#and now that I've gotten this off my chest and this weight off my soul the only thing left to say now is that I hope that everyone involved

[fatbitchneedsfoodbadly]

I've been up constipated since 3 am, so maybe this isn't the proper venue for me to be talking about this BUUUUUT... As someone who watched (and enjoyed because I don't care about the show or nuance) Lily Orchard's shitty steven universe video, and as someone who's learned a lot about how trans women (and people who go against the garden variety liberal narrative) get harassed ad infinite if they dare to say something that people don't like, I can safely say that her harassers don't care about her victims. They just don't. I won't sit here and defend her if she is truly guilty of the heinous things her sister accused her of, but the fact of the matter is that Lily's detractors could care less about CSA or anything that her sister has to say. And I will also say that her sister may one day have to contend with the fact that she and her trauma was used by a bunch of freaks on the internet to completely destroy the reputation of one of her family members to the detriment of them both. I won't place any blame on her or even accuse her of lying. The worse case scenario that I'm willing to concede is that the sister, as the victim, decided that revenge was the only path towards personal justice, and went into this knowing full well that these people didn't give two shits about her. Even if that were the case, it's still sad that she allowed herself to be (or was unwittingly) used in this manner. I say all this to say that even taking Lily's worst crimes into account, it's only ever used as a gotcha to silence critics who rightfully point out that, at the end of the day, this is just another case of liberal fandom treatlerites (shoutout to the originator of this term; iykyk) harassing a woman, a trans woman at that, for daring to having an opinion that they didn't like. Literally everything else is superfluous, and as soon as I realized this, I knew that it was the worst case scenario for for any of Lily's actual victims. There is no justice in this. Lily's not going to jail over this, and if the sister is still active online, I pray that she doesn't wake up one day and realize that it was all for nothing. Worse than nothing.

[thedeviltohisangel]

All The Things I Did (Modern Era): You'd Have to Stop the World Just to Stop the Feeling

a/n: when I said my brain couldn't stop thinking of AUs...I kind of like the idea that Cass/John's souls reincarnate across time because they are always meant to be together. This is one example of that. It's been rattling in my brain for a little while and I've gotten it on paper and hope you fall just as deeply in love with this version as you have the original. Let me know your thoughts on this era and anything specific you might wish to see. love you xoxo

She felt absolutely miserable. The satin of her champagne colored dress was itchy against her skin and the halter felt like it was choking her and if the Russian Ambassador looked at her bare back like it was a lost wonder of the world one more time she was going to have her forearm against his windpipe in an instant. There was also the absolutely offensive paper weight of a diamond ring on her left hand. She thinks if she threw it hard enough, it could break through the wall of the Embassy’s reception room like a bullet. 

“My, my, Miss Cooper. You are looking particularly diplomatic tonight.” 

“Dimitri. I asked the bartender to throw away all the vodka so you wouldn’t bother me over here.” She fully knew he was SVR and she assumed he was tracking her State Department cover as loosely intact. 

“Come now, my little eagle. I’ve spent all night waiting for you to come flirt with me like you always do. You’ve really kept me waiting.” 

“If that’s flirting, things must be very bleak in Russia.” Originally, she had thought she’d try her hand at developing him. He had tried to develop her right back. She dropped her official pursuit of him but the back and forth kept her busy at the stuffy cocktail hours she had to attend. Cass would have preferred to be out in the local villages and talking to the people and the families and the culture she was falling in love with. 

“Eh maybe our flirting isn’t great but that new American soldier is looking at you like he wants you in a way us Russian men are very familiar with.” She didn’t have to look to know it was John. His arrival a few days ago had rocked her to the very core and she had done everything in her power to avoid him since. “He the one who put that ring on your finger?”

“If you were half as good as you want me to believe, Dimitri, you’d know. Enjoy your night.” Cass finished off her drink and turned to leave when his hand shot out and wrapped around her wrist. “Let go of me.”

“Miss Cooper, I’m not-”

“She asked you politely. I won’t offer the same courtesy.” A lump lodged in her throat as she felt John’s presence behind her. Her arm was dropped in an instant and she crossed it against her chest. 

“Good night, my little eagle.” Dimitir looked at her like he had gotten the exact answer he wanted. She itched to slap the victorious smirk off his face as he walked away. 

“You okay? He hurt you?” John touched her wrist tenderly, lovingly, all the things she hadn’t felt against her skin since she fled North Carolina a few months ago. 

“I was handling it. He did it on purpose to see how you’d react.” He dropped her arm as the glint of a diamond caught his eye. Took a step back to physically distance himself from the object.

“Sorry to disappoint.” He thought about tacking on an again but thought better of it. If she wasn’t in the mood to talk to him, maybe she never would be, then he wasn’t going to broach down the pathway.

“Not it’s…there’s no way you would have known.” She looked at him, for the first time since they said goodbye bathed in the moonlight on the beaches of Hatteras Island, and he felt his world shift back into place under her gaze. “Thank you.” 

“Can I at least get you a refill?” It felt like dipping her toes back in those North Carolina waters. A place she had told herself was too dangerous to go back to. He looked too good in his blues to turn down.

“Yes.” His hand on the small of her back guided her closer to the bar and it felt so warm she could lose herself in it.

“Two of whatever the lady was having.” 

“It’s just Coke in a rocks glass, Major.” She smiled as he took a long and satisfying sip either way. 

“Still delicious,” he laughed. “You been out here awhile?” Her eyes found the corner of her cocktail napkin much more interesting all of a sudden.

“Since…since around the last time I saw you.” He nodded around the last of his soda. Wished it was full of rum. 

“You could have just told me the truth. I would have understood.” Cass shook her head.

“No, you would have fought for me and told me we would find a way to make it work.” She distinctly remembered the look in his eyes on the beach that night. The frustration at her secrecy. The distress at her leaving when he had spent the whole summer learning how to love her. The anger that she acted like the truck bed nights and T6 flights and long weekends spent in bed could be tucked back into a box. He had wanted to scream that he was in love with her. Scream that he knew what was between them was meant to last a lifetime and he would fight for her until the ends of the earth. Scream that this war had already taken so much from so many and they shouldn’t let it take this from them. 

“Would it have worked? Clearly, you had something else lined up anyways.” Instead, John had felt defeated. Had heard the words that she was leaving and couldn’t tell him where or why and it was better to leave this summer exactly where they were standing. “My sister sent me the photos of you and him at some Newport mansion.” 

“It’s not real. You have to believe me.” Cass would have rather died than know John had seen the staged engagement photos. But the point of a PR campaign was for people to see the evidence. 

“You don’t owe me an explanation, Cass.” He turned toward the calling of his name from his fellow pilots. They had been joined by a group of young women who all looked eager to head back to their housing units for the after party. 

“Looks like you have a fun night ahead of you.” Pilots were always a hot commodity no matter where they went. And John was tall and handsome and pilot and goofy and…there was nothing wrong with him that she could come up with besides his love for her. 

“Are you done for the night? I can walk you back.” She nodded, something about the gaggle of girls waiting for him making her chest ache. “I’ll get your coat.”

They walked in silence at a safe distance. Both of them were walking slower than usual. They didn’t want the fact that they were back in each other’s presence to end. Her housing complex came into view all too quickly. “Nice housing for an alleged entry level econ analyst.”

“Guess I’m just special,” she remarked. He looked at her with a smile while she glanced up at the moon. “He’s running for Congress. Landry. He offered to help my sister fix a problem if I agreed to pretend to be with him for the campaign.” 

“Why’re you telling me?” He took a tentative step closer to her. 

“Because you asked earlier if it would’ve worked. And it would have. I wanted to tell you the truth about Afghanistan and my job. But my sister made a mistake and there was a way for me to protect her from the consequences and I had to take it.” She fiddled with the buttons of his jacket as tears trickled down her cheeks. “It killed me to say those things to you. I didn’t mean any of it. Those few months we shared together were the best of my life and I wouldn’t trade those memories for anything and I’m sorry I got in the way of the things we dreamt about under the stars every night.” 

“Give me your hand, Cass.” With a furrowed brow, she offered him her left hand and he locked his eyes onto hers. He slid the ring off her finger and her breath caught in her throat as he held it up between them. “I’ll make sure this is hand delivered to Mr. Landry.” The ring dropped into his pocket.

“Will you kiss me now, John Egan?”

“Only because you asked so nicely, Cassandra Cooper.” It felt like coming home when his lips touched hers. It felt like the first warm day after a dull winter. Like seeing your favorite movie again. Like the first bite of the food you’ve been craving. 

He had thought about trying to track her down. Thought about paying off an intel officer or sweet talking the personnel lady on the fifth floor into looking her up but had always been struck by the look in her eyes when she had left him that night. Begging him to just let it be. Begging him to let her go. Begging him to spare her the pain of his words because the solemn emptiness of her soul was the only thing that would allow her to turn around and leave him behind. 

She hadn’t been able to think about him. Not if she wanted to survive. Not when she needed to shut down and smile and pretend to fall in love with the weasel of man that had cunningly offered to help her sister. Cass hadn’t been able to say no. Her only regret was that she hadn’t been able to tell him herself. 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, please forgive me.” But she would never be able to forgive herself for taking away all the time they could have had together. 

“Already forgiven, Cass, I promise.” It was easy to forgive the people you loved. Less so to forget. Less so to heal from the wounds they inflicted on you. She had hurt him so deeply. Eroded all the trust he had in her. Eroded the trust he had for his own gut instinct. Kissing it better was one thing. Picking where they had left off was something else entirely.

“I want to try, John. I want to start over and I want to do this the right way. Even if it’s hard.” 

“I’ll choose us every goddamn day, Cass.” She kept her hands on his cheeks as she dropped back down from her toes. “You look stunning tonight. I didn’t get the chance to tell you.” John began to lead her in a dance that could only be heard between the matching, racing beats of their hearts. 

“Thank you but anything is going to look more stunning than the camis you saw me in all summer.” He kissed her with a laugh. 

“You looked stunning in those too.” Lest she forget that was exactly how he had fallen in love with her in the first place. Low bun and camo pants and rolling her eyes every time a pilot tried to flirt with her. She had beaten a particularly persistent one in a pull up contest to prove her point. “Cass?”

“Yes?”

“Would you like to go on a date with me tomorrow?” She looked around at the mountains and desert. At the bland buildings and miscellaneous pods of gym equipment. 

“I suppose.” Their original first date had been to a seafood shack where they broke down their own crabs and were covered in Old Bay and laughed as they walked along the pier and he had kissed her senseless while the sun set over the water. It was the most perfect memory. “Though I doubt you can top our first first date.” John smiled and traced the tip of his nose up and down the side of her cheek. 

“I just want to be with you, Cass. Make you feel special. Remind us both that there is still good in this world worth fighting for.” 

“I like the way that sounds,” she whispered as she pressed a kiss to his jaw. “You’ll find me when your day is over?” 

You’ll always find me?

I’ll always find you. In this life, or any other. 

When two souls are meant to tangle together across the universe there is no timeline that can halt them. There would be time apart and forces who tried to keep them that way but none would succeed. You cannot prevent the inevitable. 

Two stars colliding into a supernova with no limit in sight. There was no before. There was no after. Only them.

“Yes, Cass. I’ll find you.”

[littleliterarylesbian]

Dear James,

I know I shouldn't be writing to you again. Every letter I've sent is, what I imagine, tossed away or burnt to ashes. You bought a hawk last month to deter my letters. My owl is lucky to have made it back with the damages she had. I'm promising her extra treats and love to send this one. And that this will be the last.

Harry is almost old enough to go to Beauxbatons. I don't know how I feel about it, he'll have more freedom, but I'll also be alone. I don't think I've been truly alone since you left me. And that only lasted a short time as I had Harry.

Speaking of Harry, he's stopped asking about you. I get the feeling he no longer wants to know of the man who hurt me, the man who shares his face. I've explained, many a times, that our fall out was my fault, that I had made the mistake. Harry says that I've fixed that mistake now that Voldemort was strung up and burned in front of the Ministry of Magic building. However, I don't know how to explain that I do not wish to walk back into your life like nothing has happened. That I will wait until you give me the word.

I think that time has already passed however. You've always fallen in love easily, I'm sure you have a wife and maybe more children now than just Harry. I would be surprised if you haven't. As for me, as one can tell from the letters that I used to send you once a week, now once a month, I have not. Black blood runs through my body and soul, and it sings for you, like it always will. It is the way of The Ancient and Noble House of Black, we fall in love once and never again.

I hope Harry doesn't feel that way when he's older. It hurts, falling in love does, I'd hate to see my son hurt.

I think about how you look now that you're older, I would assume you have smile lines and crows feet by now, and maybe your wife has made your hair a little more manageable unlike how I always made it my goal to make it the worst it can be. I have changed through the passage of time as well, obviously. I no longer see my ribs through my skin, you always worried about that so maybe that would be nice to hear. My hair is much shorter, I finally understand why Sirius is so protective of his own, if I had to go back to hair so long It touched my thighs I think I would grow crazy. I believe I finally got the scared look out of my eyes along with the weight off my chest. I'm the man I was meant to be now.

As always, I hope Sirius and Lupin have finally gotten their act together. I never received a wedding invitation but it's also been over ten years, so I will never know. As always , attached is a current picture of Harry, he's so big now, I still remember carrying him, and waking up at three am to his cries, but now he's almost getting his letter. As always you just have to reply with three words that you would whisper to me every time we met and every time we left one another for the time being. Different however, is the one word needed for me to stop sending these letters. I won't breathe another breath in your direction anymore. You won't need to say a peep for me to stop now.

R.A.B

Regulus Arcturus Black

| part 2 part 3

[moochii-daisies]

2018.01.

- 18+, Minors DNI

- Length: 5.4k words

Warnings - Content Contains: the usual (they smoke and drink and cuss), a ~kiss in the rain~, joon is soulful, dynamics are shifting, things get official, mental health stuff, it starts to get a little dark at the end - idk see for yourself haha :)

Sidenotes: i'm so so excited and nervous abt this year's arc and it's venturing into a genre i've never tried before so !!!! oof i love it though, this year's gonna take some turns! i hope you enjoy and thank you for readin if you do <3

- series playlist -

Find the rest here!

------------------------------------------------------------

If you just caught up on what happened in 2015, you might be wondering - "Hey, wtf! But also, where the hell is Jungkook?? And if you're just joining us, you're (possibly) also now wondering the same.

Oh you sweet reader you, Kay's off bein' a little shit most likely (said with love) - and don't worry, I'll fill ya in on that soon.

Before we get into all that though, have you ever had one of those moments - where it felt like it was over before you could even blink? Or, what about one that felt like it lasted an entire lifetime?

Back in January, when I was waiting for Jungkook to come back home, it somehow felt like both.

As cocky as that boy can be, he's incredibly humble when it comes to how smart he is. No, hang on. It's more than just being smart, that sweet and beautiful fucker is crafty.

And ok, we all have our secrets, sure. But nobody keeps a secret like Jungkook. Especially when it's his own.

He was gone for an entire week. (Did you expect me to be less dramatic about it?)

Aside from a few conversations and mostly unanswered questions - all that his texts would say was "safe :)" and I would always respond in an equally cool and concise way. (What's he gonna do, fact check me?) (I fact checked her lol - jkayyy~)

I think I was in shock from everything that had happened, everything that led to him taking off to find Lacey. We hadn't gone 24 hours without each other in over a year and I refused to step foot inside the basement without him there. His absence seeped out of his room and perched on my shoulder with dead weight. The couch became a disheveled nest that the rest of the guys would leave snacks on if a lump of blankets greeted them instead of my face.

Yoongi stayed there with me though. Lacey had left his room empty too.

We spent most of that week together actually, talking on the couches. Smoke, talk, coffee. Sometimes - read, write and whiskey. It was a whole thing.

But that's where we were that morning, when Jin and Joon came back. It'd only been 3 days since they left and they looked like they hadn't slept at all. They also, for some reason, were dressed entirely in merch from a place called, "Sip 'N Tits". Matching turquoise tank tops (it was January) that had a perky pair in a leopard print bikini and a coffee mug between them. Board shorts that were forest green and covered with pink and lime green palm tree's (the tree's had tits too).

It had taken me a while to soak in their outfits and dismal expressions. By the time I'd gotten to their flip-flops standing in the icy grass, Hobi had come humming out the front door.

A hand to his chest, he halted and looked them up and down with disapproval (and disgust).

"My oh my, mom and dad leave for a few days only to come back....so..." Hobi faltered as sleepy twin glares were aimed his way, "So fashionable!".

Using the brightness of his smile and chipper attitude as a repellant, he maneuvered his way around them to get to his car. Yoongs and I swear that Jin hissed at him when he got too close.

"Looks like you two had some..." - I had to fight back a smile as soon as I heard the laughter hiding in Yoongi's voice. The deep rumbling next to me trailed off and I picked back up with an incredulous, "Tits AND sips?".

Our snickers weren't appreciated but couldn't be stopped. Jin and Joon clomped up the front porch steps so that Jin could say his peace up close and personal.

"I am not a FAN," He waggled a hand around in our faces, "Of all of this betrayal. Uhh also...Big Egg's gonna be home a couple days later." The last of what he said rushed together as he hurriedly pushed Namjoon through the front door - before I could ask him anything.

There was a moment of silence. I mean -

What would've been the less awkward thing to say:

"Hey, have you two talked since The Fight?"

Or,

"Hey, have you heard from Lacey? Never mind what she did or all the other reasons it'd be weird - let's dish about our ships bro?" -

"Hey, so what the fuck?" Was what Yoongi decided was best.

I nodded and felt his glance.

"All right, here's what we're gonna do beebs."

(He'd poke me if I was hiding under the blankets and go, "beep beep". I dunno, it was cute - then I was beebs.)

With a small sigh I shifted towards him, one eyebrow lifted.

Yoongi's shoulders shrugged to his ears and both hands lifted with them. The disgruntled but pouty scowl he pulled started my laugh with a snort before it slid into the best gummy smile.

     "Ok forreal though, what're they gonna do? Get mad at us for bein' friends?" He reached an arm to scratch the back of his head and fluffed some hair forward. Blank eyed. Big pout. In Yoongi this meant: "eh, we'll see what happens".

     I mean, he did have a point. In a way anyways. I chewed on my lip and contemplated if it was worth mentioning that the underlying nature of our friendship was the real problem. It'd be a lot less complicated if we were, y'know, just friends. I mean, we were just friends. But - ah, fuck. You know what I mean.

     Unintentionally, I wound up staring him down without really seeing him and my gnawing was interrupted by a cigarette pushing repeatedly against my lips. It mushed them around to different sides until I snapped reflexively and caught it between my teeth - trying to frown with only my eyes.

Just a few days together and the telepathy was unrivaled.

