#Plaster Shell Scenery

[dprs99]

Mistakes on My First and Second HO Scale Model Railroads that Taught Me What Not To Do

Mistakes on My First and Second HO Scale Model Railroads that Taught Me What Not To Do

[ninibeingdelulu]

Happiness ✧

Plot: Discovering Marley with a joyful eagerness, Eren can’t take his eyes off you.

The breathtaking expanse of this new frontier sprawled out in every direction as far as your awestruck eyes could perceive - a sight none of you conscripted scouts ever fathomed witnessing beyond those towering walls hemming your entire reality since birth.

Even as the rest of Levi's elite squad trekked grimly onward adhering to their regimented protocols during this unprecedented reconnaissance mission into the enigmatic lands of Marley; your footsteps gradually slowed to a meandering pace.

Every minuscule sensory detail flooding your awakened awareness with childlike wonderment unlike anything you'd known before now.

The vibrant colors alone radiating across those quaint thatched rooftops, cobblestone lanes and bustling market stalls erupted into a kaleidoscopic mosaic igniting your nerves with rapturous delight.

Such trivial sights taken for granted by the locals yet perceived like divine manifestations defying all previous boundaries constraining your world solely within those dreary monochrome walls.

You pivoted aimlessly soaking in each new marvel presenting itself with infectious glee sparkling through your captivated irises even brighter than the sun's gilded rays dancing across the rustic scenery.

From the sweet fragrant bouquets wafting through the brisk autumn zephyrs carried flavors utterly foreign yet blissfully intoxicating upon your virgin palate.

To the sights of children frolicking with that carefree jubilance you'd only witnessed glimmers of back home before the cruel realities thrust duties far too grievous for any youth to bear without being shattered under their karmic tonnage.

Watching those unburdened souls skipping about without any premature loss of innocence plastered a euphoric smile across your own features now shining with crystalline elation cascading freely down your flushed cheeks.

Even the humblest peddler hawking their exotic wares like some sort of sweet frozen dairy delicacy they called "ice cream" instilled raptures you never imagined possible beyond those oppressive constraints until now.

Eagerly exchanging a few meager coins from your supplies for that peculiar indulgence then wholeheartedly sampling the foreign confection for the first time:

Its creamy richness coating your palate evoking utterly saccharine waves of blissful tingles rippling across every single hypersensitized nerve ending flooding you with unequivocal revelry.

So much so that a few childlike titters even escaped past your reverent lips before you even realized it as your aura radiated incandescent jubilation that moment.

In fact, you'd become so thoroughly enraptured exploring this uncharted realm of wonders that the unmistakable presence of Eren Yeager silently accompanying your gleeful peregrinations had virtually slipped your consciousness entirely.

At least until sidling up conspicuously close enough for his trademark smokey baritone to caress the shell of your ear with a hushed timbre dripping equal parts bemusement and something more molten still blazing behind those emerald depths:

"Y'know, considering the gravity of our mission here...seeing somebody experiencing genuine happiness without inhibitions like this sure's one helluva rarity these days, ain't it?"

His murmur skated across your electrified senses still basking in those euphoric afterglow emanations even as the rigidly self-possessed Alpha scout gradually stepped into your peripheral vision.

The faint spectral aquamarine highlights coruscating through those disheveled chocolate locks framed that severely chiseled visage adopting his trademark impassive mask yet again...

...Well, almost.

For despite Eren's herculean efforts at refortifying that signature stoic exterior you couldn't help noticing the infinitesimal sparks dancing through the mossy jade pools where his razor focus remained transfixed upon your auras' jubilant interplay still rippling outwards.

Like he was savoring those ebullient kinematics stirring something primordial lying dormant within his resonance through the closest empathic proximity available.

Even still, the fleeting traces of mirth subtly crinkling the corners of those piercing emerald spheres conveyed wordlessly just how infinitely more precious such unabashed revelry had become in his existence defined by constant struggle and sacrifice of any frivolous indulgences amidst their neverending war against oblivion.

So despite fully knowing this temporary reprieve of jubilant exploration through Marley's streets didn't remotely align with their covert infiltration directive, Eren couldn't quite muster the stoic willpower to jar you from that liberated headspace yet.

Not when your uninhibited enchantment and reveries shone with the radiant hope he was fighting titanic battles to secure for everybody still suffering under that same oppressive despair they'd narrowly escaped beyond those walls...

[wcrfcres]

splendid and tuneful evening is swallowed by pitch black , youthful hums and coveted hues of vibrant sceneries plastered upon walls and columns ripped by serving hands , by vexation , and exasperated scolding passed from aged lips to scarlet shells of ears . each one distinct and etched in the memory of the lord commander . merciless evaluation of himself rotten by liquor consumed in the privacy of his chamber . it remained indignant , persistent at taunting him for the callous words he had spoken to the gentle lady of castamere . ❝ it is my turn to seek your forgiveness , maesella . ❞ he dared not deny her of her request the night prior , not when it came with a touch that softened the steel cold of his armor . and even today , he carved a time of his day to spend with her , as if an arduous night has not kept him awake . ❝ i should not have spoken such things to you . ❞

another failure to add to the growing list , promises and expectations he could not meet . the story is a familiar one , a tale he has overheard many times over as a child from virulent tongues , exchanged in whispers by forms that sneak from around corners . the contempt it weaves and stitches on his flesh is inconceivable at first , but its visage was starting to grow clear , more familiar . he is one he thought had long fallen off the coastal cliffs of the storm's end . creature forgotten and buried , corpse submerged beneath the roars of thunder and flashes of lightning , maimed by harsh waves . ❝ foolish to allow myself to be at the mercy of drunk candidness . ❞ apologies pours from his lips , implications beyond what words strung convey at the surface . maesella deserved better than the man she danced with last night . due someone who can will wakefulness , allow for salt water to graze open wounds . ❝ i do not wish for you to think me ungrateful , that i have reneged on my words before the seven . ❞

dream  shatters  as  his  chains  rattle  against  the  dancefloor.  smile  evaporates  as  she  figures  she  has  ruined  the  moment,  soured  their  dance  with  selfish  thoughts,  and  forgotten  about  the  cloak  on  his  back.  how  could  she  be  so  foolish  and  forget  ⸻  his  life  was  not  his  own,  his  chains  scraped  along  the  cobblestones  as  he  walked  even  though  you  could  not  see  them.  she  understood  the  choices  he  had  made  once  upon  a  time,  to  swear  fealty  to  the  dragon  queen,  to  guard  over  her  and  her  kin.  she  was  one  of  them  after  all,  and  had  he  not  made  those  choices,  perhaps  they  would  never  have  this  dance.

it  was  a  selfish  way  of  thinking,  but  the  cloak  gave  way  to  her  love  for  him  and  she  would  not  be  without  it.  "forgive  me  theodore."  her  words  are  laced  with  regret  and  she  knows  the  cloak  is  both  a  blessing  and  a  curse.  angelic  eyes  look  up  to  knight,  searching  for  forgiveness  and  finding  it.  he  would  forgive  her  for  anything,  would  he  not?  "the  choices  you  have  made  brought  you  to  me,  so  I  cannot  forsake  your  shackles  completely."  it  was  cruel  to  say,  but  no  less  the  truth.  "do  any  of  us  have  true  freedom?  for  yes,  I  do  not  have  shackles  around  my  neck,  but  dragon  scales  grow  in  my  skin."  fingertips  itch  at  porcelain  skin,  red  marks  appearing.  cursed  be  the  dragons  for  their  mistakes.

"will  you  help  me  get  some  fresh  air?  it  is  suddenly  a  little  suffocating."  her  last  words  murmur  as  she  knows  the  night's  enjoyment  might  have  ended.  "I  do  not  wish  to  part  from  you  just  yet."  breathless  whisper  escapes  lips  as  gentle  palm  reaches  for  armored  arm.

[lunaevangeline]

Callisto

written for @ob-levi-on ❤ (sorry it took a while, I hope you like it)

warning: Oikawa Tooru x fem!reader; hurt to comfort

Derived from Greek κάλλιστος (kallistos) meaning "most beautiful". In Greek mythology Callisto was a nymph who was loved by Zeus. She was changed into a she-bear by Hera, and subsequently became the Great Bear constellation.

The first time you saw him, it was the word beautiful that defined him. There was a friendly match on Aoba Johsai's volleyball court. The bleachers were full of spectators, it was loud. Cheers and shouts can be heard, especially when the setter plays, the girls' screams will intensify.

That place was not your usual place as you prefer a more tranquil place. With eyes gleamed with passion, his hands were flexing to set the ball, and a smile plastered on his face in the euphoria of scoring. You cannot deny the fact that you were captivated at the moment.

He's still the same guy he was in high school, but with tanned skin and a more athletic form. He looks more mature in his mid-20s, but his grin is still familiar. You watch him play, basking in the shade of the sunset. He wipes his glistening sweat and exchanges compliments with his teammates.

You once again concentrate on the majestic heavenly body which is about to lie beneath the horizon. Mix and ooze another paint to mimic the scenery while the sand grains massage your bare feet. This is a beautiful serene time to end your day.

Day by day, you come to the white sandy beach at the same hour. And you can always find him in the same arena. It seems that the universe is on your side as you continue to cross his path all the time. Unconsciously, you started to include the beach volleyball team in your painting.

"What a beautiful painting." Too lost in your thought, the man you've been thinking about was already standing right in front of you.

It only starts with a single compliment that leads to hello and self-introduction. Even though you went to the same high school, you were just an acquaintance. You prefer to start fresh - it will be awkward if he doesn't remember you. And he plays along with you.

"My name is Oikawa Tooru," he said.

You tell him your name in exchange, taking his hand outstretched hand; it's bigger and warmer than yours. There's a sense of friction from meeting and parting with his hand. Some other time, you meet him again during his usual beach volleyball match.

At first, all the banters were light. You giggle at his expression when he failed to reach the ball. He tells you so many silly theories and during his break, he will eagerly explain some volleyball techniques.

But as time goes by, slowly but surely he peels off, showing his true self. He's much more profound than the facade -  the smoothness of his ice shell where an ocean of deep feeling lies.

He tells you how he used to push himself unhealthily, to the point where he put himself at risk. He tells about his insecurity and how he has dealt with it and is still working on it. His vulnerability makes you want to give him a hug, which you keep alone to yourself.

Sharing the sunset with him and watching the ethereal sunlight are the moments you look forward to everyday. A precious moment with an important person that you want to hold so dearly. You didn't know he can be even more beautiful with the proximity, to find that there are freckles that spread out like tiny stars on his face.

Unfortunately, today the person who shares the sunset with him is not you. There's already a beautiful woman giggling beside him, casually pinching his cheek while letting out a carefree laugh. She looks much more mature but still freshly beautiful, her long brunette hair waves gracefully as the wind rises.

She's the definition that age only flourishes her with grace. And in the sunset light, her head resting on his broad shoulder. Their interaction was too close to your liking. But who are you to feel even a glimpse of jealousy?

You walk away from the beachside with a weight on your feet. Something burns in your chest, you never know you want him so bad, to be someone who has significance in his life. It makes sense why Zeus come to snatch Callisto away because of her beauty and his own curse, love. Even when he had to deceive those around him.

The next day you come again to the beach, sitting bench aways from your usual place, seeking for therapy by painting the sunset again. Today's sunset is painfully pink as she’s is in love, a bit contrast to your broken heart.

But your presence isn’t getting unnoticed to the volleyball player with a number 13. He comes up to you and sits right beside you, admiring your look everytime you graze another paint on your canvas. If only you notice his gaze, he is in awe and love struck.

He asks why are you not sitting at your usual place. Your eyes still glued to the canvas from the start, ignoring his intense look because you fear those brown orbs will enchant you, making you fall all over again.

You half-heartedly answer with an argument that you need to take this spot since people were blocking the view.

"Besides, I thought today you were with your girlfriend again," you add, biting the inside of your cheeks. You try to speak in the most neutral tone, not realizing you're totally a terrible liar from your slightly pouted lips and furrowed brows. 

Now all you can hear is Oikawa chuckle that confused you, successfully gathering your attention to him. You meet his teasing eyes and infamous grin.

"As I remember, I don't have any girlfriend. The last girl I met yesterday was my sister. It's been a while since the last time she visited Argentina, I missed her so much."

"Besides, what if the girl I want to be my girlfriend is sitting right in front of me?"

Under the hues of the beautiful sunset, you're dumbfounded. He pierces right into your heart, heat creeping up your cheeks. Because you didn't expect that beautiful Callisto will catch you first. While you always think every aspect of him is so dazzling, he believes you're the most beautiful one.

masterlist

taglist: @hyeque @passionateuchiha @crystal-lilac @ohtobiors @sabyss @miya-dynasty @oikawas-milk-bread @wolffmaiden @wayyen @justheretoaskandread @filledasaf @momochimo @simpforerenn @sweetkoshi @suckerforsugawara

[stardust-kenobi]

Stay

Din Djarin x reader

Summary: You had been traveling with the Mandalorian for weeks now. He’d saved your life, inevitably creating a stronger bond between the two of you. One evening, Din opens up to you.

Warnings: just fluff (“no smut?” yes! I am just as surprised as you are), Din being starved of affection

Word count: 2.2k

A/N: In this fic, the child is not with him (don’t kill me). this has not been proofread yet, might be some grammatical errors.

I have requests sitting in my inbox and I’m so sorry for pushing them to the side right now but I got hella inspired to write for mando and could not wait. I’ll get to them soon I promise 💕

gif is not mine

He saved you.

Three weeks ago, he broke his metaphorical tough exterior shell and saved you from an impeding doom.

He didn’t have to, in fact it was probably easier for him to leave you there, but he placed himself in that same danger to rescue you.

You were standing there, suddenly surrounded by troopers, some with artillery questionably beyond his defense capabilities. Mando had escaped, he was fleeing successfully, but he returned when he realized you weren’t with him anymore. 

Never had you seen a human being destroy so many armed enemies so swiftly in the realization that he may lose you without even a single scratch upon your skin. Prior to this occurrence, you didn’t believe he cared about you at all. You were just temporarily valuable to him.

You joined him on his adventures after meeting him in the cantina on Sorgan, with the promise to present him with information on a bounty if he provided you shelter from people who wanted to harm you. You told him it was complicated, and you couldn’t go into detail about the situation. He was reluctant, and even told you no initially. You weren’t sure if it was the motive to collect the bounty money or his secretly warm heart that changed his mind, but you were thankful nonetheless.

After your rescue, you gave him the information he sought, he captured his target and gathered his reward, but still, three weeks later, you remain a passenger of the Razor Crest, and he hasn’t insisted that you leave him. 

After it happened, there was a lot of silence between you two. Gradually, though, he spoke to you more. To your surprise, he initiated most of the conversations. He wanted to know about you. Unfortunately, your past created a wall, a barrier, between you and anyone who tried to get too close. You bonded with him slowly, and you were appreciative of his company. Against your strong intentions, you were starting to have romantic feelings for him. Feelings you had tried to ignore for the sake of having your heart inevitably broken in time. Feelings for a man you’d never even truly seen with your own eyes. Somehow, though, the mysterious nature of the Mandalorian was all the more interesting to you.

He was lonely, living in the vast galaxy all alone. No matter someone’s lifestyle, surely that becomes hard after some time. You wonder if his loneliness drove him toward you. He was kind, that much was obvious, but even with his warmth, he seemed to block himself off from you as well. You’d call him a friend, or an acquaintance at the very least. The new feeling of being able to trust him with your life added a thick layer of depth to your friendship.

Tonight, both of you were rested opposite to each other around a crackling fire located in the distant forests of the lusciously green moon of Endor. The air was thin, and a slight breeze sent chills down your exposed arms every now and then. Mando wanted to stop here as peaceful place to rest for the night rather than sleeping on the Crest again. A change of scenery is certainly nice, you thought.

“Its quieter here than I imagined” you break the silence. 

“Wasn’t always quiet here” he mumbles, looking up at the stars beginning to peak into the evening sky.

“That is true...” you agree, remembering the events that took place here only a few short years ago in the days of the Empire.

Mando brewed some tea on the fire. You’d both grown to enjoy the soothing heat of the tea before you went to sleep.

“Do you want some?” he called out to you, pouring a cup for himself in the process.

“Yes, please”

You walked over to him, the fire warming the skin on your arms as you passed it. You attempt to look him in the eyes, only to be met with the reflection of the small flames staring back in the shine of his helmet. You smile softly, still aware that he could see into your eyes.

“Thank you” you nodded to him, accepting the mug from his gloved hands. As you move to return to your seat across the fire, a leather encased hand wrapped around the small of your wrist and pulled lightly toward him.

“Stay, please” he gently pleads. You were surprised, he’d never been so forward before.

“Okay” you responded, turning back toward him.

“I need....someone” he released his hold, spilling his words out uncomfortably.

“I’ll stay here, I don’t mind” you comfort him, noticing in his tone and shifting body language how shy he was becoming. You sat next to him, your knee barely brushing against his.

“Thank you” he spoke quietly, dropping his head.

“Are you okay, Din?” You asked, uttering his name out loud to him for the first time since he’d told you his real name. He looked toward you again, likely warmed and charmed by hearing you address him correctly.

“Yes. I’m okay. I’m just..” he started. It was obvious he was struggling with his words.

“Lonely?” You filled in his sentence for him. He audibly exhaled, indicating that you hit the nail on the head with your assumption.

“I guess you could say that” he mumbled.

“Din, I’m always with you” you consoled him.

“I know. Sometimes I just need more than that” he said sadly. You knew he didn’t mean sexually. You knew he wasn’t implying that he wanted you to give him anything.

“I know what you mean” you admitted.

“You do?” his tone was hopeful.

“Yeah...sometimes you just need the touch of another human being” you said, moving your hips- toward him. You were as close to his body as you could be.

“Sure” he agreed immediately, thankful that you formed the words for him.

“Have you always been alone, Din?” 

“Not always, there were more of my kind that I was close to, years ago” 

You dared not question what happened to those people as you were certain it would upset him.

“I thought, after what I’ve been through, that maybe I wanted to be alone” You began. “But, its growing old and I’m growing lonelier”

“You’ve probably wondered why I’ve let you stay with me this long”

“Everyday, I wonder why...every single day”

“You’ve grown on me, y/n” He said after moments of silence. “I care too much about you now to leave you in danger. I realize that may be overstepping some boundaries” he was gentle in his words. A smile was plastered onto your face. Never had the Mandalorian dug so deep into his feelings for you.

“I care about you, too” you reciprocated the gesture. He snapped his attention to you, certainly not expecting this from you either.

“Its not something I’m used to. Being cared about” he said, looking down to the forest floor again.

Your heart was shattered at the sound of his confession. This gentle giant was deprived of affection and was turning to you for comfort.

“You are just as deserving of love as any other being in this galaxy” you blurted suddenly. You realized the weight of your words, and you worried none for how he’d respond.

He was without words and you expected no response.

“That’s...that’s kind of you, y/n” he says. You could hear the blushing smile he possessed.

You planted your palm on top of his hand that rested upon his knee. You slowly, and hesitantly, leaned your head onto his shoulder. The beskar shoulder plates made it uncomfortable against your skull, but it was the best effort you could make in the moment. His body shifted, noticeably unaware of how to react to you.

“I know we are still getting to know each other, but, I’m here for you” you said.

Din was silent. But after a deep breath, his hand pulled itself away. You were worried you’d made him uncomfortable, but it was quite the contrary. His other gloved hand gripped the tip of the middle finger and pulled the thick covering from his hand. For the first time since you’d met this man, you were seeing his bare skin. Internally, you gasped, but you were inaudible to him in response.

As your palm lay flat on his lower thigh, you watch him lower his newly exposed hand move to lay atop of yours. The warmth collected on the surface of his skin from being encased in the glove immediately transferred heat your frigidly chilled hand.

“You’re so cold” he sweetly states the obvious.

“I’m okay”

“You need to get warm” he says, wrapping his fingers around your hand and squeezing lightly. Your heart fluttered.

“I feel warmer sitting next to you” you reassured him. This was true, as the heat from the fire stored itself in his armor at a quicker rate than that of your skin.

“You can get closer, if you want”

You did just that, and removed what little space remained between you and him. You looked up at him, wishing so badly that you’d be able to kiss him. You knew the impossibility of doing so.

“Your cheeks are red” Din said with concern. He released your hand and slowly raised it to meet your cold cheek. There was not only another transfer of warmth from his skin to yours, there was a spark of electricity that felt so deeply intimate. You leaned your face into his hold, and closed your eyes with the feeling of affection he offered.

You opened your eyes again, to see him intently staring, or so it seemed. You wrapped your hand around his wrist, encouraging him to continue his touch against you.

“I wish I could be even closer to you” you muttered. Speaking partially against his palm. You respected his culture but wanted nothing more than to really feel him.

“Can I trust you?” He spoke at a whisper. Your mind wandered. What could he mean?

“Of course. You’ve saved my life. The least I could be is trustworthy to you”

“Can I kiss you?” He inquired. Your heart began to beat rapidly in eager anticipation.

“How would y-” you began, knowing it wasn’t allowed for you to see his face.. He already knew the end of your sentence.

“Close your eyes, cyar’ika” he said sweetly. You didn’t know what that word meant, but with his tone, you assumed it meant something kind. “As long as you don’t see me, it’s okay”

You did as he asked, nonverbally giving him permission to kiss you. You heard the beskar unlatch and be lifted from his head. You breathed in sharply and slowly released your lung’s capacity.

“Keep them closed” his voice, now not muffled by his helmet, was such a wonderful sound. It graced your ears so raw, and so close to you. You’d always imagined what he sounded like without the thickness of his helmet blocking his mouth, but actually hearing it was breathtaking to you.

His hand returned to your face to cup your cheek. You felt him move closer to you without saying a word.

Suddenly, his lips delicately crashed into yours, and you form your lips into him. Your mouths were fused and still for a few moments, just taking each other in. You were able to finally smell him. He gave off an aroma of cedar that mimicked the scents of the luscious forest trees mixed with a deep masculine scent. You absorbed the presence you could observe of him without the sense of sight.

His lips were surprisingly soft and supple as they pressed into yours. He was gentle, and by the sharp breath he took, it was obvious he had not kissed anyone in a long time. If ever. You were both enthralled in one another’s affection. Neither of you expected this contact when you first sat around the fire. Slowly, you both rotated your lips in sync together, as if you’d both rehearsed it.

After what felt like a lifetime of connection to Din, you both made the decision to pull away. He breathed out in a giggle. The type that you hear when someone is overwhelmed with passion. Your eyes remained closed until he couldn’t put his helmet back in.

As you hear it latch back, you still wait for his confirmation.

“You can open your eyes now”

And he looked the same as he did the last time your eyelids were open. You tried to wipe the uncontrollable smile off of your face, but that effort alone made it more noticeable.

“Thank you for trusting me” you broke the silence. He grabbed your hand again, and lightly squeezed as he did before.

“Y/n” he called to you.

You looked to him.

“I don’t want to be lonely anymore” he said plainly.

“You don’t have to be, Din” you promised him.

“That’s why I never asked you to leave” he started “You make me feel whole...I don’t know how else to say it” he spilled out. It was clear that he was hesitant to say these things and be so forward, but it also seemed to be a relief to him.

“I’d love to stay with you. Wherever you go, I’ll go. I’ll stay until you decide you don’t want me around anymore” you said. You were both speaking at a whisper, despite being alone in the forest.

“That won’t happen” he assured you. “I can’t let you go now”

You smiled ear to ear. Your heart was full in the intimacy of your conversation. You couldn’t wait for the endless travels and adventures that the two of you would have to come.

[purposefully-lost]

He'd nearly finished wrapping up at the shop for the day. There wasn't much left he could do; there was a client's car parked outside and another in the garage, but there were parts he had to order before he could really touch them. His feet were propped up on his desk, laptop balanced precariously on his thighs while he glanced over listings and double-checked he was grabbing the right thing. Well, most of his attention was on the screen. Some other part of it had wandered back to the night before; he'd spent the last hour or so of Vi's shift taking up space at his bar and chatting to him during slow moments. It'd been.. nice. Really nice. The little routines they were beginning to fall into came far more naturally than Charlie could've ever expected, and he had no reason to complain about it. He was still scared of it, sometimes. The fact was that all his best moments of the past few years were neatly piled into the last few weeks, and all of them had to do with Vi. He was still trying to figure out how to reconcile that with himself.

He started at the sound of a voice, glancing up towards the door. The face didn't really register at first; he flipped the laptop shut and pulled his feet off the desk, moving to stand at the man walked in. There was a brief second where the easy smile he put on for business graced his face, but it quickly fell away. It clicked with him that something wasn't quite right.

