#and now I???? don't know what to do with myself or the rest of my life

[thebibliosphere]

if this is too heavy to answer that's totally fine and you don't have to but

how do you keep going when the world is as awful as it is? it's getting harder for me to find reasons to do that because the US government clearly doesn't want me to live and I can't go anywhere else because I'm broke and disabled and so I just feel trapped and I've been in tears about it for the last hour.

and you've had to deal with so much more health bullshit than I ever have but you keep going and I just... how?

I hope this doesn’t come across as trite but in all sincerity: because I know there are other people out there fighting to keep folks like us alive because even though they don’t know us, probably won’t ever know us, they care for us anyway and want us to survive.

They might seem vanishingly few right now, but you need to remember, hatred is loud because it’s the only way these dipshits can be heard.

The people screaming the loudest right now? Are not in the majority. They are afraid of the progress that has been made over the last few decades and want to drag us back to a world where they feel in control. And to do that they need to be as loud and intimidating as possible because they are not the majority, they know they are not the majority, and that frightens them.

They’re playing a fascist game of chicken, hoping the rest of us will blink first, and I don’t pretend to know what’s going to happen. I won’t pretend I’m not terrified. That the things happening all over the world right now don’t feel hopeless and lost. But I refuse to blink first.

For myself. For you. For everyone.

And I take comfort in knowing I’m not the only one. I know I’m not. And I’m so incandescently furious at the state of the world right now that even just hearing some people speak makes my blood pressure spike so hard I syncope.

The last time I heard the vice president speak, my vision turned literally red then black and I woke up on the couch with a thudding headache and a heart doing its best to escape my rib cage.

But I pick myself up because I have no other choice, I take care of myself. I do what I can to avoid that level of overload. I avoid the news if I have to because there is a fine line at present between being informed and being overwhelmed. And then I go out of my way to be kind and help the people I can because it’s something I have control over and by god if I can make the world better for just one person, it’s worthwhile.

Take comfort in your people. Protect yourself and your community as best you can. Even if sometimes that means letting others comfort and take care of you for a bit.

I’m sorry you’re struggling so hard. But I promise you are not alone 💖

[cressidagrey]

The Queen of Romantasy and the Race Car Prince - Chapter 23

Pairing: Lando Norris x Elizabeth "Lizzie" Treshton (Original Character)

Summary:

Elizabeth Treshton—bestselling romantasy author, queen of fae heartbreak, and sworn devotee of a carefully structured routine—never expected her service dog to abandon protocol and diagnose a Formula 1 driver with something. But that’s exactly what happens when Mara the wonder-dog ditches Lizzie’s side to aggressively alert to none other than Lando Norris in the middle of a coffee shop.

Warnings and Notes: 

Mention of epilepsy and service animals. I don't myself suffer from epilepsy, so I asked my IRL friend, who thankfully was nice enough to let me ask her all the questions I could come up with. The rest I asked Reddit. So everything that's wrong...that's totally my fault and not on purpose.

We are wrapping up loose plot threads so: Hungary 2024, WHICH I FIXED (kinda). My questionable understanding of racing strategy? Crocheting.

As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble

Lando had seen Lizzie nervous before—before a book signing, even before their first public appearance together—but this was an entirely new level. She was sitting in the passenger seat, gripping the hem of her sweater so tightly that he was surprised the fabric hadn’t ripped yet.

“Lizzie,” he said gently.

She exhaled sharply. “Lando, I don’t think you understand. Your sisters have read my books.”

“Yeah, they love them.”

“That’s the problem!” She turned to him, eyes wide with panic. “What if your mum has read them? What if she’s read the spicy parts? Lando, I wrote those scenes!”

He tried—he really did—to keep a straight face, but a laugh escaped before he could stop it. “Liz, I hate to break it to you, but my mum is a grown woman who had four kids. She’s not going to combust if she reads a bit of smut.”

Lizzie looked at him like he’d just blasphemed. “That’s your mum! God, Lando, you’re missing the point.”

“Oh, I have a point,” he said, still trying not to laugh. “And that point is, you’re making this way too big a deal.”

She scowled at him, whacking him with the back of her hand. “You’re being extremely unhelpful right now.”

He caught her hand, grinning. “Hey, I’m just providing perspective. But if you want to keep being nervous on your own, be my guest.”

Lizzie huffed but didn’t pull away from his grip. “Why do I feel like you’re enjoying my freaking out?”

He squeezed her hand, still amused. “Because it’s entertaining to watch.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, but the effect was diminished by the way she was worrying her bottom lip. “You’re enjoying this far too much.”

Lando bit back a smirk, bringing her hand to his mouth and pressing a small kiss to her knuckles. “Maybe I am.”

“Your dad is a millionaire, Lando,” she muttered as they pulled into the driveway. “What if he thinks I’m using you for your money?”

Lando couldn’t help himself. He laughed. “What?”

Lizzie huffed, glaring at him. “Don’t laugh at me! It’s a valid concern!”

He tried—and failed—to regain his composure. “You’re worried my dad is going to think you’re a gold digger?”

Lizzie nodded, looking at him with wide, earnest eyes. Lando bit back another laugh, shaking his head. “Liz, love, you really worry too much.”

“I’m serious, Lando!” she protested. “People talk, okay? And with your family’s background, I can’t blame them. How am I supposed to convince them that I’m not just some fangirl with a talent for writing dirty scenes?” Her eyes widened. “Oh my god, I am,“ she whispered.

“Come on,” he coaxed, reaching over to squeeze her knee. “They already love you.”

“They don’t know me.”

“They know of you. And they’re excited to meet you properly. Trust me, they’re more likely to make me uncomfortable than you.”

Lizzie lifted her head, narrowing her eyes. “Why?”

Lando smirked. “Because they’re probably going to tell you all the embarrassing things I did as a kid.”

That seemed to help—at least a little. She huffed a small laugh, shaking her head. “If they bring out baby photos, I’m taking pictures.”

“Traitor.”

“Survival.”

He chuckled, shaking his head before unbuckling his seatbelt.

Lizzie did the same, taking a deep breath. When Lando walked over to her side of the car and held out his hand, she took it, gripping it tightly.

“Ready?” he asked.

“No,” she replied, but she climbed out of the car anyway.

Mara jumped out of the backseat with a wagging tail, immediately tucking herself against Lizzie's side.

Lizzie laughed, giving the dog a quick scratch on the head. Lando watched her intently, noticing how tense she still was.

He moved forward, placing a hand on the small of her back. “Breathe,” he told her softly.

She let out a shaky exhale, leaning into his touch. "I'm trying," she muttered, sounding a little less nervous.

They began the short walk toward the door, Mara trotting happily ahead of them. Lando could feel Lizzie trembling a little under his touch.

“Remember," he murmured against her ear, "they’re going to be just as nervous as you, if not more."

Lizzie shot him a disbelieving look but didn’t have time to say anything as the door swung open.

The front door opened before they even reached it. His mum stood there, beaming, and before Lizzie could get a word out, Cisca pulled her into a warm hug.

“Oh, sweetheart, it’s so good to finally meet you.”

Lizzie tensed for a split second, then melted. “You too, Mrs. Norris. Thank you for having me.”

“Cisca,” his mum corrected, stepping back. “And please, we’ve been waiting for ages to meet you. Lando keeps you all to himself.”

Lizzie shot Lando a look, and he just grinned. “Told you.”

His mother stepped back, still smiling. “Well, now that I’ve got you in person, it makes sense why Lando's been so distracted." She cast a sly glance in Lando's direction. He just rolled his eyes.

"Mum," he said, a warning tone to his voice.

His mother just laughed, patting his cheek affectionately. “Oh, don’t you mum me.” She turned back to Lizzie, linking their arms together. “Now, come on. We’ve got lunch ready.”

Lando let them walk ahead, watching how easily his mum settled Lizzie. Even when he was a kid, his mum had always had a way of making people feel comfortable. Now, it seemed Lizzie was on the receiving end of that skill.

They headed inside, the rest of the family waiting in the living room. They all stood when they entered, and though Lando wasn’t surprised to see the eager curiosity on their faces, he still shot them a warning look. His brother in particular looked like he was preparing to say or do anything to embarrass him.

“Finally!” Oliver stood , arms crossed, grinning like an idiot. “The Elizabeth Treshton, in the flesh. Lando has been hoarding you." His brother wasted no time. “Alright,, I have questions,” he announced brightly. “First of all, how did this idiot pull you? Second, how long did it take before you realized he’s an absolute menace? Third—”

Adam Norris appeared in the doorway, shaking his head fondly. “Leave her alone, Oliver.”

Oliver just grinned. “No can do, Dad. She willingly signed up for Lando. I need answers.”

Adam shot Lando a look. “You should’ve known bringing her here would be opening her up to interrogation.”

Lizzie was trying hard not to laugh, but her eyes were sparkling. Lando couldn’t tell if that was from nerves or amusement.

"I have questions!" And there was his youngest sister. He should have known that neither Flo or Cisca were going to be normal.

"Of course you do," Lando muttered.

Flo ignored him and beamed at Lizzie. “I have questions too!"

His mother rolled her eyes at her children, stepping forward. “How about we hold off on the interrogation until after lunch?” She placed a hand on Lizzie’s shoulder, offering the slightest bit of reprieve. “I think poor Lizzie here needs a moment to readjust before we barrage her with questions.”

"But I have book questions!" Flo said quickly.

"And you can ask those during lunch," His mother assured her, steering Lizzie away. "Give the girl a chance to breathe."

"Fine, fine," Oliver said, flopping back onto the couch like a disgruntled teenager.

Adam chuckled. “Maybe try not to scare the poor woman off in the first five minutes?”

"Oh, no worries there," Oliver drawled. "She put up with Lando, right? Everything else will be a breeze."

Lando just rolled his eyes.

Adam laughed, clapping Lando on the back. “Don’t act like that comment wasn’t 100% accurate.”

Lizzie slipped right in the midst of his family, like she always had belonged there. Keeping up with his sisters' rapid-fire Q and A, his very fascinated toddler niece who kept staring at Mara, who sat next to Lizzie, as well-behaved as always...

It was almost surreal to watch the scene unfold. Lizzie was already comfortable with his family, chatting and laughing, easily deflecting questions and answering others. Even his sisters had given up their attempts at embarrassing him, too interested in Lizzie to bother with him now.

He watched all this, trying to keep the smile off his face. It wasn’t until his dad walked over and stood next to him did Lando realize he hadn’t said anything in a while.

Adam clapped Lando on the back, his tone warm. “You picked a good one, son.”

Lando’s chest filled with quiet pride as he watched Lizzie laugh at something Flo had said.

“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “I really did.”

He should have known that something was going to go wrong.

It started with Mara.

She’d been lying calmly at Lizzie’s feet one second, then suddenly sprang up, ears perked, tail stiff. She nudged Lizzie’s leg with her nose, then her arm. Insistent. Focused.

Lizzie stilled.

Lando was already frowning. “Liz?”

She exhaled slowly, looking down at Mara before turning toward him. “I’m going to have a seizure.”

Just like that. Simple. Direct. As if she were telling him it might rain later.

Lando shot to his feet. “What—what do I—”

A tense silence fell across the room as the others picked up on the situation. Lizzie reached out, fingers skimming Mara’s head as she struggled to keep her breaths even. She was already pale, a thin sheen of sweat gleaming on her forehead.

His mum was the first to recover, her expression calm but her voice sharp. "How do you want to handle this, sweetheart?"

"I need to go lay down," Lizzie said, her voice careful. "I should have a few minutes until it hits."

Everyone else was still reeling, frozen in shock, but Lando’s mind snapped into focus. “Right. Yeah. Come on.”

He crossed the room, gently tugging Lizzie to her feet. She leaned on him, her weight a little heavier than usual.

“Lando,” Adam said, “we can—”

“I’ve got it,” he said, cutting his dad off. He shifted Lizzie’s weight, supporting her as best he could. “Just...give us some space, okay?”

His dad nodded, clearly wanting to say more, but holding back for Lizzie's sake. Lando appreciated the effort.

He half-carried Lizzie out the door, Mara sticking close to them. The dog knew as well as Lando did – something was wrong.

The walk to his old room felt like it took an eternity.

As soon as they reached it, Lizzie was already moving, sinking down to the floor like she’d done this a hundred times before. Maybe she had.

"What do you need?" he asked her, sawllowing.

“Nothing,” she said. “You don’t have to do anything.” She stretched out, lying flat on her side, arms loose, legs bent just slightly. Mara settled near her head, pressed close but not touching.

Lando hated how practiced it was.

His pulse hammered in his throat. He dropped down beside her, panic clawing at his ribs. “Lizzie—”

“If you can’t watch it, I get it,” she murmured, voice calm, even as something flickered in her expression. “But don’t touch me.”

Lando’s hands clenched into fists.

“I— I can watch,” he said, even though his entire body screamed otherwise. “I’m not leaving you.”

Lizzie managed a weak smile, but her eyes were already going glassy. "Okay," she whispered. "But don't blame yourself." And then her breath hitched, and her body began to tremble.

And then she was gone.

Her body tensed, jerking suddenly, violently. Her hands curled, fingers twitching erratically. Lando could hear her breathing shift—harsh, uneven. It was awful.

He dug his nails into his palms, forcing himself to stay still, to stay calm.

It felt like forever.

In reality, it was barely a minute.

Then, as quickly as it began, it ended.

Lizzie sagged against the floor, still, quiet except for her uneven breaths. Mara whined softly, nuzzling against her arm.

Lando moved carefully, shifting onto his knees.

“Liz?” he asked, voice tight. “Can you hear me?”

A long pause. Then, a weak murmur: “Mm. Hate that part.”

Relief hit him so hard he nearly choked on it. He exhaled sharply, pressing a shaking hand over his face. “Yeah,” he said, voice thick. “Me too.”

Lizzie cracked one eye open, exhausted but there. “You okay?”

Lando let out a strangled laugh. “Am I okay?”

Lizzie blinked at him like it was a genuine question.

“Jesus Christ, Lizzie.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “That was awful.”

She hummed, voice drowsy. “Yeah. Sorry ‘bout that.”

“Don’t—don’t apologize—”

“I’m fine,” she mumbled.

Lando swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Yeah. Okay. But I still hate it.”

Lizzie sighed, shifting slightly, her limbs sluggish. “Me too.”

He watched as Mara pressed in closer, her body warm against Lizzie’s side. Lando reached out slowly, brushing damp hair away from Lizzie’s forehead.

She leaned into the touch, just barely.

Lando swallowed hard. “You’re okay,” he murmured.

Lizzie didn’t answer—already half-asleep in the aftermath.

But she was breathing.

She was safe.

And he would make sure she always stayed that way.

He wasn't sure how much time went by, but eventually, soft footsteps sounded at the doorway. He glanced up to see his mum standing there, her face pale, expression carefully neutral. She took in the situation for a moment, her eyes lingering on Lizzie before looking to Lando. There was a silent question on her face, and Lando nodded to her. She exhaled softly, nodding to herself, before speaking quietly.

"Is she alright?"

Lando's voice felt like gravel in his throat. "She's fine. She'll probably sleep for awhile."

His mum stepped more into the room, taking in the sight of Lizzie on the floor. A deep frown pinched her brow, like she was trying to hold back her emotions.

Lando looked back at Lizzie, reaching out and brushing his fingers gently over her damp hair. Just the sight of her sleeping peacefully was enough to soothe some of the wild panic from earlier, but his heart still ached.

"Does...has this happened before?" His mum's voice was quiet and careful, as if she were worried about upsetting him.

"I've never seen it," he admitted weakly. "I knew she had epilepsy. I have seen her after a seizure...but I never saw her seize," Lando admitted, swallowing. "How can a mother see this and then decide to leave?"

"Lando..." his mum's voice was gentle, almost like she was bracing him for something.

Lando's heart felt heavy. "I just don't understand how someone could—" he cut himself off when his voice broke, trying again. "I don't understand how someone could just leave their child like that."

His mum crossed the room, sitting beside him and pressing a hand to his shoulder. "I don't think most people will ever be able to understand that, hon. I can't," she admitted freely. "If I imagine that it's Flo or Cisca in her place...nobody would have gotten me away from my daughter," his mother said fiercely.

He swallowed down a lump in his throat, his voice tight. "That's because you wouldn't leave her," he said, voice low. "You'd never go without her. You'd fight to stay every step of the way. And you sure as hell wouldn't give up on her."

There was a beat as he stared at the floor, and he barely registered his mum wrapping an arm around his shoulders. She pulled him into a tight hug, and he couldn't help but bury his face against her shoulder, eyes stinging.

His breath hitched. "I just... I can't imagine just walking away from her."

"Then don't," his mother said simply. "Don't be like her mother. Don't walk away. Talk with her and the next time it will happen, it will still feel horrid. You'll never get used to it. But you'll learn to live with it."