     "Beebs, c'mon, I know he's got jealousy issues. It'll be different with'im back sure but, don't you worry that pretty lil empty head of yours." A teasing side smile broke into a full one as I head-butt his shoulder, gently but without stopping.

     After he'd thrown the arm I was bonking around my neck, he held me there with a grip around the base of my throat. The lighter flicked to life in front of me and I was tugged closer for a kiss on the head before being released.

     Exhaling with a small hum, he relaxed back into the faded and ambiguously colored cushions. Well, I'm glad at least one of us could pretend to feel normal about everything.

     If I'd been in a TV show, extremely advanced math equations would be floating around in the smoke blowing out of my mouth. Overthinking came naturally to me. Ruminating on all the ways tone and inflection in a simple "hello" could be misunderstood - was enough to get me spiraling. I switched to nibbling at the inside of my cheek with a jiggling leg crossed over the other. And while Yoongi stretched his arms out with a small groaning yawn, my spine curled further to deepen the hunch it was in.

Opposite sides of the same coin.

On the left, the image of a person capable of hiding their emotions and on the right, a person incapable of hiding any of them.

"You look like a snail." Yoongi sounded incredibly unimpressed.

My back stiffened and I shot a frown his way. With an outstretched hand he squished my cheeks together. His tongue curled over an incisor in a smirk and it was so annoyingly attractive, I squished his own and pushed them together with both hands to retaliate.

His eyebrows lifted out of view when I gently bit him on a siopao cheek.

"Thi' i' 'y ey' 'e 'ad." A gentle pull on my hair got me off of him and he gave me a look to repeat myself.

"You know what I said." It came out in a huff as I leaned back with him, arms crossed.

"I know it's why they'd be mad beebs."

Anyways.

I guess you could say we'd gotten closer.

After Lacey left, Yoongi apologized so much for what she'd done I had to cover his mouth to make him stop.

"It wasn't ok. But it's okay." I stared at him dead-on until he nodded.

"I dunno if I can keep bein' with her." He mumbled into my palm. And hell, maybe it wasn't my place to do so but - "Yeah I dunno, maybe it's a good idea not to be." is all I could mumble back.

She really wasn't good for him. I couldn't pretend to be okay with it anymore, like I had in the beginning.

It was new.

Yoongi and I bein' honest with each other like that.

     But okay, so - remember how I said, "nobody keeps a secret like Jungkook?".

     It was 5 days after Jin and Joon got back, you already know where Yoongi and I were hanging out. A wet, frigid and rainy kinda day.

     The low, spluttering rumble of a motorcycle got our attention. We lifted our heads in tandem as it approached and one of JK's gloved hands raised to wave at us. I heard Yoongi chuckling to himself while I rushed down the front porch steps to where Jungkook had stopped the bike. Everything turned into a smeared watercolor painting, I'm not sure if I actually flew but if I ever could've - that would've been the moment I did.

Once I'd gotten to him, one foot was rested on the ground and his light jeans were belted with thin, black leather. An accentuated waist was one thing, but the completely soaked through white t-shirt and damp black curls that were shaken out of the helmet had me completely conflicted.

     I had missed him so much (and was so mad at him for basically ghosting after what happened), I wondered if he had bailed to run off with Lacey (and why he told me he loved me), if what we had was over (god, he was so beautiful) and why he said he loved me before leaving (to go get a motorcycle??) - tears, excitement, relief, annoyance, confusion and love simmered in my bones at the sight of him. The tri-color jacket he wore squeaked, rubbing against itself. Both gloves were pulled off with his teeth before getting shoved into a black helmet.

     With a cocky ass grin and one more head shake, an unnecessarily sultry, "C'mere baby, I missed you." was spoken over my stuttering "you's".

     The instant I was wrapped up and held against him, vetiver hiding in his scent, I let myself believe that the drizzles of rain were enough to cover any tears.

"You - you were gone and - you left and I thought, but - you, you were getting a fuckin' MOTORCYCLE??" I spluttered through the snot and tears, squeezing Jungkook with every ounce of muscle I had.

"It's kinda sexy though right?" Lips brushed against the top of my ear as he murmured. The metal from his lip rings felt cold as it burned red.

Mad at him but unable to let go, I just clung onto him tighter. Pressed my face so hard against his chest that it was hard to breathe.

It was when the rain had become more than a drizzle, when drops ran down our faces before they trickled in descending paths along our necks. I glanced up at him and without my permission, his bunny nose smile egged on the surge of emotions I'd been trying not to notice. It was like falling and willingly being swallowed whole. Or rather, it was like knowing the fall was taking me somewhere that I'd never been before. Some place I'd always been too scared to go.

A hand held the back of my head as we kissed. Our breath felt hot in the air around us and low-lidded doe eyes made the feelings impossible to ignore any longer. The words came out breathier than I knew I was capable of, "I missed you, I missed you, I missed," - I was trying to say it between kisses. But Jungkook held me against him so I couldn't pull back any more. The kiss deepened instead, and I felt my body materialize in his arms.

"Never again baby." He whispered and my handful of dark, dampened curls took tighter hold. I couldn't feel close enough to him and I tried to take a step forward, to push him against something - to feel him as much as I wanted to.

But the motorcycle was behind us. I may as well have tried to push a wall.

The frustrated whimper that made its way out of me was responded to in an instant and he steered us towards the car in the drive way. Without breaking the kiss, we took each step together until my back was pushed up against the drivers seat window. The fabric of my oversized t-shirt was clinging to my body, sticky and heavy. Jungkook had one hand trailing along my side while mine floated up and down his torso. The skin underneath was warm and inviting, soft and sculpted. So fuckin' close and somehow still out of reach.

My fingers found the black leather belt and hooked through his belt loops. One small tug and his hand left my side to press against the car, pinning me against it underneath him.

There was a pause - and by the time he opened his eyes I was ready to meet them. Smiling and refusing to lessen my hold. Frustration with my stopping was transparent in his expression and my hands flew to his face as he leaned back in, sliding slicked down hair behind his ears. I stopped pulling away after that. Even when Yoongi's voice made its way over to us.

At least, until the words that were said registered.

"Ay Kay! They're comin'." Is what Yoongi had hollered out from the front porch, and it snapped us back to reality.

Kind of anyways.

It gave us another pause at least.

It didn't last long.

With a strange look, Jungkook leaned back in to kiss me again. Both hands slid around the sides of my thighs to lift me up and he stepped closer to the car. There was no time to think.

He needed this, I needed this.

I needed him.

He needed me.

Gasping for air in the rain shot droplets down the back of my throat and Jungkook sucked water from my neck with lingering kisses. With a low groan, slow roll of his hips and a final squeeze, I was set down.

But we couldn't stop. Anytime we'd look at each other, something from our cores would tug us back together. Breathing air only made sense if it was needed to keep kissing. The rain had turned them messy and with that came a reckless abandon. It was dripping, it was unashamed, it was -

It was slightly interrupted by Jin and Joon as they shouted down the steps. And they only got louder when they stomped out into the pouring rain.

But we couldn't stop.

Not until they reached their loudest volume, when they were right behind JK and directly in my line of sight.

"ROTTEN EGGS!" Jin pointed an accusatory finger while Joon had started rap-speaking, like he does when he gets really frustrated.

"If you can find the time, to listen to this - then don't pay no mind, to the rhyme, it's unintentional. What you're doing against that car? Unmentionable. I see with my eyes, two youths, one mind. Yet the decision that mind came to? You must be out of it. Excuses to be given? Not a damn word about it."

Jin widened his eyes and gestured towards Namjoon like he was speaking the gospel truth that we all needed to hear.

Jungkook hid behind me with his hard-on pressed against my ass.

"Boners in wet jeans are bad." He whispered and we both started giggling. I clasped a hand over my mouth while he nuzzled against my neck until Jin came over to yank him away by the ear.

"You'll have plenty of time with your baby egg, but right now? We need to talk about where the fuck my car is and what the hell happened back there." Jin rarely fumed this seriously. And after he tugged JK away, I remember feeling the sheepish look on my face as Joon beckoned me to come with them.

Jin had stopped on the front porch so Jungkook and Yoongi could talk.

I didn't catch it all but - "Eh, you love her and I love you both. Don't worry about it." Was shrugged out by Yoongi before Jungkook was marched indoors.

To cut a very long talk short - what Jungkook had done was, sneak off with the car to go buy a motorcycle after they'd dropped Lacey off. And the guy he bought the bike from ended up stealing the car. I guess it was more of a trade, than a "buy and sell" situation.

Luckily - Jin had a beat up old car from high school that he and Joon were able to drive back but, as you can probably imagine, Jungkook was in some deep shit.

When we asked why he hadn't told anyone, "Nobody asked." was the only reason he gave.

Jimin straight up leapt off the couch onto his back with repeated blows to his shoulders.

"Nobody asked you specifically about buying a motorcycle so, you just didn't say shit?? KAY! We-" (small smack)

"Were so -"

"Fuckin' worried-"

"You dick!".

There's a lot to learn about Jungkook.

But I'm tryin' to stay on some kinda track here.

Lacey wound up staying back near her friends and family. As far as we could tell, it was over between her and Yoongi. The rest of the us didn't say it but, we were all relieved. Some in a less subtle way than others, I mean - Jimin and Hobi were straight up enthusiastic about it. They kept telling Yoongi, "This is a whole new chapter dude. It's been long enough. You know what she's like underneath it all.". I never heard him argue back.

Nobody'd heard from or seen Marcus since he left Yoongi's first house show either.

Things went, relatively~ back to normal with everyone back home.

And that brings us up to speed, - well, it's brought us here at least.

So.

How you doin' reader?

Things are kinda lookin' up, aren't they?

It was the summer of 2018.

Jungkook and I were lying in The Backyard, smokin' a blunt.

There were exactly two clouds in the sky and the tiny gazebo that came with the house provided just enough shade for us to not get too hot.

We were sprawled out on an old towel that covered the cement beneath us, both in baggy shirts of his. The birds chirped so clearly, the sounds hung suspended in the air for an extra beat.

"Baby?"

"Mm."

Jungkook propped himself up on an elbow and I quit detangling my hair to look at him. Skunky fumes blew out above us and I took the blunt from his fingers for a hit.

"I want you to be my girlfriend."

I think I hacked on smoke for the next minute after he said it. With bleary eyes and a runny nose I stared at him in disbelief.

"Me??"

Jungkook rolled his eyes before laughing softly, "Nah, the other person I've been livin' and sleepin' with for basically three years." The sarcasm was well warranted but I still couldn't believe what I'd heard.

I sat up to face him and pulled his shirt down over the tops of my thighs.

I mean, ok.

Yeah - I guess I shouldn't have been SO surprised. We knew we loved each other, it'd been basically exclusive from the beginning and ok yeah, I'd moved out of my mom's place and we were full blown living together by then. It sounded a lot more serious when I thought about it that way. My dry mouth had intensified and the weed wasn't the only thing to blame.

"What- what would be the change?" I mumbled at the towel with a shy feeling twisting at my insides.

Jungkook took the blunt back for a hit and with his voice tight voice from holding it in he said, ever so casually, - "Y'know. It'd just be like, an official way of sayin' I wanna be with you forever.".

I gulped my heart back down into my chest and reached for the weed but he pulled it back.

"Baby." The sternness had been a new thing with him.

To be fair, he was patient for nearly 6 years before he started putting his foot down over stuff like this. It wasn't fair though, that he became an entirely new kind of handsome whenever he did it.

This was the place I was scared to fall into. He held the blunt hostage and instead of grabbing at it, I wondered how he was able to fall so freely.

"Like, you wanna- you wanna marry me?" I couldn't figure out what I was being so tentative for. I'd dated before but, I'd never really had a relationship like this.

Where, "I'm heading home" meant, "I'm coming home, to our home. To the home that we live in together.". Or like - Jesus, I dunno. I guess, nobody had ever asked me to be their girlfriend as an official way to say "they want to be with me forever".

It was usually more like "haha idk let's just see where this goes, you're pretty chill" (yeah, they clearly didn't know me well).

JK had tilted his head to watch my brain go into hyperdrive and nibbled his inner cheek before he flashed a cheeky grin.

"Wait - baby, say that again?"

My stoned brain tried to trace back along the conversation, "I, uh, I said that um - oh! You wanna marry me?".

"Why yes I do, baby I can't believe you asked, that's supposed to be my job!" Jungkook playfully slapped me on the arm and played coy. Tucking wavy hair behind his ear and sitting like a mermaid.

I'm pretty sure my face steamed hot enough to cook an egg.

"You did- you can't- I was asking you if you, you meant that," - "Baby. Fuckin', fuck if I know if marriage is in the cards. It's not like two newbie dance teachers are maki- I mean. Look, I think about it but I'm not tryna do it or anything. I, uh, I only asked because..." His cocky demeanor immediately shifted to shy and timid. The last bit of his sentence was said so quietly and softly, it almost didn't sound like his voice anymore.

I really wasn't in a position to get all full of myself, but shy Jungkook is too freakin' cute not to mess with.

I crawled closer so I could dip my head and find his round, sweet eyes.

"I'm sorry baby, what was that? You only asked caaaauuse...?" Jungkook broke into his laugh with an exhale and wrangled me into his lap.

It was a little easier for both of us I think. With me sitting in the space between his criss-crossed legs and his arms wrapped around me. Both of my hands gripped the muscles of his forearms and felt them ripple as we wrestled.

Most importantly - and maybe most helpful - was the fact that we weren't facing each other anymore.

"Obviously I asked cause I've thought about it for a long ass time. And, fuck, I dunno. I only asked cause I'm sure that I'm gonna be sure about it, for a long time." Everything he said made me feel like I was about to explode.

Have you ever thought about something a lot? And then one day, someone says all the things you've been thinking and you're like, "holy shit- the inside of your brain thought about this too"?- It was kinda like that.

But in a way that squeezed your heart like it was being touched for the first time.

Like, in the kinda way that makes you realize what your heart is full of.

"Like - a long, long time?" I twisted my head to try and look at him but could only see his exposed throat, and the defined shape of his jawline while he stared up at the sky.

I pressed kisses against the beauty spot on the side of his neck until I'd realized that his head was tilted away from me on purpose.

"Baby!!" I would've died if anyone else heard me sound that pouty or needy. But it just felt right with Jungkook.

His question was repeated.

"Do you wanna be my girlfriend?" In a blink, we were gazing into each other's eyes and my heart skipped a beat before it picked up a jumprope.

"Yes." Slid out of my mouth without any hesitation or second thought. A side smile tugged at his lips before they ambushed mine. I was trapped in his lap while he attacked, his lips and piercings buzzed against my skin whenever he laughed.

After he refused to relent and my laughs turned into tickled yelps, Jimin flung open his bedroom window (it looked down into The Backyard).

"MISTER KAY! DID SHE SAY YES??!!" He projected his voice like we were across a football field, instead of right below him.

In unison we belted out: "YES." and beamed twin grins up his way.

"OK GREAT! STOP BEIN' GROSS THEN CAUSE WE SHOULD CELEBRATE. I WILL KISS YOU BOTH IF YOU DON'T MEET ME IN THE ROOM." Jimin's voice echoed around The Backyard but drifted as he headed downstairs towards the living room.

He really would've kissed us if we hadn't gone to meet him.

He'd done it a few times to prove he'd follow through, and a few more times just cause, "we all looked good".

Jimin was perhaps the most notorious partier of us all, but he handled it better than anyone (usually) and was always able to make sure that everyone had fun. So when he wanted to celebrate or throw a party (like he did when we finally got new dishes or "because the sky was so beautiful that day") - we would celebrate, or have a party.

And that's how we wound up crossfaded in the parking lot of our favorite grocery store. Jungkook was pushing me in a grocery cart as we raced against Tae and Jimin. Hobi was in a wine spell and zoned out watching the race, while Joon (who hadn't noticed this) rambled to the side of his head. Jin and Yoongs were reffing the race, because someone (not my team) liked to cheat.

After we'd won our third round, JK wheezed out the words "It's not my fault you got lil legs!" and laughed so hard he had to hold himself up on the handgrip of the grocery cart.

Yoongi pretended to blow a fake whistle and waved his arm while Jin crossed his in an X. Any time Jimin started to protest, Jin shook his head with his eyes closed.

"But I'm so lovely." Jimin sulked and I wobbled out of the cart to link arms with him.

"You Are so lovely. Leshgo." My doting words were slurred together but Jimin blinked lovingly at me anyways.

Oh yeah, whoever lost the race had to go in to get groceries.

- Nin was too high and got nervous,

- Joon would've taken 4 hours

- and Hobi wouldn't have made it past the entrance.

Yoongi just didn't want to.

The lights of a grocery store are horrendous, and yes - I was high, but my eyes felt pushed to a squint by the brightness.

So maybe I didn't really see what I saw.

But we were walking by the meat, towards the freezer aisle, when a blurry dark figure browsing near the frozen pizza's sobered me up with a sharp 'zap'.

Hair on the back of my neck raised in fear and my breath caught in my chest.

A brief glimpse of the ominous shape trailing behind us had me clutch at Jimin's arm and pick up my pace.

"Woah lovely, the linoleum's givin' me the spins here - oh shit, hey, are you okay?" Jimin's concern was earnest and my heartbeat felt less dangerous when he placed his hand over mine.

"Totally, super chill. These lights are just makin' me paranoid haha." The laugh was stale in my mouth and I ignored Jimin's furrowed brows before yanking him into a quick left turn.

The person maintained the same distance and followed us until we got to the self check-out, where all of a sudden - they disappeared.

Maybe I really was just paranoid.

The beeping on the machine kept making me flinch and Jimin calmly reached down to hold my hand, moving quickly to scan things with his other.

I couldn't remember anything we had gotten.

An arm wrapped around my shoulders as we headed outside and Jimin turned his head to softly ask me, "Tell or no?" and I shook my head no against his lips. He nodded, pressed a kiss into my hair and then "yoohoo'd" to the others.

I really wish I could hide how I felt.

Yoongi noticed something was off immediately and briefly glitched in his movements before turning to find Jungkook.

Shit.

I felt Jimin turn his head to tell Yoongi 'no' and saw Yoongi's face respond with a "what" and Jin and Namjoon and Hobi were singing "Rain Instead of Mistletoe" to Tae, who was lying flat on his back on the asphalt (for some reason).

Fuck.

Jungkook jogged over in little jumps and pulled me into his arms away from Jimin, "Excuse me, that's my girlfriend. Hi girlfriend." - Ok, that helped.

"Hi boyfriend." I managed to get the words out, but I spoke them into his chest to hide the blush on my face.

With his arms around me, the feeling of being followed melted away.

And I didn't think of it how it'd felt. Not while we drank shitty champagne and ate whatever it was we made to eat.