Charlie's clientele tended towards what he just thought of as regular. Regular people with regular jobs that he tried to keep from having to shell out too much with fair pricing. Vi.. had stood out a little, on his first visit. He was flamboyant, with a car far nicer than anything else this garage had ever seen, but he'd become a regular part of the scenery as much as anything else, even if he was Charlie's favorite part. The man standing in front of him stood out just as starkly.

"Hey, uh," Charlie started, before he remembered himself enough to plaster the smile back on his face. He glanced out past the man, towards the dark car in the lot, then returned his gaze to him. "That's, uh, not a problem. I've got a minute."

He was familiar. The car, the dress, something in his face- Charlie hadn't thought much at all about what Vi had told him about his family. It seemed silly now, but it'd honestly sort of slipped his mind. A part of him told him he was being irrational, that this had nothing to do with Vi, but he couldn't help the fear that sank into his chest. He placed his laptop on the desk and nodded towards one of the chairs he kept on the other side. "What can I do for you?"

A black car pulled up outside of the garage. It idled for a few moments before it was shut off. Out of the back seat, a tall, suited man stepped out and brushed any wrinkles from the navy fabric. His face was handsome, and his hair was graying in a way that only added to the regale of him. There were dark circles under neath the pale eyes on his face, and a strong, familiar was nose perched right in the center. He tugged on the sleeves of his blazer and made his way inside.

His eyes floated over the garage. It wouldn't be a bad place to launder money, would it? Especially if he pushed a few more lucrative clients this way. Vic considered it as he moved towards the office, humming quietly as he thought. "Quaint. When I was told you were a mechanic, I was expecting something a little bigger." He mused, stepping in to stand in the doorway. Glancing over the tiny room and the clutter it contained, the man smiled politely as his eyes fell back on Charlie. The blonde was... The image that came to mind was a big headed bully. Cropped ears and stark eyes, ready to flash sharp teeth. Even a dog with a bite history could be put to work, no? Enrichment and engagement were potential answers to a violent mutt. Well-- Before being put down.

"Do you have a moment to talk?" Vic's smile spread, his thick brows lowering just a touch. "There are a few things I'd like to discuss with you."

@purposefully-lost

[taentedmess]

sleepless nights

summary: a year is a long time, isn’t it? you’ve spent yours stuck in an eternal, monochrome winter. a surprise encounter derails all of your plans: feelings fade… or do they, really?

pairing: taehyung x reader

word count: 5.4k

warnings: swearing, terrible terrible angst (im sorry!), heartbreak, implied smut, angsty flashbacks :(

a/n: hi everyone! this is my very first fic on tumblr and i really hope you enjoy! please listen to spring day and scenery to really get into the feels - i hope you lose yourself in this little slice of a seoul winter :’) also i do have a storyline planned if you enjoy this little piece and could potentially even make this a series aah! please leave comments and constructive criticism - i’d love to grow as a writer! (@chateautae i finally did it!!!!!!)

[    ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙      ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙    ]

09:17am, december 17, 2020

It’s been a year since you last saw him. A year of emptiness, hollowness, blankness. A year since you turned your back, leaving without a goodbye. It’s been a year since you’ve walked out his front door, the same one that you’d find yourself visiting and revisiting when you knew he wasn’t home.

It’s been a year since you last felt some semblance of happiness, a year since you’ve let out a genuine laugh, smiled from cheek-to-cheek. It’s been a year devoid of warmth: you shivered under the embrace of the summer sun, no longer noticed the blooming flowers that you had once loved so much. The world lost all its color. Fading into a bleak grayscale so far away, unreachable. No longer did you walk with a spring in your step, no longer did your eyes glimmer with galaxies that you’d once built with him. You were empty, a ship lost in the depths of the dark oceans. Floating, barely surviving, with no set destination. All you saw were never-ending, infinite oceans in all directions. No escape, no lighthouse. Just you. Alone. Pointless.

Your heart aches for him, the echo of a honeyed baritone, the ghost of his warm, muscular arms wrapped around your shoulders.

It’s for the best, you had thought. It’s for the best.

You squeeze your eyes shut, willing the thoughts out of your mind. There was too much, too many feelings, pent-up emotions. You weren’t a woman of emotions, never were, swore to never be, until you had met him. And he had changed everything.

Stop. This is getting ridiculous.

You needed to get on with your life, you think. There are too many things to think about, so many better thoughts requiring your attention. What were you doing, wasting your energy on him? It was time, you had decided, to end things once and for all.

The ticket machine snaps you out of your reverie, demanding it get paid. How much did the trip cost? You’ve forced yourself to forget, holed up all the memories too far into the shadows of your mind in your sheer desperation to evade the pain. You slot in a W10,000 bill, way too much, but better than having to remember. The machine happily eats up the cash, returning your card and sending you on your way.

You navigate the platforms, seeing the brightly-lit signs: Incheon line, Suin line, Bundang line. Then you see it, Platform 6, Gyeongwon line. South-bound to Soyosan, stopping at Iryeong. Your heart thumps, stomach twists, and you feel like throwing up. How many times had you once ascended these very steps with him, hand-in-hand, smiling to one another? How many times had you raced up these stairs, trying to get to the platform first? It’s too much, and you want to run. Run away from this place, from the thoughts and feelings.

No. You need this.

The winter air roughly brushes against your cheeks, hurrying you along.

What are you so afraid of?

Everything, you think. Everything. You’ve bound your heart in chains and locks, plastered it with thousands of bandages, one on top of the other. You’ve holed it away, willed it out of existence. You’re afraid of the memories, the emotions. You’re afraid of yourself.

Go. Just go. Get it over with.

You force your feet to move, one after another. You don’t think, you just move. Move onto the platform, move onto the train. You don’t realize that you’ve boarded the machine until you hear an all-too-familiar voice on the loudspeaker.

“This is the Special Rapid Train, on the Gyeongwon line, headed for Sosoyan. We will be stopping at Seokgye, Wolgye, Dobong and Iryeong. Please stay clear of the sliding doors!”

You vaguely see the blinking of lights and hear the shutting of the doors. The train picks up speed, clicking against the railroads. You are blank, a passenger on an endless journey. You sway when the train sways, stop when it stops. You don’t know how many stops have passed, having lost yourself in the familiar nothingness that had hollowed you out for the past year, until the speakers announce something about the next station being Dobong. You’re near, you realize. Too near.

Too soon does the train halt, birthing out and collecting new passengers as seats empty and taken once more in a matter of seconds. You watch this interchange with a bitter smile: how quickly he must have replaced you after you’d left, how he must’ve taken in another in your place.

Stop it.

Too engrossed in your thoughts, you don’t notice the closing of the doors and the blinking of the lights until you hear the loud system once more as the train starts to accelerate.

“Iryeong, Iryeong. Our next stop is Iryeong, please get off on the right side of the train.”

You are left suddenly hyper aware of your surroundings, watching as snow paints the ground white. The houses blur into trees and back into villages as you stare out the window, and you start to remember. You remember your hands intertwined, dancing in the snow, the click of a camera as the melodies of your laughs twirling in the air. You remember the snugness of his embrace, his earthy cologne, his smile, his lips pressed against yours…

Stop.

You tear your gaze away from the glass, staring down at your gloved hands fiddling in your lap. It’s been a year. It’s laughable how much and how little has changed. You’re different, yes, but yet so painfully similar to the girl who ran away. It’s funny how much of a difference, or lack thereof, a year can make, you think. It’s certainly been hard on you, and you find yourself wondering about him, about how maybe the year has changed him, how he’s doing, if he’s eating well, if…

Stop.

You’re hopeless, aren’t you?

You sigh and shut your eyes. You’re going crazy. Or maybe you’ve always been crazy. Your thoughts are feverish, a maelstrom in your mind. Involuntarily, you notice your feet rapidly tapping the metal bar to your side, vibrating against the pole. You feel the ghost of a touch on your thigh, hear the empty shell of his words, breathe, Y/N, breathe. What’s got you all worked up? And for a moment, just a moment, you feel his presence to your side, capture the warmth radiating off of his figure, and smile. Because it’s all okay when he’s here.

But he’s not.

You decide to focus on the sound of the railroads, staring down at the speckled floor of the train as the carriage undulates gently, side to side. You ride along, the train’s movements easing your own and you begin to lose yourself once again in the clacks of the rails, mind going blank, until you start to notice the slowing of the sounds. The train’s dance comes to a slow, inviting people to start getting up and shuffle towards the doors. Your heart sinks to your stomach. Not yet, not yet. It can’t be. It’s too soon.

The loudspeaker crackles to life, confirming your worst fears. “Arriving at Iryeong, please stay clear of the doors and exit on the right side of the train.”

Your legs move on their own accord, pulling you to a standing position as you grip the metal post with your life. The train continues to slow, eventually, painstakingly coming to a halt. You wish it never will, that it will continue on with its journey ahead. But it’s too late. The doors slide open, the sounds of the outside world whistle for you, calling you, urging you out of the comfort of the train. You don’t dare move, standing still as passengers trickle out, as the flashing lights start to appear, as the minute at the station starts to come to an end. The doors are closing in five. Four.

You twitch.

Three. Two.

“Wait!”

You rush out the doors, barely escaping the iron clasp of the metals that would’ve devoured you had you been a second too late. Behind you, the steel hisses as the vehicle exits the station, leaving you alone. So utterly alone.

You’re blessed with a moment of solitude, feeling nothing but the cold air chilling your face, until you realize where you are and why you’re here.

The bliss of being alone rapidly evaporates, and you’re hit with a speeding truck. The memories flood in; you’re winded, gasping for breath as you’re stormed with images, short clips of him, you, the pair of you. His smile, his laugh, his cheeks, eyes, nose. His breath tickling yours before he leans in for a kiss, his gentle, large hands cupping your face as you close your eyes…

Stop. Get a fucking grip, will you?

You force the color out of your mind as you make your way around the platform, empty now that everyone has gone. Your eyes graze against the pathetic, run-down station: the signs are only partially lit, the electricity having worn out. Your fingers run against the peeling, dirtied paint of the walls, dust bunnies catching onto your gloves. You scoff. This is pathetic. The floor is littered with plastics and old soda bottles, as if nobody’s been here to clean in too long. Graffiti smiles sadly back at you as you scan the fading walls, losing their life by the second. The bricks have faded into a musty brown, drab and uninteresting. Everything is so run down, so tired. You sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose as you make your way to the minimart to your right, wanting a beverage to help warm your insides up.

The doors slide open with a gentle clink, altering the store of your presence. The cashier at the counter looks up at you through half-lidded eyes, barely acknowledging you, before returning to the drama playing on his cracked phone. The shelves are well-stocked, however, in stark contrast to the beaten-down appearance of this whole ordeal. You glide along the aisles, and everything is the same. Your favorite tea is still on the same shelf as it was all those months ago, his favorite gimbap in the bottom left corner of the chiller. Beef and sesame, he’d get, while you’d get a tuna for yourself, clinking your drinks and hearing the hiss of his cola opening, laughing as you made a mess of yourselves, two young fools madly in love. You’d talk, drink, eat for hours, whispering, dreaming and wishing, wondering what was going to come in the future, what you’d name your first puppy, whether you wanted a girl or a boy for your first child. Never would you have ever imagined that it would all end this way.

Stop it.

You grab your bottle of tea violently, almost knocking it over in your hurry to leave. You could no longer stay, not here, suffocating in your memories of him. You erased the gimbap out of your vision, ignoring it as you made your way to the counter, paying for your drink as the half-hearted employee handed you with your change. You mutter a thank you, unsure if he had even heard, and mindlessly make your way out of the store, too focused on keeping someone out of your head. You nearly bang into the glass doors in your haste, looking down and walking as fast as you can. Until your heart stops, that is.

You don’t dare look up, not now. The whole world slows to a stand-still, your gaze sharpening on nothing. Your heart is about to beat out of your chest, your lungs stop working. Electricity charges through the air and you’re left reeling, not knowing what to do.

Slowly, painfully, your neck raises, muscles straining with all their might. You already know what you’re going to see, who you’re going to see, but the sight of him still shocks you all the same. You nearly spill your drink all over yourself when you finally look up, and your brain goes into overdrive. You’re sure that your mouth is hanging open, jaw slack, but you can’t do anything about it. Your knees buckle, you can’t breathe, suffocating, wanting the ground to swallow you up at this very moment. You want to fall, tumble into an eternal tunnel. You are dizzy, light-headed, going crazy, you swear. You’re going crazy, aren’t you? This can’t be real, can it?

You can’t believe it. You’re drowning, drowning in those chocolate eyes, sinking into his pupils, losing yourself in his gorgeous features. You drink him all in, his own face mirroring yours, in no doubt absolute shock or maybe even despair, his deadly stare making your breath hitch as it once did so long ago. He’d never lost his power over you, after all. The world is suspended around you, all operations ceased as you both continue to stare into each other’s eyes, the tension so palpable that it threatens to devour you whole. Your larynx seems to be glued shut, your tongue a stone in your mouth. There are no words, no way to express this feeling that washes over you upon seeing him again.

“Y/N…”

His voice. Your ears ring with his deep baritone, honey to your ears. You can’t help it: you quite literally swoon, despite the circumstances. His voice: it ignites a fire within you, warm tendrils of heat rising up from your stomach. Vibrations send throughout your core, making you lightheaded and sure that you’re about to fall. You remember his timber next to you in the dead of light, comforting you, whispering sweet nothings into your ear, it’s okay, it’s okay, breathe, it’s okay, you’re here with me.

You hug your arms around yourself, trying to keep it all in, retain the strange feeling that was now foreign to you after months of cold. It’s been too long, after all - you’ve gone too long deprived of this humanness, comfort that radiated off of him.

Things are different now, Y/N.

Yes, they are. Your mind goes berserk once more, considering all of the scenarios. Why is he here? He probably just needs to go to the minimart - no, why would he come all this way, he lives pretty far as well, or maybe he’s waiting on a friend, no, maybe he’s brought a new girlfriend, maybe she’s with him right now waiting to jump out of the shadows. Maybe they’re both exchanging looks right now when I’m not looking, laughing, taunting me, this girl from the past who doesn’t deserve to be here, maybe they all think I’m a joke now, what am I doing, why, why, why?

You’re so lost in your thoughts that when Taehyung addresses you once more, you’re violently jolted out of your mind and nearly fall backwards, body forgetting everything but the sound of his voice.

“Y/N…” he says again, forcing you to look up at him. Your name splinters through the air from his lips, cutting through the frost and straight into your chest; you notice now that his voice seems tired, that he seems tired.

You finally regain some semblance of control over your frozen tongue, lips moving in an attempt to emit a sound, any sound. Your lips wrap around the sole syllable that comes to you like muscle memory, the only one that you manage to choke out.

“T-Tae…”

Your voice cracks, unable to continue. The prolonged eye-contact has got you weak, his pupils boring into your soul. You look into his eyes, reciprocating, and you notice that maybe they’ve lost their golden sheen, that they no longer twinkle with constellations of stars. And it’s then that you realize: maybe the year has taken a toll on him too.

Look at what you’ve done to him.

“T-Tae, I, I, I…” you sputter out, guilt flooding your system like a drug. There was nothing you could say, nothing you could tell him to cheat yourself out of the situation or paint yourself in a better light like you’re so used to doing. You’re not used to feeling this powerless, this weak. Taehyung was the only one who saw through the facade, the only one who allowed you to feel vulnerable. You couldn’t lie to him, you knew you couldn’t; there was no wheedling, no bullshitting, no lying yourself out of any sticky situation, which had caused you this whole trouble in the first place. You ran because you were too much of a coward to talk to him, to confide in him. And look where that’s gotten you.

“Why are you here?” he asks, burying his head in his hands. “Y/N, why are you here?”

Why am I here? You don’t really know as well, there’s nothing that you can say to him. Why am I here? To get over him? How are you even going to tell him? He has to think that you’re over him, that it’s done. Stop torturing yourself, and stop dragging him through this mess of your life. Tell him that it’s done.

“I… I came because…”

Y/N, say something?

“I came because I… I was looking for you.”

What the fuck?

His head snaps up, his piercing stare catching your gaze once again. “You were looking for me?”

You feel your heart stop.

“Umm… well, I mean, no, but, no, well actually if I think about it now, yeah, yeah I was looking for you,” you stammer, unable to produce a single cohesive line of thought. “I was looking for you because I wanted to tell you that it’s over.”

Your own words are like a dagger twisting into your own heart and vaguely hear a choked sound breaking the awful, awful silence. Until you realize that it’s come from your own mouth, a sob that you hadn’t even realized that you were holding in.

A moment of charged silence goes by, yet louder than any noise that either of you could’ve let out. Never in your life has silence felt so utterly deafening, and you wish to cover your ears and scream it all out.

“You’re telling me this now?” Taehyung manages, features distorted in pain. “You’re telling me this now, a whole fucking year after you walk out the door without a single word to me?”

You look down at the ground, hating, blaming your traitorous mouth for saying something that you hadn’t fully thought through.

No, Y/N. You have to stop bringing everyone down.

You’ve lost all rational thought when you say, “yes, Taehyung. Yes. I had nothing to say to you then and nothing to say to you now. It’s done and it’s over.”

You couldn’t even say sorry?

The frosty wind brushes over the pair of you, causing you to shiver in your boots. You want nothing more than to curl up into a ball and disappear, pretend that this never happened, that this was all a bad dream.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see a security guard watching the whole exchanged with piqued interest. It’s none of your fucking business, you want to scream. It’s none of your fucking business. And yet you’re so humiliated, embarrassed at this whole mess that you’ve made of not only yourself but the situation in its entirety that you cannot muster up any words to merely defend yourself. You want to cry, sob, yell, scream.

“Fine, Y/N, it’s okay. You know what? It’s okay, you don’t owe me an explanation, you don’t owe me anything, not an apology, not a reason, not your love. It’s okay. It’s fine. Maybe you never loved me, saw me in the same way. Maybe I just assumed, maybe it was wrong of me to assume. Maybe I was too optimistic, too in love with you that I had forced myself to believe the story that I had made up in my head, that you were in love with me too. Maybe I had wanted it, wanted you so bad that I had made myself believe it. Made myself believe that you were in love with me.”

Your heart instinctually reaches out to him, drumming feverishly against your fragile ribcage. No, you want to scream. No, Taehyung, you couldn’t be more fucking wrong. He doesn’t know the way your heart beats for him in the dead of night, how the mere thought of him sends shivers down your spine, how every cell in your body, every thread of your being aches, yearns for his presence with every hour, every minute, every second.

You feel your heart breaking, splintering into thousands, millions of tiny little fragments raining down like shards of glass. It hurts, it hurts like hell.

“It’s okay, Y/N. Don’t force yourself into anything. There’s no need to anymore. There’s no more need to lie, no more need to pretend that you’re happy.”

“Thank you for telling me the truth.”

It’s not the truth, you want to cry. It’s not. It’s the farthest from it. But you return his look, tight-lipped. You nod, despite the swell of emotions that are threatening to cut you in half at this very moment.

“You’re welcome.”

He reciprocates your nod and slowly, painfully, tears his eyes from yours. He stands up, gingerly, as if hesitating, and you want to tell him to stop, to sit back down, that you’re lying to him, that you want him, that you want him more than anything in this world. But you don’t, and he continues onto his feet, sparing you one last gaze.

“At least I get to say goodbye,” he says, wistfully. “At least I now have the chance to say goodbye.”

You’re sure that tears are streaming down your face at this point, little trails of ice making their way down your blushed cheeks. Your lips are tight, and you cannot, for the life of you, return his look.

Before you can fully comprehend what’s happening, you know he’s here, the familiar hold of his arms, your face finding itself nestled on the same spot on his chest, right above his heart. You feel it beat, gently, slowly, under your ear, a comforting rhythm that you’ve too often fallen asleep to, whispered to. Your arms instinctually wrap around his waist, and his head settles on the crook of your neck, the curve of his nose gently kissing your delicate skin. His warmth radiates from under his coat, and you soak it all in, collecting as much as you can. You are two puzzle pieces, a perfect fit, and you will this moment into eternity, searing it into your memory, wishing for the world to stop, stop right now and leave you in this moment forever. You’ve been lost, wandering, and have finally come home.  

But forever doesn’t exist.

You’re struck with a blast of cold at his loss, feeling horribly empty. He steps away from you, and you’re almost certain that you see moisture in his eyes, tears threatening to break free. Every fiber of your being yearns for him, you want to reach out to him, extend the hug, shower him in kisses, make up and forget that this all even happened, but you’re too prideful. You can’t let yourself do this.

“Goodbye, Y/N. Thank you for everything.”

And just like that, he’s gone.

                                            [    ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙    ]

11:42am, March 12 2021

[taehyung]

I miss you.

I miss you as the seasons come and go, I miss you as I watch the world going to shit, losing all hope. I miss you when the wind blows, taking me along like a pointless man, destined for nowhere. I’ll miss you eternally; I’ll miss you when all the ice melts into the ocean, I’ll miss you when everything’s finally disappeared and there’s utter nothing left for me.

I miss you in the brightest mornings and the darkest nights, when the sun comes out to play and the rain starts pelting down like there’s no tomorrow. I’ll miss you in the loneliest winters and the blooming springs.

Everything reminds me of you. I am stuck in this eternal frost without you here; your loss has trapped me into this winter forever. I am slowly losing feel of my limbs as they succumb to the cold around me - everything has frozen into place, trapping me into the confines of this perpetual season. The world is closing in, I have nowhere to go, nothing to do. No longer do I have you to lead me out of this snow, no longer do I have you to hold my hand and bring me warmth through it all.

Why did you have to go?

Baby, did you know how much pain I’d be in when you’d left? Did you know how much it would hurt, how you’ve trapped me into this never-ending arctic, leaving me behind to freeze?

Did you know when you chose to go?

You’ve left me in ruins, my love. I can’t continue without you. I’m struggling to breathe, suffocating, as the world collapses inwards, threatening to bury me alive. I wait for you everyday, through all of the grief, the pain. I still wait for the day that you come back, that I get to see your face again.

Or maybe I’m a dumbass. I don’t know. Have you changed? Or is it I who has? Or perhaps, us both? I’m still a lovesick fool for you, Y/N, that I can tell you for sure. I can’t stop thinking of you, as the days pass, sun and moon taking their turns in the sky. I’m left, suffering in this darkness, bleakness without you here. I wonder if you’ll still be there at the end, when all ceases to exist. I wonder if I’ll see you again; how much more do I have to wait? How many more sleepless nights will have to pass before I can lay my eyes upon you again? How many days, months, years do I have to hold back before I get to feel you, touch you, kiss you, one more time?

Or maybe I’m being optimistic. You know what, Y/N, I’ll never see you again, maybe you’re better off without me. Maybe it’s all for the best, maybe it’s time for me to move on, maybe it’s time for you to move on. Maybe it really was not meant to be, maybe you really weren’t the one for me.

Then why can’t I get you out of my head?

Y/N, I wish I could just forget you. I wish you never existed, I wish I had never gotten to know you. Then it would be so much easier for me. I wish that you had ignored me, that you had turned me down when you had the chance. It would’ve been the most pain that I’d feel at the time, but believe me, it’s nothing compared to this.

Now I can’t get rid of you, no matter how hard I try. You’re there, you’re there when I lie down and close my eyes for the night, you’re there at work, hiding behind my papers and my laptop, waiting to take me out to lunch. You’re everywhere, baby, you’re in the car, riding shotgun and racing to connect to Bluetooth first, singing at the top of your lungs as we speed down the highway like the reckless teenagers that we were. I see you, hair tangled by the wind, belting out your favorite lyrics out of the roof of my convertible. And I remember thinking, for the hundredth time that night, you’re the most beautiful girl in the world. Damnit, Y/N, you’re standing by the mirror every morning when I get ready for my meetings, dainty fingers straightening my tie and planting a kiss on my lips. You got this, lover boy.

You’re there, and then you’re not. You flicker between reality and imagination, I cannot discern whether I’m living in a fever dream or simply hallucinating. You’re slipping through my hands like grains of sand: I’m losing more of you by the second, can’t seem to hold on to you. You’re disappearing, getting further and further away as all I can do is watch helplessly as you fall through my fingers.

Where are you now, Y/N?

I worry about you, I worry whether you’ve eaten well, whether you’ve slept well, whether you’ve had a good day at the office. Have you seen your parents lately? Have you had some time to yourself over the past days, have you overworked yourself as you often tend to do? Are you taking care of yourself?

Is it selfish of me to be wishing for you, thinking of you after all this time? Tell me, Y/N, is it wrong of me to be wanting you despite it having been over for so long now? You’ve probably moved on by now, considering how long it’s already been. Maybe you’ve met someone new, maybe you’re in love with someone else, maybe I’ve already been replaced with another man in your life.