The words hit Lando like a weight to the chest. For a moment, he just sat there, absorbing them. His first instinct was to disagree. He would never, ever be like Lizzie’s mother. He could never abandon her like that.

But then...

His mum was right. He'd never get used to the idea of him just standing by and watching while she suffered. No matter how many times he would see her seize, it would still be torture for him.

But this wasn’t about him. 

This was about Lizzie. Lizzie, who needed to live with an invisible illness that could be controlled to the best of modern medicine's knowledge, but never cured completely.

And Lando would rather live through the torture of seeing her have a seizure a hundred times than to let her go. To leave. To let her deal with it alone. 

***

Lizzie woke up feeling like she’d been wrung out, every muscle sore and heavy, her head pounding with the dull, familiar ache of exhaustion. She blinked at the ceiling, willing herself to move, but even that felt like too much effort.

Then she remembered.

Lando.

The seizure.

How he’d seen it—how he’d stayed.

Her stomach twisted.

Carefully, she turned her head.

Lando was lying on his side, facing her. He was awake. Had he even slept? His hair was an absolute mess, his expression unreadable, but his eyes were sharp, studying her closely.

Lizzie had always known this moment would come.

She’d warned Lando about it early on—matter-of-factly, no dramatics. She had epilepsy. She had seizures.

But knowing about something and seeing it were two very different things.

And she’d lost people to the latter before.

Her mother couldn’t handle it. The fear, the helplessness, the exhaustion of watching and not being able to do anything. It was too much. So she left.

Lizzie didn’t blame her.

But she also knew what it felt like to be too much for someone to love.

Lando held her gaze, the silence stretching painfully between them.

She swallowed hard, bracing for it - the looks of concern, the pity, the thinly veiled excuses.

Then Lando spoke, his voice rough and quiet.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like I lost a fight with a freight train.”

Lando’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “Yeah,” he muttered. “I figured.”

The silence between them was heavy.

Lizzie forced herself to push up onto her elbows, ignoring the way her body protested. “Lando—”

He cut her off with a shake of his head, his eyes never leaving her. “Stop talking.”

She went silent, staring at him. His gaze was like a steady weight, pinning her in place.

He inhaled slowly, as if steeling himself.

“I’m not going anywhere, Liz.”

Her breath caught. She'd been bracing herself for rejection, for distance. For fear and confusion and pity.

But Lando was just...looking at her. Just like that. Not like she was broken. Not like she was different now. He was just looking at her.

“You’re not?” Her voice was a whisper, vulnerable and terrified in spite of herself.

He shook his head. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

Something stirred in her chest. Hope, maybe.

Or maybe it was something else.

She swallowed, trying to get control of her emotions. “Most people don’t stick around after they see it.”

Something flickered across his face—something sharp, something angry. “Well, they’re idiots.”

Lizzie huffed a small, tired laugh. “Maybe.”

Lando shifted closer, hesitating before reaching out. His fingers brushed lightly over her wrist, careful, almost hesitant.

“Did it scare you?” she asked softly.

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, his fingers curled around her hand, grounding both of them. “I hated seeing you like that,” he admitted, voice low. “Knowing and seeing aren’t the same thing.”

She sighed, exhaustion pressing against her bones. “No. They’re not.”

Lando shifted again, his thumb sweeping over the back of her hand. “Your mum couldn’t handle it.”

It wasn’t a question.

Lizzie swallowed. “No.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then—“I’m not her.”

Lizzie’s chest ached, and not from the seizure.

“I know.”

Lando’s fingers squeezed hers. “Do you?”

She let out a slow breath. “Yeah. I do.”

“Good.” His voice softened, but the weight of his words remained. “Because I need you to believe that I’m not going anywhere.”

Her eyes stung with held-back tears. She clenched her jaw, willing herself not to cry. “You can’t possibly know that.”

Lando’s expression remained steady, but she could see the determination in his eyes. "I do know that,” he said softly. “I know me, Liz. How I feel. What I can handle. And I can tell you with complete certainty that I’m not leaving. You can’t get rid of me now even if you tried.”

She tried to keep her voice steady, but her breath hitched on a stifled sob. “What if it changes though? What if one day you can’t—”

“Liz.” He cut her off, his tone firm but not unkind. “Stop it. Stop worrying about what-ifs. This is my choice. I’m staying. End of story.”

“But—”

He cut her off again, his grip on her hand tightening, as if he could force her to believe him through touch alone. “No buts. This is a non-negotiable for me.” He took another deep breath, his voice growing even quieter. “I’m not your mother, Liz. You are not too much. And I’m not scared. Got it?”

Something crumbled inside her, some long-held piece of fear disintegrating in the face of his steady, certain gaze.

Her throat felt tight, and she could feel the tears threatening to spill over.

“Got it?” He repeated, his thumb rubbing softly over her knuckles.

There was something pleading in his voice—a silent plea for her to understand, to believe him.

And she realized in that moment, as he held her hand and looked at her with so much certainty...she did.

She believed him.

[seumyo]

This is the first time I dare to do something like this, but I saw you were writing for Rook one of my favourite characters. So I was wondering if you could do something with a French!Reader, not necessarily a romantic one but someone who would understand what Rook says perfectly. It would be better if they spoke Japanese since their arrival and he doesn't know they understand him until they surprise him by responding.

ROOK HUNT ✰ UNDERSTANDING YOU

NOTE. This is so sweet, I’m clawing at the walls. Rook, my love (◞ ⸝⸝ ◟ ) Thank you so much for this beautiful request <33 Also forgive me French speakers if the translations are rough/grammatically incorrect—I was fighting for my life against most online translators for this

You’ve always known that Rook had a way with his words. He was convinced no one at Night Raven College could fully appreciate his words, so he freely spoke his mind in his native language.

It became his way of processing emotions and, at times—his frustrations—without anyone understanding his deeper thoughts. Because of this, he was more unfiltered and vulnerable when speaking French, a luxury he thought he alone could enjoy.

That is, until you came into the picture.

You were seated in your usual spot in the library, books spread out in front of you as you studied, when Rook appeared seemingly out of nowhere. How does he do that? You could never truly know.

“Quelle concentration exquise! (What exquisite focus!) A sight you are, [Name],” he smiled, taking a seat next to you and peering over your shoulder to see what textbook you were reading.

You, exhausted from hours of reading and too distracted to think, responded automatically.

“Tu es vraiment bruyant, Rook. (You're really loud, Rook.)”

Pause.

Stop.

Rewind.

Rebooting.

“Ah-ha!” Rook almost cheered in glee, but you were able to stop him from doing so—because you were sure the librarian was keeping a stern eye on you two by now. He chuckled, murmuring this time, “Merveilleux. (Marvelous!) You speak French.”

“I—“

He, however, was already leaning closer, his grin full of delight—as if unable to stop himself from chatting your head off upon this revelation. “Why have you hidden this from me for so long? Ah, quel bonheur. (What joy!) I had thought myself alone in this vast sea of languages, but to know that you too carry the melody of French upon your tongue—it is as though fate has brought us together.”

Caught somewhere between embarrassment and amusement, you duckled your head, resting your head against your propped arms on the table. “Ce n'était pas intentionnel. (It wasn’t intentional.)”

“But why?” Rook pressed, tilting his head. He almost looked like a child—unable to hold his curiosity in one place. “Was it shyness? Or perhaps… a desire to keep your origins a secret? Oh, the mystery only adds to your allure.”

“I just... didn’t see the need to?” You mirrored his head tilt, now pondering why you never spoke much French when you got to this college.

He gasped.

“But why deny yourself the pleasure of our beautiful language?”

“Je ne sais pas, Rook. (I don't know, Rook.) Maybe I just liked keeping it to myself? I’m not really sure.”

Rook studied you for a moment before smiling, softer this time. “Well then, [Name], if I may be so bold… would you indulge me in conversation every now and then? It is rare to find someone who understands the true essence of our mother tongue.”

There was something warm about the way he said it, a genuine happiness beneath his usual theatrical flair. It’s that unfiltered, unparalleled joy of finding that specific connection with someone.

You said yes, of course.

And just like that, things changed.

Where before Rook had simply been another student you occasionally encountered and was in the same dorm as you, he now became a frequent presence at your side, always eager to chat. At first, it was strange—you weren’t used to speaking French so casually in this school, but with Rook, it felt natural.

“Regarde comme le ciel est beau aujourd'hui! (Look at how beautiful the sky is today!)” Rook says as you two walk through the gardens, gesturing delicately.

“Mhm, it’s nice out,” you replied, amused at his enthusiasm.

Or, when you were focused on something, he would suddenly appear beside you, whispering in your ear, “Tu as un esprit si captivant… Que pourrais-tu bien être en train de penser? (You have such a captivating mind… What could you possibly be thinking about?)”

To which you’d flick his forehead and respond, “Que tu es agaçant. (That you're annoying.)” He’d laugh as you continued, “Really, stop creeping up behind me like that—I could’ve elbowed you.”

“Violent, how endearing.”

He, of course, took it all in stride, laughing as if you had just paid him the highest compliment.

Despite his dramatics, you found yourself enjoying his presence more than you expected. There was something comforting about having someone else who understood your language, who could switch between playful teasing and deep, poetic musings without hesitation. It felt like home in a way you hadn’t realized you missed.

A friend that made you feel at home. As you did with him.

One evening, as you sat by the lake, watching the water ripple under the fading sunlight, Rook sighed contentedly.

“Tu sais, (You know),” he said, voice softer than usual, “depuis que je suis ici, je me suis souvent senti comme un étranger dans mon propre monde. (Ever since I arrived here, I’ve often felt like a stranger in my own world.)”

You were surprised by his change of tone.

“Pourquoi? (Why?)”

Rook smiled, but there was a wistfulness in his expression. “Parce que la langue est une chose étrange. (Because language is a strange thing.) It is not just words—it carries culture, memories, the very essence of who we are. And though I love the way words dance in many tongues, there is a loneliness in being the only one to understand a particular melody.”

You had never thought about it that way.

He really had a way with words.

And an even more

You nudged his shoulder lightly. “Tu n’es plus seul maintenant. (You’re not alone anymore.)”

Rook blinked, then beamed at you, warmth radiating from his smile. “Ah, quelle déclaration magnifique! (Ah, what a magnificent declaration!) My dear [Name], you are truly a treasure!”

You laughed, shaking your head.

“Ne sois pas dramatique. (Don’t be dramatic.)”

“But it is my nature!” he declared, throwing an arm around your shoulders.

You sighed quietly but didn’t move away.

You supposed that, just this once, you could let him be as dramatic as he wanted. Because Rook really did feel like he was home whenever he was with you, and that made his heart more contented than anything.

SEUMYO © 2025. PLEASE DO NOT REPOST, PLAGIARIZE, MODIFY OR TRANSLATE.

[mwomeo]

What can’t be reversed.

Chapter one - pilot // dark/yandere Mark Grayson

Warning- none!

You had never expected your life to take such a trajectory. Yet no one expects to live through a building falling on them and gaining the power of invulnerability, earning you the nickname the invulnerable (which sounded embarrassingly similar to the name of your sworn enemy, invincible.)

You never wanted to be one of the few humans to know the truth about the faux heroes. To be tied to the organization, hell bent on finding a way to defeat them.

Your head lulled, a grown settling in your throat, as you felt the persistent buzz of your phone. You didn't need to look to know who it was. Your boss, the head of the resistant, no doubt wanting you to intervene in Omni man's business once again.

You didn't feel like playing another game of keep away, where if you lost, your head would be detached from your body. Also, you couldn't afford to miss any more school days, unless you wanted to be in even more trouble with your parents.

A rough hand grabbed the back of your hood and yanked it off your head. You cursed yourself for flinching as you stared at another major pain in your ass. Mark Grayson, the most popular (and insufferable) boy at your school.

A cruel sneer tugged at his pretty boy features. "Hey! What did I say about sitting in my seat?!" Apparently, all the seats in the classroom were his; this wasn't his first time doing this. You don't bother to respond, simply migrating to the spot he sat in last week in the back of the class. There was no point in engaging when you knew the outcome.

Enraged by your lack of response, Mark took a step forward, his lackeys following in suit, but before they could do anything, the teacher walked in saving you. Reluctantly Mark sat down, unwilling to risk his perfect reputation with the teachers.

You let yourself zone out as the teacher droned on about a concept you couldn't even hope to grasp. The buzzing stopped as well, allowing the tension in your back to loosen. You were about to fall asleep when the words "group project" left her mouth.

You immediately sat up straighter and became more attentive as she went on. "For the sake of fairness, I have decided to construct the groups myself." The class collectively groaned, some more vocal protests fighting their way through the hushed chatter.

The teacher raised her hands, "Now, now, I've already made up my mind. You will survive not being attached to your friends for one project, no?"

"ahem.."

"Now then please form a single line and take a look at your partner's name. Once you found them, please stand next to them so I know you have found your pair." After fiddling with a clipboard, the teacher slid the list forward on the desk, where the more curious students pounced on it.

You on the other hand lingered in the back, careful to remain a safe distance away from Mark. One by one, people paired, some more happily than others. When it was finally your turn, you hesitantly scanned the paper. You pursed your lips as you saw Mark's name next to yours.

Dread pooled at the base of your gut as you slowly turned to face Mark. Your eyes met; his dancing with anger. You shuffle awkwardly to his side, trying to keep your distance. However, it isn't enough since he knocks his elbow into your bruised ribs. Like it was somehow your fault the two of you were stuck together.

"Since this is a rather long project, the apartment and I have decided to give you a month to finish it."

Your teacher, Ms. Jays turned to the clock before turning back around to address the class again.

"I'll give you the rest of the period to start planning with your partner." With that, the class dispirits. Every cell in your body screamed for you to beg Ms. Jays for a different partner. But with Mark standing directly in your path you reluctantly stayed put.

"So... where should we meet up? There's a library close to the school we could work at."

Mark scoffed "You think I'd be seen in public with you?"

Eye twitching you sucked in a sharp breath "Fine. We can do it at my house."

"Like I'd ever go there! its probably filthy or something... We'll do it at my house."

Before you could react, Mark swiped your phone from your hoodie pocket with remarkable speed. "H-hey! Give me back my phone you jerk!"

A playful smile spread across his lips as he held your phone above his head. ignoring your demands, he effortlessly typed in your passcode as if it were his own.

"How do you even know my password?!"

After typing in his number he handed your phone back "It's because you're predictable." You scramble to look over your phone, making sure nothing is out of place.

The bell rang and you looked up to face Mark, but he was already long gone friends in toe. You muttered a few choice words as you mulled over the sheer amount calls you had missed. You were in a lot of trouble.

After a not-so-short bus ride to the city, you entered the base of the resistance. As you made your way through the tunnels of the underground bunker, you could hear the sound of yelling growing louder and louder. You saw her firey hair first as your boss swiftly turned to you.

"Sorry I'm so late eve.."

Eve's eyes set ablaze "Sorry? Sorry?! do you know how many times I called you?"

"I know, I know, but I couldn't just leave school. They've already contacted my parents about the number of days and classes I have missed. So I was stuck!"

Eve rubbed her temple and sighed "Whatever. What matters is you're here now." she gestured towards a lab-like area where Robot was stationed. "Go ahead and get changed into your suit. Rudy has something for you."

You complied shedding your school clothes and shimming into your super suit. The taut latex clung uncomfortably to your skin, revealing more than you were quite comfortable revealing.

Rudy turned to you, though his eyes remained on his countless monitors. "I've made some upgrades to your suit, that should help level the playing field with you and the viltrumites." Pulling a pair of cylinders out of a machine, he presented them to you proudly.

"My latest advancement, you should be able to fly just like them. Though you won't be able to match their exact speed." You tentatively took the boosters and examined them before handing them back.

"Here let me put them on you." Hoping down from his chair, his eyebrows knitted in concentration as he attached them to the magnets embedded in your suit. When he was finished you looked down to admire his handy work. The design was sleek and not at all as bulking as you would have expected.

You were about to thank him, but the base alarm system started to go off. All the residents rushed to the center of the base to watch the big screen as a video feed of Rex fighting Invincible was projected.

Eve bit her nail and shook her head, muttering to herself. She was clearly distraught as Rex flew across the screen ending up against a wall. "No, no, no, this shouldn't be happening. He was supposed to stay hidden."

She turned to you "This is why I asked you to come! Now we might lose a recruit!" Pushing back her air she muttered a curse "You need to leave now and see if you can salvage anything in time."

You stepped forward panic bubbling in your chest, "But I hadn't gotten a chance to practice with the new boosters-."

"That doesn't matter just go!"

Reluctantly you make your way out of the tunnel, but right before you are out of ear shot Rudy yells in a last second instruction "Run and jump to start flying!"