And it didn't come back when we played "truth or naked dare" or "Bora-HEY!". (I'll tell you more about those later.)

It was when we were all on the couch in an intoxicated pile. Jungkook sat on the side near the wall and I had wedged myself between him and the couch's arm. Both of his were wrapped around my waist and his head rested against my chest while I stroked through his hair with one eye shut. It was a little hard to focus at that point.

A slight, out of place movement by the window is what spiked my heart-rate. Made it pound in my ears as I strained my eyes in the dark, trying to figure out what I was actually seeing.

The ambiguous form solidified into a hooded, shadow-y person. I couldn't make out any of their features but, the dim lights inside the house glinted off their teeth once their lips had curled into a sneer.

It reminded me of Marcus. And someone else I knew. A long, long time ago.

All of the blood in my body felt flushed away and my hand dropped limply against Jungkook's face. Teeth nipped at my wrist and tore my fixed gaze away from the window. Cupping JK's face, he kissed at my thumb half-awake and snuggled back onto my chest with a sleepy sigh. I kept my hand there to hold him close and the thought of looking back at the window made me feel sick. But I had to do it. I had to see if someone was really there.

I counted down from 10 and took a peek with bated breath -

There was nobody.

Yoongi had claimed the big lounge chair by the window and looked a bit worried at what I was doing before glancing outside himself.

He shot me a thumbs up, crossed his arms, and then both eyes drifted shut.

I never understood how he slept like that. He'd lean back with his eyes closed and just...fall asleep. Like it was so simple.

I did not, or could not, fall asleep that night, but I remember how the first rays of sun lit up the air in the living room. And how Jungkook's lip rings had left little imprints on the top of my left boob.

My cheek had been squished from resting it against the top of his head, and it felt like it couldn't get back to normal for the rest of that day.

Welcome to 2018 dear reader, this is the year I lost my mind.

[shuugumi]

૮ – ﻌ–ა "stay the night with me...please"

insomniac + established relationship + reader telling a story like a journal entree + 812wc + gender neutral reader + sfw

my eyes were heavy, and my body ached from the exhaustion of yet, another sleepless night. minutes and hours passed as i lay on my firm but soft mattress. staring off into the ceiling. i've already taken my medication at the time slot on the directions, but i still haven't found any respite for my insomnia. 

my mind felt it felt like an endless dance. weaving thoughts and worries intertwined with each other refused my body to slip into the realm of dreams. i always felt. frustrated as i longed for the simple pleasure of my eyes closing and drifting into slumber. 

i longed for it for so long and i think i've finally earned the privilege of having a comfortable night of a toss-less night. it all ended when i met him. 

even though he was, childish, playful, and unserious at most times. he had become my beacon of calmness and serenity. his presence had an inexplicable effect on my restless soul. the man named, gojo satoru. my significant other. 

i never wanted anyone to know about my insomnia and that i couldn't fall asleep. i thought it was childish that i couldn't. and i had always told myself that, the purple and deep bags that rested under my eyes were disgusting...so i would cover my eyebags with makeup to perfection that no one could question if i had a restless night. 

i never told satoru about my sleepless nights until one night he came to my apartment unexpectedly. 

he showed up, dressed in pajama pants and a white cotton t-shirt, i think it was around 2 am when he knocked, and when i answered his face was expressed. almost shocked that i answered the door so quickly when he knocked. 

that was, also the first time he ever saw me without makeup. and to my surprise, he didn't think of my eyebags as disgusting. he was, worried about if i had gotten enough sleep recently. which i had to laugh because recently, i've only ever been getting enough sleep. 

that night, i gradually opened up to satoru about my sleep issues and how i would go days without any sleep. for once, someone listened with empathy. and he understood how much it took out of me. 

he gave me a light smile before rubbing my shoulders and reassuring me that, i am now not the only one fighting my insomnia. that he was going to be there every night, and told me that we will face my insomnia together. 

that night, we both crawled into my bed. as he engulfed me in his arms, lightly l would he place spread-out kisses on the back of my head.

the comfort and warmth of both of our bodies embraced each other created an atmosphere of trust and affection. 

the feeling of what i felt that night was my anxiety and torments finally melted away in that moment.

the feeling i felt as i felt satoru's heartbeat along with his snores that vibrated off my head, was pure bliss. for once my feeling wasn't the burden of insomnia but instead; it was the soothing weight of comfort, love, and vulnerability. 

i felt my eyelids start to close on their own as i continued to listen to satoru's heartbeat and his snores. as my eyes closed and i snuggled closer into satoru's chest, i heard him whisper, "it's okay, my love. i plan to always be here with you. we'll face the night together, forever." 

i drifted to sleep that night with a smile on my face along with satoru sleeping next to me, an inexplicable sense of security filled my bedroom, and i've never felt so safe and loved before. even if it were little actions that happened that night, i knew i'd want to spend the rest of my nights wrapped in his arms. 

even when i was finally, for the first time able to enter the dream-like state, i still felt satoru's warmth. 

the next morning, when i awoke to the view of satoru peacefully sleeping on my stomach i realized something important. i realized that, sometimes the best sleep remedy isn't a pill or therapy; it's the warmth of a loving heart beside you. the warmth of a loving heart reduced my feelings of stress, anxiety, and loneliness. as the loving heart of physical closeness and emotional connection created between satoru and i, shared a sense of harmony, easing my mind and giving me that restful sleep i've longed for, for so long. 

they say, scientifically, the feeling of safety and connection triggers the release of oxytocin, often referred to as the "love hormone" or "bonding hormone." the hormone that promotes feelings of relaxation, trust, and overall well-being. can have a positive impact on sleep and i couldn't have agree more to that. 

i love satoru. i love him for giving me that sense of security, love, and togetherness. 

© 𝐬𝐡𝐮𝐮𝐠𝐮𝐦𝐢 ; do not translate, copy, plagiarize or upload elsewhere!! all content is owned by me unless stated otherwise.

[boobblog]

I've had a couple of really good days. I got my drains out finally and can do people things again, like bend and twist, and breathe. The pain is still there from the mastectomy, but that's is manageable. I've been trying to explain it to Luke, because it literally takes my breath away. It's like millions of electrical fires snapping all across my chest. It's especially bad after I've done literally anything.

I vacuumed the other day, (don't worry, the vacuum is light) and wanted to die. I was so out of breath and sweating, it made me realize that although I still look "good," I have such a long road ahead of me. I'm not really excited about it. In fact, if I think about it for too long I get mad all over again.

In the next 2 weeks I have a chemo class, pre op testing at the hospital, dr. appts with my gynecologist and plastic surgeon, my port placement surgery then 2 days later my total hysterectomy. I feel like I've been run over and then eaten and spit out already. I'm so grateful that everything is moving quickly, and it's all because I've pushed for it to happen this way. Remember that unhealthy sense of urgency I mentioned, well these are the results.

I was diagnosed in September. It is the beginning of December now and all I will have to do next year is chemo. After that it's port removal and reconstructive surgery. But the cancer treatment will be coming to an end.

That's the hope anyway. I got my pathology results from the mastectomy. All clear margins, and she even said I'm cancer free. It was such an enormous weight lifted off my shoulders. The thing living and growing inside my body, attacking me and making me sick is out. I was overcome with emotion. I wasn't expecting to hear that. If I'm cancer free then why am I still doing ALLLLLLLL these things? I know the answer to that, but telling someone they are cancer free and then telling them to celebrate feels insulting when they can barely make it up the stairs in the hospital parking garage.

My breast surgeon followed up her statement about me celebrating with, "oh, it says here that your right breast had a cluster of cancer cells as well, it's a good thing we took them both!"

Hold the fuck on! I've had 79575675035 imaging tests ran, some of them were even repeated, how was this missed? Why was it not sent for mammoprint testing? How do we KNOW that it's the same as the boob bandit in the left breast? Did we get clear margins on it?

WHAT THE FUCK DOES THIS CHANGE?

The answer is, I don't know, and they don't seem worried about it, so the only choice I have is to trust them. I do. But, now, theres a tiny voice in the back of my mind telling me that this has to change something. The one thing I keep thinking is that because my cancer is so aggressive and walking around like it's got an invisibility cloak, it will come back, somewhere else. Just because I'm having a hysterectomy and will be on hormone blockers for 5 years, doesn't eliminate the other areas in my body producing the hormones that caused my cancer.

I should have gone to medical school, damnit.

I am consumed with all the horrific prognoses I've gotten. Arthritis, menopause, weak bones, blah blah blah.... In my mind, I'm still young and fun. In reality, my body is not able to keep up.

Sometimes I dream about when I was still dancing. How I was so in tune with my body that I could do all the things with my eyes closed. In my dreams, my body is still mine. It doesn't feel like that anymore.

I feels like I lost something, something I never knew how to keep, or that it could even be taken from me.

I think I'm just unsettled. My soul is tired, if that makes sense. I spend the majority of my time, hiding how I truly feel. My boy is in online school and home with us, so he sees everything, and apparently I'm an excellent actress, because this fool was just going about life like I have my shit together enough to handle his foolishness and teenager tendencies.

I lost my shit with him. To be fair, I tried having a feeling circle. You know, like in The New Girl. I even had a feeling stick, which was a ruler I found. But I started the feeling circle and I guess my feelings were still too strong to try and have a calm discussion about priorities and helping mom out more. I lost it. I wasn't yelling. We don't yell in our home.

But, I was saying, "I have cancer....", I just kept saying that, it's like I was caught up in a hamster wheel, just repeating it. Partly because I needed him to realize how serious this shit is, but mostly because saying it out loud to my son, made it sink in.

Still, today, it doesn't feel real. Also, why in the hell is it NOW that my hair is the healthiest it's ever been? That's pretty shitty Gods. But whatever. I'm alive, right. That's what everyone says anyway. It just doesn't feel like I'm living.

I have been reading though. Alot. It makes me want to write fiction books. I am able to lose myself in these stories. The room around me fades away and it's like I'm in the room with the characters, watching as everything happens in front me. It's such a personal and special experience. And because of the type of books I'm reading, sometimes it's kind of SPICY....(that last part MUST be read in Stefan's voice from SNL).

But did you know, not everyone is able to have images in their minds like that? Luke cannot imagine moving images in his head, and has a hard time visualizing things based on a description. It has something to do with our brains. However, he says when I write, he can. Maybe he is just being nice, but maybe I write things in a different way, a way that other neurodivergents can participate in. That's a fun thing to think about.

Maybe I can try that out here too. Chemo starts 1/14. I'll have 4 rounds 3 weeks apart that last 4 hours each time. That'll give me soooo much time to write. Maybe.

I haven't done much soul searching lately. It's been nice to turn my brain off. After our family meeting, Killian got his shit together and is back to being the best human on the planet, so I've just been allowing myself to feel safe and peaceful, for the time being. So, no big revelations this time. For the moment, I'm enjoying not crying.

[glambots]

I just have to share this cause i've had brainworms about it since I heard the song im gonna mention. this is NOT a request, just a thing i wanted to share! any and everyone is free to take my ideas here and run with em!

So, I found a song called The Court Jester by thquib/Joe Swensen, and then an amazing cover of said song by Sanguine. As i kept listening to the song, and thinking about the lyrics, it inspired a sort of AU? or something? and i've just now gotten the confidence to share.

This might get cut off or something, since i dont know the current limits on asks. Also, preemptive apology for my rambling lol.

The italics (slanty text) is the lyrics, the normal text is my thoughts.

----------------

I am the Jester, my job's to entertain

And it seems that soon enough it too will be my job to reign

Over all that you see, over all that you know

As the king is slowly dying, any moment he could go

Yes the king is slowly dying, any moment he will go

This section is the introduction to the DCA, who notices how the Fazbear Company is slowly dying due to his change to a childcare bot from his old job, and how less and less people are coming, and things they overhear from others. This section is also mainly a flashback to when the Pizzaplex was still open.

Oh! Sweet memories, come rushing back to me

As I trace my fingers on these haggard walls within your keep

Though my exile still stands, I heard my duty call to me

Because I am the Court Jester, I've grown tired of my sleep

After all, I am the jester, and I've tired of my sleep

This section flashes forward to a damaged looking DCA wandering a ruined Pizzaplex. It’s clearly been at least 10 years since the Plex fell into disrepair, due to all the overgrowth.

What good is a crown if the brow it sits on is that of a dead man

I'll wear my cap and painted smile with pride, my trusty baton in my hand

And you will see me, sire, I'll make my way back to you

You cannot stop me sire, your time is up, I see right through you

Mostly flashback again here. Mostly shows the DCA’s prime in their original job. With the last couple lines, it flashes forward again to the DCA’s damaged hand clenching in anger.

Though resolute you may pretend to be inside your walls

The people soon will realize that your feeble body can't forestall

The inevitable end that we all will one day meet

You are human, you are dying, yes know I it's bittersweet

But you knew this day would come, and you can't borrow steal or cheat

Yes, your maker gave you time, but you've run out, and soon you'll meet

The DCA continues to wander the ruined Plex, with flashbacks to when it was open throughout.  (or maybe someone else could think of something more interesting for this part, idk.)

I was awoken by some nibbling in my brain

A single thought, just like a knot, a stone, a weight I can't explain

That sat there pulling me to consciousness and waking soon I found

Myself entrenched in ancient earth, with roots and vines my arms were bound

And in this post-hibernatal state my mind was filled with clouds of doubt

Were these my memories? or something else? and soon I felt the urge to get out

Flashes to the DCA waking up buried under rubble some time after the Fire Ending. They are covered in plant growth, showing it’s been at least a few years since the fire.

Tearing, ripping, painful as it was

Vines and leaves gave way easy just because

All that's left in this world is decay;

Soon I knew what caused me to awake

The DCA suddenly sits up, and begins freeing themself with surprising strength.

With a newfound memory after rest

I felt something bubbling in my chest

Soon I felt myself losing control

Peals of laughter rang into the distance from my soul

I cannot recognize a single thing in front of me

The world as I knew it now is gone, is this reality?

Absurd and nonsensical, fantastical and daft

All that is left to do is sit right down and laugh

After resting for a moment after freeing themself, they remember what happened up to the building collapsing. They laugh as they realize they were completely forgotten there, the thought nearly breaking them. The instrumental part is just them sitting there.

Oh this world that I left you in

Has been tainted by your sin

And as such I have now taken it upon myself

To reinstate the reign of laughter and in health I will return

Oh I am making my way back I will return

Soon the people will remember the reason why they burn

And the fires in their might will start to turn

Pointing fists and shouting out with no more reason for concern

The DCA decides to try to find anyone they can, human or bot, and figure out what has happened since the fire. They meet some human they knew from the Plex, and they team up. Slowly, they start telling the world what happened.

Soon you will see! the world will turn upon its head!

Just you hope that you can see it 'fore you're dead!

Foolish king, you sit in empty meaning on your throne

But in my time away you've ended up alone

Oh, all the power in the world could never save you now

As the time at which your curtain's called draws nearer, get ready to take your bow

The age of reason is now drawing to a close!

And now I, the mere Court Jester, will his majesty depose

I will tip the gilded throne, in me the people will repose

Because I am the Court Jester, not all thorns come with a rose

After all, I am the jester, and this future I propose:

Let the fool, let me, the jester, bring the olden tales to close

Let the fool, let me, the jester, a new saga now compose

In this last section, there is a big time skip. The events eventually leads to a sort of sapient robot rights revolution. The vast majority of people support the idea, so those in power are “alone”. The ending could be either more positive, with humans and sapient bots living in peace, or whatever else you could think of.

Love when the Brain Animatics take over, it is a burden we all must share.

[always-sleeping-in-his-grave]

⏳

For every “⏳” I receive, my muse will openly talk about a bit of their backstory.

"Believe it or not," Dallas confesses. "I tried to keep Kent and I out of the killin' business for as long as possible."

Letting out a deep exhale through his nose as he continues, "being two orphaned children with nothin' but the clothes on our backs, jobs didn't come by so easy for us. I offered my services to countless businesses, only to get rejected every time. I was only a child after all and what experienced company would want to hire some random Imp with no experience in the workin' force. And a hybrid one at that." The barley-controlled ire could be heard faintly on his tongue, no matter how hard he tried to mask it.

Recalling these events from their lives always brought out a familiar pain in his soul. A shattering one. "Nearly broke my heart every time I had to come back to Kent with my tail between my legs, breakin' the bad news with an ache in my chest."

He tried to keep his composure, "We didn't have a place to stay at the time, so we'd just camp out under bridges or inside abandoned houses. Usin' campfires to keep us warm durin' the cold nights. Whatever food I had managed to steal for the day, I always made sure to give Kent the first and biggest ration. I knew it was never enough. They were a far cry from ma's chicken pot pie or pork posole, but we had to take what we were given." A faint tug at the corner of his lips was now visible as he was brought back to fonder memories of home.

Only for his face to fall blank again. "I never thought that I would ever get so desperate to steal. I only started once it became increasingly clear that we couldn't survive on the land anymore. And I needed to do whatever I could for Kent."

Dallas paused briefly, pulling out a cigarette from his back pocket. He prefers not to smoke, but he needed something to soothe the anxiety while he continued to talk. Lighting it up with a bit of tremor in his hands. Savoring the nicotine like fine wine.

"Occasionally," he said through mouthful of smoke. "There would be those rare moments were life would seem a little easier and we could just forget about everything for a few fleetin' minutes. Like during the clear nights where we'd lay out underneath the stars and try to find the constellations or play in mud puddles after a heavy storm," through the thick cloud of smoke, you can barely make out the gleaming look in his eyes. "But, reality likes to rear its ugly head in whenever I start to notice Kent's lack of body weight, or how his favorite boots were starting to fall apart. Even if I could hold him close to protect him from the unforgivin' elements, he would still shiver in my grasp no matter how tightly I held."

He continued to take more puffs in, as the hand left unoccupied unintentionally began to dig into his leg. Guilt heavy on his mind.

"It had gotten so bad for us that I almost gave up entirely, thought we would be better off stuffed inside some dingy orphanage. At least there we would have a roof over our heads and food in our bellies," His posture became less tensed. "But I've heard the stories about the rampant abuse and neglect that goes on behind closed doors. Just thinking about what they do to those poor little bastards made me quickly change my mind."

Dallas started to recline against the seat, letting the weight he had been carrying on his shoulders to finally release after so much time and tension. It almost felt cathartic to let it all out, now that the worst was behind them.

"Then one day," he said more easily, hoping to start on a more positive note. "Luck had finally shined down on us in the form of an ad in the newspaper about a courier job that was hirin' urgently with good pay. Just enough for us to stop stealin', start savin' for a house, and purchase a new pair of boots for Kent."

