue sling has dark curly hair like Rio’s.

Sophie and the baby are here. They’ve been alive the whole time.

You rest a palm on your belly without realizing you’re doing it. “What happens now?” you ask Aegon.

“The rest of our lives.”

It is unimaginable, it is impossible, it is so full of luminous potential you feel like the light will spill out of your pores like blood, it’s an oasis, it’s a second chance, it’s an island in the vast lethal untamed blue of the Indian Ocean.

“Let’s go,” Aegon says softly, taking your hand and leading you across the field of wildflowers, kaleidoscopic blooms in the last days of summer.

#aemond targaryen x reader #aemond x you #aemond x y/n #aemond x reader #aemond targaryen x you #aemond targaryen fanfiction

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