#all this to say. i like the character moments you get out of filler. it's charming

[austerulous]

[incomprehensi-bull]

i'm allowed to get attached to the filler arc characters. as a treat. what if carmen and sanji got to be friends

[s-soulwriter]

Things Real People Do in Dialogue (For Your Next Story)

Okay, let’s be real—dialogue can make or break a scene. You want your characters to sound natural, like actual humans talking, not robots reading a script. So, how do you write dialogue that feels real without it turning into a mess of awkward pauses and “ums”? Here’s a little cheat sheet of what real people actually do when they talk (and you can totally steal these for your next story):

1. People Interrupt Each Other All the Time In real conversations, nobody waits for the perfect moment to speak. We interrupt, cut each other off, and finish each other's sentences. Throw in some overlaps or interruptions in your dialogue to make it feel more dynamic and less like a rehearsed play.

2. They Don’t Always Say What They Mean Real people are masters of dodging. They’ll say one thing but mean something totally different (hello, passive-aggressive banter). Or they’ll just avoid the question entirely. Let your characters be vague, sarcastic, or just plain evasive sometimes—it makes their conversations feel more layered.

3. People Trail Off... We don’t always finish our sentences. Sometimes we just... stop talking because we assume the other person gets what we’re trying to say. Use that in your dialogue! Let a sentence trail off into nothing. It adds realism and shows the comfort (or awkwardness) between characters.

4. Repeating Words Is Normal In real life, people repeat words when they’re excited, nervous, or trying to make a point. It’s not a sign of bad writing—it’s how we talk. Let your characters get a little repetitive now and then. It adds a rhythm to their speech that feels more genuine.

5. Fillers Are Your Friends People say "um," "uh," "like," "you know," all the time. Not every character needs to sound polished or poetic. Sprinkle in some filler words where it makes sense, especially if the character is nervous or thinking on their feet.

6. Not Everyone Speaks in Complete Sentences Sometimes, people just throw out fragments instead of complete sentences, especially when emotions are high. Short, choppy dialogue can convey tension or excitement. Instead of saying “I really think we need to talk about this,” try “We need to talk. Now.”

7. Body Language Is Part of the Conversation Real people don’t just communicate with words; they use facial expressions, gestures, and body language. When your characters are talking, think about what they’re doing—are they fidgeting? Smiling? Crossing their arms? Those little actions can add a lot of subtext to the dialogue without needing extra words.

8. Awkward Silences Are Golden People don’t talk non-stop. Sometimes, they stop mid-conversation to think, or because things just got weird. Don’t be afraid to add a beat of awkward silence, a long pause, or a meaningful look between characters. It can say more than words.

9. People Talk Over Themselves When They're Nervous When we’re anxious, we tend to talk too fast, go back to rephrase what we just said, or add unnecessary details. If your character’s nervous, let them ramble a bit or correct themselves. It’s a great way to show their internal state through dialogue.

10. Inside Jokes and Shared History Real people have history. Sometimes they reference something that happened off-page, or they share an inside joke only they get. This makes your dialogue feel lived-in and shows that your characters have a life beyond the scene. Throw in a callback to something earlier, or a joke only two characters understand.

11. No One Explains Everything People leave stuff out. We assume the person we’re talking to knows what we’re talking about, so we skip over background details. Instead of having your character explain everything for the reader’s benefit, let some things go unsaid. It’ll feel more natural—and trust your reader to keep up!

12. Characters Have Different Voices Real people don’t all talk the same way. Your characters shouldn’t either! Pay attention to their unique quirks—does one character use slang? Does another speak more formally? Maybe someone’s always cutting people off while another is super polite. Give them different voices and patterns of speech so their dialogue feels authentic to them.

13. People Change the Subject In real life, conversations don’t always stay on track. People get sidetracked, jump to random topics, or avoid certain subjects altogether. If your characters are uncomfortable or trying to dodge a question, let them awkwardly change the subject or ramble to fill the space.

14. Reactions Aren’t Always Immediate People don’t always respond right away. They pause, they think, they hesitate. Sometimes they don’t know what to say, and that delay can speak volumes. Give your characters a moment to process before they respond—it’ll make the conversation feel more natural.

Important note: Please don’t use all of these tips in one dialogue at once.

[comicaurora]

Opinions on fullmetal alchemist?

Brotherhood is the best anime ever made.

It's the most tightly-plotted slowburn mystery I've ever seen. Everything ties together. It makes more and more sense the more times I rewatch it, which in a mystery story is goddamn rare. In the very first episode, the filler villain at one point says "You don't understand the shape this country is in!" and that's a completely innocuous thing for this character to say except no it isn't

The magic system is a beautifully hard arrangement that never breaks its own rules, and it effortlessly explains everything you need to know to follow every alchemy-based twist just through the explanation of equivalent exchange and the question "what could equal the value of a human soul?" Alchemy follows equivalent exchange at all points and functions basically like Advanced Chemistry, and whenever it looks like the rules are being broken, it's just because somebody is burning human souls to do it.

The cast is massive, but never crowded. Everybody has a part to play. Even the seemingly-interchangeable minion characters all end up being unique contributers to the plot; there is truly no separation between Main Characters and Minor Characters because at any point anyone can turn out to be suddenly deeply important.

Contains a profound philosophical meditation on how even the most powerful person is not omnipotent, and the purposelessness of a power that can't be used to save the people they love, and this theme culminates in the only instance of the "extremely cool powerful badass sacrifices all their powers" trope that I actually 100% like.

Somehow this slowburn hard-magic mystery builds up to a massive anime confrontation about teenagers using the power of friendship to kill god and it never makes any buckwild leaps to get there. The resolution is emotionally satisfying and ridiculously kickass.

There are stories that I come back to more often, or hit me harder in the moment, or contain higher highs, or had more impact on their genres, but FMA:B is, pound for pound, the best anime ever made. 10s across the board.

[vibelladonna]

✑ 𝓉𝓎𝓅𝑒 𝑜𝒻 𝒷𝑜𝓎𝒻𝓇𝒾𝑒𝓃𝒹 𝜗𝜚 𝑔𝑒𝑜

· ─────── ⋆⋅♤⋅⋆ ─────── · 

Geo has officially become my second favorite character in Tkatb. As an asexual person writing about another asexual-coded character, I have to say—he makes me feel seen. It’s like he literally can’t take his eyes off me (and let’s face it, with Geo, that’s more intense than romantic).

𝒸𝑜𝓃𝓉𝑒𝓃𝓉 𝓌𝒶𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔: 18+ NO KIDS (Adults Only) This content contains mature themes unsuitable for children. Please respect the creator's intentions.

But let’s be serious: I love him platonically. Sorry Brittany.

So, of course, I’ll share my headcanons about Geo, some shared by other fans, and even a few from the game’s lore. And no, before you ask, I won’t be writing about Sol in this “Type of Boyfriend” trope. He’s the obvious main choice in the game, and countless talented writers have already explored that lane. 

Geo, however? His quiet, unsettling stares deserve its moment in the spotlight.

Okay, so let’s talk about Geo as a boyfriend. First of all, congratulations on making that happen. Like, seriously, how did you pull it off? 

Because let’s be real, Geo is not the type to just open his heart to anyone. This man’s walls are practically made of steel, and I’m sure it took some serious patience, persistence, and probably some sorcery to get him to even consider letting you in.

But hey, you did it. So now you’ve got yourself the most stoic, broody, and incredibly hot boyfriend. So let’s break it down! 

✑ The Silent Observer

Like said, getting close to Geo? Oh man, that was like trying to break into a vault without the code. And let’s be honest, at first, you probably weren’t even trying to get to him—he just happened to be standing there while you were hanging out with Crowe. But of course, Geo being Geo, he’d hit you with those cold, piercing stares that made you question every single life choice.

And don’t even get me started on his bluntness. He’s the definition of the strong, silent type. He only speaks when he thinks something needs to be said, which means you’re never getting any filler or small talk from him. It’s not that he’s rude—he just values words and doesn’t see the point in wasting them. 

He’d just say it. Straight up. No filter. 

However, he does talk—pretty much one sentence though, it’s worth listening to because you’ll quickly realize how sharp he is. Geo’s intelligence and observant nature are on another level too… 

The kind of observant where he notices *everything*. He’s like that one friend who knows all the drama without ever saying a word. While Brittany would spill the tea loudly and proudly, Geo keeps it all locked away in that steel trap of a brain. He’s always watching, analyzing, and probably always two steps ahead. It’s part of what makes him such a great strategist but also why he’s so cautious about trusting anyone.  

So, instead of running for the hills like most people would, you stayed. And that’s probably what made him start noticing you. You didn’t back off, didn’t try to change him, just kind of… stuck around. 

Geo doesn’t do well with people who push or pry, so the fact that you respected his space but still showed up? Yeah, that got to him. Even if he’d never admit it out loud.

What’s wild is that he notices everything. Stuff you didn’t even realize about yourself? Yeah, he’s clocked it already. He’s the kind of guy who remembers your favorite drink, the way you twirl your hair when you’re stressed, or even the exact date you mentioned something offhand weeks ago. It’s almost unsettling how much he takes in, but it’s also one of the ways he shows how much he cares.

He’s not the type to constantly shower you with compliments or grand gestures, but his quiet, steady presence speaks volumes. Geo’s the guy who will fix something for you before you even realize it’s broken or offer exactly what you need without you having to ask. 

And when he does open up or say something heartfelt? You know it’s real because he doesn’t just say things lightly.

✑ Low-key Romantic

Okay, let’s get real—Geo is not the type to wear his heart on his sleeve. If anything, he’s probably got it locked up in a box somewhere with a “Do Not Disturb” sign slapped on it. But here’s the thing: when Geo cares, he cares. Like, no half-measures. 

Once he lets someone in—which is a feat on its own—you have his full, unwavering loyalty. And let’s be honest, why would Geo want anyone else? He’s not the type to hop from person to person—when he chooses you, he chooses you.

I’m pulling his asexual card here because it just fits. Geo isn’t about flashy romance or grand declarations. For him, love isn’t in the words or PDA—mind you he HATES PDA—it’s in the quiet, consistent ways he shows up for you. He wouldn’t just call you his partner; he’d treat you like you’re the most important person in his life, even if he doesn’t say it outright.

And the way he shows his affection? It’s all in the details. Geo is hyper-observant—he probably knows you better than you know yourself. 

Again, he’ll pick up on the smallest things, like how you take your coffee or tea, the way your eyes light up when you’re excited, or how you’re always talking about that one book or game you’re obsessed with. And he’ll use that information to make your day in ways that feel effortless.

Expect random, thoughtful surprises. Maybe your favorite snacks just happen to appear on your desk when you’re having a rough day, or you’ll find tickets to that movie you’ve been dying to see in your bag without him saying a word. He’s not going to make a big deal about it either—he’ll just shrug it off like it’s no big deal, but deep down, he’s paying attention to every detail that makes you you.

Geo’s love language is subtle, sure, but it’s also steady and reliable. 

You won’t always see it coming, but you’ll feel it in the way he’s always quietly there for you, no matter what.

✑ Protective But Not Overbearing

Oh, Geo’s hella protective—like, protective to the point where you know he’s got your back no matter what. But don’t think for a second he’s the clingy or overbearing type. Nah, that’s not his style. 

He’s more of a silent sentinel kind of guy, keeping a close eye on everything while letting you do your thing. He trusts you to handle yourself, and honestly? That trust speaks volumes. He knows you’re capable, and he’s not about to baby you or hover like some overprotective shadow.

But let’s get one thing straight—if someone crosses the line with you? Game over. Geo might seem calm and composed most of the time, but when it comes to defending you, that sharp tongue of his comes out swinging. 

And let’s not forget the fact that he’s an archer. I’m just saying, if someone pushes too far, they’d better pray they’re not anywhere near a target. He wouldn’t need to say much—one cold glare, one well-aimed shot at a bullseye, and everyone around would get the message.

What’s even better is that Geo doesn’t make a scene about it. He’s not the type to start unnecessary drama or puff up his chest to prove something. He’ll shut down any nonsense with a few carefully chosen words or, if it comes to it, an intimidating presence that leaves no room for argument. 

He’s protective, yeah, but it’s in this quiet, no-nonsense way that just makes you feel safe without feeling suffocated.

And honestly? That balance is rare. He’s like your personal bodyguard without the need for the over-the-top theatrics. It’s not about control—it’s about making sure you know you’re valued and looked out for. 

And for Geo, that’s everything.

✑ A Hidden Heart

Geo’s not the type to be up in your face 24/7. Nah, for him, it’s all about quality over quantity. He’s perfectly fine with spending an hour sitting next to you in total silence, maybe reading or just walking side by side. 

You don’t even have to talk—he’s not big on words anyway. It’s the connection that matters to him, not the setting or how much time you spend together. 

To Geo, a quiet moment shared between just the two of you means more than any loud party or over-the-top date night ever could.

Now, let’s talk about Geo’s bluntness. We all know he’s sharp-tongued, unfiltered, and way too honest for his own good. It’s kind of his thing. But when it comes to you? That edge softens, and he tries—tries being the keyword here—to rein it in. He’s still going to tell you exactly what he thinks because, let’s be real, that’s just who he is. 

But with you, he’ll make the effort to phrase things more gently. You’re one of the very few people who gets that version of him, and let’s be honest, that’s kind of special. You get to see the side of him that’s not all sharp remarks and icy glares, the side that actually cares.

And while Geo might seem like this stoic, broody guy who doesn’t let anything faze him, he’s secretly a total softie when it comes to you. Again, he’s not going to smother you with hugs or drown you in words of comfort when you’re upset—that’s not his style. He’s not like Crowe T-T.

But he’ll be there. 

Sitting beside you when you’re crying, quietly handing you tissues, letting you lean on his shoulder without a word. He listens, like really listens, and you can feel his presence grounding you even when he doesn’t say much.

It’s not that Geo doesn’t care—he just shows it in his own way. A quiet walk, a softened tone, a steady shoulder to lean on. With Geo, love isn’t loud or flashy. It’s steady, subtle, and completely genuine.

✑ Tailored to You

Geo and the five love languages? Well… Spoiler alert: this man is low-key okay at all of them, even if he’ll never admit it.

— Words of Affirmation? 

So… Compliments? Yeah, don’t hold your breath. He’s not going to gush about how you’re the most incredible person on the planet. 

But when he does say something nice? Oh, it means something. If Geo tells you, “That was impressive,” just know he’s basically screaming, “I’m so proud of you” on the inside. And if you ever compliment him? Expect a half-hearted shrug and a muttered, “I guess,” but deep down, you know he’s preening like a cat that just caught a mouse.

— Acts of Service? 

This is where Geo shines. He’s not going to say, “I love you” outright, but he’ll carry your bag, or make sure you’re eating when you’ve had a rough day. 

Dating Geo means having someone who sees you, even when you think no one else does. He’s a protector, a confidant, and someone who keeps things real—all wrapped up in a broody, mysterious package. 

Need something heavy moved? Done. Can’t open a jar? No problem. He’s like a one-man life support system, quietly taking care of you while pretending it’s no big deal.

— Receiving Gifts?

Geo doesn’t do flashy gifts, but when he gives you something? It’s weirdly specific and thoughtful. Like, you’ll casually mention liking a certain anything once, and boom—it’s sitting in front of your door the next day. He’ll pretend it’s not a big deal, though. “Oh, I just saw it at the store,” he’ll say, even though you know he went out of his way to get it.

— Quality Time?

This one is Geo’s bread and butter. He’s all about meaningful moments. Forget big group hangouts or extravagant plans—he’d rather spend a quiet evening with you, just existing in the same space. You could be doing something as mundane as grocery shopping, and he’d still find a way to make it feel special. And if you’re both just sitting in silence, reading or scrolling on your phones? That’s peak romance for him.

— Physical Touch?

All right, let’s be real—Geo isn’t big on touchy-feely stuff. He’s the type to freeze up if someone hugs him unexpectedly. But with you? He warms up to it. He’s still awkward as hell at first, but over time, he’ll start initiating small touches—a hand on your shoulder, brushing hair out of your face, or even holding your hand when no one’s looking. And if you hug him? He’ll grumble about it, but he secretly loves it.

In conclusion? Geo’s love language is basically Geo Language—quiet, understated, and 100% tailored to you. He’s not going to shout his feelings from the rooftops, but if you pay attention, his actions scream, “You’re my person, and I’m not letting you go.”

✑ Tailored to Him

So you wanna know Geo’s love languages? As unique as he is and if we had to rank them, here’s the holy trinity that makes this stoic archer tick:

Geo is an independent guy, but even the most self-sufficient people need someone who understands them. He craves someone who respects his need for space but knows when to step in with the right kind of support.

— Acts of Service (His #1, obviously)

Geo isn’t the type to ask for help—he’s too independent for that. But when you step in and do something thoughtful for him without being asked? 

That’s how you win this man over. 

He’s got this quiet appreciation for when people notice the little things, like brewing him tea when he’s had a rough day or cleaning up his gear after practice. Bonus points if you surprise him with something related to his hobbies, like a rare Japanese opera recording or a new pot for one of his plants. Acts of service show him that you’re paying attention, and trust me, he notices.

— Quality Time

Geo doesn’t want loud, over-the-top outings or big social gatherings. In fact, the less noise and chaos, the better. What he really craves is quiet, intentional moments with someone who just gets him. 

Sitting together in a cozy home, tending to his potted plants, or watching the intricate art of shadow puppetry—these are the things that speak to his soul. Geo thrives in these quiet spaces where he can relax, reflect, and enjoy meaningful companionship. 

Just don’t interrupt if he’s hyper-focused on something. He’ll side-eye you into another dimension.

— Receiving Gifts

Okay, hear me out—Geo hates getting gifts, right? I mean, he literally burned the random Valentine’s Day presents people gave him that one time. Absolute menace behavior, but honestly? It’s kind of funny in a this-man-does-not-care way. But here’s the twist: Geo’s not against all gifts. He’s just very particular.

See, he doesn’t want over-the-top, flashy stuff. No giant teddy bears, love letters, heart-shaped balloons, or anything that screams “cliché.” If you even think about giving him something generic, he’ll give you that deadpan look that could shrivel your soul. However, thoughtful, personalized gifts? 

That’s a whole different story.

Picture this: you show up with a sleek, modern pot for one of his beloved plants, or maybe a rare variety of seeds that he hasn’t gotten his hands on yet. Geo would never say it out loud, but inside? He’s lowkey impressed. Or let’s say you score him tickets to a Japanese opera—something you know he’d appreciate but would never bother getting for himself. Now, that would leave him quietly staring at you like, “…You actually get me.”

And don’t even get me started on shadow puppetry. If you found a book about advanced techniques or a vintage lamp to use for creating the perfect shadows? You’d probably see the faintest flicker of a smile—like, barely there, but it counts.

With Geo, it’s not about spending a ton of money or going big. It’s about showing that you know him—that you’ve paid attention to his quirks, his hobbies, and the things that make him tick. When the gift reflects his personality and interests? 

That’s when you see the softer side of him, the part of him that’s secretly thinking, “How did I end up with someone like this?”

And yeah, he might not say that, because Geo and verbal affection are basically strangers. But the way he takes care of that plant pot or treasures that opera ticket? 

That’ll tell you everything you need to know.

✑ Cultural Depth 

Geo’s all about his Japanese roots, but he doesn’t go around making a big deal about it. It’s in the small things—the quiet traditions he carries, the way he’ll casually drop some next-level cultural knowledge.

— Sharing His World (Quietly)

Geo isn’t the type to throw you into the deep end of his culture, but if you hang around him long enough, he’ll start to let you in. It’s like a slow reveal in a really good book—you don’t even realize you’re getting hooked until you’re deep into it. 

He’ll start small, teaching you a word or two in Japanese. Nothing too complicated at first—basic phrases like arigatou or ohayou. God writing this is killing me…

But if you’re patient (and don’t butcher the pronunciation), he might hit you with the poetic, meaningful stuff. Like, “The moon tonight reminds me of home,” kind of poetic.

And food? Oh, he’s low-key a food snob, but in the best way. If he takes you out for sushi, don’t embarrass him by drowning it in soy sauce, okay? He might roll his eyes, but deep down, he’ll think you’re a lost cause. 

Bonus points if you ask him to show you how to make something traditional, though. Watching him calmly explain how to roll onigiri while being so exact about it? Weirdly cute.

— Secret Nerd Side

Geo doesn’t advertise it, but he has a soft spot for traditional Japanese arts. Shadow puppetry? Yeah, that’s a thing he knows. He won’t just show you for fun, though—you’ll have to ask and even then, it’s going to be, like, the most casual display ever. He’ll make a crane with his hands in the middle of a quiet moment, the shadow falling perfectly on the wall, and act like it’s no big deal. 

Meanwhile, you’re sitting there, wondering if he’s secretly an 80-year-old trapped in a hot college guy’s body.

Oh, and don’t even get him started on Japanese opera. It’s his go-to when he needs to vibe or think. You might catch him with his headphones in, looking all stoic, and he’s probably listening to something hauntingly beautiful and dramatic. But good luck getting him to admit it.

✑ Such Spa Days

If there’s one thing you should know about Geo, it’s that he takes self-care very seriously. This man isn’t just about keeping clean—he’s practically the ambassador of flawless skin. His routine is a whole event, and don’t even think about interrupting it unless you want to be met with one of his signature cold stares.

Geo’s all about precision, from his perfectly tied low ponytail to his smooth, glowing complexion that looks like it came straight out of a skincare ad. He’s the guy who has a shelf full of serums, toners, face masks, and creams, all neatly organized by purpose and ingredient list. Oh, and he definitely uses products with names you can’t pronounce but that sounds expensive. He’s from the rich side of the society anyway…

Sunday nights? They’re sacred. You’ll find Geo in full spa mode, complete with a fluffy towel draped over his shoulders and maybe even some calming Japanese opera music playing softly in the background. He’ll light a candle (something subtle, probably sandalwood or green tea) and go through his routine like it’s a religious ceremony. Cleansing, exfoliating, masking—he’s got it all down to a science.

And don’t get him started on baths. Geo’s baths are an experience. He’ll fill the tub with just the right temperature water, toss in some herbal bath salts or a soothing bath bomb, and relax like he’s starring in a luxurious retreat commercial. He even has a book propped up nearby or maybe a cup of tea to complete the vibe.

The best part? Geo’s love for spa days isn’t just about himself—it’s an extension of his personality. He values control and discipline, and his skincare routine is a reflection of that. Every step, every product, is carefully chosen because it’s his way of staying grounded in a chaotic world.

Now, if you’re lucky enough to be part of his life, he might invite you into his sacred self-care space. Don’t expect anything over the top, though. Geo’s not going to gush about it, but he’ll casually hand you a face mask or suggest a product he thinks you’ll like. It’s his way of saying, “I care,” without actually saying it.

But be warned—if you touch his stuff without asking, he’ll probably give you a look that could freeze fire. He’s protective of his skincare collection, and for good reason. You’ll never forget the day you used his serum without permission and had to endure a five-minute lecture about “proper application techniques” while he looked genuinely offended.

Now, let’s get one thing straight: Geo’s devotion to skincare doesn’t just stop with himself. Oh no, if you’re doing it wrong, he will notice—and he will step in.

Say you’re casually applying his skincare collection one day, just slapping it on like it’s sunscreen at the beach. Geo, from across the room, will stop dead in his tracks, narrow his aquamarine eyes, and calmly say, “What are you doing?” in a tone that sends shivers down your spine. Before you can even protest, he’s already approaching with that look—the one that says, “I didn’t want to get involved, but you’ve left me no choice.”

Geo doesn’t offer to fix your skincare routine; he takes over. He’s not the type to sugarcoat it either. “You’re wasting product,” he’ll mutter, carefully squeezing the perfect amount of serum onto his fingertips before gently patting it into your skin. “And you’re supposed to press it in, not rub it like you’re sanding wood.”

And honestly? He’s ridiculously good at it. His hands are steady, his movements precise, and for someone who doesn’t talk much, he somehow explains every step with just enough detail to make you realize how little you knew about skincare to begin with.

Geo is not one for half-measures, so don’t be surprised when he starts rearranging your entire routine. Suddenly, you’ve got a multi-step process you never asked for, complete with double cleansing, toners, serums, and a nightly mask rotation. You didn’t even know what a niacinamide serum was before, but now you have one, and you’re using it correctly, thank you very much.

The funniest part? Geo never complains about doing your skincare. He acts mildly exasperated, sure, but you catch the tiniest flicker of pride when your skin starts glowing like his. 

And while he’d never admit it out loud, he secretly likes having an excuse to take care of you. It’s his way of showing he cares without all that messy emotional talk.

But if you dare to slack off? Oh, you’ll hear about it. “You didn’t put on sunscreen today, did you?” he’ll ask, his tone low and judgmental as he crosses his arms. “Don’t come crying to me when you age prematurely.” And yet, despite all the teasing, he’ll still hand you his favorite SPF because, deep down, he can’t stand the idea of you not taking care of yourself.

At the end of the day, Geo’s skincare obsession isn’t just about looking good—it’s about discipline, self-respect, and now, begrudgingly, making sure you’re glowing just as much as he is. 

In the end, Geo’s love for spa days isn’t just a quirky habit—it’s part of what makes him who he is. It’s his way of maintaining balance, staying composed, and, let’s be honest, looking damn good while doing it. 

✑ So Damn Competitive

Don’t let Geo’s stoic, “I’m too cool to care” vibe fool you—this man is surprisingly competitive. Like, you’d think someone who’s all about calm and control wouldn’t get riled up over a board game, right? Wrong. The moment you pull out a board game or even a deck of Uno cards, you’re witnessing a transformation. Same too…

Geo doesn’t just play to win—he plays to crush. He’s not loud about it, though. Oh no, Geo’s trash talk is subtle but devastating. “That’s an… interesting move,” he’ll say, his aquamarine eyes glinting with quiet smugness as he places his piece exactly where it’ll ruin your entire strategy. And let’s not even get started on trivia night. This man has an encyclopedic knowledge of random facts, and he’ll flex it in the most deadpan way possible.

But here’s the best part: Geo will let you win sometimes—just don’t expect him to admit it. He’ll subtly fumble a move in Jenga or conveniently “forget” the answer to a question during trivia, all while keeping that unreadable poker face. If you call him out on it? “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he’ll say, completely straight-faced, as if he didn’t just let the tower fall on purpose.

The funniest part is how petty he can get when he doesn’t win. Like, say you beat him in a cooking challenge (because your pancakes were objectively fluffier). He won’t throw a fit, but you’ll catch him side-eyeing your plate like it personally offended him. “Your syrup-to-pancake ratio is off,” he might mutter under his breath, just loud enough for you to hear.

But his competitive streak isn’t all bad—it’s actually kind of adorable. If you’re struggling with something, Geo will quietly make it his mission to help you improve. 

Trying to get better at a sport? Let’s use Kyūdō, in other words, the Japanese martial art of archery. It started as you’d expect—Geo, all serious and instructor-like, standing behind you to adjust your posture, his hands steady as they guided yours. “Hold it like this,” he’d say, his tone calm and precise. You could tell he was in his element, and honestly? 

He’s kind of hot when he gets all focused like that.

At first, you weren’t great. The arrows went everywhere except the target and Geo’s quiet sighs of exasperation were hilarious. But instead of getting frustrated, he’d patiently explain what you were doing wrong, occasionally muttering things like, “It’s not that hard,” under his breath.

But then something shifted. One day, it just clicked. Suddenly, your arrows weren’t just hitting the target—they were landing dead center. 

Every. Single. Time.

Geo’s reaction? Priceless. He didn’t say anything at first, but you could feel his aquamarine eyes narrowing as he watched your shots. “Beginner’s luck,” he muttered, crossing his arms.

Except it wasn’t luck. You kept getting better. So much better, in fact, that you started beating him.

The first time it happened, you expected him to be annoyed. But instead, he just stared at the target, then at you, and said, “You’ve been practicing without me.” (Spoiler: You hadn’t.)

From then on, Geo challenges you to little games—first one to hit three bullseyes, trick shots, you name it. And every time you won, you’d catch that subtle crease in his brow like he couldn’t quite believe it.

But despite his bruised ego, Geo was secretly proud of you. You’d catch him smiling—just barely—when you weren’t looking, and if anyone else tried to challenge you? Oh, he’d brag like crazy. “She’s the best shot here,” he’d say, completely deadpan, like he wasn’t lowkey sulking about the fact that you’d surpassed him.

Watching Geo try to outshoot you while pretending he wasn’t bothered was half the fun, you know it’s eating him up inside. “Good game,” he’ll say, his tone perfectly neutral, while internally plotting his revenge for next time.

 It’s all part of the charm, though. 

✑ You’re His Safe Space

Okay, I know—Geo and PDA? They’re not exactly besties. He’s not the guy to be all over you in public; in fact, he hates it.

Holding hands? Brings too much attention.

Kisses in front of people? Absolutely not.

He’s got that whole “reserved and composed” thing going on, and the idea of being openly mushy in front of others? Yeah, hard pass.

But here’s the plot twist: when it’s just the two of you? Total cling mode.

When Geo’s guard is down, he’s secretly so affectionate it’s almost like a plot twist you didn’t see coming. Imagine this: you’re just minding your own business—maybe reading, scrolling on your phone, or binge-watching something—and out of nowhere, you feel his arms snake around you. He doesn’t say a word; he just pulls you close, resting his chin on your shoulder or burying his face in your hair like it’s his personal safe haven.