"I tried to look as presentable as I could with what little we had at the time. I washed out the faded stains from my less soiled clothes in a creek nearby, scrubbed my face from all the grit and grim that had been buildin' up, and combed out the tangles in my hair to at least appear somewhat like a member of society."

He chuckled suddenly as he suddenly remembered.

"And I must have made quite the impression. Because I think the last thing this fella was expectin' to see enter his cigarette smelling, wallpaper peeling office, was some scruffy looking kid from the streets askin' for a job. Though, he did get a good laugh out of it."

His chuckle was now a full-blown laugh, nearly coughing on the smoke as he did so.

"He asked if I was fuckin' with him. To which I replied, 'Do I look like I'm fuckin' with ya?' That only seemed to make him laugh harder."

The smirk on Dallas' face grew too genuine as he recalled his time with the Imp.

"He introduced himself with a yellow stained grin as Graves and hired me on the spot. While intimidatin' at first glance, him being one of the few Imps to start a business here in Hell actually made me more relaxed around him. Even if his business was shady at best. But that's why he left the tougher jobs to the more experienced employes."

"I followed every task he'd given me as flawlessly as I could. This was the only source of income after all, I couldn't mess this up. But with how much Graves was impressed with a brat like me, he put in a good word for me to his buddies incase things went south."

His eyes dimmed down and his mouth set in a hard line. "Unfortunately, the old son-of-a-bitch was murdered in his office while the others and I were busy with some job. Apparently, he had been scammin' the wrong crowd and one of them had finally had enough of it..."

He's seen his fair share of dead bodies, but the way they found his mangled corpse left a sour taste in Dallas' mouth.

"Was a shame, I think he was actually starting to like me too..." Leaving off on a somber note.

[thr0whands]

rhea could feel the pounding pain in her chest when she confessed everything to thierry. she wasn't sure how he would react but she needed to be honest for once in her life. everything had been bottled up inside of her for way too long and she couldn't do it anymore. she had gotten into contact with some of his friends that let her know exactly where he was. and as soon as she knew that, there was no stopping her from coming to paris and spending a few days with him. even longer if it were possible. it made her chuckle when she heard the next few words. rhea had always been super close with thierry's mom. they had always gotten along and they had the perfect relationship. ❝ that's true. your mom would definitely let you have it if she knew i wasn't staying with you. which is weird because a lot of other moms wouldn't be okay with that. ❞ it was the truth, because what mom would want a girl to stay over their son's house all alone with just the two of them there? this had to be the hardest conversation rhea had with someone in her life. she knew how thierry felt all those years ago, how he had waited for her, and she had taken her time to get here. to get to this point where she could admit how she had been feeling. it wasn't until damien had actually pushed her to paris and told her that she needed to stop wearing her heart on her sleeve. and now that she had? she felt like a huge weight had been lifted off her chest. and at the same time, she felt like she wanted to wear it on her sleeve a little while longer. especially seeing the way he was looking at her now. maybe he no longer cared for her in that way. maybe he had moved on. or maybe the only thing on his mind had been his career and he didn't have time for her the way he used to. she understood he needed time to process his thoughts and to think about what to say back. she understood all of that. but what she didn't understand was, all he wanted, all he's ever wanted was to be with her. right? and now she was practically begging for him and it seemed like he no longer was interested. what kind of love just stops like that? she leaned back in her chair, waited for him to finish talking before she started again. she felt like she wanted to curl up in that moment just because she didn't like where this conversation was headed. she sat up on her chair, leaning forward. ❝ but why are you going to be scared to return my feelings when i'm here admitting what i feel for you, t? it took me awhile to get here but i am now. and you have always wanted us to be together. and now that i am here telling you how i feel - you no longer want that. and if that's the case, then don't lead me on. be honest with me like how i am right now with you. ❞ she tucked a piece of her black hair behind her ear and continued. rhea reached for t's hand, holding his hand in hers, smiling down at their hands. the way his hand was always supposed to be there. ❝ i can't convince you if you've already made up your mind. the only thing i can tell you right now is that my heart is with you, that it's always been with you. and that i've never felt this much of everything in my whole entire life. that i love you with my whole heart and soul, thierry. and i'm in love with you now and forever. so please, give me that one chance to prove it to you. ❞

thierry   was   curious.        he    wasn’t    sure    how   she    found    him       ;   they   both    lost    contact   when   he    moved    back   and     that    included   their    friends   and   family.        paris    is   a    huge    city    and   for   her   to    figure    out    exactly    where   he   lived      showed    him    that    this   wasn’t   just   some    plain    coincidence.       nevertheless      ,      thierry   heard    her    out.         what   was   he   going    to   do    ?      kick   her    out      ?       he    couldn’t    do    that.          ❝     i don’t mind.        i’m    not   just   gonna   let    you    stay   at    a    hotel.        i   wouldn’t    hear    the   end   of    it   from    my   mother.         ❞         he    joked   to    lighten    up   the   mood   just   a   bit.           even    after   so    long       ,       thierry    was   still   able    to    read   her   extremely    well.          there    was   more    to   this    than   her   simply   coming   here   to   clear    her   head.            he    finished   the    remaining    sip   of   his   wine      ,      setting    it   down.          he    needed   something   to    calm   his   nerves.           the    nerves   that    were   still   there   that    seemed   to    never    go   away.       [  HE TOLD HIMSELF HE HAD TO KEEP IT TOGETHER  ; DON’T SEEM TOO EAGER  ] . 

 the truth   ?       what    was    there   to    tell      ?        well   everything.           he   didn’t    know    what    to    say       ,       how   to   react   next    even.         all   he   did   was   listen   to    her.           thierry    had    finally   come   to    terms   with   everything   that    happened    so    long   ago      ,       that    he    considered   even    dating   again.           his   love   of      basketball   was   slowly   becoming   number    one   again      ,       but    her    words    put      that   love   back    to   second   place.            he’s    wanted    to    hear    those    words   for    so    long        ,       but   he   had   his    suspicions.      a guard if you will.         he   wasn’t    trying   to   get   his    hopes    up   again.             his    friends    thought    it    was    nuts    how    long    he    waited   for    rhea   and   part   of   him    wondered   if    he   truly   was.       but that was love right     ?      a   hand   ran   through    his    curly    hair   trying    to    gather   his   own   thoughts     and   words.        deep breaths.       ❝     ...      -        i’m   sorry    for    being    so   silent    i’m   just    trying   to   you   know      ...       gather    the    right   words   to   say  .....     -     its a lot to process.         ❞          thierry   cleared    his   throat    to    keep    his   own   nerves    calm       ,      making   sure   whatever   he   said    next      ,       would    be   the    whole    truth. 

   ❝    rhea   you   know    i’ll   always    have   that    love   for    you        ,      but   can   you    blame    me    for    being   scared    to    ...   reciprocate    those    feelings   again  ?        when    you    didn’t    say   anything      ,       i   was   CRUSHED.          you    didn’t    even    have   to    say    a    word     ...    -     i just knew.        and   i    had    to    process   that    and   move    on     ....      well    finally    be    able   too   and    now    here    we    are    back    to   square    one.     ❞ 

[chirhos]

i am very glad to have found a christian blog on here who's LGBT affirming. i've received a lot of backlash after coming out as a lesbian. for years i tried to push it down and "pray the gay away" so to speak because i was told i would be condemned for being otherwise. but then i married a man and stayed with him for 5 years and suffered a lot of trauma. he grabbed me by the throat in font of my mother during an argument and i had a lot of christians telling me that marriage is forever and as a woman i am not allowed to leave him and that it was wrong for me to leave him and that divorce is wrong. it's gotten worse now that i've come out and i've been attacked by many christians on here saying i was never a real christian...even though for as long as i can remember i've been involved in the church.

admitting i was a lesbian made it feel like a huge weight was taken off my chest - am i still loved by god despite all this? maybe that's a stupid question.

Romans 8:38-39 (NIV): For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In other words, OF COURSE you are loved by God. This isn't to discount your discomfort or doubts, and it's not at all a stupid question - I know firsthand how difficult it can be to know that God loves you, especially when the Christians around you are being less than loving. But Christ's love for you never wavers - not DESPITE who you are, but BECAUSE of it.

I am so, so sorry that all of this has happened to you. You do not deserve any of it: not the abuse, not the homophobia, and certainly not the judgement of fellow Christians. I don't know where you live, and it sounds like you've gotten out of the marriage, but anyone experiencing domestic abuse in the US can find help at thehotline.org or by calling 1-800-799-7233 or texting START to 88788.

Admittedly, I don't know a lot about the variety of Christian perspectives on divorce beyond what you've already encountered. I do know the feminist perspective on divorce, though: it's a fundamental right for everyone, but especially for women, to be able to divorce an abusive spouse. I cannot imagine that a God who loves us (ALL of us) would want you to stay with an abuser, and I wish that the people around you could understand that. Other people have written about this much more eloquently than I ever could, but the idea that God's plan for women is for us to be entirely submissive to our husbands and at their mercy is misogynistic, ridiculous, and entirely unbiblical.

"You're not a real Christian" is an insult that progressive and conservative Christians both love to throw at one another. It's disappointing - it's good to constantly be evaluating if our actions are Christ-like, but I don't think insults really work to cause anyone to re-evaluate. Especially when Christ himself gave us the two greatest commandments by which we must live: you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind, and you should love your neighbor as yourself. Everything else should follow from this. It's not up to others to decide whether you are a "real" Christian or not. I know it's tough, but try not to listen to people who say these things to you.

I am so happy for you that you have come out despite everything that you have endured. If there is any way for you to find an affirming church (if that is something that you want - there's also absolutely zero shame in taking a step back from a religion and culture that have harmed you so much), I think that being surrounded by affirming Christians would do you a lot of good. There are more of us than you think! I've found that churchclarity.org is an excellent resource, or even just googling "[your city or area] lgbt affirming churches".

You'll be in my prayers, and I would ask that everyone who sees this join me in praying for you❤

[redhandedjournals]

Journal Entry #1

October 15, 2022

I am currently starting my journal here with a journal page. I am hoping it will help to get some things off my chest and be a safe haven for me to express myself. I find I can't talk to many people and don't much want to bother people with everything that weights on my mind.

This year has been a tough one for me. I almost lost my life to suicide twice. I am still not sure how to feel about being alive. I feel like my soul died when I almost did. I didn't expect to come back from it, yet here I am. I found out last year my dreams of becoming a funeral director were a no go as I have an adult record from assault from spitting on nurses when I was intoxicated, as well as from when I was put on psychiatric medication that didn't agree with me and I choked a nurse. I could get a lawyer and try and fight it, but I don't have the money or the patience to deal with a court battle that could just smash my hopes even more. I still have the gift of writing though. My main goal in my life was to make double what my parents make in a year, and to be able to travel the world viewing different grave sites like Edgar Allan Poe's burial site, odd cemeteries along the way, ghost tours, art and history muesums, see the beach, and go on a real vacation. One I have never gotten to have. I wanted to do it all with someone I love beside me, and while I have that special person now in my life and I am so blessed to have them, I can't afford to do any of these things as I am not a funeral director, I am disabled mentally and physically right now and can't work, and I just over all feel like I can't contribute to society nor will I ever be able to do the things my soul has longed for my entire life. It comes as a huge loss to me. I am still grieving this loss as it is huge for me. The death of my dreams. I want to try and be positive and say things could change and I may still be able to do these things, but I just don't see a light at the end of the tunnel. All my life I have craved adventure, but have spent it taking care of elderly family, children, cleaning other people's houses, volunterring, most of my life has been confined to a home or a hospital and I just want more for myself.

I always have been one to write poetry and it has brought me peace through out the years. It is a form of self expression for me when I can't get out what I want to say. Many people have said I had a way with words over the years and I got some good feedback in my writing classes at college, so I cling to the hope that maybe they were not lying, and I really can write. Lately I've been working on a memoir about my life and I am hoping it will help me grieve as I have never grieved the loss of anything or anyone in my life. My family would never allow me too. I was always their rock and support in their time of need. Writing has always been there for me when no one else was there, and it is something I can only get better at and people can't take away from me--- a lot of things have been taken away from me this year: pets, places, comfort items, and people (both living and now passed).

My aunt passed away October 11th 2022. She was a special person to me and a huge part of my support network. I still try and wrap my head around her death and wait for the coroner to tell my family the results of the toxicology. I want to know how she died, so I can be at peace in my mind and it will stop trying to ask all the same questions over and over. I just want to know how she passed. She always told me to be careful, but why wasn't she? I am a little angry with my family right now. I have had to set some major boundaries here as of lately and it hasn't been an easy thing to do. It makes me uncomfortable but at the same time I feel a sense of relief that I don't have to carry my heavy load anymore. I've been carrying so much for so many years. It is time to let that baggage go, be freely who I am, like me or don't, and live my life for me, my fiance, and our two special pets Betty white (my dog) and Puddin J. (my cat).

I still hear the voices in my head telling me not to eat. I struggle with them because somebody in my head feels like giving up completley, but I guess that is what happens when you open a pandora's box and grieve too many things at once. My stomach is in knots. My family is at my aunt's wedding and everyone is at each other's throats. I am so glad I couldn't make it due to mental health reasons but I know I could not handle it, but at least I told my aunt to her face.

I've been having a lot of memories flood in of the time I spent with my abusive ex and being locked in the closet. I really just wanted to be loved and a way out of my situation. I finally have that now and I am working through my past in a Vampire Novel. I am still trying to peace together.

The voices in my head have been more quiet lately. I just think everyone is tired of everything and everyone. I feel like I need to be alone, but at the same time alone is all I have felt for years. Is it really something I want to feel? Or am I just wanting to push everyone away because I don't want to get too close. I just wish the World would stop or something. I hear the voices in my head tell me "don't write, you're not good enough" but then I have had many people tell me that I have inspired them and that feels good.

currently money is the biggest issue. I don't feel like my writing will ever be good enough to sell a lot of copies, even after I finish my education. Will I ever be satisfied with just being a writer? Most writers aren't famous until after their death anyways. I just know I want to make a difference in this World. Will my writing do that? I don't know. I guess I can always try. I am going to dedicate my books to my grandma and grandpa, aunt who passed away, and to my fiance. All of them are my biggest supporters. I am thankful I have been blessed to have them in my life's.

I think that is it for now. I will write more later. Off to clean, as always.

-redhanded.

[fandomdaydreamer]

The Lighthouse and the Ocean

Part 16

Elsewhere

Pairing: Pedro Pascal/OFC

Warnings: slight angst, FLUFF

Summary: Pedro has a plan how to make the most out of Nini's days off work. Their encounter with a dubious gang seems to be just 'meh, whatever' compared to the important question he is burning with.

Notes: Also find this fic on Ao3 -here- or the series' Masterlist and Playlist -here-

May some light reading bring a little comfort during these very difficult times. My thoughts are with the people in Ukraine and all human beings in the world who are the victims of a war.

Length: 10.4k

~

Elsewhere

When Pedro returned to his hotel room, the day had far progressed into a warm November afternoon but she was still dead asleep to the world. He had hoped she hadn't noticed his absence but the tall glass of water he had left for her on the nightstand was empty and she was sleeping with her hand resting on his 'BRB' note. Judging by the way Nini was hugging his pillow, she had missed his presence.

Intense fatigue made him lean against the wall and a deep exhale escaped his lungs, for he was grateful for a moment of peace and silence. Pedro was running on exactly zero amount of sleep. At least he had finally managed to settle everything that needed to be done to put an end to this chaos and secure Nini's further wellbeing. He could sense the tiredness seeping into his bones, now things were finally smoothed over and the only thing left on his list was for her to get better.

Too much ineffective caffeine kept buzzing in his system and this strange kind of restlessness remained, especially because he had just gotten off the phone with her best friend.

"Wait, I've been trying to convince her to see a therapist for 'years' and then you manage to change her opinion after knowing her for a couple of months?" Tom's heated words had provoked uneasiness between them, for Pedro had thought the younger man had been seething with anger after he had to tell him what happened.

"Listen, Tom, I'm not trying to replace you as her best friend. In this situation, I-" Pedro had tried to calm him down but found himself interrupted by a loud sob. He had felt startled and suddenly worried. "Tom?"

"Thank you-" The Brit's voice had pitched over the phone and the realisation, how much Nini was loved, had crashed over Pedro like a tidal wave that shouldn't have been surprising at all. He had been stunned into silence by this misleading conversation but had lost all tension once he fathomed the amount of gratitude Tom had felt in that moment.

"Oh, oh uhm, okay." Pedro had stuttered. "Maybe it's going to be a journey with many obstacles but she will pull through, alright? I'll tell her you called." Pedro had promised because he didn't know how to respond.

"Do you love her?" Tom had finally asked, voice strangled by a sound that had been half a hiccup, half a chuckle.

Pedro needed a moment to sort his emotions and compose himself. He could pinpoint so many moments during their acquaintance when his heart had fluttered in his chest and had spread this warm feeling into the depth of his soul. When he closed his eyes, the picture of her smile seemed to be the reason why he felt illuminated.

It seemed he didn't even know when he had started to fall in love with her. Like Jane Austen once wrote, 'it had been something coming on so gradually, he hardly knew where it began. "I do." Pedro had replied in simple words but the truth had lifted a weight off his shoulders nevertheless. Yes, he loved her, of course, he loved her.

Finally, Pedro relaxed as he contemplated the echo of his words. He let them bloom in his chest and he retreated into his bathroom for a minute. It was the same place he had sat on the floor last night after Nini had fallen asleep, where he had tried to wrap his head around the story of her past. He had spilt a few silent tears then, feeling numb and overwhelmed with devastation. It still made him question why tragedies like this existed, because her father had been full of rage, fuelled by grief and because horrible things happened to good people and the most vulnerable; innocent children.

His eyelids fluttered down towards the fresh rose he twirled between his fingers and he found it to be a perfect vision from every angle. Pedro tried to be as quiet as possible as he filled a small vase with tap water and placed the light pink rose next to the sleeping beauty resting in his bed.

Watching the soft cadence of her breathing felt comforting and he pried a discarded strand of hair from her face. A sad smile tugged at the corners of Pedro's lips while he treated her gently like a precious little bird in the palm of his hands. He was glad she wasn't conscious to see his worried expression, for he felt a heavy heartache bruising within himself.

God, he adored her so much. The all-consuming, familiar feeling hurt in a good way and grew in abundance the longer he studied her sleeping form and peaceful, kind face. His affections only seemed to intensify with every breath that left her lips.

Pedro knew she would be alright again. The colour was returning to her cheeks little by little and even though it was only a small comfort, her sight soothed his weary eyes.

