#There's some dreams from ages ago that still linger in the back of my mind sometimes for being horrifying

[stylesispunk]

'Merry christmas, please call me' day 1/4

no outbreak! Joel Miller x f! reader

summary: one year after your breakup, joel is pleading to his phone for a call from you. 🌲

w.c: 6k>

warnings: age gap (joel is fifteen years older than reader) angst as usual and fluff with a happy ending like in the Christmas movies.

a/n: welcome to the first day of my joel's fic christmas version event. I want to remind you that i'm from south america and my christmas has always been hot because of summer, so i'm feeding my dreams. I hope you like this one and see you again on the second day of my mini event! Happy reading 💌

The smell of burn cookies made Joel nauseous. The lights of the Christmas tree in the corner of these four walls seemed to gave him a migraine.

A night like this where everyone was celebrating around a table full of food and loved ones. He was lonely with his thoughts drifting away to you. You were on his mind, day and night for the last 365 days that he had been without you.

It was his fault.

He recalled, this exact same night a year ago when he broke up with you out of the blue, due to poor excuses nor even him believed.

Your age gap, that you were childish, that you deserved someone better, he’d said. Someone whole. A ridiculous justification that even he couldn’t stomach now. At the time, he’d convinced himself it was for the best. He had no right to drag you into his mess of doubts and guilt, into his constant battle with the ghosts of his past. But it didn’t stop the ache from settling in his bones, lingering there like a wound that refused to heal.

His thumb hovered over your name in his contacts. It had been a year since you left, a year since the fight that had left him standing alone in the doorway, watching you walk out with tears in your eyes and a suitcase in your hand. He hadn’t dared delete your number, which now stared back at him, mocking him in the silence. How many times had he replayed that night in his head, hoping he’d wake up and find that it was nothing more than a cruel nightmare?

Call her, the voice in his head whispered.

But what could he say? What words could possibly undo the damage he’d caused?

A sigh escaped him as his head dropped back against the old couch, the springs groaning in protest. The soft hum of a Christmas song playing from a neighbor’s apartment felt like salt in the wound, each note a reminder of what he’d lost.

You were his person. You’d been his anchor through the storms, the one who never let him drown, even when he tried to push you away. And he had pushed you, hard enough to make you leave for good.

But Joel still hoped. Pathetically, desperately. Every buzz of his phone made his heart lurch, only to drop moments later when it wasn’t you. He hated himself for it, for waiting on a miracle he didn’t deserve.

Finally, with trembling hands, he let his thumb tap against your name. The call button loomed there, so simple and yet so heavy. He stared at it, his pulse pounding in his ears.

“Merry Christmas,” he muttered, voice rough. The silence of the house swallowed his words. “Please call me... God, just call me.”

He closed his eyes, pressing his palms to his face. You were out there somewhere, probably laughing, surrounded by family or friends. Did you even think about him? Did you miss him the way he missed you? The unanswered questions gnawed at him, the kind of pain he’d learned to carry in his bones over the last twelve months.

When he finally looked at the phone again, he couldn’t stop himself. He typed out a message, the words simple but raw:

Merry Christmas. Please call me.

He hit send before he could second-guess himself, the soft whoosh of the message sending feeling louder than it should have. Now, all he could do was wait.

You won’t reply, he thought bitterly. Why would you?

But just as he began to put the phone down, it buzzed in his hand.

The sound of laughter echoed around the room, your cousin telling some exaggerated story about their vacation as everyone leaned in, caught up in the humor of it all. You tried to smile, to focus on the holiday warmth and cheer, but it all felt distant, like you were watching it from behind a thick pane of glass.

For the last four Christmas you had had someone by your side, holding your hand and making you feel a whole in the room.

Now he wasn’t here.

Now it had been a year since he pushed you away from his life.

You excused yourself for a moment, slipping out to the porch where the cold December air stung your skin. It was quieter out here, the twinkle of Christmas lights from neighboring houses reflecting off the snow. You wrapped your arms around yourself, breathing out slowly, your breath a cloud in the chill.

And then you felt it. The buzz of your phone in your pocket.

Sliding it out, your heart stopped when you saw the name.

 Joel.

The message was simple, just four words Merry Christmas. Please call me.

You stared at the screen, your mind racing. You hadn't heard from him in months. The last time had been his birthday three months ago, a tentative text you’d sent just to say you hoped he was doing well. He’d thanked you, but the conversation died before it could have started. You thought that was the end of it, that Joel had moved on, just like everyone told you he would.

But now... this.

You sank onto the porch steps, your fingers tightening around the phone. The memories came flooding back: The past Christmas, when he’d held you in his arms by the fire, murmuring promises you’d believed in so completely. And the fight that tore it all apart, the anger in his voice masking the vulnerability he was so terrified to show.

You swiped at your screen, opening the message again.

Call him, a voice in your head urged. Just call him.

But another voice whispered fearfully

 What if he’s just lonely?

For a moment, you hesitated, your thumb hovering over his name in your contacts. Then, with a deep breath, you pressed the button. The phone rang once, twice, each second stretching into eternity.

“Hello?” His voice was low, rough, like he hadn’t spoken in hours.

You closed your eyes, the sound of him unraveling something inside you. “Joel,”

….

You’d spent hours making everything perfect. The table was set with Joel’s favorite dishes, the candles were lit, and soft Christmas music floated through the air. The snow outside created a picturesque view through the windows, and for the first time in days, you were excited. Joel had been distant lately, his long hours at work bleeding into your evenings, but tonight would be different. It had to be.

“Joel, you’re late,” you said softly as he walked through the door, his shoulders slumped, his face tired.

He barely glanced at the table as he shrugged off his jacket. “Got caught up at work.”

“I made dinner.” You gave him a small smile, trying to meet his eyes. “I thought maybe tonight—”

“I’m not hungry,” he cut you off, his voice sharper than it needed to be.

Something in his tone made you flinch. You watched him sink onto the couch, elbows on his knees, staring at nothing. The weariness in his face didn’t feel like exhaustion; it felt like resignation.

You walked over to him carefully, sitting on the edge of the coffee table so you could face him. “But it’s christmas eve.”

“I know.” he muttered, but his eyes wouldn’t meet yours.

Your stomach twisted. This wasn’t the man who used to pull you into his lap and kiss your worries away. This was someone locked behind a wall you couldn’t reach. “You’ve been different lately. Talk to me. Please.”

He let out a long breath, his hands running through his hair. “I don’t know what we’re doin�� here.”

The words slammed into you like a physical blow. “What?”

Joel looked up at you finally, his expression hard, guarded. “Us. This. It doesn’t make sense anymore.”

Your heart pounded. “What are you talking about?”

He stood up abruptly, pacing the room like he needed to get away from you, as if your presence burned his skin. “You’re too young for this—”

“Don’t.” Your voice trembled, but you stood too, following him. “Don’t do that. You’ve never cared about the age gap before.”

“You should be with someone who can give you what you want, not some old man who can’t figure his shit out.” He turned, finally meeting your eyes, and his were cold, deliberately so. “Someone who isn’t afraid for what people say.”

The words hit like ice water, sharp and cruel. You took a step back, shaking your head. “Joel, that’s not fair. I don’t care about any of that. I love you.”

“Don’t,” he said again, his voice a low growl. “You’re just sayin’ that because you don’t know any better.”

The tears you’d been holding back spilled over. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because it’s the truth.” He swallowed hard, his jaw tight, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “I can’t be what you need. And you deserve better than what I can give.”

It wasn’t the words themselves that hurt the most, it was the way he said them, like he’d already decided this for you, like he’d been carrying it around for weeks, months, without telling you.

“Don’t you dare decide what I deserve,” you whispered, your voice breaking.

Joel looked at you then, really looked at you, and for just a moment, you saw it: the regret, the pain, the fear he was trying so desperately to hide. But then he turned his back to you, his shoulders rigid.

“Go,” he said quietly.

Your breath hitched. “What?”

“I said you should go.”

The room went deathly silent except for the sound of your soft, choked breaths. Joel didn’t move, didn’t turn around as you stared at him, waiting for him to say something, anything, to take it back. But he didn’t.

“We had been together for five years, Joel” you sobbed ���Are you throwing away?”

Joel's jaw tightened, his back still turned to you as if he couldn't bear to face what he was doing, what he had already done. His hands gripped the edge of the kitchen counter, knuckles white as if he were holding himself together by sheer force. The dim light from the Christmas tree glowed faintly in the reflection of the window, mocking the warmth and love that should've filled this night.

“I’m tired.”

You couldn’t stop the tears, couldn’t keep the crack out of your voice as you pleaded. “Tired of what? Of me?”

He flinched at the sound of your voice breaking, his shoulders drawing tight. “It ain’t just that,” he muttered, the words coming out strained. “It’s everythin’, me, us—” He finally turned to face you, his eyes dark and distant, as though he’d already started pulling himself away long before tonight. “You deserve better.”

“Don’t do that,” you snapped through the sobs, pointing at him, your whole-body trembling. “Don’t you dare try to make this about me, Joel. This is about you. You’re the one running away, you’re the one who—” You swallowed hard, the pain rising in your throat like a wave. “Who’s giving up.”

Joel's face crumpled for just a second, but he smoothed it out quickly, replacing it with that familiar mask of stubbornness. “I am tired,” he admitted, his voice low, hoarse. “Of fightin’ every damn day with the parts of myself you don’t see. I can’t—I can’t drag you into that. Not anymore.”

You shook your head, your tears falling faster now. “I knew what I was getting into when I chose you, Joel. I chose you! Over and over for five years. So don’t you dare tell me I can’t handle it, or you.”

His gaze flickered toward the floor, like he couldn’t stand to look at you. “It ain’t enough.”

Those words cut deeper than anything else he’d said. “What’s not enough?” you whispered, your voice breaking as you stepped closer. “Me? Or us?”

Joel looked back at you then, and for a moment, you thought you saw his resolve crack. You thought he might say he was sorry, that he’d been lying, that he still loved you the way you loved him.

But all he said was, “You need to go.”

Your heart shattered.

“No,” you choked out, shaking your head violently, refusing to believe this was happening. “I’m not leaving. I’m not walking away from you.”

Joel’s face hardened, though his eyes betrayed the storm inside him. He took a step back, deliberately creating distance between you both. “I already did, darlin’.”

A sob escaped you, and for a moment, you couldn’t breathe. Your chest ached; your lungs empty despite the cold air filling the room. It felt surreal, like you were living a nightmare you couldn’t wake up from.

“Fine,” you whispered, your voice ragged. You wiped angrily at your tears, glaring at him through the blur. “If you want me to go, I’ll go.”

“I hope you know what you’re losing.”

Joel didn’t respond. He didn’t move. And when you finally stepped out into the cold December night, suitcase in hand, the sound of the door closing behind you felt like the final nail in the coffin of everything you had built together.

It wasn’t until you were gone—until the silence swallowed the room whole—that Joel let his mask fall. His knees buckled, and he sank onto the couch, his head in his hands as tears slipped through his fingers.

Because he knew.

He knew exactly what he was losing.

And he left you walk away with nowhere to go.

“Hey,” he said, clearing his throat. “I—I wasn’t sure if you’d...” He trailed off, unsure how to finish.

There was a pause, and then you spoke. “I wasn’t sure either.”

His heart clenched. He wanted to say a hundred things, to tell you how much he missed you, how every day without you had been a slow, aching torture. But all he managed was: “Thanks for calling.”

“I wasn’t sure I should,” you admitted, your voice almost a whisper. “Joel, why?

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Because it’s Christmas. And because...” He ran a hand over his face, forcing the words out. “Because I’ve been a damn fool. I didn’t fight for us when I should’ve. And not a day’s gone by where I don’t regret it.”

The silence on the other end felt unbearable. “I know I don’t deserve this,” he added quickly. “But I just needed to hear your voice. Even if it’s just this once.”

His words cut through the cold night air, stirring something deep inside you. Joel had never been good at talking about his feelings, and hearing him now, his voice raw and unsteady, you realized just how much this call meant to him.

“You hurt me, Joel,” you said quietly, your voice trembling. “I gave you everything, and you... you pushed me away.”

“I know,” he said, his voice thick. “I know I did. I was scared, alright? Scared of messing up, of losing you... and I ended up doin’ just that.”

You swallowed hard, your eyes stinging. “And now? What’s changed?”

“I have,” he said without hesitation. “I’ve had a year to think about every mistake I made, every time I let my pride get in the way. I’m not sayin’ I’ve got it all figured out, but... I know I can’t go another year without you, darlin’.”

The silence stretched between you, heavy with the weight of everything unsaid.

“Joel,” you whispered, tears slipping down your cheeks.

“Just tell me if there’s a chance,” he said, his voice breaking. “Even the smallest one. I’ll do whatever it takes, I swear it.”

“Are you alone?” you asked, feeling your voice trembling.

Joel froze for a second, caught off guard by the question. He exhaled softly, his breath shaky. “Yeah,” he admitted, his voice low and rough. “It’s just me and some burnt cookies.”

Your heart ached at his words, but a small, broken laugh escaped you at his words. Burnt cookies. Joel had never been much of a baker. That was your thing. And yet, every Christmas, he’d insist on helping or more accurately, on getting in the way, while you made batch after batch of cookies.

“You burned them?” you asked softly, a hint of a smile tugging at your lips through the tears.

“‘Course I did,” Joel grumbled, though there was no bite to it. “Turns out, I’m no better at bakin’ now than I was then.” He hesitated before adding, almost shyly, “Guess it’s not as fun when you’re not here to yell at me for sneakin’ the dough.”

“Joel, I swear to God, if you eat one more spoonful of that dough—”

He grinned, a mischievous gleam in his eyes, before scooping up another bite and popping it into his mouth. “What? I’m just makin’ sure it’s good, darlin’. Quality control.”

It was like that every single time, you’d roll your eyes, only for him to pull you into his arms and press a kiss to your lips, soft and lingering, tasting of sugar and butter.

You’d tried to scold him, but he always made you laugh instead, his hands sneaking around your waist to pull you close. The cookies always took twice as long as they should’ve, and more flour ended up on the two of you than in the dough. But those moments had been yours—sweet, simple, and full of a kind of love you didn’t realize you’d taken for granted until it was gone.

“Do you remember?” you whispered, your voice trembling.

Joel’s breath hitched on the other end of the line. “Every second of it,” he admitted softly. “I remember how you’d get that little crease in your brow when you were concentratin’, tryin’ to make everything perfect. And how I’d ruin it all just to get you to look at me instead.”

You smiled through your tears, the memories making your chest ache. “You never helped. You just kissed me the whole time.”

“Well,” Joel said, his voice thick but warmer now, “you didn’t seem to mind too much.”

You swallowed hard, pressing your hand to your chest as if it could stop the way your heart ached for him. For all of it. “I didn’t,” you admitted quietly. “I loved that.”

There was a pause, heavy and delicate all at once.

“I miss you,” Joel said finally, his voice low and rough. “I’ve missed us. Not just the cookies, or the traditions... but you, darlin’. I miss seein’ you smile. I miss hearin’ your laugh when I did somethin’ dumb. I miss... kissin’ you in the middle of a mess we made together.”

Your throat tightened, tears slipping silently down your cheeks. How was it that Joel always managed to say the exact words you’d been afraid to admit to yourself?

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” you whispered. “It makes it harder.”

“What?” he asked, hopeful somehow.

"To hate you" you said, bluntly.

Joel went quiet on the other end of the line. The soft crackle of the connection was the only sound between you, filling the heavy silence where words struggled to exist. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper, as though he was afraid saying it out loud might break you both.

“I don’t want you to hate me, darlin’.”

You squeezed your eyes shut, pressing the heel of your palm against your forehead to stop the tears. “Well, it would’ve been easier if you’d stayed away.”

“I tried,” Joel admitted.

You could picture him sitting there, in the same living room where you’d spent so many nights living together. You imagined the empty house around him, quiet and cold, without the warmth the two of you used to fill it with.

For a moment, neither of you spoke. The silence on the line felt heavier now, like it was holding both your hearts in its grip.

“I thought—” you started, then stopped, the words catching in your throat. I thought you’d moved on, you wanted to say. But you couldn’t. You weren’t ready to admit that fear aloud, not yet.

Joel seemed to understand anyway. “There’s no one else,” he said softly. “There never could be. I—I didn’t want to make you think I was waitin’, like I was hopin’ for somethin’ I didn’t deserve. But I couldn’t... I couldn’t bring myself to move on. You’re it for me.”

Your breath hitched, tears welling up as his words sank in. You’re it for me. Joel Miller, stubborn and guarded as he’d always been, was laying himself bare in a way he never had before.

“Why now, Joel?” you whispered, your voice cracking. “Why tonight?”

He let out a heavy breath. “Because i'm in love with you” he said, leaving no room for doubting “And because I couldn’t let another month pass without tellin’ you what’s in my heart. Even if it’s too late... I needed you to know.”

The line went quiet again, but this time, it wasn’t the kind of silence that felt heavy with regret. It felt different—like a small flicker of something you weren’t ready to name just yet.

“Get some sleep, Joel,” you murmured softly, surprising even yourself.

He chuckled lightly, a sound you hadn’t realized you’d missed so much. “Alright, baby. I will. You too.”

“Goodnight,” you whispered.

“Goodnight,” Joel replied, his voice soft and warm.

You hung up the phone and let it rest against your chest as you lay back on the couch, tears still wet on your cheeks.

You stood up to go back inside the house and the room felt still, like the world had paused just for you to breathe, to take in everything that had happened. The faint glow of the Christmas lights cast soft, colorful patterns on the walls. It felt bittersweet, like the warmth of a memory that wouldn’t quite let go.

Your chest ached with the weight of it all. Joel’s voice still lingered in your mind, the way he’d said baby, soft, familiar, like it belonged to you and no one else. It had been so long since you’d heard it, and it stirred something in you you’d tried to bury. Something tender and raw, something that reminded you of stolen kisses in the kitchen, of his arms wrapped around you on cold nights, of the way he used to make you feel like home wasn’t a place but a person.

You wiped at your cheeks, sniffling quietly. “Damn you, Joel Miller,” you whispered to the empty room, but your voice lacked conviction. The truth was, you didn’t know how to feel. Angry? Relieved? Hopeful?

“Are you okay?” your mother’s voice broke through the stillness, soft but laced with concern.

You startled slightly, turning toward the sound. She stood in the doorway, her silhouette framed by the dim glow of the hall light, her face etched with the quiet worry only a mother could carry.

You tried to smile, to brush it off like you always did, but the tears still wet on your cheeks betrayed you. “Yeah,” you croaked, your voice hoarse from the emotion threatening to spill over. “I’m fine.”

She tilted her head, unconvinced, and took a slow step closer. “Sweetheart...”

The way she said it made your composure wobble. You looked away, blinking rapidly as if that would erase the evidence of the storm swirling inside you. “It’s nothing, Mom. Just... Christmas stuff.”

She didn’t say anything right away, just moved to sit beside you on the couch. Her warmth and presence were enough to break something loose inside you, and for a moment, you just sat there in silence.

After a long, heavy pause, you finally spoke, your voice trembling. “I have to go.”

Your mother turned to you, her brows knitting together in quiet confusion. “Go? Where?”

You swallowed hard, your hands fidgeting nervously in your lap. “I... I don’t know…home?”

Her expression softened, and she gave a small, knowing nod. “To Joel?”

You glanced at her, startled that she understood so quickly, but you shouldn’t have been surprised. Mothers always knew. “I just-” You broke off, your voice faltering.

She studied you for a long moment, then reached out to gently clasp your hand. “Then go,” she said quietly, squeezing it in encouragement. “But go for the right reasons, sweetheart. Not because it’s Christmas, or because you feel like you owe him something. Go if you think it’s what your heart needs.”

You blinked at her, your throat tight. “What if I regret it?”

She smiled softly, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. “And what if you don’t?”

The question hung in the air like a challenge, one that settled deep in your chest.

You exhaled shakily, then stood, your movements unsteady but resolute. “I’ll be back soon,” you said, though you weren’t sure if it was more for her benefit or your own.

She gave you a gentle smile and stayed seated, as if she knew this was something you had to do on your own. “Take a coat,” she reminded you softly.

You nodded, grabbing your coat and scarf off the rack by the door. The cold air outside hit you immediately as you stepped out, but it didn’t slow your steps as you headed to your car. Your heart pounded, nerves swirling in your stomach as you turned the ignition and pulled out onto the quiet, dark road.

Joel sat slouched on the couch, elbows on his knees, staring at the Christmas tree he’d half-heartedly decorated earlier that day. The glow of the lights cast soft, uneven patterns on the floor, but he wasn’t really seeing them. His mind was stuck somewhere else—on the sound of your voice, on the quiet goodnight that hung heavier than he could have imagined.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, tired in a way that sleep wouldn’t fix. It was the kind of weariness that came from missing someone so deeply it felt like it hollowed you out.

A sudden knock at the door startled him. He frowned, glancing at the clock on the wall.

With a groan, he pushed himself up, grumbling under his breath as he trudged toward the door. “Tommy, I swear I’m fi—”

He pulled the door open mid-sentence, the complaint dying on his lips when he saw who it was.

You.

For a moment, neither of you said anything. You just stood there on his doorstep, wrapped in your coat and scarf, your cheeks pink from the cold, your breath visible in the freezing air. Your wide eyes met his, filled with something he couldn’t name—surprise, maybe, or uncertainty.

Joel froze, his hand still on the doorknob, his heart thudding hard against his chest. He blinked, like he was trying to make sure you were real. “Baby?”

“Hi,” you said softly, the single word carrying so much weight it nearly knocked the air out of him.

Joel let out a shaky breath, his voice rough when he finally spoke. “What... what’re you doin’ here?”