Maybe I treated you wrong, maybe you didn’t feel like I loved you enough, maybe I didn’t make you feel special enough. I wish, Y/N, I wish that I could turn back time for you, I wish I could go back and be better for you, that I could fix all of the mistakes that I’ve made, wipe all of the tears that you might’ve cried for me, swallow up all of the pain that must’ve been plaguing you, to suck up the hurt that you were feeling back then. I wish you could give me all of the pain, I wish that I could’ve carried it all for you, shielded you from it all like how I should’ve done.

But it’s too late now, isn’t it?

You’ve met someone else by now, you’re laughing, smiling, whispering with another, kissing someone else’s lips, in love with your new man. And I’m still here, trying to get over you like the pathetic loser that I am. There are so many regrets, so many things that I wish that I could still tell you, so many errors, mistakes that I made. It’s all my fault. I want nothing more than to be able to get on my knees in front of you and apologize for everything. There are so many more words, so many moments that I want nothing more than to be spending with you.

I’m still in love with you.

I think I always will be, Y/N. I know it’s selfish of me. I really can’t help it. I’m sorry.

You came into my life like a whirlwind, taking all of me along for the ride. And now that you’re gone, I don’t know what to do with myself no longer. I’ve been swept away with you and my fate will forever be left in your hands. There’s nothing left for me here, not in my work nor art. All that’s left is you. You are the only thing keeping me going now - I live another day, endure another night hoping for you, waiting for the day that I will finally see you again. I open my eyes for you in the mornings, in hopes of laying them upon your figure once more.

Maybe it’ll all be for nothing, I know. Maybe I’ll never see you again. But there’s nothing left for me, remember? I’m willing to take my chance. For when I finally do see you once more, it will all be worth it.

I miss you, Y/N. I miss you so fucking much. My heart beats for you, my lungs breathe for you. My every cell in my entire being aches so desperately for you, for you and you only. And so I’ll wait for you. I promise. I’ll be here for you, waiting for the day that I get to catch a glimpse of you, to be there when you need a shoulder to cry on, for when you need even the littlest, tiniest thing. I’m ready to give you the world, baby. I’m ready to right all my wrongs, to treat you like the fucking queen that you are. I’m going to treat you the way that you deserve.

When that time comes, my heart will be happy. When the time comes that I see you again, that I hear your voice again, your laugh again, it’ll be okay. All this pain will fade away to nothing. Don’t worry about me, darling, I’ll always be here, waiting. Waiting for you, until the end.

I promise.

                                                   ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙

an: i hope you liked it!!!! <3 please please please leave feedback my loves!

[sereineityy]

how many more sleepless nights?

genre: nonidol!au, ANGST, slight fluff

summary: a year is a long time, isn’t it? you’ve spent yours stuck in an eternal, monochrome winter. a surprise encounter derails all of your plans: feelings fade... or do they, really?

pairing: taehyung x reader

word count: 5.4k 

warnings: swearing, terrible terrible angst (im sorry!), heartbreak, implied smut, angsty flashbacks :(

a/n: hi everyone! this is my very first fic on tumblr and i really hope you enjoy! please listen to spring day and scenery to really get into the feels - i hope you lose yourself in this little slice of a seoul winter :’) also i do have a storyline planned if you enjoy this little piece and could potentially even make this a series aah! please leave comments and constructive criticism - i’d love to grow as a writer! (@chateautae i finally did it!!!!!!)

                                                                                    [    ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙      ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙    ]

09:17am, december 17, 2020

It’s been a year since you last saw him. A year of emptiness, hollowness, blankness. A year since you turned your back, leaving without a goodbye. It’s been a year since you’ve walked out his front door, the same one that you’d find yourself visiting and revisiting when you knew he wasn’t home. 

It’s been a year since you last felt some semblance of happiness, a year since you’ve let out a genuine laugh, smiled from cheek-to-cheek. It’s been a year devoid of warmth: you shivered under the embrace of the summer sun, no longer noticed the blooming flowers that you had once loved so much. The world lost all its color. Fading into a bleak grayscale so far away, unreachable. No longer did you walk with a spring in your step, no longer did your eyes glimmer with galaxies that you’d once built with him. You were empty, a ship lost in the depths of the dark oceans. Floating, barely surviving, with no set destination. All you saw were never-ending, infinite oceans in all directions. No escape, no lighthouse. Just you. Alone. Pointless.

Your heart aches for him, the echo of a honeyed baritone, the ghost of his warm, muscular arms wrapped around your shoulders. 

It’s for the best, you had thought. It’s for the best.

You squeeze your eyes shut, willing the thoughts out of your mind. There was too much, too many feelings, pent-up emotions. You weren’t a woman of emotions, never were, swore to never be, until you had met him. And he had changed everything.

Stop. This is getting ridiculous.

You needed to get on with your life, you think. There are too many things to think about, so many better thoughts requiring your attention. What were you doing, wasting your energy on him? It was time, you had decided, to end things once and for all.

The ticket machine snaps you out of your reverie, demanding it get paid. How much did the trip cost? You’ve forced yourself to forget, holed up all the memories too far into the shadows of your mind in your sheer desperation to evade the pain. You slot in a W10,000 bill, way too much, but better than having to remember. The machine happily eats up the cash, returning your card and sending you on your way. 

You navigate the platforms, seeing the brightly-lit signs: Incheon line, Suin line, Bundang line. Then you see it, Platform 6, Gyeongwon line. South-bound to Soyosan, stopping at Iryeong. Your heart thumps, stomach twists, and you feel like throwing up. How many times had you once ascended these very steps with him, hand-in-hand, smiling to one another? How many times had you raced up these stairs, trying to get to the platform first? It’s too much, and you want to run. Run away from this place, from the thoughts and feelings.

No. You need this.

The winter air roughly brushes against your cheeks, hurrying you along.

What are you so afraid of?

Everything, you think. Everything. You’ve bound your heart in chains and locks, plastered it with thousands of bandages, one on top of the other. You’ve holed it away, willed it out of existence. You’re afraid of the memories, the emotions. You’re afraid of yourself.

Go. Just go. Get it over with.

You force your feet to move, one after another. You don’t think, you just move. Move onto the platform, move onto the train. You don’t realize that you’ve boarded the machine until you hear an all-too-familiar voice on the loudspeaker. 

“This is the Special Rapid Train, on the Gyeongwon line, headed for Sosoyan. We will be stopping at Seokgye, Wolgye, Dobong and Iryeong. Please stay clear of the sliding doors!”

You vaguely see the blinking of lights and hear the shutting of the doors. The train picks up speed, clicking against the railroads. You are blank, a passenger on an endless journey. You sway when the train sways, stop when it stops. You don’t know how many stops have passed, having lost yourself in the familiar nothingness that had hollowed you out for the past year, until the speakers announce something about the next station being Dobong. You’re near, you realize. Too near. 

Too soon does the train halt, birthing out and collecting new passengers as seats empty and taken once more in a matter of seconds. You watch this interchange with a bitter smile: how quickly he must have replaced you after you’d left, how he must’ve taken in another in your place.

Stop it.

Too engrossed in your thoughts, you don’t notice the closing of the doors and the blinking of the lights until you hear the loud system once more as the train starts to accelerate.

“Iryeong, Iryeong. Our next stop is Iryeong, please get off on the right side of the train.”

You are left suddenly hyper aware of your surroundings, watching as snow paints the ground white. The houses blur into trees and back into villages as you stare out the window, and you start to remember. You remember your hands intertwined, dancing in the snow, the click of a camera as the melodies of your laughs twirling in the air. You remember the snugness of his embrace, his earthy cologne, his smile, his lips pressed against yours…

Stop.

You tear your gaze away from the glass, staring down at your gloved hands fiddling in your lap. It’s been a year. It’s laughable how much and how little has changed. You’re different, yes, but yet so painfully similar to the girl who ran away. It’s funny how much of a difference, or lack thereof, a year can make, you think. It’s certainly been hard on you, and you find yourself wondering about him, about how maybe the year has changed him, how he’s doing, if he’s eating well, if…

Stop.

You’re hopeless, aren’t you? 

You sigh and shut your eyes. You’re going crazy. Or maybe you’ve always been crazy. Your thoughts are feverish, a maelstrom in your mind. Involuntarily, you notice your feet rapidly tapping the metal bar to your side, vibrating against the pole. You feel the ghost of a touch on your thigh, hear the empty shell of his words, breathe, Y/N, breathe. What’s got you all worked up? And for a moment, just a moment, you feel his presence to your side, capture the warmth radiating off of his figure, and smile. Because it’s all okay when he’s here.

But he’s not. 

You decide to focus on the sound of the railroads, staring down at the speckled floor of the train as the carriage undulates gently, side to side. You ride along, the train’s movements easing your own and you begin to lose yourself once again in the clacks of the rails, mind going blank, until you start to notice the slowing of the sounds. The train’s dance comes to a slow, inviting people to start getting up and shuffle towards the doors. Your heart sinks to your stomach. Not yet, not yet. It can’t be. It’s too soon.

The loudspeaker crackles to life, confirming your worst fears. “Arriving at Iryeong, please stay clear of the doors and exit on the right side of the train.”

Your legs move on their own accord, pulling you to a standing position as you grip the metal post with your life. The train continues to slow, eventually, painstakingly coming to a halt. You wish it never will, that it will continue on with its journey ahead. But it’s too late. The doors slide open, the sounds of the outside world whistle for you, calling you, urging you out of the comfort of the train. You don’t dare move, standing still as passengers trickle out, as the flashing lights start to appear, as the minute at the station starts to come to an end. The doors are closing in five. Four.

You twitch.

Three. Two.

“Wait!”

You rush out the doors, barely escaping the iron clasp of the metals that would’ve devoured you had you been a second too late. Behind you, the steel hisses as the vehicle exits the station, leaving you alone. So utterly alone. 

You’re blessed with a moment of solitude, feeling nothing but the cold air chilling your face, until you realize where you are and why you’re here. 

The bliss of being alone rapidly evaporates, and you’re hit with a speeding truck. The memories flood in; you’re winded, gasping for breath as you’re stormed with images, short clips of him, you, the pair of you. His smile, his laugh, his cheeks, eyes, nose. His breath tickling yours before he leans in for a kiss, his gentle, large hands cupping your face as you close your eyes…

Stop. Get a fucking grip, will you?

You force the color out of your mind as you make your way around the platform, empty now that everyone has gone. Your eyes graze against the pathetic, run-down station: the signs are only partially lit, the electricity having worn out. Your fingers run against the peeling, dirtied paint of the walls, dust bunnies catching onto your gloves. You scoff. This is pathetic. The floor is littered with plastics and old soda bottles, as if nobody’s been here to clean in too long. Graffiti smiles sadly back at you as you scan the fading walls, losing their life by the second. The bricks have faded into a musty brown, drab and uninteresting. Everything is so run down, so tired. You sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose as you make your way to the minimart to your right, wanting a beverage to help warm your insides up. 

The doors slide open with a gentle clink, altering the store of your presence. The cashier at the counter looks up at you through half-lidded eyes, barely acknowledging you, before returning to the drama playing on his cracked phone. The shelves are well-stocked, however, in stark contrast to the beaten-down appearance of this whole ordeal. You glide along the aisles, and everything is the same. Your favorite tea is still on the same shelf as it was all those months ago, his favorite gimbap in the bottom left corner of the chiller. Beef and sesame, he’d get, while you’d get a tuna for yourself, clinking your drinks and hearing the hiss of his cola opening, laughing as you made a mess of yourselves, two young fools madly in love. You’d talk, drink, eat for hours, whispering, dreaming and wishing, wondering what was going to come in the future, what you’d name your first puppy, whether you wanted a girl or a boy for your first child. Never would you have ever imagined that it would all end this way.

Stop it.

You grab your bottle of tea violently, almost knocking it over in your hurry to leave. You could no longer stay, not here, suffocating in your memories of him. You erased the gimbap out of your vision, ignoring it as you made your way to the counter, paying for your drink as the half-hearted employee handed you with your change. You mutter a thank you, unsure if he had even heard, and mindlessly make your way out of the store, too focused on keeping someone out of your head. You nearly bang into the glass doors in your haste, looking down and walking as fast as you can. Until your heart stops, that is.

You don’t dare look up, not now. The whole world slows to a stand-still, your gaze sharpening on nothing. Your heart is about to beat out of your chest, your lungs stop working. Electricity charges through the air and you’re left reeling, not knowing what to do. 

Slowly, painfully, your neck raises, muscles straining with all their might. You already know what you’re going to see, who you’re going to see, but the sight of him still shocks you all the same. You nearly spill your drink all over yourself when you finally look up, and your brain goes into overdrive. You’re sure that your mouth is hanging open, jaw slack, but you can’t do anything about it. Your knees buckle, you can’t breathe, suffocating, wanting the ground to swallow you up at this very moment. You want to fall, tumble into an eternal tunnel. You are dizzy, light-headed, going crazy, you swear. You’re going crazy, aren’t you? This can’t be real, can it?

You can’t believe it. You’re drowning, drowning in those chocolate eyes, sinking into his pupils, losing yourself in his gorgeous features. You drink him all in, his own face mirroring yours, in no doubt absolute shock or maybe even despair, his deadly stare making your breath hitch as it once did so long ago. He’d never lost his power over you, after all. The world is suspended around you, all operations ceased as you both continue to stare into each other’s eyes, the tension so palpable that it threatens to devour you whole. Your larynx seems to be glued shut, your tongue a stone in your mouth. There are no words, no way to express this feeling that washes over you upon seeing him again. 

“Y/N…” 

His voice. Your ears ring with his deep baritone, honey to your ears. You can’t help it: you quite literally swoon, despite the circumstances. His voice: it ignites a fire within you, warm tendrils of heat rising up from your stomach. Vibrations send throughout your core, making you lightheaded and sure that you’re about to fall. You remember his timber next to you in the dead of light, comforting you, whispering sweet nothings into your ear, it’s okay, it’s okay, breathe, it’s okay, you’re here with me. 

You hug your arms around yourself, trying to keep it all in, retain the strange feeling that was now foreign to you after months of cold. It’s been too long, after all - you’ve gone too long deprived of this humanness, comfort that radiated off of him. 

Things are different now, Y/N.

Yes, they are. Your mind goes berserk once more, considering all of the scenarios. Why is he here? He probably just needs to go to the minimart - no, why would he come all this way, he lives pretty far as well, or maybe he’s waiting on a friend, no, maybe he’s brought a new girlfriend, maybe she’s with him right now waiting to jump out of the shadows. Maybe they’re both exchanging looks right now when I’m not looking, laughing, taunting me, this girl from the past who doesn’t deserve to be here, maybe they all think I’m a joke now, what am I doing, why, why, why?

You’re so lost in your thoughts that when Taehyung addresses you once more, you’re violently jolted out of your mind and nearly fall backwards, body forgetting everything but the sound of his voice.

“Y/N…” he says again, forcing you to look up at him. Your name splinters through the air from his lips, cutting through the frost and straight into your chest; you notice now that his voice seems tired, that he seems tired. 

You finally regain some semblance of control over your frozen tongue, lips moving in an attempt to emit a sound, any sound. Your lips wrap around the sole syllable that comes to you like muscle memory, the only one that you manage to choke out.

“T-Tae...”

Your voice cracks, unable to continue. The prolonged eye-contact has got you weak, his pupils boring into your soul. You look into his eyes, reciprocating, and you notice that maybe they’ve lost their golden sheen, that they no longer twinkle with constellations of stars. And it’s then that you realize: maybe the year has taken a toll on him too. 

Look at what you’ve done to him.

“T-Tae, I, I, I…” you sputter out, guilt flooding your system like a drug. There was nothing you could say, nothing you could tell him to cheat yourself out of the situation or paint yourself in a better light like you’re so used to doing. You’re not used to feeling this powerless, this weak. Taehyung was the only one who saw through the facade, the only one who allowed you to feel vulnerable. You couldn’t lie to him, you knew you couldn’t; there was no wheedling, no bullshitting, no lying yourself out of any sticky situation, which had caused you this whole trouble in the first place. You ran because you were too much of a coward to talk to him, to confide in him. And look where that’s gotten you.

“Why are you here?” he asks, burying his head in his hands. “Y/N, why are you here?”

Why am I here? You don’t really know as well, there’s nothing that you can say to him. Why am I here? To get over him? How are you even going to tell him? He has to think that you’re over him, that it’s done. Stop torturing yourself, and stop dragging him through this mess of your life. Tell him that it’s done.

“I… I came because…” 

Y/N, say something?

“I came because I... I was looking for you.” 

What the fuck?

His head snaps up, his piercing stare catching your gaze once again. “You were looking for me?”

You feel your heart stop.

“Umm… well, I mean, no, but, no, well actually if I think about it now, yeah, yeah I was looking for you,” you stammer, unable to produce a single cohesive line of thought. “I was looking for you because I wanted to tell you that it’s over.”

Your own words are like a dagger twisting into your own heart and vaguely hear a choked sound breaking the awful, awful silence. Until you realize that it’s come from your own mouth, a sob that you hadn’t even realized that you were holding in. 

A moment of charged silence goes by, yet louder than any noise that either of you could’ve let out. Never in your life has silence felt so utterly deafening, and you wish to cover your ears and scream it all out. 

“You’re telling me this now?” Taehyung manages, features distorted in pain. “You’re telling me this now, a whole fucking year after you walk out the door without a single word to me?” 

You look down at the ground, hating, blaming your traitorous mouth for saying something that you hadn’t fully thought through. 

No, Y/N. You have to stop bringing everyone down.

You’ve lost all rational thought when you say, “yes, Taehyung. Yes. I had nothing to say to you then and nothing to say to you now. It’s done and it’s over.”

You couldn’t even say sorry?

The frosty wind brushes over the pair of you, causing you to shiver in your boots. You want nothing more than to curl up into a ball and disappear, pretend that this never happened, that this was all a bad dream.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see a security guard watching the whole exchanged with piqued interest. It’s none of your fucking business, you want to scream. It’s none of your fucking business. And yet you’re so humiliated, embarrassed at this whole mess that you’ve made of not only yourself but the situation in its entirety that you cannot muster up any words to merely defend yourself. You want to cry, sob, yell, scream.

“Fine, Y/N, it’s okay. You know what? It’s okay, you don’t owe me an explanation, you don’t owe me anything, not an apology, not a reason, not your love. It’s okay. It’s fine. Maybe you never loved me, saw me in the same way. Maybe I just assumed, maybe it was wrong of me to assume. Maybe I was too optimistic, too in love with you that I had forced myself to believe the story that I had made up in my head, that you were in love with me too. Maybe I had wanted it, wanted you so bad that I had made myself believe it. Made myself believe that you were in love with me.”

Your heart instinctually reaches out to him, drumming feverishly against your fragile ribcage. No, you want to scream. No, Taehyung, you couldn’t be more fucking wrong. He doesn’t know the way your heart beats for him in the dead of night, how the mere thought of him sends shivers down your spine, how every cell in your body, every thread of your being aches, yearns for his presence with every hour, every minute, every second. 

You feel your heart breaking, splintering into thousands, millions of tiny little fragments raining down like shards of glass. It hurts, it hurts like hell. 

“It’s okay, Y/N. Don’t force yourself into anything. There’s no need to anymore. There’s no more need to lie, no more need to pretend that you’re happy.”

“Thank you for telling me the truth.”

It’s not the truth, you want to cry. It’s not. It’s the farthest from it. But you return his look, tight-lipped. You nod, despite the swell of emotions that are threatening to cut you in half at this very moment. 

“You’re welcome.”

He reciprocates your nod and slowly, painfully, tears his eyes from yours. He stands up, gingerly, as if hesitating, and you want to tell him to stop, to sit back down, that you’re lying to him, that you want him, that you want him more than anything in this world. But you don’t, and he continues onto his feet, sparing you one last gaze.

“At least I get to say goodbye,” he says, wistfully. “At least I now have the chance to say goodbye.”

You’re sure that tears are streaming down your face at this point, little trails of ice making their way down your blushed cheeks. Your lips are tight, and you cannot, for the life of you, return his look. 

Before you can fully comprehend what’s happening, you know he’s here, the familiar hold of his arms, your face finding itself nestled on the same spot on his chest, right above his heart. You feel it beat, gently, slowly, under your ear, a comforting rhythm that you’ve too often fallen asleep to, whispered to. Your arms instinctually wrap around his waist, and his head settles on the crook of your neck, the curve of his nose gently kissing your delicate skin. His warmth radiates from under his coat, and you soak it all in, collecting as much as you can. You are two puzzle pieces, a perfect fit, and you will this moment into eternity, searing it into your memory, wishing for the world to stop, stop right now and leave you in this moment forever. You’ve been lost, wandering, and have finally come home.   

But forever doesn’t exist.

You’re struck with a blast of cold at his loss, feeling horribly empty. He steps away from you, and you’re almost certain that you see moisture in his eyes, tears threatening to break free. Every fiber of your being yearns for him, you want to reach out to him, extend the hug, shower him in kisses, make up and forget that this all even happened, but you’re too prideful. You can’t let yourself do this.

“Goodbye, Y/N. Thank you for everything.” 

And just like that, he’s gone.

                                              [    ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙    ]

11:42am, March 12 2021

[taehyung]

I miss you. 

I miss you as the seasons come and go, I miss you as I watch the world going to shit, losing all hope. I miss you when the wind blows, taking me along like a pointless man, destined for nowhere. I’ll miss you eternally; I’ll miss you when all the ice melts into the ocean, I’ll miss you when everything’s finally disappeared and there’s utter nothing left for me.

I miss you in the brightest mornings and the darkest nights, when the sun comes out to play and the rain starts pelting down like there’s no tomorrow. I'll miss you in the loneliest winters and the blooming springs.

Everything reminds me of you. I am stuck in this eternal frost without you here; your loss has trapped me into this winter forever. I am slowly losing feel of my limbs as they succumb to the cold around me - everything has frozen into place, trapping me into the confines of this perpetual season. The world is closing in, I have nowhere to go, nothing to do. No longer do I have you to lead me out of this snow, no longer do I have you to hold my hand and bring me warmth through it all.

Why did you have to go?

Baby, did you know how much pain I’d be in when you’d left? Did you know how much it would hurt, how you’ve trapped me into this never-ending arctic, leaving me behind to freeze? 

Did you know when you chose to go?

You’ve left me in ruins, my love. I can’t continue without you. I’m struggling to breathe, suffocating, as the world collapses inwards, threatening to bury me alive. I wait for you everyday, through all of the grief, the pain. I still wait for the day that you come back, that I get to see your face again.

Or maybe I’m a dumbass. I don’t know. Have you changed? Or is it I who has? Or perhaps, us both? I’m still a lovesick fool for you, Y/N, that I can tell you for sure. I can’t stop thinking of you, as the days pass, sun and moon taking their turns in the sky. I’m left, suffering in this darkness, bleakness without you here. I wonder if you’ll still be there at the end, when all ceases to exist. I wonder if I’ll see you again; how much more do I have to wait? How many more sleepless nights will have to pass before I can lay my eyes upon you again? How many days, months, years do I have to hold back before I get to feel you, touch you, kiss you, one more time? 

Or maybe I’m being optimistic. You know what, Y/N, I’ll never see you again, maybe you’re better off without me. Maybe it’s all for the best, maybe it’s time for me to move on, maybe it’s time for you to move on. Maybe it really was not meant to be, maybe you really weren’t the one for me. 

Then why can’t I get you out of my head?

Y/N, I wish I could just forget you. I wish you never existed, I wish I had never gotten to know you. Then it would be so much easier for me. I wish that you had ignored me, that you had turned me down when you had the chance. It would’ve been the most pain that I’d feel at the time, but believe me, it’s nothing compared to this. 

Now I can’t get rid of you, no matter how hard I try. You’re there, you’re there when I lie down and close my eyes for the night, you’re there at work, hiding behind my papers and my laptop, waiting to take me out to lunch. You’re everywhere, baby, you’re in the car, riding shotgun and racing to connect to Bluetooth first, singing at the top of your lungs as we speed down the highway like the reckless teenagers that we were. I see you, hair tangled by the wind, belting out your favorite lyrics out of the roof of my convertible. And I remember thinking, for the hundredth time that night, you’re the most beautiful girl in the world. Damnit, Y/N, you’re standing by the mirror every morning when I get ready for my meetings, dainty fingers straightening my tie and planting a kiss on my lips. You got this, lover boy.

You’re there, and then you’re not. You flicker between reality and imagination, I cannot discern whether I’m living in a fever dream or simply hallucinating. You’re slipping through my hands like grains of sand: I’m losing more of you by the second, can’t seem to hold on to you. You’re disappearing, getting further and further away as all I can do is watch helplessly as you fall through my fingers. 

Where are you now, Y/N?

I worry about you, I worry whether you’ve eaten well, whether you’ve slept well, whether you’ve had a good day at the office. Have you seen your parents lately? Have you had some time to yourself over the past days, have you overworked yourself as you often tend to do? Are you taking care of yourself?

