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teamhappyme · 10 months ago

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an adjustment period

josh lyman x female!reader

word count: 2.7k

warnings: politically inaccurate portrayal of the white house, aka the west wing, projecting all my feelings onto josh lyman

a/n: me? posting two fics in one month? groundbreaking. I really am in my josh lyman era sue me idc.

“He will call you back at his next availability. I don’t know when that will be, Congressman.” You pulled the phone away from your ear as the Congressman yelled at you through the receiver. “I will let him know. Thank you, have a nice day Congressman.”

You slammed the receiver against the base until the rest of the communications bullpen looked over at you.

“I swear to god,” you mumbled to yourself as you barged into Sam’s office. “This is the first and last time I ever fill in for Ginger. Congressman who-gives-a-shit wants you to call him back at your earliest convenience.”

Sam looked up from his briefing, a small smirk on his face. “You would rather help me with research for the state of the union than answer my phone? I’m shocked.”

“Sam, if you don’t give me back my encyclopedia and the keys to my office,”

“Relax,” he interrupted, throwing your keys back to you which you caught easily. “I have a meeting in the oval, walk me there and I’ll give you your precious encyclopedia.”

“Fine.”

You walked through the communications bullpen, bumping into a frantic Kathy juggling a stack of papers in her hands.

“Sam owes you lunch everyday for the next two weeks until he leaves,” you told her, a small smile spreading over her face. “And if he tries to give you a hard time, call me, and then the President.”

“I’m not made of money, you know.” Sam piped in while leading you back into the route of the Oval Office.

“I have three words for you: Gage Whitney Partner.”

“Touché.”

The two of you rounded the corner past Josh’s office, and you couldn’t help but peer in to see if he was there.

It was a habit that started first out of survival. In the beginning of your tenure in the west wing you couldn’t walk past Josh’s office without him singing the Yale fight song. Then, after a heated argument in the Roosevelt room between the two of you over the relevance of the Oxford comma, you took every opportunity to occupy his free time to support your argument in favor of the beloved punctuation mark.

Four years had gone by, and somewhere along the way, the small squabbles turned into advice sessions on policy or speech writing. Sometimes, if either of you were feeling sentimental, you would share stories of your times at Yale.

Over time, it became part of your everyday routines to check in on one another, and it was one of the best parts of your day.

Behind writing speeches for the President of the United States, of course.

“Remind me to edit the concluding paragraphs of the President's speech to the education forum. Toby told me I’ve been using too much passive voice.”

“You do use too much passive voice.”

He stopped in front of Charlie’s desk, glaring at you for the comment.

“Hey, I like the passive voice as much as you, but Toby hates it, therefore I don’t use it.”

“He’ll be ready for you in a minute.” Charlie told Sam before leaving his desk for the Oval.

“Hey, have you guys found a new you yet? Toby has gone through like ten interviews and half of them left looking like they were going to cry.” You said as Charlie waved him in to the Oval. “I mean, the solution to this would be to not have you leave and become a congressman, because that’s boring and you can’t even write your own speeches. In fact, that’s exactly what you should do.”

You walked him to the doorway of the oval, waiting for him to hand you your encyclopedia that had been held hostage.

“Why don’t you come and join me and the President, he would like to be the one to tell you who we picked.”

“Why can’t you just tell me now? You know I have absolutely no patience for these things.”

He didn’t answer you, instead he looked into the Oval Office, a small smile on his face. You looked in after him, curious as to what he was so amused with.

All you saw was the President leaning against his desk, staring at the two of you, I’m sure not happy to be kept waiting.

“I don’t have all day you know,” President Bartlet joked before waving you both in.

Wait a minute.

“Sam,” You looked over at your boss, his smile now grinning from ear to ear. “No, Sam, it can’t-“

“Come on,” he interrupted, pushing you into the oval with a steady hand on your back.

You’d been in here plenty of times; usually with a group of people, and usually not when you’re getting offered the job of a lifetime. But when it’s just you and the President, it’s the most terrifying place in the world.