His sweet girl who only tried to chase her hopes and dreams. This talented artist, reaching for the stars. A strong woman, who had accomplished so much already despite her deep battle scars and the heavy, invisible baggage Pedro had just learned to see last night. How could he ever begin to comprehend what dark kind of storm stirred underneath the surface of her carefully constructed guard? Her undiagnosed anxiety alone should have been a severe disability if she'd only taken it seriously at some point in her life. He was making assumptions at this point after he had researched scientific data in the early morning hours, knowing he wasn't a psychologist. The only thing he knew for certain was that she needed a break. A proper break.

Pedro's eyes were wider than before, though so little had changed, he could see much more now and he was endlessly impressed and moved by all those years she just endured her struggle.

He sat down at his desk by the open window and massaged the bridge of his nose to relieve the pressure behind his eyes. The painkillers weren't doing anything for him and he was tired but he couldn't allow himself to catch some sleep just yet. Keeping one watchful eye over Nini, he guarded her sleep so her mind wouldn't play tricks with her dreams like it had at some points during the night. The best way to pass time in this deceptive picture of his personal idyllic paradise was to distract himself with work.

Of course, Pedro wasn't productively working on anything at all. His eyes skipped across the sentences of his screenplay without actually reading any words. He started over but his thoughts kept drifting away.

Nothing had changed the fact that he had been struggling to ask her an important question for more than a week... before their fight and before her breakdown. He didn't feel any different, for he was wondering, now more than ever, if she would maybe, just maybe consider- or could imagine that, perhaps- urgh- they were ready to take the next step in their... relationship? Pedro contemplated this specific word and didn't dare to assume. 'Relationship', the way in which people or things were associated... an emotional or sexual connection between two people. True, but it was also a term of commitment.

They had never brought up labels but he had realised in the course of this month that this was what he really wanted. Dreaming about it seemed like the only right thing to do while his wishes treaded lightly to the borders of reality. Whatever they were, it felt like something real.

He prayed Nini hadn't looked into his bin and read the pathetic half-written speeches on crumpled pieces of paper, words he'd designed that night they had spent apart. Words asking for her forgiveness and well, which would never be spoken aloud because he'd tossed the next sheet into the basket as soon as he had failed to describe how much she meant to him.

Pedro hid them further away. They were equally bad as an attempt to pass his crush a note with little multiple-choice boxes to tick off like high school boys did. 'Do you want to be my girlfriend? Yes - No'. Could he do that? It would certainly make her laugh. He realised he could wait for the right moment for a little while longer, wait until he knew what she wanted.

Pedro continued marking bits and pieces of text in his script with red ink while he listened to the distant sound of church bells calling for evening mass. An adorable round tit bird on the nearest branch was priming its feathers, getting ready to embrace the last rays of sunlight and fill the evening with one more song. He hardly even noticed he had drawn it next to the written love confession one of his characters was making.

As he tapped his pen against his lips, his black-framed glasses began to descend the bridge of his nose and he had to push them back in place. His brows furrowed while he read the same sentence over and over, not quite figuring out what was wrong with it.

Writing was just another synonym for struggling.

He edited until he felt a familiar energy prickling his skin. It caught his attention and made him spy over the rim of his glasses towards the white sheets stacked high enough for mountain climbing.

A pair of curious eyes blinked at him as they barely peeked above the covers.

Pedro smiled, asking himself how long Nini had been observing him scribbling away time. Her hair was a dishevelled mess chaotic enough to challenge the appearance of any famous hangover riddled rock star that ever lived to tell the tale of an extremely wild night.

The more she stared at him like a scared little mouse, the more courage he needed to speak up as well.

Her voice cracked as she finally broke their silence. "Can I ask you something?" Nini spoke behind the pillowy fortress.

"Of course," Pedro replied, expecting her to spiral into a fit of guilt and he braced himself to gently contradict her. He was ready to collide with her defeaters behind enemy lines but for now, he could only try to shed some light on her dark day.

"That's your manuscript, isn't it?" She asked, voice still sounding weak. His worry disappeared, having not expected her to pick up this specific topic. "Yeah." He gave back with a sniff, staring down at the pages like they contained rocket science instead of dialogue.

"What is it about?" She inquired further and dipped the covers to reveal her entire face and rest her cheek against her fingers. She looked up at him shyly and Pedro found beauty in everything he saw. The soft skin of her leg appeared from underneath the covers and her toes curled as she stretched her limbs and rubbed her puffy eyes.

Pedro hummed. "It's a screenplay for a movie... something I thought I had abandoned, really-" he began like it had been a silly idea to start such a project but he gladly shared his vision with her. However, he thought it was too cheesy to admit that ever since he'd met her, she had inspired him to pick up his script again. "I always wanted to produce and direct a movie someday. I wrote it for all those actors I know and love who haven't had the chance to get a part in a lot of movies yet." He said and remembered his own struggle to score roles in his younger days. "It's a work in progress but it's about um... have you noticed these flyers with contact slips all around New York?" He asked and watched the gears turn in her head.

"You mean those 'call this number for piano lessons' or 'have you seen my cat' ones to rip off street poles?" She squinted as she pictured them.

He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees and he spoke calmly despite the spark of excitement he felt at her interest in his work. "Yes, exactly or some that say 'Who's seen my tax declaration, due on Monday?' or 'take what you need, love, hope, patience."

She returned his smile, shifting to lie on her belly and raising her feet into the air while he continued. Pedro felt the thrill of creative passion bubbling up inside. "Well, the thing I'm writing is about many different people and their stories. There isn't really a protagonist but the individual plots all start with a different contact slip. They eventually have people in common, one person, in particular, it's like um..." Pedro thought. "Like 'Love Actually' but weirder and without Christmas and less white people."

Nini began to smile, growing more enthusiastic about his work by the second. "What kind of person do they have in common?"

Pedro breathed out a laugh before he admitted the red thread of the plot. "Someone who gives away young orange trees, I know how random this sounds."

She blinked at him, soothingly. "I think it sounds so charming. What's it called?"

He showed her the blank cover and a title in bold handwritten letters on the next page. "Not sure yet. The working title is... 'A Family of Orange Trees." "I love it." "A foot', for short." Pedro shortened the title and chuckled when Nini needed a second to check the initials and understand.

When she did, she grinned widely. "You're making your dreams come true." She said, sweetly.

His smile softened at her words. Would it do any harm to tell her she had become a major aspect of his dreams? "One at a time." He replied, looking into her eyes and daring to hope.

"I saw your note, thank y-" She mumbled before she looked back and discovered the fresh rose. Silently, she reached for the vase and claimed the pink flower.

"I learned its name is 'A Whiter Shade Of Pale." Pedro introduced the blush-coloured rose. Nini let out a sound of pure adoration when she buried her nose into the source of the intense fragrance like an addict who was reunited with their favourite substance. She repeated the rose's name and he smiled as he watched her inability to breathe outside the labyrinth of velvet petals. "Thank you, angel." She told him.

"You're welcome." Pedro put his script aside and removed his reading glasses. "Now you know where I've been all morning but I um-" he struggled to find the right words, not wanting to upset her by bringing up yesterday. His fingers were fumbling awkwardly before he looked at her again. "I spoke to Jim. He's fully prepared for you to sue him if that's what you want to do now."

Nini's gaze was shying away from him. "I'm not gonna sue him. Was that your idea?" She asked silently, finger tracing her rose.

He bit his tongue for not treading more lightly. "I thought you wouldn't but it's a possibility. You could consider speaking to him though, he would like to apologise to you for everything." She nodded lightly. "I will."

When Pedro stood up from his chair, he let out an old man groan from sitting in one position for too long. He walked over towards the bed in a sluggish manner and asked himself what she was smirking at. "I also bargained a deal with him." He began, letting the mystery build in his voice to intrigue her clouded mind and he felt happy to immediately tell her.

"A deal? What kind of deal?" She asked when he dropped onto the mattress and caged her in, looking down at her. "I'm taking you out." He decided, determined to distract her.

"Out like in 'out' out? Or out like in, you'll put me out of my misery?" She deadpanned and he felt relieved to witness her unique sense of humour resurface again.

He successfully suppressed his amusement. "Do you have a preference, are you suggesting we're still fighting?"

He smiled eventually, though they both remembered how severe their fight had become before everything went down a different shit hole. Fighting was apparently, just another passion they had discovered they were incredibly good at. But like everything new he discovered about her every day, her temper was something he liked about her just as much as her strangest quirks and he was prepared to put up with it.

"No?" She gave him a full teethed smile this time despite her lingering shyness and she squirmed underneath his critical stare. How dare she be this adorable and give him chest pains?

"I mean, you and I are going on a little trip." Pedro finally revealed his plan.

"You mean... like a holiday?" She paraphrased in disbelief and he shrugged one shoulder. While he explained the details, her eyes grew wider and wider. "Sure. Nobody expects you to go back to work for a couple of days and I asked for Monday off. Maria said we can borrow her truck, also said something about it needing slight repairs but it'll be fine." He waved it off, feeling reassured that the hotel owner hadn't been worried about the bitching ignition coil at all. "I already booked a place and we'll be off the grid for a couple of days."

Her jaw dropped in wonder. "Where? How long?" She gasped and he counted the days on his fingers because he was too tired to do a simple calculation. "A three-day weekend trip somewhere very nice. Would you like that?" He asked, not really doubting her adventurous spirit but proceeding with caution nevertheless.

"We could go elsewhere... drive anywhere just to get there." She replied like she drifted into a dream.

Pedro tilted his head. "I had to agree though, we have to be back before my next scene on Tuesday. So, we should be back by Monday night." "Or the truck turns back into a pumpkin?" She suggested, not helping. "Or Jim will send out an army to look for us and charge me for it." Pedro corrected. "He's joking, right?" He narrowed his eyes.

"I fucking hope he is. Oh, you want to go on another road trip with me?" She seemed delighted, drawing out the last word and digging her fingers into his hair but momentarily, a thought caught up with her. "Didn't they say Mexico is a little dangerous or is Jim's bad consciousness suddenly stronger than his concerns about us getting turned into a statistic?"

Pedro tutted at her. "Excuse me, I believe we could at least make it on the news."

It was her turn to be on the receiving end of her sense of humour. "That's not funny."

He made a sound of protest. "Mexico isn't more dangerous than New York, we're going to a tourist vacation hotspot, not North to any of the border states." "Tourist vacation hotspot?" She repeated, sceptically, staying true to her almost snobbish distaste for anything mainstream.

Pedro set her mind at ease. "None of these massive all-inclusive spa and hotel towers, don't worry. It's cooler than that."

"Okay?" She still sounded unsure but she simply had to trust him.

"We're unsupervised." He wiggled his brows at her. "What do you say?" He waited for her reaction and the more she thought about it, the more she seemed to regain the joyful spirit in her eyes.

"Hell yeah." She finally said and Pedro cheered and grinned. He leaned down to kiss her and lingered for a moment, having just realised how much he had missed her sweet lips. He was endlessly glad she agreed to his choice of action instead of letting herself be coddled and babied.

Nini returned the kiss until they were both smiling too much. "Thank you, you absolute treasure of a man. Taking care of me, being the best- sweetest-" she spoke between kisses. She cupped his cheek in her palm but the light moment ended when his attention was drawn towards the bandages on her wrist. Nini caught his stare, taking a breath of air to say something but deciding against it.

Instead of waiting for permission, Pedro helped her slowly remove them. Her skin was still tender and there were red and angry scratches, half-moon shaped wounds of her fingernails and scraped skin. It didn't look too bad though and it would heal soon. Nini wasn't alone in her recovery or falling to the unknown to be left scared and disappear underneath dark waves. She had Pedro now and he had long understood that he was utterly and completely devoted to his little songbird.

"You look tired, my darling." Nini noticed with compassion in her voice.

"I'm fine," Pedro replied, fighting a yawn. "How are you, mi amor?" He asked in return, smoothing a finger over the rebellious swirl in her right eyebrow. Nini's smile faded a little as she contemplated her answer. "Better. I'm glad you're here." She said and he felt relieved to hear this.

"I want you to make a full recovery." He demanded more sternly. "We're leaving tomorrow morning. I'm planning to romance you until you regained your spirits and I'd start right now but I'm-" he couldn't help himself and closed his eyes as he slowly sank his head onto her chest and buried his face between her boobs, best pillows in the world, covered by his Prince t-shirt. "Tired." His voice rumbled deeply as he felt contented to rest against a few of his favourite things. She should wear his clothes more often. This was nice. He could fall asleep like this right now.

Nini cooed at him. "You need to sleep. You didn't have a proper sleep in two days." She stroked his hair but Pedro grumbled, remembering the last bullet point on his checklist.

He sat back up again. "One last thing. Can you do something for me?"

"Hm?" She questioned at his serious tone and expression. "Call Tom back and maybe you're grandparents as well? They're worried sick."

Her eyes widened in surprise. "You called my family?"

Pedro was a little embarrassed, feeling awful for doing exactly what had caused their previous fight and checked the caller ID on her display. "Actually, it was Tom who called because you missed your Skype meeting this morning. I answered your phone, I'm sorry, it kept ringing, I didn't-"

"No, it's okay. Shit, I forgot about that, of course." She cringed after she realised, she hadn't called off their regular check-in.

Pedro remembered the younger man's panicked string of questions and he had tried to keep up with his terror and the many curses uttered, listening with endless patience. "I had to tell him what happened and he got... mad? Not at you, obviously but- mad the rest of us and I can't blame him. Then he started crying and this girl started interrogating me why I was making him cry and she was a lot scarier than him." He only half-joked.

"That was probably Zendaya." Nini bit her lip to hide her guilty expression. "Tom was crying? Did you tell them you're the hero in this story? You should have woken me up." "I told them you were mostly okay and that I'm taking care of you. We wanted to let you sleep."

He placed the phone into her palm. "Why don't you also order one or two of these egg sandwiches you keep denying yourself?" He suggested but it didn't sound like he was giving her a choice. She smiled at him and nodded obediently. "I'll be in your room while you make your calls, okay?" He decided to give her some privacy and maybe, close his eyes for a bit. Jesus Christ, he was so tired, he could barely walk.

An indefinite time later, she caught him in a state of half-sleep when she joined him in her room. He smiled when he heard her enter and could feel the bed dip when she crawled up behind him, smelling like the orange she must have had. She hugged her arm around his broader frame while eating something that sounded too healthy and he felt her jaw move against his bicep as she audibly munched on it.

"My grandparents love you." She whispered and Pedro let out an amused grunt. They rested like that for a while until he felt her body shift and her lips littering kisses across his shoulder.

Pedro smirked, doubting he had the energy for sex right now until he realised Nini was apologising, worrying over the bruises her fingertips had left on his shoulder yesterday. He managed to hum out a 'no', refusing to accept the blame she put on herself. He simply turned, pulled her in and sighed into the embrace of the one who could hear his silence when her breath was soft against his face.