It’s his way of saying, “You’re my peace,” without actually having to string the words together. Subtle? Yes. Effective? Absolutely.

Geo isn’t heartless—not by a long shot. He cares so much, he just doesn’t always know how to package those feelings into neat little boxes with bows on top. He’s the type to skip the love letters and dramatic proclamations and go straight to showing you how much you mean to him.

Actions over words, always.

And okay, let’s be real—some of us can relate to that. Maybe feelings aren’t the easiest thing to express, so we see a bit of ourselves in Geo. It’s not that he’s cold or distant; he’s just navigating his emotions in his own quiet way. And when he finally lets his guard down? That’s when you see his true colors.

After pulling you close, Geo turns you around, his hands lingering gently on your arms. His touch is feather-light, deliberate, as though he’s giving you a moment to realize what’s happening. He pauses, his fingers brushing against your lips in a way that sends a quiet thrill down your spine.

His eyes lock onto yours for a heartbeat—then they drop to your lips, lingering there just long enough for you to feel the tension in the air. When his gaze meets yours again, there’s something unspoken in his expression, a question he doesn’t need to say out loud: Is this okay?

And then, he leans in. It’s not rushed or overly dramatic; it’s a simple, slow movement like he wants to savor every second. His lips meet yours softly at first, testing, then growing a little firmer as he presses closer. It’s the kind of kiss that says a thousand things he wouldn’t dare put into words—trust, vulnerability, and a quiet kind of devotion he’s still figuring out how to show.

When he pulls back, his forehead rests against yours, his breath warm and steady as he lingers there for a moment. It’s like time stops, and nothing else matters except the two of you in that little bubble of intimacy.

Geo’s not about grand gestures or big, romantic speeches. But this? This is his way of telling you everything. His actions speak volumes, and each small touch, each lingering look, is filled with a kind of tenderness that words could never capture.

And maybe that’s the most Geo thing about him—he doesn’t need to shout his love from rooftops or drown you in cliché romance. Instead, he gives you moments like this. Moments that feel raw, honest, and entirely yours. Moments where he silently tells you, “You’re my world,” without ever saying a word.

Trust me, it’s worth the wait.

✑ Flaws? There’s a few…

Now nobody’s perfect—not even our polished, broody archer. Geo’s got his fair share of flaws, and honestly? They add to his charm in that I-don’t-know-why-I-like-this-but-I-do kind of way. 

First of all, he’s stubborn as hell. Geo’s stubbornness could rival a brick wall and spoiler: you’re not winning an argument against him. Once his mind is made up, that’s it—game over. Whether it’s something as simple as how to fold laundry (he has a system) or something as big as life choices, he sticks to his guns like they’re glued to him. 

Convincing him to budge? Good luck; you’ll need it.

Second, he doesn’t believe in second chances. Mess up once, and that’s it—you’re done. Geo’s not the type to forgive and forget; it’s more like, “You did what? Cool, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” He’s incredibly selective about who he lets in, so if someone breaks his trust, they’re out for good. 

It’s harsh, but for Geo, it’s about protecting himself.

Third, picky with a Capital P. Geo’s the kind of person who knows exactly what he wants, and if something doesn’t meet his standards? Nope. He’s picky about everything—his appearance (always flawless), his environment (no mess, no chaos), and even the people he surrounds himself with. 

If you’re lucky enough to pass his “quality control,” congrats, you’ve made it to the inner circle.

Lastly, Geo’s got walls on walls. He’s not about to open up to just anyone, and even once he does, it’s a slow process. He’s constantly watching, analyzing, and second-guessing people’s intentions. It takes someone special to get through that, and even then, he might still keep certain things locked away.

So, What Does This All Mean?

Geo’s flaws can make him seem intimidating and hard to approach, but they’re also part of what makes him so uniquely him. His stubbornness shows his determination, and his lack of second chances highlights how much he values loyalty and his pickiness. Well, it’s just another way he shows that he’s got high standards—whether for himself or the people around him.

At the end of the day, Geo’s trust issues are a double-edged sword. They make him fiercely loyal to the people he *does* trust, but they also mean it takes a long time for him to get there. 

Still, if you’ve made it into his inner circle, congrats—you’re probably one of the few people he truly feels safe with. And that? That’s priceless.

Is he perfect? Nope. 

But would we want him any other way? Not.

✑ Thoughts + Ranting

Okay, let’s get this out of the way again: Geo has serious trust issues. And honestly? Can you blame the guy? He’s been through (we don’t know about) so much that his walls aren’t just up—they’re basically a fortress complete with a moat, a drawbridge, and probably a dragon or two guarding the gate.  

Here’s the deal: nobody really knows Geo. Like, we know he’s loaded, he’s ridiculously good with a bow, and he has a death glare that could probably stop traffic. But beyond that? Nothing. It’s like his life story is classified information, and we’re all just stuck guessing what’s in the classified files.  

So anyway, Geo used to be High Class—fancy, untouchable, the whole package—but then bam some kind of near-accident happened, and he got booted down to the Low-Class building. Can you imagine the whiplash? Going from being at the top of the food chain to the bottom? That kind of thing doesn’t just bruise your ego; it leaves emotional scars. 

And let’s be real, Geo doesn’t exactly strike me as the type to sit down and talk about his feelings and thoughts.

And then there’s Hyugo, Geo’s stepbrother and certified mortal enemy. 

If you’ve played the game, you already know the vibes. Mention Hyugo’s name around Geo, and boom—instant disgust. Like, man doesn’t even try to hide it. His whole face scrunches up like he just smelled expired milk. And then, he hits you with the classic, “Nope, we’re not talking about that.” No explanation, no backstory, just vibes. It’s lowkey hilarious how much he’s committed to pretending Hyugo doesn’t even exist. For me.

I feel like Hyugo has something to do with Geo’s big fall from High Class. Like, maybe Hyugo was the one who caused whatever accident messed up Geo’s status. Was it on purpose? Was it an accident? Who knows! But Geo clearly decided, “Yeah, you’re dead to me.” Now, the name “Hyugo” might as well be a four-letter word in Geo’s dictionary.

And then there’s Crowe—the only person Geo actually trusts. And you know that didn’t happen overnight. Crowe probably had to work overtime, chipping away at Geo’s defenses like he was mining for gold. It was probably like:

Crowe: “Hey, let’s be friends.” Geo: Stares in suspicion for six months straight. Crowe: “Alright, cool, I’ll wait.”

If it took Crowe that long to get through, what does that mean for literally anyone else? Good luck, because Geo ain’t handing out trust like candy.

Now, let’s talk about you. Geo doesn’t say much to you, but the way he just… stares at you? Constantly? It’s like he’s trying to solve some crime scene in his head and you’re the number-one suspect. You’re just standing there like, “Uh, did I do something wrong? Or do I just look suspicious?”

Honestly, it’s so awkward and funny. Like, dude, either spill whatever you need to say or stop looking at me like that. But nah, Geo’s gonna stay quiet, because why use words when you can silently judge someone instead?

That’s the Geo experience in a nutshell.

Maybe he doesn’t trust you because of something to do with Crowe—like, maybe he thinks you’re toying with Crowe’s feelings ouch, judgmental much?. Or—plot twist—he’s onto something way bigger. What if he already knows you’re being stalked by whatever creepy thing is lurking in the shadows, and he’s just keeping tabs to figure out why it’s after you?

Who knows?

But here’s the thing about Geo: in the game, he’s not super complicated to figure out. He’s more of a supporting character—like that mysterious friend everyone secretly simps for but who tragically isn’t dateable. Pain. He’s just this quiet, chill dude with sharp words, killer aim, and a ponytail that probably smells like fancy shampoo. And somehow, he’s still everyone’s type. Go figure.

So yeah, Geo’s like a locked box made of solid silver—fancy, mysterious, and absolutely refusing to open. Respect the whole “keeping it classy” vibe, but come on, man—just crack the lid a little!

We’re starving for answers!

· ─────── ⋆⋅♤⋅⋆ ─────── ·

[ovrgrwnivy]

THE WALLS ; JJ MAYBANK

SYNOPSIS ; when an unknown face appears in the outer banks searching for a father she's never met, she's unaware of how her life is about to be completely turned upside down.

WARNINGS ; jjmaybank x routledge!oc, strong language, depictions of violence, afab!reader, sexual content, mentions of abuse, drug and alcohol consumption, strangers to lovers, fast burn to slow burn, canon adjacent, not proofread.

AUTHORS NOTE ; changes are being made! see this post to learn more. to me, this part seems a little like a filler, but i want to explore veronica as a character and develop each relationship with each character as something more than a side character, not just honing in on her relationship with jj, which of course is a huge part of the story also.

part one. part two. part three.

when veronica begins to stir, the sun had long set. there was no way of knowing how long the pair had been asleep, all she knew was the lights of the chateau were off and there was a bright pink post it note stuck to jj’s head.

‘gone fishin’. jb pissed.’

pope signed off on the note, a small smiley face drawn inside the o of his name. veronica knew the pouges hadn’t actually gone fishing, that is was some sort of code jj would decipher when he came to.

in this moment, veronica was content. wrapped in the arms of the most beautiful person she’d ever seen.

what could only be described as a war was ongoing in her head. she wasn’t exactly one to believe in love at first sight, she thought this entire ‘spark’ thing was something made up by male authors to keep women reading their shitty romance books to keep them hooked, waiting for it to happen to them.

but then she met jj, and he was like a magnet. every time veronica was in his presence she was mesmerised, whenever he was gone she felt like all the colour was drained from the world.

there was only two problems.

there was a maximum of forty eight hours that they knew each other, add to that he was her brothers best friend, then add to that said brother made it crystal clear that inter-group dating was not allowed.

oh, and then the whole ‘nobody knows i’m his sister but us’ thing.

“you’re staring, baby” jj mumbled, his voice low and tired as he stirred beneath her “can’t say i blame you”

with a sarcastic scoff, veronica sits upright in the hammock, her legs laid out across the blonds lap “just admiring the drool on your face”

“aren’t you funny.”

comfortable silence follows, jj crosses his arms behind his head and blinks the sleep out of his eyes. even though she was staring off into the water, veronica could feel jj’s eyes on her.

“can i help you?” veronica quipped, a teasing lilt to her words as she face the boy in question “use your words, you’ll get there.”

unexpectedly, jj sighs and lets his head fall back “what am i doing?”

veronica knows he didn’t intent for her to hear him, but she did. she would be lying if she said she wasn’t disappointed, but she was even more disappointed in herself at the pang of sadness that hit her.

before she can say, or do, anything, jj is sat up a little straighter and speaking again.

“listen, you’re a really cool girl,” he pauses, shaking his head and starting again “you’re hot as shit, damn it!”

barely, veronica manages to mask her giggle with a cough.

“don’t ask me how or why, but i gotta tell you i’m super into you.” he blurts out “yeah, makes no fuckin’ sense, we barely know each other, no pouge on pouge macking, you ain’t feeling me like that-“

her body is moving before her brain can even comprehend what she’s doing, chipped nail polish framing blond hair as she held his face in her hands and pressed their lips together.

then, her brain kicks in, and veronica jumps back like she’d just been burnt.

“fuck, jay i’m so sorry. i wasn’t thinking,”

seconds pass agonisingly slow and veronica can’t help but think about just how badly she had just fucked up.

but she doesn’t get to overthink for long.

a calloused hand tangled in long, brown hair. the other gripping her waist like it was a lifeline, helping her into his lap as his tongue makes its way into her mouth.

the kiss is messy, it’s desperate. like two people drowning, taking in the other like they were air. hands cling to whatever they can, afraid if they let go it would all be over.

any reservations veronica may have had about ‘the spark’ were discarded, undermined even, this wasn’t a spark, it was fireworks.

but fireworks don’t last forever, and when the sound of john b’s rickety van can be heard drawing closer. the newfound excitement being dulled by the shadow known as a protective older brother, a protective best friend.

by the time the missing pouges pour out of the twinkie, veronica and jj are in much less compromising positions, now sitting beside each other trading menial conversation about the earlier events of the day.

“welcome back to the land of the living,” kiara teases, a yellow vape coming up to her mouth as she took a hit “you two were out cold.”

instinctively, veronica’s hand shot out, wordlessly pleading for a hit of her vape. with a groan, kie handed it over.

veronica lets her head fall back against the hard oak of the tree behind her, relishing the feeling of her first hit of nicotine in two days. she had a vape when she left home, but it died before she even made it to the outer banks and being broke meant she couldn’t even go buy a replacement.

“you could’ve woke us up, y’know” jj defended, trying his hardest to act as if nothing happened, reminding himself to stop staring.

pope scoffs, not missing the longing stares sent the brunettes direction but purposefully ignoring them “we tried, it nearly cost us our lives.”

unamused, john b walks past the rest of the group in silence. when he gets to the door of the chateau he looks over his shoulder and nods for veronica to follow.

the girl is suddenly more attentive, climbing over the human embodiment of a golden retriever and padding her way into the house behind the older of the two.

“does the name redfield mean anything to you?” john b questions, passing a beer from the fridge and getting one for himself “like, the surname.”

veronica is quiet, her finger tracing the rim of the can as she goes through every crevice of her brain in search of any name even remotely close, there’s only one.

“chris redfield.” she answers with a nod, popping the tab of the can and taking a swig “but i don’t get how he’s involved.”

“why not? who is he!?”

“a video game character.”

with a huff of annoyance john b drags a chair across the kitchen to sit beside veronica, unscrewing his compass and placing it down on the table. the name ‘redfield’ is carved into the metal.

“we went back to the boat, found a motel key, whatever.” john b shrugs off the rest of their findings, more invested in whoever this redfield person was. “then i remembered when you showed me that note, the one in the compass. then i found this, figured you would know more than i do.”

veronica gently traced the carved metal, it was definitely their fathers scrawl, she’d memorised it from the note she read over and over and over.

it couldn’t be a coincidence, her fathers note asking her to meet, the matching compasses. now this?

“if i’m going to help you, i need to know..” she trailed off, biting at the edges of her nails as she wondered how to phrase her next question “does this have anything to do with dad dying?”

“he’s not dead.” john b’s voice is louder, stern. then his face softens and he tears his gaze away from the compass and to the floor “sorry, just, i know he’s out there. and this? this is proof.”

“john b, i get it.” the younger routledge speaks slowly, trying not to tread on any toes “you’re not the only one who wants him to be alive, that needs to see him. but i don’t see how this—”

“dad found the royal merchant. four hundred million dollars in gold, and he found it. he’s trying to tell us where to find it.”

veronica sighs, fingers rubbing at her tired eyes as she once again tried to think of any connection to any redfield. when it came to family, she only knew the bare minimum, her fathers name and her mothers maiden name.

what she did know, however, was the royal merchant. as a child her father sent her maps and books on birthdays and christmases without fail, until one day they stopped.

“you’ve got books and stuff, right?” she finally asked, not wanting to get either her or john b’s hopes up. a nagging feeling was telling her their dad was alive, but she knew he wouldn’t just up and abandon his son.

the walls of her fathers study feel like they’re closing in on her, john b let her inside and left her to it. veronicas hand ghosts over the framed maps and dusty books. blueprints of ships with her fathers messy scrawl written randomly around the paper.

there’s pictures of john b littered all over the office, all different life stages, a few feature jj and veronica can’t help but smile at the photo of two little boys holding a fish between them.

on the desk there’s a picture frame, immediately veronica recognises her mother, years younger and a gentle hand placed on her tummy. in the same frame, there’s an ultrasound that veronica almost bypassed as john b, but when she looked at the date it was a long time after he was born.

it was her ultrasound.

it was her in her moms tummy, framed and proudly placed right on her fathers desk.

everything comes back at once. finding the note, and in turn the years worth of letters her mother had hidden from her. the dateline special with john b pleading for information about his father, their father. the fight with her mother, packing a bag in the middle of the night and making her way to the address stored safely inside her compass.

the tears don’t register until they hit the glass of the frame, the last few weeks of pent up anger, sadness and hurt bubbling over from the flame that single photo sparked.

her dad loved her.

for years she’d heard about her absent father, then the absent father that passed when she was a baby. the father who didn’t want the responsibility of a child and ran away once he found out.

but the letters, the compass, this picture? john routledge loved the daughter he was forbidden from seeing, from the second he knew about her he loved her.

and now he was dead.

a sudden wave of anger rushes from her head to her toes, glass shattering when she throws the dusty old frame against the wall with a scream. papers fly and maps fall from the walls as she turns her fathers office into her own personal rage room.

the racket coming from the small room shakes the chateau, so it’s no surprise when the pouges come crashing through the door.

the pouges eyes briefly flash with fear when their eyes land on the destruction caused by the newest arrival, but it’s quickly replaced by a familiar sadness when veronica crumples to the ground, screaming as loud as her lungs would allow for them to get out.

they don’t know what’s wrong, but it doesn’t matter. veronica was now considered a friend, and they gathered that’s what she needed right about now.

jj is the first to enter, drawing closer slowly as if he were being cautious “it’s okay, ronnie.” he mutters softly, dodging shattered glass as he knelt beside her “we’re here, we got you.”

kiara, john b and pope are close behind, wrapping veronica in what could only be described as a group hug until her tears subsided.

taglist!

@ren-ni @marleymarleymarleymarley @miidollaasignnn @rainingcecilias @tanyaherondale @xspideyhollandx @sluterainterlude @loverofmarsss @xoxo-ada @gigistalked @genderlessmenance

[imaginespazzi]

Part 6: To Trying Again

Masterlist - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10 - Part 11 - Part 12 - Part 13 - Part 14

I don't wanna mess this thing up (I don't wanna push too far)

(In which an "evil" writer might surprise you guys just a little bit with this part)

Pairing: Paige Bueckers X Azzi Fudd

Themes: Fluff and Angst

Words: 5.6K

TW: Swearing (I think that's it?)

A/N: Happy Monday lovelies! This is sort of a filler-ish short chapter though I do think it's important to both plot and character development. I'd like to preface this by saying I've never been to Minsk or Park Pieramohi so I'm very much going off of pictures. Editing and I remain on very, very bad terms so pretty please let me know of typos so I can fix them. As always, let me know what you liked, what you disliked and what you'd like to see going forward. Have a lovely rest of your week my loves <3

July 2018 

“You’re being too loud,” Azzi whisper-screams at the blonde girl in front of her as she closes the door to her room behind her with a little too much force. 

Paige turns her head back every-so-slightly with a pronounced eye roll, “will you please relax.”

“I would if you’d just be a little more careful,” Azzi glares, taking cautious steps as if the sound of her sneakers across the carpeted floor could potentially wake up any of the coaches. 

“Azzi,” Paige says exasperatedly, “the coaches are all the way on the other end of the hallway. Besides, they're probably all sleeping.”

And despite her stubbornness, Azzi can concede that Paige has a point there. It’s nearly midnight and the game against Spain earlier in the day might have had a final score that made it seem like the USA U17 women's basketball team had won handily, but the game itself had been draining to say the least. The post-victory dinner had featured a bunch of worn out teenagers gobbling their food without much conversation and a cohort of coaches who seemed like they needed an hour of drinking followed by good night’s sleep. But even the exhaustion of the day hadn’t been enough to prevent Paige Bueckers and her diabolical mind from coming up with the idea to sneak out into the city of Minsk. 

“No,” Azzi had said immediately even before the words had been spoken, that shimmering glint in Paige’s eyes a dead giveaway as she sidled up to Azzi at the salad bar. 

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say,” Paige had pouted. 

“You never say anything good.”

“That’s crazy. You’re so mean to me.”

“So mean,” Azzi had nodded in agreement, “so how about you go and bother someone else.”

“Azzi please. We haven’t had just Paige and Azzi time in ages. Don’t want someone else. Just want you.”

And after that well, there wasn’t really any chance of saying no. Azzi’s only fifteen and she doesn’t know that much about love, but sometimes when Paige looks at her with those earnest blue eyes and a smile that promises i’ll always be here, she thinks the way her heart starts to flutter erratically to a beat of and i wouldn’t want anyone else to stay, might just be the start of her finding out. 

“See,” Paige grins triumphantly as the two girls find their way out of their hotel and onto the street, “told you we wouldn’t get caught. Shit’s just too damn easy.”

Azzi rolls her eyes at the attitude, “don’t tempt fate.”

“Fate’s got nothing in front of Paige Bueckers. I make my own fate,” Paige winks as she links her arms through Azzi. 

It’s a mundane amount of contact, absolutely nothing special to it, but Azzi feels herself shiver in spite of the humidity that’s circling around them. She doesn’t quite know how it happened. One moment she was staring across the court, judging the skinny blonde practicing free throws and coming to the conclusion that she’d be no threat; the next moment said girl was next to her on the plane back from Argentina and Azzi, a self-admitted introvert, found herself rattling off about everything and nothing with this girl who seemed to have discovered the keys to all of Azzi’s locks. Hours of talking had bled into days and days had bled into months and despite the fact that facetime had taken the place of in-person conversations, the word friendship had seemed too cavalier a word to describe the relationship Paige and Azzi were building. 

Paige had whittled away all of Azzi’s carefully constructed armor until she was buried deep underneath her skin and Azzi’s sure there’s no knife in the world sharp enough to carve the blonde out from where she lives underneath Azzi’s ribcage. Azzi doesn’t want anyone to try and dig her out. She  thinks she might bleed out if they do. 

“Az,” Paige whines, waving her free hand in the younger girl’s face, “are you even paying attention to me?”

“That depends,” Azzi hums, “are you saying anything interesting?”

“I’m always saying something interesting.”

“You’re always saying something. The interesting is subjective,” Azzi teases, laughing when Paige pouts. 

“I sneak you out to give you an adventure and this is how you repay me? With insults?” Paige puts a dramatic hand to her heart.

“Walking boring streets is not an adventure. Virginia has streets too.”

“It’s not about the streets, it’s about where the streets lead to,” Paige says with grave seriousness. 

Azzi raises an eyebrow, “are you entering your philosopher Paige era?”

“I’d make a good philosopher,” Paige waggles her own eyebrows as they two girls find themselves entering park Pieramohi. 

“Virginia has parks too, you know Paige?” Azzi says skeptically. 

Paige lets out a dramatic sigh, “will you just keep walking, woman. Sometimes I wonder if you even like me?”

It’s said like a joke but there’s a hint of insecurity beaded into it that buzzes in Azzi’s ears as she wraps a careful hand around Paige’s wrist, stopping the two of them where they are. 

“Hey,” she whispers softly, nudging the older girl, “you don’t ever have to wonder with me. I’m always gonna like you Paige. Even if you’re a pain in my ass half the time.”

“Had to ruin it with the last part, didn't you?” Paige complains but her eyes twinkle at the reassurance, “Just so you know I’m gonna be a pain in your ass forever.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that,” Azzi promises as they continue strolling through the park. 

The silence is peaceful and the breeze that flows around them is like a comforting hug. And Azzi thinks that she’d be okay if there wasn’t a destination for them to get to, as long as the journey came with Paige by her side. 

“We’re almost there,” Paige says slowly, a slightly nervous edge to her voice. 

“You sure you’re not just getting us lost-” the teasing quip dies on Azzi’s tongue as she stares at the scenery in front of her. They’re standing on the edge of a bridge overlooking a lake and it looks like something out of a disney fairytale; the picturesque image of green trees silhouetted against a magically starry night is captured perfectly on the still surface of the water that’s flowing beneath. As Azzi peers across the railing, Paige right next to her, she feels her breath hitch at the reflection that peers up at her. Because the view in front of them is beautiful but Paige’s eyes are on Azzi and she’s staring at her as if the view is nothing in comparison. 

“C’mon,” the blonde says softly, lacing her fingers through Azzi’s as she tugs her along, “I have a plan.”

“There’s more?” Azzi asks in awe as Paige guides her to the gazebo in the middle of the bridge. 

“Just a little bit,” Paige says and oh- that shy smile is different. Azzi doesn’t think she’s seen that one yet and she makes a mental note to herself, to memorize it and store it along with all of Paige’s other smiles that make Azzi’s insides swoop like a rollercoaster. 

She watches intently as Paige begins to peruse through the purple rucksack she’d been carrying. The first thing out of it is a picnic blanket and then a horde of different snacks, all of Azzi’s favorites. Two plastic champagne glasses are next and then a sheepish grin as Paige pulls out a bottle of soda. 

“Couldn’t quite risk trying to get alcohol,” Paige scratches at her neck. 

“Next time maybe,” Azzi shrugs as she helps Paige set up the arrangement and she feels herself fluttering at the thought of doing this again and again and again. 

“How’d you even find this place?” she asks as Paige begins to pour out the soda. 

“You ever heard of googling?”

Azzi rolls her eyes at Paige’s teasing smirk, “how’d you even have time to do this?”

Paige is quiet for a second as she passes Azzi her glass, “wanted to do something special for us,” she says quietly, keeping her eyes intently on what she’s doing as she pours out a drink for herself, “wasn’t hard to find time for you.”

“You could be a poet, Paige Bueckers,” Azzi whispers and she knows it’s unfair of her but she thinks it anyway. As long as all your poems are about me. 

“The poets are lucky I chose a ball instead of a pen. They’d be out of a job otherwise,” Paige says, trying to ease back into the more familiar arrogance. 

“Always so humble,” Azzi says, rolling her eyes as she holds up her glass, “alright what are toasting to?”

“I came up with this whole thing. You can come up with a toast,” Paige scrunches her nose and Azzi shakes her head at it. 

She thinks for a second before smiling brightly at the girl in front of her, “let’s just keep it simple and toast to us.”

“How original,” Paige teases but she clinks her glass against Azzi’s anyways, “here’s to us.”

“Here’s to us,” Azzi repeats as they both take sips of soda. 

They melt into a comfortable silence, relishing in this rare moment where there isn’t a screen separating them from each other. Facetimes is a wonderful creation but a blurry screen, Azzi decides, doesn’t nearly do justice to just how damn pretty Paige is. Her hair is golden as it basks in the glow of the moon and Azzi wonders if the stars are jealous of how brilliantly the blonde’s blue eyes twinkle.

It’s Paige who speaks first, her voice hesitant, “you uh- you never asked me how my date went a couple of weeks ago.”

Azzi feels her whole body go rigid. She’d almost forgotten about Paige’s wretched date. The blonde had told her about it a couple of days before the actual event and Azzi had played the dutiful role of a best friend, teasing Paige with a light-heartedness she didn’t feel and congratulating her with an excitement that came from anywhere but from the heart. She’d purposely avoided Paige’s calls the day of the date and then two days after, coming up with some sorry excuse she no longer remembers. On the third day, when the hollow ache of i miss her voice in her chest had become too hard to ignore, Azzi had finally picked up the phone and diverted the conversation straight to a different topic. She hadn’t thought of the date since. 

“Guess it slipped my mind,” she says airily, fingers gripping the edge of the picnic blanket. 

“I could tell you about it now,” Paige says slowly. 

I’d rather you didn’t, Azzi thinks but that’s a thought that veers a little too out of the sphere of best-friend-isms and so she simply nods her head, “y-yeah tell me about it. How was it?”

“It was nice,” Paige begins and there’s something hidden in her tone that Azzi can't quite place but she’s a little too busy sulking at the idea of Paige with anybody else to try and decipher it, “dinner was good. Took her to a movie after. That was good too.”

“That’s cool P. I’m glad- I’m glad you had fun,” Azzi says nonchalantly, gripping the glass in her hands just a little too tight. 

“I didn’t.”

“What?”

“I didn’t really have that much fun,” Paige clarifies and Azzi gawks at her in confusion as the older girl fidgets with the frayed edges of the picnic blankets, “just didn’t- didn’t feel right. Don’t think she had much fun either. She never texted me after.”

“What a bitch,” Azzi bites out, suddenly irrationally angry at a girl she’d never met because how could anyone possibly not have fun with Paige, “I’m sorry P. You deserve-”

“I didn’t care that she didn’t text back-”

“Still. It’s just the decent thing to do,” Azzi rants. 

“Maybe,” Paige shrugs, “but I didn’t have time to care about that. I had other things on my mind. Like the fact that you weren’t talking to me.”

Azzi flinches at the accusation, rushing out her previous defense, “I was busy.”

“Bullshit,” Paige sneers. 

“Paige-”

“But I get it,” the older girl says softly as she reaches for Azzi’s hand, tugging the brunette closer to her and Azzi feels something inside her erupt at how close their faces are, “I probably wouldn’t have talked to you for two days either if you went on a date with someone else.”

“Oh,” Azzi breathes out and there’s probably something more eloquent she should say but there’s this realization of maybe you feel it too that’s beginning to creep up her spine, rendering her speechless as Paige continues to stare at her like she’s mapping out all the tiniest details of Azzi’s face. 

“The whole date, I kept thinking how you wouldn’t order what she ordered off the menu or that you would probably hit my hand if I tried to steal something off your plate but then give it to me anyway. And that the movie would never have been so quiet with you and we’d probably get yelled at for giggling too much and I-” Paige pauses, dragging in a deep breath, “I definitely would’ve kissed you at the end.”

A sigh of relief escapes Azzi’s lips, “you didn’t kiss her.”

“No,” Paige confirms as she drops her forehead against Azzi’s, “but I-,” the blonde gulps nervously and Azzi can’t help the way her hand reaches up to caress the blush forming on Paige’s cheeks. 

“Ask me,” she whispers.

“I really want to kiss you,” Paige confesses, voice shaking slightly, “can I kiss you?”