“I’ve never seen you scared a day in your life, don’t tell me today is the day you decide to be scared of the White House.” The President commented as you tried to relax.

“Well if you offer me a drink from the fancy decanter I can promise you I’ll be a lot less scared, sir.”

You and Sam sat down across from the president, and waited for the rest of your career change.

It was hard for you to listen to anyone praise your work ethic, character, and dedication to your job, let alone from the commander in chief himself. You worked for Toby, so there weren't a lot of warm and fuzzy feelings being spread around. So when the president mentioned that, yes, Sam recommended you for his position, but it was Toby that practically locked him in the Oval Office saying it had to be you, you were more than shocked.

You knew deep down he was a softie.

After accepting the position with absolutely no hesitation, it was off to the races with another meeting for the president.

“Mr. President, just one more question.” You asked as he walked you out. “Is there any way we can rework this position so that Toby answers to me and not the other way around?”

“Dream big,” the President said through his laughter, which brought a smile to your face.

Once you and Sam cleared through Charlie and Mrs. Landingham, you landed a sharp smack to his chest.

“What the hell was that for?” He asked, resting his hand over his hurt chest.

“You couldn’t have told me that you were going to nominate me for your job? Or that the president was going to offer me the job himself in the Oval Office?!”

“Well, then I wouldn’t be able to see your anxious shaking and clammy hands as the President raves about you.”

You rolled your eyes as he wrapped an arm around your shoulder, and the smile quickly returned to your face.

“You deserve this. I’m just sad I won’t be able to see you and Josh fight in Senior Staff meetings.”

“Oh don’t worry, we’ll be visiting you on the hill.”

Sam walked you back to your office and handed you the responsibility of finishing the President’s remarks for tonight’s Town Hall meeting.

“If it isn’t the new Deputy Communications Director in the flesh.”

Josh was waiting for you in your office, holding a gold box in his hand while swiveling around in your office chair.

“Technically we’re equals now, so I can tell you to get the hell out of my chair without fear of losing my job.”

“Technically, I outrank you, but since you don’t answer to me, I’ll let it slide.” He stood up from your chair, moving to stand across from you. “Did you quake under the stress of wondering what the president wanted from you?”

“Did you come here to congratulate me or make fun of me?” You asked, a smirk appearing on his face. “And is that present in your hand for me or your new accessory?”

“Do you have to ruin all the fun?” He commented and handed you the present.

You opened the box, taking out the tissue paper to reveal a book, The Social Contract to be exact.

“I know we both went to Yale, but I’m not sure I share the same affinity for the literature of Rousseau that you do, I’m more of an Austen or Didion kind of gal.” You joked.

“I thought I’d get you something that you could quote from in your State of the Union address. You know the President loves the cheese.”

You opened the cover of the book to find a note from Josh written on the inside. There were butterflies in your stomach before you read the first word, because that’s just the effect he had on you.

The relationship you shared with Josh is one that you greatly cherished. Your work rarely overlapped, being an underling of Sam in the communications department didn’t leave a lot of room for talking major policy with Josh. But after your own squabbles, and then overhearing a debate between you and Toby only days into your tenure at the White House, he quickly found any reason to work with you.

He would volunteer to work on research with you when he had any spare time, and he always requested you when he needed an extra hand when heading over to the Hill. You finally asked him about it a few months into the arrangement, and he shrugged before admitting he’d never seen someone stand up to Toby like that.

“You’re gonna go further than a speech writer in the communications department. One day I think you may run this whole building.”

You read aloud from his note, the same thing he said to you three years ago on your walk to the Hill.

You didn’t think he meant it then, and you surely can’t believe it now.

“I told you I’m good with words, Sam and Toby just never give me a chance.”

You closed the book, the weight of this new position pushing you back against your desk. You’re senior staff now. You’re in charge. You are going to be in the room where it happens.

“What if I’m not good at it.” You admitted in the open air.