When you are finally up on the surface again, it takes you a few tries before you can truly lift off the ground, and even then your technique was shaky. A loud boom sounded from the distance, as a giant cloud of dust and debris covered the sky in a smoke screen. You leaned forward in the air purpling toward the chaos less than gracefully.

You coughed and waved your hand in front of your face in a poor attempt to wave off the smog that had entered your lungs. When you finally emerged from the dust cloud. You were met with the cite of invincible Man handling Rex. As if sensing your presence Invincible turned to your floating figure. With a gleefully and yet annoyingly prideful smile he said "Glad to see you could finally make it, and it looks like you have a new toy."

___________________________________

let me know what you think of the start of this series and if you want it to be continued :)

[bvidzsoo]

SHUT UP MINA IM LIKE JINJA NOT OKAY RN??!!! This is one of the best pieces of fiction I've ever read and I'm not saying that just to say it, you know me.

Where do I even start, omg...All of your descriptions had me shaking. Like wdym there's people out there who are so talented that they can so vividly describe damn colours that make me then vividly envision it in my mind?? Like, bro, I could see absolutely everything as I was reading it, you're jinja nuts my friend. Show me your ways rn!

The owner of the shop, the most beautiful garden fairy you had ever laid eyes on, stood with his legs in a wide stance and hands open, as if holding an invisible box. His eyes were trained on the mess of porcelain shards, a dozen red roses and a pool of water decorated the wooden flooring. The pair of see-through wings with a dash of green in them flickered fiercely, a sign of annoyance that he refused to express on his gorgeous face. Your own wings, thin and blue, fluttered as a smile overtook your features. 

I'm punching the wall at this sequence here, can you see me? Because-because the whole drabble is full of descriptions like this one and I'm about to throw up over how insanely good they are, Mina. Get over here so I can kiss kiss that damn forehead, RAH!

Also, Yeosang and the MC??? Bitch, I want a best friend like Yeosang rn! Their friendship is so precious and even tho we don't get to see too much of it, I can still tell they go way back and just how they'd always been, it's amazing. Him calling her bubbles??? So what the fuck would you say if I punched a hole in the wall??? I already told you over Discord that I teared up over their friendship lmao, and that feeling still stands!

The one thing you had in common — being of the same species — was the magnetic pull that brought you together — the garden fairy who wore his heart on his sleeve and the water fairy who, despite having a smile warm enough to melt blocks of ice, didn’t think twice before standing up for others.

Absolutely bawling, yk??? I am obsessed with the MC you created for this drabble, like she's so lovely and cool...I kinda see myself in her and that's making me so delulu ACK. Anyways, you should give me a 30k oneshot about solely JongSang to satisfy my greed, PLEASE AND THANK YOU. Also, Wooyoung is a menace as always and I would love to see more of him, too, lol. Yk what, Mina?? Just gimme more of EVERYTHING!

And NOW-PARK SEONGHWA HOLY FUCK???!!! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HIM AND TO ME?!! I knew the outfit you'd give him and I was STILL not prepared for it because-HOLY SHIT SEONGHWA PINK HAPPY TRAIL???? BIIIIITCH!!! I'M INSANE DON'T YOU KNOW THAT ALREADY??!!! No because, Mina, this Seonghwa, in this story-HOLY MOLY I folded so many times, you don't understand, I need him very embarrassingly. And their first meeting is also so freaking cute AAAH, the second that little leaf flew off her wrist I just knew what was about to happen and I almost squealed at my workplace (yes, I'm reading it here ehehehe) and also kindaaa kicked my feet HEHEHE.

Seonghwa’s grin broadened. It wasn’t a matter of what, but of who. His tongue ran over his bottom lip as he leaned even closer to you. The three letter word rested on the gap of his teeth, just gauging your wide eyed expression. In a whisper, far more quiet than the calm ripple of waves or comforting sound of bubbles bursting he answered your question. “You.”

Bitch and if I barf?? Then what?! I love how there's a tinge of cockiness and self-assuredness to this Seonghwa and yet he remains so sweet and shy, like MAN-can you let me catch a BREAK???

He hummed as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. More obvious than the grass being green and the sky blue. “Yes, you. My pretty water fairy. The prettiest water fairy.” “Don’t shy away from me, pretty. I’ve been waiting for years to finally meet you and I want to stare at you until I’ve memorized the most discreet feature of your beautiful face.”

UHM-I've jinja just stabbed myself in the eye, AHAHAHA bye. I cannot do this, nu-uh, no woman, I just can't.

Her knowing all that stuff about gardens and whatnot due to being friends with Yeosang for so long- I just know that bitch (said affectionately about Seonghwa) fell in love even harder with the MC when she started saying what each rose represents. YEAH, I JUST KNOW IT OKAY! Their whole interaction, from start to finish, was jinja so good and endearing I was praying it would never be over lol. I can feel their eagerness and desire for each other and call me a freak- but them doing the devil's tango on that bench would've been very understandable because I would've long ago jumped his bones if I were the MC AHAHAHA, oopsies~

I hope this couple never dies and I need them married with many little fairies BECAUSE I NEED TO KNOW WHAT COLOUR THEIR WINGS ARE, DO U UNDERSTAND MINA??? Also, since I brought this up- Imma kiss kiss your brain (because your forehead isn't enough anymore, and we both know how you feel about the toes-) because you gave this story such a unique touch! The fairies having wings and also all the others creatures and how they coexist...man, I wish you would give us so much more of this universe because it's fantastic.

Also, I must say this...I was never too fond of this trope because I find it basic and that it limits my creativity, so I was kinda praying I wouldn't get it LMAO. But then when you got it, I was so curious how you'd pull it off and MY GOD was I not disappointed. Like...it's seriously so good and so well done, I just love it a lot and I'm happy you got to write this trope because it was executed, dare I say, perfectly! The story was also so fluffy and just AAA...look at us making them kiss and be all lovey-dovey just after hours of meeting ahahaha (I'm looking at you Yeosang from my soulmate au).

I think I'll stop here for now, but if I remember anything else I know where to find you, hehehe...also, I think it's safe to say that this story is my favourite one so far from this event.

A Second to Forever | Park Seonghwa

🍄 Summary: The countdown on your wrist was getting closer to its end and the jitters of finally meeting your soulmate were rendering you an anxious mess. It was a moment you had waited for your entire life — the chance to put a face and name to the person you were destined to meet — and it made you think of different ways to escape fate. After a series of comedic events where everything that could go wrong, did, you met your soulmate. In that instant, everything changed. The encounter was filled with sparks of attraction, warmth and genuine connection, leading to a tender first interaction that left you both feeling enchanted.

🍄 Pairing(s): Fairy!Seonghwa x Fairy!Reader, brief Fairy!Yeosang x Werewolf!Jongho

🍄 Genres/Tropes: Soulmate AU, non-idol AU, fantasy AU, fluff, humour

🍄 Warnings/Tags: female reader, no use of (Y/N), use of magic, water manipulation, flower manipulation, Wooyoung is a mood, petnames (bubbles, little one, jjong, love, darling), smooth talker!Hwa, flustered!MC, Seonghwa has some insecurities, brief mention of kidnapping and murder (literally just mentioned once in conversation), kissing and cuteness overload

🍄 Wordcount: 7.1K

🍄 Author's Note: Click the image for a better resolution (Tumblr I hate you). Happy Friday everyone!!! I don't have a lot to say, except for enjoy hehehe. It was quite fun to write this one. I've never really done a fantasy/fairy au before so it was certainly a fun challenge! The fairies are sometimes referred to as little one / little fairy, not because of their physical appearance but because fairies are described as 'tiny' in tales even though they are human sized here!

This is all fiction and not meant to represent the idols involved in any way or form. This work is rated SFW, however it contains mature scenes, not sexual content but moments of intimacy. Minors, please, read at your own risk and refrain from interacting or following my blog!!!

AO3 Masterpost Moodboard Event taglist

The beautiful pink petals of the cherry blossom trees littered the streets of Seoul. The flowers could be found in every corner and in every crevice, covering the ground in a pink blanket, much like the thick layer of snow in the winter season. Peering out of the window of Yeosang’s flower shop, you wonder about the story behind each passerby. A trio of young witches dressed in high school uniforms walked by with their arms looped and joyous laughs tumbling out of their mouths. A tall man triple checked his wristwatch, hair gelled back and one sharp tooth peeking out. The stress was evident on his pale face and your eyes flashed down to the fat blue ring resting atop his middle finger. The bright complexion and fang was a giveaway, yet the piece of jewelry confirmed your thoughts.

The vampire narrowly avoided colliding with another man nearly half of his height that appeared out of nowhere. You glanced down and noticed the lack of feet on the new person. Ghosts weren’t usually seen out in the open during daytime as the sun made them nearly invisible. The bright rays pierced through their translucent forms and turned them invisible to those who weren’t aware of their surroundings. It was good you could walk through them, a bit disrespectful, but at least they weren’t involved in a lot of traffic accidents.

As if on cue, a loud crash erupted behind you, and you were quick to turn around. The owner of the shop, the most beautiful garden fairy you had ever laid eyes on, stood with his legs in a wide stance and hands open, as if holding an invisible box. His eyes were trained on the mess of porcelain shards, a dozen red roses and a pool of water decorated the wooden flooring. The pair of see-through wings with a dash of green in them flickered fiercely, a sign of annoyance that he refused to express on his gorgeous face. Your own wings, thin and blue, fluttered as a smile overtook your features. 

“You alright, Sang?”

“Mhm,” he hummed and crouched down to pick up the aftermath of his ditziness. “It’s the fourth vase this month…”

You grabbed the broom and dustpan from the corner while Yeosang separated the roses from the remains that couldn’t be reused. Before you got to sweeping, you placed your hand right above the puddle and wiggled your fingers. The water slowly separated from the floor and hovered in the air, taking on an oblong shape that bent at your will. You guided the water to the drain with a flick of your wrist and the only proof of there ever being an accident were the broken shards. Yeosang shot you a grateful look and you handed him the floor scoop in return as you gently swept the bits into the dustpan.

“You can’t blame yourself for the first two times, remember? It isn’t your fault the customer’s service dog accidentally knocked stuff down with his tail and it definitely isn’t your fault that some parents bring their kids in and have no control of the devil spawns playing tag in a flower shop!”

“You’re right.”

“Of course I am!” 

Yeosang ignored your cheery outburst and threw the collected pieces in the trash can behind the register. Overwhelmed by being in the center of attention, even if it was only him and you there, he reflected the light on you.

“How much time is there left?”

You slid your forearms across the counter with your palms facing the ceiling. The digital timer that was injected into your wrist seconds after you entered the world was currently showing 01:10:20 with the last numbers frequently changing. Seventy minutes. A little more than an hour left until you’d come face to face with your other half. The thought sent a pleasant spark down your spine and along the thin veins of your wings. Many nights were spent staying awake and wondering who they were and the times you managed to succumb to sleep, you were visited by the image of your soulmate, but the face was always hidden behind a blurry shield.

Just a little while longer and you’d be able to trace the outline of their features. Then there was the curiosity whether they were a fairy like you or another creature. It wasn’t unheard of or impossible to be paired with something other than your own kind. You knew fairies whose soulmates were everything from witches to werewolves, however your soulmate was yet to show themselves. 

“That’s soon,” he replied, a dash of excitement lingering in his voice and a joyous glint twinkling in his eyes. 

“Right… I don’t know whether it’s too soon or not soon enough.” You buried your face in the safety of your palms. “Oh, Yeosang, what am I going to do? It feels like my heart is going to burst out of my chest!”

A fresh and slightly musky aroma with a hint of fruity sweetness surrounded you, blossoming a comforting and warm feeling in your chest. The flower shop was filled with a variety of different scents, but this one stood out, as if the plant was right beneath your nose. A barely-there touch grazed the slightly exposed part of your cheek, right beside your ear, and you slowly raised your head only to be met with the lovely sight of a large jasmine bush protruding between the planks. Jasmines were known for their calming effect and you could practically feel the tension melting off your shoulders, back and jaw. 

“Thank you, Sangie.”

“Anytime, bubbles. Now, I can see the cogs turning in your head. Go ahead and ask away.”

“What… How was it when you met Jongho?”

The garden fairy paused for a second and thought over his answer. For someone who had already met his soulmate, it was hard to put the experience into words. How was Yeosang supposed to explain the unfathomable feeling of the air shifting the moment he locked eyes with his soulmate?

“I don’t know how to explain it, but believe me when I say that all of my worries disappeared when I met Jongho. Nothing in the world mattered anymore. I could literally be on the brink of death and I wouldn’t even care because, well, he was there.” A blush the same hue of his heart-shaped birthmark rose to his cheeks and spread to the tips of his ears. 

Yeosang and Jongho met in their first year of university, if you recalled correctly. That would be a mere five years ago. Yeosang was running late for his exam and was in such distress, he forgot about the countdown on his wrist. His thoughts were everywhere and nowhere. It would be a miracle if the fairy even remembered half of the material he revised in time for the evaluation. Yeosang quickly regretted his choice of taking the elevator instead of sprinting up the five flights of stairs. He didn’t even think of using his wings!

There were just a few more minutes until the doors would close, so when the elevator dinged and the doors just started parting, Yeosang slipped through the crack and collided with a sturdy chest. Everything he was holding — keys, pencil case, water bottle, notepad  — fell to the ground along with an apology slipping out of his lips. The words didn’t get very far as Yeosang looked up and found the warmest pair of eyes staring right back at him. Yes, he missed the exam.

You sighed at the dreamy look on his face. “You’re just saying that because you love Jongho’s eyes.”

“Do not!” His glow intensified and took on the shade of the red roses behind him, a stark contrast to his green and black highlights. Yeosang eventually yielded as you raised your brows and tilted your head sideways. “Okay, I do love him, but it’s not because of his eyes!”

Joy stretched your lips into a genuine smile. You were happy for him. It was about time someone other than you brought the fairy out of his shell and Jongho, from the brief encounters you had with the werewolf, was just the man for the job. Your friendship with Yeosang blossomed in elementary school. The class consisted mostly of vampires, witches and werewolves, and hadn’t it been for you and Yeosang, the homeroom would’ve been vacant of fairies. The one thing you had in common — being of the same species — was the magnetic pull that brought you together — the garden fairy who wore his heart on his sleeve and the water fairy who, despite having a smile warm enough to melt blocks of ice, didn’t think twice before standing up for others. In other words, by drenching the pupils for making fun of the sweetest boy in class.

Though one was a garden fairy and the other a water fairy, your differences went beyond your magical abilities. Yeosang was quiet and you were loud. He liked to observe while you wanted to participate. The apples of his cheeks set ablaze at the merest crumb of attention while you didn’t shy away from the spotlight. Your differences didn’t hinder you from being friends, on the contrary actually. The different traits were perhaps the reason why you stayed friends for so long. 

Having an unpredictable mind that changed course like the unruly waters of the sea, you couldn’t help but let your thoughts run down an unstoppable stream. If the universe paired Yeosang with someone that was an anchor — grounding and strong, giving him the opportunity to lean on his soulmate whenever — what would it give you? Would your soulmate be a vampire, cold and quiet, to balance your loud and bubbly personality? Or what if they were a controlling werewolf, an alpha ordering you around, trying to drown out your outgoing persona? But your soulmate wouldn’t hurt you, right?

The silence on your part alerted Yeosang and he was quick to notice your distant gaze. He slowly waved his hand in front of you, the motion eventually getting more frantic the longer your eyes stayed stuck on the same object, until you broke out of the bubble separating you from the rest of the world.

“Are you okay?”

“Just peachy,” you replied without missing a beat and glanced down at your wrist. 

00:50:35

Your eyes widened. The time was suddenly moving so fast. All those years of you wailing and complaining about there being an eternity until you’d meet your soulmate were taunting you now. 

“What if I lock myself in the guest bathroom of the flower shop?”

“It’s impossible to defy the universe.”

“What will they do? Break the bathroom door?”

Yeosang paused for a moment and gave you a skeptic glance. “Maybe you forget to lock the door.”

"Impossible,” you countered and kept your eyes on the countdown. “I always check twice.”

“Maybe the lock breaks because you pull on the handle when checking.”

It was your turn to take a breath. He had a point and you hated it when he was onto something. “Okay, what if I hide in a river in a bubble of water?”

“Congrats, your soulmate is a merman or mermaid.”

“What if I take a trip to Jongho’s pack?”

The sudden call of your name snapped your eyes up to Yeosang’s. “Do you not want to meet your soulmate? Because you’re really acting like it…”

“It’s not that I don’t wanna meet them. I’m just… scared…”

There was no point in feeling embarrassed of your admission. Everyone you asked who had already met their soulmate told you the same story. How they were nervous, scared and excited about finding out who their other half was. You thought they were stupid at first. Who would be scared of meeting their soulmate? Now you felt stupid for secretly invalidating others’ feelings. 