You shifted the bag in your hands, your fingers clutching the handles tightly, like it was the only thing keeping you grounded. “I, uh... I brought some things to bake cookies,” you said quietly, your voice trembling just enough to betray the emotions you were trying to hold back.

Joel just stared at you, completely still, like he wasn’t sure he’d heard you right. The words sank in slowly, and something in his chest tightened—hard and sudden—until he felt like he might break right there on the spot.

“You... you brought stuff to bake cookies?” he repeated, his voice so low it was barely a whisper.

You nodded, a small, almost shy smile tugging at your lips. “Yeah,” you murmured. “I figured... if it’s just you and some burnt cookies this year, maybe you could use a little help.”

Joel exhaled sharply, a shaky breath that sounded dangerously close to a sob. He turned his face slightly, as if trying to gather himself, but there was no hiding the way his eyes shone in the soft light spilling from the doorway.

For a long moment, he didn’t move, didn’t speak, he just looked at you, like you were something fragile and precious, something he couldn’t believe was right in front of him. Finally, he cleared his throat and stepped back, his voice rough as he spoke. “C’mon in, baby. It’s too damn cold out there.”

You stepped inside, the warmth of home enveloping you, after being away for a year, this house still carried the faint scent of pine, Joel and something a little burnt, probably the remnants of his earlier baking disaster. Joel shut the door behind you, lingering for a moment before turning to face you again.

“You didn’t have to do this,” he said softly, his voice uneven, like he was fighting to hold something back.

“I know,” you replied, meeting his gaze.

Joel swallowed hard, the weight of your words sinking into him like a balm to every ache he’d carried for far too long. “You always know how to fix my messes,” he said, his lips curling into a small, almost wistful smile.

You gave him a look, a teasing edge to your voice despite the tension still lingering between you. “Well, someone’s gotta make sure you don’t burn down the kitchen.”

Joel let out a quiet laugh, gruff and hoarse, but real. It sounded like the kind of laugh that had been buried for too long, and the sound of it made your heart squeeze in your chest.

“Yeah,” he said softly, watching you with that same unreadable expression. “Guess someone does.”

For a moment, neither of you spoke, the air between you thick with unspoken words and years of memories. Then Joel sniffed, scrubbing a hand down his face as if to steady himself. “You still use that same recipe?”

“Of course I do,” you replied, your voice light but steady. “You’re gonna help me this time, though. And I mean actually help.”

Joel watched you for another long moment before he turned toward the kitchen, clearing his throat again. “Alright, then,” he said, his voice thick with emotion he couldn’t quite hide. “Let’s make some cookies.”

The kitchen was filled with the warm, sweet smell of freshly baked cookies. A few floury handprints stained the counter, mixing bowls were stacked haphazardly in the sink, and a couple of slightly misshapen cookies sat cooling on the tray. It wasn’t perfect, far from it, but it felt like you. Like him. Like the pieces of something familiar were falling back into place.

You set the final cookie down on the tray, brushing a bit of flour from your cheek with the back of your hand. “Well,” you said, stepping back to admire the messy success, “I think we did it.”

Joel didn’t answer right away. When you turned to look at him, you found him leaning against the kitchen doorway, his arms crossed over his chest, a quiet smile tugging at his lips. There was something soft in the way he looked at you, something so Joel,it made your breath hitch.

“What?” you asked, self-conscious under his gaze.

He shook his head slowly, that smile growing just a little. “Nothin’,” he said, his voice low and steady. “Just…you look even more beautiful than I remember.”

The words hit you like a wave, sweeping away all the uncertainty you’d been holding onto. Your heart skipped in your chest, and your breath caught in your throat, leaving you momentarily speechless. You hadn't expected that—hadn’t expected him to say that, especially after all this time.

You glanced away for a moment, suddenly unsure of yourself. The kitchen suddenly felt warmer, the space between you two too close, and yet it felt like everything was finally falling into place, as if you’d both been waiting for this moment without knowing it.

“Joel…” you whispered, your voice barely audible as you tried to steady your breath. You met his gaze again, and this time, there was something different there—a vulnerability, a longing that mirrored your own.

He stepped forward, slowly, as if giving you the space to decide what came next. But you didn’t pull away. You stood there, rooted in the moment, caught somewhere between the past and the present, unsure of what the future held but certain that, for once, you wanted to face it with him.

“I mean it,” Joel added, his voice soft but unwavering. “You always did have a way of lightin’ up a room, darlin’. But right now… you’re more than I remember.”

A lump formed in your throat, and for a second, you couldn’t hold back the emotion that swelled within you. It was like he had reached right into the depths of what you’d been afraid to feel and pulled it all to the surface. You reached out instinctively, your hand brushing his arm, the warmth of his skin making everything feel so real again.

“Joel, I—” Your voice broke, and you paused, unsure of the words.

Joel didn't let you finish your sentence. Before you could gather your thoughts, before the words could fall into place, he closed the gap between you. His hand found your cheek, his thumb grazing the soft skin there, as if he needed to feel you, to make sure this wasn’t just a dream. His lips met yours, soft at first, hesitant, as though he was giving you the chance to pull away, but you didn’t.

You kissed him back, your hands coming up to tangle in his shirt, pulling him closer as the familiar taste of him flooded your senses. It was like stepping into a memory, one you’d been holding on to without even realizing it. All the years, the distance, the pain—all of it seemed to melt away in the warmth of his embrace.

The kiss deepened, slow and tender, and you let yourself lose in it, in him, in the feeling that maybe, just maybe, this was how things were meant to be all along. There were no questions, no doubts, only the comforting certainty of him being right there, of the connection you had never truly lost.

When he finally pulled back, both of you were breathing heavily, you gazing the floor instead of his eyes.

His hands were still on your face, his fingers brushing over your skin like he was memorizing every part of you again.

“I’ve wanted to do that for so long,” Joel murmured, his voice rough with emotion. His eyes searched yours, vulnerable and open in a way that made your heart flutter.

“Are you going to push me away again?” you asked, meeting his eyes with some fear dancing on them.

Joel’s expression faltered for a moment, his gaze flickering with a mix of fear and hope. He searched your face, as if trying to understand what you were really asking, what you really meant.

“No. I will never do that again.” he answered, “I was scared,” he admitted. “Scared of not bein’ enough for you. Scared of how people talked about us. Scared that you’d wake up one day and realize you deserved better.”

“I never thought that,” you said softly, finally meeting his gaze.

Joel swallowed hard, his eyes searching yours. “I was a damn fool for pushin’ you away. And if I could go back and fix it, I would. But I know I can’t. I just…” He paused, his voice breaking. “I just needed you to know how sorry I am.”

“Joel,” you said softly, your voice trembling. “I don’t know if we can go back to what we had. But…maybe we can start somewhere new.”

Joel’s breath caught, hope blooming in his chest. “I’d like that,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I’d like that a lot.”

The silence that followed felt different than before. It wasn’t filled with regret or confusion, but with a shared understanding—a quiet acknowledgment of what had been lost and what was still possible. You stayed close, your hands gently resting against his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath your fingertips.

Joel finally let out a shaky breath, as if he’d been holding it in for far too long. His hands came up to cup your face, his thumb brushing over your cheekbone, like he was memorizing the feel of you again. "I’m not askin' for all of it back. Just... a chance. To show you that I can be the man you deserve. The man I should’ve been all along."

You nodded slowly, your heart heavy but hopeful. “I’m not sure what this looks like, Joel. But we can figure it out, right? Together?”

A soft, sincere smile tugged at the corners of his lips, and he leaned down, pressing a gentle kiss to your forehead. Joel pulled back slightly, his hands still resting on your face as he looked at you with love and something more vulnerable, but what was more vulnerable than love? He took a slow breath, and then his gaze shifted toward the window, the quiet fall of snowflakes beginning to collect on the sill outside.

His voice was soft, almost reverent. "Look at that," he murmured, his eyes tracing the peaceful scene outside. "First snow of the year."

You turned to look out the window, your heart fluttering as you watched the snow gently blanket the world in white, the quiet stillness of the moment wrapping around you both like a cozy blanket. It felt surreal, almost like something out of a dream, a dream you didn’t want to wake from.

Being this close to the man you loved felt like a dream.

Joel stepped behind you, wrapping his arms around you, pulling you close again. His chin rested on your shoulder as he whispered in your ear, the warmth of his breath sending a shiver down your spine.

“Merry Christmas, baby,” he said, his voice full of raw tenderness, the words wrapped in the kind of love that had been buried for too long but never truly gone.

Before you could respond, he turned you gently, his hands sliding down your arms to hold your waist as he kissed you again, soft and slow, like this moment was meant for both of you, like it was always meant to be this way. The world outside faded, leaving only the quiet hum of your heartbeat and the warmth of his touch, the promise of something new blooming between you two.

And for the first time in a long time, it felt like home again.

[lxclerc]

𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 | 𝐝𝐫𝟑

summary... it’s never the right time for  you and daniel, always something pulling the two of you away from each other. requested... yes by literally everyone. yall were coming at me with pitch forks for this warning... age gap (7 years), emotional cheating, physical cheating, angst, angst, angst, light smut (more on fade to black) pairing... daniel ricciardo x horner! reader

note... i am tagging each and everyone of you who asked for a part 2 bc this fic has quite literally loomed over my head ever since i posted it a year ago. literally everytime i open this godforsaken app, someone is offering me their first born for the part 2 so yall better give me all the notes!!!

𝙢𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩

← prev part

high tide came and brought you in

“if you could go anywhere in the world right now, where would you go?”

the question caught you off guard as your friend drunkenly pondered over it out loud. where would you go? you were sober enough to say home, the most acceptable answer that would not invite any other follow up questions. it’s simple and doesn't need a discussion. the reason it caught you off guard wasn’t just that though but because your answer was instantaneous in your head. your answer isn’t a where but rather a who, came your bitter realization. 

and you knew that if you could go anywhere in the world right now, it’d be him you’d go to. he always lingers in the back of your mind, everything that reminded him of you tends to bring a certain kind of aching and longing you’ve grown to resent over the months and years spent without him. 

daniel sent you away and deep in you, you know he meant good. he’d done a selfless thing, loving you and setting you free. but missing him was unbearable, loving him all consuming and you resent him for doing this to you. you resent the world for making you fall for a man without letting you have him. 

still, you did as he told you. you went back to school, pursuing a career in a field you knew he’d be proud of, achieving your dreams and living your life as though a part of you hadn’t been left with him. 

your friends carry on with the party. half of university was partying which is a scene familiar to you. this time, it’s on the beach, the salty air and sound of crashing waves echoing with the sound of the music and chatter. still though, you can’t help but scan the place as though looking for him among the crowd of people the same way you always would. you miss the way you’d find his eyes already on you, pools of brown dripping like honey on your skin. 

but he’s never there and you feel dirty whenever another man looks at you, their gazes too eager as they look at you as though you’re a piece of meat, never gentle like his as though you’re aphrodite herself walking among mere mortals. 

you miss him is the ugly truth. you miss him so fucking terribly it makes you angry. you don’t want to miss him. you no longer want to love him. loving him hurts, as though he’s clawing at your chest and squeezing your heart together in a sick sort of torture. 

but even before he touched you, you were his. all he had to do was look at you. you exist in two places – here and wherever he is. 

eventually as the night progresses on, you move away from the party. you’re in some fancy country club and the tile is expensive on your feet as you step out of your heels and walked towards the beach, feeling the cool sand against your skin. 

in hindsight, you really shouldn’t have been surprised to find him in a place like this but despite looking for him wherever you go, you’d never expect to find him. searching for him has become a comfort the same way longing for him has – in a sick, twisted and painful way. 

but he’s here now and in the one time you hadn’t searched for him, he found you. the moment you’d spotted his figure looking out at sea, he turned to you as though a gravitational pull connected you to him. 

one year, three months and fourteen days. that was the last time you saw him but he looked no different from the man who’d brought you back to your hotel room only to say goodbye. 

and then he smiled and it was as though the sun shone on you again. 

“honey,” he says and your heart trembles. 

daniel.

it was too early. and you’re drunk and you aren’t entirely sure if you were dreaming or not. 

but he stands before you, eyes of brown looking as though you’re aphrodite herself and he can’t quite believe he gets to stand before you. eyes of brown that seem to be sobbing without tears. daniel. 

you’re still not talking and he’s letting you, watching you so intently as though he’s memorizing your face. he looked the exact same but you know what he must be seeing. you look nothing like the woman he left behind. you’d cut your hair short and dyed it. long gone were your summer dress, replaced by tight fitting ones that showed off your body. you feel different and you tried so hard to make sure you wouldn’t recognize yourself in the mirror. you hated seeing the woman who couldn’t make him stay. 

but in his eyes, you see your reflection and you recognize her well. 

“daniel,” you muttered as the crashing waves touched your feet. would you love me now? you wanted to ask. 

he smiled again. “you look beautiful as you always are.”

please touch me, you wanted to beg. soft eyes and soft soft hands. you’re lonely without him. 

you manage a grin. “sure, old man.”

the laugh that he let out echoed against your soul. “i’m being honest.”

you missed him. god, you missed him so fucking much. 

but daniel still would not let himself love you. not yet, not now that you’re finally building something for yourself. you have friends and have set goals. not yet. 

“y/n!” someone calls from behind you but you’re hesitant to take your eyes off of daniel, terrified he’d become a figment of your imagination the moment you do. but your friend's familiar calls force you to. “come on, we have to go.”

you ignore her, turning back to daniel and he smiles at you, offering his hand for you to shake. this is the best he can offer for now. “i’ll see you around, kid.” 

you wanted to cry, wanted to scream that it’s so unfair, but you smile sadly as he shook his hand, his calloused fingers so familiar against yours. 

“in a few years,” you say. 

and as the ocean brought him back to you, the waves must return to the sea. 

but you were still gone and gone, gone and gone

the next time you see daniel again, you were twenty four. you’re in your last year of university, applying for your doctorate. you loved academia, you loved your two cats and your little apartment downtown, you loved science and the galaxy it holds and you eventually realized that this is why he let you go. he wanted you to have this — be more than someone who just follows a man around country after country. 

he wanted you to grow, wanted you to find the things you really loved without influence from him. he wanted you to find your independence and learn to stand on your own two feet. 

max brought you here. it’s his first world champion and as his self proclaimed best friend, he refused to allow you to skip this one and so you pulled up your big girl pants and got on with it, arriving in abu dhabi on friday.

by some cruel twist of fate, he’s the first person you find the moment you enter the paddock. it would have been rude to ignore him and so you smile even though you can clearly see the woman next to him and the way she stands close. 

goddamn it. 

it hurt. it hurt seeing her there. it hurt seeing her cluelessly smile at you. the way he looks at you now, eyes of brown full of silent apologies, looking as though he wanted to reach over and touch you, to comfort you. 

you release a shaky breathe, raising your hand in an pathetic attempt of a wave before you walk past him. you aren’t the same young kid like before. now, you have enough self reservation to not actively put yourself in a situation that would only hurt you. you don’t need to play besties with daniel’s new girlfriend. 

the moment you enter the red bull motorhome, you hit max at the back of his head.

“what?” he exclaimed as you glared at him. 

“you’re an idiot,” was all you said before moving towards your father. you’d ignore daniel and his girlfriend. you’re here to support max – even if he is a stupid idiot – and there’s no need for you to obsess over daniel. 

but of course, you still do anyway. even as you watch the race, you’re watching him. he looks good, amazing, fucking edible. he looks like he stepped right out of your dirtiest dreams, all thick neck and stable arms. he looks beautiful, absolutely gorgeous and breathtaking and you selfishly want him just for you. but you’ve always wanted that and you’ve never been allowed to have him.

and then you’re watching her. she’s grace herself, really. she’s exactly the kind of woman he needed and you wonder if she knows about you and then you wonder what it is about her. what is it about her that made it so that daniel thought she’s good enough for him to love when he never could you?

“mate, it’s getting creepy,” max said as he took the seat before you. he looks tired but he looks determined and the way the hair falls over his face makes you smile. max is a very special person to you and you know that he always will. you hold him close to your heart and you know you’d move the earth for him. 

you reach over, fixing the collar of his red bull shirt. “shut up.”

“her name’s caroline,” max says. “if you want to get to know her then just approach her.”

you glared at him. you don’t want to know her name. you don’t want to know what her laugh sounds like or the color of her eyes. you don’t want to know what made daniel fall in love with her. you don’t want to know her. 

“shut up,” you say again. “i’m still blaming you.”

max laughed and you think him annoying you might just be his way of distracting himself from the race so you let him. you let him talk on and on and on the entire time till he’s needed back in the motorhome. you let him steal yur ice cream and tap your nose. 

but when you turned back to her, caroline, you find him staring right back at you, anger and jealousy in those brown eyes you missed so much.

and it was like you’re twenty again, petty and young as you glared right back at him. he had no reason to be jealous when he has her beside him. he has no right to be jealous when he’s the one who’s never allowed the two of you to be more. 

these hands had to let it go free

that night, he called you for the first time in three years. his name lit up your phone and your hand shook as you picked it up. his picture, smiling up at you taken at your twentieth birthday stares right back at you. 

“daniel,” you breathe out as you press the phone against your ear. you’d arrived back in your hotel room two hours ago smelling of champagne and victory. max’s world championship trophy is laying next to you after being forgotten because your best friend was far too drunk to grab it before his girlfriend dragged him out. throughout the party, you avoided daniel like the plague, keeping to your side of the room and never straying towards him. 

“i missed you,” he says from the other end, voice cracking and slurring. he’s drunk and you push back the blanket as you enter the bathroom, hand gripping your phone. “but fuck it, i don’t miss this.”

“what are you saying?” 

“he’s my best mate, y/n.” there goes your name. not sweetheart or honey. he says your name like it’s sacred, something he’s only ever allowed to say when he’s at his most vulnerable, completely raw and baring his soul to you. “and i wanted to fucking punch his face the entire night.”

you close your eyes. this is familiar to you. daniel and his raw honesty when he’s drunk. daniel and his jealousy of max. this is all so familiar to you that you feel twenty again. you feel young and out of control and so drunk in love with a man you can’t have that it physically hurts. he’s ripped you off the past few years where you’ve grown into yourself. you’re twenty again and so tragically in love. 

“i wanted to punch his fucking face because his touching you, because i’m not allowed to touch you,” he continues as you sink to the floor. 

“you’re the only one who’s never let yourself touch me, daniel,” you whispered on the phone, broken down from one phone call.

he laughs bitterly and you might as well not have said anything. “and here i am, can’t even sleep next to my damn girlfriend because i keep thinking of you. it’s so unfair.”

you wanted to laugh too. unfair? how does he get to talk about unfair when he’d been the one to create this mess for the two of you? how dare he talk about being unfair when he’s the one who’s with another girl? this is unfair. it’s unfair to you. he doesn’t deserve to talk about it being unfair. 

the night he left you in your hotel room on your twenty first birthday, you’d called his name again and again like a child. you hoped by some magical thing that he’ll appear. you were desperate. 

“you shouldn’t have come back,” he says. “not yet. we both weren’t ready.” 

you wipe the tears falling to your cheeks. “and when will that happen? when will we be ready? maybe it’s time to accept that it isn’t us.” 

you heard him let out a shaky breath. “don’t say that. don’t say it.”

“i’m so tired of waiting. if it wasn’t us then and it isn’t us now, why do we still believe that it’s us someday?” 

“ask me to stay,” he whispers. “ask me to stay and i will. ask me to drop her and i will. i will drop everything if you ask me to.”

you cry, pulling your knees against your chest. “goodbye, dan.”

struggled through the night with someone new

the next time you see daniel again, you invited him.  you’re twenty five, it’s two thousand and twenty two, you’re engaged and you’d gotten arrogant. 

you met your fiance, james, in university. you’re in the same program and the same friend group though you never paid much attention to him. for the most part, you never really paid much attention to anyone. six months later and he asked you on a date, one you’d declined without a second thought. it didn’t matter how many guys asked you out, you always declined, daniel in the back of your mind always reminding you of what you’re truly waiting for. 

but james never treated you any differently. he never made it awkward and never put you on the spot. for the most part, you both acted like it never happened. but you applied to the same doctorate program and coincidentally  ended up in apartments right next to each other. he was a comfort, a friend you already knew that you could rely on. he never made anymore advances towards you but it was inevitable to grow closer. 

he’s stability and curiosity. he never once pulled back whenever you touched him or apologized for liking you. it was a breath of fresh air – to be admired so freely. you did your thesis together, hands tightly clamped together as you defended it. 

you were the one to ask james out on a date, knowing he wouldn’t again in fear of making you uncomfortable. and after leaning on each other as friends for so long, transitioning to become lovers was so easy, you didn’t have to worry what anyone would say or think of you. you didn’t have to worry what your family would think. everything was easy with him. 

james was so different from the type of love you were used to. you could love him without guilt, without pain and longing. you could love him simply, easily. you didn’t need to ask him to love you back, didn’t need to wonder if he’d still love you tomorrow. it was so easy being with him and you’d gotten lazy. waiting and hurting and crying for daniel was exhausting. 

you wanted a love you didn’t have to fight for. 

you’ve convinced yourself that you no longer felt anything for daniel, gaslighting yourself into believing that you’d close that chapter and left it in the past. you can move on now. there was no need for you constantly being miserable and lonely waiting for him to be ready. 

and yet here you were, your fiance’s arm around you as you stare at the front door. you shouldn’t have invited him. there was no reason for you to do so but you wanted to prove yourself. you wanted to prove to yourself that he no longer affected you. daniel is in the past and you’ve told yourself repeatedly that you’ve let him go but now you wanted to show yourself that you have. 

if you’re lucky, maybe he wouldn’t attend at all.