Azzi doesn’t say anything, choosing to reply instead by pressing her lips softly against Paige’s. They move slowly at first, testing each other’s boundaries and savoring their first taste of each other. Azzi pulls the older girl onto her lap, hands firmly on Paige’s hips as the other girl clasps her own hands around Azzi’s neck.  It’s a little messy and uncoordinated and Azzi thinks they might need to practice a little more to really get it right but still, it’s everything.

And Azzi just knows

She knows it then just the way she knew Tim was meant to be her dad. The way she knew Jon and José were meant to be her brothers. The way she knew she was meant to play basketball. Azzi knows that she’s meant to fall hopelessly in love with Paige Bueckers. 

March 2033

There are three things Azzi should do. 

Push Paige away 

Tell her this a bad idea 

Run the fuck away

She does none of the above.

Instead Azzi kisses Paige back. 

And it’s still everything. Like the sun and moon are colliding and creating something so insanely powerful; something that feels so eternal. 

There’s nothing soft or slow about it as Paige presses every inch of herself into Azzi until she can feel Paige’s heartbeat as strongly as she can feel her own. It might be impossible but she swears their hearts are talking to each other, tapping out rhythms against each other’s chests that confess all the things their owners are too scared to say. And Azzi wants nothing more than to lose herself completely in the moment because Paige’s lips feel like a drug and Azzi thinks she might just be an addict in relapse. 

Except to relapse, you need to have recovered. And Azzi doesn’t think she ever fully recovered from Paige. 

It isn’t until she feels her back hit the edge of a desk and the sound of something crashing onto the floor infiltrates her ears, that Azzi finally comes to her senses. She tears her lips away from Paige as the older woman groans in protest, arms tightening their hold on Azzi’s waist so she can still have some semblance of control over the situation. And really Azzi knows she’s strong enough to escape Paige’s grip, could easily fight it if she wanted to. But well, she doesn’t want to. And Azzi’s tired of doing things she doesn’t want to do. 

“Paige-”

“If the next words out of your mouth are ‘we can’t do this’, Azzi I swear to god I’m going to kill you,” Paige threatens, pressing her forehead against Azzi’s. 

Azzi laughs softly and she can feel Paige’s whole body relax at the sound of it and like clockwork, she feels the tension beginning to release from her own muscles, “if you kill me then we definitely can’t do this.”

“I’ll revive you after or something,” Paige says with a half-smirk. 

“Or something,” Azzi rolls her eyes, “but we can’t-”

“Azzi,” Paige groans. 

“We can’t do this right now and definitely not here,” Azzi amends, alluding to the fact that they’re still in Steph’s office. 

Paige raises an eyebrow, cocking her head slightly, “but we can do this later? Somewhere else?”

The question lingers between them as Azzi bites her lip. She knows what this is, knows that it’s Paige putting the ball in her court. A ‘no’ would likely be the end of things and that scares her more than she’s willing to admit but she’s not quite ready to commit to a ‘yes’ yet, even if that flame of desire inside of her, the one that can only be lit by Paige, is blazing hot through her veins. 

“I don’t know,” Azzi says carefully, shivering at the way Paige’s thumb is rubbing circles against her waist, the flimsy material of her shirt doing nothing to prevent the goosebumps forming on her skin, “TBD.”

“That’s not a no,” Paige says carefully, hope blossoming freely on her face. 

“That’s not a yes either,” Azzi warns half-heartedly. 

“But it’s not a no,” Paige presses. 

“No,” Azzi admits, playing with the neckline of Paige’s shirt, “it’s not a no.”

And Azzi’s so scared of the future, scared that if she lets herself burn, she’ll incinerate everyone around her but there’s something in the way Paige smiles at her words. Something that feels a lot like a promise of i’ll be the rain that washes out the fire before you can turn us to ashes. 

“I can work with that,” Paige says softly, tilting Azzi’s chin up. 

“So desperate to get back into my pants Bueckers,” Azzi teases and she expects a witty remark in return but instead she’s met with nothing but sincerity. 

“So desperate to get back into your life,” Paige whispers, voice cracking on the last two words. 

Tears prickle against Azzi’s waterline as she stares in awe at the girl in front of her. Sometimes she thinks Paige doesn’t even know that there’s a halo of goodness sitting above her head, doesn't even know just how beautiful her soul is. Paige is stunning on the outside; it’s something no one can deny. But it’s nothing compared to how gorgeous she is on the inside, nothing compared to how kind, how humble, how forgiving Paige is. 

“Why?” Azzi asks, her tone rife with heaviness. 

“Why what?” 

“After everything, after all this time, why would you still want to be in my life?” the tears fall harder as Azzi struggles to breathe, “I- I broke your heart. I broke us. How could you possibly want that again. How could you possibly want me again?”

Paige's eyes soften as she cups Azzi’s cheeks, thumbs brushing away at the drops of water running down them, “because you’re Azzi. My Azzi. And I get it- I get that you’re not ready to be all in on this with me yet and if I’m being honest with myself, I’m not completely ready either. But we can work on it right? Take it slow and see where it goes and maybe we’ll- maybe we’ll be even better this time.”

“You think so?”

“I believe so.”

Azzi presses her lips delicately against Paige’s, reveling in the way it makes Paige’s breath hitch. She pulls away faster than she would like herself and Paige chases her lips, eyes still closed. 

“What was that for,” the blonde asks, slightly dazed. 

“For being my Paige.”

***

Azzi taps her foot impatiently against her wooden patio as she glances at her phone clock for the umpteenth time. Paige is almost twenty minutes late to pick her and Stephie up to go to dinner at her parent’s house. The invites had technically been separate but Paige had insisted that they needed to go together because Paige didn’t want to walk into the house alone. Azzi’s not sure why Paige is nervous to see her dad and brothers again, not when she’s pretty sure they’re bursting with excitement to see the blonde whose pictures still have a permanent place on the family photo wall, but if Paige wants Azzi by her side, well she’s not going to say no. Not anymore. 

 It’s been a week since they’d agreed to take things slow and Azzi’s still not quite sure what exactly that means, but she thinks she likes it. She likes being able to call Paige and not having to come up with a lame excuse for why. She likes that she and Paige can take Stephie out for ice cream after Curry Camp and they don’t have to pretend they’re only tolerating each other’s presence for the little girl’s sake. She likes that they can brush their pinkies while walking and instead of jolting away, they simply just link them together. There’s boundaries of course. No sleepovers at either of their houses. No doing anything more than kissing. No kissing in front of anyone else and definitely no kissing in front of Stephie. No doing anything in front of Stephie really. And there’s still so much mountain left to climb but as long as they’re pushing up it together, Azzi doesn’t think there’s any incline steep enough to stop her from continuing up this path.

“Miss Buecks,” Stephie squeals as Paige’s car rounds the corner into Azzi’s driveway. 

Paige steps out of the car, arms wide open and ready to catch Stephie as the little girl goes tumbling down the front porch, aiming straight for the blonde. Azzi’s not an artist by any means but if she was, she thinks she could paint a thousand pictures of Stephie and her Miss Buecks. It terrifies Azzi a little bit, just how perfectly Stephie fits into Paige’s side but it calms her too because there’s a part of her that’s in love with how much they love each other.

“You’re late Bueckers,” Azzi chides as she follows her daughter’s path down the patio stairs. 

Paige grins, shifting Stephie on her lap as she opens the side door to her car to pull out two bouquets of flowers

“Will these make up for it?” she asks slyly as she hands the larger one, an assortment of pink flowers, to Azzi and a slightly smaller bouquet of purple hydrangeas to Stephie. 

“These are so pretty Miss Buecks,” Stephie gushes before pressing a kiss to Paige’s cheek left cheek and Paige beams at the compliment, “thank you Miss Buecks.”

“You took that long to get flowers?” Azzi asks with a raised eyebrow. 

“Mama,” Stephie chides immediately, “you’re supposed to thank someone when they give you a gift.”

“Yeah Azzi,” Paige’s eyes glimmer with mirth, “thank me like Stephie thanked me. Don’t you think Mama owes me a kiss on the cheek Steph?”

Azzi narrows her eyes at the scheming pair in front of her as Stephie nods animatedly at Paige’s question, “yeah Mama you owe Miss Buecks a kiss on the cheek.”

Shaking her head, Azzi walks over to Paige taking deliberately steady steps. Slowly Azzi leans in, puckering her lips. Paige closes her eyes and Azzi winks at Stephie who’s eyes widen. 

“I’m waiting,” Paige sing-songs, a self-satisfied smirk taking over her features. 

And instead of the promised kiss, Azzi licks a sloppy strip down Paige’s cheek and the blonde shrieks as both Azzi and Stephie burst into laughter.

“EW AZZI GROSS,” Paige whines, hurriedly rubbing her shirt against her cheek, “is this what you’re teaching your daughter?”

“I’m teaching my daughter not to let anyone manipulate her,” Azzi says, giving Paige a careful look, “now why were you late?”

Paige grins sheepishly as she opens the door to the backseat of the door. A lavender car seat is placed on the left side of the car and Azzi feels her heart lurch with no one’s ever cared like this. 

“It’s pu-ple,” Stephie claps excitedly, “is it for me?”

“Of course it is,” Paige confirms, booping Stephie’s nose before looking at Azzi, “it’s just- we uh- we always have to take your car cause it has the car seat and moving it between cars is such a hassle. So I just thought- you know- I just thought it’d be cool- useful- practical- if I had one too? And this way if you ever need me to take Stephie off you then I uh- then you don’t have to worry about me driving. I don’t- I don’t really knows much about car seats but I looked it up online before and the person at the store agreed that this is definitely the best one- like I swear it’s safe-”

She’s cut off by the feel of Azzi’s lips pressed to her cheeks. 

“Thank you Paige.”

***

Just as Azzi expected, Paige merges herself back into the Fudd family with the same ease she’d first had when she’d carved out a place for herself almost a decade and a half ago. It’s a little emotional at first when Tim opens the door, a smile almost as big as him decorating his face as he pulls Paige into a hug even before she can say a word. 

“Welcome home kid,” he whispers into her blonde hair and Azzi doesn’t have to see Paige’s face to know that her best friend is blinking away tears. 

Guilt surges in Azzi’s stomach and she tries to swallow away the lump of i took this from her that’s blocking her throat. It had been so simple at 15 to give Paige a part of her world; Azzi hadn’t thought twice about it. And then with the snap of her fingers, she’d taken that world away. She knows her parents had never cut Paige out; hell they’d been at her wedding to some other woman -and Azzi had pushed them to go knowing Paige would need it- but it was a far cry from what they’d been. A far cry from when Paige’s schedule was a key factor while planning Fudd family summers. 

“Hey,” Stephie pouts, tiny hands crossed over her small body “I thought you always gave me the first hug Pops.”

“We’ll make an exception today,” Tim says with a wink before letting Paige walk into Katie’s arms and spinning his granddaughter around, “but you’re always gonna be my favorite.”

“I better be,” Stephie threatens and the adults around her laugh. 

And finally it’s Azzi's turn to be pulled into one of her dad’s patent bear hugs. She goes willingly, always at her most warmest in the arms of the man whose blood might not run through her veins, but whose love had always protected her from the cruelties of the world. 

“You look really happy today sweetheart,” Tim says softly. 

Azzi’s eyes flitter over her father’s shoulder to where Jon and José are embroiling Paige in a group hug with Stephie in the middle of it, screaming about finally having their “white sister” back, as Katie and José’s fiancé Tallulah roll their eyes at the group of them, and she can’t help but smile into her dad’s shirt, “I feel pretty happy today.”

*** 

“You cheated,” Jon yells. 

“Miss Buecks does not cheat,” Stephie yells back loyally. 

“Don’t get into this Stephie. You don’t know her like we do,” José glares at Paige who narrows her eyes at him, “she’s been stealing from the bank.”

“Miss Buecks does not  steal,” Stephie defends again, wrapping her arms around Paige’s neck from behind as the blonde presses a quick kiss against Stephie’s temple. 

“It’s okay Stephie,” Paige reassures, gently swinging the little girl into her lap, “some people are just sore losers.”

“Can’t be a sore loser because I didn’t lose-” José coughs and Jon corrects himself immediately, “because we didn’t lose.”

“Y’all let it go,” Tallulah groans, leaning her head back against the sofa, “it’s literally just monopoly. Please, I'm so tired.”

“Just monopoly? JUST MONOPOLY?” José guffaws dramatically, “I can’t believe I’m marrying someone who doesn’t understand that it isn’t just monopoly Tallulah. It’s about liars and cheats and honor-”

“Miss Buecks has plenty of honor,” Stephie says stubbornly, leaning her head back against Paige’s chest.

Jon rounds on Azzi, who’s been silently watching the situation, “did you help her cheat?”

“Excuse me?” Azzi asks, glaring at her brother from where she’s been comfortable reclining on the sofa. She’d opted to be the banker instead of playing, content just handing out money to the rest of them while watching the game unfold. But really she hadn’t been paying much attention to anyone else but her daughter and Paige. Stephie didn’t quite understand the rules yet and so she was always on someone’s team. It had been a given tonight, that of course she would be with Paige. And Azzi had watched, trying not to be too obvious, with a foolish grin on her face, as her two favorite people whispered to each other, Paige listening intently to all of Stephie’s ideas whether they were good or bad. 

“Oh good point,” José turns to look at Azzi too, “you’re the banker, did you help Paige cheat?”

“Mama would never cheat,” Stephie argues defiantly as Azzi pushes herself up from the sofa to send a menacing look to both of her brothers. 

“I’m not going to dignify that accusation with a justification,” Azzi says, standing so she’s towering over her two brothers who are still sitting on the floor, “now clean up the game. It’s almost Stephie’s bedtime.”

 They might be well into their twenties and José might be taller than her now, but they’re still not quite  immune to Azzi’s wrath. Tallulah and Paige snicker as the two men, sulking at each other, obey their older sister's command without another word. 

“You’ve gotta teach me how you do that,” Tallulah says, hi-fiving Azzi who smirks in response. 

“Miss Buecks,” Stephie whispers, “what does dig-ni-fy mean?”

“Mean she’s not gonna entertain your uncles being dumba-”

“Paige!”

“Being dumbapples,” Paige corrects and both Azzi and Stephie give her an odd look at her ridiculous attempt at saving the bad word from leaving her lips. 

“Alright Stephie-bean,” Azzi says, pulling her daughter off of Paige’s lap, “it’s late enough. Off to brush your teeth you go.”

Stephie looks hesitantly between the staircase leading up to the guest bedroom -where she and Azzi normally stayed- and Paige. 

“Can Miss Buecks stay with us tonight?” she asks softly, one hand bunching in Paige’s shirt as she stares up at her mother with large doe eyes, “please Mama.”

“Stephie I don’t think-” Paige begins, ready to stick to the boundaries they’d laid out for themselves and really Azzi should let her; should follow her lead really.  

Except the words are tumbling out of her mouth before she can stop them, “yeah she can- she can stay.”

“YAYY,” Stephie squeals, jumping into Azzi’s arms as Paige stares up at her in surprise, “thank you, thank you, thank you Mama. I’m so happy,” she swings from Azzi to Tallulah, “aunty Tully did you hear? Miss Buecks is gonna stay with us and you can make her your famous pancakes in the morning.”

“I can, can I?” Tallulah asks with a raised eyebrow as she lets Stephie and her excited chatter lead her towards the bathroom. With Jon and José both having already started towards their own rooms and Azzi’s parents fast asleep, it leaves just Paige and Azzi in the living room. 

“You’re okay with me staying?” Paige asks softly, finally lifting herself from the floor and onto her feet. 

Azzi scratches the back of her neck, “if- if you want to. You don’t have to. I can- I’ll explain to Stephie-”

“I want to,” Paige says, taking a cautious step towards Azzi, “but the rules?”

“This doesn’t count,” Azzi justifies and Paige smirks, taking another step towards the brunette. 

“It doesn’t?”

“We said no sleeping over at each other’s places. This is my parent’s house. So technically it doesn’t count,” Azzi shrugs, trying to keep her face from breaking into a grin as Paige moves one more step closer. 

“And where exactly am I sleeping?” Paige asks with a knowing grin as she loops an arm around Azzi’s waist, briefly checking to make sure no one’s around. 

Azzi tilts her head, letting the grin break through, “I think Stephie would like it if you slept with us.”

“Ah well if that’s what Stephie would like,” Paige says, nodding commiseratingly. 

“For Stephie’s sake,” Azzi repeats as she wraps her arm around Paige’s neck, pressing her forehead against the older girl’s and letting herself just breathe in the peace that comes with being all consumed by Paige. 

“Azzi,” Paige’s voice is laced with uncharacteristic vulnerability as she speaks again, “you won’t- you won’t run away again tomorrow morning will you?”

“No,” Azzi promises, gently brushing her lips against Paige’s, “I won’t run away again.”

[simplyraeblue]

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ALL CHARACTERS AGED UP !femreader x !virginshoto you've had a crush on your friend shoto for a long time, and unbeknownst to you he's been crushing as well. not only that, he wants you to be his first time; for everything WARNINGS/TAGS: swearing, fluff, suggestive, shoto is kind of a simp word count: 2,707 A/N: oopsy daisy real quick short post because I couldn't help myself and the idea of sweet shoto wouldn't leave my brain... little cutesy filler part before they hit home base (˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧ also I was listening to The Archer x Not Strong Enough while writing this... linked here if you want to listen while you read!

part one | part two | part three |

part four | part five

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you were desperate to ignore the incessant barrage of notifications from Mina. just moments ago, you had dragged yourself off your feet, finally collapsing onto the couch after a grueling day. the minute you sank into the cushions, your phone erupted with a flood of calls and text messages. exhaustion weighed on you heavily, and each buzz and ping felt like an assault on your already depleted energy. it wasn’t until the hundredth call that you finally gave in and answered.

“what do you want, Mina? I’m absolutely wiped out,” you groaned, trying to inject a note of humor into your voice despite how drained you felt.

Mina’s voice came through the receiver with an overly enthusiastic tone, almost too cheerful for your weary brain to handle. “get dressed up; we’re going to a fancy restaurant!”

you sighed heavily, rubbing your eyes in frustration. “did you not just hear me say I’m exhausted? I have zero energy left, and honestly, I’d rather not spend any more money right now.”

Mina’s response was an impatient tsk, filled with exasperation. “I don’t care how tired you are or what you want. put on something fancy and forget about the cost. be ready by seven-thirty, or I’m coming over there to drag you out myself.”

you wanted to argue more, but the stubborn resolve in Mina's voice told you this was a battle you wouldn’t win. plus, deep down, you knew she was right. maybe a change of scenery and some good company was exactly what you needed to recharge. with a resigned sigh, you checked the time on your phone—it was already past six.

“fine, fine. I’ll be ready,” you grumbled, hoping your tone conveyed the minimal enthusiasm you felt.

“great!” Mina replied with an exaggerated cheerfulness. “see you soon!”

you hung up and stared at your reflection in the darkened screen of your phone. despite your fatigue, you found a sliver of motivation. you stood up, stretched, and began to rummage through your closet. picking out a sleek dress and a pair of heels that hadn’t seen the light of day in months, you couldn’t help but feel a small spark of excitement. maybe this would be a good distraction after all.

as you prepared yourself, you tried to push aside the lingering thoughts of your long day. you opted for minimal makeup and a quick hairstyle, focusing on just enough to look presentable without draining what little energy you had left. by the time you checked the clock again, it was nearly seven-thirty.

just as you were about to head out the door, you heard an unexpected knock. you’d assumed Mina would just text you the address and meet you there. curious and a bit puzzled, you opened the door and started to say, “Mina, I promise I’m ready—”

but it wasn’t Mina standing there. instead, Shoto was at your doorstep, impeccably dressed in a sharp black suit. he held a bouquet of flowers, the rich colors and delicate petals contrasting with his formal attire.

“apologies for letting mina trick you,” Shoto said, his voice gentle and warm as he offered you a reassuring smile. “I wanted this to be a surprise.”

“Shoto, what’s going on?” you asked, your confusion mingling with a touch of excitement as you accepted the flowers, your cheeks flushing at the unexpected and thoughtful gesture.

“I’m taking you on a proper date,” Shoto replied, his eyes meeting yours with a sincerity that made your heart skip a beat. he extended his arm toward you, a subtle invitation. “I figured it was about time, especially considering the… less conventional things we’ve been up to.”

you stared at Shoto for a moment, your mind racing to process what was happening. the bouquet in your hands felt surprisingly heavy, its fragrance filling the air with a sweetness that contrasted with the formal setting.

“a proper date?” you echoed, trying to reconcile this unexpected turn of events with the casual plans you had made with mina.

“yes,” Shoto affirmed, his tone steady and sincere. “I wanted to do something special, something more meaningful. and mina kindly agreed to help with the surprise.”

you took a deep breath, a mix of nervousness and excitement bubbling up inside you. “this is… really unexpected. but also, kind of amazing.”

Shoto’s smile widened, and he gently took your hand, guiding you out the door. “I’m glad you think so. I’ve been looking forward to this. let’s make it a night to remember.”

as you walked down the stairs and into the cool evening air, you glanced back at your apartment, feeling a mix of disbelief and anticipation. Shoto’s presence was reassuring, his calm demeanor helping to ease your lingering fatigue. he led you to a sleek, black car parked by the curb, its polished surface reflecting the city lights.

“where are we going?” you asked as he opened the car door for you, his touch lingering just a moment longer than necessary.

“it’s a surprise,” he said with a playful glint in his eye. “but trust me, it’ll be worth it.”

you settled into the plush leather seat, watching as Shoto got in beside you and started the engine. the car glided smoothly through the city streets, and you found yourself enjoying the rare luxury of simply being present in the moment.

Shoto made small talk as he drove, his voice soothing and easy to listen to. he talked about the restaurant he had chosen, the dishes they were famous for, and the ambiance he hoped you would appreciate. the conversation flowed effortlessly, and you could feel the genuine interest and care behind his words.

when you finally arrived at the restaurant, it was even more beautiful than you had imagined. the elegant exterior was bathed in soft, warm light, and the interior exuded an atmosphere of refined sophistication. Shoto guided you inside, where you were greeted by a host and shown to a private table with a stunning view of the city skyline.

“Shoto, this is insane,” you gasped, your voice barely above a whisper as you gazed out the window. the city below sparkled like a sea of stars, the lights stretching out as far as the eye could see. the extent of it all hit you suddenly, making you acutely aware of just how much effort and expense this must have entailed. “you didn’t have to go all out like this. I would’ve been perfectly happy with something more… quaint.”

Shoto extended his hand across the table, his touch gentle yet reassuring as he clasped yours. his smile was soft and genuine, a look of quiet pride in his eyes. “I wanted to do this. for you.”

throughout the evening, Shoto’s attentiveness and thoughtfulness made you feel cherished and valued. the meal was exquisite, each course a culinary delight, and the conversation never faltered. as the night progressed, you realized that Shoto’s surprise was not just about the setting or the food but about the effort he had put into making this night special for you.

by the end of the evening, as you sat back and savored the last of your dessert, you felt a deep sense of contentment. Shoto reached across the table, taking your hand in his once more.

“there’s actually another reason I planned this night with you, y/n,” Shoto said, his voice a bit hesitant. he lifted your hand gently, pressing a soft kiss to your knuckles. as he pulled away, you noticed a faint pink hue spreading across his cheeks, a blush that made him even more endearing.

“okay, now you’re gonna make me worry,” you joked lightly, trying to ease the tension with a playful laugh. but his nervous gulp made your own anxiety spike, and a flutter of unease began to settle in your stomach.

“I… shit, I don’t know how to put this,” Shoto murmured, his gaze dropping to the floor as he struggled to find the right words. he turned his eyes to the sprawling cityscape outside, and you felt a pang of anxiety, your heart racing in your chest. “I care about you, quite a lot.”

“I care a lot about you too, Sho,” you responded softly, hoping to reassure him. his eyes met yours again, filled with a mix of vulnerability and hope.

“I’m sure this might feel very sudden, and maybe a tad rushed,” Shoto continued, his voice trembling slightly. he squeezed your hand with a tenderness that sent butterflies fluttering in your stomach. “but, after all these years of having a crush on you, and the past few weeks of growing closer, I think… no, I know I’m falling in love with you, y/n.”

the room seemed to hold its breath as Shoto’s words hung in the air. you could feel the weight of his confession pressing gently against your heart, and the enormity of the moment made your mind swirl with a mix of emotions.

for a moment, you were silent, processing the depth of what he had just shared. Shoto’s fingers still rested lightly around yours, his gaze searching yours with a blend of hope and trepidation.

“I… wow,” you finally said, your voice soft and trembling with emotion. “I had no idea you felt this way.”

Shoto’s cheeks reddened further, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I didn’t want to rush things or make you feel pressured. I just needed you to know how I really feel.”

you took a deep breath, feeling a surge of warmth and affection for him. the realization that he had been holding these feelings for so long, and that he had chosen this special evening to reveal them, made your heart swell.

“I’ve been feeling the same way,” you confessed, your voice gaining strength. “I didn’t know how to say it either, but I’ve been falling for you too, Shoto.”

a look of pure relief and joy spread across his face, and he squeezed your hand once more, his eyes sparkling. “really? you mean that?”

“yes,” you nodded, smiling through the tears that had formed in your eyes. “I mean it. I’ve been feeling this way for a while, but I didn’t want to rush things either.”

Shoto’s expression softened into a tender smile, and he leaned forward, his forehead resting gently against yours. “I’m so glad we’re on the same page,” he murmured. “I want to take things at a pace that feels right for both of us. I just wanted you to know how much you mean to me.”

you closed your eyes, savoring the closeness and the sincerity of the moment. “I want that too,” you whispered, your heart full of hope and happiness. “let’s see where this takes us.”

as you both leaned across the table, your lips yearning to mold against his, Shoto suddenly smirked and broke the moment. “hopefully to home base,” he joked, the playful glint in his eyes causing you to snort with laughter. his smirk widened as he heard your reaction, and he leaned back in his chair, letting out a hearty laugh that was both infectious and endearing.

as Shoto continued laughing, you felt a wave of boldness and excitement. standing up from your chair, you made your way around the table, feeling a sense of exhilaration that made you disregard the curious glances from other diners. with a determined stride, you leaned in close to his ear, your breath warm and tickling his skin. “let’s take this special evening home, shall we?” you whispered, and you could almost sense the shiver of anticipation that ran through his body.

Shoto’s reaction was immediate—his face flushed with a deep, embarrassed pink. this wasn’t the end goal for him tonight, not by any measure. he wanted you to understand that his confession was heartfelt and sincere, and he hoped you knew that it wasn’t just a pretext to move things forward physically.

“I—seriously?” Shoto asked, his voice dropping to a low, almost incredulous murmur. you could see the nervousness flickering in his eyes, and it only made you more determined. reaching out, you offered him your hand with a reassuring smile, trying to convey your genuine affection and support.

“unless you don’t want to make a home run?” you teased, raising an eyebrow playfully. Shoto’s reaction was immediate and comical—he stood up from his chair with such urgency that he almost knocked it over. “wow there, eager are we?” you laughed, watching as he fumbled slightly, trying to regain his composure.

“if you keep teasing me, we’re not making it back to your apartment,” Shoto groaned, his voice tinged with frustration and amusement. he pulled you gently towards him, placing a tender kiss on your cheek. as he lingered there for a moment, you could feel the warmth of his breath against your skin, making your heart race. “I’d hate to have to take you in my car,” he added with a playful edge, clearly struggling to keep his own excitement in check.

his warning tease almost came true, because when you two made it to the car he nudged you against the side of the vehicle, letting his hands roam a little too much for the public as he kissed you fervently.

you would’ve let him take you in the car, white hot desire burning inside of you so quickly that you felt like you’d die if you didn’t have him on top of you.

even when you made it back to your apartment, you both barely made it in the door as he started pawing at your dress. Shoto had to restrain himself from ripping the tight fabric that fit so well around your ass, thinking he needed to try and remain as gentlemanly as possible.

you became a tangle of limbs as his lips met yours, hungry and needy, the two of you stumbling your bedroom. you guided him to sit on the edge of the bed before you started to work on the buttons of his shirt, sliding it over his shoulders and discarding it on the floor.

Shoto could only watch in awe as you stepped back, slowly working on the zipper of your dress (thank god you chose one with a side zipper), before letting it drop to the ground.

“you’re so beautiful, y/n,” Shoto whispered, his voice barely more than a breath. his gaze remained locked on yours, though he clearly wanted to let his eyes wander over your now exposed skin. he had seen you like this before, sure, but it never failed to take his breath away, each time more intense than the last.

you settled yourself on his lap, your body fitting comfortably against his. a soft, tender smile played on your lips as you leaned in to place a gentle kiss on his mouth. “you make me breathless, Sho,” you murmured, your lips brushing against his as you spoke. “absolutely, and utterly, starstruck.”

Shoto’s eyes fluttered closed for a moment, savoring the kiss before pulling away slightly. his gaze was dreamy, half-lidded with a wide, affectionate grin spreading across his face. “will you be mine?” he asked, his voice filled with earnest desire. “call me your boyfriend, and I’ll call you my girlfriend. we’ll make our friends sick with pda, go on dates all the time, and I promise I’ll treat you like a princess. we can cook together, sleep together, do everything you want to do. I’ll follow you, I’d follow you anywhere.”

your heart swelled with emotion at his heartfelt words. overwhelmed by the depth of his promise, you kissed him deeply, pouring all your passion into the embrace. the kiss was intense, a shared declaration of the love and commitment you both felt. “that sounds perfect to me, boyfriend,” you whispered, the term feeling both exhilarating and right as it fell from your lips.

the moment you said the words, shoto’s arms wrapped around you tightly and flipped the two of you so that you laid bare underneath him.