Is it selfish of me to be wishing for you, thinking of you after all this time? Tell me, Y/N, is it wrong of me to be wanting you despite it having been over for so long now? You’ve probably moved on by now, considering how long it’s already been. Maybe you’ve met someone new, maybe you’re in love with someone else, maybe I’ve already been replaced with another man in your life.

Maybe I treated you wrong, maybe you didn’t feel like I loved you enough, maybe I didn’t make you feel special enough. I wish, Y/N, I wish that I could turn back time for you, I wish I could go back and be better for you, that I could fix all of the mistakes that I’ve made, wipe all of the tears that you might’ve cried for me, swallow up all of the pain that must’ve been plaguing you, to suck up the hurt that you were feeling back then. I wish you could give me all of the pain, I wish that I could’ve carried it all for you, shielded you from it all like how I should’ve done.

But it’s too late now, isn’t it? 

You’ve met someone else by now, you’re laughing, smiling, whispering with another, kissing someone else’s lips, in love with your new man. And I’m still here, trying to get over you like the pathetic loser that I am. There are so many regrets, so many things that I wish that I could still tell you, so many errors, mistakes that I made. It’s all my fault. I want nothing more than to be able to get on my knees in front of you and apologize for everything. There are so many more words, so many moments that I want nothing more than to be spending with you. 

I’m still in love with you. 

I think I always will be, Y/N. I know it’s selfish of me. I really can’t help it. I’m sorry.

You came into my life like a whirlwind, taking all of me along for the ride. And now that you’re gone, I don’t know what to do with myself no longer. I’ve been swept away with you and my fate will forever be left in your hands. There’s nothing left for me here, not in my work nor art. All that’s left is you. You are the only thing keeping me going now - I live another day, endure another night hoping for you, waiting for the day that I will finally see you again. I open my eyes for you in the mornings, in hopes of laying them upon your figure once more. 

Maybe it’ll all be for nothing, I know. Maybe I’ll never see you again. But there’s nothing left for me, remember? I’m willing to take my chance. For when I finally do see you once more, it will all be worth it.

I miss you, Y/N. I miss you so fucking much. My heart beats for you, my lungs breathe for you. My every cell in my entire being aches so desperately for you, for you and you only. And so I’ll wait for you. I promise. I’ll be here for you, waiting for the day that I get to catch a glimpse of you, to be there when you need a shoulder to cry on, for when you need even the littlest, tiniest thing. I’m ready to give you the world, baby. I’m ready to right all my wrongs, to treat you like the fucking queen that you are. I’m going to treat you the way that you deserve. 

When that time comes, my heart will be happy. When the time comes that I see you again, that I hear your voice again, your laugh again, it’ll be okay. All this pain will fade away to nothing. Don’t worry about me, darling, I’ll always be here, waiting. Waiting for you, until the end. I promise. 

                                                     ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ 

an: i hope you liked it!!!! <3 please please please leave feedback my loves!

[jaeminzie]

hot summer nights, mid-july | p.js

↳ park jisung x gender neutral!reader

synopsis: drive-in movie with the dreamies, you and jisung use each other for some body warmth

genre: fluff shy bbie

word count: 842

the movie was about to begin. we were seated in the back of jeno’s trunk of his big suv filled with blankets and pillows keeping us comfortable. jeno and hyuck sat on the left of side, chenle sat by himself in the middle, and jisung and i sat noticeably close to each other on the right side.

our gazes were fixed on jaemin and renjun who were running towards the car with bags of popcorn in their hands, some pieces falling out. they finally made it to us and hopped on the trunk making a loud creaking noise, gaining some shushes from the other cars parked near us.

jeno giggled at jaemin’s and renjun’s apologetic faces. “just sit down already, you’re blocking my view.” chenle said as he turned his head in attempt to see past the two boys.

“chill, lele. the movie hasn’t even started ye-” the loud intro interrupted renjun’s sentence. chenle rolled his eyes as jaemin and renjun finally sat down in the empty spots left for them while the rest of us laughed at the perfect timing.

i wasn’t even supposed to tag along but the boys invited me when i was dropping by earlier today to return bicycle equipment i borrowed from jeno. it’s now around seven o’clock, it’s beginning to get dark but the sun was still peaking through the clouds slightly creating a beautiful yellow cast. it was the perfect setting to watch My Neighbor Totoro with the boys, cuddled up in blankets and the scent of buttered popcorn (and a little bit of gasoline) filling our noses.

i’ve seen this movie way too many times so i took the time to admire the scenery around us. people watching. seeing families and couples cuddling in their vehicles, and some children playing on the ground. so content.

feeling the breeze. which has gotten a bit stronger, making me shiver. i tried to pull the blanket so i can cover myself but the weight of six boys was too heavy for me.

“oh you’re cold?” jisung asked softly looking down at me, his eyes boring into mine. i had a clear view of his slightly pink nose while the rest of his face stayed pale, i knew he was cold too.

“just a little,” i smiled slightly to show that i’m okay despite how cold it got, which was odd considering that it’s literally july. “are you?” i asked the obvious just to start a conversation since i was getting a bit bored.

we still spoke softly, trying not to bother the others who were intently watching the bus stop scene with cute doe eyes. “yeah, just a little too.” jisung has always been shy, and i’ve been trying to get him out of his shell when he’s around me but it never works.

“how about we use the help of each other?” my voice squeaked towards the end of my question, my right eyebrow raised and a welcoming smile plastered on my face.

“what do you mean by that? like-”

“like this.” i simply grabbed his cold hand in mine, rubbing my thumb against it immediately warming it up. i only meant it in a friendly way, in attempt to break our awkwardness but it wasn’t until i looked up to see jisung’s entire face and ears turning red when i suddenly felt butterflies in my stomach which has never happened before with jisung. “i’m sorry, i didn’t ask if it was okay to-” i let go of my grip of his hand, scared that i made him uncomfortable.

“no no it’s okay.” this time, he took his sweaty right hand and held my right hand, also rubbing his thumb against it slowly and hesitantly. he then took a deep breath before putting his left arm around me, embracing me. now, his left thumb was rubbing my left arm causing both of our bodies to heat up instantly.

i smiled, feeling proud that i’ve finally broken that awkward barrier with him. “much better.” i sighed, a smile naturally unfolded on my face, and i wasn’t able to take it off even if i tried.

we stayed in this position. hand in hand, him embracing me, my head rested on his shoulder while his head was rested back against the car, and our legs slightly touching each other—softly rubbing each other at times.

i can just feel jisung smiling uncontrollably. i bet his face is red red too. i didn’t need to look at him to know.

me and him chose to ignore the wide-eyed stares and whispers coming from the other boys, we both knew we’d be receiving an interrogation later during the ride back to their dorm. we were both too comfortable and warm to care.

although our body heat has caused both of us to sweat by now and the blankets and pillows around us did not do no good in helping us cool down, we chose not to move.

jisung and i could stay like this all night if we had the option to do so. nothing felt more comfortable and safe than this.

[sereineity]

how many more sleepless nights?

genre: nonidol!au, ANGST, slight fluff

summary: a year is a long time, isn’t it? you’ve spent yours stuck in an eternal, monochrome winter. a surprise encounter derails all of your plans: feelings fade… or do they, really?

pairing: taehyung x reader

word count: 5.4k

warnings: swearing, terrible terrible angst (im sorry!), heartbreak, implied smut, angsty flashbacks :(

a/n: hi everyone! this is my very first fic on tumblr and i really hope you enjoy! please listen to spring day and scenery to really get into the feels - i hope you lose yourself in this little slice of a seoul winter :’) also i do have a storyline planned if you enjoy this little piece and could potentially even make this a series aah! please leave comments and constructive criticism - i’d love to grow as a writer! (@chateautae i finally did it!!!!!!)

[    ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙      ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙    ]

09:17am, december 17, 2020

It’s been a year since you last saw him. A year of emptiness, hollowness, blankness. A year since you turned your back, leaving without a goodbye. It’s been a year since you’ve walked out his front door, the same one that you’d find yourself visiting and revisiting when you knew he wasn’t home.

It’s been a year since you last felt some semblance of happiness, a year since you’ve let out a genuine laugh, smiled from cheek-to-cheek. It’s been a year devoid of warmth: you shivered under the embrace of the summer sun, no longer noticed the blooming flowers that you had once loved so much. The world lost all its color. Fading into a bleak grayscale so far away, unreachable. No longer did you walk with a spring in your step, no longer did your eyes glimmer with galaxies that you’d once built with him. You were empty, a ship lost in the depths of the dark oceans. Floating, barely surviving, with no set destination. All you saw were never-ending, infinite oceans in all directions. No escape, no lighthouse. Just you. Alone. Pointless.

Your heart aches for him, the echo of a honeyed baritone, the ghost of his warm, muscular arms wrapped around your shoulders.

It’s for the best, you had thought. It’s for the best.

You squeeze your eyes shut, willing the thoughts out of your mind. There was too much, too many feelings, pent-up emotions. You weren’t a woman of emotions, never were, swore to never be, until you had met him. And he had changed everything.

Stop. This is getting ridiculous.

You needed to get on with your life, you think. There are too many things to think about, so many better thoughts requiring your attention. What were you doing, wasting your energy on him? It was time, you had decided, to end things once and for all.

The ticket machine snaps you out of your reverie, demanding it get paid. How much did the trip cost? You’ve forced yourself to forget, holed up all the memories too far into the shadows of your mind in your sheer desperation to evade the pain. You slot in a W10,000 bill, way too much, but better than having to remember. The machine happily eats up the cash, returning your card and sending you on your way.

You navigate the platforms, seeing the brightly-lit signs: Incheon line, Suin line, Bundang line. Then you see it, Platform 6, Gyeongwon line. South-bound to Soyosan, stopping at Iryeong. Your heart thumps, stomach twists, and you feel like throwing up. How many times had you once ascended these very steps with him, hand-in-hand, smiling to one another? How many times had you raced up these stairs, trying to get to the platform first? It’s too much, and you want to run. Run away from this place, from the thoughts and feelings.

No. You need this.

The winter air roughly brushes against your cheeks, hurrying you along.

What are you so afraid of?

Everything, you think. Everything. You’ve bound your heart in chains and locks, plastered it with thousands of bandages, one on top of the other. You’ve holed it away, willed it out of existence. You’re afraid of the memories, the emotions. You’re afraid of yourself.

Go. Just go. Get it over with.

You force your feet to move, one after another. You don’t think, you just move. Move onto the platform, move onto the train. You don’t realize that you’ve boarded the machine until you hear an all-too-familiar voice on the loudspeaker.

“This is the Special Rapid Train, on the Gyeongwon line, headed for Sosoyan. We will be stopping at Seokgye, Wolgye, Dobong and Iryeong. Please stay clear of the sliding doors!”

You vaguely see the blinking of lights and hear the shutting of the doors. The train picks up speed, clicking against the railroads. You are blank, a passenger on an endless journey. You sway when the train sways, stop when it stops. You don’t know how many stops have passed, having lost yourself in the familiar nothingness that had hollowed you out for the past year, until the speakers announce something about the next station being Dobong. You’re near, you realize. Too near.

Too soon does the train halt, birthing out and collecting new passengers as seats empty and taken once more in a matter of seconds. You watch this interchange with a bitter smile: how quickly he must have replaced you after you’d left, how he must’ve taken in another in your place.

Stop it.

Too engrossed in your thoughts, you don’t notice the closing of the doors and the blinking of the lights until you hear the loud system once more as the train starts to accelerate.

“Iryeong, Iryeong. Our next stop is Iryeong, please get off on the right side of the train.”

You are left suddenly hyper aware of your surroundings, watching as snow paints the ground white. The houses blur into trees and back into villages as you stare out the window, and you start to remember. You remember your hands intertwined, dancing in the snow, the click of a camera as the melodies of your laughs twirling in the air. You remember the snugness of his embrace, his earthy cologne, his smile, his lips pressed against yours…

Stop.

You tear your gaze away from the glass, staring down at your gloved hands fiddling in your lap. It’s been a year. It’s laughable how much and how little has changed. You’re different, yes, but yet so painfully similar to the girl who ran away. It’s funny how much of a difference, or lack thereof, a year can make, you think. It’s certainly been hard on you, and you find yourself wondering about him, about how maybe the year has changed him, how he’s doing, if he’s eating well, if…

Stop.

You’re hopeless, aren’t you?

You sigh and shut your eyes. You’re going crazy. Or maybe you’ve always been crazy. Your thoughts are feverish, a maelstrom in your mind. Involuntarily, you notice your feet rapidly tapping the metal bar to your side, vibrating against the pole. You feel the ghost of a touch on your thigh, hear the empty shell of his words, breathe, Y/N, breathe. What’s got you all worked up? And for a moment, just a moment, you feel his presence to your side, capture the warmth radiating off of his figure, and smile. Because it’s all okay when he’s here.

But he’s not.

You decide to focus on the sound of the railroads, staring down at the speckled floor of the train as the carriage undulates gently, side to side. You ride along, the train’s movements easing your own and you begin to lose yourself once again in the clacks of the rails, mind going blank, until you start to notice the slowing of the sounds. The train’s dance comes to a slow, inviting people to start getting up and shuffle towards the doors. Your heart sinks to your stomach. Not yet, not yet. It can’t be. It’s too soon.

The loudspeaker crackles to life, confirming your worst fears. “Arriving at Iryeong, please stay clear of the doors and exit on the right side of the train.”

Your legs move on their own accord, pulling you to a standing position as you grip the metal post with your life. The train continues to slow, eventually, painstakingly coming to a halt. You wish it never will, that it will continue on with its journey ahead. But it’s too late. The doors slide open, the sounds of the outside world whistle for you, calling you, urging you out of the comfort of the train. You don’t dare move, standing still as passengers trickle out, as the flashing lights start to appear, as the minute at the station starts to come to an end. The doors are closing in five. Four.

You twitch.

Three. Two.

“Wait!”

You rush out the doors, barely escaping the iron clasp of the metals that would’ve devoured you had you been a second too late. Behind you, the steel hisses as the vehicle exits the station, leaving you alone. So utterly alone.

You’re blessed with a moment of solitude, feeling nothing but the cold air chilling your face, until you realize where you are and why you’re here.

The bliss of being alone rapidly evaporates, and you’re hit with a speeding truck. The memories flood in; you’re winded, gasping for breath as you’re stormed with images, short clips of him, you, the pair of you. His smile, his laugh, his cheeks, eyes, nose. His breath tickling yours before he leans in for a kiss, his gentle, large hands cupping your face as you close your eyes…

Stop. Get a fucking grip, will you?

You force the color out of your mind as you make your way around the platform, empty now that everyone has gone. Your eyes graze against the pathetic, run-down station: the signs are only partially lit, the electricity having worn out. Your fingers run against the peeling, dirtied paint of the walls, dust bunnies catching onto your gloves. You scoff. This is pathetic. The floor is littered with plastics and old soda bottles, as if nobody’s been here to clean in too long. Graffiti smiles sadly back at you as you scan the fading walls, losing their life by the second. The bricks have faded into a musty brown, drab and uninteresting. Everything is so run down, so tired. You sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose as you make your way to the minimart to your right, wanting a beverage to help warm your insides up.

The doors slide open with a gentle clink, altering the store of your presence. The cashier at the counter looks up at you through half-lidded eyes, barely acknowledging you, before returning to the drama playing on his cracked phone. The shelves are well-stocked, however, in stark contrast to the beaten-down appearance of this whole ordeal. You glide along the aisles, and everything is the same. Your favorite tea is still on the same shelf as it was all those months ago, his favorite gimbap in the bottom left corner of the chiller. Beef and sesame, he’d get, while you’d get a tuna for yourself, clinking your drinks and hearing the hiss of his cola opening, laughing as you made a mess of yourselves, two young fools madly in love. You’d talk, drink, eat for hours, whispering, dreaming and wishing, wondering what was going to come in the future, what you’d name your first puppy, whether you wanted a girl or a boy for your first child. Never would you have ever imagined that it would all end this way.

Stop it.

You grab your bottle of tea violently, almost knocking it over in your hurry to leave. You could no longer stay, not here, suffocating in your memories of him. You erased the gimbap out of your vision, ignoring it as you made your way to the counter, paying for your drink as the half-hearted employee handed you with your change. You mutter a thank you, unsure if he had even heard, and mindlessly make your way out of the store, too focused on keeping someone out of your head. You nearly bang into the glass doors in your haste, looking down and walking as fast as you can. Until your heart stops, that is.

You don’t dare look up, not now. The whole world slows to a stand-still, your gaze sharpening on nothing. Your heart is about to beat out of your chest, your lungs stop working. Electricity charges through the air and you’re left reeling, not knowing what to do.

Slowly, painfully, your neck raises, muscles straining with all their might. You already know what you’re going to see, who you’re going to see, but the sight of him still shocks you all the same. You nearly spill your drink all over yourself when you finally look up, and your brain goes into overdrive. You’re sure that your mouth is hanging open, jaw slack, but you can’t do anything about it. Your knees buckle, you can’t breathe, suffocating, wanting the ground to swallow you up at this very moment. You want to fall, tumble into an eternal tunnel. You are dizzy, light-headed, going crazy, you swear. You’re going crazy, aren’t you? This can’t be real, can it?

You can’t believe it. You’re drowning, drowning in those chocolate eyes, sinking into his pupils, losing yourself in his gorgeous features. You drink him all in, his own face mirroring yours, in no doubt absolute shock or maybe even despair, his deadly stare making your breath hitch as it once did so long ago. He’d never lost his power over you, after all. The world is suspended around you, all operations ceased as you both continue to stare into each other’s eyes, the tension so palpable that it threatens to devour you whole. Your larynx seems to be glued shut, your tongue a stone in your mouth. There are no words, no way to express this feeling that washes over you upon seeing him again.

“Y/N…”

His voice. Your ears ring with his deep baritone, honey to your ears. You can’t help it: you quite literally swoon, despite the circumstances. His voice: it ignites a fire within you, warm tendrils of heat rising up from your stomach. Vibrations send throughout your core, making you lightheaded and sure that you’re about to fall. You remember his timber next to you in the dead of light, comforting you, whispering sweet nothings into your ear, it’s okay, it’s okay, breathe, it’s okay, you’re here with me.

You hug your arms around yourself, trying to keep it all in, retain the strange feeling that was now foreign to you after months of cold. It’s been too long, after all - you’ve gone too long deprived of this humanness, comfort that radiated off of him.

Things are different now, Y/N.

Yes, they are. Your mind goes berserk once more, considering all of the scenarios. Why is he here? He probably just needs to go to the minimart - no, why would he come all this way, he lives pretty far as well, or maybe he’s waiting on a friend, no, maybe he’s brought a new girlfriend, maybe she’s with him right now waiting to jump out of the shadows. Maybe they’re both exchanging looks right now when I’m not looking, laughing, taunting me, this girl from the past who doesn’t deserve to be here, maybe they all think I’m a joke now, what am I doing, why, why, why?

You’re so lost in your thoughts that when Taehyung addresses you once more, you’re violently jolted out of your mind and nearly fall backwards, body forgetting everything but the sound of his voice.

“Y/N…” he says again, forcing you to look up at him. Your name splinters through the air from his lips, cutting through the frost and straight into your chest; you notice now that his voice seems tired, that he seems tired.

You finally regain some semblance of control over your frozen tongue, lips moving in an attempt to emit a sound, any sound. Your lips wrap around the sole syllable that comes to you like muscle memory, the only one that you manage to choke out.

“T-Tae…”

Your voice cracks, unable to continue. The prolonged eye-contact has got you weak, his pupils boring into your soul. You look into his eyes, reciprocating, and you notice that maybe they’ve lost their golden sheen, that they no longer twinkle with constellations of stars. And it’s then that you realize: maybe the year has taken a toll on him too.

Look at what you’ve done to him.

“T-Tae, I, I, I…” you sputter out, guilt flooding your system like a drug. There was nothing you could say, nothing you could tell him to cheat yourself out of the situation or paint yourself in a better light like you’re so used to doing. You’re not used to feeling this powerless, this weak. Taehyung was the only one who saw through the facade, the only one who allowed you to feel vulnerable. You couldn’t lie to him, you knew you couldn’t; there was no wheedling, no bullshitting, no lying yourself out of any sticky situation, which had caused you this whole trouble in the first place. You ran because you were too much of a coward to talk to him, to confide in him. And look where that’s gotten you.

“Why are you here?” he asks, burying his head in his hands. “Y/N, why are you here?”

Why am I here? You don’t really know as well, there’s nothing that you can say to him. Why am I here? To get over him? How are you even going to tell him? He has to think that you’re over him, that it’s done. Stop torturing yourself, and stop dragging him through this mess of your life. Tell him that it’s done.

“I… I came because…”

Y/N, say something?

“I came because I… I was looking for you.”

What the fuck?

His head snaps up, his piercing stare catching your gaze once again. “You were looking for me?”

You feel your heart stop.

“Umm… well, I mean, no, but, no, well actually if I think about it now, yeah, yeah I was looking for you,” you stammer, unable to produce a single cohesive line of thought. “I was looking for you because I wanted to tell you that it’s over.”

Your own words are like a dagger twisting into your own heart and vaguely hear a choked sound breaking the awful, awful silence. Until you realize that it’s come from your own mouth, a sob that you hadn’t even realized that you were holding in.

A moment of charged silence goes by, yet louder than any noise that either of you could’ve let out. Never in your life has silence felt so utterly deafening, and you wish to cover your ears and scream it all out.

“You’re telling me this now?” Taehyung manages, features distorted in pain. “You’re telling me this now, a whole fucking year after you walk out the door without a single word to me?”

You look down at the ground, hating, blaming your traitorous mouth for saying something that you hadn’t fully thought through.

No, Y/N. You have to stop bringing everyone down.

You’ve lost all rational thought when you say, “yes, Taehyung. Yes. I had nothing to say to you then and nothing to say to you now. It’s done and it’s over.”

You couldn’t even say sorry?

The frosty wind brushes over the pair of you, causing you to shiver in your boots. You want nothing more than to curl up into a ball and disappear, pretend that this never happened, that this was all a bad dream.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see a security guard watching the whole exchanged with piqued interest. It’s none of your fucking business, you want to scream. It’s none of your fucking business. And yet you’re so humiliated, embarrassed at this whole mess that you’ve made of not only yourself but the situation in its entirety that you cannot muster up any words to merely defend yourself. You want to cry, sob, yell, scream.

“Fine, Y/N, it’s okay. You know what? It’s okay, you don’t owe me an explanation, you don’t owe me anything, not an apology, not a reason, not your love. It’s okay. It’s fine. Maybe you never loved me, saw me in the same way. Maybe I just assumed, maybe it was wrong of me to assume. Maybe I was too optimistic, too in love with you that I had forced myself to believe the story that I had made up in my head, that you were in love with me too. Maybe I had wanted it, wanted you so bad that I had made myself believe it. Made myself believe that you were in love with me.”

Your heart instinctually reaches out to him, drumming feverishly against your fragile ribcage. No, you want to scream. No, Taehyung, you couldn’t be more fucking wrong. He doesn’t know the way your heart beats for him in the dead of night, how the mere thought of him sends shivers down your spine, how every cell in your body, every thread of your being aches, yearns for his presence with every hour, every minute, every second.

You feel your heart breaking, splintering into thousands, millions of tiny little fragments raining down like shards of glass. It hurts, it hurts like hell.

“It’s okay, Y/N. Don’t force yourself into anything. There’s no need to anymore. There’s no more need to lie, no more need to pretend that you’re happy.”

“Thank you for telling me the truth.”

It’s not the truth, you want to cry. It’s not. It’s the farthest from it. But you return his look, tight-lipped. You nod, despite the swell of emotions that are threatening to cut you in half at this very moment.

“You’re welcome.”

He reciprocates your nod and slowly, painfully, tears his eyes from yours. He stands up, gingerly, as if hesitating, and you want to tell him to stop, to sit back down, that you’re lying to him, that you want him, that you want him more than anything in this world. But you don’t, and he continues onto his feet, sparing you one last gaze.

“At least I get to say goodbye,” he says, wistfully. “At least I now have the chance to say goodbye.”

You’re sure that tears are streaming down your face at this point, little trails of ice making their way down your blushed cheeks. Your lips are tight, and you cannot, for the life of you, return his look.

Before you can fully comprehend what’s happening, you know he’s here, the familiar hold of his arms, your face finding itself nestled on the same spot on his chest, right above his heart. You feel it beat, gently, slowly, under your ear, a comforting rhythm that you’ve too often fallen asleep to, whispered to. Your arms instinctually wrap around his waist, and his head settles on the crook of your neck, the curve of his nose gently kissing your delicate skin. His warmth radiates from under his coat, and you soak it all in, collecting as much as you can. You are two puzzle pieces, a perfect fit, and you will this moment into eternity, searing it into your memory, wishing for the world to stop, stop right now and leave you in this moment forever. You’ve been lost, wandering, and have finally come home.  