“are you okay, love?” james whispered against your ear, having noticed your stiff posture. you spent weeks planning your engagement party, stressing over the smallest details but now you don’t seem to be enjoying yourself. 

you loved this about him – the way he’s able to read you like an open book. james knows there was someone before him – someone who’d left you broken and torn apart. he just didn’t know that person would be attending today. 

you nod, taking a sip from the champagne glass you’d been holding as an excuse to stop your hands from fidgeting. “just a bit nervous from the crowd.”

“don’t worry too much. it’s just friends and family.” he gives you an assuring smile, accepting your reasoning as he pulls you closer towards him to try and comfort you. 

you’re an idiot, the biggest one there is. max told you himself after you told him that you sent the invite to daniel. you’re a massive idiot and you’re in denial and you set your own trap, tempting yourself when there was no need to and now you were going to hurt james because the moment daniel entered the room, your breath was knocked out of you, heart beating furiously as though it recognized him. 

it was daniel. how can you be so stupid? 

his eyes meets yours and you missed the way those eyes of brown settle on your skin, grazing as though his soul was touching yours. but they’re sad this time – sad and exhausted and defeated and you can practically hear the way your heart shatters. it was daniel. it has always been daniel. it will always be daniel. how stupid were you to think otherwise? how stupid were you to believe you could ever forgot the way your heart and soul roars back to life the moment he enters the room. 

you’ll break james’ heart, you’re breaking your own and you’ve broken his. 

the entire time, you and james had stood before the door, greeting all of your guests and showing them where they can wait. you absolutely had no plans to greet daniel. it was bad enough that he was here, but james, sweet sweet james, who had no idea what he was doing dragging you towards the formula one driver, hadn’t gotten the memo.

he didn’t know that having daniel’s eyes on you so close would set wildfires in your stomach and he didn’t know how exhausting and difficult it was to contain those wildfires. he didn’t know that he was burning himself as he all but dragged you in front of him. 

“hey,” your fiance says cluelessly. “daniel ricciardo!” 

daniel is looking at you and you feel frozen under his gaze. it’s heavy. he makes you feel heavy, like you were cheating on james simply by looking at you. you feel nauseous but with guilt eating up at every cell in your stomach. but you shouldn’t feel guilty. he had no right to make you feel guilty for moving on. he moved on. last you him, he had a girlfriend. why aren’t you allowed to do the same? why can’t you go on with your life and build a future with a nice man that isn’t him?

“i’m a big fan,” james says cheerfully, offering his hand for daniel to shake and forcing him to tear his gaze away from you. 

daniel forces a smile to his face, moving to shake his hand and you know this is the part where you’re supposed to introduce him. daniel is your guest after all and so you clear your throat, hoping your smile isn’t as stiff as you feel like it is. 

“james, this is my friend daniel. daniel, my fiance james.” you manage to let out, gripping your champagne glass to avoid having to touch either of them the same way you avoid the way daniel’s eyes hardened when the word fiance tumbled from your lips. 

“it’s really nice to meet you, mate,” james says with a massive smile. god he’s so nice and sweet and you hate what you’re doing to him. 

daniel says nothing, only smiling and you end this entire interaction the moment you get a chance to. pointing at the snacks table, you turned to him. “there’s food over there and max is around here somewhere. nice seeing you again, daniel.”

you were lying through your goddamn teeth. thankfully, he seems to have taken the hint, walking away without saying another word. 

the entire night, you feel his eyes on you. even as james makes his speech declaring his love for you, daniel stares at you with hooded eyes. he looks pissed and sad at the same time and you wanted to scream. stop looking at me! you couldn’t take anymore of this. he’s looking at you as though you’re under a microscope – staring into your soul like he could reach you there. 

you’re an idiot and now that he’s in the same room as you are, the illusion has left you. you’re not over daniel because you can never be over him. he’s engraved in your soul, his fingerprints all over your heart. he was, and still is, the sun that made your universe turn. you’re choking and you needed to get away lest you burst.

daniel is overwhelming. he’s terrifying and addicting and you hate him but you’re madly in love with him. and worse of all, you’ll spend the rest of your life being in love with him. you’ll spend the rest of your life wanting him and hurting for him and and longing for him and that’s a goddamn fucking tragedy. 

you manage to get through the party, practically dissociating yourself. eventually the guests leave one by one, only your family and closest friends left. you sit on the foyer with max, the dutchman watching you drink champagne straight out of the bottle.

“you shouldn’t have invited him,” he tells you quietly. “you were fucking yourself over.”

you roll your eyes. you stare inside the house where daniel is talking to your father. your dad offered his home for your engagement party. you know he likes james. your mother too and your little siblings can’t get enough of him. that fact almost makes you want to throw up. 

“i thought i was over him,” you say.

it’s max’s turn to roll his eyes. “you’re just a good liar. you’ll never be over daniel and he’ll never be over you. even i know that.”

you glared at him. you already know what he’s telling you and quite frankly, you had no desire to hear it again. “i hate you.” 

“neither you nor dan would survive this long without me.” max laughed and you threw the throw pillow at him. 

not that he’s lying. you met max the same time you did daniel and you clicked immediately. he knows everything, comforted you many times as you pined over dan. he’s your best friend and he’s also daniel’s best friend. he knows more than anyone how deep the connection you two shared. 

“go home already,” you tell him. you’re tired and slightly drunk and you just want to go to bed now. “and make sure you take him with you.” 

max laughed at the way you said him like it’s a bad taste on your tongue but did as you said anyways. 

that night, you laid on the bed you and james shared, you couldn’t sleep. he’s fast asleep next to you, his arm over your stomach as you lay wide awake. you shouldn’t have invited him because now he’s turned your world upside down again. everything you’ve built for yourself was gone the moment his eyes met yours. he’s a plague, sucking all the happiness out of you. 

eventually though, the restless night was about to get worse as you picked up your phone, scrolling through your contacts till you found his name. you stared at it for a while, knowing that you shouldn’t but you’re rattled and your self control is at an all time low. you shouldn’t have been trusted to make any types of decisions. 

you come back to what you need

daniel was waiting for you when you parked your car outside his apartment building, hand gripping his phone as he watched you step out of the vehicle. four years since he first let you go and one year since he last saw you and you look as beautiful as you ever were.

he shouldn’t have told you to come but he’s so exhausted from staying away, from waiting for the right time. there will never be a right time and tonight, he’s done holding back. he wants you, he always has and he no longer has the energy to stop himself from wanting you. 

“i shouldn’t be here,” was the first thing you said as he opened the door for you. 

a lazy, almost mocking smile covered his lips. “and yet here you are.”

you glared at him but daniel’s heart was soaring. it’s been so long since you were this close. he can smell the perfume that followed you and the scent of your shampoo. he’s so so tired, he just wanted to hold you. 

he’s going to make this as hard as possible, you realize. you’re no longer a child, he doesn’t need to play nice and easy with you anymore. you’re a woman now and he’s going to treat you like one. but you just need to get over this. you need closure. you need to put him in the past where he truly belongs so you can go about your life. you need him out of your system. 

daniel may be everything you wanted but it’s time to accept that he’ll never be what you need. 

“why did you come?” you asked, wanting to get this over with as quickly as you can. three years pining for him in red bull and four years of longing for him and everything leads you here. 

daniel cocked an eyebrow. he’s done with playing nice. “you invited me.”

okay, you walked right into that one. “you still shouldn’t have come.” 

daniel wanted to laugh. “i guess we  both like doing shit that we shouldn’t do. now the question is, sweetheart, what are you doing here?” 

“i’m getting married, daniel,” you whispered. “we need to accept that it isn’t us.”

“i thought you did that in abu dhabi.”

he’s being an asshole. “you’re the one who told me to leave. you don’t get to be mad that i’m moving on.”

“you’re not moving on,” he laughed, leaning against the wall. 

you glared at him. “yes, i am. i’m getting married!” 

he looked at you as though you said something hilarious and you wanted to punch him in the face for it. “and yet you’re here.” 

“for closure.”

he stepped towards you and you found yourself holding your breath. from this close, you can see the freckles on your cheeks, the ones you used to spend all your time trying to memorize. the curve of his plump lips and the intensity in his eyes. and when he touched, it felt like the first drop of rain after a million years of dessert. his hand perfectly fitted on your hips, warm and so achingly familiar. 

his hand snaked from your hip to your legs, finger light on your skin as he ever so slightly tugged at your shorts. you need to pull away but your body needs him closer. you want him. you want him to get closer. you want him to touch you more, to feel his skin against yours. you can have every single inch of his body pressed against yours and you’d still begged to get closer. 

his lips graze your cheek before it reaches your ear, even breathes in contrast to your desperately shaky ones. “is that really what you want, baby?”

with every ounce of sanity you have left, you forced yourself to nod and you can feel the way his lips formed into a mocking smile against your cheek. 

“really?” he mocked. “then why are you clutching my shirt like you want more?”

you hadn’t even realized the way your fist is holding on to his shirt, pulling him closer towards you like you’re terrified he’d disappear right between your fingertips. 

“fuck,” you muttered, the heat of his skin against yours dizzying. james is nowhere near your mind as your hand slips under his shirt, self control flying out the window as you feel the curves of his abs. you want him. you’ve always wanted him so desperately that you’re willing to go to hell for it. “fuck me.” 

he kissed you then, fire in his lips as it finally finally touched yours. this is all you’ve ever asked for and it’s worth the damnation you’d be paying in return. you pull him impossibly closer, going on your tiptoes. you need to get closer. closer, closer, closer. 

like an addicted chainsmoker to cigarettes, you can’t get enough of his kiss. you want to inhale the fumes of his breath, of him, deep into your lungs. he tugs at your shirt and you pull away enough for him to get it off. 

you grunt in complaint when he pulled away from you, only to swallow it back as his lips attached to the skin of your chest, licking and nibbling as it slowly made it way down. 

“oh,” you breathe out as he lips attached to your breast, your fingers tugging at his curls as his tongue circled your nipple. 

you should have stopped him the moment his hand unbuttoned your shorts but as he bent you over and his hand slipped between your folds and he trapped your moans with his mouth, you were far too gone. god be damned, morality be damned. you’d crawl through hell for this. 

but eventually, reality comes knocking and morning comes and your bliss ends. you woke up from your phone ringing, cocooned in daniel’s arms. 

“don’t answer it,” he mutters but sleepily, you grab your phone from the nightstand, seeing james’ name on your screen. 

and that snaps you out of it, being reminded of what happened the night before and what you did and you all but jumped out of his arms as though his touch burned you. 

“fuck, fuck, fuck,” you mutter under your breath as you hurriedly put on your clothes, daniel watching you still naked from his place on the bed. you turned to him, “this never happened.”

you watched as anger slowly filled his eyes. “are you being serious right now?” 

“i’m getting married, daniel!” you’re panicking now, screaming as your phone rings again. 

“then why the fuck were you knocking on my door at two in the morning?” 

you ignore him, gathering your things. “it was a mistake.”

he’s glaring at you now, looking like he wanted to start screaming. but he remains silent, only glaring as you gather your things and put on your clothes. 

you look at him again, apologies and sorrow in your eyes. “i’m sorry but this isn’t me. this can’t be me.”

and then you left, not allowing yourself to look back as you ran to your car. maybe in a parallel universe or a different world, you sit next to each other at the kitchen table and go over the grocery list, but for all the universes and worlds there are, this one was not enough, not for now and not for you and daniel. 

when you finally arrive home, your father is in the kitchen, eyeing you up as you walk past him. “where were you? james was looking for you.” 

you grimace. there’s a knowing look in christian’s eyes as though whatever you reason he already knows will be a lie. and unfortunately, he’d be right. “i was out with friends.”

“at seven in the morning?” he narrowed his eyes and you hated his timing. of all times, did he have to question you now? 

“breakfast.” 

you all but run to your room before he can question you further, thanking all the gods that james isn’t there. for a moment, you stood stunned, reeling from the past twenty four hours as the guilt settles in your chest. you need to get as far away from daniel as you possibly can. you can’t be the type of woman who cheats on her fiance. you refuse to be. you refuse to break a good man’s heart like that. 

and yet as you finally calm down enough to try and fix yourself, your phone buzzes, his name appearing on your screen saying he sent you a text message. 

daniel i’ve loved you in every way i can. i loved you selfishly and so i tried loving you distantly, i tried loving you selflessly, i tried loving you correctly but i just want to love you now. if i could do it all over again, i would love you better but i can’t love you more than i do now.

this love came back to me

the wind is chilly as you step foot in hungary and the dress you wore is definitely not meant for it but still, you persevere, finding your way to the red bull motorhome and greeting your father. the last time you attended a grand prix was abu dhabi 2021 and yet it still feels like home. 

“there’s my biggest fan!” max cheered the moment he saw you, immediately wrapping his arms around you. he hasn’t seen you for nearly a year and he missed his best friend. to be fair, no one has seen you for nearly a year, disappearing from the face of the earth after your failed engagement. 

after the night of your engagement party, the guilt ate you alive as you realized that you were exactly the kind of girl you didn’t want to be and so you came clean to james. he screamed and cried and said you could work it out but you were exhausted from lying to yourself. as long as there was daniel, you can never be happy with anyone else and no man deserve to be someone you simply settled with. 

you realized then that you’d lost yourself. you don’t know who you are, don’t know who you’ve become and so you left everything you know, ignoring everyone’s calls as you attempt to find yourself. 

“actually, i’m supporting ferrari,” you joke once max finally lets you go. 

“i’ll disown you!” your father screamed from across the garage, making you and max laugh. 

“have you seen him?” max asked, whispering as though he’s telling you a secret.

you shake your head. coincidentally enough, or ironically, the first gp you attend in a while, daniel is announced to race in. and max, quite frankly, is far too excited for the two of you to see each other again. he’s had enough watching you both be stupid. 

after catching up with max and the mechanics you still know, you find yourself in a cafe with your father, talking about everything and nothing at all. christian watched your every move and you can see the worry in his eyes. he’s part of the people you ran from and you know that it was a cruel thing to do to your father. 

and then he was there and you’re all too familiar with the feeling of your world freezing the moment your eyes meet. he looks better, happier and you’re sure you look different too, hopefully more grown. 

“you’re here,” he says, unbelieving. 

you smile, genuine and free this time. “i’m here.” 

and this time around, you were both tired of fighting it. it’s him. it’s always been him. there was no point denying it. he’s the only person you’ll ever want. you are totally and irrevocably in love with him – the kind of love that’s so intense it feels like an explosion of fireworks throughout your whole body. the love that leaves you sleepless but exhilarated, speechless but poetic, lost but exactly where you're meant to be. 

and in that moment, your lives flashed before your eyes – marriage, children, growing old together. 

daniel ricciardo is the defining moment, the collision of stars that slammed into you so hard it tore your heart in pieces and only he can put it back together again. 

he smiles at you and you smile back. 

hello, love, welcome home.

and finally, finally, it felt like the world isn’t burning anymore. 

taglist: @ricsaigaslec @dragon-of-winterfell @coffeehurricanes @rdtbattinson @privcherry7 @miniminescapist @sebsdaniel @strelcka @writing-about-current-obsessions @amsofftrack @lostinketterdam @bisexual-desi @cialovessirlewis @multilovebot @lovelynikol16 @troybolton-14 @ohthemissery @dr3lover @myescapefromthislife @sunf1owerrq @the6ccnsp6cyy @t-nd-rfoot @navixfr @xjval @gridbunny

@heyoooo1111 @littlefreaksatellite @imxthunderstorms @o0itsjustme0o @bigdickdannyric1 @hellomumitsme @llarue @ironmaiden1313 @magic-s0ul @lynnthinksthings @vainbimbo @3khaos @chimchimjiminie16 @lost-heartbeat @thxtmarvelchick @s4dgir1jaehyun @dreaminofpoison @lewishamiltonstuff @mk15x @angywritesstuff @that-aesthetic-chic @artemis-medusa @capbuckybuchanan @moonvr @softsakusas @closhelby @

[icallhimjoey]

Prompt idea either for your current fic or a random one shot! Soft!Joey was VERY much not so soft Joey in your dream and you wake up in a STATE about it. Now real Joey needs to rectify his dream world bad behaviour. Angsty Smutty fluffy whatever you think is best.

Love your work!

me: save this for something longer also me: no the girlies need it right now Wordcount: 1.5K

---

Boy Of My Dreams

“Come here, baby.” 

Joe was there.

Right there where you'd left him, holding the covers open for you when he heard you turn off the lights in the bathroom. 

“I’m fine. Was just a dream.” you immediately said, curling back onto your spot, close to him, but your back turned.   

Joe’s eyes were still closed as his hands roamed until fingers trailed up your back to hold onto your neck. To feel some kind of closeness, the laziest way of comforting his girl after a nightmare.  

“Talk later?” 

But his question went unanswered. No confirmation, no dismissal, because either one didn’t feel right. You let the words float and hoped they would float away, real far, hoped they’d make real distance as you both fell back asleep.

Occasionally, you’d have a nightmare that would continue the story of a nightmare you’d had years earlier. A dream you couldn’t even remember, hadn’t consciously thought of since that one morning after you’d woken up from it, but somehow it still managed to store itself away inside your brain. Somewhere deep down, a place you couldn’t reach by yourself, just... lingering there for you to revisit in your sleep eventually.

It happened very rarely, but the second you’d wake up, you’d realise, fuck, this was that same fucking nightmare you had had ages ago.

When you hadn’t even known Joe yet.

Hadn’t even known of his existence, let alone would have known the lines of his face like the back of your hand.

The plush of his lips.

The scruff of his cheeks.

His chin.

The way your mind would hallucinate awful things in your sleep that would feel so vivid and so real was absolutely terrifying, but the addition of Joe’s face made everything so much worse.

Your unconscious mind could play tricks on you.

You knew this.

But in your sleepy haze, the feelings were real. The emotions right there.

And that man who’d scared you years ago in this same nightmare now wore a face that you recognised.

Logically you knew it was an addition.

Something new that hadn’t been there before.

There was no way you’d also dreamt about Joe all those other times - every person in a dream was someone you needed to have seen before, you knew.

But still.

The hand that held onto your neck was of little comfort, and you knew it was silly, but your body still flinched and moved away from the man in your bed because he didn’t feel safe right now.

You hoped Joe wouldn’t react to the quick pull away from him. To the little shimmy you did to duck into your pillow a bit more. But you felt how he raised his head off of his own, likely to see through a squinty eye if you were okay.

“I’ll have forgotten in the morning.” you quickly reassured with a whisper into the dark, and Joe decided he was too tired to get into anything right now anyway. He’d leave it to rest and hoped that you were right. That the next bit of sleep would make you forget about any horrors.

Except it didn’t.

It took you long to fall back asleep, and when you eventually did, you slipped right back into the same awful narrative.

It was why, not that long after you’d woken up that first time, you shook Joe awake. Leant over him, sort of sweaty, big wet eyes close to his face because, you just... you needed to check.

Had to see for yourself.

To see if his eyes were normal.

Joe roused awake, confused and definitely not as alert as you were.

“What?” Joe croaked, a little freaked out by the way you frowned in panic as you searched his eyes. He saw how yours flicked between his left and right.

Normal.

Joe’s eyes were their normal big brown beautiful kind soft ones. Bit tired. Definitely confused. But not the evil pitch black giant orbs you’d just dreamt of. You immediately relaxed and fell back onto your pillow, sighing with relief. This was definitely one of the weirdest most disturbing ways to be woken up before six o’clock.

“What’s wrong?” Joe asked, voice still just as hoarse, as he turned his head to look at you stare up at the ceiling.

Why were you panting?

“Nothing. I... don’t worry, your eyes are normal.”

Just a dream. It was just a dream. Your nervous system just had to catch up to it.

“My eyes?” Joe was so confused. What the fuck were you talking about?

“You were...” you started, but shook your head instead of finishing the sentence. It was of no use explaining. Just a silly dream. “Never mind. Just...” you looked at the ceiling and even though it was dark, the rubbing of your eyes made you see spots for a second.

Joe watched as you gathered your thoughts for a second, and worry etched deeper into his features.

“Hey,” he whispered, concern thick in his voice, a hand reaching over that placed itself on your forehead. “I was what? What did I do?”

You then turned your head to look at him, moving Joe’s hand into your hair, and you immediately felt guilty. Joe looked far too bothered for your liking.

“Scary.” you admitted, scooting over closer to him. “But you’re not scary now. Was just a dream.”

For a second, that made Joe relax a little. You weren’t talking about him him, you were talking about whatever weird version of him you’d just dreamt about. One without normal eyes, apparently.

Joe accepted you into his arms as you cuddled up to him, finding his sleep warm body to curl yourself around, seeking closeness this time around, because Joe’s eyes were normal and comforting.

He was glad it had just been a dream.

But then, Joe’s thoughts caught up, and actually, Joe didn’t like that.

Joe didn’t like that at all.

Didn’t like how you dismissed a nightmare like it hadn’t affected you when it so very clearly had.

Didn’t like how hugging you tight also meant that he could feel how fast your heart was beating.

Didn’t like how, real or not, you’d been scared of him. Had felt real fear because of him.

He’d been the boy of your nightmare, and that was not okay.

“You had a nightmare about me?” Joe almost sounded hurt, voice small and soft. Like it was his fault that you were breathing the way you were right now. Like he had personally done you a great disservice.

Which wasn’t true, obviously.

It hadn’t actually been him.

“It wasn’t you.” you comforted, pressing your face into Joe’s neck, reminding yourself just as much as you tried convincing him.

“Hm?”

“Just looked like you.”

But that didn’t make it better. Not to Joe, anyway.

The way that you went from trying for a little distance before, to suddenly hiding yourself away into his skin didn’t sit right with him either.

“You okay?” he whispered, a hand trailing up your back as he asked it, ending at your neck where he held onto it like he’d done before.