“can I make love to you, girlfriend?” Shoto’s face was pink with lust and emotions, and his gaze was filled with a deep desire that made you feel like the only girl in the world.

“yes, Shoto.”

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Link to Bakugo x reader here

(word count: 2,328)

Link to Kirishima x reader here

(word count: 902)

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ taglist: @ellielover69 thank you so much for all your support! if you'd like to be added to the taglist send a request in my inbox! ◝(ᵔᵕᵔ)◜ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

[puhmpken]

Author’s Note: This one is a filler since I am still working on “Dairy of the Obsessed” ..this one was spontaneous lmfaoo! Also requests are open feel free to give me story ideas

This has BEEN edited 🥳🎉

Warning ⚠️-> If you’re under the age of 18+ DONT interact with this post, this is your only & final warning! I do not & will not take responsibility for anything further!

You have been warned

Title: A Shape-Shifter’s Dilemma

Alastor x Reader Oneshot

written + edited by @puhmpkins-blog 🎃

W/C: 5.1K 😀 oops maybe too much lol my imagination got the better of me but please enjoy!

You always questioned where Alastor your husband would go. Most of the time you would brush it off and not think of it—Overlord stuff.

But one night while Al and you slept in the same bed he tossed and turned in his sleep you could assume he was having a nightmare

“honey..?” You said in a low ruff voice as you gently placed a hand on Alastor who stops his moving before the word he mutters out was

“charlie..”

...Now that is odd. Why would a overlord like Alastor be saying the princess of hells name in the middle of his sleep?

It made you raise a eyebrow, and questioned him.

The day following did not seem to ease your nerves one bit, he again in rather ..a rush to leave the manor

Standing next to the front doors door you watched as he moved back and forth through the living room looking for whatever he was desiring

“What's rushing for darling? This is rather out of character” You said as your eyes watched him move throughout the room

“Oh nothing to concern yourself with dearie!~ Just overlord business”

You hummed back at his bland cryptic response not wanting to pick it apart–you just decided not to question it and save yourself the energy

“Right. Just don’t go get yourself in trouble” You said smiling at Alastor standing infront of you, slightly towering over you as you fixed and cleaned off any dirt or lent that got caught on his suit as he was in your words rushing around

Moving your hands away from him, your eyes locked with his as Alastor’s reddish brown eyes, a flicker of amusement dancing within them. His lips curved from a small smile into a sly smirk, revealing his pointy teeth.

“Trouble?,” he questioned, making his one of his eyebrows raise in a cocky way , “Why..thats my middle name, my dear.” He said clasping and holding both your hands as he stared at you, before shrugging “But perhaps maybe I’ll make an exception—for you.”

You rolled your eyes to your husband's playful antics, before giving Alastor his goodbye kiss and waving him bye as he sinks into his shadow disappearing leaving you alone in the manor.

A moment of silent filling the air before

“Now, let me figure out WHAT’S actually happening.”

And that’s how this whole shenanigan began with you.

You see, while Alastor might have been expected to marry some ordinary demon, you in your case, were far from ordinary. As a shape-shifting demon, you possessed the ability to transform your identity at will, becoming a whole new demon or a manifestation of whatever your imagination desired.

The only limitations were those of your own imagination or..if Alastor was able to sniff you out, thanks to his keen sense of smell. HOWEVER, avoiding detection was usually easy enough… for the most part.

Weeks to months you’ve been keeping up on this “routine” of cat and mouse but all was paying off.

You found out Al has been to much of your dismay harboring rather a couple of secrets hidden and tucked from you. Other than your known overlord stuff he was a suppose helper at a hotel called the “Hazbin Hotel” that princess charlie owns and works at with a couple of other people almost made you drop with laughter when you first seen Alastor helping out with the hotel, you had to tell Rosie about this later.

It was easy to stay undercover and even easier to get close to him without him realizing and knowing it was you.

You made up your mind weeks ago that his territory would be fine, if you step away here and there to follow Alastor to the hotel

And that’s how you end up to the present day you.

You weren’t satisfied with knowing Alastor helps at a hotel. Yes indeed it was a shocker but that’s all? You were still puzzled on why Al said Charile name to began with

Alastor hasn’t suspected a thing yet due to him kinda being busy at the hotel or up in his office.

On the rare times you would see him, he was up in the upper balcony with nifty laughing with her, you couldn’t hear what they were talking about but knowing the both of them.. it was rather something strange or gruesome

As another shifted ended, the day ended with you back at the manor seating in your comfortable loveseat, reading a book before mere minutes Al got back, making it seem as normal as possible to not raise suspicions

The next day as things moved along you wished Alastor a goodbye as you watched him shift into the shadows and disappear off.

Waiting a few minutes after he left you then began to get ready for your shift at the hotel, that first started with showering to rid yourself of your natural scents–you didn’t want to be tackled down by your husband as soon as you walk in through the door.

Finishing up with your shower you stepped out spraying some random cheap perfume you had bought to scramble Al scents.

As you began styling yourself from being a lady of the 1920s with elegant beauty and designer dresses to a ripped petite coat, old bleach stained black skirt with a hole at the bottom with a finish messy down hairstyle

You laughed at your reflection

Seeing what you looked like in your normal form made you laugh. Alastor would probably gasp and dropped to his knees at the things you wore.

You walked out the house being sure to not be seen

Successfully making it past the fenced gates and out of the woods you came to the main roads of hell shifting yourself into a hell creature you have been using for this whole little “spying game”

A lengthy white fur being that stood, 6ft having two red stripes covering both arms and legs. Your (h/c) just reached the middle of your back and on your head sat two cream colored pointy horns, you kept your sharp teeth to still be able to scare off unwanted demons if the occasion was to rise

Checking yourself out in the reflection of the glass windows, you made sure everything was correct: your look, your attire and your scent.

You started to walk to the hotel, the sidewalk you have taken at least more than ten times.

As you inched closer to the hotel you for safe measures stopped and sprayed yourself down one more time in cheap perfume emptying the bottle before tossing it off in the distances and kept walking

Getting inside the hotel was an easy task,

You said hello to everyone vaggie, angeldust, sir pentious and his eggo children, huskier and nifty.

‘Everyone is down here practically–well almost everyone’ looking around furrowing your eyebrows together

“Where Charlie? She's usually with you, Vag?” You said to Vaggie who was sitting on the couch next to Angel looking at the TV

“She should be in her office right now Lucy. I think she also wanted to talk to you” Vaggie said kinda nonchalantly shrugging her shoulders towards the end as she looked up from the tv to you as you nodded your head

Making a hum noise you turned on your heel and began walking to Charlie office

Knocking before you entered, Charlie sat at her desk looking at papers

“Helluva morning Charlie. Vaggie was telling me you were looking for me, I just wanted to speak to you about what you wanted” You said as you walked towards her desk and seating down in one of the chairs across from it

Charlie still having her go lucky smile on her face nodded putting down a couple of papers “Yes Vaggie was right! I was looking for you Lucy!” She said pausing as she slide over a little stack of paperwork, “It’s nothing serious promise! I just wanted you to run these up to Al~!”

You nodded silently thanking hell for the opportunity to be closer to Al

“Yeah of course I can do that” You said standing up taking the paperwork in your black gloved hands “Consider it done Charlie!” You said walking out of her office as she screamed a thank you from behind a closed office door

You hummed quietly to yourself as you walked up the flights of stairs to get to Alastor’s door

Minutes passed before you got to the door that read in bold letter

“Alastor, Radio Demon”

Knocking lightly on the door, ‘he should be in there?’

“…”

‘No response..hm that weird’ You thought as you looked over both your shoulders before you placed a gloved hand on your door handle twisting the knob before it opened slowly

!!!CREAAAK!!!

Your body mentally cringed at the noise as you pushed the door more open glancing around one more time you slipped in the crack of his door, gently shutting it closed once you entered

‘Wow’ Was the first word that escaped your mouth looking into his room now, it's his office yes, but what was beyond it that made it almost feel like you were..alive it was the bayou swamp/forest it was just how you remembered before you died all those years ago..breathtaking

Scanning the dimly lit area with the only light being a moonless night and the few fireflies that infested the air, you didn’t see Alastor anywhere in sight, just a table with a chair on it in the middle of the grassy forest.

You bite your lip gently as you looked between the paper work and the forest before groaning knowing your mind was made up, as soon as you laid your eyes on the bayou. Leaving the paperwork for Alastor sitting on his wooden desk before you walked passed it and too the bayou landscape filling as it was almost a dream

Walking slowly into the grassy area with a smile as you breathed in the smell of forest closing your eyes and taking in the sound

It was a wonderful moment of quiet before the light noise of static in the forest made you snap your eyes open,.. that’s Alastor getting closer into range of where you were standing.

Being lucky and hopeful you HOPE he didn’t see you in the clearing just standing their with your eyes closed

You ran and hide behind some bushes and trees that were away from the table and chair you were standing near–and just in the nick of time

You could hear and see him from where you were hiding the full static sound of a certain radio demon as he hummed a tune with a deer slumped dead over on his shoulder, carrying it with ease as he slammed it down on the table, you examined as he sat down making a fork appear out of thin air as he leaned his staff against his chair, before disappearing into air as he began to eat the deer raw pulling at its meat–made you want to gag in disgust

‘He could’ve cooked it’ you thought watching him munch down on his hunt you can assume. Licking his lips after a couple of bites he wiped his mouth with a napkin like a true unhinged gentleman

Before he cleared his throat his eyes shutting but his smile spreading wider, causing you to get goosebumps

“I know your there” He said making you do a double take ‘he knows i am here?’ you thought blinking as you didn’t buy his bluff

“I can sense your presence,” he drawled, his voice dripping with a sinister charm.

“You can’t hide from me.” He opened his crimson eyes as they began scanning the area. You kept your movement still as he scanned over the area you were hiding. You saw how he squinted his eyes almost immediately at the bush you were in

“Come out, come out wherever you are” He sang out in a haunting tone

“You do know as a predator.”He started in a cheery tone before his voice dropped to a dual and deep one “ I can smell you out.” His voice ringing of no radio filter

Your heart began to sped up

‘fffuck’ Is what you thought before you seen Alastor disappear into thin air—it wasn’t a surprise you were accustomed to that but you couldn’t help your heart starting to speed up as he vanished into the air

“Run,” a disembodied whisper breathed against your nape

Took you no time of convincing as you ran not looking behind you as you kept your eyes forward only hearing the sound of something chasing behind,

You hit left and right, hoping to get Alastor off of you

As you take another right you ran behind a tree, hiding behind its figure as you heard and felt Alastor run pass you

You have never done something like this, it was rather fun but dangering

Peaking your head from behind the tree after what felt like entirety you didn’t see Alastor for safe measures you transformed yourself to a small forest animal, just in case Alastor wants to sneak behind you..again

Following near your foot trail from the tree branches, you jumped from branch to branch with ease as you stopped once more hearing static noise come from nowhere, you smirked in your creature form as Alastor wouldn’t suspect a thing

Watching from above, his form essentially appeared from thin air as he had a wide smirk and a look of hunger in his eyes as he looked at the spot you were suppose to be standing

“Where are you~?” He said

“…”

After a moment of looking in all the places he would expect and assume for someone to hide, he stood in the middle of the forest arms crossed as his ears flickered now and then

“Now where did they go? I was rather hungrier for something other than deer” He said you can tell by his voice he was almost dumb struck how could he still be able to smell you but your nowhere near..weird?

You slowly shifted yourself backwards away from Alastor as you didn’t want to alarm him nor give away your hiding, you were almost clear before a vibration was felt throughout the branch and in one second the branch snapped as you land ontop of Alastor head

“...”

“...”

It was quiet not either one of you dared to move before you felt your body being picked up fully by his hand and now..the jig was up

“What do we have here..” He said looking at you “A small diversion from the person thats in here?”Alastor’s gaze bore into you, dissecting your very essence.

A wicked glint in his eyes began to take place, “Well I guess since I couldn't catch my actual food, I shall eat you little one” Pausing to smug smile before continuing “Bad luck for you?~” He said as he lifted you above his mouth

You squirmed in his hands, heart racing.

‘This can’t be how (y/n)'s story ends’, you thought desperately.

Just as he was about to drop you into his abyssal maw, you shifted—your disguise falling away

You landed on top of Alastor, who staggered back, utterly unprepared.

“Don’t eat me,” you blurted out, adrenaline surging. Alastor stood, bemusement etching his features.

“Lucy?!” Alastor’s voice crackled through the air, a radio filter distorting his words. The static hummed, raising the hairs on your arms.

“Why are you in here?” His step was deliberate, menacing. You retreated, heart pounding.

“How did you make yourself appear small? Then big?” His eyes narrowed, dissecting you. Each step he took, you mirrored, until your back pressed against a tree—literally.

Your mind raced for a lie, an escape. But then it happened—the slip up, the unraveling.

You shifted into your true form, the one Alastor would recognized.

“(Y/N)?!” His voice lost the radio filter, and you met his gaze. Confusion etched his features. You bit your bottom lip, a awkward laugh escaping.

“Erm, surprise…?” You said as you watched him back up a little from you a smile now spreading wider by the minute as the static was the buzz in the air

As it was overtook by the applause he started to emitted as he turned the other way starting to laugh

“A surprise indeed dearie who would’ve know my wife could pull such a thing off” He started.. you didn’t like how this was sounding as you moved away from the tree watching him as he created slight distances between him and yourself

You watched as a nagging feeling was telling you to start running but ignoring that you spoke up “Alastor I-” He cut you off with his words

As he appeared behind you—the Radio Demon, with crimson eyes and a dangerous smile. His arm encircled your waist, pulling you closer. “You had the entire hotel convinced of this Lucy woman,” he murmured, his voice devoid of filters. “Bravo, dearie. Truly bravo.”

You didn’t like how he was taking the situation as what he said to you in a flare voice on confirmed how much you actually DID piss off Alastor with this little disguise

“You should run now.”

Those four words holding a threat of the unknown and you wanting to at least talk for yourself turned to face Alastor his crimson eyes only reflecting the pure chaos he was about to inflict on this game of catch with you, as you shook your head

“Please let me explain” You urged, desperation coloring your voice.

“5” Alastor your dear husband replied, holding out his hand. The air crackled with tension

“Al please—…”

“4..” He sung out as he closed his eyes, standing tall. One hand rested behind his back, the other poised like a pendulum. The smile of him showing his sharp teeth made you swallow harshly

“3” He warned out to you knowing your still there as he opened one eye to look at you breathing out short “Hmm..a shame your going to let me catch you so easy” He said shutting his open eye closed

“2 dearie” He warned out now holding two fingers as he began to shift in his stances his neck elongated he was slowly shifting into his demon form, and that’s when you finally decide to run

You huffed and panted as you switched your form a couple of times to give you longer distances away from Alastor as you made it deeper into the Bayou the ground under you turning slightly squishy as you kept running not interested to turn around

You ran for what felt like hours before you stopped down near a swamp bank hunched on you knees as you gain your second wind, taking a few more breathes you stood up, the air was quiet you couldn’t hear the static of Al, so you have to be far from him? or he just turned off that noise so he could stalk and pounce on you

Whatever the case maybe you took a breathe in and out as you looked ahead of the lake, nothing but more forest—

You thought different ideas like turning into a winged creature and flying back towards the rooms door to get out of here, but you didn’t know how high you could fly and since Alastor can’t fly nor has wings, you doubt that celling is high enough to get high enough where he couldn’t hit you out of air

Best option was to keep running or go into the swamp water, it would give you better opportunity, reflecting your options about it you heard the ground beneath you move with vibrations ‘fuck he already found me’ you thought coming to the defeat you were going to let yourself be caught but that was until you seen that fucken demon form mere seconds before he seen you, you bailed out dipping yourself slowly in the cold water taking a big breathe before dunking yourself under

Seconds stretched into eternity as you held your breath, your lungs screaming for release. The vibrations in the ground intensified, and you knew he was near. What was Alastor going to do when he catched you? He wouldn’t actually hurt his wife? You thought of as your heart hammered against your ribs, and you wondered if you should be actually concerned

Alastor scanned the area, seeking his dear wife. You pressed deeper into the water, your head submerged further, only the top part of your head concealed by a stray lilypad.

Minutes passed—or perhaps it was mere seconds—before you surfaced. Gasping for air, you wiped water from your eyes. Alastor wasn’t in sight.

You continued walk towards the edge of the pond before crawling out of the pond, lying down on the edge of it your knees still submerged as you sighed out in relief, shutting your eyes for what felt like a second

Before you heard, the clearing of a throat—a sound that sent shivers down your spine. Opening your eyes standing above you was the oh-so-familiar radio demon. You smiled, but before you could vanish into the water, Alastor’s grip closed around your arms. His purr was a velvet blade against your skin.

“Come now, darling,” he drawled, his tone deceiving. “We don’t want you to get wet. Let me assist you in this rather…exchange.” His strength pulled you back, and you squirmed, defiance flaring. But Alastor was stronger, and you found yourself pressed against his chest, dripping and caught.

“Let go,” you demanded, but he only laughed—a predator savoring its prey

“Now, dear, this is part of the game.” His eyes bore into yours, crimson flames dancing. “I’ve caught you, and now you’ll be the prize I win.” His tongue flicked across his lips

As Alastor carried you through the forest he hummed a simple tone, making you more on edge

You both arrived at another clearing?

“This isn’t where we started Al” You said as he set you down, gently helping you get up, as your eyes shifted from the scenery to him

Alastor’s gaze was going up and down on you, as you caught little symbols manifesting themselves around him as he was now a step or two away from you

“Come here” He said in a commanding tone, a chain manifesting around your neck as your eyes widen to metal chain outline with the color of green. Your hands immediately shot to your neck trying to grip and claw at it. You felt a tug come towards Al before you leaned your body away from it trying to keep space, digging your feet lightly in the ground

One real yank got you to move forward unprepared, the earth meant your face very quick and you instantly felt blood in your mouth

“Ah, be good for me, Y/N, and just obey,” he murmured, his grip unyielding. You crawled on your knees and hands, inching closer to him. The chain around your neck tightened, lifting you off the ground. Alastor’s crimson eyes bore into yours.

“My dear sweet little wife, Y/N,” he drawled, his voice devoid of filters. Each word carried weight, punctuated by his southern accent. “You, dearie, violated our little agreement.” His fingers traced the chain. “We had an understanding, did we not?”

Your breaths came in ragged gasps. “I didn’t mean to Al” you whispered

His chuckle echoed through the clearing as he lowered you gently to the ground, ensuring the fall didn’t harm you.

“So, my doe,” he began, his voice a velvet blade, “please give me an explanation. Why has my wife been running around disguised as a Lucy person, working—” His fingers closed around your hands, the chain that had bound you vanishing into thin air. “Her dear, softly delicate hands at a hotel that deserves none of her attention?” His words hung in the air, a question wrapped in menace. “Rather than be in a manor that belongs to her and her husband? Have I done something wrong?”

You sighed out as you nodded taking your hands out of his, to his displeasure “All this started because i heard you mumble in your sleep rather a month or so ago..princess name Charlie” You said with embarrassment flaming your checks as you looked away from Alastor not wanting to know what expression he held

The air was quiet between the both of you, not a word was spoken—You felt like you were holding your breathe with the tension in the air before you felt the touch of your husband on your hands again

“Mon cher~” He purred out making you look at him, his face of course held a wide smile but the look in his eyes held anger with something else glimmering around it “Nothing could replace you”

“No hotel” He said his hand holding out your arm as he kissed at the palm before saying, “No demon” Alastor continued raising his head kissing you at the center of your arm, looking at you in the eyes before kissing more up your arm while saying “And certainly no Lucifer daughter could take my eye off of something as ravishing as you my doe~” Al kissing up you between each pause as he at your neck slowly peaking at it having you basically in his lap with your back towards him, as you moved your head to side to let him continue as he only chuckle at the gesture

Al with his free hand grabbing at your chin to make you look at him as he stared into your (e/c) “But my dear mon cher, you agree at my words as if you understand, but it seems as though you forgotten who I belong too” He said letting go of your chin as both of his hands traveled down to your hips resting there “You forget who's name causes thrill of different emotions within me, so let me remind you~”

Alastor leaned into you, as you meant him half way kissing him

A passionate kiss with some underline aggression made the kiss much more thrilling as Alastor fought for dominance with you trying to dominate over him

With a deep chuckle he pulled away from the kiss, “You being defiant won’t end well for you dear” You looked up too him as you bite your lower lip holding on too his bow tie slowly undoing it as his hands trailed up and down your legs

“No words so be it” He shrugged before pushing you down to the ground, your back laying on the grass as he spread your legs open wide, everything on full display for him to see

He leaned his head down as his ears pushed back towards his head as his eyes half lidded looking up to a red face you “Mm~Darling your so intoxicating with that look on your face” He said before plunging his head down open his mouth before eating your pussy

Your eyes shut closed as your hands went immediately to his hair gripping and pulling at it, as you mumbled out moans holding onto Alastor head down as he kept eating you out

“Al~!” You said in low moan as you felt yourself starting to come undone down there “Alastor..I..I am going to—”

Before you could muster and get out the words to warn your husband, the sensation of Alastor mouth moved away from you leaving you in almost blank state, so close to clarity but yet so far …

You whimpered as you looked down to Alastor who’s face was smirking as he shook his head licking his lips slightly “You think after the charade you pulled your going to get to cum that quick and easily?” He said and laughed “Dearie we are just starting.”

Alastor in a instances flipped you over making you rise to all fours with help of his shadows tendrils you were now ass up face down, with your arms being held down by the shadows tendrils, you whimpered trying to move against them as you felt a burning sensation on your bottom causing you to move it from side to side

Alastor watched in trans like state as you moved your ass after he smacked it only making his boner go harder, as he rub on it through his pants

“Al, let me out of this! I don’t want to be—Ahh~!”You said feeling a familiar feeling slide in you as your eyes rolled behind you, you clawed at the grass alastor pushed all himself in you

“Mmm~There you go Mon Cher~” Alastor said rolling his hips as his head tilted backwards, both of his hands gripping on your hips keeping them in place as he began slowly pumping in and out of you

You moaned as you moved with his thrusts, arching your back as Al grunts and low moans could be heard

Alastor started to pick up in speed as you could only speak out the simple word “Al~” Which was music to the radio demons ears

“Oh (Y/n)~” He said as he kept up fast with his thrusts moving one his hand to your hair, gripping at it pulling you backwards as your head flung back

“Open your eyes.” He said making you slowly open your eyes as meant with the eyes of crimson red ones as his smile was deceiving as his eyes showed pure lust that was feeling “Fuck.” He said as gripped tighter on your hair yanking almost at the root as you moaned with each thrust

“I am going to finish in you.” He said in not a question but as a command as you tighten around him bring him closer as he shut his eyes letting go of your hair before opening his mouth and bitting at the back of your neck as you moaned closing your eyes feeling yourself reaching edge as you reached climax sametime as Alastor

Couple months later drawed by quick before you knew it you were back at the manor, watching over Al’s territory sipping tea as you smiled mindlessly, yeah there was really nothing to worry about.

FIN!!!

Extra! Extra!

(Y/n) and Al strolling through the park. hand in hand as Al hums a tune

Al: “I do say mon cher, I think I never told you why I was saying Charlie's name”

Y/n: “Yeah you haven’t, do share”

Al: “You wouldn’t believe it! Charlie in my dream was trying to paint my Radio Studio, it was all going to be rainbows with fluffy pink unicorns if I didn’t say her name”

Y/n: deadpans

Al: Only telling you the truth dearie~!sings out

Y/n: Your truth is utter dogshit sometimes

Al: gasp Darling!

[bratbarzal]

On Your Side (NH13) / Chapter Eleven

Pairing: Nico Hischier x Fem!OC Poppy Jensen

WC: 17k (I've literally been calling this a short filler hahahahaha)

18+ MDNI!!

Chapter Warnings: unbearable amounts of fluff like you're gonna think is this girl okay??? the answer, as you should already know, is no. I honestly think it's just fluff.... and bad smut. oral (fem receiving, very briefly) and p in v. mentions of jealousy I think. cheeto gets a name finally but honestly.... she's cheeto forever let's not forget. discussions around marriage and more babies. yeah - fluffy fluff.

Series Masterlist

Previous Part (Chapter Ten)

A/N: remember the good old days when I uploaded a chapter like every 10 days??? remember me trying to beat the week-ish allegations??? I can’t tell if me struggling to finish this fic is bc I’m worried it’s getting samey and boring or bc I don’t want to let them go but i need to get over myself!!! sorry for the wait on this one!!! I kind of veered off the path that I planned out for the end of this story, I was really adamant I didn’t want something to happen, but it doesn’t really make sense for the relationship and characters I’ve written for it NOT to happen, so pls bear with me while I figure these last couple of chapters out!! I know a few people have discovered this fic recently so thank you for reading!! I promise I do love these two as much as I haven't acted like it the last couple of months!!

BUT ANYWAY!!! MORE IMPORTANTLY!!!!! this chapter is dedicated to my bestie Rory!! it was her birthday on Monday and if I'm honest I don't know if I would have made it this far without her!! she sends me full chapter breakdowns every time I post and she loves Poppy and Nico as much as I do - literally if I perish, she will take the reins!!! she knows everything!!! I accidentally spoiled the gender to her forever ago, and she helped me figure out Cheeto's name (as well as the name cheeto lmao) and we compared lists and literally had the same number one and the same reason we are that connected!! @h1sch13r I love you so much I couldn't possibly put into words how much I appreciate you!! happy belated birthday capricorn queen!!

Nico

Ever since he moved to the states, summers in Switzerland have always been the best part of Nico’s year. 

Spending much needed time with his family - staying with his parents for days at a time, back in his childhood home, eating his mother’s cooking and hanging out with his dad, and annual trips with his siblings, where the three of them got to spend a week together pretending like their lives hadn’t taken them away from each other. 

Despite the chaos that came as hockey season came to a close, he always looked forward to coming home.

And last year, when he had done so after one of the most heartbreaking moments of his career, he had endured what he now considers the worst summer of his life.

And it was all because of Poppy.

He can see it so much clearer with hindsight, how he had taken himself so far off the beaten path just to avoid his feelings for her, and experiencing a summer with her only makes him regret it more.

Last year, he had come home in a slump, and he had thought, at the time, it was the noise of being knocked out of the playoffs and a brief appearance at the world championships that was lingering. He thought he was exhausted, and remorseful, and that it was the failure of carrying his teams any further that was making him feel so down.

And so he had tried his best to do things that made him feel the opposite. 

He bought an apartment, not too far from his family that he felt distant, but enough so that he could be independent when he came back. And he had tried to make it feel like home - furnished nice, with personal belongings from his parent’s house that made the place feel like his, and not some rental he had no place making feel like forever.

He went on more trips with his friends, weekends away, music festivals, sporting events, and made a point of saying yes to things he might usually have turned down.

And that had been what led him to Talia - to being blinded by what probably should have stayed a summer fling, in lieu of sparing a thought to adoring eyes looking back at him from booths in bar corners, and a girl that, in the back of his mind, he had always wanted to be forever, too.

He had missed Poppy more than he ever could have realised at the time - and had fallen victim to abiding by their usual routine of radio silence in the summer, without realising that they had grown way too much since the year before to seriously keep that up.

He wishes he’d have texted her or something, back then. Commented on an instagram post, responded to a story, or called her, even. Her voice might have deterred him from ever trying to move on, and it could have saved the two of them so much time and heartache from what came as a result of that.

But maybe then she wouldn’t be here now, belly round with his child, sat out on the terrace in the back yard of his childhood home, schooling his big brother at Uno. Maybe he wouldn’t come down the stairs in the morning to the sounds of her laughing with his dad, helping him prepare breakfast for the family and asking him questions about what constitutes being offside in soccer when he’d sit down to watch Switzerland play their international games and she’d join him to try get into it, herself. 

Maybe she wouldn’t go on shopping trips with his sister, and come back with bagfuls of baby clothes that she holds up to her front as she shows them all to Nico in their room, and make comments about how she can’t believe that something so big can grow from her belly. 

Maybe she would still be someone he always wants to keep to himself, instead of sharing her with the people he loves the most in this world, only to have his love grow for her even more - and maybe that’s not how he ever wanted things to be. 

So maybe he had to suffer through the facade he put on last summer to get to where he is now, content in every possible aspect of his life, wrapped up under the bedsheets, muttering random stories to Poppy’s belly as she sleeps, the side of his finger caressing the soft skin as he anticipates whatever movement happens inside her that is going to rouse her from whatever sweet dreams he hopes she’s having. 

“What are you doing?”

There’s a brief flash of light before Poppy joins him under the covers, pulling the sheet over her head to shield them from the morning sun’s intrusion before she looks down at where he’s resting beside her belly. 

Her eyes are narrowed like they’re trying to fight consciousness, and her face is swollen in that adorable way it gets in the mornings, puffy and plump, and he wants to kiss it all over. 

She’s so beautiful, and she’s his, and it warms his heart every time he gets to wake up to her. 

“Having a private conversation with my daughter, if you don’t mind,” he smiles up to her, soft and teasing, before she kicks him gently and shuffles her way out from under the covers.