“There’s no reason to be afraid, bubbles. The person you’re destined to meet isn’t just created on a whim. A piece of your soul is taken to put in theirs and vice versa, whoever it is, you’re created to fit each other.”

“But–”

“No buts. You can’t cheat fate…” A quiet blanket settled over the almost empty flower shop. “Take a stroll and try to think of something else. Here.” 

A vine covered in different sized leaves emerged from the ceiling at a single twitch of his fingers. Yeosang held his hand out and a leaf the length of your forearm fell off the branch right in his palm. He grabbed each end of the blade and beckoned you to hold out your wrist. The leaf was neatly tied around your timer, successfully covering the changing numbers.

“Now you can’t look at the timer and won’t worry about where you are or who you’re around.”

One corner of your mouth curved up in a gracious smile. “Thank you, flower.”

“I gotchu, now fly away and don’t come back unless you wanna show me your love for all eternity.”

With a new found confidence and a leaf on your wrist, you big Yeosang goodbye and left the flower shop per order. You didn’t know where to go. Any location you thought of was either too fancy or not fancy enough to meet your soulmate in. The idea to wait outside your front porch wasn’t too bad. If they turned out to be a complete weirdo you could just run and hide. The downside would be that they would know where you lived. Not wanting to waste anymore time, you decided to just walk in a straight line and let the path guide you to the person destiny chose for you. 

It was a beautiful day. There wasn’t a single cloud in the blue sky, and the sun could freely share its warm rays with the planet. People made the most of the sunny weather and spent the day outdoors. Some took longer walks with their dogs, while others decided to enjoy the clear sky in the outdoor seating areas of coffee shops. As you passed a park, you caught sight of students in high school uniforms with blankets strewn beneath them and books lying open on their laps. The bright weather sent everyone in a good mood and you just hoped the atmosphere wouldn’t change when your timer ran out. Getting sidetracked was easier than you thought. A little further up ahead the road was a fairly new shop which had just opened a few months ago. You did visit it a handful of times to your mother’s requests of buying different ingredients for her and just like then, her gentle voice echoes in your head reminding you to stop by Jung’s Magic Shop on your way home for a bottle of moon petal essence. 

The bell above the door jingled at your entry. A surge of intensity hit your nose the moment you stepped over the threshold that you thought blood would ooze out of your nostrils. One word to describe the store would be chaos. The space was the size of a shoe box and crowded due to the many unopened boxes, random piles of books that couldn’t fit in the bookshelves and random trinkets laying around. At first glance, the shop appeared to be empty, but as you reached the register and tapped the small bell with the sign ‘tap me’ attached to it, a man of short stature emerged from a cloud of smoke.

“Hello little fairy,” he greeted and leaned his elbow on the counter while resting his chin on his palm. “What can I help you with this fine evening?”

Jung Wooyoung, the youngest wizard of his family line, was most known for being the new addition in town and almost setting the whole building on fire on his first night there. He was a handsome wizard. Black hair that fell neatly over his nape and tickled the beginning of his shoulders. His equally dark eyes were obscured by a heart-shaped fringe. It was nearly impossible not to squirm beneath his gaze, but the tension would disappear with a quick flash of his bright smile. The most alluring feature of his face would be the mole right beneath his right eye, and if the viewer was extra observant, they would notice a subtle beauty mark on the center of his bottom lip. 

“Hey Woo, do you perhaps have some of that moon petal essence?”

“Hmmmmm, I think they are all reserved for other customers.” The hopeful light faded from your eyes and he was quick to take back his words, lowering his tone and whispering behind his hand as if the place was bustling with customers. “But… I can just tell Mrs. Yang, I dropped her bottle.”

“Thank you.”

“No worries, little fairy. Take it as a gift for being my favorite customer.” His eyes jumped down to your wrist and a wrinkle appeared between the skin of his furrowed brows. “What’s wrong with your wrist?”

“Oh, this?” You raised your hand and gave him a better view of the leaf. “It’s nothing, I’m supposed to meet my soulmate soon and I couldn’t stop worrying, so Yeosang tied it to keep me from worrying.”

Wooyoung hummed as his hand reached out to play with the knot of the blade. “Yeosang is that little flower fairy, huh?” He dreamily sighed. “He is beautiful.”

“And happily taken by his soulmate,” you stated matter-of-factly.

“Oh, don’t remind me! Can’t a mind fantasize in peace?” Agile as a fox, he changed the course of the conversation, seemingly no longer interested in the ‘little flower fairy’ and his boyfriend. “Well how much time is there left until you meet the lucky one?”

“It showed less than an hour back at Yeosang’s shop.”

“And you walked all the way over here?” You nodded, a bit clueless at the sudden question. “That’s a thirty minute walk, little one and that’s if you walk at a brisk pace.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I think you need to get out of here unless you want to find the love of your life in this chaos.”

Your eyes widened and you quickly ushered him to get your moon petal essence. 

“Jeez, woman. I’m going!”

As soon as Wooyoung handed you the essence trapped in a bottle the size of your pinky, you slipped it over your head and let it dangle around your neck, and dashed back out into the busy street. The door nearly hit you on the way out and you could’ve sworn you heard a cackle come from the inside, definitely Wooyoung pulling some strings to mess with you. A harsh gust of wind  swooshed around the many bodies and you threw your hand up to shield your eyes from the flying dust and dirt. What you didn’t expect though was for your leaf to come undone and travel through the air.

“Oh no!” You gasped and quickly ran after it.

As if sensing your chasing figure, the wind picked up and pushed the leaf further away. Like a game of cat and mouse, the blade would land on the ground and then jump a few paces whenever you’d get too close. It was taunting you and that alone made you more determined to capture it again. The thought of Wooyoung casting a spell on it back in his shop didn’t sound too unbelievable. The more time you spent with the wizard, the more of his foxy personality broke through his innocent act. 

“Come back here,” you hissed and chased the lively leaf while successfully avoiding collision with the other pedestrians. A brilliant idea flashed before your eyes and everyone watched in awe as your blue wings fluttered to life, and lifted your figure off the ground.

The leaf brushed off your command and continued its path further and further away from you. There was actually no point in retrieving it, but you realized you felt much better not having to look at your timer than when it was visible for everyone to see. Even now, as you were losing your mind trying to get it back, you didn’t think to glance down at your wrist. Entirely occupied by the stupid part of a random plant Yeosang summoned, you didn’t realize your timer was rapidly coming to an end. Your wings flapped rapidly, propelling you forward. Victory filled your veins as you inched closer and closer to the blade. The harsh wind stilled and the leaf fell limp on the ground just as you touched down with the soles of your feet. You ran the last stretch with your arm extended and fingers spread, ready to capture the green piece. A noise of triumph escaped your mouth as you grabbed the end of the blade.

“I got you!” 

What you didn’t expect was for the leaf to be pinched between a thumb and forefinger, twice the size of yours, at the other end. You traced the path up the stranger’s arm and gazed into the most beautiful pair of brown eyes you could ever imagine — round and wide, akin to a surprised bunny. A bubble you weren’t aware of burst in your ears and all of your thousands thoughts stored in various chests scattered in the vast space of your mind were reduced to nothing. Your breath was trapped in your throat, yet you didn’t feel the need for air as long as you kept staring at the stranger. A soft breeze — nothing like before — brushed against your bodies and a rain of cherry blossoms followed. The petals landed in the stranger’s hair and blended with his baby pink strands. The man was breathtakingly beautiful and your heart squeezed in content of being the center of his attention. 

“Hey,” he said and your insides nearly collapsed from the combination of his slight rasp and soft-spoken tone. His raspberry-colored lips curled upward and dethroned the sun as the warmest source of light in the galaxy. The fairy who couldn’t go a day without speaking was for once at a loss for words. 

“Hi,” you squeaked out and hastily rose to your feet, letting go of the oh-so-important leaf.

The man chuckled and followed your lead. His long legs were trapped in a pair of khaki pants and the pine-colored vest was buttoned up, showcasing his sunkissed arms and collarbones, and even a sliver of his belly button adorned by a trail of bright pink hairs. A brown string was tied around his neck, with just enough space for a pinky to slip between his skin and the material, and the ends disappeared beneath his shirt. That wasn’t the only accessory on his beautiful body — a light watch, in the same hue as the necklace, sat snuggly around his left wrist. A pair of beige boots fit his outfit perfectly and perhaps even made him an inch or two taller.

The attire was very comforting as it reminded you of your relatives and the few fairy friends you had. It wasn’t something people wore around these parts as most residents weren’t of fairy descent and stuck to the more modern-day clothes. Before you could spiral into what-ifs, a motion behind him caught your attention and as you threw a glance over his shoulder, the prettiest pair of wings in fairy history came into view. They were much brighter than his hair and glowed with iridescence, shifting from shades of lavender to bubblegum pink beneath the sunlight. But that wasn’t all. A shimmering gold ran through the venations, starting thick and then thinning out as they neared the edge of his wings. The stranger belonged in a bedtime story based solely on his appearance, a tale deserving to be shared with the world.

“I’m Seonghwa.” 

He tucked the leaf behind his ear and held out his hand, patiently waiting for you to reciprocate. The moment your palm touched his, he ran his thumb over your knuckles and gave it a soft shake. Gentle ripples erupted along the surface of the skin he touched and it brought a sense of serenity you only felt while being in a pool of water. Seonghwa gently and slowly turned your hand sideways, as if waiting for any attempts of resisting, but continued when you didn’t fight him on it. Multiple zeros glared up at him and a smile, broader than the one before, spread across his cheeks. 

“And do tell, is my soulmate’s name as beautiful as her face?”

An embarrassing noise was born as the question struck you like a golden arrow launched from Cupid himself and lodged itself in the center of your heart. To make matters worse, Seonghwa pulled your hand up to his face and planted a chaste, but lingering kiss on your ring finger. If Yeosang knew that a mere kiss and some sugar coated words would leave your brain fried, he would’ve done it a long time ago. Through the haze of pink hearts and desire, you managed to give up your name, but not without stumbling over your tongue a few times first.

“I love being right,” he admitted and you were a second away from fainting in the arms of your soulmate.

“I–I, yo–you– I–I mean, what!?”

Seonghwa chuckled, clearly amused and endeared with your flustered behaviour. “You have a pretty name.”

“Your face is pretty!”

You didn’t mean for the compliment to slip out after not even five minutes of meeting your soulmate, but you were drunk on him and everyone knew a drunk mind spoke a sober truth. Nonetheless, you slapped your hand over your mouth as if it would take the confession back and erase his memory. Little did you know that Seonghwa had already stored it in a folder named ‘prettiest flower’ somewhere in the far back of his head with the intent to reminisce about the sacred first meeting every once in a while. 

“Thank you, darling.”

A few people had gathered around you to witness the life changing moment of two strangers, but neither paid them any thought. Seonghwa scratched the back of his neck with his left hand — the other one still holding yours — and cleared his throat, slightly feeling the pressure of multiple eyes on him. 

“Do you wanna get out of here?” 

“Please.”

There was no step by step manual telling you what to do after meeting your soulmate. You wished though. Something like Soulmate 101 or The Soulmate Startup, it would certainly help you in times like these — you and Seonghwa sitting on a random park bench, a vacant seat between you and the March wind doing all the talking. The scenery was pretty though. An oblong pond stretched from one end of the park to the other as a long trail went around it. Years ago, probably an elderly garden fairy, planted a bunch of various trees along the path that had now grown into beautiful timbers of various sizes. You weren’t that skilled in flora, it was Yeosang’s specialty, but you managed to snag up a thing or two from the decade long friendship. 

There was an array of oak, maple and pine trees that would look nothing short of magical during the harvest season, but it didn’t mean the different hues of green were any less pretty. The growing leaves just needed to emerge from their buds and the park would look lively again. The few cherry blossom trees were at least in full bloom and distracted the visitors from the otherwise naked park, and a couple of evergreen shrubs were blooming nicely. The few ducks and swans were a cute bonus too. You thought back to Yeosang and Jongho’s story. How the younger immediately introduced Yeosang to his family, to his pack, and they welcomed him with open arms or how the garden fairy wasted no time taking Jongho to his family owned — now, entirely written over on Yeosang’s name as both Mr. and Mrs. Kang retired — business.  

“So… what kind of fairy are you?” Seonghwa’s voice snapped you back to the present. 

Most people usually guessed what abilities you had based on the color of your wings. Blue could only represent so much and the element that was always tied to it was water. Either Seonghwa was really clueless or wanted to spark up a conversation… You had a feeling it was the latter.

“I’m a water fairy,” you replied and crossed your legs over each other, subconsciously leaning closer into Seonghwa who sat with his arm draped over the back of the bench. The heat emitting from his limb grazing your shoulders and neck. “But that’s obvious because of my wings… Your wings are beautiful though and like, I’ve never seen wings in that color before and I’m trying to understand what fairy you are, but it’s so hard!”

By that point, you were already rambling. The words trickled out of your mouth like a waterfall with no end in sight, but Seonghwa didn’t mind. On the contrary, he bashfully smiled, as if you had told him the stars belonged in his eyes — which wasn’t far from the truth. People, more often than not, praised him for his wings, calling them beautiful, breathtaking, magnificent — every flattering word you could think of. Seonghwa thought he had grown immune to the compliments. However, hearing it from you sent a heat to his cheeks challenging the pink peonies in Yeosang’s shop.

“Thank you…” He meekly replied and lowered his voice down to a whisper. “People try to guess, but no one’s gotten it right yet… I’m a garden fairy.”

You felt stupid for not thinking of that, but in your defence, most garden fairies you knew (just Yeosang’s family) had green wings and green or brown hair — the two main colors symbolizing earth and flora. Of course you wouldn’t assume Seonghwa was one too as he radiated the colors of strawberry ice cream and lavender skies. 

“Are you like… royalty?”

Seonghwa couldn’t stop the laughter bubbling out of him and threw a hand over his mouth to keep his volume down so as to not disturb the other visitors. In all his years of living, he had never been mistaken for royalty. His cute pink blush intensified and was identical to the vibrant camellias on his left. 

“N–No!” He said between the laughter and waved his other hand. “It’s not common, but fairies with parents who have different abilities can be born with… abnormal wings. My mom is a garden fairy and my dad a fire fairy.”

“Wow, that’s cool. I didn’t know that at all.”

“Not many do. I mean, I have yet to meet another fairy with a not-so-normal pair of wings.”

You chuckled. “If that’s why you came here, then you’ll be disappointed.”

“How come?”

“There’s only one other fairy family here and they are gardeners too, but not the flashy-kind like you.”

This time he didn’t cosplay a tomato or shy away from your kind advances. Seonghwa leaned in and the distance between you was reduced by half. You gulped at the sudden close proximity and your eyes darted down to his lips curving up in a smirk. 

“I’m not disappointed.”

Snapping out of your trance, you found his eyes again. The round rabbit-like shape taking on that of a siren. “Huh?”

“You said if that’s why I came here then I’m going to be disappointed and well, I’m not. Wanna know why?” 

You didn’t trust your usually loud and bubbly voice to be stable anymore, not when his scent of burned sugar and sunflower fields infiltrated all of your senses. Playing your cards safe, you nodded slowly.

“Because I found something better.”

The question of what lingered in your eyes and while Seonghwa could see the curiosity shimmering in them, he wanted to hear you ask. Perhaps the soulmate connection was stronger than both of you thought because a warm feeling spread through your abdomen, like an instinct telling you when danger was near or when you could feel someone staring at you from afar, and you decided to take a step from your unusually shy exterior. 

“What?”

Seonghwa’s grin broadened. It wasn’t a matter of what, but of who. His tongue ran over his bottom lip as he leaned even closer to you. The three letter word rested on the gap of his teeth, just gauging your wide eyed expression. In a whisper, far more quiet than the calm ripple of waves or comforting sound of bubbles bursting he answered your question.

“You.”

“M– Me?”

He hummed as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. More obvious than the grass being green and the sky blue. “Yes, you. My pretty water fairy. The prettiest water fairy.”

A rush of heat attacked your face and the urge to look away was almost bigger than the urge to run your fingers through his wavy hair. The looming fear of taking a step too far made you hold back and keep your hands glued to your sides. Seonghwa wasn’t having it though. With trembling hands, he gently hooked his pointer finger beneath your chin and rested his thumb in the center of your chin, the tip grazing your bottom lip,  and directed you back to face him. Fierce bubbles reached the surface of the pond and the ducks quacked in panic at the sudden change in their peaceful environment. 

“Don’t shy away from me, pretty. I’ve been waiting for years to finally meet you and I want to stare at you until I’ve memorized the most discreet feature of your beautiful face.”

“Seonghwa,” you whispered. Your heart was loud in your ears and the hot blood wouldn’t stop rushing to your head. If you were to check your temperature, the thermometer would break from the heat and you’d be rushed to the nearest hospital. Little would they know you weren’t suffering a severe fever, but of love sickness instead.