“Mhm,” you confirmed, and took a big deep breath to hopefully slow your heartbeat down a little. “Need to calm down.”

“Do you want to talk about it? What did I do to you?” Joe didn’t wait for an answer to the first question. Just wanted to know how severe his crimes had been. How big his apology needed to be. How much he needed to comfort you.

But like before, when he’d suggested to talk later, you let the questions sit where they sat, and didn’t provide them with an answer at all. Instead, you just burrowed deeper. Pressed your nose into his skin a little harder. Hitched your leg over his thighs a little higher. Squeezed yourself around his middle a bit more.

Joe decided his crimes had been very severe. Maybe even life sentence sort of stuff. He tightened his arms around your frame, the hand on your neck letting its fingers slide into your hair a little.

“I’m sorry.” Joe murmured against your forehead.

That made your eyes water.

You didn’t want to talk.

That was okay.

Just needed comforting.

“You’re okay,” Joe whispered into your hair, answering his own earlier question. He placed a little kiss there too, eyes closed, determined to make you drift off back to sleep, and it made you whine.

“You’re safe,”you deserved more sleep, but nightmareless this time. No scary eyes.

“I’m here.” Joe squeezed tigther as he felt you relax. From the way you started matching your breathing to his, he knew it was working.

You could have a nice dream about him.

He could be the boy of your dreams. Good, postive, sweet ones.

“No one’s gonna hurt you. Go back to sleep. You’re safe. I’m here.”

The hand that held onto your neck was actually very comforting now, and your body fully relaxed into the man in your bed because; he was right.

No one was going to hurt you.

You were safe.

Joe was there.

---

The Taglisted

@alwayslindie, @babybluebex, @capricornrisingsstuff, @chaoticgood-munson, @demonsanddemogorgons

@djoseph-quinn, @dolcevit4, @eddies-puppet, @emma-munson, @emotionaldreamer

@everythinghasafacee, @figmentofquinn, @ghost-proofbaby, @gri959, @hanahkatexo

@hazelenys, @imjustjen14, @jewellethief, @joesquinns, @keikoraven

@kennedy-brooke, @lovelyblueness, @mandyjo8719, @mexicanfolklore, @munsonluvrr

@munson-mjstan, @munsonssweets, @nadixq, @niallersfreckles, @notverywise

@pepperstories, @phyllosilicate-s, @prettiestboyreid, @readergf, @royale1803

@skulliecadaver-blog, @sherrylyn0628, @shizlac, @solzi1420, @songforeddiemunson

@sweetberry47, @take-everything-you-can, @thebellenouvelle, @tlclick73, @werepartnersnow

@witchwolflea, @yunirgo

add yourself

[verysium]

『02』 出発: departure

ft. rin itoshi, sae itoshi

summary: a star's life is its counteraction against death, an endless deadlock against the brute force of gravity. in the constant struggle between space and time, rin cannot tell if he is being held up or held down. perhaps he has already dictated the terms of his own demise. cw: epistolary montage, mentions of blood in film, rin violently crying and throwing up, highly implied hallucinations, swearing, suicidal ideation, disillusionment and lots of hard angst. word count: 4.9k

previous || series masterlist || next

Two weeks after Sae took off from Haneda Airport, his words still lingered inside Rin's mind. His brother had left with a fiery flick of a grin—a gaping, white-hot maw right where his mouth should have been. It blazed then sputtered cold in his gums by the time he turned back around, but Rin still knew what he saw. The smoke never lied.

A triple tap of tongue against hard palate, the message moving fast as light. Something had flickered between Sae’s teeth. Something about split knuckles and brotherly love. Something about calling him back.

But Rin couldn’t hear over the boarding announcements, the roar of engines propelling out of the runway, the heat waves of people out in front. At half past noon, his brother had already departed from Tokyo, ten thousand miles westbound in a floating aluminum dream, reeling contrails through the sky. 

And Rin still stood on Earth, waiting. Like some dumb thing left behind.

It wasn’t until his mother laid a gentle hand on his shoulder that he finally tumbled back to reality, an empty gate at his feet, no arrival or departure calling. The afternoon sunlight had grown dim, splintering against the glass windows and whirring the blood through his ears. His chest felt strangely suspended.

It was in the backseat where it all began. Three floors down in the parking garage. Fumbling through his pockets, his coat had snagged between the door and car frame, ten digits on a crumpled paper sent fluttering to the ground. Looking back on it now, he should’ve thrown that damn thing away. But he was stupid then, drunk on a heat stroke and the beginnings of terminal grief. Right on the exit of the Shuto Expressway, he made his parents turn the car back around and drive ten miles down to the nearest World Mobile, a wretched inhale of hope stuck squirming in his chest. 

It took him several weeks before he finally decided to punch in those numbers, and then another several weeks to call after that. His body shuddered, sweat-faced and suffocating, as he trailed sticky fingers down the waiting screen. The phone rang once then twice. Then rang on forever.

Nobody ever bothered to pick up.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

2013 年 6月 17日 Nii-chan, 

It still feels like you never left. And I say this with a miserable lack of sincerity because you did in fact leave just two weeks ago. Kaa-san still makes your bed. Square corners and all. Your duvet goes in the pile with the rest of my laundry. 

Just the other day, I think I saw your shadow. I was sunbathing on the roof when I felt something brush against my back. Does Spain have big shadows too? I hope so. A country with so much sun must leave those poor shades short and stunted. Maybe they’re just a little shy. Be nice to them, will you Nii-chan? Not everyone can shine as bright as you do.

I hope you’ll make friends soon. Write to me often. I want to know everything.

2013 年 7月 7日 Nii-chan,

How are you? I didn’t receive anything in my inbox, and I checked with Kaa-san twice. She said you didn’t text me, but there is no way such a thing could have happened. Perhaps old age has finally gotten to her, or maybe something’s just wrong with this phone. Either way, I should’ve asked her to buy me a newer model.

On second thought, if you don’t text me, I will be very upset. But it will be a childish sort of anger. You wouldn’t be very proud. You will be pleased to know, however, that I have grown a total of ten centimeters this summer, and my bones are looking very strong and wide. My shots have improved too, and I scored three goals today.

Otou-san took us out to dinner for Tanabata this weekend. He told me it is about time I became a man. I smiled and said I didn’t want to disappoint. But then he said ten and three quarters is no longer a youthful sort of age, and I suddenly felt a little mad about it. I don’t want to grow up without you. 

The festival was crowded as usual. I ate every selection of wagashi then chased it down with some of the sake Otou-san lent me from his cup. Pretty sure that was illegal, so I threw it all up on the way home. But then we all went and saw the tanzaku, so I guess something went right. I wrote down a wish, but I won’t tell you. Otherwise it won’t come true. I hung it up on the highest branch though, so that someday it might reach you. 

Tell me what you think. Text back soon.

2013 年 8月 31日 Nii-chan, 

I did not receive your reply from last time. I think this phone must still be broken. Perhaps you should check on your end. Even if it’s just a greeting, I will be content. Anything from you is fine, really.

I visited the beach again. It was peaceful until the wind blew hair in my face, and I went blind for almost fifteen minutes. I tried cutting it, but Kaa-san got mad at me. After your disaster five years ago, she said she’d never let her sons hold a pair of scissors ever again. Don’t tell her, but I laughed. Inside, you know?

Sometimes I still see the waves in my sleep. The ones at Koshigoe Beach. They cradle me, and suddenly it feels like my head is floating even though my body isn’t. You’d probably think I’m crazy. But lately dreams are the only way I can reach you. 

I do watch the news though. And I train hard. Very hard. I can pass like you now, though not nearly as good as your highlights on TV. Coach says I still need to learn. You always said the same thing. But I am nearly as tall as Otou-san now and twice as strong. That must count for something, right? I hope the guys overseas will like this new me. When I finally come over there, that is.

Make sure you aren’t training too hard. I don’t want you to overstrain yourself. And if you don’t like it there, promise me you won’t force yourself to stay. You’ll pack your bags and come home early. 

Promise me. Please. 

That you’ll come home to me.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

For the second time in his life, Rin finds himself on his knees, heaving up everything that has ever made him whole. The bathroom mourns with every dry retch of his throat, and suddenly he’s laughing into the porcelain, clutching at the sides in a mad form of desperation. His ribs shudder—tough in their hurt—yet nothing of substance ever lies between them. He’d smiled out his guts a long time ago. 

Is empty space still a space or just the photonegative of presence? 

Sometimes Rin feels like his body can never truly filled, but it can never be completely emptied either. No matter how much he regurgitates, there will always be more to come. The space inside him widens until it hangs on a threadlike line of limbo: so much to give yet so much to keep. It tugs at him—a crude form of baptism—pulling him up for air and then crashing his head beneath the waves again. 

Another harsh hurl reverberates across the bathroom tiles, this time accompanied by the loud smack of spit. He’s emptied out so much his bowels might just prolapse at any second, the boy inside him turned into some sort of liquid slop, sloshing back and forth in his ribcage. It’s all over the front of his shirt now, the stomach contents soaked for hours in bodily brine, the grief his body tries to hold. No amount of bleach is going to erase the stench.

Some days Rin just wants someone to cradle him like a child does a bird, gentle and afraid to hurt. He had a dream about this once, many moons ago. After wringing himself out to dry, he had gone to work, looping the washing line around his feet until it resembled some sort of upside down noose. Once the wind picked up, he let go of the string like a pendulum, watching his body sway in third person: up and down and up and down. In this reality, he was a creature of feathers and clothespins, his body molting in the breeze. So long as he swung back and forth in this state of suspension, he would remain in the middle, not tethered down enough to live but not free enough to die either. 

He’d simply exist. 

Some nights Rin still can’t sleep. His eyes lay limp in their sockets, two dead weights sinking into bone. He tried to pry them out with his fingers, but they only pressed deeper into his face, rigid and wax-cool to the touch. No matter what he does, Rin knows he will be too late. He can never reverse this decay—the post-mortem withering of his own heart. 

Just this afternoon, he died once again, his body slumped with the hollow weight of disappointment, his spirit sinking like a fault line into earth. He had been drying his hair in the locker room after practice, the friction of the towel’s loops causing small pinpricks of static to echo along his nape. The static had carried over hushed whispers, trailing along his scalp down to his ears. God, he hadn’t meant to overhear.

“Damn it, we’re really done for this season, huh? I’m telling you it’s the striker. We could’ve won this match if it weren’t for him.”

“I mean, if Itoshi were here, he would’ve destroyed their whole team by himself.”

“You mean the older one?”

“Of course I do. Who else did you think I was referring to? The younger one’s just been blessed up until now.”

“Without his brother, he’s just an ordinary guy.”

“Oi, Haruto, shut up! What if he hears?”

“Hear what? It’s not like it isn’t the truth!”

Rin still remembers how his surname burned on their lips, the tip of the tongue caught raw between teeth, the vowels seared into flesh. Itoshi was a burden coming apart at the seams, a title for something he could never possess. They were right and it left him smarting, reeling. He hadn’t laughed a day since Sae’s departure, but in that moment he wanted to shove his whole fist up his mouth and choke for the first time in five resentful months. The laugh had been a silent one, with tears on his waterline and a smile bruised onto his face. 

Ha.....ha.....hah.....

There comes a point in every boy’s life when he simply exists. Still young but no longer impressionable. Salt in the eyes. Salt in the mouth. Take it like a man. When he hawks back the knife, it must come out breathing and clean. Living but not dead. 

His teammates had every right to blame him. 

He can’t score goals like he used to. Can’t run and bleed. Can’t love like before. There’s nothing but shame waiting for him when the realization finally breaches the bathroom air and his teammates scramble off the benches, cleats stained with guilt. They saw his reflection in the mirror, weeping right above the communal sinks.

“R-rin! W-we didn’t know you were here.”

“Y-yeah! You didn’t hear much, did you?”

Rin had never hated his name more in that moment. They uttered it like a euphemism, hand over his stupid bullet-riddled heart, the blood too runny to salvage. It only hurt him more. So he did what he knew best. He clenched his fist, the nails fisted into the meat of his palm, eyes caught on a hardened edge. It didn’t matter if Haruto was his senior. He’d beat him within an inch of his life.

“So you call me Rin now? Wasn’t I just younger Itoshi to you earlier?”

“I didn’t....We didn’t mean...”

“Then what did you mean?”

Only the scurry of shoes answered—two scuff marks against the dirty floor, Haruto’s yelp in the distance. Rin was left all alone again, his thin shadow blown wide across the whitewashed walls of the locker room. 

“Damn coward,” he wanted to yell after him. “Run! Run and tell them how it’s not your fault!” 

But he was just talking to himself.

Is empty space still a space or just a pseudonym for absence?

He hadn't been thinking at the time. Within the liminal space of the abandoned shower stalls, he lent himself a moment of weakness. He let himself cry. The shower head was cold and dirtied, and he stood there for forty-five minutes, waiting to be filled with a warmth that never came. In the end, he let his tears mix with the brackish water, staring at the evidence of his failure before it swirled down the drain. 

He realized he must have been a mistake. There was no other explanation. The real Rin Itoshi was swapped at birth and replaced with someone else. Inside the four-walled confines of the shower stall, his imposter reared its head through the mist, long baby hair drowned down to the ears. He didn’t belong. Not in this body bathed in condensation. Not in this namesake crowned in tempered glass. But by the time the water trickled down to his nose, Rin was already knee-deep in self-doubt, wading his way into misery. What more did they want from him? No one could ever replace Sae Itoshi. Not even his younger brother. 

Not even him.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Six hours post-death in the locker rooms, Rin went home and passed out with his head on the toilet seat, two slick fingers shoved up his throat and his luminous guts buried somewhere down the pipe drain. Six hours later, his lids peel back scarlet, gelatinous with haze—a ringing in his ears. Some fucker is calling him again. 

He doesn’t answer. Twice. But the telemarketer is either underpaid or rudely insistent, so Rin finally picks up just to curse him out on the line. He doesn’t need any scripted intimacy. Doesn’t need other people counting his own losses. He just needs to be left alone.

At midnight, he staggers out of the bathroom, fingers absentmindedly flicking off the lightswitch before collapsing into bed. The sheets aren’t even his own. He doesn’t notice until he sniffs the pillow and stiffens. It smells god-awful. Like tiger balm and soothing menthol. Like somebody he used to know. And much to his chagrin, the images come stumbling back: knee-deep in the salted sea, shirasu swimming around his toes. What color were his eyes again? Blue ice between teeth. Sour like a bad star. Oh, what can he remember? Disappointment peeled into spirals. Happiness running down the back of his hand. The blood of an orange, sweet and dripping. He’s forever staring at someone’s back. Always a few steps behind.

Fuck you, Sae.

There’s haunting laughter coming out from the window panes, and he can hear the waves crash on shore in the distance. Two children run across sand. Muted footsteps. One soft thump then another. The vision is so close he can practically taste it. Salt in the wind, in the eyes, in his mouth. The seagulls pluck at his eyes, but he takes it like a man, breathing and clean. Living but not dead.

One of the children stands with his arms behind his back, face hidden by the shadows of the horizon. The ocean spray nips at his burgundy fringe, the hunger of a whole world engulfed in his gaze. In the distance, a younger boy shouts his name, dark hair framed by a cowlick, turquoise eyes smoothed over by water. He runs as fast as his little legs can carry him, his arms filled with bone-white shells.

“Nii-chan, wait for me!”

Sae’s face blurs before he can turn around, and Rin is left staring at the wooden slats above his childhood bed, resenting something he can no longer remember. Why did people have to go and change? Three years later and his brother had gone straight from stealing seashells to swindling stars clean out of the sky. Three years and he still had nothing to show for himself.

He imagines the look on Sae’s face when he tells him this. Conversations over Sunday dinner. The family gathered round the kotatsu, piss-yellow light slicing every dish into halves. He spoons pickled radish and chokes Sae’s teacup till it breaks. Would it be disappointment he sees on his face? His brother’s features crumpled mid-smile, blue-green eyes wounded into a porcelain state. Why? Why haven’t you done anything with your life while I was gone? 

Or perhaps it was anger. Smoke on the lips, bruised fists, and the heat of his mother’s blazing scream. Her son bares teeth and scrapes every syllable of their surname clean. Wrestles her other son’s shoulders down to the ground and shakes until the boy—the real Rin—gurgles and sloshes up inside. Do something, Rin. Do something! Or else you’ll never make it this lifetime.

Both, he could live with. But not this. The silence that burrows into his mind while he sleeps. The constant calling and the phone that just rings and rings and rings. It’s a circle, some sick sort of cycle. Every night he dreams of war—of sights and slights and stars. Things that end then don’t end then never end. He dreams until he wakes up screaming, on his hands and knees begging. Say something, will you? Anything. Fuck, why won’t you just say something?

Three years later and his brother still can't love him in a way he understands. 

But what did he expect? Sae was like that: pale and blistering, beautiful even when burning. Last dream cycle, his brother fell down three stories and erupted into flames, limbs compacted into fine dust. Should’ve screamed but didn’t. By the time Rin got down to him, Sae was already on his feet, sputtering soot from his lungs then flaring back up like nothing had ever happened. As if his hurt was merely bursts of light gathering and bunching, violence in free fall. 

And he was beautiful, Rin thinks. A boy of the blaze, man in the making, hair aorta-red, staring right back at him. By the time Sae opened his mouth, Rin’s arms were already open, ready to embrace the glittering shards. He crumpled before him as a building does a god, set alight on his brother’s palm. Strike me. He begged, blood around his mouth. Strike me anywhere and set me free. 

But that’s not what happens when you die. Not when his brother said it best.

I think I’d die and become a star. 

So he holds onto this life. Bunches it between fingers and twines it around his fist until he knows the person he’s dying for. Until he’s blacked out and dreaming in that damnable backseat again. Experiencing everything in the third person—the news, the screen, the slow-motion reels of an astral body wound up in constant replay. He can only watch as his brother slowly becomes a stranger in his own life again, and it guts him every time.

Sae Itoshi Dominates at Junior Championships, Secures Victory with Hat-Trick. Future Star? Sae Itoshi’s Sensational Performance Stuns Fans and Scouts Alike.

Who the hell is Sae Itoshi? Man, celebrity, celestial body? Not even his brother knows. But what Rin has learned over these past few years is that all stars are really just dead people, housed in a mausoleum of glittery beginnings and explosive endings. It’s binary—circling, really. A blinking eye in the sky, ticking time bomb, crying corpse, then everything wailing before its implosion. Sae could never comprehend this. The smoke-sputtering reality beyond tangible substance. This form of dying. 

But dying isn’t even the worst part of it all. It’s people like him who suffer. Unlucky stars are cursed with another, forced to revolve around each other. If one collapses, the companion gets ejected out the deep end of space and time—stumbling, groping, searching. 

Three years later and he’s still searching. 

Hey Google: Can stars still be seen from Madrid? 

The results for light pollution pop up. In a city of light, even light cannot be seen. How ironic, he thinks, that Sae is now a shining thing, flaring tendrils a million light years away. Post-nebula and he still loses himself in people who look exactly like him.

But that past has already come and gone, leaving nothing but the future behind. In the next dream cycle, Rin too will die, sputtering and choking, like a firework lit from within—violence in free fall. And when the time comes, he will leap off the fire escape, the city blocks spinning and spinning, every second a little death. The faster he falls, the more alive he’ll feel. He’ll drop all the way down until the only way he can go is up. And then he’ll ascend, floating past the skyscrapers, the streets, the sprawling metropolis. His toes curled, caught on the hook of night, the burnt flesh peeling back on bone. Floating until he disappears, his body nothing but white light.

Someday his brother will drown himself in his own artificial brightness. And Rin will follow, screaming, rearing, and set ablaze.

If you die Nii-chan, I think I’ll die along with you.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

There are rare moments when seasons die a sunless death, quiet and wilting into the earth. Rin’s final birthday without Sae falls on one such month—a red September during which nature bleeds, the autumn leaves rusting around Engakuji Temple. He’s taken up long walks during that time, pacing for hours around the park nearby. Something about taking his mind off things. Something about counting his own losses.

By late afternoon, his hands are shoved fist-deep into his coat pockets, on track to finish his ninth lap around the perimeter. The daylight has long pooled down his back, tiny dollops of brightness slow-dripping and honeyed, settling into the hollow divots of his spine. The mise-en-scène frames him in a languorous ochre—the kind of lighting reserved solely for an aged romance. And the wind plays his lover, its post-meridian breath tender as it brushes against his cheek. It’s all a range of motions from there. He takes another step, adjusts a stray earbud, then tugs his scarf all the way up to his nose. Ten laps now, and he still walks. The only time he ever stops is when he stalls mid-way to check his phone. 

Zero messages received. Message not delivered.

His thumb hovers briefly over the send button. The cursor at the end blinks with an almost human hesitancy before it opens its mouth, swallowing everything back up. The screen clears itself again, reduced to nothing but absence: a small square of light where silence reigns. Rin sighs before trudging home, a thousand words lodged into the back of his throat.

Nii-chan, I miss you. 

The kitchen is empty by the time he slides open the shoji, removing his shoes with practiced ease before padding across the soft tatami. His mother’s gone on an errand for groceries, her hastily scrawled note tucked under his door with a bowl of persimmons. The house is empty, the joss sticks still smoking in the living room, tips warm and powder-soft. He grows heady on their incense, locking himself away in his bedroom and drawing the curtains. His old Fujitsu laptop whirrs to life, propped up against two pillows and an oversized owl plush. This time he puts on a splatter film, splayed on his stomach as he reels through the opening credits.

He can watch without the subtitles now, even converse with tourists at the station in Enoden. He recalls his teammates’ faces last Saturday—breaths held tender, jaws slackened with faux horror—when he gave out directions in perfect English. Sae would’ve been proud, if only he knew how much it meant. But lately, there hasn’t been a single interruption to Rin’s nights alone, despite how desperately he longs for one. The most his English is good for nowadays is translating the kooky foreign films he puts on rotation, ninety minutes of runtime for thirty-one evenings.