“You made her make me want to pee,” she huffs, feet padding across the room to the en suite, where she leaves the door open as she empties her bladder, and he re-situates himself back against the pillows at the top of the bed, one arm behind his head, so he can watch her when she makes her way back.

Her bump is big enough now that she almost waddles, 6 weeks of eating his mother’s cooking, and all the incredible food they have tried in  restaurants he has told her about over the years, and she had really popped in no time - and it’s the sexiest Nico thinks she’s ever been. Nose and lips constantly swollen with water retention, her voice changing, Nico witnessing the ever-growing struggle that she refuses to acknowledge - but she does everything so effortlessly, and without much complaint, that he finds it all endearing. 

His eyes are drawn to her belly every time he sees her, chest puffing with pride when he takes notice of the speedy growth of it, and he fixates on it for as long as she’ll let him - usually swatting at his chest and telling him to knock it off with a telltale flush to her cheeks whenever they’re around others.

Sharing his part of the world with her these last six weeks have been pure bliss, and as she ambles her way back over to where he lays, he can’t help but be grateful for whatever led him to this - to her crawling back into bed and straight into his arms. 

“I want you to teach me your language.” She mumbles into his chest, her body curved into his, legs tangling immediately as his arms circle around her.

“The language of love?” He asks with a wiggle of his brows, leaning in to kiss her lips, laughing against them as he feels them frown, 

“Don’t be gross you know what I mean,” she sighs, lips fighting a smile, and he kisses her again, helping her hook her leg properly over his so she can straddle him, her bump settling between the two of them as she relaxes over his hips. “Swiss-German isn’t on Duolingo, I checked. And I can’t have you and Cheeto conspiring against me in words I don’t understand, that’s not fair.”

She looks so cute, all pouty and pleading, and as the gravity of what she’s asking weighs down on him, he breaks out into a dreamy smile, himself. 

He can’t think of any other person who had wanted to speak his language. Too complicated for most, with too many dialects to grasp properly, he has always adapted to what the people around him need. English, back in the states, which he likes to think he has mastered by now, but he still trips up on the odd word, here and there.

Some Italian, some French. Odd bits of Czech and Swedish.

And German - he and Talia always spoke in plain German. 

It had never really bothered him, until now - until he has a girl on his lap, willing to learn something for him, and so their daughter can learn it too - passing his culture down another generation and sharing it with the love of his life. 

“What do you want to know?” He asks, hands on her hips as she runs hers along the broad expanse of his chest, fingers trailing on the little patch of hair on his chest that she’s always drawn too, holding him in place so she can lean in and kiss him, herself. 

“Everything,” she whispers against his skin, lips pressing back to the corner of his mouth. “You can teach me, right?”

“Yeah,” he shuffles his hips beneath her so she rests a little more comfortably, “I can teach you.”

He reaches up to move her hair behind her neck, leaning to press a kiss on the bare skin there, edging the strap of her bra down so that he can mutter the word for shoulder against the curve of hers, and she repeats it back to him, breathy and distant. 

He does the same along her collarbone, against her neck, nipping at her jaw and her cheek.

He distracts her with his teachings, and she relays each word back almost perfectly as he slowly repositions the two of them, laying her up against the pillows so she isn’t flat on her back, and pressing kisses down her body. 

With fingers grasped firmly around her calf, he lifts her leg slowly so that he can perch it over his shoulder, pecking at the side of her knee and barely just making eye contact over the curve of her bump. “You’re a fast learner, Mohn,” he praises, fingers tickling up and down her leg as she straightens her back to try and watch him as his face moves upward. “Can you remember what shoulder was?”

“Not with you between my legs like that,” she huffs, her voice just above a whisper - too used to keeping her responses low whenever the two of them have been staying at his parent’s house instead of his apartment, too used to holding back and releasing frustrated groans into the broad expanse of his chest. 

The two of them had gotten creative, most of their time spent around Nico’s friends and family, only a few days here and there alone in his apartment. 

Quickies in the car, fumbling hands under tables, rushed kisses whenever they get a second to themselves. There had even been a time where Poppy sought him out in the sauna.

“Should you be in here?” He had asked, straightening on the bench and running a hand through his hair as she came in and shut the door behind her, eyes on his glistening chest as she slowly made her way forward.

“Google says I’m good for 10 minutes,” she shrugged, reaching back to untie the straps of her bikini top. “Figured you’re so riled up you’ll only need 2 anyway.”

He had been training with Luca most of the day, leaving Poppy to hang with his sister, and the two of them had spent the entire time they were apart texting each other teasing messages about how much they missed each other - but were staying with his family again, and so the outdoor sauna he and his brother had built in the garden a couple of years ago was probably their best bet for privacy at that point.

Nico’s eyes flickered to the clock above the door, making a mental note of the time so he could make sure she was out in 8 minutes max, before helping her guide herself onto his lap, giving into both of their frustrations for as long as Poppy’s Googling would allow them. 

“You might have to teach me again when you get back from your trip.” She tells him, spreading her legs as much as she can to accommodate his figure. He’d feel guilty for leaving her behind with his family if she hadn’t been the one to push him to go away training for a week - him and Luca accepting after her insistence that she’d be fine in the company of his parents and his sister.

“We can do that,” he chuckles, his voice low, too. “And again the day after,” he kisses a little further up, twisting at her calf to reveal the inside of her thigh, “And the day after that,” and again, even further. 

“Nico,” she sighs, face scrunching, eyes fluttering shut as he glances up at her one more time, his face concealed now by the curve of her belly and relying on her subdued sounds to gauge her pleasure. 

Poppy’s back arches about as much as it can as Nico closes in on the apex of her thighs, a finger hooked through the bottom of her panties, pulling them to the side as he nips at the top of her thigh, anticipation building until her hand finds purchase on the back of his head.

He lays his tongue flat against her glistening folds, bringing it up to get a taste of the heaven between Poppy’s legs, and relies on her breathy gasps and the buck of her hips to guide him to pleasure her just how she likes, lips around the bundle of nerves that makes her jolt when he sucks a little too hard, moving slowly, teasingly at first before hunger takes over.

He can’t relent until he feels her legs trembling at either side of his head, Poppy’s body slithering beneath him as his tongue works between her folds, and he can taste nothing but her sweet arousal.

He almost loses himself in her before he distantly hears a whisper of his name, ears perking at the tone in her voice - not like the usual pleasured gasp or moan, just slightly off.

“Babe, stop,” Poppy whines, fingers clutched in his hair as he withdraws from her heat, pulling back enough to check on her over her belly.

“You okay?” He frowns, hand gripping her thigh, thumb rubbing soothingly as he takes in her frustrated expression.

“No,” she pouts, “I can’t see you. I don’t like not seeing you.”

Nico pokes his tongue to the side of his cheek to stop himself laughing, feeling her fingers loosen their grip on the strands of hair in their hold enough that he can sit up a little. “Do we need to get a little creative with mirrors, or something?”

“No, I need you to come up here.”

“But I like it down here.” He sighs in faux-protest, leaning his cheek against her knee as their gazes meet.

Poppy narrows her beautiful eyes at him, and there’s no stopping the smile after that. “My back hurts like this,” she huffs, “And I don’t want your mouth right now.”

“Well if you were patient, I would have used my fingers, too,” he chuckles, retreating entirely so he can crawl up the bed. 

“Don’t want your fingers either.” She starts making grabby hands when he gets closer, until he follows her guidance, holding himself up to the side of her and letting her pull him in to press their lips together. 

“Greedy,” he teases into her mouth, just as one of her hands drops to tug at the waistband of his boxers. He can’t blame her for wanting more, though - not with the way they’ve both been chasing every little pleasure where they can over the past 6 weeks, and not with how he’s set to spend a week away for training with his friends. 

Poppy’s hormones are yet to dissipate, and all he wants is to please her, so he lets her pull at his underwear with ease, distracting him with the swipe of her tongue against his, and the soft little moans she lets into his mouth as he works at her underwear, himself.

“You wanna go on your side?” He mumbles between her lips, remembering the position they had ended up the last time, Poppy unable to lay on her back too long, and her bump now getting in the way if she wanted to straddle him. He was too nervous for her to get on all fours, despite her protests that she could handle not collapsing onto her front, and they had ended up spooning. He had enjoyed it way more than he ever thought he would if anyone had told him months ago that being behind her on his side would have become their default position.

“Mmhm,” she hums, nodding frantically as they position themselves, his hands guiding her to comfort as she lays on her side, hair tucked behind her ear so he can press his lips to the curve of her neck before sinking into her from behind, her back arched just right to make it easy for him. 

“Fuck,” he groans under his breath as he pushes himself in to the hilt, Poppy squeaking, her arm bent back and nails digging into his shoulder, “You feel so good, baby.”

She feels tight and warm around him, in a way that makes him feel like his head might explode in pure bliss, and he presses his chest straight to her back. Their skin sticks together with perspiration, clamminess building as he starts to move, and her head falls back, baring the elongated slope of her neck for him to bury his nose into.

She smells so good, even after a full night tossing and turning in his arms, and the ever-present scent of his body wash lingers in the depths of her skin, Nico inhaling fully as her hips press back onto his, a slow rhythm building.

He holds himself up with an elbow against the mattress, his other arm curling over her waist, hand reaching between her legs to rub at her clit, slick with arousal and swollen from his previous attention to it, causing her legs to tremble again. 

Her arm tangles with his, nails scraping at his skin, pushing to apply more pressure where she needs it the most, and he grunts lowly into her neck, nipping at her skin and lifting his chin every now and then to gauge her response to his ministrations.

He can see her jaw slack, head craned back, lashes fluttering in blissed-out euphoria as she grows closer to her peak - and Nico is so in tune with her now that he feels like he’s there with her. A night pressed against her, and his previous stint between her legs already adding to his pleasure, and he can feel the tell-tale tension in the pit of his stomach, muscles in his thighs growing taut as he kicks up his pace a little, Poppy quietly moaning like music to his ears.

“You gonna come, huh?” He asks in a breathy growl, lips moving against the sensitive skin of her neck, “Can feel you getting close, baby, you’re so good for me.”

Nico can never forget the way such praise had made her cheeks flush all those months ago, the first time they had ever slept together - the night their baby girl had been conceived, and their lives had been set to change forever. He’s always seeking that same reaction, that glint in her eye and the stutter of her hips - and she always gives him just what he wants, walls tightening around him in a mind-numbing pressure, thighs shivering, spine curving, all muscles tensing as she falls apart. And he soon follows, coming inside of her like he’s all too used to now, teeth pressed into her shoulder and chest panting against her back.

The arm she had intertwined with his soon untangles itself to reach back and stroke through his hair as he comes down, scratching at his scalp as she gets her own breath back.

He brings his hand up to his mouth to clean his fingers of her arousal before he goes back to rest his hands against her belly, still inside her until he softens, pressing soft kisses to her skin until she giggles a little when it tickles, and the vibrations of her laughter force him to pull out before he starts to grow hard again.

He does so with a grunt and a hand on her hip, rolling out of the bed and toward the bathroom to get a cloth to clean her up, returning to her blissed out form splayed out on the mattress.

He bites back a smile as their eyes meet, edging her legs apart so he can wipe between them, swiping softly at her sensitive folds and watching her smile sleepily back at him as her chest rises and falls in laboured breaths. 

“Thank you,” she sighs, blinking slowly, and he feels his cheeks push into a dimpled grin as he watches her - completely lost in the afterglow.

“You don’t have to thank me, baby,” he throws the cloth over to the nightstand, crawling up Poppy’s body to press his lips to hers.

“You make me really happy.”

He smiles, slow but big, eyes tracing the way hers crinkle a little in the corners. “You make me happy too.”

“I said really happy.”

“You make me the happiest man in the world.”

“That’s better.” She bumps her nose against his before kissing him again. “You’re a quick learner, too.”

He chuckles against the corner of her mouth, pressing one more sweet kiss there before pushing himself up, looking around the floor for his pants. “Why don’t you take a shower and I’ll bring you some breakfast? Make you really really happy,”

“Or we could eat together and you could shower with me? We could have some more fun-,”

“I’m not falling for that again, babe, you don’t want to have fun, you want me to wash your hair because your arms ache.”

He’s been lured into the shower one too many times over the past 6 weeks with the promise of a good time, only for Poppy to claim they couldn’t get too frisky and risk slipping, so he may as well put his hands to good use and shampoo her hair - guiding him on where she liked him to apply pressure until he was pretty much giving her a scalp massage.

Poppy pouts, sinking back against the pillows as she watches him hop into his underwear, pulling the briefs until the waistband snaps against his hips, her eyes following them all the way up his legs. “I thought you loved me.”

His laughter bubbles all the way up from the pit of his stomach, swirling with adoration and amusement. 

“And now you’re laughing. Unbelievable.” She scoffs, feigning irritation with a telltale quiver at the corner of her lips. “Do I need to remind you that you’re going away for a whole week tomorrow? Living it up with your buddies and leaving me in the dust. I’m owed like 2 more orgasms at least before then.”

“I’ll give you three tonight, I promise.” He leans in again, thinking he’ll never make it out of the room at this point, Poppy having the most kissable lips in the entire universe. “We’ll figure out the mirror thing, so you can see me better between your legs.”

She hums against his mouth as she kisses him once more before asking, “Can you make me avocado toast please?”

“And a smoothie?” He asks, stepping away so that he isn’t drawn back in until mid-day.

She nods, a pretty smile stretching out across her swollen lips, watching as he walks backward towards the door. He keeps his eyes on her until he closes the door behind him, making his way through his family home with a smile that won’t give, feeling confident in his previous sentiment uttered to her. 

Nico Hischier might just be the happiest man in the world.

Nico had thought being away from Poppy for a whole week would have been torturous - that he would be counting down the hours until he could get back to her, distant from his friends and hating every second apart - but it had almost been the opposite of that, and he only had her to thank.

He thinks that maybe 6 weeks of living out the dream life with her, and knowing that would be exactly what he was returning to, allowed him to enjoy his week away - even though it wasn’t exactly a break. 

His off-season training had kicked up a gear while he was away, and he was thankful that he didn’t have to mope around missing her all the time and could concentrate a little on his gruelling routine.

They FaceTimed every morning, and every night before she went to sleep. Texted throughout the day, sending pictures back and forth of what each other got up to - Poppy spending her days with his parents and his sister, being doted on by his entire family in his absence, in ways that made his heart grow ten-fold, and his days spent training, lifting, running, hiking, doing all sorts of activities that he would send her several videos of and she would respond with some crazy comment that made him laugh out loud. 

She never made him feel guilty for being away from her - never made it seem like she felt like second best to his schedule, or his career, or the season looming in the background of their relationship. She never complained about him not being around, only ever gushed about who was back home with her - telling him how much she loved hanging around with Nina, who was back in Switzerland taking her on spa trips and exploring the city with her, teaching her about their hometown and filling in all the blanks that Nico had yet to clue her in on. 

And he was getting chirped like hell for walking around with a constant dopey smile on his face - something he should know better by now than to do on a boys trip, but he was long past caring.

He had the girl of his dreams blending in with the family he loved more than anything, and a little girl on the way - his best friend and brother rallying the boys to poke fun at him at the dinner table could do nothing to diminish the flame that was fuelled within him.

“I’m on my own when we get back to Jersey, even Nico’s wifed off, now,” Timo jokes as they sit around a large restaurant table on their last night of their trip, his big arm resting on the back of his chair as he sips on his beer. 

“You’re getting married, too?” Their friend Leo asks, brows raised as the influx of new information hits him all at once. “You guys don’t tell me anything!”

“It’s just a saying,” Nico scoffs, his bottle pressed to his lips before he takes a swig, “We’re not engaged.”

“Yet.” Luca adds, “I give him a month before he asks her, though. You should see him around her, he’s obsessed.”

“It won’t be a month,” he denies, ignoring the second half of the sentence, completely - there’s really no point denying that anymore, “I’d have to get her dad’s permission or whatever, and her parents sort of hate me.”

Timo barks out a laugh from across the table, “Oh yeah, he yelled at her dad!”

“You yelled at someone?”

“I didn’t yell,” he frowns, the word starting to lose all meaning with its overuse. “I just called him out over something. And, to be honest, I think he might have liked me more after that.”

Nico doesn’t really like looking back on that first night at the Jensen house - there was probably no preparing him for what he was walking into, and, entirely overwhelmed by the grandeur of it all, he had lost his head. But their family dynamic was difficult.

He had witnessed it only in short bursts, before - had seen Poppy around her mom a few times, had met her dad once before that in passing - and being immersed in it, being looked down on by her mother all day, overshadowed by her brother, ignored by her father, watching the whole conversation around their pregnancy unfold at the dinner table, tensions high and emotions rampant, he had let his frustrations build to the point of boiling over.

When Poppy’s brother had first started berating her, he had tried to write it off in his head as sibling banter of sorts. He and his siblings were never quite as cruel, but he knows sometimes brothers and sisters bicker like Poppy and Oli had - biting remarks and words intended to hurt. Then, it had spiralled.

He’s seen Poppy stick up for herself, before, but he’s never experienced her blow up like that. And he had understood it completely, considering he was reaching the brink of eruption, himself - and that’s not taking into account her heightened pregnancy hormones.

He had felt protective, and even upset, himself, that this thing his family had embraced with open arms, had celebrated at time where he and Poppy needed it the most, that was turning his life around in all the best possible ways, was being rained on by the rest of them, and when Poppy had stormed off, and her mom had followed, he couldn’t sit there in silence and not say something.

What kind of partner would that have made him?

“I think you underestimate her.” He had said, quiet but firm, as silence settled over the table in Poppy’s absence. 

The reactions had been slow, a gradual raise of Oli’s head, matching that of his wife, beside him, who pressed her lips together to hide what Nico hoped was a smile, and the prolonged lowering of cutlery from her father. 

“Excuse me?” Philip asked, leaning onto his elbows. “What did you say?”

“Poppy,” Nico clarified, “I don’t think that any of you really understand what she’s capable of.”

“That’s my daughter you’re talking about, I think I of all people understand-,”

“She’s really smart,” Nico had interjected before he lost the courage to do so, ignoring the twinge in his gut that told him to calm down, that he shouldn’t be risking his relationship with the future grandfather of his baby like this. “And really independent, and she somehow always knows what to do if you drop her into the middle of a really tough situation. If you could see her at work, you’d get it, people go to Poppy to fix things and for her to help them, and support them, and she always does it because that’s the kind of person she is.”

Neither of them had seemed to react, but had been so far into hyping himself up to let all of his thoughts out that he doesn’t think he would have noticed if they had. 

“You guys might not see it because you only see her as your daughter, or your little sister, but she is the strongest person I know. She’s an incredible woman, and she’s going to be an even better mother, and she deserves, more than anybody else, for her family to have her back right now.”

“It was just a joke, man,” Oli had scoffed, “It’s not that serious.”

“It is to her. She spent the entire ride here talking about you guys, about your family and everything you’ve built for yourself in California,” Nico had nodded to her brother, remembering all the ways Poppy had hidden her admiration for him behind sarcastic comments - even before the drive from Jersey City, over the years where she had opened up to him about her family, he had always seen a small dash of affection for her older brother - before turning to her dad, “And everything you’ve achieved, sir, everything you’ve built for yourself, and for your kids. She just wants to be seen as an equal, and I think if either of you actually noticed her, you’d see just what she’s capable of, and you wouldn’t make digs at her,” he had narrowed his eyes at Oli, “Or sit in silence while others make her feel like crap.” He hadn’t quite been able to meet Mr Jensen’s eye, but he felt a little relieved that he had managed to say what he needed. “You’re both supposed to have her back.”

Neither of them had come back to him after that, tensions rising once more in the growing silence, the hammering of his heart and the rush of blood to his head the only thing he could hear before he had excused himself, and had ascended through the house to find Poppy in her room. 

He hadn’t told Poppy at the time what he had said - he felt no need to do so, it wouldn’t have changed anything, and might have made her upset or even more stressed, which he never wanted to do. But Philip had changed after - had made more efforts to be there for Poppy, to get to know Nico, and the two of them had even gotten onto texting terms. 

So he doesn’t necessarily think that her parents hate him, but it’s definitely too soon to be asking for their daughter’s hand in marriage, even if it feels like the right thing to do.

Even if the thought of it has started to keep him awake at night, as Poppy tosses and turns to get comfortable beside him. Even if he finds himself stroking at the bare surface of her ring finger when they hold hands, and introducing her to others as his wife in a language she doesn’t fully grasp - pretending it’s a joke she isn’t clued in on, when really it feels more like a manifestation.

He twirls the ring she had gifted him on his own ring finger, the weight of it especially present in the midst of this conversation, frowning as Timo levels him with a stern look.

“You know that getting her dad’s permission isn’t like the law or anything right?”

He does know that. If he’s honest, he knows he’s using it as an excuse, too - but admitting to that at dinner with the boys feels like he’s setting himself up for an entire night of chirps.

He and Poppy have only technically been together for a couple months, and most of that time had already been spent apart. When he had asked her to move in, she had taken offence at him only asking due to the convenience of it all, and he half expects the same if he gets down on one knee.

He can hear her already, some muttering of, you only want to marry me because I’m having your baby, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. 

When Nico pictures his future, he pictures Poppy. 

Everything revolves around Poppy.

And yeah, their baby girl plays a big factor in that - seeing Poppy as a mother, raising their daughter together, providing a happy, stable home for her to thrive in. But it’s so much more than that, too.

It’s her being his partner. Waking up to her, tracing over the soft curve of her lips as she rouses from sleep, and knowing, as sure of anything in his heart, that no day can ever be bad if it starts out like that. 

Feeling secure in his job, despite all the times in his life he has felt anything but, and knowing that he can succumb to the pressure of it all without having to worry about her bailing. She has his back in ways no body ever has before. She understands the demand of his career, the fact that he isn’t available at all hours of the day to her every need - but she can take care of herself. She would rather do so, and she doesn’t make him feel guilty for the fact that sometimes his schedule takes priority - because the times that he can prioritise her are valued in ways that he never thought he could provide - not if anybody asked any of his exes, at least.

She understands his role as a captain, how he has to be there for the guys, understands his love for doing so, and has never in their entire relationship, made him feel like it’s a burden, or that she feels neglected because of it.

Even before they crossed the boundaries of something more. When they were just friends - as if they were ever just anything - and he could vent all of his worries and stresses to her, and she’d talk him out of ever seeing the negatives.

She has some sort of superpower, he thinks, for turning things around like that, and he wants to bask in the glory of it for the rest of his life.

He wants that warm feeling that floods his chest at the thought of going home to her after a long day to never go away.

And he knows that it isn’t a chunk of metal around her finger, or signatures on paper, that solidifies that.

But he wants it, all the same.

“I don’t know, we haven’t been together that long.”

Timo barks out a laugh, and a couple other guys at the table raise their brows. 

“Do you know when I first got to Jersey, Siegs was the one who introduced me to Poppy? You know what he said?”

Nico shakes his head, a crease forming between his brows as he frowns at his friend. 

“He points at her from across the room, we were at a bar, the one near his place, he says that’s Poppy, and I look over and I think, whoa, she’s gorgeous, maybe I will like it here,” Nico narrows his eyes as Timo recalls the story, his hands unintentionally balling into fists below the table, “And before I can even get a word out, he goes, Nico’s Poppy. He told me not to even think about it.”

“We weren’t in a relationship, though.” He argues, despite the way his lips twist into an almost-smile, one trying to hide itself from prying eyes. He does quite like the ring of that. Nico’s Poppy.

It reflects that base level possessiveness he feels when he looks at her - the way he’s probably felt since the day they met, sharing a bond he had never really shared with anyone else. Feeling jealous when any of the other guys would talk to her alone, as petty as it might have been, and only ever wanting her attention on him. 

“You’ve always been in something with her,” Timo shrugs, “There’s no point delaying the inevitable if it means you get to make sure she’s your Poppy forever.”

“We don’t have to be married for her to be mine.”

He does feel comfortable knowing that - feels sure and safe in their dynamic, now - knowing the life they share, the home they share, the baby they’re so close to bringing into this world together. Knowing how much she loves him, how much she’s willing to be there for him, even when he feels like he isn’t enough for her. 

He’s never felt so secure in a relationship in his life, and he doesn’t need to force either of them into marriage when they’ve never really had that conversation - even if the few times he’s attempted to joke about it, she has been receptive.

“I don’t know why you’re trying to talk yourself out of it.” Luca chimes in from the side of Nico, “You’re never gonna find anybody more perfect for you. I think our parents like her more than they even like us at this point,” he tells the rest of the table, swatting at his little brother’s shoulder, before reaching for his beer. 

“Yeah,” Nico sighs with a smile, knowing already there’s no one more perfect for him - he’s only been cursing himself all summer for not coming to that conclusion much sooner. “Mom will probably already have asked her for me while she’s been with her this week.”

He knows he’s delaying the inevitable, trying to pretend that marriage isn’t what he wants right now with Poppy - he had pictured it the second she told him she was pregnant, his life flashing before his eyes in home-movie-esque glimpses, babies, and white dresses, and a big house with a nice plot of land in the back for him to build a tree house like in the movies.

He knows, too, deep down, that there is the slimmest possible chance of rejection. She loves him. She shows him every day just how much - and she’s been so willing, so far, to fit herself into his life in whatever way is easiest. 

He knows when he sees her, tomorrow, that the thought of dropping to one knee as soon as his eyes lock on her will cross his mind.

And he thinks when he does get back, after a week of chirps about being wifed off, he might just test the waters.

Nico doesn’t think he’s ever had a quicker flight than the one he and Luca took back from Tenerife. From check-in, to boarding, to the plane ride, itself, he felt like he had blinked and landed back on home soil, heart beating that little bit quicker in anticipation of seeing Poppy - of his eyes laying on that perfect bump for the first time in a week and catching the slightest difference, making up for lost time while they can in the privacy of their apartment before they spend the week with his brother and sister.

The train ride from the airport flies by too - Nico feeling excitement akin to when he was younger, and his dad would take him and Luca to go practice at their local rink, and he was at a point in his life that he loved nothing more than hockey, wanted nothing more than to don his skates and play to his heart’s content.

He feels that way about Poppy, now, he thinks. 

Like she’s something he can dream toward - push and strive to keep her in his life for as long as he possibly can. 

It feels like the blink of an eye before he’s putting his key in the door of the apartment, pushing in with his case following behind him, discarded in the entryway as he steps though the hall in search of her. 

“Baby, are you home?” He calls, his heart thumping as he waits to catch his first proper glimpse of her in a week.

“In the kitchen!” She calls back, voice like his favourite song, and when he steps into the room he sees her by the oven, prepping for dinner. When she had first offered to pick him up from the train station, he had joked that he didn’t trust her driving alone on European roads, but the truth of it was that he felt better coming home to her - where she was safe, and he wasn’t putting her out just so that he could selfishly see her sooner. 

And seeing her there, in the heart of the apartment he had bought last summer, when the idea of her ever being in it was nothing but a dream, swollen and round and growing their baby, he thinks that reality is more than worth the wait.

“Hey,” he sidles up behind her, arms placed on either side of her body on the counter as she chops at some peppers. Poppy angles her head so that he can press his usual kiss to her cheek, and Nico feels it puff up with a smile. 

She smells clean and fresh, like home, like a mixture of the detergent she uses on their sheets, and his body wash that she still likes to steal, and he swipes his nose at her flesh as he takes a prolonged inhale of her skin, filling his lungs with the familiarity of it and making up for the days he spent away. 

“Hi,” she turns back enough that he can press a kiss to her swollen lips, slow and sweet, “I figured you’d be beat when you got home so I ran you a bath, I only just shut it off like 2 minutes ago.”

He kind of likes how there isn’t a big fuss about him coming home - likes that she’s welcoming him back like it hasn’t been almost a week, and it diminishes the guilt he had been feeling for leaving her behind at all. It reinforces the thoughts he’s always had - that Poppy makes everything easy. 

She puts the knife down and turns in his arms when he kisses her again, and his hand swipes from the curve of her belly to the small of her back, keeping her stomach pressed to his.

“You’re too good to me,” he mumbles before his lips touch hers again, nose bumping teasingly at hers when she starts to chase him for more. “There’s room in that tub for 3, you know.”

“It’s supposed to be for you to relax,” she tells him as her hands travel the broad expanse of his chest, sweeping to his shoulders and down the width of his arms that are circled around her. “And I’ll have dinner ready for when you get out.”

“Trust me, Mohn,” he hums, his hands travelling slowly down her sides, “That is my idea of relaxing.” And then he leans down to hook an arm behind her knees, lifting her before she has a chance to protest, all too prepared after a week of training to carry her down the hall toward the bathroom, making sure she isn’t too curled up that it’s uncomfortable with her bump. “Dinner can wait.”

“You missed me that much, huh?” She giggles as he sends a gentle kick to the door, letting it swing open before he steps into the room. “You gonna have me sit on your lap while we eat, too?”

“Yeah, you can feed me if you want,” he laughs as he places her on the counter in the bathroom, her legs parting immediately for him to slot himself between them. “And I missed you more than it might be healthy to admit.”

“I missed you too,” Poppy smiles softly, hands reaching up to tuck the grown out flicks of hair behind his ears as his own hands place themselves on either side of her hips, “Appreciated all those sweaty workout videos you sent me though, definitely made up for you being gone.”

“Thought they might,” Nico chuckles as he starts working at undressing her, sliding her shorts down her legs and throwing them into the hamper. “Appreciated that video you sent me of your belly moving like something out of Alien.”