“May I…” he hesitated as well. The two-hour-long interaction, mostly spent sitting in front of the pond, made you feel as though you had known each other for two decades. 

Sensing his caution, you wrapped your fingers around the wrist attached to your face. You gave him a soft squeeze of encouragement and whispered, “It’s okay.”

Seonghwa cleared his throat. “May I kiss you?”

“Please.”

A pair of soft and plush lips pressed against yours and a tidal wave whirled in your stomach, flipping all of your senses into overdrive. The hand that was originally cupping your chin maneuvered to cradle your cheek as his other hand fell on the cramped space between your and his thighs. Your own fingers reached the sides of his vest to not stray with the pink haze clouding your rational thoughts. It was nice to be taken care of and follow someone else’s lead every once in a while, and Seonghwa proved he could do just that. Eager and wanting more, you pushed against him and Seonghwa took it as a sign to gently swap his tongue against your bottom lip, practically begging to be let in and who were you to deny him entry?  A rich, romantic and soothing fragrance surrounded you as the kiss deepened and your fingers slid up his sides, and gently wrapped around his neck. The need to run them through his hair grew alongside the desire bubbling in your abdomen, but you refused to mess up his neat waves. 

As you parted to relieve your burning lungs, the sight surrounding the bench stole the breath right out of your throat. Multiple thorny stems protruded from the ground and created a curving wall around your bench, leaving a slim opening facing the pond. White, red, yellow and pink petals bloomed through the thousand green leaves shielding you from the outside world. It was magical, something you’d only see in movies or flower gardens where the caretakers would trim and bend the bushes until they fit their vision. You gingerly extended your hand and traced the outline of a pink rose. They were fully grown and unraveled, the kind people would kill to get their hands on for their partners on Valentine’s Day. 

“Why…?”

You were so immersed in the flowers to notice Seonghwa shrinking into himself. Shoulders hunched up to his chin, fingers fiddling in his lap and bottom lip caught between his teeth. The powers of a fairy were both a blessing and a curse for different reasons. Garden fairies could manipulate greenery to create art deserving of a place in the Louvre. Until they were fully in control of those powers, their emotions dictated their actions, often leading to chaos like a cocoon of roses mirroring Seonghwa’s warm heart.

“Did you do this?”

Seonghwa was snapped out of his embarrassed trance and sheepishly smiled. His hand came up to rub the back of his neck despite not feeling an itch and then wiped it obnoxiously off his thigh. There was no point in hiding the truth. A bush didn’t just sprout overnight let alone in a matter of seconds, at least not without the help of a fairy. Seonghwa was still reluctant to admit the truth. What person would want to hear about their soulmate becoming overwhelmed by emotions to the point where they lose the reins of their powers? There was nothing attractive or admirable about that. Not at Seonghwa’s grown age! 

As much as he wanted to play it off and play stupid. Answering with a simple shrug of his shoulders and feigning a look of surprise. Seonghwa was a worse liar than someone who couldn’t control their powers, the truth spilling out from him despite his best efforts. “...Maybe?”

The garden fairy had yet to gauge your reaction. He wished to spare the flustered image of you in his mind for just a little while longer before ruining it forever with the expected disappointment souring your features. 

“Red for love and passion…” Your voice rang out like a wind chime and Seonghwa  slowly looked up at you who had your eyes set on the beautiful flowers. “Yellow for warmth and friendship. Pink for joy and appreciation, and white for new beginnings.”

“You know the meaning behind them,” Seonghwa whispered in awe. 

A soft smile spread across your face. “It would be embarrassing if I didn’t considering my best friend is a garden fairy.”

There was a mutual understanding not to prance over the obvious mishap and Seonghwa released a blow of relief as you didn’t laugh at him and the slip of control over his abilities. The silence returned with a comforting undertone, soft and steady, allowing space for peace to settle in. Neither you nor Seonghwa tensed or fidgeted at the lack of conversation and simply basked in each other’s presence. The fear and sheer anxiety of meeting your soulmate was for nothing as Seonghwa proved to be more tender than a flower. The flame burning inside of you flickered brighter with each gentle word he spoke and you hoped, with every ounce of your being, that he felt the same, that he too was drawn to this connection as deeply as you were. 

“The flowers are for you.” Seonghwa was the first to interrupt the silence. Perhaps the soulmate connection ran deeper than a simple countdown leading up to the moment you met.

“Huh?”

“The roses. They are for you. It’s what I felt– What I feel when I’m with you.”

“Oh!”

He let out a sound something between a huff and chuckle at your sudden rigid position while you begged for your face to cool off.

“Would it be wrong of me to assume you feel the same?”

“Not at all.” You bit the inside of your lip and tapped your fingers along your thigh. “Would it be wrong of me to say I really like you?”

Seonghwa held your gaze. The warmth of his smile seeping into your bones and spreading throughout your already heated body. He gently dropped his hand on the wooden surface with the palm facing the clear sky. Cautious yet daring, your finger extended from your remaining fingers as if testing the waters. It grazed the soft skin of his palm and it was the brief contact you needed to slide your hand in his, fingers intertwining and giving each other comforting squeezes.

“Not at all,” he breathed out, his thumb running along the side of yours.

Bonus: 

“No, Jongho, you don’t understand. I told her I didn’t want to her if she wouldn’t come back with her soulmate. It’s been hours since then! What if she’s kidnapped? Or murdered? Or sold overseas?!”

In the time you were enjoying the company of your newfound soulmate. Showing Seonghwa the town where bits and pieces of your childhood were sprinkled in the streets, coffee shops, book shops, restaurants, playgrounds and elementary- to high school. Yeosang was slowly losing his mind in the safety of his flower shop, prancing back and forth as his mind theorized a hundred different ways harm could come your way. Jongho helplessly watched his soulmate get his daily steps in. The werewolf, despite being younger than the fairy, was quite calm about the whole ordeal. It was more likely that your phone had died than for your soulmate to kidnap and take you to another country in a span of three hours. 

“Yeosang, love, I need you to calm down–”

“Don’t tell me to calm down, Jongho!”

The werewolf threw his hands up in surrender. It wasn’t everyday the calm and collected garden fairy who followed strangers home to see their puppies and kittens lashed out on others, especially not his own soulmate. 

“Whoa, can we go back to using our inner voices, please?”

That seemed to snap Yeosang out of his frustrated stupor. He sighed and ran a hand through his multicolored hair. “Sorry, Jjong. I’m just worried for her.”

“I get that, but working yourself up over nothing won’t help. I mean, you haven’t even tried calling her…”

“That’s because I don’t want to interrupt if everything’s going alright! That would just be embarrassing for us both!”

As Jongho parted his lips to reassure his boyfriend that there was nothing embarrassing about checking on his best friend to see if she was alive, the door of the flower shop opened. The person Yeosang had been prematurely growing gray hairs over waltzed in with a bright smile on her face and a handsome man in tow. Yeosang’s jaw went slack and Jongho leaned back in shock, certainly not expecting you to heed Yeosang’s threat and bring your soulmate to his very shop. 

You cleared your throat, “Yeosang, Jongho. This is Seonghwa, my soulmate. Seonghwa, this is my best friend Yeosang and his soulmate Jongho.”

© HONGJOONGSPOETRY 2025. All rights reserved. Copying, editing, reposting or translating my work is not allowed.

[star-41306]

Pushing It Down and Praying (pt.0 here)

‘Isn’t this what you wanted? To feel loved?’ my brain asks. ‘It doesn’t feel like love.’ my heart supplied

I love him, kiss his mouth, prayin'.. He can't see what I see

I follow him carefully to his bedroom, my shoes faltering on the hardwood. ‘What I would give to live in a house like this one’

He leads me up the stairs, glancing back at me as we travel upwards. We walk down a short hallway until- 

“Here we are,” he says with a smile. The door creaks open gently, an invitation. I stay in the hallway as he sits on the bed, expectantly. He said his parents aren't home, but I survey the hallway until I deem it safe. ‘No one saw.’

I approach Chance unsteady, lips trembling, heart in my throat. He doesn't seem to notice. I walk up to the space between his legs, unsure of where to put my hands. 

He grabs my waist, ‘I guess he knows where to put his.’ and smirks up at me. He opens his mouth, seemingly about to say something. I finally rest my hands on his shoulders, right next to his dark brown hair. He doesn’t say anything though.

When I close my eyes.. You replace him

Suddenly his mouth is on mine. It’s warm, almost tantalizing, but my mind is somewhere else. Somewhere with darker hair, kinder eyes, rosier lips. ‘Focus Will, who knows when you’ll get another opportunity like this’ 

I try to kiss back. It’s uncomfortable, with teeth clashing and too much tongue. ‘I wish he were someone else’

His hands push up my shirt, appearing to search for something. I pull away fast. “What are you doing?” I ask.

“Woah, calm down. I was just trying to spice things up.” He dismissed me. I look in his eyes, and now I'm the one searching. I can't find anything.

“You said.. Just kissing. Nothing else.” is my shaky reply

“We are kissing” is his solid one

“But-”

“Look, if you aren’t ready for this, just say that. But good luck finding anyone else.” he says unbothered, leaning back on the mattress lazily.

Wearin' no disguise.. You erase him

I sit with that. He’s right and I know it. By the smug look on his face, he knows that I’ve caught up. “So?” It hits me like freezing water. 

“Okay.” I move back to where I was, maybe even closer. He raises back up and puts his hands back in their place. I move mine into his hair, tugging lightly. I realize the stakes. ‘I’m a queer in Indiana. This is the best I'm gonna get. Even if I want something more’

I try to distract myself from the nausea, and use the thoughts of my bestfriend to my advantage. “Somewhere else, somewhere else, somewhere else.. someone else.”

His lips are back on mine.

I wanna feel guilty, I wanna feel that it's wrong I wanna know peace again, Wanna sing a different song..

I imagine his sharp face, his soft voice, his careful hands. If they were his, maybe it wouldn’t feel so wrong. Or maybe it would feel worse. Yeah, worse. ‘Focus’

‘But would it?-’

“Hey” a voice unlike the one i’m thinking of interrupts my thoughts. It's deeper, sharp like chipped wood. 

“Yeah?” 

“You wanna-”

A phone rings in the distance, coming from downstairs.

“Oh shit, give me a minute, yeah?”

And he’s gone

Left standing there with my thoughts, the disgust festers.

‘Isn’t this what you wanted? To feel loved?’ my brain asks

‘It doesn’t feel like love,’ my heart supplied ‘you know what love feels like.’

I keep imagining him even without the counterfeit versions' presence.

‘I’d rather never have Mike in that way than kiss a guy that kind of looks like him.’

I want you to need me I need to want somethin' more He gives what he can But now I don't know what he's givin' for.

Next thing I know, I’m out the door.

(pt. 2)

[undertale-gardensave]

Well... I hate to do this, but I think I'll abandon Gardensave

I'm sorry.I swear I tried really hard to continue AU in a new way and I really wanted to do it!But unfortunately it didn't work.

when I started this AU it was great to imagine the concepts and draw the characters but now, I don't know, it all seems to have become boring and annoying, like it's a job I'm obliged to do and I don't like that!I made this AU for fun so it seems more like it's lost the purpose TwT

Well, I don't really want to give up AU completely , I'm just going to stop the "process of creating it", I don't know if I'm explaining it right 🫠

My original plan (after restarting AU) was to gradually post the AU information, like:First shows Frisk and her "powers", then Toriel and the rest of the ruins, then the Sans and...well you get the idea

As I no longer intend to continue this story, I was thinking of stopping the mystery and simply answering anything you ask about the AU.Just to put these concepts that I had already created to some use -w-

Maybe later (If I can motivated myself to draw) I'll show you the few designs I've finished ?

So that's it, I'm sorry again and... let me know what you think

Also, here are some sketches of a sort of "introductory comic" which I was working on but couldn't finish for lack of inspiration

[bullet-prooflove]

Wait And See: Tim Gutterson x Reader

Tagging: @kmc1989 @fallmoreinloveeveryday @elenavampire21 @floralfloyd @lamaudite

Companion piece to:

Lucky - Tim's assignment doesn't go to plan.

Stars - Tim's not like the other guys.

The Good Book - Tim makes you a promise you don't think he can keep.

Bad Timing - You and Tim have always had a case of bad timing.

Straight From The Heart - Tim speaks from the heart during a late night phone call.

Missed Call - Tim's world crumbles when he listens to your voicemail.

Stars Align - Things start to go wrong just as Tim and yours stars align.

A Ramblin’ Man - Tim makes you a promise about the future.

A Patient Man - Tim awaits news on your condition.

Devastation.

That’s what you’re feeling right now. It rises up like a tidal wave in your chest as you stand before the bed in your hospital room, packing up your shit into the duffle bag that’s travelled around the entire world with you. Your eyes sting as you pick up Monty the plush racoon that Tim won for you at the county fair a few years ago, squeezing it lightly between your hands.

“Fuck.” You whisper, cuddling it to your chest the same way you do back in home on the nights that you miss him.

You’re leaving Kentucky today with your ASAC, heading back to New Orleans because that’s where your boss dictates you should recover. They need you on site to run through the finer details of the ongoing investigation. That deal you had, it’s been pulled because the operation crumbled in the aftermath of your shooting, which means you won’t be moving to Kentucky after all.

You can’t express how much it killed you to be given that news, to have your future yanked out from underneath you yet again.

“They tell me you’re leaving today.” Tim says from behind you and you use the back of your hand to wipe away the tears from underneath your eyes before he can see them.

“Yea.” You say, your voice rough as you tuck Monty carefully into your bag. “It’s not my choice, the overlords have spoken.”

“I know, which is we’re gonna make a trip of it.” He says, setting down his own dufflebag down alongside yours. The two of you have some of the same patches from your service, you remember watching him sew them on with that quick, neat stitch of his back in his apartment in Indiana. “You, me and Monty here…” He says, his palm smoothing over the plush racoon’s head. “We’re gonna drive to Nashville tonight, stay in the swankiest hotel we can afford, eat room service and watch TV before we depart for New Orleans tomorrow. I’m gonna stay there with you for a couple of weeks so I can help you get back on your feet.”

“Tim, I can’t ask you to take that time…” You begin but he shakes his head, cutting you off.

“You’re not.” He says, his palm coming to rest on your lower back, his thumb chasing over the tattoo of a geometric lotus flower you’d gotten after the tour where the two of had you met. “I kinda got myself suspended for doing something really fucking dumb.”

“On purpose?” You ask and he leans back against the bed, his arms crossed over his chest as he gives you that smirk.

“It’s a bitch when you misplace your firearm ain’t it?”

Out of every single person on this planet, Tim is the least likely to lose his gun. That thing is a fucking extension of his personality. If it’s not on his hip, he’s cleaning it, and if he’s not cleaning it, it’s locked in his gun safe. Art must know that, which is why you see this for what it is. Furlough. He can’t give him leave to help you with your recovery so this is the next best thing.

“You are fucking terrible.” You tell him, your lips tipping up into a smile.

“Oh I know.” He says, taking up your duffle bag and slinging it over his shoulder before he does the same with his own. “But ingenuity like this, it’s why your gonna marry one day.”

He isn’t wrong, the way this man makes you feel when you’re with him. It makes every single one of those lonely nights worthwhile.

“You’d have to ask first.” You say and he gives you that devil may care grin of his before his fingers link with yours, drawing you out of the room.

“That day is coming Lucky, just you wait and see.”

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[greenesmyfavcolor]

Just popping in to say that I love your blog so much and that I always find myself scrolling through it when I catch a bad case of Little Shop brainworms <33 thank you for truly being the backbone of this Tumblr community ^^ Also!! Do you have any aspect of LSOH (either film or stage show :)) you LOVE a ton but don't see enough people talk about or praise?? Or just an underrated aspect of it in general?? Hope that question makes sense lol and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day/night :D

Aw thank you so much! Means a lot to know that I'm contributing something worthwhile to this small but passionate fandom on here!

Anyhoo, that’s a good question. Just about everyone I've seen has covered everything about Little Shop down to the nitty gritty details and I absolutely love that. However, if there’s one thing I think deserves more love and tends to get overlooked, it's Lee Wilkof, who originated the role of Seymour on stage.

He tends to get thrown under the bus a lot by some people and I have absolutely no idea why. I've heard people criticizing him saying that he was too old for the role at the time, but he was only 31 when the show first opened and is actually slightly younger than Ellen Greene but no one seems to be saying that she was too old for her role. That, or either he doesn’t look the part, which I don’t understand how he couldn’t look like Seymour when he was the first guy to play Seymour on stage. If it's about him balding prematurely at the time, who cares? Seymour's not supposed to be this conventionally attractive guy anyway so why should there be a set standard for how he should look? Those complaints are just a bit silly to me.