He must have gone through a dozen franchises by now: Halloween specials, 90’s vintage, slashers, the paranormal. The American flicks still remain his favorite, mostly because of the chainsaws. Something about the suspense of disembodiment scratches an itch inside his brain. Like the adrenaline before a final goal, moments before he implodes—naked body slathered in pools of primary color.

In the darkness, the films weave together: a tidal wave of light that washes down his bedroom walls. The victim shrieks before she is bathed in an eerie swathe of red, pierced at the helm of a bloodshot lens. Something about her death is both alien and terrifying, and Rin feels himself come alive again. 

At climax, the light from his laptop is nothing short of searing, carving-knife intensity digging slowly into thin, rousing bodies. He can only watch as the killer sharpens his blade, each stroke a day-bright epiphany, cutting little wounds into the night. His figure is lit up from behind, illuminated in such a way that Rin can see his organs and count every one of his ribs. The scene peels back like water, reflecting montage after montage on the glass display case next to his closet. The trophies electrify themselves in the shadows, each silhouette splayed neatly on the shelf and serrated round the rim. The metal handles distort the characters’ faces in two-frame slashes, decapitating nose from ear, eye from mouth. Another scream rips through the background as Rin digs graves into his palm. This time the murderer chases a mother down the stairs, gleeful when her child fails to keep up. 

He’s seen this scene play out before—three years and eleven months ago, when he first got himself killed. It’s the final match against Tokyo Metropolitan Youth, and he’s running on fumes, ten minutes into additional time. There’s only a few more meters to the goal area, the footsteps fast approaching from his left. He has to make an escape. The opponent closes in behind him, knife in hand, and all he can do is run, body barreling straight toward the camera. 

The impact hits him right before the shot, his leg flaring out in some desperate attempt at a goal. The ball soars as he stumbles forward—violence in free fall, the boy inside him lit from within. In the final moments before he combusts, time stretches itself thin over his bones, smoking and exorcized from the fire. The shadow of his killer looms behind him, arm raised with the promise of metal and memory, the blade gleaming in sparse light. 

Got you.

The child on screen turns around, facial features contorted in dramatic horror. Rin can hear her scream before the lips even part. He can already predict this ending. He can predict the next one after this too. Plight of the final girl: last to die but forever immortalized in her own grief and helplessness.

In six months, he will be named the most valuable player for Kamakura United Youth. In another six, he will be hollowed from the inside out, cursed to feel only the loss inside every win. This motion picture has rewound itself one too many times, the credits rolling and taking him along with them. End scene and he’s standing there in a pool of his own triumph—the grass strewn with painted carcasses—a thousand boys dead at his feet. His knees make hard contact with the earth, nothing but penitence in his eyes. This is all he knows: love and its smoking aftermath, the weight of it iron-hot on his tongue. Victory has never tasted so bitter. 

But it always ends the same. For the final girl, the film star, everyone crucified by the crowd. All good auteurs come from a long line of men who have already run out of time, color pooling past their waists, crashing in over their heads. They don’t want to die, so they preserve their souls into billboards, spool strands of silence into substance. They only shoot what is in their blood: the sensational guts, glory, and gore. Because what better way to keep your memory alive than burn it onto the emulsion side of thirty-five millimeter filmstrip?

The red lights have begun to feel suffocating—the last of his breath now a belt around his neck—as the cameras pan down to a mutilated body. Rin secretly envies the child’s soaked shirtsleeves, the ground beneath her perfused in violent color. If only he could be filled with something that beautiful. But instead he was given the body of a pale child filled with longing, constantly waiting for a change and constantly wishing for something to flow out of him. 

Eventually the clock strikes twelve and Rin closes his laptop, the backs of his eyelids whited out, brain overstimulated from the psychedelic screams. His brother’s portrait blurs in his peripheral vision, overexposed from the red glow, staring up at him from the cluttered nightstand. And in the moment, he briefly wonders if Sae left Japan in search of a new image. Perhaps Spain was just ninety minutes of solid technicolor screen where people could scream without horror, where the protagonist could freely bleed. And in the end, there was no death. The audience remains seated in theaters, their memories replaying over and over, bodies forever housed in cinema.

At the director’s cut, Rin’s consciousness falls under, hand still clutching the frame. End scene and Sae’s blown-out face smiles just a little into the darkness.

© verysium 2024 / please do not translate, repost, or plagiarize any of my works

[justmystyles]

hi! your angst is so so good! could you please write something angsty around the Selena Gomez song “Lose You to Love Me” kind of about a girl learning to love herself after a toxic love with Harry and then them reuniting after growing up years later, please?

Lose You to Love Me

read my other work here

pairing: Harry Styles x plus size reader

word count: 4.2k

summary: a run-in with your childhood sweetheart brings up old memories, and lingering feelings.

a/n: my friend, you have no idea what you've done sending this ask in. technically you do, because I posted about it after i received it. but this song popped into my head a little over a week ago, and has been running up there on repeat. it's been making me think about my life and relationships, and being all reflective or whatever. i hate it. 😂

I have been thinking about this story pretty much non-stop since you sent the ask, and was so exited to finally get it written. i hope it's what you were looking for, and that you enjoy reading it as much as i enjoyed writing it.

also, a note about the story, the italicized parts are flashbacks.

i know we’re on all on edge after last night, so why not throw some angst in there to make it worse!

tags: @allthelovehes @ameerakane20 @ash-craze @bethanysnow @blue-ballad @blueraspberryreader @brightlightsinlife @creativelyeva @cute-as-ducks420 @deannaard @fanficismydrug @gem1712 @golden-hoax @gothmingguk @groovychaosavenue @hillzrry @iceebabies @indierockgirrl @jerseygirlinca @jng4kook @jooniesbabie @kaverichauhan @lexiecamposv @mrs-anna-styles211994 @n0vaj3an @potterheadandsherlocked @rach2699 @ravenclawdirectioner @stylesfeverr @superchrystaldrug @tenaciousperfectionunknown @tiaamberxx @thechaoticjoy @theekyliepage @walkingintheheartbreaksatellite @youknowwhaaat

As you moved through the streets of London, you were so focused on making it to your destination that you weren’t paying attention to the faces passing you by. 

But he was, and he recognized yours immediately. 

“Y/N?” 

You froze in place, causing the person walking behind you to crash into you. You apologized and stepped off to the side, looking in the direction of the voice. “Harry,” you breathed out. 

Before you could fully process what was happening, Harry had rushed up to you, pulling you into his arms. You closed your eyes, even after all this time he still gave the best hugs. Your mind flashed with memories of all the times you found yourself in his arms. Good and bad. 

“I can’t believe it’s you!” He spoke against your neck before pulling back, taking your hands in his as he looked you up and down. “You look amazing. All grown up.” 

“Yeah, you too.” You took him in, he had definitely filled out since the last time you saw him. Of course you knew that, no matter how hard you tried to get away from him, you never could get that clean break you so desired. That’s what happens when your ex is one of the biggest stars in the world. 

“Gosh, it’s been ages.” He muses. 

You purse your lips and nod. “Eleven years.” You feel a knot in your stomach, thinking back to the last time you two spoke. 

“Harry, it’s just not fair to me.” You move the speaker away from your mouth, hoping he doesn’t hear your breath hitch.

“And you think you’re being fair to me? This is my dream, Y/N, and I can’t even enjoy it because I’ve got you making me feel bad, or like I’m doing something wrong every time I talk to you!” 

“Yeah, well you were my dream.” Your voice is quiet, defeated. “But I guess it’s time for me to wake up.” 

Harry is silent on the other end of the phone for a moment. “What,” he lets out a deep breath. “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

You wipe your eyes, sniffling softly. “It means I can’t do this anymore. You’re living your life, you’re finding your way in the world. I need to go off and do the same. Alone.” 

Harry gives you a sad smile. “I tried to reach out a few times, I didn’t like how we left things.”

“I know, me either.” You agreed. “But I needed to just sever the tie. It would have been too hard otherwise.” 

“I’m sorry,” you look at him curiously. “For how I handled things, for how it ended…”

You held your hand up to stop him. “We were just kids, you were eighteen and an international pop star, you handled things as best you could.” 

He smiled gratefully at you. “Do you, uh… do you have some time? Maybe we could grab a coffee and catch up?” 

Your mind is begging you to say no, but your mouth doesn’t listen, agreeing immediately. “But I’ll pass on the coffee.’ 

“Still?” He smirks, remembering how much you hated coffee. “Some things never change.” 

****

The two of you order drinks, and get settled at a quiet corner table in a small coffee shop, the conversation starts off simple enough, you catch each other up on your families, you tell him about your career, and how you had relocated to London three years ago for a big promotion. He shares a couple of stories of some of his more memorable moments over the years. 

Even after a decade apart, you still managed to fall into conversation with ease. From the moment you had met when you were kids, there was this instant comfort between the two of you. It was no surprise to anyone when you started dating at fifteen. You were inseparable, going everywhere together. You were there at his XFactor audition, you supported him every step of the way. It was when things really started taking off for him that everything changed. 

“Hi angel,” Harry’s voice was low and raspy, that’s when you realized you forgot to take the time change into consideration before you called. 

“Oh my gosh H, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up, I–”

You’re cut off by his laughter. “It’s alright, I like when you wake me up.​​ To what do I owe the pleasure?” 

“Mum is taking me dress shopping for formal today, I just wanted to see if you had any ideas what you’d be wearing. We could coordinate!” There was a long silence as you waited for him to respond. “Harry?” You asked. Maybe he had fallen back to sleep. 

“Yeah, I’m here. Sorry.” You could hear him shifting on the other end of the phone. “I have some bad news actually.” He sighed before continuing. “They booked us a bunch of shows in the US, I’m not going to be able to come home for the dance.” 

“Oh,” you did your best to mask the disappointment. It was just a dance, Harry was doing amazing things, and you needed to be supportive of that. 

“Angel, I’m so sorry, I really tried…” 

“No, don’t worry. It’s fine, really.” You assured him while also trying to assure yourself. 

You heard a knocking on the other side of the phone, and muffled voices. “Fuck, I’ve gotta go Y/N. I’m so sorry, I love you. You know that, right?” 

“Yeah, I know H. I love you too.” 

“Okay, we’ll talk soon. I promise.” The call disconnects before you can respond. 

That was the beginning of the end for your young love. You had put on a happy face for everyone, especially Harry, but your family and friends were able to see right through it. He probably would have too had he actually been there. 

You ended up going to your formal with your friends, but as they danced and laughed, you sat on the sidelines, staring at your phone waiting for a call or a text from Harry. And that’s what your life became from there on. 

When Harry would come home, things would be better, but still not what it was. Because he’d be gone for such long stretches, his time was spread so thin when he was home. He would want to spend time with everyone, which didn’t leave enough time for the two of you. You would tag along as much as you could, but your one on one time was lacking. It got to a point where you couldn’t even go out on dates, constantly being bombarded by people asking for pictures or autographs. 

That’s when you decided to spend your time behind closed doors. Harry said it was so he could focus on you, but part of you wondered if it was so that he could keep you secret. You knew that there were girls all over the world that wanted to be with him, his team knew that was part of the marketability of him, of the whole group. The second the two of you stopped hanging out publicly, the insecurities started creeping in. From then on, every time you saw a picture of him with another girl, you wondered who she was, why it was okay for him to be seen with her and not you. 

As the two of you continued to talk, you glanced down at your watch. “Oh shit,” you interrupt him. “I’m so sorry Harry, I actually have to go. I have a meeting I need to get to.” You stand from your seat and collect your things. Harry stands with you.

“Yeah, of course.” You could have sworn there was a hint of disappointment in his tone. “Hey, you should come to the show tonight. If you’re free I mean.” 

You look up at him with wide eyes. “Are you sure?” 

“Of course, it’s Wembley. How many times did we talk about this?” 

“A lot,” you smile wistfully, remembering those conversations. Whenever he was feeling discouraged about his journey, you would always be right there to pick him up, assuring him it was going to work out. That he’d be onstage at the famed stadium, and you’d be right there cheering him on. 

“It would mean a lot to me to have you there. Full circle and all that.” He said with a smile. “Besides, the whole family is going to be there. I’m sure mum and Gem would love to see you.” 

It would be nice to see his family again. You had been all but officially adopted into the clan, spending holidays, dinners, birthdays with them. You were at Harry’s house just as much as you were at your own, possibly more. Sure, you had mourned the loss of your relationship with Harry, but it also broke you that you lost that second family. 

“Yeah, sure. I’ll be there.” You agree. 

“Amazing.” He pulled you in for a tight hug. “I’ll see you tonight. Just check in at the box office when you get there, I’ll take care of everything.” 

****

You made it to your meeting on time, but you were anything but present. Your mind kept going back to Harry, how great he looked, how happy he was to see you. And then the memories started flooding back. 

“Y/N?” Your mother’s voice and gentle knock on the door call your attention away from your phone. 

“Yeah?” 

She sticks her head into your room. “We’re leaving in five minutes, are you ready?” 

“Ready?” You suddenly remember that your parents were supposed to be taking you and your sister out to dinner. “Oh, I uh… no. I think I’m going to pass if that’s okay?” 

“But honey, we’re going to your favorite restaurant.” You could see the concern spread across her face. 

“I know, but Harry is supposed to call and check in. We haven’t had a proper phone date in weeks. I want to make sure I don’t miss him.” 

“Y/N…” your mother says in a warning tone. After Harry missed out on formal, you had completely changed. You’d go to school, and then immediately come home waiting to hear from him. You would drop everything the second his name popped up on your phone screen.

“Mum, next time. I promise.” 

Your mother lets out a sigh and nods, leaving you alone. 

About an hour later, your phone pinged with a text from Harry. 

Sorry love, can’t call tonight. Talk to you soon, promise. XO

****

After your meeting, you slipped out of the office. You knew you weren’t going to get anything done today. Besides, you needed to find something to wear tonight. You called Heather, your oldest and closest friends, asking her to meet you at one of your favorite shops. 

You told her about your run-in with Harry, and his invitation to go to his show. 

“You said no, right?” 

“Yeah, I said no. That’s why we’re here, you’re helping me pick an outfit for a concert I’m not going to.” you rolled your eyes.  

“Y/N, I say this as your friend, this is a terrible idea and you definitely shouldn’t go.” She says completely seriously. “Do you even remember what life was like for you back then?” 

“Come on!” Heather grabbed your arm, trying to pull you out of the booth. “Come dance with us!”

You pull out of her grip, checking your phone for a notification. “I can’t H-”

“Harry’s going to call,” she finishes your sentence. “Y/N, you’re both my friends, but you’re my best friend, so I’m going to be real with you. Harry’s a wakner.”

“Hey,” you reply defensively. “He is not, he’s just really busy. He’s kind of a big deal, you know?”

“I do know. And I also know that while you’re sitting here staring at your phone, you’re missing out on life. But he’s out there living it. You deserve better than that.” 

“Right, and in a couple of months I’ll be living that life with him.” 

Heather’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean?” 

“I’m not going to university.” You state plainly, her eyes go wide in shock. “Harry is going to get me a job on his team. It won’t be glamorous, and it probably won’t pay much, but we’ll be together and everything will be good again.” 

“Have you told your parents about this plan?”

“I have, they aren’t happy about it, but I’m eighteen, so there isn’t really anything they can do about it.” 

“And you really think this is the best idea?” She asks you.

“Yes,” you say, a little louder than intended but you needed to get your point across. “Harry and I are supposed to be together, and if this is how it needs to happen, this is how it’s going to happen.” You grab your purse and stand from your seat. “I’m going home, it’s too loud here for me to hear him anyway.” 

After that, you stopped going out when your friends invited you. They didn’t understand your relationship, and they were always on your case about it. It was easier to just stay home and wait for Harry. Eventually, the invitations stopped coming. You were fine with that. It made it easier for you to focus on Harry, and be there when he had time for you. 

As far as the job, that never happened. About a week after you graduated, you received a call from Harry. He told you that he fought for you, all the guys did, but his team said they weren’t able to make a spot for you. 

You were devastated, but you did your best to hide it from him. That didn’t last very long, however, as that was the point where the cracks in your facade of ‘supportive girlfriend’ started coming through. You started seeing what everyone had been telling you, that Harry was out there conquering the world while you were putting your life on hold, spending your life by the phone waiting for a quick text or five minute phone call.

****

When you arrived at Wembley, you gave your name at the window and were immediately ushered to a backstage VIP area. You walked in and smiled to yourself at the turnout. You recognized almost everyone in the room. You stayed by the door, not wanting to interrupt when Gemma’s eyes traveled in your direction, She did a double take before smiling wide and running to you. 

“Y/N, I can’t believe it!” She pulled you into a tight hug, which you quickly returned. “Harry told us he ran into you, and invited you to the show. But I wasn’t sure you’d actually come!” 

You giggled at her excitement. “Of course I’m here, I told him I’d come.” 

“I know, but you’re so nice, I figured you’d say that to his face and then just disappear.” You both laughed, before she took you by the hand, leading you into the group. “Come on, we have so much to catch up on!” 

You went around the room, greeting those you had known a decade ago, and meeting the new members of Harry’s entourage. Everyone was so happy to see you, you were being pulled in a million different directions trying to catch up with everyone. They had told you that Harry was with them earlier, but had to leave to get ready. You were grateful for that. It would have been too much to be there with him, and his family. 

**** When it was time to go out to the front of house, Gemma locked her arm in yours and you walked together. She stayed by your side the whole night. The two of you were always close, she had always treated you like you were sisters. Often joking that someday Harry would make it official. She made you promise not to leave without giving her your number, she said she wasn’t about to let another ten years go by without seeing you again. 

The show was incredible. Harry was incredible. As you watched him up there, you felt your chest swell with pride. Despite what had transpired between the two of you, you couldn’t help but get emotional watching him live the dream that the two of you had spent so much time talking about. He had done it, but on a level that neither of you could have even imagined. 

As you listened on, your mind wandered, thinking about the girls those songs were about. The girls that had come after you. You felt tears begin to pool in your eyes as you remembered the first one. 

“Come on guys, put it away. Y/N is going to be here any minute.” You heard Heather plead. “This is her first time out since the breakup, she doesn’t need to see it.” 

After the phone call where you ended your relationship, you were inconsolable. You cried nonstop, mourning your relationship, the future you were supposed to have, and all the time you wasted waiting for him. Your friends would come over often, but they would mostly just hold you and offer words of encouragement to you as you cried. Nobody was able to get through to you, they weren’t even sure how. 

About two months after the breakup, you got this surge of determination. Harry had taken away enough of your life, you weren’t going to let him do it anymore. You texted Heather, and she agreed to gather all your friends for dinner. 

You walked in and saw her trying to pull the phone out of her boyfriend’s hands. “What don’t I need to see?” You ask, everyone’s attention snapping to you. 

“Nothing, don’t worry about it.” Heather assured you. 

You nodded, leaning in to hug your friend, quickly diverting and grabbing the phone out of her hand. You looked down at the screen and saw a paparazzi shot of Harry walking hand in hand with Taylor Swift, it was an article about the budding relationship between the two singers. 

“Oh,” you said, dropping the phone on the table. “I uh… I just remembered I’ve got to…” your brain was too cloudy to come up with an excuse, not that they would believe it anyway. You turned and rushed out of the restaurant. Heather hot on your heels. 

“Y/N, wait!” She followed you as you ducked into a nearby alleyway, getting to you just in time to watch your back slide down the wall. 

You wrapped your arms around your knees and began sobbing uncontrollably. Heather sat down next to you, wrapping her arm around your shoulder and pulling you into her. 

“I… he… I…” You couldn’t form words, too upset to do anything but cry. 

“I know babe, I know.” Heather said in a soft tone, rubbing your back comfortably. “I told you he was a wanker.” 

You chuckled lightly, your breathing starting to return to normal. You looked up at your friend with tear stained cheeks, your breath hitching as you regained composure. “We just broke up. I’ve been locked in my room crying, and he’s been with her.” 

“He’s a piece of shit. He doesn’t deserve you. You’re so much better than all of this.” She held your face in her hands and gave you a determined look. “You’re a fucking catch Y/N, he’s an idiot for not seeing that.” You nod, pretending you agree with her. “Let’s get you home. We’ll get a bunch of junk food and watch sad movies. Get all the tears out.” 

“Hey Y/N, you alright?” Gemma pulls you from your thoughts. 

You suddenly realize the house lights are up, and people are filing out of the stadium. “Oh yeah, sorry. It’s just crazy to think that he went from the weird boy with the dumb jokes to that,” you gesture toward the stage.

“Oh, he’s still the weird boy, he’s just telling his dumb jokes to a whole lot more people.” She joked, slinging her arm around your shoulder. “C’mon, let’s go backstage.” 

“Oh, no no no, you go. I should…”

“Not a chance,” she interrupted you. “You’ve gotta come back and see him.” You narrow your eyes at her, wondering why it was so important that you see him, but she just smiles innocently and leads you back to the VIP room. 

****

You and Gemma get comfortable on a couch in the back corner of the room, so lost in conversation that you don’t even notice when all eyes in the room land on the door, cheering Harry as he enters. He walks through, offering hugs and handshakes, thanking people for coming and graciously receiving compliments on his performance. 

Once he’s made his way to the back, he stops, silently observing you and his sister gossiping and giggling just like you always had. 

“You’d better not be talking about me, or I’m telling mum.” His voice pulls you from your conversation, and you both turn to look at him. 

Gemma grins and jumps from her seat. “You were outstanding.” She pulled him into a hug, saying something to him in a hushed tone. 