Pedro basked in her softness and he was already asleep when he thought he could hear hushed reassuring words, that everything was alright and the world would look infinitely brighter tomorrow.

~~~

"This is totally our thing now," Nini exclaimed the next day, beaming at him while she stuck a feather she had found out the window of their borrowed truck, letting it flutter in the wind.

Just for old times’ sake, they listened to Fleetwood Mac's 'Rumours' again. He tore his eyes off the country road to look at her and she pushed her cat-eye sunglasses up her hair. Pedro returned her wide smile, taking in her white summer dress and young face, free of worry, eyes shining bright like morning drew drops. It was like nothing had ever changed since their first road trip, only this time, she leaned into him and he could put his arm around her shoulders while steering the car with one hand.

Oh Daddy

You soothe me with your smile

You're letting me know

You're the best thing in my life

She gave him a kiss on his cheek.

"When will you tell me where we're going?" Nini asked, noticing they were driving past a sign that indicated they were heading towards the west coast. The landscape had changed from a high mountain range behind them to dry grasslands and softer hills. He was looking forward to palm trees and to resting his eyes on the horizon of the wide Pacific Ocean.

"Mazatlán," Pedro answered promptly and sighed because he really was incredibly bad at keeping secrets. "I have a surprise for you, I booked an Airbnb-" she interrupted him with a long squeal and he couldn't help himself and joined in. "Now it's not a surprise anymore, I guess. I found a nice place without a pool." He felt free to mention his efforts during his sleepless night.

Nini sat up to look at him with a sweet, tortured expression. "You're perfect." She whined and he snorted. "No, I'm not." He protested but felt flattered anyway. Wasn't that like... a no-brainer after learning that pools were an absolute deal-breaker? He was glad he knew what things to avoid now.

"Yes, you are, you just won't admit it. But oh, thank you. That's one less unreasonable fear to worry about."

"It's not unreasonable." Pedro disagreed, trying to phrase it carefully. "It's actually quite common for, you know, trauma survivors to associate smells with their trauma. The amygdala releases stress hormones and-" He recited from memory but stopped when he noticed she had begun fumbling with her bracelet again. "It's going to be fine." He reminded her.

"Promise?" Her smile began to quiver a little bit. "Pinky promise." He offered his finger to her and her full belly laugh started with one of her adorable snorts.

"Fuck off." She replied instead of accepting and she paused fondly. "Thank you for treating me the same, even though you know every disturbing detail now." She said, relief laced into her gentle voice.

He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times. "Nini, why wouldn't I? I'd- I would, even if... I don't know, had found out you liked puppy for dinner, voted conservative or were fucking my best friend."

She squinted her eyes at him, sensing the exaggeration. "No, you wouldn't."

He shrugged, defeated, not taking these extreme red flags seriously. "No, I wouldn't." He corrected himself. "But you get what I mean."

Pedro wasn't surprised at all as he witnessed her black humour kicking in. "I'm a cat person." She said, like the absurdity in itself could somehow ease his mind or explain anything.

"And you sing along to your favourite leftist punk bands." Pedro recalled, knowing they shared similar views and he could rant about socialism to his heart's content, even though she wasn't very interested in politics and her standard position was a sweet-natured but naïve; 'I just don't want people to suffer. Which is why he had never doubted her when she swore it hadn't been her who had left the Ayn Rand book in the lobby. An event that had occurred two weeks ago and had led to a tense game of 'who-dun-it-Cluedo between the cast.

"I've been told that makes you a shitty leftie but yeah." She stated. "Who said that?" "Better lefties on Twitter who called me out on my so-called 'liberal elitist wank." She replied in fake disgust and didn't that sound relatable?

After a while, she must have realised she could annoy him a little more. "So, Oscar Isaac is your best friend?" "He is..." His tone should have been warning enough already but she made a 'not-bad' sound anyway and he explained further after a beat. "-already married."

They both grinned at her attempts to get under his skin as she pretended to debate whether or not she would jump the really good-looking man he called his brother, though she never met Oscar apart from a video call she'd ruined once. "You better not." He cautioned her. "Bros before hos."

"Oi, dickhead!" She snickered at his ability to keep up with her pestering but she offered him a slice of her portioned apple anyway.

"Are you afraid of anything?" She asked while he munched on the fruit.

"Uh, yeah, shit tons of stuff." He admitted, ever so willingly, partly just to make her feel better. "Like what?"

He paused chewing. "Being buried alive for example. Full 'Uma Thurman, Kill Bill' style. What a fucking nightmare." He almost shuddered at the claustrophobic thought.

Nini hissed in understanding. "Oh, okay. Well, that's unlikely but not unreasonable. What else?"

Pedro thought for a while, remembering the thing he had grown scared of since yesterday. He had realised he was incredibly scared something could happen to her. "I don't know, I think I've seen too many goddamn horror movies in my life, pick literally anything." He answered instead.

"Zombies? I'm afraid of zombies."

Pedro frowned and tore his gaze off the road for a little too long. "You're afraid of zombies and you want to play a character in an apocalypse?"

"Who told you that?" She accused him, more than asked.

Pedro huffed out a laugh. "You. While you were drunk and proclaimed your love for 'The Mummy." He knew a lot of things about her. He knew she only pretended to hate musicals while in fact, many of her favourite films were musicals. He also knew that he had exactly no chance to ever win any future fights because she immediately ran off to write the next heart-wrenching song.

"Oh, how embarrassing, ok." She shrugged her shoulders. "Well, I think it would be exciting." She decided and Pedro thought how entirely true this was and how enjoyable it had been to play the upcoming real-life version of the video game 'The Last of Us. Pedro just loved gory scary movies.

Nini continued. "But that's my unreasonable fear then, in case of a real apocalypse, dying first because I can't drive a car and wouldn't know how to bring myself to safety."

No. That wouldn't do. Pedro frowned and stopped the truck, killed the engine and put the brakes on with determination.

"What's happening, why are we stopping?" She asked in confusion.

He was already half out of the car. "I'm teaching you how to drive, come on. One less fear for you, one at a time but this I can get rid of, right now."

"Ow, my heart." She complained and her posture deflated alarmingly. For a split of a second, she had scared the hell out of him because he remembered reading about her higher risk of heart disease. "You okay?" He asked, climbing back into the car.

She winced in response. "Yes, you're just so adorable. Give me a second." He relaxed with an enamoured exhale after she had said this and he let himself be pulled in for a peck on his lips. "Okay, teach me."

Pedro readjusted the driver's seat for her once she had settled behind the steering wheel. It shifted a mile forward for her shorter legs and she buckled up.

He leaned one arm against the driver's seat and donned his aviators. "Okay, the first thing you should always check is the rear-view mirror and the side mirrors so you can keep an eye on the zombies behind you."

Nini adjusted the mirror while he shut the door and walked around the car. She noticed the sides were just fine. "Okay, what now?" She asked once he was seated next to her.

Pedro began explaining. "There's automatic driving and stick. This truck has five manual gears and a reverse, see? Step onto the left pedal." He went through every gear with her, dwarfing her hand with his when they turned them together. "I get it, you go to the next the faster you're driving." They smiled at each other. "Yes, let's try it. You can lose the breaks."

"Which one is for gas?" She looked down at her feet at the three pedals.

"The one on the right is gas, the middle is the breaks, and the one on the left is the clutch pedal, pressed halfway to release the drive only and pressed fully to release both the drive and PTO clutches."

"Huh?"

He blinked at her. "Step on the left one again and turn the key." He instructed, realising technicalities weren't a priority.

She did as instructed but immediately stalled the engine and both them and the truck jumped forward.

Pedro had let out an 'oof' against the restraining of his belt. "Should have told you to not let go too quickly."

"I'm sorry!" Nini yelled and turned on the windscreen wipers.

Pedro remedied her panic by deactivating them and placing his hand on her back. She calmed down immediately. "Don't be, it's alright. Try again and lift your foot veeeery gently." He demonstrated with a slow tilt of his hand.

Soon after, they were rolling down the road. "I'm doing it!" She exclaimed and bounced in her seat while she drove the car at the speed of that lazy donkey on the field next to them.

"Good! Now accelerate and step on the left pedal again while turning the gear into two."

She did it and he nodded. "Now three, good. Faster, now four. Baby, you're doing it! You're driving!" He whooped but Nini's grip on the steering wheel was so tense, it caused her knuckles to turn white.

"We're too fucking fast!" "Downshifting is easy, just go from four into three."

She shifted the gears and the car nearly exploded, she screamed, they flew forward and everything shut down.

"That was the second gear," Pedro commented breathlessly, taking this punch in the gut but after they had digested the shock, he stared at her with wide eyes.

"Let's try again."

Nini was driving the car at a reasonable speed, she was a lot more relaxed now and even though she had no driver's license, they didn't give a damn about driving on a street they encountered another car only every ten minutes or so. He was incredibly proud of her fast learning progress and she seemed to enjoy driving, muttering along to a Jimmy Page guitar solo in perfect sync. This time, it was Nini who was looking at Pedro riding shotgun until they both started frowning.

"Um, why does it make that sound? I'm not doing anything." She said in a worried tone and Pedro turned off the music.

The car was sputtering even though they had enough gas and everything had worked just fine until now. "No, it's not you. I don't know what's-" he was interrupted by a loud bang coming from the back. "Shit, stop the car." They rolled until the truck had come to a complete halt and he motioned them to switch places.

Pedro tried to reignite the truck several times but it just whined and trembled pathetically. "It's probably the ignition coil." He remembered and let out a string of curses in his mother tongue when it still wouldn't start.

"Sounds like Hugh Jackman's singing voice," Nini remarked. "Or Hugh Jackman complaining about that his pen is out of ink."

He quirked one eyebrow at her. "That's weirdly specific."

The truck gave a sudden burst of black smoke behind them with its last dying breath and they jumped.

"Fuck." They both swore at the same time.

Pedro opened the hood and waved in front of his face as the back smoke circled into the air. He coughed and hissed when he found the vehicle's motor to be dramatically overheated.

"And?" She yelled, poking her head outside the window. "Shit, something's causing the engine to overheat, I don't know." He replied after he had checked the oil. She stepped out to join him but she was just as clueless.

"You're a man, don't you know how to fix a car?"

"That's sexist." He scolded, pointing his index finger at her before he pushed his sunglasses back in place. Standing with his hands on his hips, he shook his head at the exposed motor. He'd driven cars since before it had been legal for him to do so but he spent the majority of his life in big cities, using the subway or cabs. He liked cars but he wasn't a mechanic and he could do very little about a weak current.

"We don't even know how far the next town is!" Nini walked a few steps into the direction they had been heading while the truck continued to smoke.

"Half an hour at least- by car. On foot though? No clue."

"We have suitcases." She complained.

Pedro sighed, looked left and right and the road looked just the same both ways. Empty and long.

"If we head that way, we'll make it to the next village eventually or we could go back to the gas station we drove by. Your call, baby." He let her decide and would follow her gut feeling.

Nini thought for a moment, then headed back towards the truck and tossed him his yellow backpack. "There could be a mechanic at that gas station. We can't just leave Maria's truck here." She told him.

Pedro checked if they had the essentials and enough water. "Alright. It's a hiking trip now, c'mon."

They walked for a while, thankful for every cloud and tree that offered some shade. A flock of birds throwing a shadow plane across the road was the only sign of life. The sun stood high above the sky and the green piece of sea glass Pedro produced from his pocket sparkled prettily.

"You brought it with you?" He heard Nini ask and he smiled and shrugged his shoulders. What, it was a sentimental thing. The attachment he felt for this inanimate object had been slightly stronger than his fear of losing it. "It's for luck." He claimed.

She chirped out a laugh and Pedro thought it was a sound so beautiful it seemed to have been kissed by a cosmic muse in its moment of creation. "That's sweet honey, I hope it's working soon." She said, tilting her chin at their journey ahead.

Nothing else was at the horizon except more yellowed grass and a distant cloud of dust behind them but they soon learned what was producing it.

A red car approached over the hill and whirled up dust in the sun as it closed the distance between them. Pedro gave Nini a look like she had been mocking fate when luck had been just around the corner. "Hey, maybe they could give us a ride?" He stuck up his thumb as a universal sign for hitchhikers but she swatted his hand down before it was even raised properly.

"What do you think you're doing?" She spoke through gritted teeth. "This is Mexico, you can't just hitchhike, you never know how friendly they are towards the Narcos." She hissed, eyes widened in alarm.

Pedro's jaw dropped, not quite believing her. "Really, Nini? Prejudice?" He accused her, having thought better of her. "This country is full of friendly, helpful people. There's nothing, literally nothing to worry about and look at that, a Prius. What Narco drives a Prius?"

"That's the point, you can't tell who's a trafficker before they kidnap you. We're both famous fucking multi-millionaires, walking around like unclaimed prizes to just pick up." She described them as the next criminal's big jackpot.

"Not everyone's bad, c'mon." He disagreed. "Jesus, I-" she began but was interrupted just when the car stopped next to them.

Momentarily, the smell of marijuana drifted out when the window on the passenger seat's side opened and the clearing of fog revealed a very fat and imposingly large guy. The car was packed with a group of tough, unfriendly looking men with a bunch of tattoos and Pedro's smile dropped.

Some might have wondered how clowns did that trick where too many of them fit into a single car. This wasn't much unlike it, only there weren't clowns inside the Prius but a gang of maybe five to eight men who had made their tiny car a hotpot of fuming aromatic smoke. And they were all staring at them like they owed them money.

Pedro's jaw dropped slightly and he removed his aviators when Nini turned her head slowly to give him a blank look but this wasn't a 'told you' moment, more like a 'we're about to be turned into that statistic Jim told us about' moment.

Pedro's wasn't so cock sure anymore. It was a window to a life he hadn't seen since he'd shot 'Narcos' and he gulped. This wasn't for television, those were actual thugs with- fuck, very unsuspicious brown paper bags... A kind of panic he could only control with politeness coursed through his veins and he prayed they were in luck and he was only judging a book by its cover- and those men were nice- and just staring them down with patronising glares for show. They might be a bunch of gay guys or gym bros showing off their jagged tattoos stretched over their tree trunk arms in their tank tops, who knew for certain?

Nini bend forward to their eye level and Pedro noticed they were most definitely not gay but smirking at her cleavage. "Hola, como estas?" Nini spoke up first to his surprise, smiled girlishly and waved at them. Pedro's tense posture deflated in resignation and he scrunched his eyes shut behind his hand.

He could tell she tried her best Spanish on those too serious men and charmed them with a noticeable Gringa accent. The imposingly large man continued to give her a blank stare above the protruding purple circles of his eyes. "Mi novio y yo tenemos... una direción a la- What's 'next city' in Spanish?" She looked back at Pedro, her shiny, windswept hair flipping around and making him realise she was putting up an act when she gave him another stressed out glance.

He on the other hand dealt with a momentum of pure astonishment. When he realised, they were all expectantly looking at him he thawed and tried to smile past his puzzled expression. "La proxima ciuadad." He answered. Jesus, good for him to muster up any words at all while she had taken the initiative to keep their asses out of trouble.

'Boyfriend', she'd said and the word echoed through his head. He grinned at everyone, like a proper idiot. Pedro was experiencing both the best and worst moment of his day right now.

Nini simply looked at him with an expression that seemed to question his sanity before she smiled back at the troup in the car. "Okay, a la proxima ciudad proque our coche is broken, indefenito." They all frowned at each other, the driver with the black tear tattoo beneath his eye looked back and forth between Nini and Pedro. Still, nobody was saying anything. Why was this meathead not saying something?

He thought his heart would stop when the mean-looking one in the passenger seat reached into the paper bag on his lap. Pedro tucked Nini behind his body, raising his hands while they both babbled out their 'whoah there's' before he could produce anything from it. Pedro repeated an elaborated and much politer version of their predicament in fluent Spanish, all the while making sure she couldn't step forward.

Before the situation could escalate though, the driver had already raised his hand to his compañero and Pedro relaxed a little when he didn't pull a gun from the paper bag, but some kind of pan dulce.

He chewed on the sugared pastry. Very slowly, very high.

He knew Nini couldn't understand much except him saying that they didn't want any trouble. He offered them money too but paused awkwardly when donut guy offered him a clear plastic bag with maybe five grams of pot in return. Pedro looked at it with a nervous quirk of his eyebrows but decided it was rude not to accept and he was just baffled, thanking pastry guy with the big necklace and sausage fingers and making the exchange.

The driver had suddenly, gained an ounce of friendliness, making them an offer. "Vale, nececitas que la lleven?" He spoke up for the first time and big guy stopped chewing on his sweet bread.

"What did he say?" Nini whispered to Pedro nervously, who then glanced back at her like he hadn't understood him either. "He asked if we need a ride."

They both looked back at the car that was so packed with thugs it couldn't have picked up a single chicken from the road and after a beat, everyone laughed at the obvious joke together.

All passengers hollered with laughter as the driver hit the gas and sped away with a lewd jerking off gesture and a rude comment at Pedro.

They stared after the red car for a while with open mouths until it had disappeared behind the hill, its passengers' laughter louder than their engine.

He could sense Nini stepping to his side after they had regained their ability to breathe. "So, that went well." She commented and let out a deep exhale. "Oh, my God, I'm shaking."

"Holy fuck," It was like his mind had caught up with this absurd encounter just now and Nini giggled at his astonishment.

Though, he didn't need much time to put himself together and produce a cheeky grin. "You just called me your boyfriend." He looked at her in a teasing manner.

Nini swallowed, visibly flustered. "Oh, um... I'm sorry if that was inappropriate. I know how bad my Spanish is, don't tell me. I didn't mean to... I was just- SERIOUSLY?" She gasped at him, face flaring up with a furious blush all of sudden which made Pedro chuckle already. "We just met a fucking gang and got away only because they were in a good mood and you choose to focus on that detail?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Whatever they were, that guy also said I'm an old jerk." She quirked her brow and raised one shoulder. "Well..." She kind of agreed and thus, earned a critical stare from a not-so-amused Pedro.

"You were wrong," Nini said pointedly but he held up his dull sea glass. "Lucky." He argued in return and felt sure that it had proven its worth. "No, you were wrong and they were at least dubious." "Meh." "Wrong." She insisted.

"Alright, birdbrain, I was wrong but look who's got weed now." He sing-songed, and inspected the tiny bag of pot triumphantly, assuming it was legitimate good Mexican stuff, fuck yeah.

She grinned, crossing her arms. "They just did that, huh?" His shrug was answer enough and he put it in his backpack for later.

They both lost more of their tension by laughing before they picked up their journey again. "Well, at least it's a good story to tell our grandchildren." She suggested, provoking a somewhat surprised look from Pedro before they both realised 'our' was also an undefined determiner and they were not, in fact, talking about starting a family. "Or- or interview." She corrected with an awkward side glance.

Stretching his neck, Pedro gave the landside a thin-lipped smile. "That's more likely, I'm too old already to expect to ever meet any grandchildren, even if settling down happened rather sooner than later." He said, having made peace with the fact that he probably won't even be a father.

"That's just not true." It made her bump her hip into his playfully and he stumbled to the side from the surprising impact. "You're in your mid-forties, not dead."

First, he huffed at her bluntness, then pulled her back into him and kept his arm around her. "But you're still dating me even though I'm... an old jerk and you're a P.Y.T."

"Sí, papi." Nini agreed and then asked. "What's a P.Y.T?"

He chuckled at her and then groaned in agony when he realised liking the term of endearment was totally inappropriate because the girl had very real daddy issues. "Pretty young thing? By Michael Jackson, Thriller album. 'I want to love you- P.Y.T, pretty young thing. You need some lovin'- T.L.C, tender love and care." he sang the song, snipping his fingers. There, he did it again, tiptoeing around the word 'love' but masking it by being a dork.

"Oh!" Nini exclaimed. "That song." She remembered a little but the melody was wrong. "Exactly." He replied anyway.

"Of course, I'm with you. You're... you're everything." She pressed her lips together and blushed when Pedro finally cracked a smile. It felt like such a relief when she laced her fingers into his and they continued walking hand in hand.

Ask her, ask her, he encouraged himself. "Truth is, I really can't believe my luck." He said but before he could continue, she tugged at his sleeve to make him look at her. "Even though I'm a nutcase and easy to fight with over anything?" She asked and he hummed with a pout on his lips.