But forever doesn’t exist.

You’re struck with a blast of cold at his loss, feeling horribly empty. He steps away from you, and you’re almost certain that you see moisture in his eyes, tears threatening to break free. Every fiber of your being yearns for him, you want to reach out to him, extend the hug, shower him in kisses, make up and forget that this all even happened, but you’re too prideful. You can’t let yourself do this.

“Goodbye, Y/N. Thank you for everything.”

And just like that, he’s gone.

                                             [    ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙    ]

11:42am, March 12 2021

[taehyung]

I miss you.

I miss you as the seasons come and go, I miss you as I watch the world going to shit, losing all hope. I miss you when the wind blows, taking me along like a pointless man, destined for nowhere. I’ll miss you eternally; I’ll miss you when all the ice melts into the ocean, I’ll miss you when everything’s finally disappeared and there’s utter nothing left for me.

I miss you in the brightest mornings and the darkest nights, when the sun comes out to play and the rain starts pelting down like there’s no tomorrow. I’ll miss you in the loneliest winters and the blooming springs.

Everything reminds me of you. I am stuck in this eternal frost without you here; your loss has trapped me into this winter forever. I am slowly losing feel of my limbs as they succumb to the cold around me - everything has frozen into place, trapping me into the confines of this perpetual season. The world is closing in, I have nowhere to go, nothing to do. No longer do I have you to lead me out of this snow, no longer do I have you to hold my hand and bring me warmth through it all.

Why did you have to go?

Baby, did you know how much pain I’d be in when you’d left? Did you know how much it would hurt, how you’ve trapped me into this never-ending arctic, leaving me behind to freeze?

Did you know when you chose to go?

You’ve left me in ruins, my love. I can’t continue without you. I’m struggling to breathe, suffocating, as the world collapses inwards, threatening to bury me alive. I wait for you everyday, through all of the grief, the pain. I still wait for the day that you come back, that I get to see your face again.

Or maybe I’m a dumbass. I don’t know. Have you changed? Or is it I who has? Or perhaps, us both? I’m still a lovesick fool for you, Y/N, that I can tell you for sure. I can’t stop thinking of you, as the days pass, sun and moon taking their turns in the sky. I’m left, suffering in this darkness, bleakness without you here. I wonder if you’ll still be there at the end, when all ceases to exist. I wonder if I’ll see you again; how much more do I have to wait? How many more sleepless nights will have to pass before I can lay my eyes upon you again? How many days, months, years do I have to hold back before I get to feel you, touch you, kiss you, one more time?

Or maybe I’m being optimistic. You know what, Y/N, I’ll never see you again, maybe you’re better off without me. Maybe it’s all for the best, maybe it’s time for me to move on, maybe it’s time for you to move on. Maybe it really was not meant to be, maybe you really weren’t the one for me.

Then why can’t I get you out of my head?

Y/N, I wish I could just forget you. I wish you never existed, I wish I had never gotten to know you. Then it would be so much easier for me. I wish that you had ignored me, that you had turned me down when you had the chance. It would’ve been the most pain that I’d feel at the time, but believe me, it’s nothing compared to this.

Now I can’t get rid of you, no matter how hard I try. You’re there, you’re there when I lie down and close my eyes for the night, you’re there at work, hiding behind my papers and my laptop, waiting to take me out to lunch. You’re everywhere, baby, you’re in the car, riding shotgun and racing to connect to Bluetooth first, singing at the top of your lungs as we speed down the highway like the reckless teenagers that we were. I see you, hair tangled by the wind, belting out your favorite lyrics out of the roof of my convertible. And I remember thinking, for the hundredth time that night, you’re the most beautiful girl in the world. Damnit, Y/N, you’re standing by the mirror every morning when I get ready for my meetings, dainty fingers straightening my tie and planting a kiss on my lips. You got this, lover boy.

You’re there, and then you’re not. You flicker between reality and imagination, I cannot discern whether I’m living in a fever dream or simply hallucinating. You’re slipping through my hands like grains of sand: I’m losing more of you by the second, can’t seem to hold on to you. You’re disappearing, getting further and further away as all I can do is watch helplessly as you fall through my fingers.

Where are you now, Y/N?

I worry about you, I worry whether you’ve eaten well, whether you’ve slept well, whether you’ve had a good day at the office. Have you seen your parents lately? Have you had some time to yourself over the past days, have you overworked yourself as you often tend to do? Are you taking care of yourself?

Is it selfish of me to be wishing for you, thinking of you after all this time? Tell me, Y/N, is it wrong of me to be wanting you despite it having been over for so long now? You’ve probably moved on by now, considering how long it’s already been. Maybe you’ve met someone new, maybe you’re in love with someone else, maybe I’ve already been replaced with another man in your life.

Maybe I treated you wrong, maybe you didn’t feel like I loved you enough, maybe I didn’t make you feel special enough. I wish, Y/N, I wish that I could turn back time for you, I wish I could go back and be better for you, that I could fix all of the mistakes that I’ve made, wipe all of the tears that you might’ve cried for me, swallow up all of the pain that must’ve been plaguing you, to suck up the hurt that you were feeling back then. I wish you could give me all of the pain, I wish that I could’ve carried it all for you, shielded you from it all like how I should’ve done.

But it’s too late now, isn’t it?

You’ve met someone else by now, you’re laughing, smiling, whispering with another, kissing someone else’s lips, in love with your new man. And I’m still here, trying to get over you like the pathetic loser that I am. There are so many regrets, so many things that I wish that I could still tell you, so many errors, mistakes that I made. It’s all my fault. I want nothing more than to be able to get on my knees in front of you and apologize for everything. There are so many more words, so many moments that I want nothing more than to be spending with you.

I’m still in love with you.

I think I always will be, Y/N. I know it’s selfish of me. I really can’t help it. I’m sorry.

You came into my life like a whirlwind, taking all of me along for the ride. And now that you’re gone, I don’t know what to do with myself no longer. I’ve been swept away with you and my fate will forever be left in your hands. There’s nothing left for me here, not in my work nor art. All that’s left is you. You are the only thing keeping me going now - I live another day, endure another night hoping for you, waiting for the day that I will finally see you again. I open my eyes for you in the mornings, in hopes of laying them upon your figure once more.

Maybe it’ll all be for nothing, I know. Maybe I’ll never see you again. But there’s nothing left for me, remember? I’m willing to take my chance. For when I finally do see you once more, it will all be worth it.

I miss you, Y/N. I miss you so fucking much. My heart beats for you, my lungs breathe for you. My every cell in my entire being aches so desperately for you, for you and you only. And so I’ll wait for you. I promise. I’ll be here for you, waiting for the day that I get to catch a glimpse of you, to be there when you need a shoulder to cry on, for when you need even the littlest, tiniest thing. I’m ready to give you the world, baby. I’m ready to right all my wrongs, to treat you like the fucking queen that you are. I’m going to treat you the way that you deserve.

When that time comes, my heart will be happy. When the time comes that I see you again, that I hear your voice again, your laugh again, it’ll be okay. All this pain will fade away to nothing. Don’t worry about me, darling, I’ll always be here, waiting. Waiting for you, until the end.

I promise.

                                                    ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙

an: i hope you liked it!!!! <3 please please please leave feedback my loves!

[ji-yaaan]

𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐲...

Yandere!Malleus x Reader Oneshot

Warnings: Mentions of death, blood, self harm, toxic relationships.

Note: Yandere time kids! \(óvò)/ time to debut as a yandere writer... Lolololol jk! But seriously, I think I enjoyed writing this too much- hmmmmm I don't know what to say anymore..... Anyways have fun reading ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Rain dripping down the skies. Heavens weeped their sorrows. Raindrops pitter-pattered on the glass windows, loneliness fills the room accompanied by a cold wind that gushed from the open windows. Ice cold raindrops hit your frozen face. How you wished to wail out your misery and despair... 

Life is unfair...When was it fair? When you had the 5 seconds in which your escape from this endless nightmare was in the grasp of your hands? Freedom was in arm's reach, yet the so called freedom was a lie painted in sweet colorful rotten words.

"God... Is this a joke? Is this a test? Is this a Nightmare? Why have you forsaken me?" You questioned the heavens pouring down heavily. As if to mock you, a loud boom of thunder echoed up above, lightning lit up the dark grey skies for a brief moment...

Empty eyes filled with sorrows gazed up the heavens, unironically, the abyss stared back at their lifeless soul. You scoffed as the heavens ridicule you, a scornful laughter escaped your lips. Only to be interrupted by a loud creak of the wooden doors that rang across the room. "Hmmmmm? Y/N darling, what are you doing by the windows? See.... Look at you.... You're drenched and you might get sick..." A deep sigh escaped the fae's lips as his eyebrows furrowed from worry. "You really have a knack for getting people worried, my love..."

How disgusting "If you're really worried, you should've let me go by now..."

Is what you'd like to say, but why make it worse for yourself? Instead of a truthful answer, you simply stared at the man you loathed most... Malleus Draconia... The great man of The Valley of thorns... The infamous man who's part of the top 5 greatest mages... The powerful prince, who's heir to the throne... Just why must he stoop this low to abduct someone with the stupid excuse of true love?

A pair of peridot orbs that seemed to glow in the dark sent shivers down your spine. Those very orbs that stared straight down at you suffocating your chest. "I'm sorry..." You have to keep it together... You worked so hard to earn this man's trust and favor, you planned your way out of this mess... The show must go on The fae walked towards your direction, inching closer and closer. The air around you seemed suffocating as it became harder to breathe. The man you despised the most... the man you detested most... held your chin up to face him as he towered over your figure. Malleus brushed away a stray hair in your forehead. His peridot eyes that looked like gems allured you, they shone brightly despite the fact that both of you were surrounded by plain darkness. You felt small in his precence...

The fae held unto both of your cheeks as he placed a small gentle kiss atop your forehead. Almost af if it was done in a loving manner... He rested his forehead in yours, darting his gaze back unto yours. "I love you, my darling..." His eyes pierced your soul as a cold sweat ran through your spine. You were speechless, tongue was tied, no words escaped your lips. Growing paler by second, colors leaving your face. A shiver went down your spine as the dark fae held unto your neck, grasp tightening as moments pass. Your pulse and your heartbeat ringing in your ears, your brain was set in a frenzy as hands tightened around your neck. Caught up in a moment of hysteria, the lack of oxygen caused you to gasp for air, as you stared at the glowing pair of eyes inches above you. Your stomach churns, adrenaline rushed up your body. You forced yourself to say the words that left a disgusting taste in your mouth... "I love you too..." Your lips curved up forming a weak forced smile as a pair of lips devoured yours. A distinct taste of bitter sour berries spreads inside your mouth, like a deadly disease blooming in chaos...

Rays of warm sunlight lit the stagnant bedrooms. Buried in silken sheets and velvet pillows, cold fingers held you tightly in slumber. Like a nightmare that paralyzed your body, the fae embraced you closely, merley inches apart from one another. How you wished to wake up from this nightmare... Staring blankly at the ceiling, thousands of thoughts lingered on your mind. You wanted to disappear from this sick fate that bounded you to where you are. You closed your eyes, wishing when it opens, you're back in the safety and comfort of your real home.

Day after day, you struggled aimlessly under the grasp of the fae. You felt like life was taken away from your grasp, making you an empty shell of your former self. Smiles became meaningless. Laughter became dull. Your vision painted gre, colors began to burn out... The only thing that's bound to keep you breathing is the hatred you bore for the man you loathed. So you made yourself a show to put on. A mere act of rotten love, like a lovesick songbird chirping lies after lies. The fae believed the deceptive love you showed, drunk in his delusions. With each fables that escaped your lips, a nauseating taste lingers on you mouth.

Now you've come this far. You felt broken beyond repair. The once colorful life you've lived feels like a vivid dream you hopelessly graps on. No means of escape under clutch of the sickening man you despised. How ironic life can be.... Hope keeps us breathing, only to kill us at the end. But this time hope is not the only reason for you to be breathing. Seething hatred you bore against Malleus plagued your mind day and night. How you wished your hatred and insanity bore fruit...

Morning dew drops dripped from the lush leaves of the white rose petals. In the garden of the diasomnia halls, there you stood caught in a daze not knowing what to do. You sat down in the lonely table in the middle of the lonesome rose garden. White flowers adorned the scenery as you pick up your cup and took sip of your bitter tea. "How dull..." You flipped  the pages of the worn out book in the midst of your fingers. You savor your sweet time indulging in your pseudo freedom while the fae is away.

In between the crumbling book you held, lies a small note stuck in between the pages. The note you've been reading for the past few weeks, contemplating on it's contents. A wicked smile plastered across your face as you peered unto the dagger that sat across the table. But your vision shifted to something far more interesting... The flask that accompanied the lone dagger. The flask with intricate designs and patterns that's bound to intrigue anyone. The very flask you stole from Malleus' study... "It's time..."

You took a last sip of the tea in your cup. The unpleasant taste still lingered in your mouth. You took the silver dagger beside the glass bottle, charmed by the metal adorned with dainty rose carvings. You sighed as you ponder on whether you're doing something right. "The right thing to do? What a joke..." A broken smile plagued your face as you look up the heavy skies threatening to pour at any moment.

The dagger in your hands pierced the smooth skin under your wrists. Scarlet hues dripped down your arms with each slash of the white metal. What a bore... None of this is painful... Has reality really became dull for you to be this numb to not even feel pain? How disappointing for yourself. Are you even human at this point? Oh right... You died once upon a time when you kissed the man you despised.

As the sunset melted in the dark grey skies, raindrops dripped from the heavens yet again. You felt like time was running out pointing the dagger in your chest. Metal prickling your collarbone, blood spilt unto your dress. A stab across the chest as sweet vermilion ichor gushed from your torso, staining your fingers bright scarlet red. The metal dug deeper under your flesh, followed by a wail escaping your lips. 

"What are you doing!" An ear piercing scream echoed in between the thunders and rain. Malleus raced towards your direction with raging fury evident in his eyes. burning peridot orbs devoured your vision as the fae loomed over your figure. Crouching unto the muddy ground, Malleus asked again "What do you think you're doing?" Possessive chartreuse eyes piercing you deeper than the metal in your chest. A scoff left your mouth as a loathsome grin surfaced your face, a sneer ridiculing the fae before you. A moment of silence passed, but the fae's fury began to grow more with each passing second. Green flames devoured the rose gardens. The very flames that suffocated you. "You're a monster" you said under your breath as a mocking grin graced your lips.

"Then make me the monster that will forever be your nightmare my love..." The fae pulled the dagger out your chest as more blood gushed and pooled under you. "How foolish humans can be... Didn't I tell you? no matter what you do, you cannot escape from me. Even if you ran away to another world.. I’d find you wherever you’ll go. Now let’s stop this twisted game we’re playing before I change my mind." Green flames engulfed your figure for a brief moment.  "ARGHHH!" A weep escaped your lips as you felt the pain from the flames burning the life out of you. The cuts in your wrists and your supposedly wounded chest is nowhere to be seen. Like a vivid dream that never happened. 

You looked at your pathetic state sitting down in the muddy grass as malleus hend unto your arms. Pools of red blood stained your white dress. The rain wailing as the thunders roared in the distance. Green flames engulfing the rose bushes despite the raindrops pouring. You stared at the dagger in your lap that stabbed your flesh, yet the supposedly wounded places are smooth and flawless. No sign of scar or wound to be seen. Nothing...

You stared at the man before you. Towering over your figure, Malleus put a hand on your cheeks as he dries off the droplets that hit your face. Peridot eyes stared down at you. The anger and disappointment still present in his eyes as green flames swallowed the gardens. Oddly enough, this moment you felt nothing, just an empty void inside you, no means of escaping this nightmare. Nothing... Absolutely nothing... No fear, No remorse, No hatred, No Love.

"You cannot escape me, my darling. No one in this twisted world will love you as much as I do. I am your one true love and  I hope you won’t forget that..."  Threats that are masked by sweet sugary words like cheap rotten candies... How disgusting... "Are you sure about that My Love??" Mocking the fae with your words, you inched closer to close the gap that seperated the both of you. Lips mingled with each other, but instead of a sweet reaction from an innocent kiss, The fae violently reacted as he pulled away grabbing unto both your wrists.

"What did you drink?"  Burning eyes that gleamed fury and anger... What a sight to see... The taste of bitter tea mixed with rotting flavors still lingered in your mouth. A wicked smile plastered across your face, you replied "I wonder what it was?" Sharp nails dug under your flesh. Scarlet liquids dripped across your arms. Eyes burning with rage stared down at you. Green flames that glowed surrounded the both of you. Booming thunders echoed up the sky. Loud raindrops hitting the grounds grew louder.

You reached for your pocket to hold out the note you were reading for weeks now. "Eternal slumber" 2 words made the great Malleus Draconia insane. 2 words that destroyed the pseudo world the both of you lived in. 2 words that set aflame to both of your twisted worlds.. 2 words that will set you free from this joke you call life.... Freedom tastes sweet.

"You’re not allowed to leave me... what have you done? Don't do this to me... stop joking around... Y/n you love me right" Eyes brewing with insanity darted their gaze unto you. The man drowning in delusion was drunken in madness. Pale hands made their way to your neck, ice cold fingers gripped your skin as black nails dug your flesh. "Even if I have to use every spell, every magic, I'll make sure to make you wake up and punish you. y/n you won’t escape from me." Tears fell from the fae's face as madness devoured both of your souls. Hands that gripped your neck tightly shook. As Malleus let's go of you. The fae embraced you rigidly, burying his face in the crook of your neck. A weep escapes his lips "Y/n dont leave me..." salty tears trickled down your neck. Alas, you cannot savor this victory for long.

A mocking grin graced your face for one last time. The sky seemed to settle down, but the flames burned brighter. Triumph....this was your sweet triumph... It's funny how you won but now you've lost so much. In fact, you've lost everything now, even yourself.....how sad.... Your eyes began to grown heavy, you simply felt tired. "Goodnight." Your eyes closed shut, never to open again. Unless with a kiss of true love, eternal slumber shall devour you.

The End....

HGNNNNN MALLEUS WAS THE EASIEST TO BULLY OK!? I wanted to do vil, but I'm sweating too much, I can't even think of a concept🤦🤦 oh wait I actually have one..... But that's for another day( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Hope y'all enjoyed this low quality yandere time!🥺🥺🥺🥺

Tagging: @ghostiebabey u said tag u if I make yandere content..... Shame on me for this😔✊

[dontasktheradiodemon]

Sands #2 (1/2/2021)

Click here if you’re like “What the heck is this about?”

Valera @autokrates meets Alastor @usedhearts. They hunt fish. I don’t mean “they go fishing,” I mean “they hunt fish.”

At one point Valera uses their Mom Voice on Alastor. It’s super effective.

Valera

Having guests was lovely, but the best part of being back home? The ocean, with all the underwater caverns, the kelp forests, the reefs and coves and crowds of colorful fish to lose yourself in. Valera had well and truly lost track of time goofing off in the water, doing acrobatics and harassing the local wildlife until she was dizzy from it all. But she had obligations, and as wonderful as time to herself was, she wanted to see her company before it got too late.

She turned to the shallows once more, picking up speed and skimming along just under the surface until the last! Possible! Moment! And then she breached, tucking into a somersault and then twisting into one, two, three backflips before landing on the shore, a self satisfied little grin plastered across her face. Still got it. Hmhmhm~

Alastor (@usedhearts)

When Valera lands, there's applause, both real and canned, and even a few whistles.

"What a performance! Simply stunning! How graceful, how dexterous! How powerful!" Alastor called from his spot on his beach blanket. With a red and grey stripped swimsuit, and a pair of small sunglasses replacing his monocle, he looked decidedly different from his usual outfit. But certainly not different enough that one wouldn't recognize the Radio Demon himself.

"I wasn't expecting a show beyond the sultry song of the sea herself, but then there you were, springing for from the water like Aphrodite herself!" He stood and walked over towards them, hands, still gloved, clasped behind his back-- and was he still in his shoes and socks? Yes! Clearly someone didn't plan on going for an actual dip.

"Mademoiselle Valera, isn't it? Pleasure to finally, formally meet you! Alastor, the Radio Demon!" He winked over his sunglasses and moved nearer to give her a playful elbow.

"But you knew that already, didn't you!"

Valera

She really should have expected an audience, with this many people on one island. But it's still a surprise to turn and see the ~feared radio demon himself~ dressed like something out of an old timey picture... Oh gods he was still wearing socks and shoes. Somehow she'd expected as much... But best not to get distracted by that, he was coming in fast and already talking and right right yes, this was a new one, must by Kyxs' boss? Either that or the one Rhedd brought along, but... No, he seemed normal-ish, for an Alastor..

A demure little smile, and she nods. "I'd be hard pressed to mistake you for anyone else, my good man! I take it you've been enjoying your stay so far, judging by your attire?"

Alastor

"Yes! Certainly! Haven't seen an ocean this gorgeous since I was alive, had to get my fill!" He turned toward said ocean, his hand moving in a large arch, taking in the whole of it. "And of course, I couldn't wear my usual out here! The beach is no place for a suit, after all!"

He turned back to her, and gave himself a comical slap on the forehead, the audience laughing as he did. "Oh dear, how rude of me, I haven't made it clear _which_ Radio Demon I am! I'm the one that came with Kyxs! He's my apprentice!"

There was a chorus of 'ooooo's like someone messed up in a sitcom. "OH! And I even forgot to thank you for that gift: the tiny radio! Bee's a darling, she's right here, actually!"

He pulled the teeny radio out of the pocket on his swimsuit chest, cradling her gently in his hand to show Valera.

"Thank you dearly for her, she's a charmer to be sure! No one can look away when she comes out!"

Valera

She covers her mouth with a hand, stifling her amused snort as best she can as he waves around. This Alastor was *very* animated, it almost reminded her of Pentious. "Ah! Yes, of course. I was wondering. I appreciate the speediness of your clarification, my dear, much appreciated!"

Oh, and there's the little darling herself, tiny little Bee! "I'm so glad you like her, she's the sweetest little thing to ever receive a radio wave. And so helpful! Her schematics have been a great help in understanding the transition from the larger compact radios like the Baby Grand, to the pocket radios like *this* little beauty. But that's a lot of technical nonsense, I wont bore you with my prattling."

Though, now that she sees Bee.. "No no, I have something MUCH better for you and yours, my good man!" Give her a moment to reach into her room through the ever convenient portal, there's something somewhere on her worktable... Ah, perfect. Alastor is presented with a tiny bow, fabric dyed to match his classic bow tie.

"So you can match!"

Alastor

His eyes turn to dials, just for a split second when she reveals the bowtie. And then he's gasping! The audience is gasping! Everyone is gasping!

He delicately takes the bow and affixes it to Bee-- somehow it sticks without any sort of adhesive, but that's magic for ya! Alastor holds Bee out, admiring her with her new bow. The audience coos in delight.

"Look! At that! How cute, how adorable! Simply stunning, beautiful, the most charming little radio to ever graces the nine circles! She'll be the talk of the town!!"

Valera

Oh no, oh that was so cute. Look at that itty bitty little radio all dressed up, she could just KICK herself for not making some tiny antlers to match. Next time. But even just a bow was precious, no need to overdo it.

"She looks even better than I imagined! Nobody will be able to resist your little lady now, even the coldest hearts would melt. Make sure nobody tries to steal her away, Alastor!"

Alastor

"Oh, they won't! I'll be sure of that! No one's going to touch this little darling!" He tucked her safely back into his pocket.

"Now, I've been wondering, the sea-- what kinds of seafood do you get from it?"

Valera

She tilts her head to one side, fins exaggerating the gesture.

"What kinds of seafood? Fish, with and without shells. Plants as well, if you're interested in kelp and seaweed. There's a sea serpent in the area too, but I wouldn't consider him food so much as a part of the scenery. If you're craving fresh fish, we've got plenty in the kitchens for you to play with!"

Alastor

"Oh, that sounds delightful! Fresh fish can be so hard to come by in Hell, and to get to experiment with new varieties, well! It's enough to make a chef's heart soaaaaaar!" He belted the note, the sound of birds chirping accompanying him.

"I'll have to make sure to take some when I go, just to have some extra fun with the hotel! But before then, seeing the variety would be scrumptious!"

Valera

"You should try snorkeling. Maybe spearfishing, if you want to try catching them yourself..." She looks him up and down. Perhaps not. "... Or we can package some in live traps for you!"

Alastor

"Live traps! How quaint! I'd love some, certainly, thank you!" He laughed, and as always, the audience joined in.

