#Thanks for sending this Sho! These prompts are lovely 🥺

[floydmtalbert]

Lou & Tab + “hugging while lying down together” from this prompts list, requested by @shoshiwrites

When she has drunk the last of her tea—the stuff the British had left, so weak that all she had really tasted was the chlorinated water drawn from the lister bag—she slumps forward and rests her elbows on her thighs. The empty mug dangles from her fingers. At last she looks up and meets Tab’s eye, and, as if the sight of him is a reminder, her mouth twists.

He comes to kneel in front of her, and takes the mug gently from her hand and sets it down on the floor beside the cot.

“You should get some rest,” he says, and touches her knee. “Hmm?”

Louise makes no reply, staring at the floorboards, and he is about to repeat himself when she takes a deep breath and nods, and, with effort, straightens slightly.

He stands, and starts to turn away, but she catches his wrist. For a long moment she just looks at him, eyes dark and wide in the light of the gas lamp, and then she asks, “Can you stay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I can stay.”

Her mouth tightens again, then abruptly she drops her hand and turns her head away, and lies down on the cot to face the wall.

Tab goes over to the table where the lamp sits, hissing softly; its light flares on the floral wallpaper before he turns it off. In the darkness, the autumn chill feels more pronounced; the ghosts she had spoke into being linger in the corners of the room. He unfolds a blanket and drapes it over Louise, pulling it up to cover her shoulders. Then he lies down beside her, his head pillowed on one arm behind her head, his knees tucked under her thighs, the toes of his boots just touching the heels of hers.

Curled up by the door, Trigger is dreaming, little whines punctuating snuffles and low snores; the cot creaks every now and then with their minute shifting of limbs; he can hear Louise breathing, too quickly for her to be asleep. Small sounds, magnified by darkness.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks her, his voice low in her ear.

“Nothing,” she murmurs back. “Everything. I don’t know.”

He takes a breath. “C’mon,” he whispers, “put your arms around me.”

She turns, and does as she’s told, pressing her face into his neck as her arms wrap around his shoulders. He has one arm around her waist and the other crooked for her to rest her head; his nose is buried in her hair, smelling dirt and old sweat.

Slowly he gives in to the waves of tiredness, that floating, rocking feeling, and he lies there halfway between sleep and waking and holds her, and in time with her breathing he strokes his thumb over the two small freckles behind her ear.

[ciaossu-imagines]

hello, this is nix! i’ve read the self-shipping headcanons you did for me and shoichi, and all i could say is wow. i’m in awe. it’s amazing that you got most, if not all, spot-on! i enjoyed reading them and thought to myself, “this makes so much sense.” they’re long and specific, so it must’ve taken you time to write all of that 🥺 don’t worry about having repeated some things because it’s still worth the read. i know you put a great deal of effort into interpreting the descriptions i gave and writing those headcanons, and i really appreciate it. i had never put much thought into self-shipping with a fictional character before, that is until you matched me with sho-chan (and don’t worry, i can share him with you! haha).

i would also like to express my gratitude for the two personalization prompts you’ve done for me. honestly, i never expected that because i simply loved your works without anticipating anything in return. so, for you to do reader appreciation gestures warms my heart. your dedication to giving back to your readers is amazing. 💝

one thing, though—i was laughing when you mentioned my pfp because i’m not even a feline enthusiast, and i’m allergic to them. it’s just that i find the icon picture itself cute and funny, so it was hilarious that it’s how you had pictured me when you thought of me, haha. oh, and the sawako face claim works out as well because i do have jet black hair, except that i don’t have any bangs, and i prefer a short haircut (i only had to grow my hair out because my health degree program requires us to wear a chignon most of the time. ugh!)

for the personalization prompt #1, no need to worry because i’m familiar with servamp from watching the anime. however, i have yet to read the manga, so there are characters i still don’t know about. even if i’m not deeply invested in the series (because i’m more focused on other fandoms), i still enjoyed it and the personalized prompt you made as well. 💗🎀

Hey Nix! It’s so lovely to see you back in the inbox 😊 I’m so glad you enjoyed the self-ship headcanons. I honestly had a lot of fun writing them up – I’m a sucker for those kind of things honestly, so I’m glad that most of them hit the mark! It did take a fair amount of time, but it’s time well spent to me! I enjoy it and I like being able to do special little things like that for lovely readers like you. I wasn’t kidding – your support, all your likes and asks sent in mean a ton to me, as I am one of those bad writers who really do get a lot of their motivation from interaction with readers and feedback/knowing people are reading! I’m glad that the repetition I did notice didn’t bother you too much. It’s really such a compliment to learn that my little match-up made you consider self-shipping! It really is just a fun and sometimes therapeutic thing, but that’s coming from someone with so many self-ships hahaha! And thanks for the sharing – sharing is caring, after all lol!

Aww, thank you so much for saying that 😊 I know it wasn’t expected from any of the people I did it for, they were all meant to be little surprises for those who keep me happy and motivated to write! I really do appreciate all my gorgeous constant readers and do believe that every single one of you is an amazing person behind those screens and when I sit down at my altar at night for meditation, I send blessings out in the universe for each and every one of you <3 Hopefully that’s hitting its mark in at least some cases!

Okay, but I am laughing over here at the irony! It sucks you’re allergic to cats and I can see why you wouldn’t like them if they make you all sneezy and gross feeling but yeah, the icon picture is adorable! It just did not work out well for actually inserting you into a universe, something I do with any of the readers I start to recognize by name or favourite characters (it fleshes out the world’s just that much more when I write my little cheesy stuff for myself or imagine myself/my OC’s in the various ‘verses!) That’s so weird that your health degree program specifies a certain hairstyle and that’s really gender-biased, as I’m assuming they don’t make men have chignons! I hope you’ll get to have your hair back to how you prefer it when you finish your degree (with great success, as I know you will!). I really lucked out in that, even when I was doing my clinical work for my degree in the health field, it was only the standard – long hair pulled back and I had to get rid of my funky colored hair and have it only natural colors while in the program. Thankfully my current workplace is fine with whatever I want to do with my hair, as long as I don’t shed into the pill bottles. And I’m glad you were at least familiar with the universe, even if it’s not one you’re deeply invested in! I just honestly could see you in that universe so well, plus another couple universes but the fandoms for those are so, so small that I assume nobody knows them haha!

Anyway, thank you so, so much for sending this in to the ask box. I popped on tonight to really catch up on everything new that has come in and to add a bunch to my queue and this made me smile a lot and made my heart happy, so really appreciate it and you 😊