"Honey, it will be like that sometimes. We'll fight, we'll make up, we'll fight again, maybe worse and we'll get out of it stronger. It'll be worth it." He squeezed her hand.

"Does that mean you want to- does this mean we're official now?" Nini asked, shyly.

The last bit made Pedro's steps falter. He couldn't believe she was the one to finally breach this topic. "You know, I really wanted to talk to you before we... well, before everything went downhill, at least according to the original plan." He rambled after they had stopped walking completely.

Nini bit her lip, feeling conscious about something and she dropped his hand, walking ahead and leaving him behind. "I understand. I would have broken up with me too. I wanted to do the same, you know? Do it before you would."

Pedro's eyes widened and he jogged after her to catch up. "You wanted to break up with me?" He asked as they picked up their voyage across the countryside again.

She let out a weak sound of confusion. "Wasn't that what you wanted to do?"

"God no, I wanted to apologise. I stayed up all night, writing a whole ass speech." "Really?" More like, he had sat in the dark, sad and drunk, scribbling stuff he was, of course, blanking on right now. "Do you still want that? Call it off?" Pedro asked, feeling his heart sink to the floor.

"Only if thought I trapped you into staying with me by having a mental breakdown." She mumbled and Pedro paused to gape at her. "Okay, first of all, yes- being needed, feels great. I'm not gonna pretend you don't wake that protective instinct in me but I don't pity you, I don't think you're not strong enough."

The corners of his mouth turned downwards. Just the thought she could have ever assumed she was a bother or didn't mean more to him than being someone he vibed and had sex with, pained him. "I'm here for you, even if you want to continue our relationship as friends and no, I was not giving you up that easily. After I screwed my head back on, I just wanted to talk things out like adults. Which by the way, we've been improving on, I think."

"And you had me convinced I would get dumped." It was her turn to groan. "Oh, you could have been less cryptic about your 'We need to talk' speech, you-" she kicked some sand into his path with a grin. "Stomme kloothommel!" She dared him and had shouted the obvious insult without any malice in her voice.

"What's that mean?" His eyes widened in curiosity and she looked away, stuttering out what the insult translated into. "Stupid... stupid ballsack-bumblebee." She admitted and stopped walking when she noticed he had fallen behind.

Pedro laughed good three minutes about the Dutch insult, repeating it back to her whenever his breaths allowed him to. He tried to stop but the image of a bumblebee with balls kept intruding his mind. They both communicated such a creature with dorky hand gestures and immature descriptions and laughed until their sides hurt.

"God, I love Dutch." He wheezed, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. "You just can't get mad at that. Who invented you people?"

"A German with a sore throat and a hot potato in their mouth." She replied without missing a beat and shrugged her shoulders at the historically inaccurate fact, seemingly happy she had made Pedro snicker again. Yes, he wanted to stick around, at the very least for a sheer limitless number of ridiculous words.

Which made him remember what the thing he had originally planned to ask her was. "Nini, listen, I um-" he had to get serious for a second, which was hard because they were both being incredibly childish.

She stood facing him from a few feet away, looking at him with a halo of warm light illuminating her blonde hair, dipped in sunlight. He wondered how he could ever tell her that every time he looked into her eyes, he longed to be seen by them forever.

He adored her, it was her he idolised and his inability to just be cool about it scared him. He had forgotten that this kind of young love could make you scream internally in sweet agony.

This was it. He'd ask her. He'd ask her now, there was no turning back. "When I think about what we have and it being so... perfect- it's hard not to wanna rush things." he began and his heart swelled at the sight of her blush creeping up her face. "Sure, I don't even know where to begin describing how much you're keeping me on my toes, how mad you're able to get me, how jealous-" Pedro's eyes had narrowed as he stepped closer again and she gulped. "-and I'm not the jealous type so, congrats for managing to bring up that side of me. I um- I've got to ask you, if not now then someday, if-" he bit his lip to stop himself from talking. Man, get it together, you're not asking her to marry you, he reminded himself.

He zoned out, staring at her while she stood before him in that white summer dress and the idea of her in a wedding dress popped into his imagination. Him, waiting for her at the altar... Pedro blanked. He felt positive about wanting to waste an eternity just looking at her with this image in his head but he was half afraid to picture it any further because she could read his mind like he could read hers.

Just like he had worried, her eyes widened. "Pedro?" She questioned breathlessly, snapping him back into reality.

"Sorry-" He closed his eyes and shook his head. Damn, where had that come from?

He nodded to himself, finally finding the right words. "I'm all the way in if you are." He opened his arms and palms to empathise his vulnerability at this moment. "And I have no idea what our future has to offer and no possible plan. I don't know if we'll last a year or less or gonna meet 'our' grandchildren someday but the best-case scenario I can think of, for now, would be if you wanted to be my girlfriend. You know," It was his turn to blush. "The whole boyfriend-girlfriend kinda thing in case you like me better than Ewan." He rolled his eyes, making fun of his unreasonable insecurities.

"Oh, Pedro."

"If you prefer this old jerk." He pointed at himself.

After she seemed to have digested his words, she swaggered over to him playfully, drawing her voice into a tease. "I do prefer you-" "Well, good. That's good. That's a start." Pedro chuckled nervously when she snaked her hands up his torso and bit her lip in a way that always managed to make him weak.

"Even though Ewan has a nicer singing voice and drives motorbikes." She continued unfazed and put her arms on each of his shoulders, still plaguing him. "And owns an impressive collection of bagpipes but he's getting married so..."

Pedro let out an irritated hiss through his teeth, spying through her tease but she grew more serious. "I'm most definitely over him and you don't have to wonder if I'm all the way in or not." She slotted her hands behind his neck, trying to catch his gaze. "So, yes." She grinned.

"Yes?" He repeated her answer, feeling his heart speed up.

She nodded wildly before she could speak up. "Yes, I want to be your girlfriend, do you want to be my boyfriend?" She returned the question happily and her eyes shimmered up at him.

"Oh, yes!" He breathed thoroughly, repeating the answer to her follow up question several times, feeling like the luckiest bastard in the world and after a pause for breath, he smirked. "Okay, are you ready?" He asked. "Ready?" "Are you ready 'cause I'm about to do something extremely bold."

Nini's eyes widened. "Ready for what?"

"I'm gonna kiss you now. In public." Pedro announced with a comical frown and it made her look around in confusion. There wasn't a single soul around and they were both aware of that. Not for miles. The joke wasn't lost on her.

"Okay." She giggled but he instantly muted her with a kiss, slotting his mouth against her decadently soft lips and keeping his eyes closed to lose himself in this feeling. He could get so lost in her.

She hummed into him, hands flying up to frame his face when she let him swipe his tongue into her mouth possessively.

They kissed in between fields in the middle of nowhere until he broke the kiss. She leaned into him for more but Pedro sniffed and rolled his shoulders, picking up on her former words that seemed to have been more irritating than he had thought. "Bagpipes." He cursed under his breath about how fucking lame that was, admitting to her he wasn't chill about her ex at all and she let out a snorting laugh.

The world made a little more sense to him now that Nini was finally his girlfriend and he found purpose in belonging with her. It echoed through his head, like a mantra and he grinned widely.

Maybe he could start learning a little of her weird language. He caught her smaller hand in his and found a new bounce in her step as they continued walking down the sandy road.

"What's frog in Dutch?" He pointed at flattened, dry and very dead frog on the road and she pouted at the poor little guy before she told him. "Kikker." She gave back with a stunning smile. She picked the mummified thing up, held it between her index and thumb and realised her bag wasn't suitable as a temporary tomb.

Pedro shook his head after she had turned to him with a questioning look on her face. He could support her collection of all kinds of stuff but he was not putting that in his pocket. She was almost as bad as Grogu. "He's not coming with us." Pedro decided. There were limits. "But-" "No."

This was the first thing they did after becoming a couple, they buried a frog and spent a moment of silence in front of its shallow grave.

Afterwards, they went on for a while, either one of them pointing at something they saw and repeating the Spanish or Dutch word. She discovered Chilean Spanish had its own set of particular words and accents and Pedro discovered, like the Inuit had a hundred word combinations for 'snow', the Dutch had a hundred insults containing the word 'dick.

He was mirroring his girlfriend's wide grin when he realised, they had never lost their dorky dynamic. They were two tall children, stuck in the middle of nowhere, who weren't half as concerned as they should be... that was until the next car approached and they eyed each other nervously.

"Oye! ¿Puedo ayudarle?" The stranger asked. A woman in a white cowboy hat and a deranged, happy dog leaned out of the window of her sky blue truck and after a second, she flashed them a brilliant smile. "Wait, don't I know you?"

~

Part 17

Translation notes: (self explanatory mostly)

(sp): Oye! Puedo ayudarle? - (eng): Hey, can I help you?

[madefate]

Every time she's out of the hotel, Charlie is hit with that strange, dizzying mix of guilt and exhilaration - honestly, it's really the same thing she'd felt as a teen, sneaking out by avoiding her mother's watchful gaze - worried about the world outside, entranced by what she found. Aching with the fear that she might disappoint Lilith. Now, she feels her mother's absence like a physical thing in her chest, but the guilt is still present in multitudes: every second she spends not working, is that another soul she won't be able to save ?

Charlie is inordinately grateful for Stolas' presence and his listening ear. - It's not like she doesn't have anyone who will listen, of course ! That would be so deeply ungrateful to everyone who has stuck by her, especially through the worst of it. But every time she goes to open her mouth, she sees Vaggie's concerned face, the pictures on Angel's door, Sir Pentious' portrait, and the words die in the back of her throat.

When he covers her hand with his, Charlie turns, an earnest, warm smile at her lips. He's so kind and she's honestly humbled by the care in his voice, that he'd take the time to listen in the first place, especially since it's so clear that he can empathize with the weight of responsibility - hey, Morningstar, no waterworks yet !

❝ You're right ! You really are - I feel so lucky that everyone has stuck around after - after everything that's happened. And when the road ahead has gotten even steeper - ❞ Charlie returns the squeeze, and she feels the dam starting to shake against the weight of every roiling thought even as she tries to do the exact opposite of the sage advice she's just received and bury it down -

❝ - But I can't let them know that I'm basically back at square one ! After the fight, they were so hopeful about rebuilding and I can't let that down! Not when they're counting on me to stay positive and believe that this will all work out no matter what. And I'm hopeful, too, of course, but even though the hotel looks beautiful, not even the Seraphim will listen to me - what if I've only made things worse by fighting back ? But I don't know how to use singing magic to make them listen, and should I even be making them listen in the first place? I thought we'd wanted the same things - because of course I couldn't just listen to Dad, I had to do things my own way, and now he's stuck at the hotel because he probably feels like he has to be there even though I don't want him to resent me or anything - ! ❞

In what can only be described as typical Charlie fashion, at some point during the rush of flood waters of every thought she's kept locked tight over the past few weeks, she'd started pacing, hands gesturing wildly - counting things off, pointing at nothing in particular, and it's only when she needs to stop and take a breath does she realize that she's not alone in her room with KeeKee, or poring over her journal, or even in Rosie's back parlor.

And her face immediately turns scarlet.

❝ Oh my gosh, Stolas I'm so sorry ! You're being so kind to offer a listening ear and then I just talk it right off ! ❞ Doesn't he deserve her steadfastness and cheer and protection as much as anyone else? She immediately takes his hands and gives them a squeeze, eyes bright with apology.

❝ I swear, I'm going to protect Hell no matter what. Even if I worry about it, I know there's a way, so you don't need to worry about anything okay ? And I hope you know that you can always talk to me too! That's what friends are for! ❞

@madefate asked: “ I felt there was no point in telling anyone anything that was happening inside me. ” / charlie @ stolas!

quotes found on pinterest // accepting

Stolas had found that he and the young Princess of Hell had quite a bit in common. They'd both been raised with certain expectations placed upon them, had been kept relatively isolated (though he's pretty sure that Charlie had managed to at least partially thwart that particular issue whereas he'd retreated into himself, into his books), and they both tended to bottle up their feelings, to keep from even the possibility of bothering someone else with a personal issue that they could deal with on their own.

Except it was never that simple, was it? Because bottling up your feelings, keeping them all inside, meant that eventually they were going to have to come out somewhere, and when they did, it could be even more devastating than if they'd simply dealt with them when it was happening.

But that was so much easier said than done, especially when defusing the situation, pulling on a placid mask, so no one could see there was anything wrong was as much about survival as it was people pleasing. Stolas understood all too well where the princess was coming from.

He offers her a soft smile, reaching forward to put a hand over hers.

"There may not have been, at the time," he starts, his voice quiet, pitched to be reassuring, to be comforting, "but things have changed. You have people who will listen to you now, who want to hear about what's happening inside you. And believe me, I know how hard it can be to open up, especially when it feels like you're burdening the people you love, but….," Stolas pauses for a moment, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. "You're always there for other people. They can't be there for you, to help take care of you the way you do everyone else if you don't let them."

And he was very much speaking from experience. It was still hard, sometimes, to ask for help, to speak up when that voice in his head tried to tell him that he wasn't enough, that he was a burden on the people he cared about, but every time he did, every time he reached out, leaned on others for support, they came through for him, gave back to him what he so freely offered to them.

"I know it's not the same, but you can also talk to me, if you need to," he murmurs, red eyes trained on the princess, voice and expression utterly sincere. "I have a feeling that there are some things that we'll be able to share that the others might not necessarily understand," Stolas adds with a rueful little smile. And while she'd been raised to potentially rule over all of hell, he had been raised as a prince of the Goetia, who would have his own domain and legions; they'd each had a unique sort of pressure placed on them, ever since they'd been born.

[generallybarzy]

too pretty for this.

anon requested: based off the photos of barzy at training camp: taking care of him after he gets hurt on the ice at training camp

an: yes!! here’s a lil request for an anon about our precious boy barzy and how beat up he’s been getting, bless that pretty boy. I’m also working on Hey There Stranger, so that’ll be out soon! I'm so proud of myself, even though it's short this is the quickest I've gotten something requested, written, and posted at once in a long time!!! Hopefully I'll get back in the swing of things soon!!!

tags: @selenophileangel @deleausvp @dunnwithlyfe @smit41 @softboybarzal @fallinallincurls @matbaerzal @brokeninsidebutnobodyknows @hockeyhughes11 @folkloreflyers @nazdaddy @shawnsreputation @comphybiscuit @aboveaveragehockeyboys @canadianheaters @ifiwasshawnmendesidslapmyself @baby-cat-nol-pat

word count: 1.1k

“Oh, baby…”

“I know, I know.” 

Mat smiled sheepishly and held up his hands in surrender as he stepped in the door. He always loved how you were the first thing he saw after getting home from practice, but he knew today that as soon as he was within view of you, you were going to baby him. You pulled him into your arms in the apartment and he pushed the door closed behind him and dropped his stuff down before wrapping his long arms around you. He squeezed you tight and, just when you were about to pull back to get a good look at his face, he scurried off to the kitchen to grab a glass of water. 

“Hey, get back here, mister. Don’t think you can just walk off.” He let out a laugh at the soft tone of your voice with the stern sounding words. Before being with you, he would’ve cringed at seeing couples sweet talk each other, he would’ve found it nauseating to hear their baby talk, but now he recognized just how amazing it felt to have someone to dote on you- and to dote back on them on other days. He wouldn’t trade it for the world, the beautiful exchange of love in this relationship, the pure, earnest loving and adoration that was shared. He never thought he would find a love like this. “Maty, I gotta check up on you!” 

“I promise I’m okay.” But still, he came to sit next to you on the couch, where you were already reaching for him, eyes wide and searching his face for any more injuries. “It’s seriously nothing.”

“Beau sent me pictures of you when you were bleeding.” 

“It looked worse than it is. It’s just a little cut.” 

Still, you reached up to cup his face between your palms, tenderly, and turned his head this way and that, examining his pretty features and the ugly, bandaged cut above the corner of his lip. His lips turned up at the corners, allowing you to play doctor and make sure he was still up and running like the Mat you loved so much. You tilted his head side to side before grazing a thumb across the bandage delicately. “You gotta be careful out there. You’re too cute to keep getting beat up, bubs.” He smiled, cheeks lighting up in a grin, always loving when you held his face. He leaned in to your touch, practically snuggling into your palm.

“Oh, yeah?” 

“Yeah.” 

“I’m cute, eh?”

“Adorable.” You leaned in and pressed your lips to the tip of his nose, his face scrunched up in an uncontrollable grin in the beautiful way he always did, the smiles where he could barely contain his happiness and let it swallow up his entire being. He was happy. He was always happy with you. And just knowing that you were the one causing these full-body smiles made your heart swell with pride. He chose you. “You’re just so cute, my beautiful, talented, pretty boy, you know that?” Mat’s cheeks went pink at the name, sticking his tongue out to wet his lips.

“Hmm. Call me that again?”

“What, pretty boy? You like that nickname?” 

“I do.” 

“Well,” You leaned back against the couch and pulled him down with you, slowly, letting him rest his head against your chest as you pressed your lips against the top of his head, breathing in the shampoo he’d used after his shower and playing with the dark locks. “It’s true. You’re my pretty boy.”

“Only yours.” 

He sighed against your chest and let his eyes slip shut. He was content. 

“And my pretty boy keeps getting hurt. What are we gonna do about that?” 

Mat couldn’t form an answer, too busy focusing on the way your soft fingers felt on his skin, the way they traveled up and down the back of his neck, the way they immediately found his cheek when he turned his head to the side, and the way they danced their way delicately across the bandaid with so, so much carefulness. The way your other hand slid up his body and under his hoodie, across the warm, tight muscles on his back and over the developing bruises from practice, ever so gentle wherever you touched him. He loved that about you, the way that no matter how obvious it was that he was so much bigger and sturdier than you and could handle a rougher touch, your hands always lay on him as softly as possible. The act always knocked the breath out of him, seeing how gently you touched him and how much you cared, and it almost felt more intense than if you would’ve been rough. It felt more intimate. More special. Mat’s job consisted of him getting beat up and slammed against boards, and you always gave him the gentle side of life. He would get home from games or practices, black and blue, bruised and beaten and bloodied, and you would be there to hold him, run your fingers through his locks, and adore him like he deserved. 

“Bubs?” 

“Huh?” 

“You falling asleep on me?”

“Sorry. Just feels so nice.”

“Good.” Your fingers tugged at a knot in his hair and your hand rubbed along his shoulders. “I’m serious about you having to be more careful, okay? You’re too pretty, baby. That pretty boy face of yours is gonna be all banged up by the end of the season.”

“Babe, I’m a hockey player. I’ve been through worse than a cut on my face.” 

“I know, but it doesn’t make it any easier to see you get hurt. I worry.” He looked up at those words, hearing the pout in your voice before he even saw the way your bottom lip jutted out so cutely at him. He pouted right back at you for a moment, stretching up to press a playful kiss against you before settling back where he belonged. 

“I’m sorry for worrying you.” 

“S’okay. As long as you come home in one piece.” 

“Always.” 

He lifted himself onto his knees and crawled further up your body so that he could press a kiss directly onto your mouth, his big hand cradling your cheek in his palm, before resting the entirety of his weight against you. Your favorite weighted blanket. 

“Ya know,” You started, your hands curling through his locks once again as he closed his eyes to get some rest. “The more beat up you get during practice, the more I wanna just lock you up here and not let you leave this couch. Keep you all safe with me so you can’t get hurt anymore. That’s what I wanna do. We can stay like this forever.”

He laughed against your chest, the feeling resonating through your body and sending vibrations of love and devotion deep through your soul, and looked up at you under heavy lashes one final time before settling back to sleep:

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

[sissytobitch10seconds]

You're My Person

Fandom: Grey's Anatomy Summary: Sometimes, your soul is made for one other person and only that person. Warnings: Mentioned/Implied unhealthy relationships Word Count: 1,408 Ship(s): Meredith Grey/Cristina Yang

Archive link!