“Hold on-“ Josh tried to interrupt you.

“Sam, Toby, and the President of the United States just told me they want me for this job. I don’t have a law degree, Josh. I have a Bachelor’s degree in English and a Masters in Political Science from Yale, but I don’t make laws. I don’t have an illustrious career in politics, I’m not even a head speechwriter for Christ’s sake. I crumble under the image of the Oval Office, and unless I’m correcting Toby’s grammar, I don’t particularly like to debate with people. I am going to be in charge of a department, responsible for people to get things done the way I want. I barely get things done the way I want. I am not going to be good at this.”

“Hey, I went to Yale, don’t drag her down.”

You threw him a look as he moved from his spot in the doorway.

“For the last three years, I’ve watched you handle more crises and speeches than any other deputy in the communications office. Sure, the President showered you with compliments for your writing skills, but it’s you, the person behind the speeches, who is going to make real change here.”

“Josh,” you protested, your voice becoming a whisper as you grew uncomfortable with the accolades once again.

“I’m serious,” he began, moving to stand in front of you. “No one ends up in the West Wing by chance. You were meant to be here. And I have no doubt in my mind that you are going to run this building one day.”

You shook your head, letting your hair fall in front of your face to shield Josh from seeing the tears forming in your eyes. No one has ever believed in you like Josh does.

“Hey,” he worriedly said, slowly reaching for your hand. “What’s really bothering you?”

You looked down at your hands, fingers laced with his for what felt like the hundredth time. The line was always a bit blurred with Josh. You worked on so many projects together, spending hours on end in one office or another. Three years of small spaces and critical decision making led to post-meeting breakdowns, confiding in people you spent hours on end with.

Josh quickly became your person at work, and after the shooting, you became his. Neither of you spoke of it, you just knew that he would be there for you whenever you needed it. Josh knew it all, from screaming matches with Toby, to family emergencies, and the never ending question of what your purpose in life is, which was looming over everyone’s head that worked in the West Wing.

You had always felt something more for Josh. Maybe you read too much into it when he would walk you home from a late night event at the White House, or how he would call you in the middle of the night to get your thoughts on how to best proceed with policy. It was easy between you two, and with Bartlett’s second term in the White House now halfway through, you thought this friendship would finally shift to something more.

But now that you were equals, senior advisors to the President, holding extreme responsibilities for the republic in your hands, you knew that the dynamic would change. There was no room to slide into a new relationship.

“Things are going to change now, between us. And I know that nothing has really been said but, I’d like to think something was… shifting into more.” Your voice trailed off at the end, embarrassment taking over.

“There was.” Josh reassured you, a small smile breaking over his face.

You nodded, and in an attempt to hide the goofy smile crossing your own face, you continued to look down at your hands. You reached out for his other hand, which he gladly surrendered to you.

“Things don’t have to be different. There are no rules against a devilishly handsome Deputy Chief of Staff dating a gorgeous Deputy Communications Director.” He joked, trying to get a laugh out of you.

He was right, there really wasn’t a rule against it. And if there was, you’re sure it had been broken before.

“I’m sure you’re right. But if I really want to make a difference here, I need to focus on this job, and not be distracted by an annoying Deputy Chief of Staff.”

“I understand,” he said with a smile, giving your hands a squeeze. “And I think a two month adjustment period is plenty of time before I ask you out on a date.”

“Josh,” you said through a laugh, “Are you really that impatient you need to put a timetable on it?”

“Yes. Four months sound better?”

“Six months.” you said, but as you looked at him longer, you knew you couldn’t possibly last that long. “With a check-in at the three month mark to see how I’m adjusting.”

“That sounds like a great plan.”

A great plan indeed.

To an outsider, the two of you looked like school kids interacting with their first crush. And that’s exactly how you felt, butterflies in your stomach and your brain all fuzzy.

“Josh!” You could hear Toby yelling through your closed office door, and you couldn’t help but sigh.

“You’re Director is a real pain in my ass.”