“She’ll probably start up soon, she likes to move while I’m eating now, she keeps getting the hiccups, it’s quite cute.”

Nico leans down once he’s lifted the big t-shirt that covers Poppy’s torso, and while she works it off, he presses a soft kiss to her bare belly, nudging the curve of it with his nose before he stands to his usual height and starts to work his own clothes off. He can feel the heat of her gaze as he steps out of his underwear, and it prickles at his skin like a lingering longing, like the way his own feelings have lingered over the past week.

A week where he had pushed forward on the sheer thought of Poppy, and now that she’s in front of him, those thoughts swirl into something overwhelming. 

He offers her a hand to help her down from the counter, and guides her toward the tub, the water still hot, but not scolding, on it’s way to tepid as he steps in and positions himself toward the back. He holds her steady as she steps over the edge, and sinks down as she lowers herself, her bump making it difficult to do so with ease, but he spreads his legs for her to sink back into him, and he soon feels her relax with her back to his front.

“Does it hurt,” he mutters with his limbs curved around hers, “When she moves a lot?”

He had noticed before he left that things had become a little more difficult for Poppy - sleeping, staying on her feet for extended periods - and when she had sent him a video of movements she could see through her belly, he had thought it seemed uncomfortable, but she just shrugs against him.

“It’s just weird, I guess,” she sighs, muscles seeming to melt against him. “Depends how she’s positioned, she was playing my ribs like a xylophone the other day, that wasn’t fun.”

Nico smiles, hand coming around her front to caress her belly, rubbing gentle circles into her soft skin. “Where is she now?”

“I think her butt is at the front,” her hand rests on top of his, moving it up a little, and a bit more to the side, “She’s gonna give me hell later, I can feel it.”

“Maybe she’ll behave now that her daddy’s home,” he mutters, his lips falling by instinct to kiss at Poppy’s bare shoulder before he hooks his chin over it, “Maybe she missed me too.”

“She definitely missed you. She practically did somersaults every time you came up in conversation.”

“My girl,” he smiles into Poppy’s neck, “Did she kick for Nina yet?”

“Oh yeah,” she laughs, her hand moving to trail up and down Nico’s leg beside her, “She jumped around so much in there that I learned a new word while you were gone.”

“From Nina?”

“Häsli,” she says with perfect, practiced pronunciation. 

“Little bunny,” Nico chuckles, both hands patting at the bump where his daughter rests. “I like it.”

“Good, ‘cause your parents have started calling her it, too. No respect for Cheeto around here.”

Nico finds himself melting in ways he didn’t think he needed to - an ache so present in his bones he hadn’t even realised it was there, all of a sudden fading to nothing as he sits in the tepid, soapy water with his girls in front of him. Poppy absentmindedly uses her fingers to trickle droplets down his calves, and makes space for him to rest his head in the space where her neck and shoulder meets. 

“Who’s the better teacher?” He asks, looking up and watching as the width of her cheeks puff out into a close-lipped smile. 

“Well, you have an automatic advantage, considering I can’t ask your sister to teach me all the dirty stuff.”

“Is that all I’m good for, the dirty stuff?”

“I’m yet to be able to hold a conversation that has nothing to do with body parts, so you tell me.”

“Yeah, well the more you learn, the less I get away with, so we might have to put a pause on the lessons.”

“And what is it you think you’ve been getting away with?” Poppy asks, twisting a little so she can look back at him, and it’s when her eyes meet his that Nico feels some warped sense of security wash over him. He hadn’t planned on bringing this up, especially not so soon after coming back from his trip, but it just feels right.

And it’s better to get it out of the way sooner - where better to test the waters than in the bathtub?

“Whenever we meet someone, I’ve been introducing you as my wife,” he admits, cheek pressed to her shoulder blade as he looks up at her through thick lashes. 

Her lips twist in amusement, eyes shimmering in the warm light of the bathroom, and it seems like she’s biting back a smile at the revelation. His heartbeat steadies just a little. “Oh really? How have you been getting around the distinct lack of a ring on my finger?”

“I tell them your hands are too swollen to wear it,” he admits, taking a hand from her belly to pick up her left one. 

Her smile fades slowly as she glances down, his fingers squeezing a little at the one closest to her pinky. “Wait, you’re serious?”

“Very.”

“What about-,” she starts, and before she can glance back, Nico lifts his own left hand in anticipation of what she’s about to ask, the signet ring she had gifted him when she first came overseas, that she hasn’t even noticed for as long as they’ve been together out here, sitting comfortably on his own ring finger. “Oh.”

“I can get you your own, if you want,” he tries, trying not to hold his breath as he makes the suggestion - makes light of it, even, just to test her reaction. Her face is angled forward as she looks down at his finger, and her own hand twists to fiddle with the ring that sits there, so he can’t exactly see what she’s thinking. “I know you said you already had one, but-,”

“Just to sell the story better?” She asks, still looking at his hand. 

“Or because I’m in love with you,” he pouts, his lips moving against her skin as he speaks, anticipating a rejection of sorts - although he still feels the lax press of her spine to his chest. She hasn’t gone rigid, hasn’t recoiled from his touch - their bodies are still merged together in the tight space, and a part of him feels better for it. 

She turns, finally, levelling him with a look that has her gaze flickering between his eyes, like she’s trying to read his mind.

“You better not be proposing to me in the bathtub,” she frowns, “You can’t ask someone for their hand in marriage within 6 feet of a toilet, Nico, that’s definitely an unwritten rule.”

He feels something dissolve in his chest as it bubbles with affection, spreading through his bloodstream and directing itself to every corner of his body - joyous laughter rippling up his throat and spilling out into her neck. 

“Why are you laughing?” She giggles, her body shaking against his in the most delightful way, “I’m dead serious, anywhere but the bathroom, please.”

“Okay,” he chuckles, wanting nothing more than to lean up and press his lips to her beautiful smile. “I’ll bare that in mind.”

“You do that.”

I will, he thinks, taking that as her confirmation.

Not in the bathtub is a far cry from not ever.

Maybe Timo was right - as much as it pains Nico to think - maybe she has always been his Poppy, and maybe, if he can find the right time and place to ask, she always will be. 

Poppy

Last year, Poppy’s summer had felt like the longest of her life.

She had worked all the way through to Mid-July - choosing to work around the summer programmes that were run through the Foundation had taken up most of her time, and she would rather have taken the extra pay than mope around thinking about how everyone else was spending their time off.

Ever since college, she and Nia would spend their weekends together in the summer - and that worked the same last year, with both of them still working in Jersey and having their family nearby. It worked for their other friends too - until their lives away from the group started to take priority, and their group became whittled down to just the two best friends.

Friend group outings had become a rare occurrence, and so when they did happen, they were quite the spectacle - weekend trips down to Atlantic City, or bagging invites to parties the girls really had no business being - like rooftop bars in Manhattan, where a player from the Giants was throwing a party, and their friend Kelsey’s boyfriend, Liam, had somehow secured their names on the list. 

Poppy and Nia always got ready together - reminiscent of their teenage years, blasting music through the speakers in Poppy’s bedroom and letting Nia raid her closet while she did her makeup.

“We’re gonna need to prep Els on how to be cool, she can’t be asking for players to sign her napkin so she can frame it for Jensen.” Nia called as she came out of Poppy’s closet, shrugging into the strappy sleeves of a mini dress she had borrowed, pulling her hair from getting tangled beneath the arms. 

“Elsie’s not coming,” Poppy replied absentmindedly, a small, soft brush sweeping pigment across her eyelid, “It’s just me, you and Kels,”

“What? Why?” Nia had whined, zipping her dress up behind her back. “Did her sitter bail?”

“This stays between me and you, but she’s pregnant again,” Poppy told her, relaying the cliff-notes version of the hour-long conversation she had had with her cousin earlier that day. “So no more girls nights with her for a while.”

“Poor girl,” Nia huffed, falling back onto Poppy’s bed so that she could put her heels on, “I can’t think of anything worse than being pregnant right now, I’m in my prime, I’m not letting anyone dislodge my organs. Nothing is worth that kind of damage.”

“Gross” Poppy shuddered, the thought of having a baby and her age sending literal shivers down her spine. “But same. I’m so far off of being ready to be a parent, it isn’t even funny.”

She had weirdly enough been thinking a lot about what her life was turning out to be around that time - spearing straight for her 25th birthday and feeling the daunting pressure of a looming quarter-life crisis, she had put some thought at least into the traditional stuff.

But babies hadn’t been at the forefront of her mind. 

“Plus, it’s hard enough to find a remotely decent guy to go on one singular date with, never mind raise a child. Elsie got lucky with Jared.”

“Right,” Nia had scoffed half-heartedly, ambling up behind Poppy and finishing off the curls in her hair. There had been a look in her eyes - dismissive and evasive - that had caught Poppy’s attention.

“What’s the look for?”

“Nothing,” Nia shrugged, lips turned down in denial and continuing to work at her best friend’s hair. “Just think that for you of all people, it’s not that hard to find somebody decent.”

Poppy frowned, watching Nia behind her, trying to think of a single guy she had ever dated or spoken to that had garnered her approval.

She had always been supportive of Poppy, knowing that if she were to start something up with a guy, it would be after a lot of thought and meticulous research - Poppy rarely dated, and if she did, it mostly didn’t work because she wasn’t that good at it. She was always so focused on work, and her friends, that trying to make time for anybody outside of all that just felt exhausting. 

Guys usually ended up breaking things off with her, telling her they could tell her heart wasn’t in it, and Nia would always curse them whenever Poppy relayed it back to her, but there was always that look - like she knew something Poppy didn’t.

“You’ve literally watched my every attempt at a relationship crash and burn, Ni,” she narrowed her eyes, “I don’t get what part of my dating life seems easy to you.”

“The part where you have a ready made relationship just waiting for you to press the start button.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Nico,” Nia said, like it had been the most obvious answer in the world. 

The last thing Poppy had wanted to think about - again - was Nico.

She had been trying to think of anything but since he had left Jersey, but everything unfortunately was starting to remind her of him, just as they did every other summer.

Walks in the sun, passing places they would always go together - snapping a picture of a coffee from her favourite shop and thinking of who she could send it to instead of him. Running their shared route, soft breeze running through her hair as she jogged through the park, playing music in her headphones that he had once recommended.

It had been hard to shake him off - but she had grown to be good at it over the years.

Nia bringing him up had been new - unexpected - and wasn’t contributing to the routine of forgetting he existed until he would come back to New Jersey in September. 

“The second that one of you makes a move, you’re literally ready to go with the perfect man.”

“I’m not gonna be in a relationship with Nico,” Poppy snickered, trying to find humour in what nonsense her best friend was coming up with. 

She didn’t have a ready to go relationship with Nico Hischier. They were friends. That was all they would ever be.

And not only had she told Nia that a hundred times before, she also knew that Nico had said the same - shrugging off jokes made in front of the two of them and smiling awkwardly at Poppy whenever anyone had dared to make a comment on their friendship being anything other than just that. 

“We don’t even talk for like 4 months out of the year,” Poppy frowned, referring to the routine Nico had adopted over the years, of returning home to Switzerland for the summers, and leaving his friendship with Poppy behind - only communicating through social media likes and odd messages in the same conversation thread within a wider group chat.

She had never really minded it - not to the point of moping - but she had always wished things could be just a little different on that front.

“I don’t get why you guys don’t just text each other,” Nia rolled her eyes as she ran the barrel of the curling iron down the lengths of Poppy’s hair, eyes meeting hers in the reflection of the mirror. “You act like you’re not allowed to cross his mind all summer, it’s stupid, no offence.”

“He deserves a break, Ni,” Poppy had shrugged, “From everything, especially after how the season ended, I’m just a reminder of his life here, and he probably wants to escape that.”

“I don’t think he means you when he says those sorts of things, babe,” she responded, letting the curl drop into her free hand and scrunching it until it cooled down. 

“How did we even get onto this?”

“Because I’ve been looking for an opportunity to bring it up, duh,” Nia jested, “C’mon, just reach out. It doesn’t have to be a text, what was the last thing he posted on his instagram stories? Just reply to that.”

Poppy’s lips twisted, her phone feeling increasingly heavy in her grip as she weighed her options up. 

For as long as she had known him, her and Nico would never really talk over the summer. She lived her life, and he lived his, away from the Devils, away from The Rock, and it had worked well, for the most part.

Sure, a part of her always missed him. A part of her would watch his stories over, would think about what his life in Switzerland looked like, and if she could ever possibly fit into it - but another part, a larger part, would suppress all that. Push her feelings back down until they were nothing - shut away behind some barricaded door in the back of her mind.

It was weird, she thought, how much they flourished in his absence - thoughts she wouldn’t usually spare dedicated to him. Especially now that Nia was bringing it up out of nowhere.

Her perceptive best friend suggesting there could ever have been something more was sparking a flame within her she had long tried to put out. But it wasn’t entirely Nia’s doing - there had been embers floating around her subconscious for a while, now.

She blamed that night in Finnegan’s Bar, not long before he had left.

Cuddled up to him in that booth, comfortable in the lingering silence, the steady beat of his heart below her hand. She had thought, at the end of that night, that something might have been different - and she realised that had probably been why she was thinking about him more that summer.

Poppy unlocked her phone and brought up her Instagram, scrolling through the stories on the home page until she saw his picture. 

“It’ll probably be some workout video, I can’t reply to that, he’s gonna think I’m thirsty.”

“You are,” Nia had jibed, “Pop, honey, you either gotta put up or shut up. If you’re not gonna reach out, I don’t wanna hear any more of your whining about him for the rest of the month.”

“You brought him up,” Poppy frowned, “Please be kinder to me when you have hot tools in your hands, you’re giving me anxiety.”

“Whatever, I’m gonna get another drink before we go, do you want one?”

“I’m good,” Poppy smiled, watching her best friend put the curling iron down safely on the heat-proof mat on her dresser and make her way out of the bedroom and through to the kitchen. 

Her thumb had hovered on her screen for a good minute before she pressed down, biting the bullet and viewing his most recent story with bated breath. 

There were a few of them - it seemed like he was out with friends - probably-drunken selfies and videos of a DJ at some club - but the last photo was the one that caught her attention, properly. 

Nico with his arms around a girl - a gorgeous girl, sharp features, perfect hair, piercing eyes, a killer smile - and his lips pressed to her temple. 

She had let the photo time out before it shrunk away into his private profile, and she had felt like time had stopped in place after that - until the sound of Nia’s heels clicking back down the hallway caught her attention.

“I know you said no but I made mine too strong so I had to pour it out a little and make two,” she had said as she entered the room, Poppy locking her phone and turning it face down before she could see.

“Thanks,” she had accepted the drink with a smile, gulping it down in the hopes that the liquor might have burned through some of the growing ache in her chest. 

“Damn girl,” Nia had scoffed, “Thought you were good?”

“I realised I should drink for two, considering Elsie can’t anymore.”

“Good point! We should both do that, show our solidarity for the cause.”

“Exactly. Getting shit-faced is what she’d want us to do in her honour.”

Nia glanced down at Poppy’s downturned phone - a look Poppy wouldn’t have caught if she wasn’t nervously watching her best friend in the hopes that she, for once in her life, wouldn’t be so perceptive. 

“I’ll have a baby with you.”

Poppy laughed, right from the depths of her chest, tension easing from her shoulders as she shook her head.

“I don’t want a baby,” she declined, rolling her eyes and standing up, “I want to get drunk on rooftop bars with my friends and NFL players and eat as much deli meat and cheese as my body can handle for as long as it can handle it.”

“That sounds like a plan.”

Poppy didn’t know at the time why that picture on Nico's story had felt like a kick to the gut, but she had swallowed down her hurt and smiled, tight lipped, at her best friend.

Getting wasted and forgetting about Nico for the rest of the summer - that had sounded like a plan. 

Looking back on last summer, Poppy barely recognises her old life. Rooftop parties with endless cocktails, tiny dresses and high heels and hair that didn’t fall flat and frizzy the second she blinked too hard at it in the mirror. 

She can barely remember being able to look down at her thighs without being sat down.

The only thing that remains the same is finding time to lounge around on the beach. Growing up, spending her time on Jersey beaches - her family renting a house in Mantoloking most years, or making the trip down to Ocean City and Cape May with her girls when she was old enough - had become a staple for her, and she has been so thankful that it’s something her and Nico share a love of.

She’s adored her summer in Switzerland, so far - as far away from expectations as it might yet have been. 

She hadn’t expected to get such little one-on-one time with Nico, but she can hardly complain - not when his family and friends have all welcomed her with such open arms. It’s something so new to her too, getting to do everything in a group, bonding with more than just Nico, sharing parts of herself and her life beyond what she has only ever shared with him before, and she’s never really felt so at home with such a close-knit family.

She watches sports on the couch with his dad, goes to the grocery store with his mom, plays cards out on the deck with his brother, spends as much time with his sister as she would with Nia back home in Jersey, and she gets Nico to herself at night, or on the rare couple of days in a row they’ll stay in his apartment closer to the city.

But she loves this - being so close with everyone. Loves it so much that she doesn’t really care that it isn’t just her and Nico, she doesn’t really want it to be.

Katja helps her through the rough stages of her pregnancy - sometimes anticipating symptoms before they even come on, sharing tips on how to lessen the constant ache in her stomach, how to sleep easier, what supplements she can take that don’t make her feel nauseous again or bloated and heavy. 

Rino helps too, recalling what he can of his wife’s pregnancies, remembering how Katja could get her back pain to go away by relaxing in a rocking chair with a cushion wedged into her arch, and he had dug the exact one chair the depths of the garage, making sure it was safe after years of misuse and placing it out on the deck in the backyard, right beside what had always been Nico’s chair.

Luca is probably the best language teacher of them all, not that she’d tell Nico that - he’s the only one with the nerve to correct her, doing so with an amused glint in her eye until she gets it perfect and offering her a proud nod when she can finally speak a full sentence - a useful one at that, instead of random words and nicknames.

Nina allows Poppy to keep an essence of her independence - of the girl she was before she was pregnant, or had come back to Switzerland as Nico’s girlfriend. She makes sure Poppy keeps doing things for herself - accompanies her to the salon, to the local mall, gives her valued opinion on different outfits Poppy tried, and what makes her look like a frumpy mom and not her usual self. The two of them trade books between each other, get ready with each other when the group all go out, and it fills a gap that Poppy never even realised she had until she met her - this desire for a big sister, a want for something she never even knew had been ripped away from her before she was ever even born. 

And Nico.

She has all of this, now, because of him.

He’s given her a life so sweet, and so wonderful, and it’s barely even started yet.

Their little girl is still sat comfortably in her stomach, kicking and moving and causing aches all over, but she’s contributed to a world so beautiful that Poppy doesn’t want to remember life before it. 

And he gave it all to her.

He gave her their baby, his family, summer sun in a foreign country, rocking chairs and card games and trips to the mall. 

Trips to the beach with his siblings, who don’t let him forget his status as the youngest, doting on Poppy while teasing him the whole time, breaking off from the group in search of gelato for her, and none for him, because he has two hands and two feet and a wallet bigger than anyone’s to go and get his own.

And that leaves her with just him, wading in the gloriously warm shallow sea, the sun glistening against soft waves, and his hands around her, large and safe, happy and secure - and so in love she hasn’t stopped smiling in weeks.

So infatuated by the man in front of her, that she’d let him do anything, take her anywhere he wants.

“It’s a shame it’s not just the two of us, today,” Nico hums, a large hand stroking up Poppy’s back, sliding under the straps of her bikini top and tugging, teasingly, “Bet I could have convinced you to take this off.”

“We’re in public, perv,” she scoffs, her own palms flat against his chest, “Also, you can’t accuse your own family of cockblocking you.”

“I can when they won’t leave you alone,” he pouts, “My brother and sister never waited on me hand and foot, if I want gelato I have to go get it myself.” He mimics his sisters voice, face scrunching adorably. 

“My heart bleeds for you,” she groans in feigned pity, “I’m carrying precious cargo, and there’s some serious name stakes up for grabs right now.”

“So you’re pitting them against each other for your own benefit?”

“Exactly, you Hischiers love a little healthy competition,” Poppy smiles, back arching as his hand travels down her spine, the curve of her belly pressing right into his below the water. His skin smooth and hot, making her want to press even harder. “You need to up your game, I’ve got a godparent thing going on with some of the boys, too, you wouldn’t believe how much they’re willing to do for you when they think it puts them ahead in the rankings.”

“We’re not leaving our baby girl in the hands of any of those idiots in the unfortunate event of our deaths, Poppy.” Nico chuckles, lifting her with hands lowered to the backs of her thighs so that he can carry her deeper into the water. 

“I know that, and you know that,” she presses a finger to the tip of his nose before her arms curl around his broad shoulders, “But if it means that Timo always brings me madeleines when he’s around, and Jesper and Nic always buy cute baby clothes for us and send me pictures, then who are we to rain on their parade?”

The smile that stretches across Nico’s lips is fond as he asks, “Who’s the front runner?”

“Well, Timo for now, obviously.”

“Obviously,” he agrees in good humour.

“But I’ve managed to convince Jonas he’s in with a good chance after we went to visit him, he kept bringing cut up fruit out to me while I was around the pool.”

“Baby, I cut up that fruit for you, don’t let him take the credit.”

“Oh, well then he’s disqualified for being a liar.”

“Why’s Timo the obvious choice?” He asks, now at a point in the water that if he let Poppy go, she would only just be able to keep her chin above the water, and she clutches on a little tighter.

“He’s an October baby, like me.” The hands around the back of his neck start playing with the ends of his hair, scratching softly at the skin as she presses herself entirely against him. “If anyone’s gonna raise our daughter, it’s going to be a Libra, we’re fair people.”

“Makes complete sense,” he jokes, “Written in the stars.”

“You get it,” she smiles, ignoring his sarcasm entirely. “But I’m waiting for the penny to drop when they realise all the boys back home are gonna want to be in the running. I have big plans for when we get back to Jersey, they’ve all got a lot of catching up to do, Luke’s in with a pretty good chance, you know.”

“You and that kid, I swear,” 

“He’s very precious to me, Nico.”

“Yeah, don’t I know it.”

“Jack on the other hand has dropped way out of contention. We were talking on the phone the other day while you were training and called me Pop-belly. That’s out of line.”

Nico knows that laughing in any way at that is going to earn him some sort of reaction, but he really can’t help the way his lips quiver of their own volition. 

“Yeah, laugh it up,” Poppy scoffs, swatting lightly at his shoulder, “I’ll be the only one laughing when he turns into my own personal smoothie butler when we go back. He has no chance of getting back in my good graces, but I won’t be telling him that.”

“You’re an evil genius.”

“It’s your devil spawn communicating through the womb,” Poppy hums, leaning in to press a proud kiss firmly to the dimple that forms in his cheek when he smiles at her. “I was a good girl before you corrupted me.”

“You were never a good girl,” he smirks, with his voice low, one hand travelling up the back of her thigh until he can pinch at her ass. 

“Watch it, Hischier,” she warns, feeling steady enough in his hold to take an arm from around his neck and stroke the side of her finger along his slightly stubbled jaw. “You’re on thin ice with me already after shaving again, you don’t want to start being mean.”

“Oh, I’m being mean?” He asks, the hand that had pinched at her flesh now slipping beneath the fabric at the top of the back of her thighs. “You’re the one walking around in this bikini and not letting me touch you.”

“We’re in public, people get arrested for doing the things you want to do to me in places like this.”

“Could be worth it,” he shrugs, “You’re forgetting I’m kind of a national treasure, baby, they’d probably let me go with a warning.”

“Yeah, well, can’t risk it. I kind of need you. Plus, I think you’ve already done enough touching, you’ve literally impregnated me.”

“Way to make it sound romantic.” Nico mumbles, leaning to press a kiss to her bare shoulder, nose nudging once more at the thin straps of her bikini that curve around her slender neck. “Could never touch you enough.”

“You’re touching me right now, aren’t you?”

“Not where I want to.” He repositions where her legs are curled around his hips, just to emphasise his point, pulling her tighter around his torso until he can buck up into her and feel her shudder against him. 

“You can touch me wherever you want later,” she promises, her eyes meeting his, speckles of sunlight glistening off the surface of the water and straight into his irises, warming them in a way that shoots heat all the way down her spine.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“You better.” She presses a sweet kiss straight to his lips, one hand holding him close as they part, and she kisses him quick again, before saying, “Thank you for cutting up my fruit.”

He smiles, eyes squinting against the sunlight and crinkling in the corners, deep dimples forming in each cheek.

“Thank you for having my baby.”

She giggles, kissing him again, unable to resist muttering, “Thank you for putting a baby in me,” against his lips before he nips at her mouth, moving along her face in a targeted attack as his hands grip firmer at her hips, tickling her until the sound of laughter fills the air around them.

—

Poppy and Nico had made their way out of the water and onto their towels in the shade by the time Nina and Luca had returned with 3 cones of gelato in hand. Luca had already eaten half of his, coffee-flavoured, and Nina had strawberry, handing a cone with a white scoop over to Poppy.

“Fior di latte,” she had smiled sweetly, “Like milk ice, you said that was your favourite.”

“Thank you,” Poppy had blushed, the smallest gesture of her remembering that sending a buzz down her spine. Nico’s putting beside her, and mutterings of how they could have gotten him one, too, soon forgotten when she started to share.

The two of them had gone for a walk to find a bar on the beach front where they could watch soccer, leaving Poppy and Nico cuddled up on their towel, lost in their own world as they shared the cone between them.

She was resting between Nico’s legs, absentmindedly licking at the dessert when a screaming blur had zoomed past them, kicking sand up in their wake as three young children chased each other down to the water.

Poppy thinks that a year ago, she might have pouted about the sand being thrown onto her legs, but she finds herself smiling softly as she reaches back with the cone, waiting for Nico to have a turn taking a bite.

“Do you ever think about having more?” She can tell without looking back at him that he’s speaking around a mouthful of gelato, and even the thought of it makes her chest warm with the rumbles of laughter. 

“Kids?” Poppy asks, and he hums affirmatively in response, “We don’t even have this one yet, babe,”

“I know,” he mutters, and she can hear the smile in his tone as his thumb swipes at the curve of the top her bump, “But do you ever think about what our family might look like in a few years?”

Our family still makes her heart skip a beat, and she finds herself relaxing even further into his embrace - melting, almost, into his chest, warmed by the rays of sun he has been bathing under.

“We probably need to see how difficult this one ends up being before I think about having any more.” She licks quickly at the drip travelling down her thumb before offering the cone back to Nico, who shakes his head as he lowers it to her shoulder, nose nudging against her skin.

“Should have put two in you while I had the chance,” he mumbles, lips pressed into the side of her neck, trailing soft, but purposeful kisses.

“Not how that works, babe,” Poppy chuckles, lifting her chin to give him more space for his ministrations. “Although they do run in my family, my dad’s a twin.”

“There’s two of him?”

“Yeah, him and my uncle Peter. That’s where the whole name thing started in my family.”

“Name thing?” He juts his chin when she looks back, asking for another taste. 

“We’re all P’s,” she frowns as she focuses on directing the cone back toward his mouth, making sure she doesn’t smush it in his face.

“Oli isn’t a P.” The gelato lines his lips messily as he speaks, and her eyes start to crinkle in the corners as she takes him in. How can he be so stupidly pretty with mint choc chip smearing his upper lip?

“Oli’s a fraud,” Poppy chuckles, swiping a thumb against the soft flesh of his mouth, bringing it to her own to clear it of the cold, sticky substance. “His name’s Philip Jr, but people started calling him Lil Phil and it gave him a complex.”

“Poppy, baby, did you start calling him that?”

“No comment.” 

“You get all grumpy when Jack gives you dumb nicknames, and here you are calling your own flesh and blood Lil Phil.”

“I don’t get grumpy,” she pouts, recoiling her hand from his reach when he tries to lean back in for another taste of gelato. 

“You threatened to block him the other day.”

“That’s ‘cause he called me Pop-belly,” she grumbles, “That’s not funny, it’s mean.”

“Not funny at all,” Nico concurs, lips twisting in the corner as he bites back a smile, eyes gleaming as he watches Poppy sit up and face him, fully. Her eyes narrow, gaze zeroing in on where he’s trying not to laugh, again, at the horrific moniker, and her own lips twist with mirth as she shuffles, resting back on her heels, limbs half on the towel and half on the warm sand. 

“We should stick to your thing, when we’re picking a name for Cheeto,” she hums, meeting his eye as her tongue swipes against the cone, watching his eyelids grow heavier as he focuses on the movement of her lips. “4 letters, no chance of funny nicknames, no chance of people spelling it wrong on birthday cards,” she reaches out for him to get the taste he had been chasing before, and just as his lips press to the frozen substance, she adds, “You all have such pretty names, too. Like Luca.”

Poppy shouldn’t like the darkness that flashes across his eyes when his jealousy flares up, shouldn’t want to push his buttons to make it happen, but she can’t help herself - her favourite pastime all summer has been making Nico think she has a crush on his brother.

It’s so stupid, so childish but so so fun.

It had started off lighthearted enough - her first time meeting Luca, she had been a little knocked back by his presence - ruggedly handsome where she might usually have considered Nico softer, but there were definite similarities. And she wasn’t exactly attracted to him, but she had been flustered - obviously so - and it’s Nico’s own fault for making his notice of that fact so obvious - brows furrowed, his grip on her hand tightening, and a persistent urge to be present whenever Poppy hung around his brother.