Besides that, he also gets completely upstaged by Ellen (which is understandable 😂) so most people tend to remember her more when it comes to the original off-Broadway production. I mean, she even got top billing over Lee who was the lead which is kind of insane when you think about it (but again, iconic for her).

And then later, he got even more overshadowed by Rick Moranis, which I also get. He played Seymour in the movie which was most people's first introduction to the character so I understand that there's going to be some sort of bias present.

Basically, everything was not in his favor which sucks cause I really love him as Seymour. He added a lot of grit to the role, which I typically don’t see a lot of Seymours doing. Most people play him very passive or overly timid, which is fine, but Seymour's a very morally grey character that isn't all good or all bad. He's cute and insecure, yes, but he also indirectly murders people and feeds them to a plant lol. There's gotta be a balance and Lee gets that. He really nails all the anger, guilt, distress, etc. that Seymour goes through throughout the show. The Meek Shall Inherit and Death of Seymour in particular are when he really gets a chance to pop off. And he's of course able to be sweet and sincere when needed such as during Suddenly Seymour or basically anytime he interacts with Audrey. His singing is also amazing! I primarily listen to 1982 cast album just for him (and Ellen I won't lie haha). I especially love his vibrato and how hard he goes in some of the songs like Feed Me and Now It's Just The Gas. And he has great chemistry with Ellen! What's not to love?

I also appreciate how he’s still very much involved in Little Shop whether it’s doing an interview, like recently with Little Shop of Audrey, or showing up for Little Shop related events, like the 2015 Encores opening night afterparty. Not a lot of actors do that especially so long after their show has ended so I can tell the role and Little Shop as a whole has meant a lot to him. I mean, he met his future wife while working on the show so you can’t say it doesn’t mean something to him lol.

While I have said in the past that Rick is my favorite Seymour, Lee is for sure a close second. He played an essential part in making Little Shop what it is today by laying out the foundation for Seymour which is very respectable.

So yeah, give him some more love! He's great!

And thanks for the ask! Have a wonderful rest of your day/night too <3

[cressidagrey]

The Queen of Romantasy and the Race Car Prince - Epilogue (The End)

Pairing: Lando Norris x Elizabeth "Lizzie" Treshton (Original Character)

Summary:

Elizabeth Treshton—bestselling romantasy author, queen of fae heartbreak, and sworn devotee of a carefully structured routine—never expected her service dog to abandon protocol and diagnose a Formula 1 driver with something. But that’s exactly what happens when Mara the wonder-dog ditches Lizzie’s side to aggressively alert to none other than Lando Norris in the middle of a coffee shop.

Warnings and Notes: 

Mention of epilepsy and service animals. I don't myself suffer from epilepsy, so I asked my IRL friend, who thankfully was nice enough to let me ask her all the questions I could come up with. The rest I asked Reddit. So everything that's wrong...that's totally my fault and not on purpose.

And with that, we have reached the end. I could, as always, write a lot more, (And maybe eventually I will, but for right now, that's where we will leave Lando and Lizzie.)

As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble

Twitch Stream Transcript – Max Fewtrell & Lando Norris

[Stream starts]

Max: Right, chat. I know we’ve been through a lot together. We’ve seen things. We’ve survived things. But I don’t think any of you are ready for what’s about to happen.

Max: Because, somehow, defying all expectations, defying all logic—Lando Norris is actually here.

Chat: 

LIAR.

NO WAY.

PROVE IT.

MAX THIS BETTER NOT BE A PRERECORDED AI CLIP.

OH SO HE DOES EXIST.

IT’S BEEN 84 YEARS.

Lando: [over voice chat, deadpan] I hate you.

Max: Gasp. He speaks. It’s real. It’s happening.

Lando: You’re so dramatic.

Max: No, mate, I’m just telling it like it is. The last time we saw you, you were escaping the internet at full speed. Thought you retired. Went off the grid. Became a monk.

Lando: Yeah, well. Things got messy.

Max: Understatement of the year.

Chat: 

YEAH NO KIDDING.

THE INTERNET WAS A NIGHTMARE.

LIZZIE DESERVED BETTER.

MARAAA OUR QUEEN.

THE ABLEISM WAS SO BAD.

LANDO DEFENDING HER >>>

Max: So, how’s Lizzie?

Lando: She’s good. Writing, mostly. And making sure I actually sleep.

Max: A saint.

Lando: Obviously.

Chat: 

PROTECT HER AT ALL COSTS.

SHE NEEDS TO KNOW WE LOVE HER.

I WANT TO SEND HER FANMAIL BUT I’M SCARED.

MARA POST WHEN??

TELL LIZZIE SHE’S A QUEEN.

Max: But mate, you really should’ve warned me before hopping on. Nearly had a heart attack.

Lando: Didn’t think it was that big of a deal.

Max: Didn’t think it was—oh my god. Chat, back me up.

Chat: 

IT IS A BIG DEAL.

HISTORIC MOMENT.

LORE DROP.

WE THOUGHT LIZZIE LOGGED YOU OUT FOREVER.

DO YOU EVEN REMEMBER YOUR TWITCH PASSWORD??

SHE PROBABLY DRAGGED HIM BACK HERE.

Lando: Actually, she’s in the kitchen right now.

Max: Oh, is she? What’s she doing?

Lando: Giving Mara peanut butter.

Max: …Oh no.

Lando: Yeah.

(And then, as if on cue, absolute chaos erupts in Lando’s mic—loud licking, snuffling, something knocking against furniture. A thump. A very happy dog making a complete racket.)

Max: WHAT IS HAPPENING.

Lando: [muffled laughter] She’s going feral.

Max: CHAT, DO YOU HEAR THIS?

Chat: 

MARAAA.

SHE’S EATING LIKE SHE HASN’T BEEN FED IN YEARS.

DOG ASMR STREAM WHEN.

THAT’S THE SOUND OF A QUEEN ENJOYING LIFE.

SHE DESERVES EVERY BIT OF THAT PEANUT BUTTER.

Max: Mate. Your dog is losing it.

Lando: She loves peanut butter.

Max: Yeah, no kidding. It sounds like she’s wrestling it.

Lando: Wouldn’t surprise me.

Max: I swear, chat’s gonna riot if you don’t post a Mara video soon.

Lando: I’ll think about it.

Max: Think about it? No, mate, you don’t understand. Mara is the people’s princess.

Chat: 

MARA FOR PRESIDENT.

SHE DESERVES THE WORLD.

THE WAY SHE’S JUST EXISTING AND WE’RE ALL LOSING IT.

THIS IS NOW A MARA FAN STREAM.

GIRLBOSS.

Max: You could literally disappear again for months, but if you drop one single Mara clip, all will be forgiven.

Lando: Huh. Good to know.

Max: Don’t even pretend like you won’t exploit that.

Lando: [grinning] Wouldn’t dream of it.

(Mara, still licking peanut butter, lets out an extremely content sigh.)

Max: Oh, that was adorable.

Lando: Yeah, she’s great.

Max: I can feel chat melting over this.

Chat: 

SHE’S SO PRECIOUS.

LIZZIE AND MARA HARD CARRYING THE CONTENT RIGHT NOW.

MARA POST WHEN.

WE DON’T DESERVE HER.

SHE’S SO REAL FOR THIS.

Max: Right. Now that we’ve all had our emotional moment over Mara’s peanut butter obsession, shall we actually play the game?

Lando: Probably.

Max: But just so we’re clear—this stream peaked the moment Mara showed up.

Lando: Yeah, I figured.

(Chat spams heart emojis as the game finally begins.)

***

The Queen of Romantasy and the Race Car PrinceBy June Shepard

Elizabeth "Lizzie" Treshton has built an empire on love stories—intoxicating, sweeping, heart-stopping love stories that have made her one of the most successful romantasy authors of the decade. Her Seasons of Fate series, a four-book saga filled with magic, intrigue, and forbidden romance, has captivated millions worldwide, cementing her place as the reigning queen of the genre.

But even her most devoted readers could never have predicted that she was living out a love story of her own. And certainly not with one of the biggest stars in motorsport.

When Lizzie Treshton walked into the Silverstone paddock in July 2025, hand-in-hand with McLaren’s Lando Norris, social media imploded.

No one had any idea they were together. No rumors, no leaks—just an earth-shattering confirmation that sent both F1 and romantasy Twitter into collective cardiac arrest.

"It wasn’t supposed to be a big thing," Treshton says now, curled up on a sofa in her Surrey flat, a steaming mug of tea in hand. "Lando was racing at Silverstone. I wanted to be there to support him. I didn’t think the world would explode."

Perhaps that was naive. Because if there’s one thing the world loves, it’s an unexpected crossover. And this? This was the ultimate crossover event.

Lando Norris has spent the last six years in the high-pressure world of Formula 1, balancing blistering lap times with an ever-growing fanbase that adores his mix of raw talent, easy charm, and chaotic humor. He’s no stranger to public scrutiny. But even he was caught off guard by the sheer scale of the reaction.

"I knew Lizzie was a big deal," he says, rubbing the back of his neck with a sheepish smile. "But I didn’t fully grasp it until people started calling me ‘the romantasy book boyfriend of the year.’"

He grins. "I think my sisters are still mad I didn’t tell them who I was dating."

That particular detail has only added to the legend of "Lizzie & Lando." While Norris’s family knew he had a girlfriend, they had no idea it was that Lizzie Treshton—the very same author whose books they had lined up at midnight to buy. His sisters, self-proclaimed romantasy fanatics, took approximately thirty seconds to forgive him before launching into full-scale fangirl mode.

But not everyone has been as welcoming.

Almost immediately after Silverstone, the backlash began. While plenty of fans celebrated the unexpected pairing, others turned vicious. Some called Treshton “undeserving.” Others dismissed the relationship entirely, claiming Norris would eventually move on.

And then there were the ones who went after her health.

Treshton has always been open about living with epilepsy, discussing it occasionally in interviews and social media posts. But being open about something and having it dissected by millions of strangers are two very different things.

Some reactions were cruel—questioning Norris’s commitment, making sweeping judgments about Treshton’s ability to “keep up” with the fast-paced, jet-setting lifestyle of an F1 driver. Others were outright ableist, using her condition as a reason to doubt her place at his side.

Norris, uncharacteristically sharp in his response, took to Instagram. “The way some of you have spoken about Liz—the woman I love—is disgusting. There’s no other way to put it. You’ve taken something she has no control over and used it as an excuse to dehumanize her, to insult her, to act like she isn’t worthy of me.” 

McLaren issued a formal statement condemning the backlash, while much of the grid rallied behind Treshton, with drivers like Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc publicly voicing their support.

“It was disgusting,” Treshton says bluntly. “But not surprising.”

"I’ve lost people because of my epilepsy," Treshton says quietly, her fingers tightening around her mug. "People who couldn’t handle it. People who didn’t want to try."

Her mother was one of them.

Treshton doesn’t often talk about her mother, but when she does, it’s with a detachment that speaks of wounds long since buried. "She left when I was young," she says. "Said she couldn’t deal with it. So she didn’t."

She exhales slowly. "I learned early on that some people see epilepsy as an inconvenience. Like it makes you fragile. But it doesn’t make me less. And it sure as hell doesn’t make me unlovable."

Despite the backlash, Treshton and Norris remain unfazed. Their relationship, built away from the public eye, is stronger than the noise that surrounds it.

"Lando makes me feel safe," she admits. "Not in a way that makes me feel like I need protecting, but in a way that reminds me I don’t have to do everything alone."

For Norris, it’s simple. "She’s incredible," he says. "And I’m lucky to have her. End of story."

There’s something almost cinematic about the two of them. The bestselling author who spins love stories for a living. The racing driver who defies speed and gravity every weekend. It’s the kind of pairing that shouldn’t make sense. And yet, it does.

At the end of the day, theirs isn’t just a love story. It’s a story about resilience. About belonging. About choosing each other in a world that constantly tries to tear people down.

When asked what’s next, Treshton shrugs. “I have a book to finish. He has races to win. And beyond that?” She tilts her head, thoughtful. “I think we’ll just keep surprising people.”

One thing is clear: the queen of romantasy and her race car prince are far from a fleeting fairytale.

They’re just getting started.

****

8 December 2024, Yas Marina Circuit, Abu Dhabi

The moment Lando stepped out of the car, the world blurred around him. The cheers, the McLaren team swarming in orange, the fireworks—none of it felt real. He had won Abu Dhabi. He had won the Constructors’ Championship for McLaren. After years of dreaming, of heartbreak, of being so close yet so far—he had done it.

His mother reached him first, arms tight around his shoulders, holding him like she never wanted to let go. “Lando,” she breathed, pulling back just enough to look him in the eyes. “You’ve made so many people happy today.”

His father clapped a firm hand on his back, pride evident in his expression. His team, his engineers, Zak Brown—everyone was celebrating around him. But Lando was already searching for someone else.

And then he saw her.

Lizzie stood off to the side, wrapped in one of his McLaren jackets, Mara sitting dutifully at her feet. She looked exhausted, and he knew why. Just last night, she had suffered a seizure. He had been with her through it, waiting for the worst to pass. He had told her she didn’t have to come today, that she should stay at the hotel and rest.

But Lizzie was nothing if not stubborn.

Her gaze found his, and her face lit up like the fireworks lighting the sky outside.

He could see how tired she was, though, in the tightness around her eyes, the way her body was still a little stiff.

But she was here.

His feet moved before his brain caught up, and suddenly, she was in front of him, her hands reaching up to his face before he could say a word.

Her fingers traced over his skin, her tired eyes taking him in with a familiar, almost reverent look. It was as if she couldn’t believe he was real. Lando knew the feeling.

“Like I ever would have missed this,” she murmured before he could scold her for being out in the chaos of the paddock. Her thumbs brushed his cheekbones, her voice thick with emotion. “Lando, you did it. You actually did it.”

"You didn't need to come," he whispered. His hands came to rest on her waist, grounding himself. “I was worried about you.”

“And I was never going to miss watching you win,” she said simply, smiling up at him. “I am so proud of you.”

Lando let out a shaky breath.

Then, with the whole world watching, he kissed her.

It was soft, careful—his hands tightening on her waist like he was terrified she might disappear, like he still wasn’t sure if any of this was real. When he pulled back, her eyes were shining, and for the first time since he crossed the finish line, it hit him.

He had everything he had ever wanted.

****

Dedications of The Seasons of Fate: 

A Spring of Secrets and Thorns

For Mara—

My steady ground, my quiet guardian, my fiercest protector.

For every unseen battle you’ve helped me fight, for every moment you’ve kept me safe, and for always being by my side—this book, like so much of my life, is possible because of you.

A Summer of Blood and Bloom

For Dad—

For every doctor’s appointment, every sleepless night, and every time you carried the weight of the world so I wouldn’t have to.

You taught me that love doesn’t walk away—it stays, it fights, and it endures. This book is a testament to that, and to you.

An Autumn of Fire and Stone

For Tasha and Aunt Lou—

For the sister I chose and the woman who made us family.

For every page read, every dream encouraged, and every time you reminded me that I was more than my worst days. I am who I am because I had you both beside me. I couldn’t have done this without you.

A Winter of Ash and Starlight

For Lando - 

Who taught me that love, like speed, can take your breath away in an instant. You’ve turned the pages of my life in the most unexpected, beautiful way. 

Thank you for showing me that sometimes the best stories are the ones you never saw coming. 

Ours is my favourite one. 

Acknowledgments – A Winter of Ash and Starlight

Writing this book, and really this entire series, has been one of the greatest joys of my life. I never imagined that a story I started one summer in my dad’s garden would turn into this, but here we are. I couldn’t have done it alone, and I wouldn’t have wanted to.

To my dad—thank you for everything. For the late-night talks, the endless encouragement, and the way you always made sure I knew I was enough, just as I am. You’ve been my rock, my biggest supporter, and the reason I never stopped believing I could do this.

To Aunt Lou—you are proof that family is about love, not blood. You didn’t have to be a mother to me, but chose to be anyway. I don’t have the words to properly thank you for that, but I hope you know how much I love you.

To Tasha—my sister in every way that matters. For always having my back, for every chaotic adventure, and for making sure I never forget who I am. You are my favorite person to cause trouble with.

To Mara—my best girl, my constant companion, my real-life guardian angel. You have been curled up beside me through every late-night writing session, every deadline panic, every high and low.  There is no version of my life, or this book, without you in it.

This book marks the end of Astrid and Ciaran’s journey—the last chapter of their love story. And in a way, it closes a chapter of my own life, too. Love has a funny way of finding you when you least expect it, and just as I was bringing Astrid and Ciaran home, someone walked into my life and changed everything.

To Lando—who came into my life just as I was closing this chapter and somehow became the best story of all. I don’t know if fate is real, but if it is, I think it was always meant to bring me to you. You walked into my world when I wasn’t sure I deserved something good, and you have never let me forget that I do. 