“I tried to get his job while I was in there, but the President said no.”

He laughed and tried to pull away, but you held on to his hand even tighter.

“Josh,” he turned back to you, and you couldn’t help but wrap your arms around him. It took him a minute, but his arms wrapped around your waist, and you finally felt like you could do this. “Thank you for the book.”

“You’re welcome. You’ve got this.” He said and dropped a kiss to your shoulder, then your cheek before pulling away. “I’ve gotta go find the dictator before he breaks every door down.”

“Go ahead, I’m going to spare myself from him for as long as I can.”

“Ok, I’ll see you in Senior Staff tomorrow morning. Newbie brings a full breakfast.” he joked.

“In your dreams,” you said with a roll of your eyes as he went to exit your office.

“You really are going to do great here.” He winked and wrapped his knuckles on the doorframe before yelling into the bullpen himself for Toby.

Yeah, there’s no way you guys are lasting six months.

****

#josh lyman x reader #josh lyman fic #josh lyman #the west wing #the west wing fanfiction

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softxsuki · 2 years ago

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Hello, I have an urgent request, could I request head cannons for Baji and Hakkai and how they would comfort/ help their s/o with anorexia? But like, they never noticed since their s/o is always wearing baggy clothes, but one day they collapse and then the boys go to pick them up to help them and realize how thin they are.

My mental health has been really down recently and your blog has brought me so much comfort, keep up the good work :)

Baji, Hakkai, and Mitsuya (Separate) with Anorexic Reader

Pairings: Baji x Gn!Reader, Hakkai x GN!Reader, Mitsuya x Gn!Reader

Warnings: mentions of anorexia, being thinner than usual, mentions of potential death in mitsuya's (very brief), pretty sure I accidentally used a comma instead of a period somewhere in here, but I'm too tired to look for it :0

Genre: Comfort

Post-Type: Headcanons

Word Count: 1.1k

Summary: In which you collapse and upon helping you up, they discover how thin you've become and address the issue of your anorexia

[A/N: Hi hun! I was supposed to write this yesterday, but I woke up not feeling too great, so sorry for the delay. I'm so happy to hear that my blog has brought you some comfort <3 I hope these headcanons are useful to you as well then <3 Take care! ]

Baji:

You were spending the day with Baji at his place

It was pretty easy hiding your anorexia from him–he never pushed you to eat at his place, having already told you that you can just take food if you want it from his kitchen

He was always too caught up in the moment of spending time with you to realize that you never ate while with him

So when you suddenly collapsed after standing up from the couch, he was very shocked, and worried

He’s by your side in a second wrapping his arms around your waist to hoist you up, but what he feels makes him pause

Expect him to be very blunt, he’s not going to sugar coat his way around asking you upfront why you’re so thin

And he doesn’t have the patience to hear you try and weave your way around excuses–you weren’t like that before

Is this why you haven't been so touchy with him lately? You used to love cuddling up to him, but lately you had been pushing him away

He didn’t really think anything of it at the time though; gosh he was so stupid

He picks you up with ease and traps you on his lap as he sits back on the couch, refusing to let you go until you’re honest with him

Doesn’t care if you’re upset with him afterwards, he needs to know so he can help

After everything is said and done though, he’d apologize for being so rough about things

You’re very important to him, and he doesn’t want you to struggle in any way, especially not right under his nose when he could have been helping you the whole time

You’re definitely not getting off easy though, he’s keeping a close eye on you this time, and will try and make sure you at least eat something whenever you’re with him

He’d do whatever he can to make sure you feel better again–tells you that you don’t have to starve yourself

Reminds you of how perfect you are in his eyes, and how badly he wants you to be healthy again

Overall, he is very passionate and a bit aggressive at his approach to help you out, but he’ll soften if you ever crack under the pressure and apologizes for being too tough on you

Just tell him your boundaries very clearly and he’d do his best to not cross them

Hakkai:

You were walking hand in hand with Hakkai back home when you suddenly collapsed, causing Hakkai to freak out

Reaching down to help you up, he could feel how thin your arms were

He tries to wipe the shock off his face though, not wanting to alarm you or make you think that he was judging you or anything–because he wasn’t, he’s just…worried

After reassuring him that you’re okay and just felt dizzy for a moment, he plays along and continues to walk by your side, your hand still held in is

He’s not fully there though as you try to talk to him for the rest of the walk

Truth be told, he was trying to figure out how he wanted to address what he had discovered; would it be rude if he just asked you outright? What if you got self-conscious and closed off from him? What if you scolded him for pointing out when he should have just kept the discovery to himself? He was just over-thinking at this point

So when you finally arrive at your place and kiss him goodbye, getting ready to let go of his hand and walk into your home, his grip on your hand doesn’t loosen

“What’s going on?” He asks nervously, hesitant that you’d take his words the wrong way, but knowing he needed to address it nonetheless

If you do brush him off though, he definitely wouldn’t have the guts to reiterate what he means, so he’d try again another day, but he’d be keeping a closer eye on you

He loves you so much and he’s scared he’ll say the wrong thing and potentially lose you one day, so he’s extremely cautious

However, if he does notice you getting thinner and thinner before his eyes, he would find the courage to go to you about it

He just wants to help you and love you–he wants a long future together with you where you’re both healthy and happy! So he’ll definitely make sure that happens.

Tell him what he needs to do to help, and he’ll do it

Mitsuya:

You were jumping onto Mitsuya’s motorcycle behind him, when the world started to spin, making you stumble a bit, almost falling off the bike had Mitsuya not caught you

He felt it, how thin you had become, but it wasn’t news to him–he had already noticed your face getting thinner and thinner each time he met up with you, but he couldn’t sit by and help from the sidelines anymore, he needed to be more bold with his approach

“You’ll be riding up here from now on until you start taking better care of yourself, darling,” he whispers in your ear as he sits you in front of him, making sure your helmet is on securely before racing off with you leaning against his chest

You knew he had found out–but you didn’t know that he had already known for a long time–as observant as he was, Mitsuya was a gentleman and he didn’t want to address it at first in fear that it would make you self-conscious

His lousy attempts at helping you subtlety weren’t working so he needed to do more–and that started now

The rest of the ride is silent (ofc, you’re not gonna try and scream over the motorcycles’ engine lol) but as soon as he stops at your destination, he keeps you trapped in his arms

“Look, I don’t know why you’re doing this to yourself, and I won’t pry for an answer if you’re not ready to give one, But something has to change. I can’t sit back and watch you slowly kill yourself. I love you too much to see you harm yourself like this, so please…tell me what I can do for you and I’ll do it.”

With having two sisters, he’s used to being the person people rely on, and you feeling like you couldn’t do that, hurt him, but he needed you to know that he was here to help and even after knowing what he knows, he still loves you and will continue to love you through it all

That’s the only time he’d bring it up though. He keeps a close eye on you and makes sure you’re eating well balanced meals, even if it isn’t a lot. But he won’t speak of it ever again until you bring it up first

When you’re ready to take the step to seek professional help as well, he’s right there by your side the whole way

REQUESTS ARE OPEN :D

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daughterofthequeen · 1 year ago

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The Last Moments of Solace

Pairings: Ezra Bridger x reader

Request: I saw that your request are open and I was hoping that you could write an Ezra Bridger (season 4) x reader?? Maybe fluff and smutty?? Maybe reader can be also a Jedi of his age? For the plot…mhhh…maybe something based on episode 6 (season 4) or episode 17 (season 3)?