"I might be persuaded to wade a bit, but going fully underwater isn't my cup of tea. You understand." He tapped his chin. "Spearfishing, though, tell me more about that..."

Valera

Oh good, a subject she can drone about! She claps her hands, giving Alastor her toothiest grin.

"The most basic form of spearfishing is very straightforward. You get your fishing spear, you find a good shoreline, pier, or take a boat out to a school of fish.. And you heft your spear in to skewer your target! If you plan on throwing it, tie a line to the pole! You can put bait or just wait for an opportunity to present itself, people have different methods. There's also *speargun* fishing, where you take, essentially, a crossbow, and do the same thing! Speargun fishing is typically done fully underwater, but I'm sure it would still be serviceable from above. The bolt is pulled back in by the line, the fish is placed wherever you store them, rinse and repeat!"

Alastor

"Oh! That sounds wonderful! Now, I wonder where there would be an experienced spearfisher to show me the ropes!" He pretended to look around before jumping when he 'spotted' Valera.

"Well! You're right here, aren't you! How about we go rummage up some gear and let loose on some fish!"

Valera

"By all means my dear protege, just so long as that fish isn't me! I may be delicious according to select sources, but I'm afraid there's already other Alastors queued up for a go at me!" She sighs, pressing a dainty wrist to her forehead. "Yes, everything from breast to shank. You'll have to take a number, or settle for second best!"

Valera snorts, offers a deep bow, and gestures grandly towards the estate. Weaponry awaits!

Alastor

"Oh, how terrible! Looks like I'll have to wait my turn behind myself!" The audience gave a short boo before swapping to laughter, as Alastor turned towards the estate.

"Let's see the weapons! Can't wait to discover all the secrets of alien weaponry!"

Valera

And off they go, to the estate, and then the armory. The secrets of alien weaponry? Easy! It's magic!

Veci don't have a cultural inclination towards technology, but every member of the species radiates magic the way humans radiate body heat, and they channel it in everything they do. How could electricity compete with that? All things that Valera will happily explain to Alastor when she drops a speargun into his gloved hands.

"I don't know if your magic works the same way, Alastor, but it doesn't matter. I can always charge it for you, and even without magic the gun will function. The magic just lets the bolt go farther, and winds it in automatically."

Alastor

His grin becomes a little manic when the gun is dropped in his hands. He'd never been one for guns, but this!! This was something special! He adored the heft of it and held it up to look down the sights.

"Oh, no worries! Let's see..." His eyes turned to dials and the static picked up, a red glow radiating around his hands. It flowed into the gun and he settled back down.

"Well, look at that, I think it worked!" Alastor laughed, putting it up on his shoulder. "Shall we?"

Valera

A wise man would probably think better than to cheerily hand the big bad radio demon a magic powered speargun designed for maiming fish, especially when said wise man was himself a fish. But Valera never claimed to be wise. Or a man, but that was as debatable as any other gender floating around. No no, Valera grins just as wide as Alastor, her own gun loosely held in a practiced grip.

"We *shall!*" And off they go, to spear helpless fish off the pier.

Alastor

Alastor lets out a cackle filled with static as he followed them-- no audience that time, it was full manic Radio Demon glee!

And down to the pier they travel. He's so excited he's nearly vibrating.

"Now, don't pick on me if I'm a terrible shot-- haven't handled a gun in decades!"

Valera

"I wouldn't *dream* of it, my good deermon. In fact, I should warn you! You'll want to aim low, water refraction likes to make fish look further than they actually are. The first five shots are practice, in my book."

She twirls her gun with a flourish, curling her tail under herself to improvise a seat. How convenient, to be a fish with a tail longer than you are tall. How rich! And now the fun part. A little bait in the form of a chicken thigh tossed off the pier, and watch the fish gather.

"Have at it, Alastor."

Alastor

"Deermon! Ha! Lovely!" He laughed, the audience joining in this time.

Once the bait was in the water and the fish swarming, he took aim, humming a jaunty little diddy to himself as he pulled the trigger....and missed.

Well! Valera did say the first five didn't count! He wound it back and then gestured for her to take a shot.

Valera

She purrs, takes a look down at the water... And spears a fish through the head. She doesn't look very pleased when she reels it in though, huffing as she examines the entry point.

"Hrm. I was *aiming* for the eyes..." Ah well, time to take a bite! Delicious.

Alastor

"Oh! Well, look at you-- and here you had me thinking we'd be trading missed shots for a bit!" He laughed and then aimed again, focusing more intently this time.

Another shot!

......And another miss.

Valera

She glances over, eyes scrunched up in half moons as she tries to look apologetic around a mouthful of fish.

"Oh? Sorry darling, I've been doing this since I grew thumbs! Though if it makes you feel any better, it took me three days of trying before I ever caught my first fish with these tools."

Alastor

His eyes squint in turn, but he's still amused! So that's good.

"Ah, fair enough! Like me with cooking! Been doing that since I could hold a spoon!" He took aim again-- but then blinked, something registering at last and he lowered the gun to turn to her.

"_Grew_ thumbs, you say?"

Valera

Oop, hang on, let her swallow this mouthful. Alright, the fish remnants are dropped on the pier next to them, that can be the next piece of bait when they feel like shooting again. She turns to face Alastor properly, jazz handing with gusto.

"Yeah! Veci like me hatch with our little graspers shaped more like *paws* than anything else. If you were so inclined, you'd still be able to feel the grippy little pads in my fingertips. Think... fish cats? I guess? We've got a hatchling right here in the estate, actually, if you're struggling to visualize what I'm on about."

Alastor

"Paws?" A brow arches as he thinks on that, and then he laughs.

"Oh, that's quite cute. Fish cats...." He snapped his fingers and shouted. "Catfish!" Before bursting into laughter.

"Ah, oh, I crack myself up!"

Valera

She flutters her eyelids, pressing dainty fingertips to her smirking lips.

"Actually, I'm a lionfish, my dear sir."

And then she just starts _cackling_.

Alastor

Oh boy! They're both laughing! And the audience is laughing! It's just a laugh factory around here!

It takes him a GOOD FEW MINUTES to collect his composure, and he wipes tears from his eyes as he does.

"My, my, you are a CARD, my good lady! Or perhaps even a full deck! No wonder you've charmed your way into the hearts of so many of Hell's citizens!"

Valera

Just a couple of clowns standing around with spearguns, laughing their heads off. What could be more normal than this?

Deep breath, she's good. "Thank you, my fine fellow! That's the kindest way I've been called *stacked* yet!" She honest to god slaps her thigh, barking out another laugh before she regains her composure.

"Sorry, sorry. Couldn't resist! I appreciate it, truly. You're a bit of a riot yourself, aren't you Alastor? I suppose I could expect no less from a fellow who knows how to talk a person in circles!"

Alastor

"Oh yes! Comes from working in Raaaadiooooo~" He belts that last word-- he was doing that a lot today! Maybe it was just from being so happy at _not_ being hunkered down for an extinction. Plus sun was good for the skin!

"I've trained a long time to work my way around words as well as a serpent sliding through the surf!" He threw her a wink before hoisting his gun again. He took aim and!!

This time he hit! He laughed excitedly-- with surprisingly little static-- as he pulled it in.

"Well, would you look at that! It's a body shot, but hell, I'll take it!"

Valera

Being out of Hell seems to have perked up a lot of people's moods, she shouldn't be surprised by the extra oomph. She is, but she shouldn't be. But then he turns to try another shot, and she gasps in delight as he hits his mark, clapping as he reels in his first catch.

"Oh! Amazing, only your third shot and you've made a catch! You're a natural, Alastor. What a shot!" Will he be needing a cooler for that fish? Some ice?

Alastor

Nope! Just like her, he takes it off the spear and takes a nice, big chomp out of it. What good was catching your own seafood if you didn't try some fresh out of the ocean?

He hummed and hawed as he chewed, tongue licking his teeth and picking at the spaced between. "How interesting a taste! Familiar, and yet, completely foreign!"

He laughed and then took another bite, letting the audience continue to chuckle for him.

Valera

FINALLY someone around here with STANDARDS. Valera's tail would be wagging, if she wasn't using it to lean on. Her fins will suffice, the little wiggle likely indiscernible from another other twitch to the eyes of an alien. But even so!

"Palatable, I hope! You're doing a grand job, you'll be wiping the floor with me soon enough. Were you a hunter in life, then?"

Alastor

He laughed again! Around his mouthful of fish! He swallowed without chewing much and shrugged.

"Oh, I dabbled here and there. Living in New Orleans, one learns those sorts of things. So much in bayou to make into dinner! Say, have you ever had gator?" His eyes sparkled-- literally, they got big and sparkly as he spoke.

"Ah, one of the things I miss most about living! So hard to get good gator down in Hell, unless it's been a fellow sinner!"

Valera

HAS she had gator? Hrm...

"I might have, but not in many, many years! I'd be happy to bring you some, if you'd be kind enough to share the meal you make out of it! Same with any other seafood you crave. Or crawfish, I never know if they should count as *sea*food..."

Alastor

"Oh, I certainly think so! A proper seafood spread is never finished without a heaping, steaming pile of crawfish!" He laughed. "I'd be more than happy to share some of anything I make! What good is New Orleans cooking if you don't share it?"

He hummed, a low whine turning more high pitched, as he aimed again-- and fired. Oops that one's another miss.

"Dang! Thought I had it!"

Valera

She watches him fire again, eyes narrowing as the bolt misses. Would it be overstepping if she...? Ah, what's it matter. She reaches an arm out, mindful of his personal space as she taps the speargun a hair lower.

"You're doing beautifully, don't worry. You've got this next one in the bag, Alastor."

Alastor

He doesn't say anything when she tilts the gun lower, and even sends a beaming smile her way. And then he aims again, and fires again.....

And another strike! Another body shot, but hey! He was still learning, after all. He reeled it in and removed the spear.

"This one I think, will need some ice!"

Valera

A small matter to drop a cooler and some ice in, presented with a grand flourish to her most esteemed guest. And THEN a round of applause on top of it. He IS doing remarkably well after all, he deserves some feedback for his efforts.

"Fantastic display, Alastor. Five shots, two kills, and all within your first half hour of practice! I couldn't be prouder of my star pupil!"

Alastor

"How long until this thing needs to be recharged, so to speak?" He looked at the gun, inspecting it all over.

"And thank you! I've always picked up things rather quickly-- well, most of the time!"

Valera

"Eh, with shallow waters like these? Ten shots, I think the instructions said? Though I'm not sure how your magic compares, so it could be eight, or twelve." She shrugs. "I barely ever need to charge mine, but to say I radiate magic might be describing it in the way a forest fire might be called a bit toasty, so.. Your mileage may vary."

Alastor

He snorted, and aimed once more-- spearing another fish. He was getting pretty good at this.

"Radiate is about right, I could feel your aura from a mile away! It's so....everywhere here, that it _actually_ took me a while to notice it. Like if you're in the water and don't notice the temperature."

Valera

She grins! Offers him a very loud purr in place of a shoulder bump.

"Oh! You noticed? Nobody had said anything, I wasn't sure if you were sensitive to it or not. Okkylk itself sings with magic! Or, at least the parts where we Veci like to live do. If you go into the mountains, it thins out considerably. The Nir and Artak'in aren't nearly so.... Vibrant, I suppose. And the Pira actually *absorb* magic." Yes, he's totally going to know what all of those things she's saying mean. Absolutely.

..... Cough. "Those are the other species that live on Okkylk."

Alastor

He smiles through it. Be strong, Alastor, be strong for Mother! He laughs and gives her a nod.

"Oh yes, I figured as much! Wouldn't want to meet the ones you said absorb magic-- I run on the stuff, pretty much!" He shrugged and aaaaaimed again. And fired! And missed. Well, you win some, you lose some. He reeled it back in.

"I'm quite magical myself, so I did notice! I suspect my other selves also did, but with the lot of us, who knows! Kyxs may well have noticed too, but he hasn't been practicing his aura sensing much." The audience 'ooooo's and he tsks.

Valera

Oh, hm! Closer, that one was unfair. She'd probably have missed too. Guess she can fire a shot, but she'll be fair and aim for trickier targets... Ough, body shot on that eel. Good enough, into the cooler it goes.

"Tsk tsk! Alastor, you'd better tell that boy to get back to his studies! Can't have him getting himself in trouble with half baked magic, that's worse than no magic at all!"

Alastor

"Yes, I know! I've been giving him a break for the holidays-- stressful time that it is-- but after the extermination, he'll be right back in it!" He laughed and shot again. Another fish and that one was right into the eye! Excellent!

He beamed at Valera as he tossed it into the container.

Valera

She actually cheers when he reels in his new catch, bouncing in place right there on the dock as she claps enthusiastically. He did it! What a shot! What a PERFORMANCE! A perfect display!

"Bravo, Alastor! That was BEAUTIFULLY done! You've got to be pulling my leg, you've done this before, haven't you darling? Either way, that was perfect! I'm in awe, my dear!"

Alastor

He laughs!! Again!! And puts a hand to his chest. "I swear on my dear Mother, that I haven't! Told you, I get things quick!"

He hums and then a song starts playing. _If I can learn to do it, you can learn to do it!_ The song cuts off as quick as it starts, and he chuckles, firing off another shot. And another strike! Not a clean one like before, but still good!

Valera

Not perfect, but more than good enough to bring in dinner. And look, she even gets a snippet from... "Anastasia! A wonderful little film that was, the songs were so lovely. And my goodness, the animation.."

Hmmhmm... She's getting distracted, don't mind the humming.

Alastor

He blinks at that! Well!! "I wasn't expecting you to know songs from Earth!"

He lifts the gun and fires again, and another strike. As he reels it, he figures it's about time to charge it back up, and there his eyes go, all radio dials again and the static picks back up-- and then he's back to normal.

"I find most musicals entertaining! Far more than non-musicals, for certain! And yes, the animation has a charm to it!"

Valera

He wouldn't know! Of course he wouldn't know. She twirls in place, arms opening as she just short of sings.

"Oh, I love Earth musicals! All the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, Mary Poppins, Hello Dolly, Chicago, even a number of animated films! I've seen a spread, and I've found some charm in each of them!"

Alastor

He perks up visibly at that. "Oh! A fish swimming in my own see! How grand!!"

Another song starts up. _Come on, babe. Why don't we paint the town? DADADA BUM BUM And all that jaaaazz!_

He almost forgot he had a gun in his arms, but remember it quickly enough, turning to take aim and fire another shot. Shoot, another miss.

Valera

Good try, Alastor! She leans in, lining her sights up to shoot the fish he'd been going for as it swam away. Not a good shot, by any means, but vengeance is vengeance, can't have that fish telling anyone else that it escaped the radio demon. To the cooler with his catch!

She'll dare go for a hip bump, just enough of a brush that it might have been accidental. Is she humming When You're Good To Mama? She might be, but good luck getting her to admit it.

Alastor

The song cuts off and the audience cheers, and Alastor claps his hand against his gun. "That little thing won't slip out of your grasp!"

When he picks up what she's humming, his frequency shifts and that song starts playing in place of 'All That Jazz'.

"You know! This is practically the theme song of a good friend of mine, whom you've invited here!"

Valera

Dinner and a show, what could be better? She snorts, stepping back into her own personal space bubble.

"I'm familiar! She's a lovely dame, big fan of the work ethic she keeps."

Alastor

"It's true, she never stops that Madame! Always working some angle, networking some connection-- I'd call her ambitious but that'd do her a disservice. She knows what she wants and she grabs it with both hands and four tentacles!" Another bout of canned laughter.

"I've been a loyal patron since she approached me way back when-- never showed her fear, which I applaud!" And there's some canned applause. Alastor lifted the gun again annnnnnd.....boom! Another fish onto the pile. How many did they have, four? Hm, not enough for all the carnivores they had here. He should shoot some more.

Valera

He SHOULD shoot some more. So should Valera, instead of jawing away and flailing around like she is. Silly fish. Back to hunting, then.

"Indeed." Oh, another eel? She aims, then hesitates a moment while she double checks... alright. Not one of her guests, it's safe to shoot. She doubted either Pentious was dumb enough to swim around where there were people spearing fish, but at the same time.. They weren't the most observant, despite the eyes.

"Try not to shoot Sir Pentious, my fine fellow. I don't think he's over here, but I'm sure he's swimming around somewhere."

Alastor

The Audience boos a bit at that but Alastor only laughs. "As your guest, I'll respect your request! Considering that I couldn't be sure which Pentious I was shooting at anyway, it's no skin off my teeth!"

He displayed said teeth in a wide mouthed grin. "Wouldn't want to tag your beau instead of dear little Pentell instead!"

Valera

She misses her next shot, jolting in place as Alastor just TELLS HER SIR PENTIOUS' REAL NAME. The poor speargun doesn't even get a chance to reel in before she drops it, hands flying to her hips as she rounds on her guest. "ALASTOR."

Ooooh Alastoooor she's giving you a look like she's about to get out a wooden spoooooon.

Alastor

That _tone_ has him JUMPING nearly out of his skin. His smile doesn't falter-- eighty years of keeping it up the only thing to save him there-- but his eyes do widen, almost comically. The feeling crawling down his spine is a familiar one, someone who grew up with a strict but loving mother always would get when one did something to earn her ire.

He turned towards Valera, trying to keep his cool as he asked, as nonchalantly as possible: "Yes? What is it?"

Valera

Valera steps in, using the entire two inches of height she has on him for all they're worth. Not to look down at him, just to loom as she lowers her voice to that firm, no nonsense tone.

"Alastor, you know better than that. Why would you go telling business that isn't yours to tell?" Oh, maybe she's being too mean.. Alright, soften that tone up. She's not his *boss* here, she's just the hostess. "I'm not mad, just disappointed. I don't want to make Sir Pentious feel like I've invaded his privacy, but I'm going to have to talk to him about this later."

Alastor

Oh and does she loom. And when she whips out the 'I'm not Mad, I'm Disappointed' line, it's like she just took the speargun and shot him right through his chest. It's only his consummate professionalism and skills as a performer that keep his face static, keep him from giving a hint of ground.

"Ah, yes, my apologies! I often forget myself when speaking about him. Don't mind me and my old mind, sometimes things just fall out out of there! Like blood leaking from sackcloth!" He laughed, but there was noticably more static and reverb to his words. Alastor turned back to the sea, firing off his gun again to spear another fish, as he spoke again.

"Don't worry about Sir Pentious-- or the one that I'm familiar with at least. He's resilient! He bounces back eventually! No one can put him down for good, though many have tried!" Every compliment seems more insult coming from him, where Pentious is concerned.

Valera

Nice try, Alastor. If you were the first she'd met, she'd probably have believed him. But no such luck this time around. She watches him turn away and spear another fish, quietly taking up her speargun to wind it in properly. But then she sets it aside, planting a firm hand on the poor man's shoulder.

"It's not me you need to apologize to, Alastor. Though I do appreciate it, that's very sweet of you." Better to temper her scolding with kindness, it's the only way she's gotten *some* people to listen. "We can come out again later, we should take these back and clean them before any pesky birds show up. I've got scalers in the kitchen. You did a wonderful job catching these!" A pat, and she pulls her hand away. She was already playing a dangerous game by initiating any physical contact at all, so best to keep it brief.

Alastor

There's certainly a shiver when she touches him, but he swallows it down. Don't be weak, don't show it. The show must go on. After reeling his latest catch, he puts it on the ice and props the gun on his shoulder.

"Yes, I think we've got a hefty enough supply! And the cleaning is the best part, after all, I'd be happy to lend a hand!" He wiggled one set of fingers.

"Or two!" Suddenly, his other hand is waving-- without the gun moving from its place on his shoulder-- and then he's back to holding it and all is normal. Including him dodging the bit about apologizing to anyone else.

Valera

Ah, back to business as usual, that's MUCH less tense. Valera snorts at his theatrics, picking up her speargun and laying it over the fish before hefting the cooler up with her tail. Much better than making anyone carry the bulky thing in their arms!

"Much appreciated, my dear. And don't worry, I haven't forgotten about my promise! You'll get your fresh fish before you saunter back to Hell. Now lets get these things looking presentable, hm?"

Alastor

"Yes, absolutely! We'll have to see who's the better cleaner, eh?" He laughed and gave her a quick, playful jab with his elbow. Got to show who's the one who gets to touch around here!

Valera

"What, you think you can descale a fish better than another fish can? That's awfully bold of you, I hope you've got the talent to back that claim up, Alastor!" She wont elbow him back, considering she's got spines full of neurotoxins around there, but she will give him the gentlest shoulder bump, barely enough to dent his padding. She's competitive, but not to the point of actually wanting to upset the man.

Alastor

"I think I'll at least put up a fight!" He laughed. "As long as I've been around fish and fish adjacent creatures, I've gotten very good at relieving them of scale and guts!"

Valera

"I can't tell if I should be impressed or intimidated. I'll decide when I see it in action!" She'll stop milking the 'because she's a fish joke', but come on. It's perfect for this.

And off they go, catch and all.

[peachykindalovesyou]

Sunkissed

(A change of pace, drum roll please!! badadadaaa!! A song fic !!! I wrote this for Lulu’s birthday, uwu)

Lucifer x F!Reader

Genre:: Fluff

Song:: Sunkissed by Khai Dreams

Summary:: After the party they had thrown for Lucifer, they made a stop to the human realm and it was bright and sunny, MC decides to sing sunkissed to him for his birthday.

Word count:: 1.3k+

     The party had ended already and everyone already finished cleaning up, MC decided to visit Lucifer’s room to ask if they could go to the human realm for a while.

     (MC POV)

     I knocked on Lucifer’s door, “Come in.” Lucifer spoke, I could tell he was smiling. I opened the door and stepped in the room, sitting next to Lucifer on his bed. “So, I was wonder, can you take us to the human realm for a while? I need to show you something, and if it isn’t too much to ask for, please take me to my home town.”

     “Hmm..I will make an exception this time. What is the name of our destination?” We both stood up, he took his hand in mine. “(Town name), it is very lovely there.” I smile brightly, I’m excited to show him the place where I had once spent most of my time. “Alright, hold on to my hand tight.” I nod my head, and he chants something I couldn’t make out. A portal opens, we walk in, in sync.

     A white light shines brightly, almost blinding. With the flicker of that light, we are there already. The sun shines brightly above us, we were out in the field just outside the town. I see the forest, it looks just as lively and beautiful since I last went there.

     “What is it you would like to show me, anyway?” He raises a brow at me, looking down at me. “Just wait, it’s gonna be amazing!! Now, follow me!” He obeys and follows me as I lead the way.

     My eyes lit up at the sight of my home town, my smile was just as bright. “Oh my gosh! There’s the theater, oh, and the school! Ah, and there’s the plaza where the kids would meet up at! No way..It’s the old rail road track that me and my friends designed last summer, I can’t believe its still there! This brings back memories..” Almost the whole town knew me, they were all so kind.

     I waved around at the people who recognized me. “Oh, hello MC, dear. Ah! I see you’ve finally found yourself a lovely young man!! He is very handsome indeed.” Ms. Samantha, the flower shop owner, said. “Oh no, no, no, i-its not like that!!” I waved my hands around, my face flushed red. I could feel Lucifer smirking behind me, he put a hand on my shoulder.

     “Yes, its not like that...yet.” He whispered the last part in my ear, I tensed up and chuckled awkwardly. “Oh my!” Ms. Samantha giggled and waved us both goodbye.

     We got through the town, and we were finally reaching the end of it, to the forest. “MC, we had skipped the whole town, where are you taking me?” He raised a brow once again, and spoke in a weary tone. “Just wait, we’re almost there.” I held out my hand, and he took a hold of it once again.

     We walked into the forest, I could feel the memories flooding back to me, it felt so nostalgic and comforting. Chunks of the suns bright beam shone through the canopy of the forest, we could hear the running of the river that was near by.

     I found the hidden cave that I used to spend all of my time in, on top of it was a grassy patch filled with beautiful flowers. When you sat on that patch of grass, you could feel the warm beam of the sun on you.

     “We’re here!” I had a soft and gentle smile on my face, the scenery of beautiful, it was calming. “I must admit, I never thought that I would find myself in a forest, let alone in the human realm, well, with a human.” His eye’s were slightly wide as he said this, I could tell he was impressed by the forest.

     I climbed the rock, sitting down, I pat my lap, “Luci, come lay your head on my lap, you deserve to relax.” His cheeks flushed pink at my bold statement. “W-well, if you insist.” He climbed up the rock and lay his head on my lap, facing the sun, I could tell he was still tense.

     “Get as comfortable as you want to, its just you and me in this forest.” He nodded and turned into his demon form, I giggled. Just then, I could feel his entire body relax, I played with his hair and horns. “Hm..keep on doing that.” I did as he said. ‘Wow! This is so..not like him..’ I thought to myself, his first pair of wings wrapped around himself, the second pair were just sprawled out and still.