Thank you for every quiet moment and every inside joke. Thank you for the dino nuggets, the peanut butter and the Ferrari Dog Bandanas. Thank you for making me laugh, for making me feel safe, and for proving, every single day, that love isn’t about grand gestures, but about showing up, time and time again. 

You have been the greatest plot twist of my life. I love you. 

And finally, to the readers—thank you for taking this journey with me. Thank you for believing in Astrid and Ciaran, in fate and magic, in love that defies the odds. This world, this story, exists because of you.

Here’s to new stories, new adventures, and finding our own kind of magic. Always.

With love and endless gratitude, Elizabeth Louise Treshton

The End

[futuristicanoe]

nothing could have prepared me for that. wow.

I just felt my heart shatter right there. I don't know what you put in that last sentence but fucking hell I literally felt it like a precisely aimed bullet.

"But I just wish it would have come to me in a different way, a more pleasant way. Not like this. Not when I had to come to terms with the fact that I’m dealing with sleepless nights not over someone else’s crying, which should have been yours, but my own."

"I wanted something that would sway with the wind, that would bend but not break. Something that I could watch bloom despite it all…He said he would do it when he wasn’t so afraid of letting something he planted grow again."

my god.....

"That love, when it is that enormous, does not simply disappear. It does not simply dissolve into nothingness like you seemingly did. It lingers with nowhere to go. He made me love myself once. And maybe all of it together — the way he loved me, the way I loved him — caused this much love for you to spark in such a short time. We only just got to know you.

I don’t love myself anymore."

:((((

"I feel envious of the ones who got to have a headstone, a place to go, a physical marker that proves their loss was real. I wish you would have at least given me that. You gave me nothing, and yet, somehow, you took everything."

Okay, OKAY. !!!

It couldn't have been more beautiful, and it's truly impossible to explain how it made me feel because words fail me and you just do not fail anything. Perfect. Ughhhh.

I can't cry, but if I could, I'd spend the rest of the weekend clawing my eyes out over this, and I'd be immensely grateful because, hey, even just being able to read this is such an honour itself. Thank you. 🫂

(And oh, I have a willow tree right outside my house, actually. And now I don't know what to do with myself.)

Twilight

to climb back up from my oblivion

warnings: 1st person pov, talks of pregnancy, miscarriage, feelings, and sex. 

word count: 7k

It is the last day of winter.  

The sun should have shown itself by now, should have crept back into the creases of the earth and returned his freckles stolen by the cold, made us blush under its rays. But the sky remains bolted shut and there’s nothing on his face other than the purple that now seems embedded under his eyes. Shadows where warmth used to be. I bet mine looks just the same — though I still refuse to look in the mirror. I don’t need the confirmation. I know what I’d see: a face that doesn’t belong to me anymore, a stranger carved from sleepless nights and something nameless.  

For two months now, I’ve been paralysed with fear. I think I am living a nightmare, a dystopia. A world where things are just a little off-kilter, where reason slides just out of reach. I read, I listen, I try to understand the impossible. I try to untangle the logic of things that seemed reasonable before, but which oneself can no longer reach with feasible arguments. It’s like running my hands along a wall looking for a door that isn’t there. And all around me, people keep pretending. Pretending to be going about their lives, pretending all is business as usual, pretending they don’t hear the static growing louder.  

I keep looking out to winter trees, bare and brittle, skeletal in their stillness. And he…he is seeking achievements one after the other, as though that will fill the space. As though stacking accomplishments brick by brick will build something strong enough to hold him up. But I see what he’s doing. He’s turning off the soul — too much transparency bothers, you see. Too much honesty, too much feeling, and it would all come apart. So he moves forward, while I remain here, watching the trees, feeling the wind hollow me out.  

There’s a lot of negative emotion I am feeling. 

But that word — negative — doesn’t quite capture it. It’s not just sadness or simple dread. It’s something continually sprawling and seeping into everything. I keep wondering how this collective psychosis is possible? How the world can split in two, between those who see it and those who refuse to? And him. How can he believe that ignorance is the one thing that embodies the solution to all worries, problems, anxieties, and fears that your absence caused? He wants to un-know what has already carved itself into the marrow of things. He wants to believe he can choose not to feel it. And maybe he can. Maybe he’s learned something I haven’t. 

I feel like a cat looking at a calendar, staring at the little squares marked with days and not understanding the meaning of them. Time is streaming, spilling, slipping, and I don’t know how to be or what to do in the remaining time I have to urge for myself. To claw something back before it’s too late.  

I wish I could say it directly.  

But ultimately, I believe that in these circumstances, it is the only choice — to keep it buried, to play along. So that we can continue in the paradigm of the perfect reality and not in the nightmare of despair we’ve been given. Because to accept it, to speak it out loud, would be to let it consume us whole.  

I didn’t realise until now that souls could have a patina.  

Perhaps it’s that thing where you get wiser with age and experience, and so maybe your soul develops a patina over time. A thin film of time and sorrow, a dulling of the once-bright edges. It’s kind of a beautiful idea, in theory, to think of the soul as having a patina. It sounds very poetic. But I just wish it would have come to me in a different way, a more pleasant way. Not like this. Not when I had to come to terms with the fact that I’m dealing with sleepless nights not over someone else’s crying, which should have been yours, but my own.   

There’s a kind of exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix.  

You have no way to know, but it’s the kind that settles in your bones when your days are filled with things that don’t move you, but they settle, deep and slow, like water sinking into wood until it ultimately starts to rot. It’s the kind that lingers in the hollow of your throat and makes you choke on nothing. It’s not the tiredness that comes from doing too much, but from doing too little of what makes you feel alive. And the worst part is that I don’t even know what that is anymore. I try to go through the motions like before. Ticking off everything on my to-do list, fulfilling obligations, pretending the structure is enough. But something essential is missing. And maybe it’s not that I need more rest, but that I need more of myself in my own life — more of the things that once made time disappear, made my heart race in my chest so hard I thought it might burst out, those that remind me why any of this matters in the first place. But I can’t find the thread to pull myself back. I said a time “before”, before you that was, but now I realise there’s no before, for there’s no after. 

There is only this.  

It is not a metaphor I’m trying to make out of this ache. It is not something that can be translated into prettier language, not something that can be softened. It is simply what it is. It hurts in a way I’ve never known before. No animal could be as cruel as a man. No man could be as cruel as God. No God should have ever taken you away from me.  

It’s as though the world wants to calcify me.  

To make me hard, to make me unfeeling, to coat me in layers until nothing raw is left. But I don’t want to be unfeeling. I don’t want to be numb. I just don’t know how else to survive…

What have I done?

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold. 

When it is summer in the light and winter in the shade, and you don’t know which season you belong to, caught between the thaw and the lingering frost. The first days of spring in the non-astronomical season, in that strange liminal space where the earth is undecided, as if hesitating to commit fully to warmth.  

It felt childish, but early in the morning, I asked Alex for a willow tree in our garden, which I know is too small for one — the roots would surely outgrow the space, the branches would brush against the house, probably the neighbours’ too. Much too wild, too untamed for something so contained as the space we live in. But I wanted it anyway. I wanted something that would sway with the wind, that would bend but not break. Something that I could watch bloom despite it all…He said he would do it when he wasn’t so afraid of letting something he planted grow again.  

It broke my heart, the little of it that was left still holding itself together.  

We cried together in bed for a while after that, though I think we had stopped crying for you. It was starting to feel like we were crying only for ourselves, for the versions of us that had existed before this grief you hollowed out of us. For who we had been before loss turned us into something else. And maybe that was the most unbearable part of it all — not just losing you, but losing ourselves in the process.  

Since then, I only cry alone in my own selfishness. I do not let him see it. I keep my grief contained with my fists tightly held, which I refuse to unclench. 

But I know he cries too. I hear it sometimes, even through the shut door of the bathroom, even through the thick silence we pretend is nothing. The muffled gasps, the sharp intakes of breath. The way he presses a towel to his mouth to keep it all inside. As if sound alone is what makes it real. It seems acknowledging you would break him entirely.  

I feel sick looking at him.  

Not because I do not love him, but because I do, I love him. I love him so much that it is unbearable to witness his suffering and be powerless against it. Because I know what it feels like to sit with grief alone, to let it consume you piece by piece in the dark, and I can’t stand the thought of him feeling that same emptiness.  

I just want to touch all his loneliness and suck it out of his body, just for one night, at least. I want to hold it inside me, let it settle in my lungs, let him breathe freely for a little while. I want to fill myself with all of his sorrow, let it flood through me, and then press my mouth to his and give it all back. Let him drink it from me and know who he is by seeing it reflected in my eyes.  

I love him.  

And I think I love him enough to try and hold both of us together through the pain.  

I’ve never loved anyone like this, and I never thought there would be anything that could eclipse it. We weren’t ready to love someone more than we loved each other. But we did. We loved you more. That love, when it is that enormous, does not simply disappear. It does not simply dissolve into nothingness like you seemingly did. It lingers with nowhere to go. He made me love myself once. And maybe all of it together — the way he loved me, the way I loved him — caused this much love for you to spark in such a short time. We only just got to know you.

I don’t love myself anymore.  

To be loved is to be known, I know that. But I also know now that love is not always gentle. Love, even in its purest form, can wound. 

At night, I often dream of such a time where I got to love you, where I held you properly and you knew me in return. And then I wake, disgusted by the immensity of my own yearning, by the vast, hollow ache that stretches inside me. It makes me sick, this hunger. So I deny it. I tell myself I do not want it. Because to want would mean to recognise the impossibility of it.  

I think I’m afraid that if I admit I wanted you, I will have to admit that I won’t, and can never, have you.  

And I know — God, I know — that this hunger of mine is not love in its purest form. Not like the love you have shown me. This is something else. It’s possessive, I know. A need to take and take, to grasp at what is left until I am sure my fingertips have memorised every remaining trace of you. Until I have devoured what still lingered and made it part of me, hoarded it like a secret I refuse to let time erode. An act that, in the end, would mean forsaking your existence. 

To keep you only as something I consume, something I ache for, something that I refuse to let go of…

Would that mean I never really let you be real at all?

It was summer when we planned you.  

The whole city was empty, as if it had been invented just for us. The kind of stillness that only happens when the heat chases everyone indoors, leaving behind only the sound of bugs and the distant hum of traffic and us brave ones. Our footsteps echoed on the warm asphalt, his hand trembled slightly when I touched him — it was subtle, but I knew him too well — I felt it in the way his fingers tightened around mine for a second before loosening again.  

The sun was slowly going down, stretching out the day in that lazy, golden way it does in the thick of summer. It put on a real show that afternoon, casting him in gold all over. It made everything feel like it was plucked out of an old film where the colors are richer, the emotions sharper. I could feel Alex’s warmth from a mile’s distance, though the sweat prickling on the inside of his palm and onto mine gave him away regardless. He always ran warm, but that evening, it felt different. Like he was burning from the inside out.  

I stopped near an old swing I always saw in the path we walked but never dared to touch before. One of those rusted ones that creaked under the weight of me and of time. I laughed and let my dress slide a little, not for him, not for anyone, but because it felt good to let the air hit my skin, to pretend the world didn’t matter. As if time could stand still. And maybe it did, but only for a moment. It was just me and him, us, and that included you — the thought of you, the unspoken idea of you that had been forming between us long before we had the courage to say it out loud.  

When you finally came around, the time to tell your still out-of-the-loop soon-to-be daddy also did. I wasn’t the most inspired, but you were too much to keep hidden any longer. 

I told him on a drive back home — I don’t even remember where from. Maybe we had just been aimlessly driving, filling the silence with half-finished conversations and songs hummed under our breaths.  

He threw his half-smoked cigarette out the window and didn’t say a word until he saw us safely parked in the mostly vacant parking lot of a nearby restaurant, the closest spot where he could pull over.  

“Did I hear you right?”

I nodded, staring at the dashboard, my heart hammering so loudly I swore he could hear it.  

He exhaled sharply, dragged a hand through his hair, then turned to look at me like he was memorising my face in real-time.  

“Say it again.” he murmured, like he needed to be sure he hadn’t imagined it.  

So I did. And the second time, it felt more real.  

His face changed. I wish I had a better way to describe it, but that’s the only way I know how to say it — it changed. His whole body, too. Something inside him had just shifted, reorganised itself to make space for something bigger than either of us. It was like his organs rearranged themselves to make room for you spiritually, whereas I was deemed the one to take care of the physicality. 

His hands, always so steady, shook as they reached for me. He held my face so delicately it made me feel like I was the sole thing worthy of such a touch. He looked at me like had just given him the entire universe.  

“Are you scared?” I asked.  

“Terrified.” he admitted, his lips twitching like he wasn’t sure if he should laugh or cry. And then he did laugh, it just broke him open at the edges and spilled over with something too big to contain. “But God, I’ve never wanted anything more.”

You made him the happiest I’ve ever seen him.  

Nowadays, when I drive to nowhere, or when I smoke by the window alone on silent evenings, I still see you, and I still see him, smiling as he was, like a movie running endlessly. A loop of something untouchable, something I’ve since lost. 

Sometimes, when the radio plays a song we used to hum absentmindedly in the kitchen, I catch myself looking at the passenger seat, half-expecting to find him there, fingers tapping against his knee, lost in thought, or nervously checking on you in the backseat. I can almost see it, the way he would have glanced back every few seconds, pretending he wasn’t checking as often as he was, pretending he wasn’t entirely consumed by the sight of you. I can even hear him…Alright back there, love? That soft, careful voice of his he would have reserved just for you. 

The phantom weight of your presence is so vivid in my imagination that, for a second, I forget the truth. I’m alone. He’s never here. Just the ghost of him, of you, of a life that almost was. And then the song ends, and the silence that follows is deafening.

It’s summer again now.  

And I miss you…but I miss him too.  

I feel him in the warm light that covers the city, in the empty streets where there’s no one left, in the sunsets that always look like I might see you again if I hold onto that hope. I miss when the world was brighter, when mine and Alex’s affairs were less convoluted, when love was something simple and reckless and ours.  

I see the sudden speeding up of cars below, the slowing down of people as the world gives way to heightened sensations, to feeling everything I have not been letting inside. And then, inevitably, the process of becoming desensitised to it all over again. I miss him, but I do not need any part of him in sharing this sacred moment. I do not deserve to, not when I am with you.  

Even sitting with just who I have become feels unbearable. 

So, I smoke, and I numb myself to my surroundings, looking for a recluse from being myself. The person I am sickens me. I flick the ash onto the windowsill, watch the embers fade, and tell myself I’ll quit tomorrow. But I won’t. Because there are too many things I should have quit by now. This longing, this version of myself that I don’t even recognise anymore…

This grief is part of it too, isn’t it?

It is Friday, late at night in autumn.  

Outside it is raining as if someone is trying to wash the city of its sins. It beats down on our windows so harshly that I can’t drown it out no matter how hard I try. The sound is relentless. The wind howls between the buildings, rattling street signs and bending trees, and for a brief second, I think the whole world is grieving with me. The lamplight outside flickers against the puddles, casting reflections that shimmer and distort — nothing stays still, nothing holds its shape. I stare at them for too long, hoping that they will.  

It wasn’t too late in the pregnancy when it happened. We barely got to enjoy you before you got taken away from us. That, I’ll never forgive myself for. I keep thinking if I had done something differently — if I had been more careful, if I had paid more attention, if I had just…known — maybe things wouldn’t have turned out like this. Maybe you would still be here, a weight in my arms instead of a distant feeling.  

He didn’t take it well, and that made me take it worse than if he did, I think. He shut down, locked himself away in the quiet, unreachable space inside him, and I was left outside, pounding on his door. There was no nursery to go and mourn in. We hadn’t even got around to that yet. There was no crib waiting for a future occupant, no tiny clothes tucked into drawers, no soft lullabies humming through the walls. There was not a body to go and cry over except each other’s… nothing left but him and I and the memory of you, and you were both slipping from me.  

I am left with empty hands — that’s the story of my life. The feeling of absence clings to me. I feel envious of everyone around me. I feel envious of the ones who got to have a headstone, a place to go, a physical marker that proves their loss was real. I wish you would have at least given me that. You gave me nothing, and yet, somehow, you took everything.  

I think about love and not-love. About how love is supposed to hold, to comfort, to shelter. Alex won’t look at me anymore. I lost my dignity so miserably, and I don’t know how he can pretend that we are always ‘fine’. When everything else isn’t, I just want him to be kind to me again — Please be kind to me. Nobody is to blame, least of all me — I wish he would understand that.  

He’s sitting in a corner now, among stacks of books and cigarette smoke, a bottle of whiskey on the floor beside him. The room smells of old paper and burnt tobacco, of rain-soaked fabric and something faintly metallic — that’s probably from the storm. The lamp beside him flickers, the glow catching in the glass of the framed photo we never took down. I don’t look at it. I can’t.  