He smiled gratefully at her as she sat back down, Harry turned to you with a curious expression. “Well? What did you think?” 

“H,” his nickname fell so easily from your lips, as if you had never been apart. You stood up, looking at him with so much awe that he was taken aback. “You did it. I’m so,” you sigh with a shrug. “It was incredible.” 

He smiled, dimples on full display. “Thank you, angel. You have no idea what that means to me.” He steps in front of you, pulling you into a firm embrace. You were so lost in the moment that it didn’t even register that he had called you by his pet name for you. 

Gemma stood behind you, making sure to get Harry’s attention, she winked at him with a smirk before matriculating back into the crowd, allowing you two a moment. 

When you finally separated, Harry looked down at you, his gaze so intense that you felt your cheeks heating up. “I should probably go,” you finally speak up.

“No, wait.” He says in a panicked tone. “Can I talk to you alone for a minute?” 

You furrow your brow, not expecting that. He’s in a room full of the most important people in his life, and he wants to be alone with you? “Yeah, sure.”

He leads you out of the VIP area and down the hall to his dressing room. He opens the door, signaling for you to enter. He follows behind you, closing the door once you both cross the threshold. 

You both stand there awkwardly for a few moments before Harry finally breaks the silence. “I’m really glad you came tonight.” 

“Me too, thank you for inviting me.” You smile, trying to hide your nerves. 

“I, uh…” he takes a breath, running his hand through his hair. “I miss you.” 

You look up at him in confusion. “Harry, it’s been eleven years.” 

“And I’ve missed you the entire time.” He took a couple of cautious steps towards you. “I was so stupid back then, so stupid. I know I wasn’t fair to you.” 

“I told you, it’s fine, you were a kid. You did the best you could.” You assured him.

“I think running into you today was fate.” He ignores your words and keeps going. “We’ve both grown up, I’ve grown up. I see what’s important in life now.” 

“Harry…” 

“There were so many times I wanted to call you. So many things that happened that I wanted to celebrate with you, but I couldn’t. Every sold out show, every award, all of it, you were the first person I wanted to tell.” 

You were speechless. You were listening to his words, watching the vulnerability in his face, all of it completely overwhelming you. Out of everything that could have come from your run in with Harry, this was probably the last thing you would have expected. 

“I don’t… what?” Was all you managed to choke out. 

“Listen, I’m not saying we jump right back in and pick up where we left off,” your eyes went wide at his words. “I broke your trust, that’s something I need to earn back. But I’d like to try, if you’d let me.” 

“Try…”

He reached out, taking your hand and sighing in relief when you didn’t pull away. “I want to show you that I can be what you need, what you deserve.” 

“What are you asking?” You ask, searching his face as if it held the answers. 

“I just want to be in your life again, be your friend. I want to get to know you now, I want you to get to know me now, and see where things go from there.” 

You stood in silence, looking into Harry’s eyes, butterflies filling your stomach at the way he’s looking at you. You nod your head slowly. “Okay,” you respond, barely above a whisper. 

“Yeah?” He asks hopefully, you nod with a smile and he wraps his arms around you, pulling you into his chest. “Thank you thank you thank you. I promise I’m not going to mess this up.” You chuckle against his chest. “What’s so funny?” 

“Heather is going to kill me.” 

A bark of laughter escapes him. “I’ll protect you,” he places a kiss on the top of your head. “I’m not going to lose you again.” 

[haitani-bruvz]

FAMILY AFFAIRS

Chapter 4 preview

previous part

Shinichiro x Reader, Mikey x Reader, Izana x Reader

Please enjoy an excerpt of chapter 4 :) Full chapter coming soon!!

DARK CONTENT!!! MDNI READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Series TW: Yandere, smut, murder, noncon/dubcon, drugging, kidnapping, pseudo-incest (reader is considered a sibling but not blood-related), physical abuse, emotional abuse, mentions of child abuse, and neglectful parents, ages of characters are shifted around a bit (Shin is younger)

Sept. 6th ****

Groggy and disoriented, you slowly pried open your eyelids. The world around you was hazy, senses dulled as if emerging from a deep slumber. A persistent ringing echoed in your ears, making it difficult to tell what was happening and where you were. As your vision cleared, you found yourself lying on a couch in an unfamiliar room, bathed in the dim light of the street below.

Before you stood a large window that framed the Tokyo skyline in the distance. Amongst the towering structures, a familiar luxury boutique stood like a sentinel from your past. Rapponggi? you wondered before your attention turned to sudden sounds.

Muffled voices reverberated around you, distant and fragmented. your gaze shifted to two figures in the room—tall, imposing, with vivid purple hair that seemed to shimmer in the subdued light. Matching tattoos adorned their necks- odd symbols that sparked something in your mind. It triggered a vague sense of recognition, but the details remained just out of reach, obscured by the daze.

They conversed as if you were not present, their words dancing just beyond the grasp of comprehension.

"… and both leaders sent us looking for her. The irony, right?" one of the figures mused, a touch of amusement in their tone. "I wonder who'll be more pleased to see her— boss or Hitto. Its been over a decade for both after all"

The other figure chuckled in response, a low sound that sent a shiver down your spine. "Could've saved time if we knew Shiba was the one helping her. Wasted three years chasing that idiot from the pet shop."

The conversation swirled around you, but you struggled to focus, to understand the significance of their words and their connection to your existence. Why were you hear? Who were these men? Were they the ones who got your parents? Were you next? Were they even talking about you in the first place??

Just as their voices began to fade, a door creaked open and a lanky, dark figure began to make its way inside the room. Panic surged within you, the instinct to flee gripping your mind. But before you could react, a touch brushed against your cheek, grounding you in a moment of clarity. With a start, you awoke, heart racing as you found yourself back in the familiar confines of the orphanage.

Izana's concerned gaze met yours, his fingers still lingering on your skin. The echo of the dream clung to your thoughts, flashes of the figure in the doorway making you shiver and grip your blanket. As you struggled to shake off the remnants of the dream, your eyes fell upon the earring adorning Izana's ear. Its design bore an uncanny resemblance to the symbol on the tattoo—the symbol etched on those figures' necks. Panic swelled within you, but you quickly dismissed it as your mind playing tricks, reassuring yourself that it was all a dream. ' the earring must have been the last thing I had seen before I fell asleep' you thought. but still, it felt too real, the men, their voices, the room...

You shook your head, trying to dispel the unsettling feeling that lingered. As your gaze lifted, you found Izana's concerned eyes locked onto yours. His brows furrowed, and you realized that the distress you were feeling must have been evident on your face. "Hey, you okay?" he asked, his voice laced with genuine worry.

a/n: didn't want this sitting in my drafts for too long :) also, hope you guys caught the hints of some new faces, one of which was mentioned a few chapters ago :)

TAGS @wildartist @rosemary108233 @devils-blackrose @teesissy @jcrml @soushswag @inurmom00 @spookychaossuit @shinslover @stalkergirl512 @miyuaditt @lurvelybones @kthyyxz @missanonymous1999 @kokonoiscoconut @ang3liclov3ly @josuke8 @bunn1rabb1t @gata-preta08 @chocomori @whyulyinggurl @Imbiafandbored @kazusbby @jcrml @the-grimm-writer @tamaki-jiki-reblogs @kookieszme @Berriesandcrem @bloobewy @thetruepair @madness-puppy @spookychaossuit @caramelcandescence @pongster @lostsomewhereinthegarden @k1nkyshoto @luno-614 @a-cult-leader @imbiafandbored @lovlessbish @kenmasbimbo @hnmashji @valeriinee @mel-star636 @mikeyaki @bontensbabygirl@luffysbaee@lostinahaze@reveluv-wendy@junolikescats@jkeluv@hells-jester@evvie8@randomsoba

[rottenroyalebooks]

Love Drunk - 0.3

Pairing: Eddie Munson x older sister!Harrington reader

Also includes: Steve Harrington x sister!reader (siblings)

AU: No Upside Down.

Genre: Angst, Fluff

Summary: Y/N Harrington left Hawkins as soon as she turned eighteen with her boyfriend to follow her dreams of being a Rockstar. Three years later, she returns to Hawkins alone and scarred. Now, she has to repair her broken relationship with her younger brother, all while trying to prevent herself from falling for a cute metal head who plays at the Hideout, where she works.

Warnings: Announced each chapter.

<- Prev Next ->

A/N: Please let me know if you'd like to be added to the tag list (messages and/or asks preferred)

Taglist: Open!

The hideout was just as busy as I remembered.

Live music, the smell of weed and cigarettes lingering in the air, the bustling of customers and waitstaff, the unknown sticky stubstance that seemed to coat the floor, and Jim's voice hollering at the cooks.

Yep, same place, different year.

"Y/N Harrington as I live and breathe." Sarah, Jim's wife's voice came from the bar, gaining my attention quickly.

I smiled and waved, walking over to the bar with a small pep in my step.

She looked me over once, "When Jim told me you were calling our house that early to ask for a job, I thought we were being punked. What the hell are you doing here?"

A chuckle escaped my lips, and I ran my hand through my hair, "Stuff happened, and I had to come back. I'd rather not get into it if you don't mind."

She waved it off, "Understood. Come on, get back here and show me what you know."

♡♡♡

The night at The Hideout was in full swing, and I was mixing drinks for the bar patrons.

The night was still young, and once I got a chance to breathe, Jim was standing at the bar.

"There's a live band playing tonight. They're a cover band called Corroded Coffin. Pretty good group of guys." He explained, leaving against the bar, "I gotta warn ya, one of the guys, he's got these high school friends that like to come watch. They're allowed to be in here but no alcoholic beverages. Only food, water, soda, or a virgin drink if you're nice enough."

I nodded, understanding what he was telling me, "It's cool that you let them come watch."

"They bring business, and that's all I care about. Same reason why I let you perform whenever you wanted, starting at age sixteen."

I laughed, shaking my head as I handed one of the patrons their drink, "God, that feels like a lifetime ago."

He nodded, smirking as he sat in one of the barstools, "Why don't you help out your old pal and perform one of these nights, huh? I'm sure you'll get quite the audience when people realize Y/N Harrington has come back to town."

"People already know. I got five calls from people asking if she was performing or not." Sarah joked, which made me chuckle lightly, shaking my head.

"Sorry guys, my rockstar days are merely a distant dream."

Jim furrowed his eyebrows, watching me move from the bar to the sink as I started to clean the glasses, "Is that why you're back? Because you didn't get your big break in three years?"

There was a pregnant pause before I answered. I didn't want to tell the truth, so I didn't, "Yeah, that's it."

A group of young teenagers raced to the bar; the tallest had shaggy brown hair and looked very excited as he was bouncing off the walls, he had an anxious looking girl with long brown hair gripping his arm as she looked around.

"Hey Jim!" Another boy with curly brown hair greeted, before looking over at me, "You're new."

I shrugged, amused at the teens, "Not really, just moved back. Want some nachos?"

A read head nodded, glaring lightly, "You look familiar."

I shrugged, "I've got one of those faces; what can I say."

The curly-haired kid interjected, "Can I get a Sherly Temple?"

"You've got it," I said grabbing my notepad, "Anything else?"

The group of teens gave me their drink orders from various sodas, and the redhead asked if I could make her a fruity mocktail. I agreed as I loved mixing drinks of all kinds; it shouldn't be too difficult to replace tequila with Sprite.

"You guys find us a table; I'll wait for our stuff." The curly kid said, and they all nodded, moving off in separate directions to attempt to find a table big enough.

The kid turned to look at me as I was making their drinks, "What's your name?"

"Y/N." I said, moving my hip so he could see my name badge on the apron that was tied around my waist, "What about you?"

"I'm Dustin." He greeted, "It's nice to meet you"

I smiled at his kindness, "It's nice to meet you too."

A very familiar voice that approached the bar, "Henderson, where are the others?" Steve, in a bar, seemed to know many kids. I smirked, passing Dustin his drink as Steve made eye contact with me, freezing.

"Why, hello, Steve. What can I get for you?"

He blinked, snapping out of his shocked state, "What are you doing here?"

"What does it look like? Making your little friends Mocktails just as the good lord intended."

He rolled his eyes, "Really, Y/N, what are you doing here?"

"I'm working, Steve. Can't you tell?"

Dustin looked confused, looking between the two of us, "Do you know her, Steve?"

"She's my sister." He gritted out, not taking his eyes off me as I put the drinks on a tray so I could bring them to the kid's table.

Dustin blinked, "You have a sister?"

"Go find the others, Dustin." He said and the boys' eyes widened, scurrying off with his drink.

He sighed, "Put their stuff on my tab." He mumbled and some other older teenagers walked over to him, including Robin whose eyes widened as she saw me.

"Right on." I say as I write it down in my notebook, "Can I get you anything else? Sodas? Another plate of Nachos?"

He turned to his friends, and they ordered, and I wrote it down, "Cool. You can find a table, and I'll get right on it after I deliver these drinks."

Nodding, they all turned and walked off, and I grabbed the tray of drinks. Spotting the kids at the table, I saw Jim approaching them with the Nachos as I approached, "Alright! A Coke, Sprite, Fruity Concoction, another Coke, and water for the little lady. If you need anything else just come and find me, yeah?"

They all stared at me; Dustin must've told them I was Steve's sister. Apparently, it's uncommon knowledge. I wasn't too surprised.

"Alright, enjoy your night." I slipped off and back to the bar, a waitress was clocking in which meant I could stay behind the bar for as long as I needed.

I heard tapping on the microphone, and I glanced over at the stage, seeing the band that was playing that night. Corroded Coffin was written on the drums, and they seemed like they were a relatively normal rock band.

My eyes found the frontman right away.

He wore a Metallica shirt with the sleeves cut off, black ripped jeans with a studded belt, he held a beautiful electric guitar, and he had silver rings on his fingers on his hands. His hair was long and curly, and he had big brown eyes that excitedly looked through the crowd.

He had a stage presence like no other.

His eyes scanned the bar and they landed on me, where he stopped looking around. Our eyes met and I felt my stomach drop, so I looked away as a customer walked up to the bar.

I smiled at Robin, who greeted me as she sat at the bar.

"Sorry, Robin, I'd hook you up with something good if Jim weren't here." I said with a smile as I leaned against the bar, "Can I make you a fruity virgin?"

"I already am one." She joked, but her face turned pink, and she looked away from me, looking down at the ground, "Sorry, bad joke."

I smiled, laughing, "I spent the last three years in California, Robin; I don't care if you do swing a certain way." I winked at her and grabbed an empty glass from a customer returning it, placing it in the sink for later.

She nodded, tapping on the counter as the band started playing.

I looked at Steve's table, and they were all paying attention to the stage intently; they must know someone from the band; I decided not to inquire since Steve didn't seem to want me to know his business.

"I'll take whatever you made for Max, though," Robin brought my attention back to her, "Just so you know, I know that things between you and Steve are tense right now, but he loves you. He's just a dingus who can't healthily express his emotions."

I chuckled, nodding, "Cheers to our parents for that. Thank you, Robin. I'll get right on it; bring it to your table if you want to enjoy the show."

"Oh, we come here every Tuesday. Supporting the band and all," She turned, pointing to the first band member, "Jeff is on the guitar to the left, Gareth is on the drums, Dougie is on the Bass, and Eddie is the frontman, singing and playing the guitar. We're mostly here for Eddie."

Ah, so the man has a name.

I nodded, handing her the drink, "Enjoy the show."

She grabbed the drink and nodded, disappearing into the crowd.

I looked back at the band, and my eyes went to Eddie immediately. His playing was good, but his voice was fantastic. I was surprised to find out about any other talent coming from Hawkins, Indiana. I leaned against the counter and watched since no customers needed my attention.

[avirael]

FFxivWrite 2024

Day 25 - Perpetuity

Rael had seen many impressive and fantastical thing already in their short life, from the deepest corners of the Golmore Jungle and throughout all the lands they had traveled. But never had they seen something that was so terrifying and beautiful at the same time as one of the great wyrms.

On white feathery wings the dragon Hraesvelgr had descended from the sky and his presence alone radiated such an ancient powerful energy that it made Rael’s skin crawl in awe. They could hear him speak aloud, a deep voice in a strange tongue, that sounded foreign and familiar alike. But at the same time it felt like his words echoed in their mind and in their soul and Rael, as well as the others, seemed to understand Hraesvelgr perfectly well.

He didn’t seem aggressive but neither was he particularly friendly. Instead he bluntly told Ysaile what he thought about her fantasy of being Shiva reborn.

“The spirit thou hast summoned belongeth not to Shiva, 'tis but a shade conjured by thine own fancy. In an age long past, mine own kin were guilty of like folly. Beguiled by the dark ones' lies, they attempted to resurrect a king amongst wyrms, who thou hath slain — yet the divinity they called forth merely borrowed the semblance of my fallen brood-brother. Such gods are not summoned, but created. Phantoms spun from the threads of misplaced faith. The spirit you summoned was but thy dream of Shiva. Thy souls hath been corrupted by a deity of thine own making, child.”

Ysaile was visibly shocked by this revelation and the others seemed quite speecheless to. But as horrible as this news was, it had not been what they came here for. So before the dragon would see their conversation as over and rise back into the sky, Rael called out to him.

“Be that as it may, Lord Hraesvelgr, Ysayle's desire to heal the rift between man and dragon is real, and it has borne us this far. We would spare both our kind and yours the ravages of this senseless war! Please join your voice to ours in a call for peace and forgiveness!”

But Hraesvelgr only angrily turned his head towards Rael and made a deep growling sound.

“The tale of thy kind is one of avarice, treachery, and death ─ and thou wouldst speak to me of peace, dragonslayer? The blood of mine brothers and sisters is on thine hands. Old and new blood, thine souls reek of it. Hark thee, mortal, to the naked truth...then tell me thou deservest forgiveness!”

Then the great dragon revealed some truths to them against which the real nature of Shiva paled in comparison.

A thousand years ago, he claimed, the first King Thordan, craving the strength of the dragons eyes, had murdered Ratatoskr — one of the first brood and therefore sister to both Hraesvelgr and Nidhogg. They ate her eyes, to gain the dragons power, and so condemned their descendants to Nidhoggs vengeance and a never-ending war.

Rael could feel that every single of Hraesvelgr’s words was true, no matter how bitterly Estinien argued against it.

And while this truth did nothing to better the ongoing slaughter of innocents, the wrath of the dragons was undeniably justified.

In Rael’s opinion the fact that each of the murderer’s descendants, which likely was almost all of Ishgard, still carried a piece of Ratatoskr‘s essence in them, was pure irony.

All these highly faithful people, the kind as well as the arrogant ones, the so-called heretics and those holy men judging them, were in reality almost dragons themself — only a small drop of blood away from transforming into the very thing they had been taught to hate.

The dragons had been the first victims of this war, and they would never forgive and make peace. This became very clear as Hraesvelgr mourned his sister and explained to them the dragon’s nature of perception and memory.

“The betrayal that yet haunts mine every waking moment is no less than the truth to my kind. Fain would I strike the image from my mind, yet still the scene doth linger ─ of my brood-sister's tattered corpse, defiled by her Elezen allies. Thou thinkest in mortal terms. Our perception of time is too broad for thee to grasp. For a wyrm such as Nidhogg, however, that history is yet part of his present, as fresh as the blood that did gush from Ratatoskr's wounds. How could he not be driven mad?”

Rael realised that he was right and that Nidhogg would never be appeased by apologies or compensation. For as long as he felt the pain and rage over his sister’s death, which was forever, he would return again and again to let Ishgard feel his vengeance.

But if their mission of peace was destined to fail, what other option remained. Estinien would certainly suggest slaying Nidhogg, but neither did Rael wish death upon the dragon nor did they think his kin would not want to avenge him and wage war against Isgard even more furiously. They would have to slaughter each and every single one of Nidhogg‘s kin to end this conflict, a thought that made Rael nauseous.

While the Viera still tried to desperately find another solution, A‘viloh did something entirety unexpected. Unexpected and reckless.

In fear Rael held their breath as the small Miqo’te slowly stepped forward, closer and closer to the giant dragon. Soothingly A‘viloh raised his arms as Hraesvelgr turned his head towards him with a threatening growl, his sharp teeth bared.

But the Miqo’te didn’t flinch away.

Instead he looked at the dragon and rested a hand on one of his curved horns. Slowly his arms reached around it, as far as he could, in the closest thing to an embrace he could offer. Then he rested one side of his head against the dragons horn and closed his eyes.

„I am so sorry.“, he said, while everything else was deadly silent.

None of them had even thought of offering apologies or condolences to Hraesvelgr, guilty or not. His tale a cruel one, shocking even, but still so distant to them. Little could they understand his pain. Only A'viloh had found the compassion and bravery to at least try to comfort the giant dragon.

For a moment no one dared to speak or move. Then the great wyrm huffed deeply, which made the Miqo’te loosen their grip and look up, while his long red hair was whirled around by the dragons breath. Rael could already imagine Hraesvelgr razor-sharp claws and teeth tearing poor, silly A‘viloh to shreds.

Instead the great wyrm slowly raised his head again and spoke a little more calmly than before.

„Thine words are meant well, mortal, but they could never soothe my pain or my wrath. It is only by the calming embrace of Shiva‘s soul that mine own fury hath not consumed me. But let us speak no more of what is done. My faith in your kind is spent, and I would be alone.“

Then without another sound he unfurled his wings and rose to the sky. Stunned they watched him vanish between the clouds. Only then Rael dared to breathe again.

[jacscorner]

The Reboot of Sharkboy & Lavagirl

So, who here remembers The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl?

...Yeah, I figured there'd be a lot of people. This movie came on almost every other week on Disney Channel some moons ago.