     (Lucifer’s POV)

     This is the most I’ve ever felt relaxed in two thousand years, I forgot what this feeling felt like. It feels nice. I admired her beauty, and the way her (h/l) (h/c) flows in the warm breeze, she was absolutely breathtaking.

     I closed my eyes, I want to stay like this for another eternity. Just with her, no one else. I love her with all my heart, I never want to leave her. I could hear her softly humming a tune I didn’t recognize, I want to ask what the song is, but it is the wrong moment to ask.

     Taking a deep breath in, I exhaled, I want to feel like this all of the time. I payed attention to her breathing and humming, I want to fall asleep to this. I was stuck in my thoughts, until I could hear her singing to me, she probably thinks I’m asleep. I decided to play along for a little longer, just to hear her.

     (MC POV)

     I hummed softly to him, his soft sleeping figure was just adorable.

     “So slowly a sunlit dream pulls me out of sleep

      Feel the morning through the blinds

      I get to thinking bout your sunkissed face

      And a quite place where I could give you all my time

      You know I wanna be your rock, my love

      You know i wanna be your light

      In darkness how you find me just in time

      To tell me what I needed to hear

      So if you don’t know what you need

      You can leave it all to me

      Don’t want you worried about a thing

      I know you’d do the same for me”

     I sung this aloud, thinking Lucifer was asleep. “MC, your singing is very lovely, please, do sing to me more often.” He had a cocky smirk plastered onto his face. “I-I- you w-were listening!?” He nodded.

     “Well, I think its the right time to tell you this now..” He got up and held his hand out for me, I grabbed it and he helped me up. “MC, I love you. I always have. From the way that you laugh at the smallest of things, to the way that your eyes sparkle when you talk about something that interests you. I love all of you.” I felt his hands snake around my waist, pulling me closer to him. “Lu-Lucifer I..” My cheeks felt hot, I was a bright red.

     “I understand if you don’t feel the same way, MC. Its okay.” I looked a little saddened. “N-n-! Its not that, I-I..just didn’t know you felt the s-same way..” I looked down in embarrassment, but his pointer finger and thumb made me look up at him, he moved closer to my face.

     He was just inches away, he leaned in a whispered in my ear, “Well, in that case, will you be mine?” He kissed the shell of my ear. “Y-yes!! a million times, YES!!” He pulled me even closer to him, his wings wrapping around us, He pressed his lips against mine passionately, I close my eyes, he does as well.

     After a few seconds, we both pull away, I smile sweetly and look up at him.

     “Well, I think its about time we head back to the house.” He grabbed my hand, summoning another portal. “Agreed, lets go” We both walk in, he kisses me again right as the portal swallows us into the Devildom.

[vannahfanfics]

Hello! For the alphabet challenge reward, the first character I'd like to request is Baby 5! :)

Thank you again for your donation! Here’s the first reward~ I hope you enjoy it! 

Fluff Alphabet: Baby 5

A-   Activities: How do they spend their time with their s/o?

Baby 5 lives to please her s/o in all aspects of life, and therefore, she always looks to her s/o to see how they want to spend their time together! Staying in, going out- Baby 5 has no preference as long as she’s with the person she loves. If her s/o insists on doing something she wants, there will be a bit of back-and-forth at first, but if her s/o is insistent enough, she’ll cave. Believe it or not, Baby 5 is more of a homebody and would love to just snuggle up with her s/o and watch a movie, play a fun board or videogame, or cook together! She’s a simple gal and simple things make her happy, but nothing more so than being with her s/o!

B-    Body: What does this character appreciate about their s/o? What part of their body are they most proud of, and in reverse, what body part are they ashamed of and how do they respond to their s/o gushing over it?

As has been addressed, Baby falls in love comically easily, and at first, it’s hard to determine if there is any one thing that she loves about her s/o. If one pays attention long enough, though, you’ll notice one thing about Baby- she loves to lay her head on her s/o’s shoulder! Whether they’re taller or shorter, or they’re just walking around town together or cuddling, she just loves to wind her arms around theirs and lay her head down.

As far as Baby is concerned, she actually is pretty proud of her silky black hair. She takes special care to shampoo and condition it nightly, and loves to accessorize- bows, frilly scrunchies, hats, the whole nine yards; she loves calling attention to it! So, when her s/o points out how lovely and soft her hair is, she’s a gushing mess and so pleased that they noticed and complimented her!

That being said, Baby is a bit self-conscious about her legs. She knows she’s a tall gal and her legs make up a lot of her, and sometimes she wonders if that’s intimidating or makes her less cute! Despite her wearing outfits that showcase them (because, after all, a girl needs to be able to move in a fight), she worries that her s/o doesn’t like them. The first time her s/o compliments her legs, she’ll be over the moon instantly; the fact that her s/o not only accepts but appreciates that part of her almost makes her self-consciousness vanish instantly! She’ll definitely take more care to show them off for her s/o, wearing slim-fitting pants or dresses that highlight that part of her!

 C-    Cuddles: Is this character a cuddler? What is their favorite way to cuddle?

Baby 5 loves to be all over her s/o, and cuddles are a must! As mentioned before, Baby loves to lay her head on her s/o shoulder (bonus if they stroke her hair!) but she doesn’t mind other ways either; spooning in bed, sitting between their legs on the couch watching a movie, curled up in their lap while they hold her in their big arms- Baby is all game!

 D-   Dreams: How do they picture their future with their s/o?

Once someone is in Baby 5’s life, she can’t imagine life without them. Baby 5 has it planned out from beginning to end- a beautiful wedding, having several children, retiring to a nice little island with a beach and spending the rest of her days with her s/o taking sunset walks or just admiring the scenery. She has goals like these, but honestly Baby 5 is going to align herself with her partner’s goals more than anything; she’ll go wherever and do whatever they want, because as long as they are in her life she will be pleased!

 E-    Equivalence: Is this character the dominant force in the relationship, are they passive, or is the relationship more or less even?

Baby 5 is definitely a passive sort. Her head-over-heels-in-love nature takes the spunky edge that she has with other people away from interactions with her s/o. In due time, once she is comfortable in the relationship and realizes that she is her own person, she may take up the playful banter and slight independence she has with others, but she definitely won’t take an active role in decisions. Baby will definitely need someone who always considers and welcomes her insights into things, lest she be easily taken advantage of.

 F-    Fights: How does this character respond to arguments with their s/o? What would they fight about, and who would cave and apologize first?

Baby 5’s desire to please can get a little grating sometimes; a caring s/o would want her to think for herself for a change rather than solely exist for them, and this can lead to some spats. It will definitely take Baby 5 some time to realize that she doesn’t have to be this way. Of course, it will be less of an argument than Baby simply sobbing and begging forgiveness even if she really doesn’t understand why her s/o is mad in the first place; she just knows that she has done “something” wrong and needs to apologize. After she finally gets it through her head and alters her behavior, though, life is honestly smooth sailing with Baby. She’s patient, understanding, considerate, and caring, and will give little cause for arguments at all. Well, except for maybe her inability to say “no” even after all this time…

 G-   Gratitude: How does this character show their s/o that they are grateful?

Baby 5 is very thoughtful about her gestures! She loves to thank her s/o every day for their wonderful life together in some way, whether its cooking, massages, gifts, or just telling them outright! She’s dreamed of a meaningful relationship her entire life and is so grateful to her s/o for providing her one, and so she’s going to go the extra mile to express her gratitude. She takes very careful note of their likes and dislikes to tailor her gestures to them.

 H-   Honeymoon: If this character had a honeymoon with their s/o, where would they go?

Baby 5 loves the beach, and a honeymoon in a tropical paradise with her s/o would be absolute heaven! Romantic walks in the morning or under the moonlight, scuba-diving or wildlife tours, lounging in hammocks drinking cocktails, late-night swimming in pools or the ocean- it’s enough to make any girl’s heart get to thumping! She would collect pretty shells for her s/o and get excited at all the cute little fish and other creatures around. As in her nature, though, even if this isn’t the case, Baby 5 will be overjoyed to go anywhere with her s/o for a romantic getaway.

I-      Insecurity: What is this character insecure about? How do they deal with their insecurities with their s/o?

Baby 5 is fully aware of her personality and incessant need to please everyone, and she knows this can grate on her s/o after a while.  Despite that, she just… can’t… help herself! This will lead Baby 5 to question if one day her s/o will have enough of her and leave her, which terrifies her to no end, and this will result in her going to even greater lengths to make them happy so they won’t ever, ever leave her! Baby’s gonna need a smart s/o that can recognize this behavior, because the poor dear isn’t going to be able to herself. Once her s/o sits her down and explains that she doesn’t need to go so far for them, that they love her and she makes them happy just by being, Baby 5 will have a bit of a revelation and tone it down. She’s still going to be excessive with the gestures, but simply because it makes her happy and not because she wants to please her s/o enough to stay around.

 J-      Jealousy: Is this character the jealous type? How do they deal with being jealous?

Baby 5 has a mild jealous streak, but not extreme. If she sees someone coming onto her s/o, she’ll definitely plaster herself all over them (if she isn’t already) to make it obvious that they are taken. Baby won’t try to hide her jealousy if she’s approached about it; her feelings are so strong for her s/o and she just can’t stand the idea of someone else having them, and she’ll be honest about it. If someone tries to goad her into a fight over her s/o, however, watch out! Baby will definitely bite back and you may end up on the receiving end of her Devil Fruit powers! No one is gonna steal her s/o on her watch!

 K-   Kiss: What does the character want their first kiss to be like with their s/o? How does it end up happening?

Baby’s a romantic soul, and so of course she’s going to fantasize about her first kiss. Her daydreams are the stuff of romance dramas, the perfect setting, the perfect moment, the perfect kiss. For the first kiss, Baby won’t initiate; she wants it to be like all the stories, and her s/o has to engage! It really depends on her s/o on how it ends up. Whether it’s planned or spontaneous, like the movies or a little not, though, Baby’s gonna melt into a pile of happy mush. She’s a bit shy with kissing at first, and she’s definitely gonna be blushing and cute!

 L-    Love Confession: How does this character first profess their love to their s/o?

Baby feels her emotions right at the surface and has no qualms about expressing them, so professing her love is no great ordeal for her! Baby will come right out and say it, no shame, no fear! It won’t really be a grand event, either; whenever Baby thinks she may be in love, she’s just going to come right out and say it right then and there- they could even be in the heat of battle and she’s just gonna shout it out!

 M-  Marriage: How does this character view marriage? What is their ideal wedding like?

Baby 5 is so gung-ho to get married! She loves the idea of being forever bound to someone in love. Her ideal marriage wouldn’t be excessively grand, but definitely a stylish, big wedding with all the people she and her s/o care about in attendance! She loves the idea of wedding traditions and will for sure enact a few at her wedding. The garter and bouquet toss, shoving cake in your partner’s face, being carried across the threshold- it gets her dizzy with happiness just thinking about it!

 N-   Nicknames: What does this character like to call their s/o?

Baby’s a bit traditional when it comes to nicknames- “honey,” “darling,” “dear,” etc. She has a whole plethora of them that she just randomly tosses around because she loves her s/o dearly and wants to express that love in so, so many ways!

 O-   On Cloud Nine: What is this character like when they’re in love? Is it obvious to others, or are they good at hiding it?

Baby 5 is a lovesick gal and it is so obvious to everyone and anyone. When Baby’s in love, her entire demeanor changes; she’ll be the happiest gal in the world, practically radiating positive energy like the sun! Her s/o will always come in the chatter- how great they are, how much she loves them, anything and everything she wants to gush about them! It can be a little overwhelming to those who can’t deal with her passionate personality, but she just can’t help it; she’s got too much love to contain! She’ll burst if she doesn’t tell the world!

 P-    PDA: Does this character like PDA? If so, what kinds of things do they do in public to show off their s/o?

PDA and Baby 5 go hand in hand… Pun intended. ;3 Baby loves to show the world her love, and so she constantly has to be showing some sort of affection to her s/o: holding hands, leaning her head on their shoulder, little kisses, clinging to their clothes. Baby 5 always keeps it tame, though. There are some things not meant for the public eye, and if her s/o gets a little spicy in public, she’ll definitely blush!

 Q-   Quirks: What random traits or quirks does this character have that positively affect the relationship?

Baby 5 is a very neat person. Part of this was fostered by her incessant need to be useful and clean around the Doflamingo household, but this habit has carried over into her love life. As such, her s/o never needs to stress about a messy home or things to do when they come home; Baby has it covered! This in turn ends up leaving with them a lot of time to spend time together, because things are always done in a timely and orderly manner! Baby never wants her s/o to have to worry about chores, so they can focus on spending time with each other when they can!

 R-    Romance: Is this character a hopeless romantic, or a bit on the low-key side? Are they cliché when it comes to romantic gestures, or can they get a little bit creative?

Of course Baby is a hopeless romantic! While she may get a little predictable with nicknames, our Baby 5 is real creative when coming up with her gestures for her s/o! She wants each one to be exciting and show just how much she loves them. From something as simple as giving them a flower she found to cooking a full-course meal for them to surprising them with romantic weekend getaways and everything in-between, Baby 5 never ceases to surprise her s/o.

S-    Secrets: Are there any secrets they hide from their s/o? If so, how do they deal with it when those secrets finally come out?

As has been expressed, Baby 5 is an honest person with her s/o. If her s/o does not know of her past with the Doflamingo family and multiple (now deceased) fiancés, Baby is going to be forthcoming about it all, because she would hate for a kept secret to be the undoing of their relationship! She may tone down a few parts, because she would hate for her s/o to think of her of some horrible person, but she would never lie. After all, she wants to be loved more than anything, and wants that person to love her in her entirety, not some façade she presents.

 T-    Thrill: Does this character prefer routine in their relationship, or do they like to shake things up every once in a while?

Baby doesn’t mind falling into routine; there’s a lot of comfort in the ins and outs of just simple daily romantic life. However, if she begins to think her partner is growing bored with the way things are, Baby will for sure throw a wrench into the mix to shake things up a little! Suddenly going out to a new place or changing up how she does things to keep her partner happy and interested is definitely not a problem. As such, she will also respond positively to her s/o doing the same, because if her partner wants to shake things up, she wants to, too!

 U-   Understanding: Is this character level-headed and empathetic toward their partner, or do they sometimes have trouble figuring them out, which leads to some butting heads?

Baby 5 doesn’t like to rock the boat in her relationship, and she knows the key to happiness in a relationship is knowing her partner well. She’ll know her s/o more than they might know themselves! She’ll be so in tune with their habits, personality, quirks, and whatever else to make sure that hers align perfectly, tailoring the relationship to maximum harmony. Sometimes, though, her s/o will do things she just can’t predict or understand (normally in terms of her inability to say no or desperate need to please which undermines her identity). As previously discussed, this may lead to some discord here and there, but overall, Baby 5 knows what makes her partner tick.

 V-   Value: How does this character value their relationship with their s/o? How does it hold in comparison to their goals, ambitions, etc.?

A relationship is all Baby 5 ever wanted out of life, and to her, it’s the most important thing ever! Baby 5 cherishes her s/o and their bond, and any goal or need that she has is always secondary to her relationship. Sometimes this can grate her s/o if they want Baby 5 to have more of an identity, but that’s just how she is. Nothing can get in the way of her love!

 W-  Wild Card: Any random fluff headcanon that does not fall within the other categories!

Before she wants a child, Baby 5 wants a pet to share with her s/o! She knows that such things are very important steps in their relationship, and Baby 5 wants to make sure her s/o isn’t overwhelmed with the idea of caring for another human being when she broaches the topic to them. Baby 5 loves dogs,, their devotion and unconditional love, and would love to have one or two of them with her s/o! They would be perfect to guard their little children whenever the time comes, too!

 X-   XOXO: How does this character show affection?

Baby 5 is definitely in the camp of the “touch” and “acts of service” languages of love. When she’s not doing something for her s/o, taking their coat and asking about their day, cooking them dinner, catering to them if their ill, she’s all over them. Hand-holding, cuddles, massages, little kisses- Baby 5 just loves to show her affection in this way! She just wants her s/o to know how much she loves them and can only express it in such a manner.

 Y-   Yearning: How does this character deal with time apart with their s/o?

Baby hates being away from her s/o! She misses them dearly when they are apart. Oftentimes she seeks comfort from something her s/o owns, a jacket or a shirt or whatever she can get her hands on, because holding it makes her feel like they are there. She will definitely be more depressed than usual, and bringing up her s/o at all might make her tear up a little! Baby would never stop her s/o from leaving, though, if it was very important; she knows that being there, waiting for them to come home, is an important duty as well. She just gets so damn sad doing it.

 Z-    Zeal: Is this character willing to great lengths for their relationship? If so, how far, and how long does it take to get to this point?

As pointed out earlier, Baby 5 values the relationship very highly and of course would go to great lengths to preserve her relationship! If she caught wind that her s/o was in danger, she would charge in guns-a-blazin’ with zero hesitation at all! If a problem threatened to tear her and her s/o apart, she would do everything in her power to make it right. Baby 5, being the overzealous, loving woman she is, gets to this point almost a little too quickly, which can be overwhelming to a timid s/o’s. Baby just loves with every fiber of her being, strongly and wholly!

Want a full fluff alphabet for your favorite character? Support me on Ko-fi!

[sunrisehoneybee]

I Will Believe

This was a request I got for soft Dark who was caring for someone who was having issues around the way they looked. 

It had gone on for a few days now.  At first, Dark just assumed you were tired, though he was constantly encouraging you to relax. But he noticed that you were quiet and he missed your laugh.  When he asked, you just say “I have a lot on my mind right now.” and gave him a weak smile.  But when Wilford couldn’t even coax a grin out of you, Dark knew he had to do something.  He wasn’t good at ...comforting. Seduction, of course.  Manipulation. Like it was breathing.  But ...for you, he would try. 

“Let’s go out.  Do something, get out of the house.”  Dark, as usual, was dressed impeccably.  He hoped that a change of scenery would perk you up a bit.  “No, thanks. I just wanna stay home tonight.”  You were in your ...comfy clothes. Soft, warm...and not clingy, with your hair pushed back off your face with a hairband.  You looked down, toying with the hem of your shirt, sighing as he took your hand, rubbing his thumb over the soft skin. 

“We can do that. But you have to let me pamper you.”  He held up a finger as you started to protest. “Indulge me, kitten ...please.”  

Dark asked for ...very little. And never said ‘please’.  “Ok, but don’t…. Don’t be all...extravagant, ok?  Can we just keep it lowkey?”  You just weren’t up for being around a bunch of people.  Wearing the mask.  Keeping the smile plastered on your face. It was just too much right now. 

He gently kissed your hand, “I promise. Understated and comfortable, alright?” He rose then, setting the rest of the house to work.  Everything was picked up, put away, scrubbed and cleaned and then ...they got out.  Dark, of course, didn’t kick them out, not after all their hard work, but he made sure they were well occupied until late sometime tomorrow.  For tonight, it was just you and him. 

He came to get you, “Close your eyes, kitten.”  Taking your hand, he led you to the bathroom where the sunken tub had been filled, steaming and full of bubble bath.  The room was dim but lit with flickering candles. Red and pink rose petals led from the door to the tub. “Dark!  I said lowkey!”  But….it was beautiful.

“Darling, this is lowkey….”  He tapped something on his watch and your playlist came up on the speakers.  The one you used to relax and write.  “Please….” He bit his lip and you could tell he was trying. “Relax and soak for as long as you want. I’m working on dinner.”  He kissed your forehead and left.

“Nothing fancy, Dark! I mean it….”  Undressing, you sank into the bubbles with a sigh, though, unwilling to look at your reflection in the mirror and ...glad the bubbles hid...everything.  It was then that you noticed the glass of what you thought was wine.  You took a sip and almost purred.  You didn’t know what it was, but it was heavenly.  Light, fresh, just sweet enough and fruity.  You don’t know how long you soaked until there was a soft knock on the door.

“Kitten. You haven’t drowned have you?” Dark’s amused voice floated in. 

“Noooo.”  Though you were relaxed. Between the warm water and the drink, you felt like you were floating. 

“Would you like another?”  He came in, hanging up a robe and towels, still warm and fragrant from the dryer, sitting down at the edge by your feet, picking one up, heedless of the water and bubbles on dress pants, as he began to slowly rub your feet. The tension slowly melted away as he worked his way down one foot, picking up the other one and starting on it. 

“Maybe with dinner. If I drink another one now, you’ll just have to put me to bed.”  

“Alright, dinner will be ready in about ten minutes, if you are.”  He took the empty glass, and gave you a kiss on top of the head, leaving you to your warm bubbles.  

After a few more minutes, you got out, drying off and felt… a little better.  Enough that you put on just a touch of makeup around your eyes and a dab of lip gloss. After getting dressed you headed down to the kitchen and the smell hit you.  Whatever it was he was cooking smelled...amazing.  The table was set for two with a few candles lit.  Dark’s arms wrapped around you from behind, pulling you against his chest. “Ready for dinner?”  

“Yes! I’m starving!” Leaning into his arms, you realized you were for the first time today, having skipped breakfast and lunch ... and sat down as he fixed your plate.  Homemade mac and cheese, with a crunchy topping and little bits of bacon throughout. The cheese was gooey and omg, it just melted in your mouth. You chatted, coming out of your shell a bit more, feeling more relaxed and like yourself than you had in days. “This was really nice, thank you.” 

“You say that like it’s over.”  Dark gave you a bit of a smug smile, taking your hand and leading you out the back door. You still hadn’t quite figured out how doors worked around here, though, Dark had promised the front door would always take you to where you wanted to go.  The back door, however sometimes opened up into the Void, other times, like now, opened up to a beach. It was dark and deserted, but the moon was full, shining down over the waves. You weren’t even completely certain you were on earth, but it was peaceful.  Just you and Dark, and beach for miles in either direction.  He kicked off his shoes and socks, rolling up his pants leg and walking ankle-deep in the waves. “Feeling better?”  It was the first time he had mentioned your ...mood.

“Yeah, I am, thank you.” You leaned into him, holding on to his waist as you walked, the waves a lull in the background.  

“Would you like to talk about it?” Dark’s voice was soft but warm in a way that was reserved for no one but you. 

“I just …” You sighed.  How do you explain feeling ...this way in your own skin to someone who was perfection? “I wish sometimes that… no one could see me.  And before you tell me how beautiful you think I am ...”  You glance up at him, “I know. I know you think that.  I just don’t...feel it.  I don’t feel beautiful.”  

“Then I will believe it for the both of us when you cannot.”  He took your hand and kissed it, as you continued to walk. As the moon sank lower, he brought you back to the manor, dusting the sand off your feet and heading to the living room where Google had installed a state of the art home theater system.  Dark had a stack of your favorite movies, loaded and ready to play.  By the end of the second one though, your eyes were heavy and you knew you weren’t going to be able to stay awake much longer.  But you didn’t want it to end.  You were warm, content, and happily curled up next to Dark, who was leaned back with his arm around you.  “I think it’s bedtime, kitten.”  

You whimpered a bit but got up, headed back to your room and crawling in bed. Pulling the covers up to your neck, you looked up at him, “Would you ...sit with me for just a little bit?”  

“Until you fall asleep?” His long fingers brushed the hair back off your forehead. 

Nodding, you sigh contentedly when he laid down beside you, arm around you.  Nighttime was sometimes ...the worst. You were exhausted and your brain ran unchecked.  But now with Dark beside you, it seemed....manageable. You barely heard it as you drifted off to sleep, “I love you, kitten…” and he kissed your cheek softly, nestling closer beside you.

[adventuresloane]

i left a light beside the bed for you

Read on AO3

Dani/Aubrey

Rated T

Raffle Prize for @desiree-harding-fic

@tazprideweek

"This feels...normal," says Dani, chewing on a three-inch nail.

Aubrey pauses. Her thumb stops gently rubbing over and over Dani's knuckle, and only then does she notice that she's been repeating that same gesture the whole time, absent-minded. She remembers that she has to pee. Truthfully, she's sort of had to pee for the past hour, but kept refusing to make the fifteen-foot trek from the bed to the bathroom. It would mean overcoming her inertia enough to leave the comfort of the soft duvet, and it would mean her bare feet on the cold tile, and it would mean no longer holding Dani's hand.

"Good normal or bad normal?" she asks. She can hold it.

"What do you consider 'bad normal'?"

"Well, you know. Like boring. I feel like normal things are usually boring." She shuts her mouth, then, and swallows. Is this boring? Was she bored?

"Well, I wouldn't call  you  normal," Dani answers, and her grin makes the freckles on her cheek shift.

Aubrey glances at the box of nails. "I wouldn't call you normal either."