They could hear the sounds of the waves lapping against the beach from their hotel room as the morning sun slowly started to creep across the floor from the window towards the bed. Meredith snorted as she began to wake up, her eyes pressing together for a moment before they fluttered open. "Morning," she mumbled as she could still feel the weight of her best friend in the bed next to her.

"Morning," Cristina echoed, though it sounded a bit more hollow than it had the morning before.

"Did you get any sleep last night?" the other woman asked as she sat up on the bed. Because this had been meant to be a honeymoon and not a best friend vacation like it had turned out to be, they were sharing a bed while they enjoyed everything that Cristina and her now ex-fiance were supposed to be doing.

"Yeah," she sighed again.

The blond turned to look at the other woman. "Is everything okay? We had a great time last night, and now you sound all sad. I know Derek said that I snored really bad but I didn't think that it was bad enough to make someone completely miserable in the span of four hours."

The raven-haired woman stayed silent for a moment. "I'm free," she murmured, her lips sticking together as she spoke.

"I know, you've been saying that since we came down here," Meredith giggled. She slipped off of the bed and then grabbed her shawl. She tugged it on over her shoulders as she walked over the chilled carpet to the massive glass balcony overlooking quite a bit of the island. "If you really hated being with Burke that much then why did you stay with him until you were left at the altar?"

"I don't know…" Cristina sat up in the bed. Her wild black locks fell over her shoulders and face as she looked after the other woman. "Why did you stay with Derek?"

Meredith shrugged. "I've never really dated before. I was too focused on college for the first four years and then my mother got Alzheimer's. It was a lot easier to just sleep with people then to try and figure out all of my abandonment issues. Derek was the first person I ever wanted to try it with, even if he wasn't willing to work with me on anything."

"He also lied to you," her best friend commented as she slipped from the bed and walked up behind the other doctor.

She leaned backwards so that her back was pressed into Cristina's shoulder and chest. Neither of them had been touchy people when they met, but they had both grown and changed as they suffered and flourished in their separate relationships. The fights that they had gotten in with their then boyfriends had brought them closer together as friends, maybe even too close. Over the course of the vacation they found themselves laughing more, crying less, and touching each other like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Burke also lied to you."

"I know, and I hated him for it. I wanted so badly for things to go back to the way they had been before. For a while everything was amazing. George was out of our apartment and he was nice to me. Things weren't awkward when we were at work even though everyone knew I was an intern dating an attending. We were in love, and there were no fights over moving in together or my apartment or anything. You think you have commitment issues but I have them worse. Finding out that he had lied to me about not having a tremor anymore and then yelling at me because he thought I only wanted to date him for power hurt. I carried his fucking kid."

"Yeah but you were going to get an abortion anyway," Meredith objected.

"I put up with attention from both my mother and his mother. They pressured me into getting a white dress when I wanted something blue, silver, or gold. They made me wear that stupid choker. He made me come up with vows. His mother took my eyebrows. She made me miserable for weeks because I had to plan this huge wedding even though I told him that I wanted something small and intimate," she huffed. "He never listened to me and what I wanted. He always wanted to push me into doing stuff that I was uncomfortable with."

"Sounds like a bad boyfriend. But at least he told you what he wanted. I could never figure out what Derek wanted from me," Meredith sighed. She felt the other woman slip her arms around her waist and she moved to rest her hand on top of them.

Cristina let out a small hum as they watched the sun begin to creep up over the ocean. "You always knew what I really wanted to do. You're my person."

"And you're mine," Meredith beamed. "I know you didn't want the dress but you did look very lovely in it."

"I did want to get married. I'm so mad that he didn't even really say goodbye. He just told me that he didn't want to marry me after making me go through all of that shit," she swore, pressing her forehead into Meredith's neck.

"He's an asshole," the blond agreed.

They were quiet for a moment, Cristina moving so that her chin was resting on her best friend's shoulder while they finished watching the sun rise like they had done every morning since coming down here. "Hey Mer, you and Derek aren't together anymore, right?"

"I don't think so. He wasn't very good at communicating even though I was trying my best," she shrugged. "I'm pretty sure he broke up with me after he said that he couldn't keep breathing for me."

The other woman went quiet again. She opened her mouth to say something a couple of times but then closed it again when she changed her mind. "What would you say if I… if I admitted something really intimate to you?"

"You're not pregnant again, are you?" Meredith asked, something that had become a bit of an inside joke between the two.

"No, you asshole," the doctor pulled off of her friend and punched her shoulder. She opened the big glass doors to their balcony and took a step out onto the cold concrete. The blond followed after her. "I just…" she paused as she sat down on the chair pointed out towards the ocean.

Meredith sat in the one that was pointed towards the other one. "You just what?"

"You're my person," she sighed.

"I know," the blond smiled and tilted her head to the side. "Cristina, what's going on?"

"I think I wanted to be marrying you," she blurted all at once. She turned her head to the side and looked out over the island to avoid making eye contact with the other woman. "I don't want to lose you because your my person and my best friend but I literally cannot imagine my life without you. I could imagine my life without Burke a million times over and I was completely fine, but not without you. I don't want my feelings to ruin our friendship but after being on my honeymoon with you I don't think I can ignore them anymore."

"You're in love with me?" Meredith whispered, her eyes widening a little bit. Both women knew the other's sexuality. That was one of the first things that they had talked about during their late night, drunken cuddle sessions between bouts of boyfriend drama. It had been one of the things that had bothered Cristina about her relationship with Burke so much in the first place. He had seemed so ready to be in a romantic relationship and tell everyone when she was still struggling to get romantically attached as a demiromantic person.

"I think so," she nodded, biting at the corners of her nails like she always did when she was nervous.

The blond slowly stood up from her chair and walked over to the other. She slipped down into Cristina's lap so that her arms were around the other woman's neck and her fingers were brushing through her messy black curls. "I think I love you too," she whispered before they closed the distance and pressed their lips together in a sweet kiss.

[sillyrabbit81]

Her Heavy Cross

Summary: Three years after tragedy hits, Lana she decides to start dating again. She meets Will through a dating app and they begin an online romance. After months of constant requests, Lana relents and agrees to meet and go on an irl date with Will. But is Will who he says he is? Lana is quickly pulled into an intense relationship forcing her to confront her tragic past. Will Lana face it or will she close her heart forever?

Pairing: OMC x OFC (Female and Male POV)

Word Count: approx 3.3k

Warnings: swearing, smut,

Authors Note: The story started as a Henry Cavill fanfiction but I changed it to be an original character, but shades of Henry are still there. Hope you enjoy the story and thanks for reading.

Part 19

Part 20 Final Chapter

Liam and I took it easy for the next couple of days. We spent some time with Perrin and Cole, taking them for walks and making sure they were getting along.

We watched Inglourious Basterds in Liam's theatre room, which was amazing. It was like being in an actual movie theatre. The dimmed lights and sound system made the experience great. Liam cooked me dinner. We even played Scrabble a few times. We were pretty evenly matched, so the games were competitive. We worked out. We fucked. We made love.

On Saturday morning, I woke with a sore neck. I prayed it was just a strained muscle from working out but the stress I was under during the week tended to catch up with me on a Saturday. By about 4 pm, the left side of my head started pounding, and my eyes became sensitive to light. Every sound in the house felt like screaming in my ears, and I wanted to throw up. I would have cried if I didn't already know how much worse it would make it my migraine.

I told Liam I had to go to bed. Even though my migraines were terrible, I was lucky I could usually treat them with some codeine and a few hours of sleep. They rarely last more than six hours. Liam was lovely about it. He insisted on helping me get changed for bed, and he even went and got me a cold washcloth for my head. He laid in bed with me until I fell asleep.

I woke up around 11 pm feeling groggy, but the migraine had gone. I got out of bed and went looking for Liam.

I found him asleep on the lounge under a blanket downstairs. It looked like he had planned to sleep there all night. Perrin was curled up on the blanket between Liam's legs, and Cole laid on the floor in front of the couch. Cole looked up when I came in, rubbing himself against my legs like a cat and nudging my hand for a pat. Perrin's ears came up, and his tail wagged but didn't move. Lazy old Dog.

I knelt in the spot Cole had been. Liam looked so much younger asleep, almost like a boy, since he had started shaving. Apparently, his character is clean-shaven a lot of the time, so he will be switching between being shaved and unshaved depending on filming. I didn't want to startle him, so I ran my fingers through his hair until he started to wake. Liam stretched a bit before opening his eyes, and he looked so cute doing so I almost pinched his cheeks. Perrin finally got up, realising his warm spot was compromised.

"Hey, Sweetheart," he said and looking at his watch. "Are you ok? do you need anything?"

I smiled at him and shook my head. "Just you," I said.

Liam smiled one of his full Hollywood smiles. He takes my breath away when he does that. "How's your head?"

"I haven't had any complaints," I said, winking. I think I've watched Drag Race too many times.

Liam chuckled and shook his head at me. "And you certainly won't get any from me." He said, getting up. Kissing my forehead, he said, "I'm glad you're feeling better."

I took his hand and pulled him towards the elevator. Like the gentleman he is, he pretended I was able to pull him.

We get in bed, Liam on his back and me with my head on his chest. He stroked my hair, trying to lull me to sleep. I always find it difficult to sleep at night if I have a nap in the afternoon. I was content to breathe my calming breaths and not worry about forcing the sleep I knew would eventually come.

Since sleep was alluding me, I asked Liam, "are you nervous about tomorrow?"

"Meeting your family?" I nodded. He shrugged, "a little. It's been a while since I've been introduced to the family. A couple of years, actually. But I'm mostly looking forward to it." He gave me a quick kiss. "What about you?"

"After Thursday, I don't know if I'll be nervous about anything again." Liam chuckled. "I'm a little concerned about my mum. But I'm excited about you meeting the kids. I wonder if they will recognise you."

"Sometimes, kids do. Other times they say that's not him. He doesn't have a cape." I chuckled. Liam didn't speak for a while, so I tried letting Liam's breaths rock me to sleep. Then he spoke again, "Do you want kids?"

"You know, I do," I replied. We had spoken about it when we first started talking. Not wanting kids had been a deal-breaker for both of us. It was one of the first questions he had asked once we had gotten past the superficial talk. I looked at him, puzzled. "Why?"

"When you first told me about your contraception, I thought with my dick, so naturally, I was excited about not having to wear a condom." Liam's lip twitched, "Having said that, I wouldn't mind seeing you put a condom on me again." I rolled my eyes and indicated he should keep talking. "But then I thought you got that thing put in when you were still with Andy. If it's none of my business, that's fine. I had just been thinking about it, is all."

"You're wondering why I would use such a long-lasting contraception when I was married and wanted kids."

He nodded. "That sums it up."

"Well, several reasons. I had to replace the one I had. It had expired. Second, I have Poly-Cystic Ovarian Syndrome, and one symptom is very irregular periods. I was always scared I was pregnant. I could go months without a period, and when I did, they were hell. I would get migraines for weeks, mood swings from being happy to almost suicidal throughout my cycle. When the period came, there was bad cramping and back pain, joint pain, fatigue. So, I had my first implant when I was 20."

"That sound's awful, Sweetheart."

"Yup. I got the last one put in instead of trying for kids because I was 26. Yes, Andy and I wanted kids, but we wanted to wait a few more years, pay more off the house, grow up a bit." Liam nodded.

I was surprised that talking to him about Andy in such intimate detail didn't make me start crying. I still felt sad and missed him, but it was different now. There was a fondness to the thoughts rather than the fear and guilt that would usually arise. Anthea had been right. I had to talk with Andy and be honest with him about how I felt. As if verbalising how I felt to Andy, wherever he was in the universe, eased the guilt I was feeling. It made me realise that it wasn't wrong or selfish to seek love again. It was what made life special, sharing your life with someone else.

Liam was looking with furrowed brows. "Are you ok?" He asked.

I wondered if I should tell him what I was thinking. Would he be interested? Would it be weird for him to hear about Andy? In some ways, Andy had always been the elephant in the room. He was mentioned in passing, but other than last Friday, I hadn't told him anything meaningful about him or how I felt. He had been right when we argued, Andy was a shadow that loomed over the relationship, and that was my fault. I decided to be honest.

"Yeah, I am." I gave him a half-smile and said, "I spoke to Anthea, my mother-in-law, on Tuesday." Liam's face was unreadable. Too late to stop now. I kept going. "I wanted her to hear from me that we were dating before it was official. It turns out she already knew. She was cool about it, happy for me. I was surprised by her response, and I thought she would think it was a betrayal. But she said I should talk to Andy, and I would feel better."

Liam still wasn't showing me what he was thinking. His face was stoic. I thought again, I should stop. "Keep going," he said, his voice not much louder than a whisper.

"So I visited Andy and told him about how I was feeling. I told him about you and how I felt about you. It seemed to work like a weight was lifted from my shoulders. I felt free."

Liam was quiet for a while. I could almost see him arranging his thoughts. After a while, he said, "it seems the only one who makes you feel guilty is you."

"I think that was true, but not anymore," I said. "Are you upset I told you that? Is it... I don't know... tmi?"

Liam gave me a half-smile, "no, Lana. I'm glad you told me. I'm glad you did that. Not just for me, but for you."

"Then why were you looking at me like that?"

Liam's smile was full now. "Because I thought you were going to break my heart. Instead, you told me something private and because you wanted to. Not because I forced you or put you in a position where you had no choice. It makes me believe you may care about me as much as I care about you."

I cupped his face in my hands and looked deeply into his eyes, so he knows what I'm saying is true. "Liam, I do care about you. I don't think anyone else could have opened my heart. I was ready to go the rest of my life alone. If it weren't for you, I would never have taken those final steps to move on. For being the catalyst I needed, I will always be thankful for you and care about you."

Liam POV

Lana held my face in her hands. Her green eyes shined in the dim light of my bedroom as she spoke to me. "Liam, I do care about you. I don't think anyone else could have opened my heart. I was ready to go the rest of my life alone. If it weren't for you, I would never have taken those final steps to move on. For being the catalyst I needed, I will always be thankful for you and care about you."

My heart stopped a moment before it started to thunder in my chest. Lana so rarely bared her soul to me. She dropped hints sometimes, said little things to make me believe she could love me. But too often she was closed off when things get too intimate or too real.

She had changed so much since I first spoke to her, yet somehow she was still the same. She was kind and generous. I picked up on that early. That she was so funny and witty was something that she was slow to reveal but was a joy to watch. Watching her start to open her soul to me was beautiful. To see her courage and strength as she pushed through her grief was inspiring. That she saw enough in me to want to go through all she went through was humbling.

I loved her. I was desperate to tell her. I almost told her so many times. But my fear kept me from saying it. I didn't want to scare her off. I knew now she has to set the pace. She will be ready when she's ready and I will be there when she is.

Lana kissed me, and my body lit up. Her lips were like a match igniting a fire that travelled through my whole body. I instantly grew hard and needed her. I kissed her back, my tongue licking at her lips, urging her to open for me. When she did, I was lost, and all control left me. I needed to be in her.

My tongue entered her mouth, and her taste reminded me of apples and honey. She tasted so sweet to me. I wanted to taste her everywhere. I rolled her onto her back, reminding myself not to throw her around too roughly. She could take a lot of punishment, but I was still careful.

I sought Lana with my hands, pulling off the underwear that separated me from her. I put my hand between her legs, and my fingers parted her. I groaned when I felt how wet she was already, and I had to taste her. I moved between her legs as she opened them wide for me.

I put two fingers inside her, and my cock ached. "You're so warm, Lana," I told her, and she moaned, arching her back, her hips moving as I fucked her with my fingers. She was so responsive to my touch, and I loved watching her every movement. Her body moved in the most spectacular ways, writhing and seeking her pleasure.

I couldn't wait any longer for a taste, so leaving my fingers inside her, I let my tongue find her clit. When her taste hit my tongue, I hummed with delight. Lana's fingers slid into my hair as she pushed me into her and her hips rocked as she grinds herself on my tongue. God, she was so sexy. I wanted to stay here forever, watching her and listening to her moan. I ran my hand up her hips to her tiny waist. Feeling her hips under her soft skin was so erotic. I needed to fuck her, but she needed this first.

Lana started panting, her moans became short cries as she exhaled and I knew she didn't have long. I felt her walls close in on my fingers as she started to cry out my name, begging me not to stop. As if I would deny her this. As if I would deny her anything.

When Lana came, she was beautiful. Her eyes closed hard, her body convulsed, and her thighs trembled. Then she did this thing where she throws her head forward, and her body almost curls into a ball, and I know she's finished. Even when she's standing up she does it, I almost dropped her the first time. It's the cutest fucking thing I've ever seen.

I lapped at her one more time, taking one last taste. She shuddered and tried to close her legs, giggling. She smiled at me, and my heart melted, but my cock was in pain. I needed to have her.

I kissed her, and she licked at me, tasting herself. She drives me wild when she does that. I felt like an animal, my careful control was gone, and I pushed my cock into her. She was so wet and tight, her body moulded around my cock, taking me all in, holding me so tight I almost came.

"Fuck," I swore into her mouth. Lana bit at my lip, playful, but I knew what that meant. She wanted me, and she didn't want me to be gentle.

I wasn't gentle. There was no way I could be. She had me too worked up, and all I wanted was to own her and claim her as mine forever. I started to thrust into her, her tits bouncing as she takes all I give her. Her lips were parted, and her cheeks were red. Her hair looked like a halo of fire on the sheets. Its vibrance thrilled me. I pushed my self off her and watched as my cock pumped into her. Seeing her stretched around me, I felt my orgasm rise again. Not yet. I wasn't done with her yet. I slowed down.

"Liam," She whispered my name, and there was no stopping it. My body took on a mind of its own, driving itself to release. She cried my name again as I felt my seed rise into me, and ecstasy flowed through me as it pumped into her.

I fell on my side next to Lana and took deep breaths. She gave a hum of contentment and I pulled her into me, hugging her tightly and I felt the surge of love again. She was so beautiful and sweet but so fucking sexy. She made me feel drunk. Even moments after orgasming, I wanted her again. I put my face into her hair, smelling her sweet pomegranate shampoo. Lana hugged me back as she played with my chest hair, and I smiled, she loved to touch me there, and it felt so good when she did.

My mind wandered as she caressed me with her pretty little hands and pink fingernails. The first time she had touched my chest, she had seemed so hesitant and unsure, even looking at me for permission. It had been such a turn-on.

It had been so hard not to fuck her that first night. I did try and seduce her. I knew what effect I had on women. It's hard not to know when you're famous and have women hitting on you all the time. I think I could have, there were a few times there where if I had played my cards right she would have let me. But knowing what I know now, I'm happy I didn't. I'm sure she would have run, and I would never have seen her again.

When she did let me, she had knocked me for six when she bit me. It was almost out of nowhere, and the way she opened up to me after about her desires was amazing. We still had so much to explore, only just getting to know each other sexually. I could tell she was getting more comfortable with it. She was probably going to teach me a thing or two. That thing she did with the condom, I think I almost told her I loved her then. I chuckled.

"What are you laughing at?" Lana asked. Her accent made it sound like she said, "whadcha laughn at?" I don't know why, but her accent excited me, especially when she swore at me. Her mouth was filthy. Maybe it was the combination of her outward elegance and her potty mouth that I liked. It was such an exciting combination.

"Nothing, Sweetheart." I kissed her long neck gently and held her. She seemed to accept it and squeezed me into her.

"I love you, Lana," I said, and my heart stopped. She froze. I don't even think she was breathing. My blood was like ice as my heart started to beat again. Oh, God, I fucked up. I'm going to lose her this time. I wanted to take it back. I was such a fool. Fuck.

Then Lana found my mouth and kissed me. The warmth that spread through my body was such a relief. Her kiss held such sweetness and passion. It was the promise that I needed. She wasn't mad. She wasn't going to run away. I held her close and kissed her back. She didn't have to say it for me to know that she loved me too.

End.