I loved the movie as a kid. While it hasn't aged the best, it still holds a very special place in my cold heart. One thing always lingered in the back of my mind: why isn't this a cartoon? Biased on my half, but I feel animation is better for trying to show an alien world, completely unlike anything we have on Earth. Because live action movies like this, as impressive as they may, will always be limited by budget and the effects of today - or, in this case, yesteryear. And if they're bad, they can really ruin the immersion. SB&LG are no different from this; as impressive as they were for the time, it was purely for the innate spectacle and not necessarily because they were good.

But, this movie still has a place in my heart, so let's push those critical thoughts aside. Cause i really wanna get into my thoughts on a Sharkboy and Lavagirl reboot.

SB & LG Designs

Since these are supposed to be characters dreamed up by a kid, I intentionally made their designs simplified. Cause while I can draw their suits NOW, I certainly couldn't when I was a kid watching that movie. Which, like, I hate how superheroes when made in live action have the most over the top and complicated uniforms to draw. It's such a high bar for fanart and it makes them un-fun to draw. If Japanese shows can make cool heroes that are manageable to draw, then so should we in the west!

For Sharkboy, I gave a wet suit and some clothes on top, to sort of give a pulp-y feel to his suit. I also gave him a pair of oxygen tanks; since Sharkboy apparently can't breathe underwater, but hold his breath for a long time, I thought it'd make sense for him to have something for those deep DEEP dives, or maybe he could give them to someone drowning who'd need it more.

Meanwhile, I wanted Lavagirl to look more like a classic superhero in terms of design. I do regret a little bit not making her suit more pink and instead red, but I don't hate it. I never like it when elemental heroes have suits that's just their element slapped onto them. Makes me feel it's just their body, and that's a strange school of thought to have.

How The Reboot Would Work

I'd imagine this show would be the 22-24 minute format. The show would begin with a segment of Max in the real world. We'd have a short scene that shows Max in live action and something, good or bad, happen to him. Then, the camera would fall onto Max's dream journal, with the book flipping open and pages furling. We then transition to Planet Drool, with the episode title flashing on screen and the cartoon segment takes over.

I think this would better show the distinction between the real world, Max's world, and the dream world - specifically, Planet Drool. Since Max is basically the God of this world, his emotional state and feelings effect Planet Drool. When he's sad, it's cloud and gloomy. When happy, the birds are singing and flowers are blooming.

Naturally, the various friends and allies Sharkboy & Lavagirl run into on Planet Drool are inspired by the people Max meets. Bullies and jerks in the real world play the role of villains on Planet Drool and their punishments in the real world and comeuppance in the dream world correlate. On the reverse, Max's friends are allies for Sharkboy & Lavagirl, and brief flashes of Max maintaining or straining their friendship will reflect on SB & LG and their relationships.

For example: an episode could start with Max in bed; he's got a Summer Cold and is sick. His mother brought him a bowl of sick and told him to stay in bed and rest, and to remember to take his medicine. She then leaves the room as Max just lies down in bed. 

And then the dream journal flips open and the pages furl and we zoom in on Planet Zoom and it's a frozen wasteland. Blizzards are blowing, the waters are freezing. Even Lavagirl is shivering as she sits on the beach, waiting for Sharkboy, who breaks out of the ice. It's too cold for even his shark friends to come out and they think they need to do something to warm the planet before another ice age hits them.

Probably needs a few drafts, but you get the point.

Sharkboy - Deep Sea Mystery

Sharkboy, real name Finn Mako (cause this is Sharkboy and Lavagirl, subtlety does not exist) was found in a small cave along the coast of Sharktooth Bay. He was found at around age 5 by Dr. Marlon Mako; clearly human, but obviously mutated, with shark-like teeth, sharpened claws, pointed ears, and superhuman senses - not to mention that he saw the boy talking to the Sharks that inhabited the cave. Dr. Mako adopted the boy and built his lab in that cave, where he studies marine life and also builds various technologies for the benefits of Planet Drool. Sharkboy grew up with his new adopted father, never too far from his shark friends. Dr. Mako still doesn't fully understand why Sharkboy mutated like this and is searching for the origin of his odd superhuman abilities and where he came from. Sharkboy does not care; he's happy to have his father, and his Shark Friends.

Sharkboy mostly has all the same abilities he had in the original movie; enhanced physical capabilities, underwater adaptability - for the most part, shark-like teeth, and a super capable swimmer. Sharkboy is also super smart and supplies the team with the various tech and gadgets they use throughout the show - all usually shark themed, cause of course they are. Of course, just because he's smart doesn't mean he's passive or a thinker. His first solution is still primarily to smash it - he's a cocky hothead. It was his father's idea for him to carry that oxygen tank in case of emergencies and if not for the fact he loves his dad and doesn't want him to worry, he'd never bring it with him.

And just like in the movie, Sharkboy can be overstimulated and go into a frenzy where he's stronger, faster, but more feral and less cognitive. This can be good AND bad since he's rarely in control of himself. Sharkboy also has a strong distaste for most human food - whether he can or can't eat it, I don't know, but but he at the very least won't eat most sweets willingly.

Lavagirl - Princess of Heat

Lavagirl, real name Pyrrha Redsword is the daughter of the Lava Lord, Ignis Redsword. Lavagirl hails from the largest volcano on Planet Drool, found at the equator of the planet: Mt. Habanero. We'll get into it later, but yes, Lavagirl is the youngest daughter of this Lave Lord, who controls the thermal heating of Planet Drool. A sheltered princess most her life, Lavagirl grew up listening to stories of Planet Drool's heroes. But that many of them were gone now, apparently having been lost after a 'Great War' - which, in the real world, would be Max losing his grandfather, who would be introduced into the story and would have been the one helping him build Tobor (wink wink).

Inspired by these stories, Lavagirl would make her own suit and decide to become a superhero and would leave her volcano home in search of adventure. She's eager to be a superhero and tries to do things 'by the book' and try to do her best to help people. She holds the majority of the team's emotional intelligence, being more socially capable than Sharkboy - though sometimes, a bit too formal. And at times, maybe a little too naive, as her eagerness to help and her lack of experience with people leads to her being taken advantage of.

Like Sharkboy, Lavagirl's powers are the same as they were in the movie. She can manipulate lava and magma, spew it from her hands, and her hair can light up in flames. She can also melt into lava and reform at will. These are all natural abilities of the inhabitants of her volcano home; in this reboot, Lavagirl knows exactly what she is: a Geofolk, or Geoperson. They all can live in extreme heat and have naturally hot to the touch bodies, as well as hair that can light up with fire as a tie to her emotions. They can eat lava rocks, but they can also eat normal food without issue. Lavagirl has older siblings in this reboot; two older sisters and an older brother, though they're not important right now...

Planet Drool

Planet Drool is a reflection of Earth through the warped and twisted lens of a child - one who has a love of superheroes, robots, and escapes to his fantasies while his planets are having marriage problems and he has to deal with homework, bullies, and the world being big and scary. The two planets, Drool and Earth, have no relation to each other outside of Max; SB & LG do not know of Max's existence, though Max is referenced in a religious sense, as a 'Dreamer'; someone with the power to make thoughts into matter, who can create anything, but also destroy it in an instant. Anyone on Earth can be a Dreamer - in fact, maybe we'll explore the 'Dreams' of others, as they may influence Planet Drool.

For now, though, let's focus.

The natural world of Planet Drool is ruled by a respective Elemental Lord - a King, Queen, or something. Lavagirl's father is the Lava Lord and control's the planet's natural heating. The Ice Princess - yes, she is in this reboot - controls the cooling of the planet and is acting in palce of her missing father, the Ice King. Mr. Electric is the (former) planetary electrician, so on and so forth.

Planet Drool once had lots of heroes acting as its guardian, but after The Great War, many of them had either perished or retired. One of them, the Mighty Tobor, is left as a rusting giant robot in the Dream Graveyard, where all of Max's discarded dreams end up - in context of Planet Drool, it's a massive junkyard of broken machines or magical artifacts that don't work. There, Tobor lies, still technically functional, but seemingly beyond repair, a relic of the Era of Heroes that protected Planet Drool and acts as SB & LG's mentor.

As a planet made up of the dreams of a kid, Planet Drool has various locations that don't make sense. The Land of Milk & Cookies, where deserts are made to appease giants, swamps where the sun never seem to shine and is home to frog-like dragons, desert landscapes where the sand is like water and you need to sail it by ship; the planet's landscape is in constant flux. It twists and turns at the discretion of the planet's Dreamer (AKA, Max and his slowly growing collection of friends). The most important thing about Planet Drool is that it's a mismatch of different ideas that might not really work or go together, but that's kind of the point. Cause it's a dream and dreams don't always make sense.

[thestarfilledsea]

Quiet day

it’s my birthday! wooooooooo i’m ancient now.

Have a self indulgent “Wukong struggles with the passage of time” fic because i can and this has been sitting in my drafts for a month.

AO3

words: ehhh like 1k

—

Have you ever noticed that you’ve gotten used to the quiet?

The warm light of the lantern hanging from above flooded through Wukong’s cracked eyelids. Throwing an arm over his face, a sigh escaped his lips. His fingers drummed against his skull in an old rhythm of a dance he couldn’t quite remember the steps to. It had to be at least two millennia ago. Where’d that even happen anyway? Who was he with?

Echoes of disjointed sensations were all the sage could recall, which was not unusual for a being as old as he. The brush of cloth on his skin, his feet hitting the floor until they ached, spinning on and on and onwards. A festival perhaps? He recalls the smell of the food-rich air, a wild excitement crackling like lightning in his veins, and…oh. Wine. a lot of wine.

A chuckle fell from his lips.

That was a long time ago.

Gods, he’s getting old. Why so nostalgic all of a sudden?

Dragging his arm back and peering upwards through his loosening fingers, Wukong couldn’t help but stare at the rays of light pouring through his lax grip. It wasn’t unlike laying under the thick branches of flowerfruit mountain.

Wukong never considered himself old…mentally, that is. As the years went by though, he could feel himself becoming more and more complacent. Content to sit and watch the world go by. To watch it bloom, wither and die only to sprout from its own remains again.

He felt disconnected from it. An observer watching a never-ending cycle repeat until time itself runs out. His memories meld together into an indistinguishable blur, only solidified by the stories scholars tell and ghosts of sensations the king recalls. In a way, he was perfectly fine to let those memories fade and die as the rest of his past did. Maybe there was some reason for mortals' demise. I mean, he could barely recall some of the things he’s done in his life until someone asks him to recount the tale.

Wukong shifts, adjusting himself more comfortably into his couch. his ears twitching towards the timeless sound of the monkey's play.

Some things never left him though. Like the weight of the circle upon his head, the scars that still ache when it rains, and the dreams he has almost every time he sleeps. The dreams are disjointed and chaotic, blurry images paired with unintelligible voices painted with an urgency he didn’t understand. A language he no longer spoke.

He’d drag himself out of bed, still burdened by the weight of the long restless nights. His body felt more like a vessel than actually him these days, with aching scars and calloused hands serving as a constant reminder of his age. His eyes, once full of the curiosity and excitement of youth, were now weary and dull, stained by smoke.

No matter how desperately he tried, he could never truly rid himself of the ghosts of his past. The faces of those that stood before him remained as their names faded. But he could feel their presence. Looming over him—lingering.

The feeling of nothing shook him to his core at times. The realization that another year had passed without so much a blink of an eye rattled him. Seemingly going in and out of some sort of fugue state. One moment it was spring, the next thing he knew snow had fallen.

The lights between his fingers danced timelessly before his eyes. Sighing, he rubbed his eyes, not quite sure if he’d be able to summon the strength to roll off the couch. You’d think he’d be better at this by now, but he wasn’t.

The faint murmur of someone lecturing echoed in his mind, ever so faintly, teasingly just out of earshot. As if they were standing just outside the door. He couldn't quite make out the words, but it was a voice he knew all too well - one of reprimanding before a punishment.

The voice seemed to grow closer, as if the person was getting impatient. Frustrated, he strained his ears, desperate to understand what was being said. Yet it still stayed just out of reach, frustrating him even more.

“Monkey King!”

The sound of his successor's voice made the sage jump, snapping him out of whatever masochistic reverie he had been swimming in. MK had a knack for doing that. Always seeming to know when to come knocking. Like a ray of the sun leaking through the fog, shedding light on the world around him.

“I brought some noodles cause Pigsy said you were more mopey than usual.” MK casually swung open the creaky door of the cottage and waltzed inside.

“I don’t mope, I brood. There’s a difference.” Wukong mumbled, defeatedly sitting upright. The inviting aroma of fresh food wafting through the cottage for the first time in weeks.

“Yeah yeah I’m sure there is in your world, now eat up before I have to call in your entire army to cheer you up.” MK says, pulling out a chair and sitting in front of the sage.

Wukong chuckled, unwrapping the bag and peering inside at the warm food that awaited him. MK looked on expectantly, while pulling out his own smaller serving.

“Dig in.” MK encouraged, as he continued struggling with the packaging on his own serving. Wukong was not daft, quite the opposite. He understood perfectly well that his apprentice was concerned about him, watching him like a hawk to ensure that he was eating.

Sometimes he forgets how observant his student could be. Beneath the happy go lucky demeanor, MK was sharp as a tack. Wukong, after all, took pride in his ability to act like there was absolutely nothing wrong even during his... episodes.

Yet, despite all these measures and precautions, MK saw right through him and never failed to show his concern.

With an ancient mischievous twinkle in his eye, Wukong tilted the container of noodles back and devoured the entire thing in one single fluid motion. The sound of MK’s snort was the prize he had won, as he raised the empty container in a mock victory, as if displaying an achievement for all to see.

“All gone!” He set the remains of his massacre to the side, settling comfortably into the couch. The tension and unknowing of earlier dissipated with the laughter of another.

“You are one crazy old man.” MK snorted, bringing his own noodles to his mouth.

“I prefer the term eccentric, actually.” Wukong replied in an exaggerated tone before unleashing a loud belch the likes of which gods would fear.

“See, If you had burped like that in the Lady Bone Demon’s direction you could’ve one-shot her” MK mumbled, his mouth full of noodles as he leaned back in the chair.

“You know, in all my years of living, I’ve never had someone bring such a good point to my attention.”

“That’s what I’m here for, remember? To challenge an old man’s ideas.” MK teased, fishing around the bottom of his own noodle container for the scraps of a meal now eaten.

“Yeah yeah, now hand over the remote.” Wukong dismissed with the wave of his hand. MK expertly tossed it over, eyes casting themselves towards the television.

“Quiet day?”

“Quiet day.”

MK nodded knowingly, shifting himself into a more comfortable position.

“I was thinking you’d show me that series that you always talk about. That uh…what’s it called?” Wukong struggled to recall the name of the show he was referring to. It was on the tip of his tongue.

MK's face instantly lit up with excitement, clearly knowing exactly what his teacher had been trying to remember.

"I know! You mean the show about the superhero team," he interjected excitedly, finishing his master's sentence for him with a smile. "I think you'll love it! It's all about this group of crime fighters who use their powers to protect the city and take down villains—“ MK rattled on about the plot as Wukong pulled it up, adjusting himself as to be facing both the screen and his student.

Sometimes, a new kind of quiet can shake things up. The quiet doesn’t have to be spent alone

[augustghosts]

Candles

Tommy Miller x f!reader

I don’t even know what this is tbh. This has been in my drafts forever and I haven’t posted in a month so… have this. I debated posting this as it kinda felt like me just rambling about Tommy lmao, but I think some people might like it! I didn’t know how to end this either lmao, I honestly could have kept going and added smut but i held back hehe. Also, this is a rare non nsfw fic from me lmao. <3

Word count- 2k

Warnings - mention of sexy times because like post sexy times. Like mild angst? But like in a hurt/comfort way? but that's about it! Not as many warnings as my usual fics lol. Not proofread as always because I’m still lazy.

Tommy likes her best like this. He likes her all the time, of course. But this was always something special. Dusk, when the apartment was warm. When the bed was warm - whispers against hot skin. Sleep lingering, bodies pressed together like they belonged there. Tommy felt that for the first time in forever, he had a place to come home too. A place he wanted to come home too. When there were no barriers between them. When all he had to do was pull her a little closer and she knew exactly what he wanted. The way she would open up for him so easily, so trustful. It made his aching heart feel full.

He remembers the first time they did this, the first time he had taken her on this dirty mattress. The first time he’d watched her get up and enter the bathroom, back then - he had held back on telling her how beautiful she looked. But now, it's almost like she could sense the words on the tip of his tongue as she turns to smirk at him as she opens the door. She waits in the doorway, letting his eyes skim over her naked body. She can’t deny that she loved Tommy’s attention. He was always so doting, so loving. Nothing like she’d ever had before. It was a strange thought, she’d found the kindest love she’d always dreamed of in one of the roughest places she’d ever been. Life in the QZ was not as kind as Tommy was, his soft touch was a welcome break from her newfound life.

At first it had been a classic case - I think you’re hot, you think I’m hot, no strings attached. But when do those ever work out? Especially with men like Tommy. Men with gorgeous skin and big brown eyes and soft curls to work your fingers through when he was between your legs. Thinking back, she’s not sure why she ever thought she could let him go.

“Do you have something to say?” She teased. Still standing in the doorway with a grin on her face - the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen. She thought the same, she always thought he was beautiful. But especially like this, he was lying down with his arm propped up behind his head, thin sheets draped over his waist - the awful orange light from the makeshift QZ street lights streamed in the window, but somehow, he managed to make it look beautiful. The light making him look like a fucking angel.

“No.” He replied, leaning over to reach for the pack of cigarettes on the bedside table. His gorgeous smirk still lingering on his lips as he placed it between them. She rolls her eyes and slips into the bathroom, the door shutting behind her. Tommy still can’t seem to wipe his giddy grin off his face. Honestly, he’s past the point of telling himself to grow up and be cool. He lost that around her ages ago. She had seen the cool, sauve Tommy facade that he had put on when they first met, and she had seen him as himself - she had seen him for who he is. And she loved both. He doesn’t know what he did to deserve it, but he sure as hell made sure he was making the most of it before she left him. Leaving him was inevitable, he thought. Just like everyone else.

“Shouldn’t you be leaving?” Her angelic voice grasps the evil one in his head by the hair and yanks it completely out of his mind, she always had a way of doing that.

“Why?” He asks, his cigarette now lit, smoke dancing between his lips as he speaks. She hated to admit that she found it hot. “You tryin’ to get rid of me?”

“No,” She giggles. She joined him on the bed, resting on her knees beside him. His hand instinctively goes to rest on her thigh, stroking her warm skin. Although,much to his disappointment, she had slipped on a shirt now. She took the cigarette from his fingers and placed it into her own mouth before she spoke. “I just don’t wanna face the wrath of your brother. You’ve been gone for a while now.”

“He probably knows where to find me.” Tommy said softly, looking up at her as his thumb continued to move slowly back and forth on her inner thigh. Joel knew about the girl across the hall, and he knew how much time Tommy spent with her. If he was really that interested he could come break down the door and see for himself.

She hums, in agreement or quizzically, he’s not sure. She passes the cigarette back to him and gets up again, leaving him in darkness. But as quickly as she left, she returns again with a candle in hand. She lights it, their dim corner of the room now full of beautiful flickering yellow light. Tommy spends so much time with her because when they are together, she brings some light and hope to him. Just like her damn candles. Hope and light he’s not sure he deserves. It’s addicting, being around someone like her. Someone who makes that darkness in his mind disappear.

He knows he can’t have her forever. Although he hopes too. The thought of losing the light that she brings scares the shit out of him. But for now, he pulls her down beside him, they talk for a bit and he holds her until she falls asleep. He doesn’t sleep much, but he doesn’t mind. He waits until the candle she had lit burns out, and eventually he drifts off too.

~

Tommy winces as his bruised fist pounds against the door, his knuckles still throbbing a little. Adrenaline is still running through his veins. He should have gone to Joel. But honestly, he has nothing to say to Joel. Joel always has something to say. He knows that he can always show up at her door, even if he has nothing to say. His world felt pretty fucking dark right now, so what else was he supposed to do?

He hears the locks jingle on the other side of the door, it cracks open slightly, the chain lock at the top still in action and stopping it from opening all the way. He sees her peek through, calmness immediately flooding through him. It’s already dark outside so she probably hadn’t expected him tonight. He looks sheepish as he mumbles a small “Hi, baby.” through the small gap.

She undoes the chain, opening the door all the way. She looks confused, about to ask him what was wrong before her eyes flicker down to his bloodied knuckles. The concern immediately falls from her face, a more stern look taking its place.

“Can I come in?” He asks, his voice is small, like a child who's been told off.

“As long as no one’s gonna follow you.” She said, glancing out into the hallway.

“No one is following me.” He confirms.

“Alright.” She steps out of the way to let him walk in, glancing down the hallway one last time before shutting the door and putting all the locks back in place. Tommy knows she worries, she knows the kind of people he and Joel mix with. Living here was tough, she tries to keep to herself and protect her own peace. She also knew that bringing Tommy into her life put that at risk. And he knew it too.

“Are you okay?“ She asks. He walks over to her small table and drops down into the seat, breathing in deeply.

“Yeah. I’m okay.”

She nods. He doesn’t really know what else to say - he doesn’t need to. He knows she won't ask what happened, she doesn’t want to know. If he wanted to talk, she would listen. But she prefers not to hear about what he gets up too when he isn’t with her. She doesn’t like knowing how he makes his money, how he gets all his cards. She likes to keep their little love bubble clean from his other life.

He watches her as she fills up a bowl of water and roots through a drawer. She comes back over to the table with the bowl and an old first aid kit.

“Give me your hand.” She says, dragging a chair over to sit in front of him. Their knees touching, he wants to reach for her and hug her tightly. But he waits, he lets her lead. He does as she says, placing his hand into hers. She dips a rag into the cold water and presses it to his knuckles, he watches her face as she cleans up his hand. He can tell she is disappointed and it makes him so fucking sad.