"I guess not. I was just talking about...this." She goes quiet after that. Both of them are submerged in the hum of the mini fridge and the air conditioning. Aubrey looks away and holds onto the air inside her mouth, just behind her closed lips. Dani, she has learned, is the type to get her words all in order before she says them. She has also learned--is still learning--not to interrupt the process by blurting whatever comes to mind, which, as it happens, is her usual response to silence.

If she stares at the ceiling long enough, it starts to look fuzzy. Like there's a grainy film of static over the surface of the plaster. It makes her think of mist outside a window, of the big old tube TV that had sat in the living room of her house for her first few years of life and that had tingled warmly when she pressed her hand to the screen. Everything feels a bit fuzzy now, maybe because it's 3AM. Everything feels warm and a bit familiar.

Finally, Dani says, quietly, "This is what I imagined it would be like if...if things had gone differently."

Aubrey shifts to nuzzle underneath her chin and nods slowly against her, lips brushing her neck. "I know what you mean." As she says it, she knows that it both is and isn't true.

Aubrey had always been good at getting used to things. She had to be, in order to drift in the way she did, navigating unfamiliar towns and faces. The novelties of the new places she visited, the disorienting change of scenery that made her pay attention to everywhere she went, things like storefronts with shells in the windows and residents who all still referred to fridges as "iceboxes"--all these things turned into background noise before long, things she stopped seeing. Sometimes, she thought she was too good at adapting. Boredom always lumbered up behind her, would glom onto her if she stopped moving for too long. Her general rule of thumb was that if she managed to memorize the major street names in the latest podunk little place where she had settled, it was time for her to move on. She'd go and do her best to shake off any moss she had gathered.

So, typically, she wouldn't have chosen to stay in Kepler for as long as she was. But getting accustomed to monster hunting, moon-activated portals, and her own actual magic was its own kind of challenge. This, she guessed, was the new normal, this hotel and these people. But she was used to that too. Her life had been full of new normals the past several years. It had become normal for her, at the end of a long day, to crave the protein kick of a cheesesteak sandwich from a roadside stand, when before she had hardly ever touched meat and a fig and pear salad had been her favorite meal. Hell, it had become normal to be homeless.

Being unable to sleep through the night had been normal for awhile. It was fine, whenever she lay down to close her eyes and instead felt her heart running too fast and hot for her to relax. In that case, she just threw off the sheets and went for a walk anywhere.

While most of the lodge's halls were familiar to her by now, they were harder to navigate in the darkness. She got turned around and backtracked a couple of times. That was alright. Nobody was up to see her fumbling around at this hour of the night, or, rather, the morning.

Or that was what she would have assumed, until she wandered into the kitchen.

The first thing Aubrey noticed about her was what she always noticed, which was the fact that she was gorgeous. The second thing was that she looked as if she'd just been caught in the act. Frozen in shock, she stared wide-eyed, with her arms wrapped around a stack of take-out boxes freshly plundered from the open fridge. She hunched over it awkwardly, like an Igor in an eighth-grade production of  Frankenstein,  her chin pressed on top of the pile to steady it. All in all, there was a certain frantically-stockpiling-squirrel-in-autumn quality about her, which, Aubrey knew well, could only derive from the early-morning munchies.

This was to say that, for once, she looked like even more of a hot mess than Aubrey. Given that up until now, she, with her lithe body and smell of fresh earth, had resembled more of a fey creature than a person, this came as a strange relief. So she was human after all! Or, well, not human, but capable of imperfection. On the other hand, it just so happened that Aubrey was currently wearing a Snoopy-themed nightgown that she hadn't bothered to wash in a month and almost surely had a comical case of bedhead, so it wasn't like she was winning the Dignity Olympics.

Fuck. She'd been staring.

When Aubrey finally kicked her brain into gear enough to speak, her voice sounded an octave or two higher than normal. "Hi! Hey, uh, Dani, sorry to walk in on you like that! I hope I didn't freak you out, I was just--"

"Are you supposed to be down here?"

"Oh." Dani had said it quickly enough to make her jolt back. The sound was loud and bounced off all the chrome in the large space, hitting her like an accusation. Within moments, the tips of her ears felt so hot it was a wonder that they did not ignite. "Sorry, I, um, I can go--"

"No! No, I..." She exhaled heavily and placed her bundles on the chrome countertop. "Sorry, that was rude. You don't have to leave."

"Oh," she said again. "I mean, it's fine, though. I can if you want."

"I don't. Really. That, uh, wasn't what I meant to say." Dani glanced away and did not elaborate.

"Oh," she said, and now this was getting ridiculous, and she thought about how much she really ought to think of something better to say, quick, before this got to be any more awkward than it was, which was hard, because the only thought running through her mind right now was Don't blow it.  

"I love your--"

"I love your hair," Aubrey said almost simultaneously, then quickly added on, "Sorry, what were you saying?"

"The same thing." Dani breathed out through her nose, something that was not quite a laugh but approached it. When she grinned, her canines showed, noticeably longer than her other teeth, disguise or not. That was kind of hot, though she couldn't say why. "And...thanks, but there's nothing special about mine, I don't think. I just like the way you dyed yours."

"Yours is really pretty, though! It's cool that you're able to keep it that long and still have it look nice. And you've always got that, like, strategically disheveled thing going on. Like, you don't even need to look in the mirror every morning and it still just looks good."

Dani blinked at the end of her rambling. "Well...I don't have a reflection, Aubrey."

Well, dunk. "Right! Right, 'cause, vampire, so you're--right, sure."

"I mean, it's not just me. It's something about the human disguises. Don't ask me how it all works--the disguises are made of illusion magic, and I guess they interact with light in weird ways. It happens in pictures and video too. Sometimes we just show up blurry, but my form's never shown up at all."

"So, wait, but how do you know what you look like, then?"

"I kind of don't?" She shrugged. "I know some things, obviously. But not so much what my face looks like. At least, no more than you know what your voice sounds like if you never hear a recording of it."

"Wow. That...that's kind of a shame."

"I mean, it's whatever. It's not what I really look like anyway."

"Yeah, sure." Her fingers tapped rapidly against the pad of her thumb as she considered. "But like...would you like to know? What you look like, that is. I mean, I could try to tell you, if no one else has."

Her eyebrows shot up, in what, thankfully, looked like curiosity rather than judgment. Aubrey accepted that as an okay to stay for a bit, seating herself on the metal of the kitchen counter, cold even through her clothes. Dani hopped up to join her.

The inherent problem with this idea, she realized too late, was that she would have to look Dani in the eye for an extended period of time, and, as it happened, the last time she had done that, she had nearly started an all-out bonfire in the middle of the lodge. All she could do was try to think cool thoughts, which, of course, made it more difficult to give a decent answer. She kept tapping her fingers together, this time to snuff out the tiny flames she felt budding at the ends of her fingertips. "Well..."  Don't just say 'cute.'  "You kinda look like Florence Welch."

Dani's mouth quirked upward, and a half-second later, giggles came up out of her. She turned so that her expression was half-hidden by the curtain of her hair, but not before Aubrey saw the way the smile changed her whole face, softly crinkling and brightening her eyes, lifting her slightly sunken cheeks. She looked lighter, somehow, than she did before, and it had nothing to do with the kitchen fluorescents. With some of the tension gone from her chest, Aubrey went on, "But, like,  Lungs  Florence, you know?"

"I can live with that," she chuckled. "I like most Florence + the Machine."

"Me too! I'm doing a bad job of this, though. Fuck. Um, you've got a sharp jaw and a square chin. Your nose is kind of narrow. Green eyes, but you probably already knew that. A really nice, light green, though. Kind of--hang on, don't blink for a second. Kind of like...duckweed? No, shit, I was trying to come up with a good plant simile but I fucked up."

"Oh my god, please keep going. You're doing great."

"Like matcha, then? Yeah, I'd say matcha. Okay, sorry, we can stop having a weird staring contest now."

She laughed softly again, then quieted, eyes cast downward. Then, without warning, she reached into her back pocket. She flipped through the pages quickly, but Aubrey still saw, flitting before her, the gray graphite faces of other residents of the lodge. Just about everyone, except for one.

As she sketched, Aubrey leaned over the page and watched her create a new person out of nothing, weaving an image out of crosshatchings as thin and delicate as spider silk. Although knowing next to nothing about drawing, Aubrey gave her some pointers. "Your lips are a little bit thinner than that." "Your cheekbones are a little bit higher." "Don't forget to draw in the freckles below your eye. They're kind of faint, but they're there."

Aubrey went to look in a little closer and felt her forehead knock against something hard. By the time she realized that her head had collided with Dani's, both of them had jumped back a little, instinctively. She hadn't realized how much they had been leaning in with their heads turned toward the sketchpad.

Dani blinked once, twice, as though dazed. "I'm sorry, I should...it's late. I should go."

"Um," she called to Dani's back, "are you usually up at this hour?"

Dani stopped walking, then turned with a small, sheepish smile. "Well, I don't strictly have to sleep."

"Rad! Me neither! I'll probably see you around then."

"Yeah, you probably will."

Aubrey kept sitting there for some time after she left. She wasn't tired, and her heart was still pounding too much for her to sleep.

A few nights later, as she wandered the lodge in the wee hours, she rounded a corner to find the door to a single suite open, drenching the otherwise dark hallway in the golden lamplight from within. Considering that no one left their doors open even during the daytime, this was decidedly weird.

When she walked by and looked inside, Dani was there to meet her gaze. As if she had been waiting.

"Hi," she said quietly.

Aubrey, whose exhausted brain was even more deficient in the attention department than usual, replied after a delay of six full seconds, "Hi."

More moments of silence passed as she tried to figure out whether she should just keep going without being a bother, or whether her addled mind could manage a conversation right now. She couldn't figure out which Dani would have preferred. Maybe it was a fault of the disguises or maybe it was just how she operated, but either way, she was hard to read.

"So...do you have your bunny?"

"His name is Dr. Harris Bonkers, PhD, and no."

"Can you get him?"

"Huh?"

"So he can hang out with us. I probably should've asked if you wanted to hang out first. Sorry, I don't normally do this."

"Uh...no, that's fine. That's great. I'll...I'll go ask if he wants to come."

She brought him, and then, in the following weeks, made sure to bring him every time. More often than not, they passed the first hours after midnight together. For the most part, Aubrey did not remember the conversations in particular, at least not the specifics of them. They were long and meandered and doubled back on themselves. Instead, she remembered what she learned from them, from Dani. That the light orange-ish mushroom that grew on large trees in the forest were mildly poisonous to some and tasted like chicken to others, and that you'd never know unless you tried. That Barclay and Mama used to have regular competitions to determine who could handle the spiciest food. That she was, in fact, not to hard to read at all--that she picked at the stitches in her quilt when she was nervous, that she sometimes rocked back and forth a little on the bed when talking about something that excited her (though never enough to disturb the rabbit resting in her lap).

Aubrey remembered what she learned in the pauses, too. There were large in-between spaces of nothing, when neither of them spoke. She learned, to her surprise, that she didn't mind it. The sound of Dani's deep sighs and the bags of slightly stale Goldfish crackers she kept under her bed had become part of a routine. Predictable. She hated predictable, usually. But the rest of her life--her new life of monster-hunting and magic-using--had stopped being predictable awhile ago. So this was alright. Nice, even, to have one space where she knew what was what.

"I kind of don't want to leave," she mused into one of these silences.

"The room, you mean? You probably should. My bed's not big enough."

"No." Yes. "I mean leave Kepler. Normally I would've moved on by now."

Dani nodded. "I guess you did travel a lot before. You've got a lot going on around here, though."

"Yeah, I guess that's it. So much is new I haven't gotten used to it yet. I'd hate to live somewhere I'd gotten used to," she said with a chuckle.

"You always wanna keep moving?"

"I think so."

It might have been several minutes before Dani spoke up, though she didn't keep track. All Aubrey knew was that she heard her say suddenly, "Aubrey, don't take this the wrong way, just...how could you ever want that?"

The "how could you" pricked her. Aubrey  slowly turned to look at her, eyebrows raised.

"It's an honest question," Dani went on. "I just...I can't relate. Maybe because I left home so early and...well. Suddenly."

Aubrey glanced away. She asked, "How early?" before she could wonder whether she wanted to hear the answer.

"Oh, I don't know. I was a teenager."

"And remind me again, how old are you?"

She had to think about it. "Twenty-two."

"How long have you been twenty-two?"

"Awhile?" She gave a small shrug. "But years are different on Sylvain than on Earth. Keeping track is hard for me. That's what I'm saying. I miss being used to where I live, and understanding it, and understanding my place in it. I'm barely acclimated to Kepler. I can't imagine having to pick up and do it all again, all the time."

The forest green hotel carpeting was rough under her toes. "Yeah, I hear you," she replied after a bit too long. She wanted to say it was easy for her to do it, over and over. She would have said that, normally, to anyone else. But now, in the early morning hush, she thought it might not have been what was easy so much as simply what she did, what she felt she had  to do. "I guess...I mean, I had a home I left early too. And I don't think I'll feel that way about any place ever again. I never even wanted to try. Why stay anywhere when no place is ever going to feel the same? I don't know, I'm not making sense, probably. It's too late. Or too early."

"No, I think you are."

"Yeah." She took in a breath and tried a smile. "I could be wrong, though. I've, uh, found out I was wrong about a lot of things since getting here."

Dani glanced at her and, gradually, returned the grin. Aubrey had also learned not to look for too long, or she might get self-conscious and hide her face behind her hair again. Not as often, though, lately, and not now. She had been unfolding over these nights, slowly. "Like what?" she asked.

"Monsters being real was a big one."

She laughed this time, albeit from behind her palm. "Guess so." With one hand stroking Dr. Bonkers, she let the other rest on Aubrey's thigh, fingers lightly tapping. Aubrey tried not to squirm. Her body seemed hypersensitive under the touch, almost pricked by it. Or maybe that was the heat traveling just beneath her skin, out to her extremities, like it did just before flames burst from her fingertips. After holding it back for awhile, her hands stung like they had when she had touched a hot lightbulb as a child. Dani was still touching her, and she wanted to shift away but also desperately didn't want this contact severed. She tried to quench the heat radiating from her and hoped Dani would not notice. (Surely, she had to notice, and that thought only made her burn more.)

Later, she tried to hide the round scorch marks left in the quilt by her fingertips. She realized then that she was in what one might call deep shit.

So she had been less than proactive in the romance department for the last few years. She had had work to focus on. A blossoming career in entertainment, in fact. And anyway, she had never stayed anywhere long enough to make a real connection. Aside from some flirtatious moments in bars, a few teasing strokes, there had been nothing since high school. She was touch-starved, probably. Liable to crush on any living soul who so much as brushed arms with her. Did it really even count as a crush if all you wanted to do was sit together while touching? Maybe she just liked hanging out on her friend's bed in the middle of the night while the two of them took turns resting their heads in each other's laps and spilling their darkest secrets, and that was all fine and very platonic.

These were only some of her considerations as she sat, one evening, with Dani's fingers loosely interlocked with her own.

If she weren't careful, she knew she would just up and ask. She tried to distract herself instead. "Oh! I thought you might like this." She pulled out her phone and opened up her photos, which was about the only thing the device was good for in this quiet zone. "Saw a snail today."

Dani, who was already leaning against her shoulder, came even closer, tickling her clavicle with her hair as she looked at the picture. She grinned and nodded. "Effervescent."

"Can you ID it?"

"Virginia bladetooth, I think. I see them all the time in the garden."

"You're like a walking field guide, you know that?"

She giggled quietly, idly flicking the buttons on Aubrey's vest. "I think I've just spent way too many hours reading them." The metal jingled as she jostled it.

"You're amazing. Hey, by the way, what are we?"

After saying it, Aubrey immediately wished she had taken more distracting snail photos.

Dani, for a moment, looked as if she had not quite heard or understood. She gave her a curious look before the meaning of the question occurred to her, and her soft smile collapsed under its own weight. Her mouth was open. She seemed to take in a lot of air without breathing out.

She was just about ready to laugh it off, to make a gal pals joke, when Dani started, "We're friends, Aubrey." Aubrey didn't think she imagined the way "friends" had been enunciated. "Why? Were you...did you think we were more than that?"

Her whole mouth tasted of sour spit. "Well," she said, with an impressive lack of shaking, "we could be, if you wanted?"

"No."

The answer was instantaneous. She didn't say it in a mean way. Just an honest one.

"Ah." It sounded, even to herself, like the wind had been knocked out of her. "Right. I, uh, think I made this really goddamn awkward just now! Bad joke. I should probably go back to my room anyway, so--"

"No, hang on!" There was a tug on her sleeve as she went to stand up.

She sighed. "Listen, it was dumb. You really don't have to try and--"

"It's not dumb. I just...it's got nothing to do with who you are or anything..."

"It's not me, it's you, right?" she muttered. Suddenly, she felt exhausted.

"No! No, that's not what I...it's only even kind of about me." Her eyes snapped frantically this way and that, as if searching for a way to explain herself, or for an exit. They looked in every direction but Aubrey's. Her fist clenched and unclenched rapidly, over and over.

"Hey," Aubrey said in the softest voice she could. She sat back on the bed and considered, for a moment, wrapping an arm around Dani's hunched-up shoulders, then decided against it. "Hey, it's okay. Really, it is. I...I didn't want to make you worry."

"I'm sorry." Dani's breath shivered. "I'm sorry, I don't know how to explain...okay, look. I want to date you. I do."

Within half a second, Aubrey went through whatever the opposite of the seven stages of grief is. "Oh. Good to know."

"But I don't think I can."

"Can I just ask why, though?" She waited for an answer that she did not receive. "Listen, you're, like, really sending me a lot of mixed signals here, and I wasn't gonna push it but I feel like at this point you owe me some kind of--"

Dani slapped her hand down onto the bedspread and, far too loudly for 2AM, shouted, "I can't bring you home to my mom!"

The silence that followed was not one of the comfortable ones. It hit her like cold.

"Sorry." Dani's voice was a whisper, now, one that came out cracked. "I'm genuinely sorry. For all of this. I just don't know how else to explain it. This could never be a normal relationship, you know? I can't introduce you to my family, I can't take you on the dates I would've taken you on back at home..." She trailed off, swallowed loudly. "Maybe it's stupid. It's definitely stupid. I...when I was younger, I always imagined having a stupid romance like you see in teen movies or whatever, something really sappy and typical, and then I left home and resigned myself to the fact that I'd never have a chance of a normal relationship like that. Or a relationship at all, really. I don't know."

Aubrey let the quiet stretch on for a good while longer. Then, almost to herself, she murmured, "I couldn't bring you home to my mom either." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dani's head snap towards her. She kept staring at the floor anyway. "It's hard. She won't ever know the person or the people I decide I want to spend my life with, and that's hard as shit."

"Yes," Dani answered, barely audible.

"It'll always make relationships feel a little weird, I think." Finally, she glanced in Dani's direction. "I feel like that's not really a reason not to have them, though. I don't even know what would qualify a relationship as not-weird, honestly. Or what counts as 'normal' in your book."

"Maybe," Dani sighed. "But it's also like...you really don't know how much you still don't know about me. About Sylphs in general. You might find it too weird."

"Are you serious? Try me."

With a huff, she reached under her bed to pull out a small, jangling cardboard box. Making eye contact all the while, she pulled out an iron nail, held it up for Aubrey to see, and then bit down on it, running it back and forth so that it grated against her teeth.

"What, is that a stim? You don't honestly think I'd judge you for--"

"No," Dani interrupted with a tired tone. "That's not it. You'll see some Sylphs doing this when there are no humans around to comment on it. You know how my kind are rumored to drink blood? That myth started because we get insane cravings for iron, and so a lot of us will just spend all day sucking on literal metal."

"So? Still not that weird."

"But that's just an example. There's a million little things like that you don't know about. I just think you're going to find something about me too bizarre one day."

"Oh yeah? Well I can hang," Aubrey said, and with that, pulled an inch-long nail out of the box and gulped it down.

A pause.

"You don't swallow them whole, do you?"

"Aubrey, what the fuck.”

"Huh. Why did I do that?"

"Oh my god." Dani laughed, and kept laughing, high-pitched and uncontrollable. It was the incredulous sort of laugh that comes from being so delirious with panic that the feeling loops back around to being hilarious. Not that Aubrey could relate or anything. "Oh my god, Aubrey, you're insane! How did you manage to make this night even more ridiculous than it already was?"

"Am I weird enough yet?" She had started to giggle too. It wasn't like there was much else to do at this point.

"I'm gonna die." Dani wiped tears from the corners of her eyes, trying to catch her breath as she continued to laugh. "Or you might. I'm really scared for you actually."

"Yeah, this is bad probably, huh?"

"No, seriously, we have to go to the actual emergency room now because you just ate an entire nail."

"Wait, no, I hate hospitals!"

"Me fucking too, but you just swallowed a sharp chunk of literal metal! It could, I don't know, puncture you or something!"

Aubrey groaned. "Fine, but only if we don't tell Mama."

Dani stopped giggling for a moment, thinking. "We still need her car, though. I know where the keys are."

"You have a license?"

"I don't show up in photographs, remember? Of course I don't have a license."

"Right. Cool. Well, I don't either, so..."

"Don't worry. I drive the landscaping cart around the lodge's grounds all the time."

"Well, that's probably basically a car. You know what street signs and shit mean?"

"Probably."

Three blown stop signs, two unheeded red lights, and several screeching turns around bends on the highway later, they both came stumbling up to the sinister red glow of the EMERGENCY sign and the automatic sliding doors below it. "Stop laughing," Dani kept saying as they walked in. She tried several times to bite her lip in order to stop her own hysterics, but it only resulted in her snorting loudly instead. "Stop it! You're injured! We shouldn't be having a good time!"

Given that most cases of ingested foreign objects occur in individuals under the age of five--a fact of which the doctor felt the need to inform her--Aubrey figured she could at least take some pride in being a novelty. All the same, it was difficult to get her story straight. She ended up with several brochures for therapy to treat pica. It was at least preferable to admitting, "I ate a nail in a misguided attempt to prove a point to my anxious vampire not-quite-girlfriend."

Dani stood up the moment Aubrey walked back into the waiting room, as though she had been watching the door. She had sobered up some, it seemed. Nervously, she pulled on each of her fingers as though to crack the knuckles, though there was no sound. "How'd it go? What'd she say?"

"So apparently, most people just pass this stuff on their own. They took some X-rays, but apparently I'm not at a huge risk for being perforated or whatever, so they're not gonna put me through surgery. She just said to monitor it."

"Well, I guess that's good." Her tone was doubtful as she wrapped her arms around herself. "Still, I wish they could do more for you than just tell you to wait. Where'd you get the Jello cups?"

"The nurses will just give them to you if you ask! I guess they felt bad for me. Want one?"

With a faint smile, she took it and sat back down. "So," said Dani, peeling back the lid.

"So," said Aubrey. She tapped the side of her plastic cup with her forefinger. Of course they had to talk about it. It might as well be at this hour, she supposed, like all their other important talks. "Maybe you had a point, huh? You'd never have a normal relationship with me as your girlfriend." She forced a small chuckle at the end.

Dani didn't laugh in return this time. She poked at the red gelatin. Aubrey noticed that she liked to watch the chunks of it jiggle on her plastic spoon before eating it. That was important. "Maybe not," she said thoughtfully. "Though I was thinking that sneaking out and stealing Mama's car is pretty teen rom-com."

Aubrey recognized that as a hint of hope. "So is sharing Jello, I think." She looked out the window at the streaks of yellow on the horizon, signaling the coming sunrise. Mama would be up with the sun, surely, and possibly wonder where her car went not long after. "We're going to get in so much fucking trouble. Also very teen rom-com."

That time, Dani giggled. Then she stopped, not lifting her eyes from the tile. "I really do care about you."

Aubrey blinked. "I...I care about you too."

"Could we...would you be okay with taking it slow? I'm not sure I want to call it a relationship just yet. But I like what we've been doing. I really like it."

Slowly, she felt a grin spread across her face. "Just tell me something: can I do more than what we've been doing? Am I allowed to kiss you?" She brushed aside Dani's hair before it could fall in front of her cheek.

With a small smile, she asked, "Are you going to make fun of me if I tell you I've never kissed a girl before?"

"No. But I think it's worth a try."

"This can't be exactly how you thought it'd be, though."

"What do you mean?" Dani asks.

"I mean, for one thing, you probably imagined you'd be dating a Sylph. And that you wouldn't be living in a hotel. This probably isn't anything like you imagined a  normal relationship being, is it?"

"Well, that's true." Another pause passes by. Matter-of-factly, she goes on, "Nothing in my fucking life worked out the way I wanted it, actually."

"I know," Aubrey says quietly.

She feels a graceful hand card through her thick curls. "I feel like that might be okay, though."

Aubrey had no idea if this relationship qualified as normal or not. Normal, she guessed, was not the word for it. It just felt a bit like home.

((Please consider reblogging if you enjoyed!))