She blames the fact that she misses that teasing aspect of their relationship - when their conversations were based off of sarcasm and inescapable charm - for how she continued to press his buttons over the summer. It’s hard to maintain their old snark when her hormones are all out whack, and all she wants is for him to get his clothes off and press her to the nearest surface at any given moment. He constantly has the upper hand, and she’s not exactly used to that being a part of their dynamic.

Teasing him about Luca kills two birds with one stone - she gets her fun, and she elicits that possessive part of him that he somehow locks away every time he gets eyes on her belly, that she can see him restraining in order to handle her with care.

“You’re not funny,” he huffs, swiping the melting gelato from her grip and taking an exasperated lick of the sides, not realising how adorable he looks making little swipes with his tongue when he’s trying to look annoyed.

“I’m dead serious, your brother’s a hunk.”

“Mohn,” he sighs, “I’ll dump this in the sand right now, and I know how much you want to eat this cone.”

“Fine, fine, fine,” she relents as she giggles, reaching to grasp at his arm where he’s holding it away from her, fingertips stroking teasingly to make him give in. “I don’t think your brother is hot.”

“Thank you,” he smiles, offering the gelato back to her.

“Your dad on the other hand.”

“Poppy,” he warns.

“Kidding! I’m kidding,” she laughs, shuffling forward and back between his parted legs, “You’re the only man for me, baby, I swear.”

“I better be,” he pouts, guiding her back into the space he leaves, where she had been cuddled up before, where he misses the press of her body between his thighs. “I booked a table at that Italian place you liked the other week for tonight,” he tells her, voice lowered as one hand falls to her waist, and the other reaches up to push her hair behind her ear and cup at her cheek, “And it’s under my name, so you can’t ditch me for my brother or you get no tiramisu for dessert.”

Her mouth drops at the threat, spare hand reaching up to grip at his shoulder. “I promise I’ll never love another man in my life.”

She says it with a tone so serious that he can’t help but laugh, and her lips tremble too as she watches him, rolling his eyes with affection and looking away so that he doesn’t entirely give him.

She doesn’t really think it’s much of a joke, though.

There isn’t a single person on the planet who could make her feel like this - so happy, so warm, so content. 

She might never love anyone like she loves Nico.

Except for maybe their daughter. And whatever other family he wants to give her in a few years. 

Poppy can’t quite figure out why the thought of going out for dinner alone with Nico is making her nervous.

They’re in a relationship, have been for around 3 months now, and she’s literally carrying his child, but as he stands behind her in the apartment, hands sliding torturously slow up her spine as he zips up her dress and making eye contact with her in the mirror’s reflection, she starts to feel her heart race. 

She’s trying not to be quieter than usual as they walk hand in hand in the warm summer evening air, Nico guiding her down the streets that are comfortingly familiar to him, and that are starting to feel more like home every day to her, too. 

It doesn’t help that he looks so good too, hair grown out and pushed back out of his face, a clean shave - as much as she had grumbled about that, she can’t deny how gorgeous he looks - a loose black shirt and baggy linen trousers, fancy watch clutched around his wrist.

And he makes her feel good about how she looks, too, despite flashes of insecurity hitting her over the past few weeks. Their afternoon spent between the sheets when they had returned from the beach, Nico not being able to get enough of her, and whispering sweet nothings and sexy mutterings into her skin as they finally took advantage of some much needed privacy.

He had chosen her dress for her, had strapped her slightly heeled sandals onto her feet with kisses pressed to her calves, and she thinks it’s all the attention he’s given her over the past 24 hours that has her feeling what she can only describe as high.

It’s what has her stopping him at the corner before the restaurant, seeing the perfect place to prop her phone up on a nearby wall so that she can capture the moment - the two of them looking so perfect that she wants her daughter to see, wants to print it out and tape it into her memory book to show her just how in love and happy her mommy and daddy are.

“Can we take a photo?” 

“You want me to take one of you?” He asks, stopping as she starts to adjust her camera settings on her phone, adding the timer so she can leave her phone perched at a good angle. 

“No, I want one together. So we can show Cheeto how hot her parents were.”

Nico chuckles as she places her phone on the side and pulls him to a good distance, holding her in his arms and smiling down at her as she holds back onto him - the two of them repeating a couple times with different poses before Poppy has a nice little collection of photos, and they can carry on toward the restaurant.

She swipes through and shows them to him as they walk together, and she sends them straight to him so he can have them for himself. 

“Is that hard launch material for your instagram?” He asks as she zooms in on one of them, Poppy’s arms circled around his waist, the biggest, toothiest grin on her face and her eyes scrunched shut.

“I’m gonna put them in Cheeto’s pregnancy book,” Poppy hums, not answering him directly. “Remind me to keep a card or something from the restaurant, she loves their pasta. We can come back when she’s older.”

Her nerves have increased tenfold at the mere mention of that godforsaken app.

Her instagram had never been a big deal before - private since the day she started her account, she only really ever had friends from school and work on there. She never posted in search of likes or validation, just to share little updates on her life, but she had to delete it at the start of summer once the requests to follow her started flooding in.

The first barrage had been easy to ignore, but once the zeros started adding up, and the requests went over 10,000, she figured that just getting rid of it would do her a world of good.

Anybody that needed to be updated, she could just text anyway. It wasn’t a big deal, which is why she hasn’t told Nico yet.

She doesn’t want to worry him with the fact that her whole feed had ended up on Twitter somehow anyway - that the thought of posting anything new, and it ending up shared by one of her existing followers to an intrusive gossip account freaks her out. She doesn’t have the energy to whittle down who might be leaking her stuff, so deleting the app entirely and counting the rest of her privacy as a loss had felt like the safest option.

And it’s not like she misses it.

It’s also not like she cares that much about people knowing about her and Nico - she’d scream from the rooftops about him if she could - but the lack of control scares her a little.

It’s all so invasive - seeing herself cropped out of group pictures, with threads of discourse about her, her life, her relationship with Nico and the rest of the team. Everything twisted so far out of context she starts to question her own reality. 

She had sought advice from Nina about the whole thing, and the two of them had agreed that between themselves, they could figure things out - documenting their summer just for them, without stressing Nico out about what was happening behind the scenes. And she’s grateful, at least, that she has someone like Nina in her corner - who understands what it feels like, to an extent.

Telling Nico would just make him feel guilty, or, even worse, apologise for something that isn’t his fault, and so all she can really do is avoid it altogether. 

She hardly posted on there anyway.

“We should probably figure out her name, soon, you know,” 

Poppy snaps out of her thoughts to look up at him, twisting his lips nervously as he checks on her.

“We can’t call her Cheeto forever.”

“We can. That’s her name.”

Nico chuckles as he guides are across the street with a hand on her back, the restaurant now in sight - a small, family business, not too fancy, the kind with the most delicious recipes past down generations and made to perfection.

She loves places like this - much prefers it to fancier joints - where they can sit side by side at a small table and bask in the intimacy of it all.

An older gentleman smiles warmly at the two of them when they walk in hand in hand, and guides them to a table in the outdoor section at the back, a lit candle and a single rose in the middle of the set-up, and the starry night sky twinkling above them.

She knows exactly why she’s nervous.

It’s the first date she’s been on in a long time - her first official date with Nico, period, and it takes her back to being a little younger, when she first started going on dates, first started opening up to the idea of sharing herself with anybody else. It’s daunting, even if he is already the love of her life. Even if she’s pregnant with his child, integrated into his family, and returning to Jersey in a matter of weeks to the apartment they now share.

He helps her into her seat, pulling his around from the opposite side of the table so they can sit together how she likes, his hand immediately finding where her legs cross beneath the table and stroking at her bare skin. The waiter hands the two of them menus, and Nico asks if he can bring water with ice for the table before he nods and departs, leaving them alone.

“This is really nice, baby,” she smiles, gratefully, eyes roaming over how soft his features look out in the dimmed light, chocolate irises twinkling as they reflect the flickering flame in the centre of the table. 

“Only the best for my girls,” he says lowly, and the two of them sit and smile dopily at one another and making light conversation until the waiter returns. Nico says something that Poppy hasn’t quite learned yet in his language, only just about making out the word pen before Nico takes one from the man with an appreciative thank you before he leaves again. He reaches across the table for the napkins that sit beneath their cutlery, sliding one in front of her before writing on the one in front of himself behind his other hand, hiding whatever he’s doing until he folds the paper.

“I want you to write down the name that’s on the top of your list. Then we’re gonna close our eyes and shuffle them up and pick one.”

“How do you know I have a list?” She frowns, taking the pen when he offers it over to her.

“Because you make a list for the pros and cons of what takeout we’re ordering, Poppy. Of course you have a list to name our daughter.”

She rolls her eyes, covering her napkin as she pauses with a hovered pen. 

She does have a list. And she has a definitive number one.

It hadn’t even been an option before the summer, but she’s found herself imagining the name more and more over the past few weeks. Embroidered on blankets, written into birthday cards for the boys, etched into a personalised wooden bookcase like the kind she had as a little girl.

Nico is right. She isn’t going to be Cheeto forever.

“You know,” Poppy leans back to hide her paper as she writes her name down, her legs angled toward his as his hand strokes softly again up her calf, his napkin clutched tight in his other hand. “Most people don’t pick out baby names on their first date.”

“This isn’t our first date,” he scoffs, eyes narrowing at her as she folds her own. “We’ve been on dates before.”

“Name one.” Her head tilts as she challenges him, eyes meeting his as she waits for him to come up with something. 

“All those times we grabbed dinner together back in Jersey,”

“Not dates.”

“There were several candles lit, Poppy.” Nico frowns, and Poppy’s lips twist as the crease between his eyebrows deepens as he thinks back on it. “All those times we got food before or after your scans, and movie nights at your place with takeout-,”

“Not dates. You have to specifically ask for those to have been dates, they were more like hang-outs.” She repeats, a hand reaching out to place itself on his knee, thumb rubbing against the linen of his pants, countering before he can bite back, “But that’s okay, I like this being our first. We’re making our own order.”

“What like getting pregnant before we’re in a relationship?”

“Exactly. Structure is boring. I like the idea of waking up and you deciding today’s the day to put me in your will and tomorrow’s the day to learn my middle name.”

“I thought you didn’t have a middle name.”

Poppy smiles, close-lipped and big, like she’s holding in laughter as she reaches up to caress his face. She kind of doesn’t want to burst his bubble - sweet, naive but well-intentioned Nico, who thinks he knows her like the back of his hand - but she wants to prove her point, more. “Giselle. After my Nanna Gigi.” 

“Poppy Giselle Jensen?” He asks, mouth agape as she nods. “You’re telling me I knocked you up before I even knew your full name?”

“Way to make it sound romantic,” she mocks, just as he had, earlier on the beach, tucking his hair behind his ear and shuffling a little in her seat, legs tangling even more with his under the table. “I think it’s cool that we get to learn new things about each other all the time.” 

“What have you learned about me?” His voice drops an octave, thumb stroking at her skin in an attempt to distract, but she isn’t giving in to him.

“I spent a week with your mom and sister while you were training out in Tenerife, babe, I know all your secrets from all the photo albums we went through.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yeah,” she smirks, “Little blonde baby Nico with his big, pretty brown eyes and his bowl cut. I saw everything.”

“That’s not fair,” he pouts, grasping at her ankle, “You have the upper hand.”

“You saw me with my head in a toilet bowl for like 3 months straight, I think we’re even.”

“Speaking of,” he places his folded napkin down onto the table and slides it beside hers, “Close your eyes, I’ll mix them up.”

Poppy closes her eyes, but pouts a little as she hears him shuffle the napkins around. There was no speaking of - she was talking about puking. That wasn’t necessarily speaking of their daughter. He’s just deflecting attention from his bowl cut, she thinks, but she has extensive plans for revisiting that one. Preferably with backup, when their daughter is old enough to join in.

“Alright, now I’m gonna close my eyes, and you mix them up.”

She peeks her eyes open to see his scrunched closed, and smiles to herself as she mixes the two identically folded napkins on the table, nudging him with her knee to let him know when she’s finished.

Her heart starts to pound all of a sudden when his eyes flutter open, those perfect brown eyes darting straight to hers, and she holds her breath in anticipation.

“You pick.” He tells her, sliding the two napkins toward her.

She does so without looking, unfolding it in her lap and holding it against her palm so that he can’t see.

Her lips twist as she eyes the familiar name, a sense of victory swirling in her gut until the reality of it crashes down on her, her eyebrows scrunching in confusion.

That isn’t her handwriting.

“It means ray of sunlight in Persian,” Nico tells her, peeking down at the name written in the palm of her hands, already knowing from her reaction which napkin she had chosen. “Or beautiful girl.”

“Like you know anything in Persian,” she scoffs, “It’s just your brother and sister’s names combined.”

Nico frowns, “What?” He whines in denial, a poor attempt at lying that automatically makes Poppy’s lips turn at the corners, “How would you even think of that? I’ll let you know, I did extensive research, okay, I-,”

Poppy opens the other napkin up where it sits on the surface of the table, the exact same name scrawled in the centre in her handwriting.

Lina.

Nico smiles, slow but big, cheeks dimpling and eyes crinkling, and Poppy feels those nerves in her stomach swirl into something else, entirely. Her hands start to shake and her eyes start to water as soon as his gaze meets hers, pride shining through every pore of his features.

“That’s fate, Mohn,” he breathes, leaning closer, his chair shuffling against the floor as he reaches out to caress her face softly, palms pressed at either side of her jaw. “We wrote the same name.”

“I know,” she whispers, feeling a tear slip out that he catches immediately with the pad of his thumb. 

“You wanna name her after my brother and sister?”

“I do.” She nods. Of course she does.

Not only has she seen how much they mean to Nico over the last couple of months, but they’ve started to mean as much to her, too - providing her with a sibling bond she’s never really experienced with Oli, one of unconditional love and support, admiration and affection.

She wants her daughter to embody that too.

To be a beacon of love.

A ray of sunlight.

“Lina Cheeto Hischier.”

Nico’s dimpled smile turns into laughter that erupts from the depths of his belly, and fills Poppy with elation, her body turning to jelly as he pulls her in until their lips press together, giggling against each others mouths until Nico feels the need to part, his head leaning down toward Poppy’s bump, where their daughter lays once again, butt to the front, ready to cause her mother a night of grief. 

“Don’t worry Lina-bug,” he whispers, eyes drifting up to meet Poppy’s, her heart soaring at the sweet, definitely pre-meditated nickname. “We’ll work on the middle name.”

“Maybe something Persian,” Poppy scoffs, her own neck craning to speak toward her stomach, her hand falling to stroke it at the side, “Considering your daddy’s such an expert, all of a sudden.”

“I thought you might need convincing,” he chuckles, “I promise I looked it up.”

He leans in to kiss her again.

“I love you,” she whispers against his lips, “So much.”

“I love you more.”

Next Chapter

Taglist: @alwaysclassyeagle @bunbunbl0gs @idgaf-if-youre-here @youflowerr-youfeast @thearchersstuff @bellsdi0r @wonderheartz @jjgsunflower @butterflies35 @kenziepickle @josierosie @laheyxlover @mrsmattytkachuk @dasiysthings (sorry if your tag hasn't worked btw)

[blocksgame]

Tips on character voices when writing fic

This is written in mind for people writing fic in MCYT/QSMP/DSMP/Life series/etc kind of fandoms. But if anyone finds it useful for anything else, well then, hell yeah.

Character voice is big in all, uh, fiction, and mimicking it in any fanwork is big. But I think it’s especially big in these fandoms where the voices are so distinct – it’s usually how a Real Person Somewhere (the streamer) talks, versus something very scripted that you’d see in a TV show or novel. And it can be a big difference in your character sounding generic versus really feeling true to the original.

Listen to a bunch of your subject talking. If you want to write a character well, watch vods from their point of view, or episodes where they show up a bunch. Take note of what they say and how.

2. If you don’t know how to start doing that: try literally writing down what they say. Transcribe an actual exchange in fic-format. You probably won’t want to publish a literal exchange from canon, but it will give you a sense of how to physically write what they say.

3. If you do this (or just pay attention to how they talk), you will get a lot of: Stumbling, pauses, repeating words, filler words, weird sentence constructions, fragments, etc. I love em! Here’s something that comes through in improv much more than in novels or movies: Most people, even very charismatic people, are not very eloquent when they speak. Writing out conversations or sentences will give you a sense of the unique and delightful way in which your subject is not eloquent. vvvvv way more under cut vvvvv

(People use a LOT of filler/etc when they speak. It’s reasonable to cut back on this if it’s interfering with a nice-looking or readable result. I believe this is the eternal struggle of people who write transcripts – you want the transcript to be accurate, but there are also a lot of things you can obviously simplify and not lose the meaning. So you’ll end up falling somewhere on this spectrum either way. But I do think a lot of mediocre/generic fic dialogue is very stylized – it doesn’t sound like your guy because your guy literally wouldn’t say that. They would say it worse and more confusingly.)

(I’m serious, if you’ve never sat down with a short non-completely-scripted clip or real conversation or whatever and just written out exactly what was said, do it. It will make you better at writing.)

4. Wonda-cat made a really incredible list [link] of characterizing speech patterns for the Dream SMP members. But you can also do your own reconnaissance and come up with your own patterns, common phrases, etc.

5. You do not have to get EVERYTHING right. You’re not going to, like, get so deep into the speaker’s brain that you can produce “exactly what they would have said if they were somehow in your fic.” That is impossible. You’re just trying to evoke a character, and if you get a few turns of phrase to ring true, you’re doing great.

6. A lot of these people are popular because they are hilarious. Include jokes. Yes, even if your thing is angsty or serious. A lot of the most serious lore I can think of from, e.g., the Dream SMP or 3rd Life or the QSMP - the really story-defining, life-and-death moments - were absolutely hysterical. If you’re writing characters who are usually funny, then add some humor. It can heighten angst via contrast and a sense of realism. Ask yourself what a funny streamer would make jokes about if they were possessing a character in this situation.

7. Some people have the mystical ability to “hear” character voices in their head, and read things in their voice. If you can, do this with all of your dialogue during the editing process. This won’t always get you there, but sometimes it can catch things that sound wrong by invoking "that's really hard to imagine them saying". If you don’t have this power, try recruiting a friend who does.

8. So there’s dialogue and then there’s narration that’s still from a character’s point of view. I’ve mostly given you tips about dialogue, but a lot of this is also true for narration. IMO, narration is less about phrasing things the way the subject would, and more about recreating the way they think. I don’t have concrete rules on how to do this, but here is my wisdom:

You can get eloquent again - narration is more of an abstract and artistic process than dialogue.

Spend time with your subject’s source material.

Pay attention to what they notice and care about. How do you think they think?

Don’t be afraid to get weird with it.

That last one also applies to all art ever.

9. MCYT tends to give you a great boon you don’t see in other media: what the speaker says to their chat/audience when nobody else is listening. This can be incredibly characterizing even if you’re writing a story where people don’t have chats. It’s your person talking about their thought processes and feelings! Mine that shit.

10. Some questions that might help guide both characterizing narration and dialogue (that you’d get from dialogue):

How open are they about their feelings?

How often do they lie? What do they lie about?

What kind of metaphors do they use, if any?

How quickly does their mood change?

How can you tell when they’re in different moods?

What kind of things do they pay attention to?

How formal is their speech?

11. Finally, this is a little odd, but I find it’s much, much easier to write a character that sounds good if I, the author, like them and am rooting for them at least a little bit. If a character needs to be there who you don’t love, try to love them. Or at least get a sense of what other people love about them. It just makes everything else easier. I swear to god.

Happy writing out there!

[tastywormfood]

Ive tried to get my feelings about Moominvalley s4 into words, but im having a really hard time even accepting them. But ill try!

So here's my thoughts in Moominvalley s4.

Im 23 now and i remember being 12 - 15 figuring out my identity, and the only "representation" in mrdia being basically either "Bury your gays" trope or just queerbaiting. I grew up on a base level thinking i wasnt allowed to exist, and if i still dared to, tragedy would be my only birth right.

I believed i wasnt allowed to live a happy, soft AND queer life, cause no media i had seen had ever showed me that, that was a possibility.

Both the 90's Moomin series and Moominvalley 2019 are my comfort shows. I fall asleep to them at night, i listen to them like a podcast while im working or outside, they even calm my panic attacks. I collect cups, plushies, i collect the Comics and even some of the books.

I have 3 Moomin tattoos. This universe means a damn lot to me, and to thousands of ppl world wide.

As a queer person i find incredible comfort in Tove Janssons work, and you have to be a fool to be unable to see the way Snufkin and Moomintroll are written together.

I have been following this show since early 2020 and have watched interview to interview, ive listened to the podcast more times than i can count, and they knew what they were doing.

From the beginning of the show they deliberately wrote Snufkin and Moomin to be something more, they even confess In a BTS that their Moomin might like Snufkin more than Snorkmaiden. Even the podcast talked about it!! We are not crazy!!!

I feel incredibly gaslit by the entire situation, and suddenly im 14 again being told im reading too much into it.

Idk what happened inbetween S3 and 4, but it felt like all the love and care that came from the show, just disappeared?

Ignoring Snufmin for a second, every episode this season felt like a filler. It has no plot, followed up on nothing from the last seasons, and had an extreme amount of loose ends.

The former seasons, especially s1 and 2 has such amazing writting, character development and just a feeling of patience and of softness, i would watch it and think everything would be okay... But this season felt stripped of every inch of the care Tove Jansson put into her universe.

I want to talk a little about Moomintroll.

One of Moomins character Arcs is his want to grow up, its his need to be taken seriously and his need for independence and adventure. His need to step out of his dads shadow, and to be his own moomin! The character development he had built up through out the seasons, completely and utterly disappeared. There is no trace of anything in s4.

He is right back to where he started in s1, not being able to stand up for himself and say no, not having the confidence to go on adventures and right back to idealizing his dad. If anything this entire season felt like a prequal! Cause at least s1 Moomintroll wanted to learn, and was activily trying to change.

Moomintroll truly felt like a side character this season, i dont even think he has any important moments. Unless you count Comet in Moominvalley (which i dont), where all his independence has disappeared. Moominpapa literally has to push him out. He made one decision that eps, which was to float down the river instead of walking, which ended up being the wrong and slower way.

The regression Moomintroll went threw this season is heartbreaking, and thats not my Moomin.

Focusing for a bit on Snufkin, this season felt like a slap to the face.

They know that Snufkin is one of their most popular characters right? If not the most popular. If anything he is at least in the top 3, not only in Moominvalley but in the rest of the moominverse.

So why did this season feel like Snufkin erasure?

He was barely in it, and when he was all of that glow that normally radiats from him was all gone. He felt like the husk of a character.

This version of Snufkin was on of my favs, cause you could actually see his flaws and disagree with his actions. He had room to grow, and he did, he truly did.

He learned from Moomin just like Moomin learned from him. Their characters Arcs co align witch each other, their relationship and interactions are the pillars of the entire show. Snufkin and Moomintroll are what make the show proceed.

Finding the 2019 show for the first time as an 18 year old gave me confirmation and trust, that i was allowed to live a soft and slow life as a queer person. If Moomintroll and Snufkin could have that kind of beautiful queer slow burn romance, then i had a chance to as well.

They knew that a big part of their viewers are queer, and they knew how popular Snufmin was. They knew what kind of ppl they attracted, or they wouldnt have made it like that.

All the soft moments, the longing, the zoom in on eye contact, the zoom in on hand holding. They said trust us, they said be patient, and then they threw everything they had been building up out and set fire to it.

We got Queerbaited, and i truly havnt felt this feeling for a while. We got actual queer shows now, ofc they all end up being cancelled! But they exist!

This show felt like it was crafted with so much love and care, that i completely let my guard down. The entire queer Moomin community did a 5 year long trustfall, just to hit the floor the last second.

Season 4 of Moominvalley felt empty. It felt lost of all care and love. The first 3 seasons felt handcrafted by warm hands, season 4 felt machine made. Easy to digest, with no real soul.

Season 4 of Moominvalley feels souless.

I have chosen to live in a world where Comet in Moominvalley is a prequal to s4 and that s4 is a prequal to s1. The true last season was S3 and Moominvalley ended with Snufkin and Moomin walking arm in arm. Thats the only way i can Rationalize everything.

I have so much more to say, but ill stop here for now. Hope all of you are doing okay<3

[tobiasdrake]

Hi! Absolutely adore your DBZ analyses, thank you so much - just spent a delightful time reading them all. I was wondering, since you've commented on Chi-Chi and Goku's marriage, what do you have to say about Vegeta and Bulma's relationship? (I've always been entranced by it - mostly because as with all his romances, Toriyama had the wisdom not to show any of it onscreen. But I'd love to know your thoughts about it.)

Bulma and Vegeta are a match made in Hell, and they deserve each other. (Which is to say yes, I love this ship.)

Hooking Bulma up with Vegeta was a hell of a narrative swerve. Generally speaking, stories rarely do this; They rarely let characters break up once they're already invested in a romance, unless it's supposed to be like a love triangle thing.

And Bulma? Bulma was invested. At least, to a degree.

This was the birth of the original Bulma romance that ran through about half of the manga. Two teens interesting in the opposite sex suddenly realize the availability of the other and a relationship is born.

Toriyama says he's bad at writing romance but to be honest, this has always hit me as more believable than your typical drawn-out five-seasons-of-pining Will They/Won't They affair. I'm a girl. You're a boy. Wanna go out and see what clicks?

And these two... these two do not click. We only really see their relationship from Bulma's perspective but it's clear that these two are miserable together.

The manga sorta takes Bulma's side, in that we never really get to hear Yamcha's opinion about their relationship one way or another. When he's around, all he wants to do is talk shop about martial arts. Since Toriyama doesn't like to write romance, we simply don't see much of it from them. What little we do hear about it comes from Bulma complaining about how miserable she is.

Bulma is pretty much always pissed off whenever the relationship is in focus at all.

Anime filler tends to take Yamcha's side instead, portraying him as a put-upon victim of Bulma's jealousy and abuse. A nice guy who doesn't deserve the way she treats him.

It's not hard to buy into this interpretation of their relationship since, as noted, we rarely get anything from Yamcha with regard to his relationship to women or Bulma specifically but we know Bulma's a lot. It's easy to accept Bulma as the "bad guy" of this relationship because. Like. Remember that time she enslaved a sentient being? Good times.

Though one particular moment from Yamcha later on kinda stands out as a bit of a retroactive Yikes.

Yeah. Uh. Threatening violence against a woman for rejecting his bro is a bit of a Yikes. Is this who we were supposed to see Yamcha as all this time? Because, if so, it might have helped to let him opine about the relationship more. Just saiyan.

According to Toriyama in interview, Yamcha and Bulma ultimately broke up because she caught Yamcha cheating on her. I guess that's what him being "popular with girls" was supposed to mean: Once he got over his gynophobia and found confidence with the opposite sex, Yamcha became a player.

But that doesn't necessarily come across from the statement, "Bulma can't stand that Yamcha's popular with girls." A lot of fans took that to mean girls just like him for no reason, and Bulma's unreasonably jealous about it. The anime took that position too.

Note that the "Yamcha is popular with girls" thing isn't helped by the fact that we never see it on-panel because he's only ever talking shop when he's around. But we do see a wandering eye from Bulma often enough.

There's nothing wrong with enjoying the aesthetic appeal of another party even when you're in a monogamous relationship, but it doesn't really present the "Other party is a womanizer and cheater" case when you're the only one ever seen doing this.

So it feels like there's a lot about Yamcha and Bulma's relationship that never made it to print yet influenced later decisions. Those decisions ended up being controversial because the foundation for those decisions was never laid. Here, Toriyama's disdain for writing romance worked against him.

But ultimately, regardless of whose side you take, it doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter who the "bad guy" is. A healthy relationship does not have a "bad guy" in it.

Whether or not Yamcha cheated, whether or not Bulma's just an unreasonably jealous hell-beast, it doesn't actually matter. What matters is that once you reach the point where you're taking sides over which party is the most obnoxious asshole and I hate you and I wish we never met... this relationship is not working for anybody.

It doesn't matter who the bad guy is. It doesn't matter who deserves the blame for this relationship being a toxic shithole. That there is blame to throw around in the first place is the problem. Every relationship has its ups and downs but if one party is constantly miserable for years and has possibly been looking for an escape hatch since year 1, that's not a little tiff.

What matters is that these two are not working out. Any time we see their relationship in focus, they are miserable together. The anime tried to do some patchwork on that with audience reception by giving them some cute moments as well, but because those moments aren't canon the pair remained miserable.

And then this happened.

Despite everything, I think we all assumed that Bulma and Yamcha were going to work it out. Fictional relationships are often portrayed as tumultuous. To a writer, nothing says true love like being constantly miserable and despising every waking moment you spend with your awful, nagging ball-and-chain of a spouse. That's just. Like. What the straights think romance is. It's weird.

I think we all thought that was going to be the deal here too. And then Trunks came along and said, "Nope, actually, they finally severed the cord."

Again, Toriyama says he's bad at writing romance but holy shit, the toxic and miserable relationship actually ended. The two characters involved who only got together out of loneliness and desperation later found they were incompatible with each other. That's so real. Much moreso than a lot of fictional romances.

Instead, we got the absolute crack ship that is Vegeta and Bulma. What a wild-ass revelation for Trunks to drop.

Like. Until the end of the Namek arc, this was the only time these two characters even met.