When she’s finished, she stands up and says. “Are you hungry? I’ll make you something.”

He shakes his head, he’s still staring at her silently.

“Are you sure? Because I can-“ She stops abruptly when he surges forward and wraps his arms around her waist - he buries his face into her stomach, trying to hide the tears burning the corner of his eyes. He didn’t know why he was crying, she just brought this out in him. The light she brings into him makes him vulnerable, but he didn’t mind. He adored her, he’d cry in front of her every single day if it meant that he got to see her. She sighs, but not in an angry or disappointed way, in the most loving way he’d ever heard - it makes more tears fall from his eyes.

“Oh, Tommy.” She murmurs into his hair, one of her arms wraps around his shoulder, the other digs into his hair. “What is it?” She asks softly.

He takes a few more seconds, holding her tightly. Then he pulls away, his hand staying in place on her waist. He takes a deep breath and shakes his head, “I don’t fucking know. I’m fine, honestly.” He laughs.

She laughs with him, her hands coming up to cradle his face, her thumbs wipe under his eyes.

“You wanna know something?” He asks.

“Sure.” She answers. The soft look of love in her eyes has given him a sudden confidence.

“I, uh, I think I love you.” He breathes out. She takes a few seconds to respond, it makes in fucking nervous.

“You think?” She responds. The smile on her face tells him she's joking, much to his relief.

“No, I do.” He confirms. “I do love you.” He feels like he's confirming it with himself too. His hands are still tightly gripping her waist, an attempt to ground himself.

“You know what?” She smiles. He nods eagerly, urging her to continue. His big brown eyes looked up at her intently. “I think I love you too, Tommy.”

He stands suddenly and kisses her. Kisses her more passionately than he ever has, her hands grip the front of his denim jacket and she laughs against his mouth, breaking the kiss - but he doesn’t mind. Because as usual, the ghosts that floated around inside his head were quiet - her light brightening his mind until all he saw was her. He smiled to himself as he watched her light the candle that sat beside her bed, beckoning him over to the small corner of the room that he liked to call home.

[belovedcorvid]

a tray with a letter and a dish covered with a cloche is left outside of rosinante’s room. once lifted, it’s revealed to be a meal of lettuce – plated like a face, with apple slices and plums functioning as the mouth and eyes.

　　　roci, 

it’s your birthday. 

are you surprised i remembered? did you remember? i waited all week for you to request something special of me, but you never said a word. surely it’s because you forgot and not because you didn’t think it would matter to me.

if your reason is the latter, i wouldn’t deny being a bit sad. just a bit. because, in fourteen years, i’ve never not remembered your birthday. i might have treated it like a lot of things – like a vigil, or an excuse to drink – but i still remembered. i never got much sleep on those nights. i hope the same wasn’t true for you. i hope, wherever you ended up, you spent those nights in places that were safe and warm. i hope you slept well. i hope mother visited your dreams – maybe that would explain why she never visits mine. .

speaking of mother: you might be too young to remember this clearly, but on your 6th birthday – before she even started getting sick – she wanted us to find you something special to eat while she kept you distracted. i broke into a nearby farm and ripped a head of lettuce straight out of the ground, with the trade-off of getting a nasty welt on the back of my head from a rock. father found some plums, and we had one apple left. then she had me take you outside to play and, while we were gone, she took that food and arranged them into a smile.

i tried my best to recreate it from memory. i don’t know why, it was just the first gift i could think of. i have others for you, too – but you’ll have to come see me for those. how about after dinner, on the balcony? i have a bottle of wine we could share while the sun sets, and maybe we could watch the stars for a while. if you want.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　- doffy

❣︎ | Unprompted :: Happy Birthday, Corazón ! |

He stared for a long time after he'd brought the dish back to his desk - a bizarre staring contest with a face made of fruit, or with his own small, distorted reflection gazing forlornly back at him in the margins of Doflamingo's fancy tableware. The smell of fresh produce - crisp, clean, alive - still lingered in the room even though he'd removed the cloche ages ago. He did remember, though perhaps not as sharply as he should: a lot of his early memories were sort of blended together into one pain-inducing sequence, alternately blurry and viscerally sharp - difficult to wrap his mind around, to understand that he was there in them. All that stuff happened, written on mind and body with a sharp edge. Doffy was older, maybe that was why he could see all this so clearly, like in this letter.

Guilt coiled itself around his heart as he reread the portions of this that seemed particularly genuine, for what if it was ? What if there was some remnant of a heart rattling around inside his brother's ribcage, and here he was betraying his last blood relative, lying to him, because he was too weak of will to believe that he could get better ? What kind of brother did that make him ? Or, was what he was doing for his brother's own good like he usually tried to tell himself when he felt poorly ? Scarred hands curled themselves into fists in his hair as Rocinante mentally prepared himself to try and explain this to Sengoku. What could he say - that Doffy could be rehabilitated after all, and that his primary evidence of this was a lettuce with a face on it ? It was entirely possible that this was done this way specifically because his brother could still read him so well, could see his bleeding, sentimental heart even though he did his best to hide it. That was what Sengoku would say, if he were to call him. Really there was nowhere to go.

The sensation of tears tracking from the planes of his face to the edges of the bowl was itchy, made his vision blur a little as he picked through its contents to browse a little. The plums, his favourite, were really good.

Doffy remembered.

[snailchasers-den]

How does starclan reacts to Spottedleaf's lies?

Super sorry for answering this so late, I've been super busy LMAO I try to answer asks as quickly as I can, so thank you for being so patient!

This will contain some spoilers for my fic, even if I might tweak some things before then, so know this is subject to some possible changes! It'll also contain some mild horror and themes of being watched, so fair warning!

It's nothing big at first, for a while she actually flies comfortably under the radar, the problem only really starts getting recognized by Starclan once they tell the clan the false prophecy, uncomfortably close to before whenever Spotted receives the 'Fire will save our clan' one, and gets worse once Yellowfang gets there and starts working alongside her. A lot of the plan hindered on the only other medicine cat around being her and her apprentice, so Yellowfang appearing threw a massive wrench in things. Yellowfang does agree not to reveal the fact she's faking her and Tigerclaw's prophecy, but can't promise she'll be able to keep her safe from everything that may come her way because of it.

She starts to avoid the night sky after that, doing her best to only go out during the day, or when the stars are hidden by clouds. But that doesn't always help her when she starts to feel watched near constantly. She's not exactly sure if it's a manifestation of guilt or Starclan themselves, at the time, but she starts to have dreams if not hallucinations of silent starclan cats, just... Watching as she tries to gather herbs. It's extremely rare for Starclan to decend from the sky, much less for no good reason. They don't tell you how dead and lightless an otherwise glittering Starclan cat's eyes can look when they stare at you so blankly. Nothing proves they're no longer alive more than that.

Yellowfang tries to comfort her through the days, but she out of anybody can tell it's starting to weigh on her- She does her best to make her feel a bit more secure, but having another cat with Starclan's gifts so nearby only makes things more unsettling.

Starclan is very different in this AU, being a lot more reserved and ominous, much closer to a coalescence of all the spirits of their ancestors that started having their lines between eachother smudged long ago. The clans have this image of ethereal starry passed family members who watch over them and keep them safe, but if you look deeper, there's something beneath the surface. They don't actively try to stop Spottedleaf, since this is likely a new type of crime, faking a prophecy not for power, but for something as simple and small as love, so instead they just judge. They know she knows they're watching her, and they plan to keep doing it until she dies, even if she tries to shut Starclan out of her mind later.

She does start trying to shut out Starclan once she realizes she's pregnant with Tigerclaw's kit. She knows the clan will see them as something special due to the prophecy that allowed them to be born 'within the code', and she doesn't need twice the stress with Starclan still lingering around her during the whole thing. Unfortunately, with her having such a strong connection with Starclan, and Tigerclaw having his own ties to it for wildly different reasons, their son ends up having a much, much higher connection than a majority of medicine cats do, even from a young age. Spotted isn't sure whether they passed it down to him, or if Starclan felt a bit sadistic and decided to play along for now, but for a while, the starry figures that stalk her through the forest seem to dissipate. She can't tell why, though, but she can feel in her bones that they'll be back for her.

Tigerclaw doesn't have a direct link with Starclan, but he does actually get his own glimpses of them, though his seem to be more based in malice. They've obviously never been too fond of him, and since Pinestar refused to kill him as a kit, they've let that demand go, but a lingering distaste for him never faded. He's been plagued with nightmares his entire life, but something about the ones he started getting once Starclan discovered their lie seemed to be less copy-paste with a few adjustments, and more personal. Deeper cutting and more unnerving. Ones he couldn't shake even with Spottedleaf at his side every night.

[cocainegirlsnblunts]

Ecstasy | Euphoria

Serena Baxter

MENTIONS OF SUBSTANCE ABUSE, SELF HARM, AND CHILD NEGLECT.

*Rue narrating*

Serena Baxter has gone through some fucked up shit.

She grew up in East Highland as an only child with her Mom and Dad.

And she was a normal girl.

Just always left alone with her thoughts.

She was exposed to a lot at a young age, Her dad was a drug addict, a cheater, parents always argued. But when he found someone else and actually left his family, her mom became a whore. She had a new boyfriend every week, never got anyone to stay. Serena thought her mom was weak, and it showed her how easy it was to get hurt. So she made the promise to herself to never end up like her mother.

After coming up with the idea of shutting everyone out and not having relationships with anyone, Teachers quickly noticed her drastic change in behavior and contacted her parents. All they did was get her a therapist. Which she appreciated but, a therapist couldn’t replace her parents.

All she ever wanted was genuine love in her family. So every night before she went to bed she’d pray to God that her dad would come back and love her again.

Sometimes she’d even cry in the shower thinking about how she was always a loving daughter but he still left.

Therapy helped but she knew she couldn’t let that much out because she would get her and her parents in trouble. Plus her mom couldn’t afford therapy so it didn’t last long.

And one night, the Summer before 8th grade, out on the roof looking up at stars she thought

“my parents stopped caring about me a long time ago.”

So she just gave up, on everything. Grades were slipping, she’d skip school, got into smoking and drinking, started cutting herself.

But nobody noticed.

And nobody seemed to care.

She stopped with the shutting people out bullshit and got a group of friends, just not the right friends. They made her go from smoking cigarettes to smoking weed, they got her into LSD, cocaine, and stealing. They took her to parties with horny older guys. She got into makeup, slutty clothes. Serena loved it, not caring anymore.

But she knew it was wrong.

The thought of “this is not the way to live.” lingered in her mind all the time but she always ignored it.

Her Mom was either always fucking some guy, or passed out drunk while all of this was going on. But when she’d sober up and actually get back in touch with reality it wasn’t hard to see what has been up with her Daughter. Serena changed, It hurt her seeing her like that but what hurt her even more is that she knew it was all her fault, and she didn’t do anything to stop it.

She tried to help her and make small talk everyday. Express her concerns and try to actually know what her daughter has been doing. But it would always turn into an argument cause Serena thought it was all bullshit.

And even though Serena would just walk away and ignore her Mother, she’d always listen, even if she closed and locked her door, she’d listen to see what she had to say, if she was actually trying. And one day her Mom’s words actually got to her.

“I’m getting help, for me and for you. I know that I haven’t given you the best life and i’m sorry. But it hurts me seeing you like this. You’re my sweet girl Serena, and I love you. So please whenever you’re ready i’m here.

And that worked, All Serena wanted was reassurance. So she opened the door and hugged her Mother, and ever since that they both got better. Both sobered up, Serena put more effort in school, Julie in work, they did check ins with each other, went on walks, started eating healthier, watched movies every night. It was Serena’s dream come true, and she was thankful for those moments with her Mom.

[mazerunnerfanatic]

You Were Supposed to Be My Dad

Pairing(s): Aris × Rachel / Janson & Rachel

Universe: Movies

Series: Part 3/?

"Go to sleep, sweetheart," a soft voice murmurs.

A hand runs through a head of dark hair, pushing a few pieces out of the owner's hair. The voice smiles, searching the blue-gray eyes below.

"Where's Daddy?" a smaller voice whispers.

"Getting some rest," the first voice whispers back. "Which is what you should be doing right now."

There's a little giggle, a flash of a smile.

"Go to sleep, my dear," the first voice whispers again.

Thankfully, this time, the smaller voice does fall quiet. The first voice sits there quietly, stroking the smaller's hair.

"I love you, Mommy."

A small smile. "I love you too, sweetheart."

Eyes close, and the sound of breathing levels out.

Rachel's eyes snap open. Her body surges forward to sit up, grasping at the edges of the cot she's sitting on. Eyes darting around the room, she tries to take in her surroundings. She's still in the same room, with artificial lights glaring above her, white curtains blocking her view of everything outside of her little bubble. The room smells like disinfectant, making her nose wrinkle.

Rachel shakes a little, that last memory from her dream lingering in her mind. That woman...

That was her mother. Her mother. Her-

"Good morning, Rachel."

Her head whips around at the voice, blue-gray eyes wide. They land on the nurse from before she passed out, who looks more kind now.

She steps forward. "I'm glad to see that the sedative didn't affect you too horribly. You've always had a bit of a bad reaction to it."

Rachel swallows and blinks at her. A hint of familiarity tickles her brain, and when she reaches for that memory, she expects nothing more than futility.

But the memory comes back full-force.

Rachel's heart stutters from her shock, from the clear image of being in a medical wing as a young child, the words "allergic reaction" and "allergy treatment" being thrown around with other terms she couldn't quite understand.

Rachel swallows again, putting a hand on her chest. The nurse's eyes crinkle, a sign that she's smiling under the mask plastered on her face.

"Welcome back. I'm sure the sudden flow of memories is a bit daunting right now, so I'll let you rest for a little bit," she says, voice soft; Rachel's heart squeezes at the sound, thinking of that memory of her mother.

The nurse turns to leave but stops. She looks over her shoulder at Rachel, who is staring back, speechless. The nurse sighs.

"A.D. Janson will speak with you shortly."

Then she's gone without another word.

Rachel's mind is swimming in shock from all the sudden information being thrown at her. Her brain begins to slowly process her returning memories, all of the things she couldn't remember from before she woke up in the Spring just a mere week ago.

The one thing that stands out to her is Aris. Aris, the boy she became close with at such a young age. They went through so much together, faced so many challenges together. Built the Maze.

A sudden wave of sickness washes over Rachel at that thought. She and Aris built the Maze. They trapped the girls in there, made them suffer through Variables and Grievers. Rachel makes a vow to herself that she's going to apologize to her friends when she sees them again.

'When'? Or is it an 'if'? She's going with 'when'. It's no time for being pessimistic.

Finally, the nurse's last words sink in: 'A.D. Janson'. Assistant Director Janson, second-in-command to Chancellor Paige. Every incoming memory that Rachel processes has her heart falling further and further.

She gets a clear image of that man in her mind, his face permanently fixed in a scowl, his blue-gray eyes cold and calculated. Every time she was under his gaze, she felt so small and stupid and insignificant. Every time she heard his voice, she wanted to curl up into a ball and die.

Janson, the man who oversees the entirety of the Trials, who runs this whole operation. The man who watched over Rachel like a hawk, ready to dive in when she made the slightest mistake. Her childhood had been hell because of him, because of all of the people at WCKD.

Anger starts to boil in her chest, tears pricking her eyes. The more she remembers her past, the more she remembers her hatred towards WCKD, her rage at the way she and her peers were being treated like mice in a maze. She wants to scream, to barge into Chancellor Paige's office and demand the Trials to be called off and everyone to be transported to Denver and raised until adulthood.

The sound of the curtain opening draws Rachel from her thoughts. Looking over, she sees a lady with black hair dressed in a black suit, face drawn into a tight frown. Her dark brown eyes match her overall aesthetic of black.

"The Assistant Director will see you now."

Rachel takes a deep breath and blinks. Janson wants to see her now.

Not wanting to hear this lady ask again, Rachel stands up and walks past her, avoiding eye contact. Now that she's out of the curtained-off area, Rachel sees how sterile and empty the room is, almost like her group had never been there to begin with.

"Where are the others?" she asks the newcomer, looking back at her.

The lady moves to open the door with a hum. "You'll find out soon enough."

She gestures for Rachel to walk through.

"Don't keep the Assistant Director waiting."

Rachel is still for a moment, staring at the lady. But she knows resistance is futile at the moment, and meeting with the A.D. is her best shot at getting answers right now. So she walks through the door and into the hallway, down the opposite direction from which she came the first time.

She's off to see Janson. The man that caused the living hell that was her childhood and life.

[randomoranges]

i was going to keep this for M2 day. in fact, i did not think i would finish this part in time. yet, in one sitting, i managed to write it it all. it was super smooth and easy. i had forgotten how that could go. writing has been hard recently and ive been trying to get back into it slowly without pushing myself. so the fact that i was able to go at it in one shot surprised me. therefore, i figured i could celebrate and post it today. will i be able to write the next one in time for m2 day, who knows haha but i have other things for that

anyways, can't believe it's been nearly a yr since i last updated. ive had this scene on rotisserie in my mind for ages. this fic has lived in my head for years. will i ever finish it is the real question haha

amnesia au part 195

About an hour or so later, Edward offered to drive Étienne home. Étienne refused at first, not wanting to bother him, but Edward had insisted, saying that it was late and that he didn’t like the idea of Étienne having to wait for a bus and aggravating his leg. It was cold as well and Edward knew how much Étienne did not like to be stuck outside any longer than necessary. Plus, it meant they could spend a little bit more time together and Étienne was not about to say no to that.

The drive back was pleasant and Étienne wasn’t apprehending being back in the apartment that never quite felt like home as much as he normally did. Maybe it was the turn of events of the evening that had put him in a better mood, or maybe Edward reaching for his hand at every red light made it all the better, he didn’t know, but he wasn’t about to complain.

When they finally made it to his place, Étienne thought for sure that Edward would wish him a good night and then be off, but instead, he was surprised when Edward parked the car and then made to get out.

“I’ll walk you to your door,” he explained when Étienne offered him a quizzical look.

And okay, Étienne was charmed by the utter gallantry of it all.

“You don’t have to,” he deflected for good measure, but Edward waved him off and went as far as going to open the door for him. It was a good thing it was dark out, for Edward wouldn’t be able to see the flush on his cheeks.

“As cliché as this is going to sound, I had a really nice evening and I’m glad we’re giving this another shot,” Étienne said once they made it to his door as he fiddled with his keys not sure exactly what the protocol was. Part of him wanted the evening to linger just a little more and invite Edward inside, but he was also tired, he needed to feed Mercury and he had medication he needed to take. He knew he could do all those things with Edward present, but he also wasn’t sure he’d want Edward to leave again or that he was ready for Edward to see him go about his nightly rituals.

“Me too.”

Edward reached for his hands again, stilling them in their nervous movements and Étienne focused instead on Edward and he couldn’t help but smile timidly at him. He felt like they had gone back twenty years ago, when they’d been a little bit awkward and unsure around each other, but he didn’t mind and thought that this was endearing in its own special way.

If this was a cruel dream, then he never wanted to wake from it.

“Are you free on Wednesday? Maybe we could go out for dinner – nothing too complicated.” Edward suggested, still holding on to Étienne’s hands, their warmth a source of comfort. Maybe Edward didn’t want the evening to end either and he was stalling with time, looking for excuses to stay just a little bit longer.

“Like on a date?” Étienne asked, his lips curling into a smile.

Edward laughed, “Yeah, like on a date.”

His laughter was contagious and Étienne nodded, giddy. He didn’t think he’d ever go on a date with Edward ever again and he could only hope that it would go better than their last… (It had to. Lord, it absolutely had to.)

“Perfect; we can figure out the logistics over the week. I’ll let you get some rest.”

Before he could go, Étienne tugged on his hands and then pulled Edward to him for a tight hug. He could do this again, after all. They were going on a date. Edward had kissed him. They were giving each other another chance.

It was as if Étienne was realising the magnitude of everything that had happened over the course of the evening at once and he was frankly a little dizzy by it all and so he held on to him and furrowed his face in Edward’s neck for the briefest of moments while his mind calmed down.

“Text me when you get home, please?” He asked when he resurfaced, settling once more on Edward’s face. He was still handsome – would probably always be in his biased opinion and he couldn’t help but be a glutton for a caress he hadn’t been able to give in far too long.

“Of course.”

Edward knew he’d worry otherwise, some leftover trauma from the accident, and honestly, Edward couldn’t say he blamed him. He’d asked Étienne once what he’d done when they hadn’t really been talking and Étienne had admitted that even then he’d worried, despite trying not to and telling himself that it was no longer his problem.

“I guess I’ll see you on Wednesday then,” Étienne told him, soft smile back on his face.

“And I hope to hear from you before then,” he teased, making Étienne laugh.

“Of course,” he parroted back and then, because he could again, he pulled Edward close for a kiss that Edward was more than happy to return. He was quickly getting used to these again and was only a little disappointed when they both stepped back.

“Drive safely,” he said as he watched Edward head back towards his car. He bit back other words that threatened to spill from his mouth and swallowed them back. There would be time to reintroduce them later. He waved at Edward as he entered the car and only once he had driven off did he go inside, happy to find Mercury.

Étienne distracted himself with his little odd tasks as he waited for Edward’s text, even managed to take Mercury out for a quick walk and by the time he was back home for good, he found a message on his phone waiting to quell the small thrum of anxiety that had settled in him when Edward had driven off.

“Back home safe and sound. Sweet dreams x”

He smiled to himself, relieved, as he settled in his couch, Mercury using his lap as a makeshift pillow before he answered back.

PREVIOUS: CXCIV CURRENT: CXCV NEXT: CXCVI