I’ve been staring at the ceiling for a while, going through nearly everything I’ve ever said to him in hopes of finding where I wronged him so badly. I replay every conversation, every glance, every touch that might have led us here. Maybe if I can pinpoint the exact moment it all started slipping, I can drag us back to the surface.  

“Want some?”

His voice cuts through the silence. He offers his hand to me, holding the cigarette in such a manner that it almost urges me to put my lips on it. I would do it only to feel his fingertips on my bottom lip. His fingers are stained with nicotine, his nails uneven. He’s been biting them again. His eyes fixate on me, ever so slightly curved at the corners, telling me that this offer is all but a test, and that he doesn’t actually want me to take it. His face betrays his intent — he wants no part in me ruining myself.  

For that, I am grateful.  

“Everything okay?” I ask from my spot, refusing to play along.  

“Yeah, why?”

I look at him, and he understands the anger I’m feeling. I don’t know if he’s being thick on purpose to get a rise out of me or if he truly is so out of touch with reality — more than I ever thought he was.  

“Everything’s fine. You don’t have to worry about me.”  

He says it like a fact. It’s his script he’s rehearsed so well he almost believes it. The hand holding the cigarette now hangs by his side rather than near his mouth. It’s still burning, consuming its own life with each passing moment. The ash at the tip grows longer, dangerously close to falling onto the carpet. A part of me wants it to catch on fire and burn everything down, starting with me and him, just so we don’t have to figure out the solution to this game we’re forced to take part in, given no instructions and no way to cheat our way through it.  

“Okay.”

I don’t think I can hold my breath anymore. I’d have to do it until everything around me fell apart, which the majority already has, but I can’t let this happen. I won’t become immune to his sweet sound of ignorance.  

“I’m standing around like an idiot waiting for you.”

I almost yell it at him, but I think it ends up coming out softer than I would have liked. He doesn’t flinch.  

“Waiting for what?”

“Waiting for you.”

“Waiting for…what? What do you want me to do?”

“I’m waiting for you to get rid of me, Al-” I shake my head before he can interrupt. “No, no, don’t you look at me like that. I don’t want your pity. God knows what I’ll do, so please, do not…do not look at me like that.”  

I hold my head high, face up, storing tears in the back of my eyes.  

He looks at me with his own eyes that once made me believe I would matter. The ones that used to look at me like I was the only thing in the world worth seeing. They’ve dulled. Still beautiful — still him — but something has shifted beneath the surface and I am terrified it is irretrievable.  

The rain keeps falling. The cigarette smolders in his hand. The physical distance between us that has become too long for comfort is now shorter, but I am still waiting for him, far from an answer.  

We kiss, the taste of whiskey and fatigue lingering between us, while his cold hands ghost over my warm skin. I’ve been setting myself on fire for this heat in his absence, hoping the flames will keep me warm, hoping fire will heal my soul. When we break apart, the flame has burnt out.  

“If you want to light your cigarette, use the fire in my heart.” I tell him.  

He smiles, and it makes me proud. It makes me feel like I still have something left to give. But there’s a thought at the back of my mind — a quiet, creeping fear I can’t shake…

What if it burns out before he gets here, deep inside me?  

It’s November 2nd. 

You don’t have to know this, but today he made me feel alive.  

The room was cold. An inescapable kind of cold that settles in these buildings that are too old to hold warmth properly. The radiator rattled in protest, working though barely giving off any heat. I pulled the blanket tighter around me, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t the kind of cold wool could fight off, or that could be solved by adding another layer. This kind came from the inside out. 

I held a stuffed animal to my chest. It wasn’t meant for you, it was my own — mine only. Small and soft, something to press into the empty spaces where nothing else fit. It was old, one ear slightly torn, stuffing uneven from years of being clutched too tightly. I had it when I was a child, had it through every heartbreak, every sleepless night, and now it was here with me, in a bed that had never felt bigger.  

At some point, I let it slip from my grasp. Let my fingers move lower, sliding beneath the waistband of my pyjama pants. I could pretend I felt ashamed, that I felt dirty doing it. But I didn’t.  

The focus was not to evoke layers of hidden emotion. It wasn’t about longing or sadness or grief. It wasn’t about loss, either. It wasn’t even about wanting him. I’m not going to act like it was anything other than what it was — movement and sensation. A way to fill the time and carve out a moment where I wasn’t haunted by everything I had lost. I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to feel. I just wanted to slip away for a little while, to exist in a space that was mine and mine alone, away from the eternal tragedy that we play in without ever understanding it and away from those nocturnal and demented thoughts that torment me. 

I wished to taste the sweet glory of release again. 

What you think is more important than what is real. It might not be the healthiest thought, or the fairest, but in moments like this, it brings me peace.  

“People always think we look for love at our lowest to distract us. I am convinced we do it because we want someone to look us in the eye, to look our ugly in the eye and still choose us.”

That was what I wanted.  

Not to forget. Not to cover up the truths we lived in. I didn’t want to ignore that I was still here, still surviving, even without you. I wanted him to see me as I was — this mess, this wreckage, this person who didn’t know how to hold onto anything anymore. I wanted him to see himself. I wanted him to see me and still believe I was something worth loving.  

I wanted him to tell me that he loved me, even after how I had failed you both.  

I didn’t stop touching myself when I noticed him standing in the doorway. I didn’t pull away or adjust my clothing or pretend like I wasn’t doing exactly what I was doing. I didn’t even flinch. 

He was watching, not in judgment or disgust. 

And so I continued as he stepped closer. So close now that there was no more debating what was happening, that I was fingering myself and crying. I didn’t even stop when he was near enough that I could feel his breath, see the way his hands flexed at his sides, like he wanted to reach out but wasn’t sure if he should. Not when he knelt beside the bed, either, when he kissed my thigh, lifting the blanket slowly with just the lightest touch of his fingers. I had my knees up in the air, bent at the caps, arching my back a bit as Alex climbed next to me. 

The mattress shifted under his weight taking its occupancy as he moved up the bed. He kissed me on the lips, softly, his taste warm and familiar. He covered my mouth with his palm, quieting my sighs, and replaced my fingers with his own between my thighs. I hadn’t felt his touch in so long, I had almost forgotten what it was like. He spread me apart, and though I was still empty — he kept his fingers only on the outskirts of me — I came close to feeling whole again.  

He unbuttoned his jeans, hastily, fumbling. Then he stopped. Rolled over onto his back beside me, one arm draped across his face as if shielding himself from something too bright and painful in the darkness. I turned toward him, reaching down before he could take himself out in his own eagerness, guiding his hand away so that I could be the one to touch him instead, to play with him just as he played with my softest parts. I put my hand down his jeans and talked to him in the way only I could. 

There was a streetlamp just outside the window, its light cutting through the slats of the blinds, casting striped shadows across his form. His eyes were darker in this lighting, his lashes flickering as he watched me, his mouth parting slightly every time I moved my hand. I could hear the distant hum of the occasional car speeding down the street, tires splashing through puddles. 

The world outside was still moving. Indifferent and unchanged.  

But inside this room, time had slowed.  

He took his rightful place above me, pushing me so hard in the process that I nearly rolled off the bed. He was there to catch me.  

He almost said something to me. He looked straight at me, his lips parted, his breath caught in his throat, and for a moment, I thought he might speak. His top lip quivered. He changed his mind and started undressing me. Whatever words he had, he swallowed them down, chose instead to press his mouth to my shoulder, my neck, my jaw. Maybe he knew that words wouldn’t rewrite the past, wouldn’t undo what had already been done and they would change nothing when he had his body there, speaking to me so tenderly. 

The stress that kept us awake all day and all night was dissipating. Maybe it helped to know that we’re all, both of us, we’re all feeling it. That it’s okay to be afraid and we don’t have to be strong.  

We don’t have to serve as role models. 

We didn’t lay down expectations or reshape our mindsets to redefine what was acceptable, didn’t brace for impact in this big approach. We just let it happen, let ourselves fall into each other like we always had.  

I slid across the sheets, curling up into myself, and Alex followed. He took me from behind, his forehead resting against my spine, his hand smoothing over the small of my back and lower onto my bare body, tracing over the dimples his fingers had pressed and carved into my skin so many times before.  

We had sex with one another for the very first time — not as the people we used to be, but as the people we had become in the aftermath of everything, these new versions of ourselves we had yet to discover. 

It was so overwhelming.  

Not just for me, but for him, too.  

I felt the moment it hit him, the exact second everything he had built inside of himself collapsed. He grabbed onto the blanket and pulled it over us like a shield, muffling the sounds that broke free from his throat. He started crying. And when he did, I felt something shatter in my chest. I knew then that he might leave again. That he would get up in the morning, sit on the edge of the bed, run a hand through his hair, and tell me that maybe, in another life, in another city, in another room, things could have been different and we would have had a different fate. 

But we didn’t have another life, we would never have another chance, just this one, and we got it wrong, but that didn’t mean we had to quit trying to make it right. Or, at the very least, make it bearable in its current state.  

He’s the only one who matches my sweetness, who feels emotions so deeply they tear him apart from the inside out. I sank my teeth into his skin, and he listened when I whispered in his ear.  

“Please bite me in return.”

I spoke to him in code, but not only. I wanted him to bruise me. I wanted him to say: Let’s sabotage each other, let’s pretend we don’t know each other, and then let’s kiss.

“I missed your pretty mouth so much.” he told me.  

He moved himself inside of me, and through that shifted the very foundation of who I was. It felt as though our hearts had fucked our brains, untangling every thought, until we were nothing but raw feeling, instinct, and need. There was no logic left between us, no fear, no past or future — only this. The warmth of his breath against my neck, the weight of him pressing into me, the unspoken language of skin on skin, heart to heart.  

It was the most genuine and honest act that had ever taken place between us. The last barricades we’d built to keep ourselves from feeling too much had dissolved in the heat of our bodies. We surrendered — not just to each other but to everything we had been running from. And I think that’s when you know it’s real. When reason drowns in the flood of unfiltered emotion, when desire stops being something you perform and becomes something that simply overtakes you, consumes you, makes you its own.  

We kissed sloppily and fucked lazily, moving slowly. We had all the time in the world. We weren’t just trying to claw our way back to something that had once been whole anymore. His hands, rough and familiar, mapped me out, relearning the territory he’d been forced to forget. Our moans tore through the air, shamelessly, mingling with the occasional quiet sobs we were too far gone to suppress.  

At one point, he pulled back just enough to look at me. His lips were swollen, his eyes dark with something that was more than just lust. “You still feel like home.” he murmured, almost like he didn’t want me to hear it.

I swallowed hard, threading my fingers through his hair, tugging lightly. “Then don’t leave.”

His breath hitched slightly. “I never wanted to.”

He kissed me again, harder this time, to swallow the space between us and make up for every second we had spent apart, every moment wasted on silence and avoidance. 

I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him closer, deeper, until we were no longer just touching but fully entwined. Tears clung to our cheeks, and I wasn’t sure anymore if we were crying from everything else or just from the overwhelming relief of this moment, of still having this, of still knowing each other in this way. He buried his face in the crook of my neck, and I ran my fingers through his hair, nails scratching lightly against his scalp.

“You’re shaking.” I whispered.

He let out a short, breathy laugh against my skin. “So are you.”

I wanted to hold him there, to keep him stuck to me forever in this way, to stop time from moving forward, because for the first time in so long, we weren’t ghosts in our own lives.  

For the first time in so long, we were real.

I didn’t understand him for a while. But now I know that to love in silence does not become reprimanding. The way I feel about him is beyond words and I understand his need for silence. In a manner of speaking, semantics will just never be enough. Not for this. Not for us. Not for the things we have lost. There comes a point when words just won’t do for human beings, for our inherent yearning and need, what only a crescendo can. A pinnacle. A peak. A release so raw that you have to beg the ones above. 

The ones that tell me nothing, the ones that tell me everything…

Oh, why won’t you give me the words?

It’s been a year.  

I didn’t want to be here for another winter. It was too much you and none at all.  

I suggested to Alex that we run off to the countryside. It seemed like a good idea to get out of this place, to slip away before the first snowfall could remind me of what we lost. There were no bags packed, no plans made — we set off with just one extra set of clothes stuffed into the backseat and no set destination in mind, only the silent, mutual agreement that we would let the road decide where we belonged.  

Alex drove, one hand on the wheel, the other resting between us, fingers occasionally grazing my thigh, making sure I was still there and letting me know that he was too. He put on the soundtrack of some Wes Anderson film and let it play, its whimsical, melancholic strings filling the car in place of words we weren’t ready to say. I let myself sink into the passenger seat in the quiet, lulled by the soft hum of Ennio Morricone drifting from the speakers, by the low vibration of the wheels rattling beneath me, carrying us somewhere — anywhere.  

I must have fallen asleep.  

When I wake, the sky outside is thick with gold, clouds gathered around the sun like whites cradling a yolk. Eggy. It strikes me as unusual. It’s an odd thing to see in winter, when the evenings are usually a wash of pale pinks and deep blues, cold and distant. There hasn’t been snow this year either, and I wonder if the world feels as upside down as I do.  

The music is gone, I realise. In place of it I hear Alex humming softly, a sound so familiar and low that it feels like a memory playing on repeat. When I turn to look at him, I notice it instantly — the skin beneath his eyes is raw and there are dried tracks of old tears have settled into his cheeks. He’s cried in his time spent alone behind the wheel. 

He notices me staring and wipes at his face, exhaling like he’s annoyed at himself. “I’m not sad.” he says. He really needs me to believe it.  

I don’t say anything. I just watch him.  

“I cried because…” He pauses, choosing his words carefully, measuring their weight before handing them to me. “Because I have the privilege of watching someone I love very much, even in sleep, and knowing I’ll get to talk to them again.”  

There are a million things I could say, but none of them would be enough, none of them would fit into the space that his words have carved between us. And before I can try, before I can even begin to think of how to hold all of this, the immensity of what he’s just said, his hand is on my cheek, warm and steady. The tactile sensation of it all overtakes me. 

“I was here first.” he declares. 

And you…you are the ubiquitous pest.  

Love can’t be created or destroyed — we’ve established that already. It lingers, even when it’s unwanted, even when it curdles into something unbearable. It stays until it evokes fear and it tears you apart, until you’re left with nothing but the pieces of what it used to be.  

You want me to love you still, but I can’t. I’ll soon catch the rot of you deep inside me that I’ve been too scared to face. Someone has to leave, and I won’t let that be us. I will love you forever, but I can’t. I can’t. I can’t — I won’t — I’m afraid I’ll catch your disease. 

A few months. That’s all it was.  

And yet — sometimes, just sometimes — I wish it would hurt for you too. At least a little. Just enough to make it fair. Just enough so I wouldn’t have to carry all of this alone. But now, it’s all I can do to push you away, to shove you off so I can live knowing that, for once, I saved someone. Even if it couldn’t be you.  

I saved me.  

I saved him.  

I saved us.  

I look out to the sun waving at us as it veils itself behind the clouds, casting long shadows over the quiet stretch of road ahead. I watch it disappear, a slow, deliberate exit, and I think—  

How lucky we are to have known someone that makes saying goodbye so hard.

a/n: Inspired by this request. This is definitely influenced by a lot of what I’ve been reading and seeing recently. I reference ‘God’ and concepts related to that quite a bit, I’ve noticed, it’s something that’s present here as well, and though I’m not at all religious I find it to be an interesting subject when it comes up in fictional situations. I mentioned the other day that I wrote a sentence I really liked, it’s the one at the end of the paragraph about the willow tree. I don’t have much else to add here :)

[piecesofchess]

Tartarus is still a little broken and that's Fun !

[lunarharp]

if i just told you i love you would this world change

[sandpapersnowman]

so I talk about my job pretty rarely but like. it's the perfect job for me. scheduling is flexible so I can make it to all my appointments, it's a good mix of activity and rest that works for my chronic pain and general disability, my coworkers are great, my boss is WONDERFUL, and taking photos is something I'm good at and enjoy so being a portrait photographer was something I jumped at the chance to do when I was leaving my last job and saw my current one was hiring

today my boss let me know that corporate isn't renewing our studio's lease next month. we're going to keep taking sessions for about three more weeks, and then the second half of February will be spent clearing out our space for whoever rents it next

and I'm just. Unbearably fucking sad about it 🫠

[oxymoronicdumbass]

if i’m not constantly stressed and busy, then i’m lazy and wasting valuable time, but if i am constantly stressed and busy then i am constantly stressed and busy

[ecrireverie]

okay lol mini rant in the tags sorry i just HAD to get this off my chest 😭 sorry if this is very incoherent and poorly worded or structured or whatever i'm just. pretty out of it and i cannot really think to write this properly. well, that or i am probably just illiterate actually. Yeah that's it lol