She also saw Vegeta for like two seconds here.

That was it. That was their entire history together until Goku defeated Frieza while Kaio sent everyone to Earth. But that's when everything changed for Vegeta.

Stranded on Earth with no ship, no affiliations, no ability to leave the planet and nowhere to go or be and no obligations to anyone but himself, Vegeta's circumstances were wildly different than they'd ever been before. He had become one of the Namekian refugees.

And Bulma was offering refuge.

Hard to resist, indeed. That moment is absolutely hilarious in retrospect. Bulma rolled a Nat 20 on that charisma check. It's pretty clear who the instigator of this relationship was.

Like. It needs to be stated that at this point, the only thing Bulma knew about Vegeta was that he tried to kill them all multiple times, and also he's kinda hot. But. Like.

It's Bulma. Anyone who doesn't expect this from her by now either hasn't been paying attention or started watching the English dub of the anime when they did Z first.

So, naturally, Vegeta is a kind and loving man and became a phenomenal husband and fa--

Wait. No. I got my notes mixed up. It says here Vegeta's a rotten dirty bastard. Like. Chronically. He has Supreme Dickshit Syndrome. It's genetic.

Most of Bulma and Vegeta's developing relationship happens offscreen. From what snippets we get, Vegeta has a tendency to vanish during the day, but he still lives at Capsule Corp so Bulma sees him around.

By the end of the three-year timeskip, it's official. Or semi-official. Yamcha and Bulma broke up at some point during that timeskip and Bulma's given birth to Trunks.

As for Vegeta, he's evidently moved out of Capsule Corp and into his own place.

I guess he's still keeping contact with Bulma since she knows what his intentions are. Not to mention he found his tranquility during these three years, though it's somewhat ambiguous as to what exactly brought that peace to his heart.

But the relationship is off to a rocky start nonetheless. Clearly something went down between Vegeta and Bulma that drove Vegeta out of Capsule Corp. To. Uh. Somewhere.

I like to imagine Vegeta living in some shitty West City apartment he rents off a stipend Bulma's sending him that he refuses to openly acknowledge. Like, room 101 is a down-on-his-luck tax accountant, room 102 is a couple with a kid trying to make ends meet off two retail workers' salaries, and then room 103 is Vegeta, Prince of All Saiyans. Sometimes he goes to community events and pretends he isn't having fun.

No lie, I would absolutely watch that as a sitcom.

As for Vegeta himself, he's still a rotten dirty bastard.

Worth noting that Vegeta's saying this as a Super Saiyan which means he's drunk on the form's enhanced aggression. But. Still. Vegeta is an absolute monster being dragged kicking and screaming into a pleasant life that he'll one day resent himself for enjoying. This is his arc moving forward.

It's not so much a redemption arc as it is a domestication arc. The uniquely evil even by Saiyan standards Vegeta is gradually being changed by his new terrestrial life. He doesn't want to own up to how much he enjoys it here. Seven years later, he's still desperate to avoid owning up to it.

He doesn't want to be happy here. He doesn't want a loving wife and a son who looks up to him and the most lavish home wealth can afford him and easy, comfortable days spent with friends and loved ones by his side. He doesn't want a happy ending.

But it's like Bulma warned him: Dragon Ball's queen bee is hard to resist.

Welcome back to Capsule Corp, Vegeta. We hardly even noticed you were gone. Honestly, Future Trunks deserves a lot of the credit for this; Watching him die at the Cell Games was what flipped the switch in Vegeta's head that he wants the family he and Bulma have spawned together.

Sure is a good thing we have Dragon Balls because this is a hell of a time to suddenly decide you love your son. But we see the consequences of that seven years later, since Vegeta moved back into Capsule Corp from... I don't know, wherever he went. They're gonna miss him at the next community poolside summer BBQ event for all tenants.

Part of what makes Vegeta and Bulma work, I think, is that they're on the same page about one crucial point. For Bulma, there is one person who will always take precedent in her life above all others. Romance comes and romance goes, but this is the relationship that matters most to her.

Especially when it comes to martial arts and fighting. Bulma doesn't know a lot about the subject, but she knows that Son Goku is her #1. She has no reservations about saying that to her lover's face either.

When fists start flying, Bulma knows who she's rooting for. If Goku's involved, then it's not her guy. That's. Just. Something that anyone who wants to be with her has to be willing to understand. The single most important relationship in Bulma's life will always be her friendship with Goku.

And the thing about Vegeta is... He kind of agrees? Like. See above, re: I wanted Babidi to destroy my feelings for Bulma so that I could become the warrior that can fight with you, Kakarot.

As much as Goku will always be Bulma's #1, he'll also always be Vegeta's #1. He even gets included into Vegeta's fond farewell to the family he loves.

Goku is basically the platonic third in a two-person polycule. This is the second marriage that this poor ace plays a vital role in despite having no real interest in romance whatsoever.

Bulma is selfish, spiteful, petty, and vain. At one point, DBS: Broly directly compares her to Frieza; A comparison that manages to be unbelievably unflattering to both participants.

They're the same picture. A revelation that would probably be horrifying to both.

And Vegeta. Especially Vegeta. But. Like. She warned you she was irresistible. You didn't take her seriously and now look where you are. Married to the She-Frieza. Maybe you should think about your life choices.

This is just. So much fun. As I said at the outset, Bulma and Vegeta are a match made in Hell who make it work because they're both similar brands of awful.

As for Yamcha, it's a little known fact but Yamcha rebounded and moved on with his life. He stops having much story relevancy after he leaves Capsule Corporation so we see very little of his private life from there. After retiring from martial arts and splitting up with Bulma, Yamcha's left without any story hooks to keep him involved.

But there was this interesting moment, when he realized they had a Shenron wish to spare.

After Krillin comes up with something better to use the wish on, he takes it back and claims it was a joke.

This is, surprisingly, a point of contention in the fandom as some of Yamcha's fans prefer the idea that he died miserable and alone after Bulma ruined his life by leaving him. This takeback gets pointed to as proof that he made up his girlfriend entirely. However, in context, it's clear that a) he's trying to brush off his earlier attempt at making a petty wish and b) the thing he's transparently pretending was a joke is the necklace wish, not the existence of his new girlfriend.

Like Bulma, Yamcha moved on with his life after the break up of their miserable relationship. And that was the final word that was ever uttered on Yamcha's romantic prospects, because this was the last time he was ever meaningfully involved with anything at all.

[vidavalor]

I've had to disconnect from my dash because of all the negativity; I honestly do not get why people are acting like a semblance of justice+a movie is the worst thing in the world?

I'm mourning for the full six-episode season we lost because ng couldn't pass the utmost basic sub-zero bar for not acting like scum and of course I wish amazon had kicked him out and then sprung for it anyway (and honestly, as long as you're blaming the right person, I think it's fine to feel upset? We deserved better, the cast and crew deserved, Terry deserved better, and this one guy ruins it for everyone because the bar was buried six feet deep beneath the ground and he still managed to go lower, and that does suck, and it is miserable and unfair, so take a moment if you need it 🤷‍♀️) but let's face it, we got off lucky. Arguably, considering this was a standalone novel from the nineties, that then got made, in one of the best book adaptations I've ever seen, into a limited standalone tv miniseries (and, again, emphasising the standalone here, so even if it all goes to hell in a handbasket, we'll still always have S1 and the book; people have been ignoring the Jurassic Park sequels for nearly three decades), and then got a surprise sequel, we were pretty lucky the whole way through.

And regarding the whole what if it's bad thing, I was always going to be worried: I was anxious long before this shit went down, and I was anxious before S2 and even S1, as well. It's not like we ever had any guarantee it was going to be good beforehand either, and at this point, knowing what we do now, I'm not at all sure I'd have trusted ng to write this anyways. So while, yeah sure, I'm maybe a little more anxious now, I trust Michael and David with these characters and I trust Rob and Rhianna with Terry's legacy and story and that they wouldn't have fought so hard for this ending unless they planned to keep fighting and thought they could pull it off. Isn't the problem with this kind of thing normally that what happnes is the creator who cares deeply about the work gets pulled in favour of someone out-of-touch who cares not a jot about the story and needs to leave their own grubby fingerprints all over it? More the other way around here, no?

Anyway, what I also wanted to say was that I really appreciated your 'think of it as the final two episodes of season two' (and all your takes on this situation so far, very level-headed and optimistic, thank you). I mean, you're right, and it's hardly wildly out-there for a series to finish on a feature-length special, and although the filler material in S2 and the compression of S3 maybe means it doesn't exactly resemble what the second book would have been, it was only ever meant to be two books. (Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed S2 and was very glad to get it, even though I am a book/S1 fan and also had the most fun in that time fandom pre/post/around the time of the S1 release, but why does it exist? Ego? You can't tell me you couldn't have fit the important parts of S2 into one season with the S3 plotline.)

Basically, I'm grieving the could-have-beens (imagine if he'd been exposed way earlier and the TP estate had had control of this whole production from the very start!) and I'm a little worried that that hurt'll stick around no matter how good S3 is - which I need to fix, because that's more power over my favourite show and what it means to me that I want to give anyone, let alone someone like that - but at the end of day, I do think it definitely can be done with what we have, and I'm choosing to be hopeful it'll be done well, because, well, why wouldn't I?

(I will say this hasn't been great for my faith in humanity, because I really want to believe not all men are shit and some of them are making it very difficult right now, but that's an entirely different problem and so far believing most people are mostly good has always prevailed in the end so. y'know. we'll get there. might reread discworld, that's always good for that.)

Sorry for venting all this at you! I just kinda felt the need to write it all down once to get it off my chest... have a snack on me? I'm partial to cherry tomatoes, green melon and mandarines at the moment (I stop eating salads in winter, which means I default to eating even more fruit) but I can also offer homemade baked goodies fresh from this morning? 🥧

Hi there. 💕 You are welcome to vent away & thank you for the delicious-sounding snacks and kind words. I'm glad my posts on the movie boosted your spirits about it. I agree with and can relate to almost everything that you said here so assume that anything that I don't address just has a 'yes, absolutely' nod happening. 🙂‍↕️

The one thing I want to touch on here is S2 and this idea of it being "filler" that you mentioned that I think might not be quite accurate. I think you (and anyone else who reads this) might feel more enthused about the idea of a good ending in 90 minutes after reading this so hopefully this'll be another way that I can help?

On why S2 is really the whole story and actually had a lot more going on in every way than S1...

Ok, I'm going to explain something that drives writers like myself bonkers 😂 and that is how some readers or viewers of fictional stories mix up plot and story.

Nothing grinds our gears than reading things like "filler" and "unnecessary subplots" because, while everyone is within their rights to have an opinion on written works, 95% of the time, the person who says phrases like this isn't talking about the quality of the work but of its very existence. They're saying "why did we have to read/watch this? it didn't connect to anything" and that's where they are very, very, very... argh, just tell them, Crowley...

...thank you, dear. Right, so, why is it wrong?

Because what many people who don't write don't understand about subplots and more character-driven story arcs is that the writers sat down and decided to do that stuff for very, very specific story reasons. Readers and viewers mistake plot for story. Plot only exists in service of story and, so, all plots exist for a purpose in the story. They're all relevant. In fact, the stuff people usually label as "filler" in a story is really exactly where they should be looking to figure out what the story is saying. If you're big mad about all this time you spent with Maggie and Nina in S2, I'd say you might not still understand what S2 was about because you won't understand Aziraphale's story without understanding both Maggie and Nina's struggles in S2, for example.

A story is the whole, overall thing. It's the meanings, themes, and messages in the work. It's what's being said. It's the ideas being put forth by the piece. It's what it's about. It's different from plot, which is just the stuff the writers are making the characters do or not do in order to tell the story that they are looking to tell. Story is the art; plot is a tool used to make that art. Fiction writers can come at their story from almost anywhere to convey what it is that they are trying to say so there is meaning in the fact that they are choosing to tell their stories the way that they are telling them. They came up with these ideas for reasons.

When you dismiss stuff as filler, you're saying that it's lesser than more in-your-face and bigger plots (when, often, it's very much not), and you're telling a writer how they should have written their own story-- most of the time, without even fully seeing the ending of that story or giving any consideration to why it is that the writer wanted you to read or watch the stuff you're saying wasn't necessary. I'm not arguing that every story is perfect but you aren't getting anywhere near close to being able to evaluate a story if you're not willing to dive into what you were given and consider why it was that you were given those things and what they might mean.

Until the main question that you're asking about every single aspect of a story is "what is this saying?", you're not really fully engaging with a work. You won't get there by dismissing what the artists are telling you is important.

The secret sauce to interpreting fiction are subplots, actually. They exist to help highlight the themes of the main story, often in a slightly more direct way. If you want to understand Good Omens, starting with Ineffable Bureaucracy is actually one of the best ways to get at the core of the themes of the story. It's far from wasted time in the story.

There's actually a funny nod to the importance of subplots in 1941 when Aziraphale references Sophocles, the playwright who basically created the concept of the supporting character whose story mirrors and parallels the main character(s). The mention of Sophocles shows up in S2, the season that brings Gabriel more fully into his purpose as exactly that.

The reason why S2's plot is centered around the honestly pretty easily solvable mystery as to what's happened to Gabriel is because Gabriel, from the get-go, has been the entire story distilled down.

If you follow nothing but Ineffable Bureaucracy in Good Omens, you're going to be closer to getting what it's about and where it's going and what its end game is than you are if you are dismissing it as wasted time when we only have few episodes left. If you haven't yet seen the secret wisdom in Jim-- not to mention understand that Jim and Gabriel are the same person-- then you're probably wigging out more about the movie.

You likely think that S2 was wasted on stuff like Gabriel, or Maggie and Nina's romance, when they should have been getting to Armageddon and The Second Coming already!

You haven't yet noticed that Armageddon has more than one meaning in the series.

It's not always the literal destruction of Earth but also a person's own life crisis. We are all worlds of our own and those worlds can be put at risk if we don't let others in and take care of ourselves and those around us.

When you realize this, you can start to see that S1 goes hard with a freight train of plot all over the place that is related to Armageddon in a more Biblical, apocalyptic sense while it establishes its universe for us but that, once we know how it all works, we can get something like S2... a time where we can step back and start using Armageddon in the more figurative way that the story is also presenting it.

We need to because the story isn't about Heaven or Hell-- it's about being a person. S2 is emphasizing the deeper aspects of the themes and rolling that out at a pace more in line with a person having a few days of inner crisis. When you see that Aziraphale's crisis is the point then you can see how S1 can be about The Four Horsepeople riding to the end of the world and S2 can show War (inner conflict), Pollution (mental health issues), and Famine (symptoms of the other two; lack of food and pleasure and connection; self-starvation and self-denial) as a mental health crisis.

The point is that if you're thinking these characters need to come together to overthrow Heaven and Hell and get to the South Downs Cottage and there's no time slajdflkfwjlkejlje!?!?, then you aren't realizing that not every revolution involves guns and bombs.

People all over the world can start a love train that's far more effective. You might think a subplot about The Hellhound and The Ginger Cat learning to play nice and that they have a fuckton in common and should maybe bury the hatchet and just become eternal bffs already is filler but Crowley and Gabriel aligning is set up for the end game. It's strength in numbers and finding peace and family. They can't overthrow Heaven/Hell without help and Gabriel is the Supreme Archangel. They literally will never have a South Downs Cottage ending without a plot that helped Crowley and Aziraphale see that Gabriel and Beez are on their side.

This is the revolution in Good Omens:

It will take all the characters coming together to overthrow Heaven/Hell and set up something new for us to get a happy ending and we absolutely will. S2 is Gabriel-centric because Gabriel is the key to all of the characters getting a peaceful ending and because he's a split-directly-down-the-middle mirror of both Crowley and Aziraphale. In a season that is more about Aziraphale's inner Armageddon than about an external threat, Gabriel is vital to telling that story. The plot of S2 is every bit as important to the story as S1. I'd argue that it's even more important because takes the time to go at the themes in a slower, deeper way. It needs to because it's a story of a fall that sets up for a story in S3 of a recovery from one.

Good Omens is the absolute perfect combination of a show that is both very, very detail-oriented and full of depth while also being, secretly, an incredibly simple story. I do not mean simple in a negative way but in a chef's kiss sort of way. Simple in a tight and elegant sort of way. This is something that I think some people might not see when they're theorizing but it's something to keep in mind ahead of the movie. Not just because the movie is shorter-- this would have been relevant if we were having a longer S3, too.

Good Omens has a very engaged fan base that looks for the details, yes. *raises hand* I'm one of them lol. And there will be plenty to pour over in the movie, but... the big thing to keep in mind is that your theory needs to be something that is simple, that can be explained in under a handful of scenes, tops, and that is focused on where Aziraphale's story arc is going above anything and everything else.

If you're beginning with time loops and the birth of a new antichrist baby, I'm telling you from ages of experience reading and writing stories, you're going to be way off. If you are over here composing theories of the story that you are arguing are correct and this theory involves, idk... *makes something up* Crowley is really Elvis and Elvis is really The Bentley and when a rainbow hits Whickber Street at exactly 4 minutes into the new season, Satan will be revealed to really be Jesus, I think maybe you might be missing the point of the details that the show has given already. Like the plot, these details exist to reinforce the themes of the story. Story beats everything else-- it's what this is all about.

And what Good Omens is about? Is best summed up by Michael Sheen, in this single sentence that I really, really agree with and have paraphrased more than once in posts:

Good Omens is about the business of living. It's about the human experience, which is the experience of being a person. Everything related to Heaven and Hell and good and evil and Armageddon and supernatural things is plot that only exists to highlight a story about the complexities of being a person.

The supernatural is human and the human is supernatural.

That is what Good Omens is about.

While Crowley and Aziraphale are built as two halves of a whole and are both main characters, Aziraphale is the main character from a technical, story perspective, because he is the character whose story arc is driving both the plot and story forward. He's heading for a happy ending with Crowley in the South Downs by the end of the film. If you're making theories, start with what kind of plot would truly get him there and still fit with all of the themes of the story.

This 'it's about being a person' business is why if you look at S2 as filler and not as a season that is exploring the continuing themes on a deeper level, you're still worried about things like there being no time in a movie to show the story of a new antichrist kid being born or how they're going to fit the whole Second Coming into the movie. You don't yet see that Aziraphale parallels Adam and that being an antichrist is basically just being a person and that Aziraphale is presently the antichrist in the story. There is no antichrist child yet to be born. They won't be cutting it because it's not the story.

Armageddon since S2 has been Aziraphale's own personal one and the story from the end of S2 on is now how, if all the other characters can't come together to help him, it could also trigger Armageddon of the S1, Earth-destroying kind. It's tying a more literal Armageddon into a more figurative one. Because this story is about being a person so Armageddon is just metaphorical for going through a mental health crisis and shutting people out.

This story's themes include that every person matters and we all have to let others in and look out for one another. That there's strength in numbers. That found family and adopted family is as much family as biological family-- often, even more so. That labelling and categorizing people is bullshit and you should always open the cover and read the first sentences of people and help people whose stories begin with the same letters find one another. That it might be surprising who has things in common. It's about all of Heaven and Hell versus all of humanity, in the sense that ideas of being a perfect angel or being seen as an evil demon are concepts felt by human beings that get in the way of peace and healthy, happy living, but that fighting them is a common, human struggle, regardless of from where you come.

If you are too focused on the religious plot being the center of the film, you haven't yet seen the meaning of why the end of S1 was an eleven year old kid saving the world by telling off the bio-dad that was never there for him. You might be one of the people who thought this a silly, anti-climatic ending to that story, and don't yet realize that this is the entire story in a nutshell.

Adam can only reject Satan and keep the darkness at bay because he is surrounded-- here, literally-- by a family that supports him. He has good people for parents and was lucky enough to grow up with resources that all kids in this world should have. He has an absolutely terrific group of friends. He has this witch lady and her boyfriend and these two gay uncles that just showed up out of nowhere 😂 and his human incarnate self has what it needs to make it through this crisis, in this moment, even if he'll probably have others throughout his life, just like all of us. He's not evil incarnate and he doesn't have to be perfect-- he's just a person.

Aziraphale tells Adam this but struggles to see himself in the same way. That's what S2 is about.

S2 is about that other kid who, like Adam, breaks the season down into a single line of dialogue, David Tennant's apparent favorite from the season:

Jemimah knows who she is and she is happy to claim ownership over her art and contributions to the world. She's living her life with excitement and enthusiasm in a way that gets more complicated as we become traumatized adults. Crowley and Aziraphale struggle with this. They have been making a life together on Earth for thousands of years and each struggle, in their own ways, to truly accept that they are people who are allowed to have a life because they struggle to accept that they are people, just like everyone else.

Their story is about getting to a better place with that. That's really all Good Omens fundamentally is. That's why their ending is going to be to go live in a little cottage together that isn't a business that covers up an angelic embassy that covers up a secret love den. It's just their house-- theirs together for the life they're going to live openly together.

If you want some peace with the film, I'd advise throwing over your theories about The Second Coming and Armageddon needing to happen and antichrist kids and how Jesus fits into everything. Jesus in Good Omens is Crowley romancing Aziraphale at the crucifixion and Aziraphale using what Jesus said to Crowley to reject temptation as invitation to fuck him. I thought Jesus in a single scene or less was the most likely thing for S3 and the same holds for the movie. It's not the story. The only time The Second Coming is mentioned in S2 is by the villain and, to get there, Earth would have to first be destroyed. It won't be.

If the story is about being a messy human walking the Earth and we're in the end game now, then the story is about Aziraphale and only Aziraphale. Everything-- everything-- will be in service of Aziraphale's story arc. We already had just a few episodes with S3 and we now have even less time but the way this is going is still the same. The story is Aziraphale's fall and the other characters coming together to challenge Heaven to keep Aziraphale from eternity in Hell. That's how Armageddon is stopped this time around-- overthrowing Heaven with Aziraphale's fate as the motivation to take on The Metatron. It's nothing to do with Jesus. It's everything to do with Aziraphale.

When you see that, you can see how feasible that is in 90 minutes, with plenty of time for things like 1941, Part 3 and other flashbacks.

I think, when all is said and done, you might wind up appreciating S2 more after the film but you can get there already if you start looking at it less as meaningless fluff and start asking why it is that we were shown this story, in this way, and what that can tell us about the story we're watching.

[imbecominggayer]

Writing Advice: How To Write A Tight Story!!!

You are trying to write a story :D

BUT! The characters just feel so disconnected from each other that at this point they come from different genres. The plot lines just seem to be weaving less of a beautiful tapestry and more of a hairball. Nothing seems to be going together.

but fear not, for I am going to be giving advice today on how to connect your characters and plot thematically!

Today, we are pulling out our tool box and breaking out themes, motifs, and great writer shit!

A) Character Design :D

The trick to character design is to make everyone unique enough that they stand apart from eachother but cohesive enough you can look at them and say "yeah".

A trick that I use is to ground them in ~realism~

If your characters live in a cold weather, then obviously they're going to wear clothing that protects them from the cold. Now, there are circumstances that might permit your character to wear non-cold appropriate clothing like superpowers or species-related stuff but just grounding your characters into the setting and just saying "what would they need?" can just do amazing things for your characters.

Other things that cohesive-fy your characters is sharing a fundamental aesthetic but then having different branches of of these aesthetics. These aesthetics tend to also come with the setting!

Sci-Fi = Futuristic (Solarpunk, Cyberpunk, Cyberpop, Oceanpunk)

Fantasy = Nature (cottagecore, ravencore, dragoncore, etc.)

Slice of Life = Mundane Cozy (Academia, Clean Girl, Casual)

You get the point. Even the social outcasts will be using the same materials as the in-crowd uses, unless it's specialized material. The difference is in how they wear it. A social outcast's Sci-Fi outfit will probably be a bit tattered. A bit dystopian maybe. But it's still Sci-Fi!

Two characters can wear a crop top of the same material and still seem distinct enough if their backstories have them being distinct.

Differentiating characters is pretty easy. Have them share the same overall type of stuff and let the details weave the story.

B) Plot Lines

Look, there is no easy way to say this but you probably need to cut out some parts of your story.

Let me tell you, a plot is a summary of all of it's subplots. The goal of a subplot is to gradually build up these elements whether it be character arcs, character relationships and all that good shit so it can light a bigger fire.

It's just like a bonfire. The characters are the spark, the subplots are the logs, and the plot is the fire.

Ask yourself this:

Is there a way I can incorperate this character arc into a grander action-focused plot where I actively demonstrate this character's change?

Is there a way I can morph two subplots together so I can get both the benefits and the lessen load?

Is there a way I can give character responsibilities onto the well-developed characters I already have instead of just making new ones?

All of these questions can help chop off some of the bad filler that is weighing your story down. And also give your story a bit more breathing room so you can have all of those important quiet moments.

C) Themes :D

Let me tell you, having themes just makes my story that much more cohesive. It feels like there is this overarching tie between all of my characters that just makes the story feel that much more well-thoughtout.

A good example of characters being reflective of the overall theme of the show is "The World God Only Knows"! It's a harem anime that genuinely feels very well-thoughtout with the comedic dating sim parody elements and the deeper message about the fight with reality both bouncing off of each other.

It feels like a world wear the characters and the theme are both gently rocking the worldbuilding and story together.

Having themes allows me to identify potential character flaws within my cast, develop characters that I didn't really have an idea about, and the overall worldbuilding of the WIP.

Overall, my themes tend to read more like central ideas. It's less about a moral message in my opinion but an explanation.

Some of my lastest themes are:

" the horrors of love and understanding"

" the alienation of being not human in a world of humans"

"the burden of being forced into selflessness"

"the desire to no longer exist"

"the fantasy of controlling reality"

"the limitations of instinct"

I'll give you a quick summary of how each different theme impacted the characters and the storyline :D

"the horrors of love and understanding" inspired the storyline of being smothered in a Hive Mind and the desire to not be an individual anymore since it's so lonely being singular. It developed my main characters extensively.

"the alienation of being not human" was definitely uplifted by the fact that this is a superhero story about literal non-humans who may look and sometimes act human but will always be eternally aware of the chasm. It shaped my protagonists extensively.

"the burden of selflessness" inspired the motivation behind why Yituing became a villain. It also serves as the mantra for Nonkosi's character arc. The theme was eventually developed into a commentary on the Strong Black Woman

"the desire to not longer exist" was uplifted with heavy religious symbolism. This was demonstrated through an angel trying to use empathy as a way of self-imploding and an ex-pastor using invisibility to try and drive themself away from humanity.

"the fantasy of controllin reality" was developed in an isekai setting which definitely drove home the theme of literally escaping the necessary evils of reality for the simplicity of fantasy. All of the characters are inspired off of motivations protagonists tend to have which ultimately boiled down to a desire for control.

"the limitations of instinct" was a crtique on the argument that what's natural is somehow better. The main protagonists work with their instinctual existences with Nariman lacking in empathy and Hetrunmeass being an android who can literally turn off their feelings at any moment. They grow beyond who they were. They still are what they are but they are also something more.

[cripplecharacters]

Hello. I am writing a character with intellectual disability, and I have found your posts about that really helpful. Thank you for taking the time to make them.

I am trying to do research and write him well, and I was hoping you could give me some advice on how to do that. My problem is that I would like to describe the way he speaks and the sound of his voice, but I'm not sure how to do that respectfully.

What I would like to describe is the way he takes a little longer to complete his sentences, needs more time than others do to plan what he's going to say, and pronounces some sounds a bit differently because of motor skills issues. I want to honor his unique voice and also help readers understand that he is noticeably disabled.

Are there any words or terms that would be really good/preferred to describe this sort of thing? And, on the other side, is there anything stereotypical or hurtful that should be avoided?

Thank you!

Hey!

I recommend our guide on writing speech disabilities.

In-dialogue, you can try showing him taking a break mid-sentence or using a lot of filler words/sounds to show that he's taking his time. You can spell them out in his speech, but I wouldn't overuse it - you can put more of them at the start, but later your readers will remember that that's how he talks, and occasional reminders should be enough.

It's important to remember that;

1) ableists often mock the things I just mentioned, and

2) they're nonetheless real and real life people (me) talk with those patterns. I'd urge you to show them as just how he talks, not something that's inherently "annoying" or "child-like". Stray away from any sorts of infantilizing comparisons in general (that is, if he's not an actual child).

For him taking longer to plan what he is going to say, that's very real. How it shows (or doesn't show) will be very personal, I specifically tend to look up + fidget with my hands and people who know me can recognize that it means I'm trying to say something but need a moment (though strangers also often get it). But he can show it completely differently of course.

I don't think there's a consensus on what's the best way of "spelling out" someone's speech disability. My personal preference is leaving it out of the actual speech, but making it clear in the dialogue tags. It's also easier for readers who might have reading disabilities or not be native speakers of the language you write in. So you could make it clear there whether it's that he's slurring words, has a lisp, or stutters.

For terms, a lot of the accurate ones have also been used to mock how we talk. "Slow" would be the best example, "loud" would be there as well. A lot of us will talk slow, a lot will talk very loudly. I do the latter, and I know people who do both or neither. The key is to say it in a way that's neutral and not pass it off as some funny quirk or an outright gag. It's just a speech characteristic, the same way that someone could have a lower pitched voice, or speak very softly.

You can also show him struggling to follow the flow of the conversation. So sometimes it could be that he just loses the main topic and just asks what the discussion has been about (I do that all the time), or continues going on the subject that the other character(s) already moved on from.

Thanks for the ask and being thoughtful about it,

mod Sasza