Warnings: Suggestive content cus I don’t write smut yet, yet, fluff, kissing, groans, moans, the overuse of comma’s

A/N: I’ve been wanting to write lately, and I’m so excited to start. And this request just reopened my Ezra hyper-fixation. And I’ve been wanting to write my first series too, I just haven’t figure out which one of the characters I’m currently invested in, to do it on first. You just made the choice harder Anon, you’re no help😫!!! (nahhh I’m just kidding I love you for this, I forgot how much I loved my first Star Wars crush🥰🧡) Ezra had 11 year old me giggling and kicking my feet every Monday night before I had to go to bed 🤭. So I chose episode 6 of season 4 but I couldn’t find a way how to incorporate the reader into the show that I liked so, it’s taking place in episode 7 so technically it’s still based on episode 6. This is my first time doing suggestive too btw and I’m very nervous so cut me some slack pleassse🧡

Y/N POV

How did we get here?!

This was only meant to be a recon mission. But no, Sabine just had to get the data recorder and the hyperdrive. Which is good use for the rebellion, but it still doesn’t stop me from wanting a easy day. Next thing I know there’s cats, Thrawn, a wolf, troopers, me and Ezra falling over crates, then us jumping into the newly designed TIE that Sabine hijacked. Which was a nice touch may I add. Well it was, until we found out it had a kill switch that we barley got out of alive. And that lead to us on top of a nice loth wolf, that only me and Ezra could remember since Sabine fainted and didn’t wake back up until we got back to the hideout. Yeah, it was a lot.

The Next Day

Currently me, Ezra, Zeb, and Jai were collecting the hyperdrive, well trying to anyway we couldn’t find where we left it.

“Hurry up.” Ezra told Zeb after he lifted up his mask to his scout trooper uniform. Identical to the ones Jai and I were wearing.

“Where’s the hyperdrive?” Zeb asked looking around the rocks.

“Over here somewhere.” Ezra replied. “Jai keep watch.”

“Over here somewhere? All these rocks look the same!” Zeb whispered frustratedly

“It was dark and we just crashed, we didn’t have time to make a map!” I whispered just as frustrated, sassily putting my hand on my hip. Suddenly we heard the meowing of a white loth cat, like the one from last night sitting on top of a rock.

“Hey, when in doubt follow the loth-cat.” Ezra said while smirking, causing me to lightly chuckle.

“You’re kidding right?” Zeb asked hesitantly as we walked towards it. “You and your loth-cats.” Zeb told Ezra as they moved the rock revealing the hyperdrive. As they started moving the hyperdrive, a small empire ship flew over us towards the crash sight, and I got a strong feeling that we had to hurry, to speed up the pace I grabbed a hold of the back of the hyperdrive to help them move it onto the trailer.

“Uh, Ezra, we have to problem.” Jai called while he was looking into his binoculars.

“What is that?” I asked while walking up beside Jai.

“I don’t know, and I don’t think I want to know.” Jai responded.

Ezra turned to Zeb. “We’ll draw them away, you get the hyperdrive out of here.” He said as me, him, and Jai, closed our helmets and started walking towards the weird bounty hunter looking guy who was using all four of his limbs to run.

“Just let me blast it.” Jai said anxiously, on the left side of Ezra while I was on the right.

“It’s ok, I can get us out of this.” Ezra said in an unsure tone.

“You don’t sound too confident about that blue.” I said also feeling his unease.

Ezra let out a breathily chuckle at the nostalgic nickname that he remembers you giving him back when you both first met.

“Yeah well, I know you have my back no matter what.” He said. Hearing his smirk under his helmet, I can’t help but smirk too.

“No doubt.” He has no idea how right he is, I would do anything for him. But our small moment was cut short when the assassin made it to us, sniffing?

“LS-3226, LS-3227, and LS-3228, reporting. We’ve checked out this area and found nothing. Should we continue our search?” Ezra once again sounds unsure, but this time it’s understandable given this guy is up close sniffing his armor. Jai slowly raises his blaster, ready to shoot but I try to discreetly raise my hand to tell him to wait so, he wouldn’t blow our cover.

“No.” Is all the bounty hunter said before turning the opposite direction then quickly turning back around swinging at Ezra to catch him off guard, but Ezra was able to dodge and punch him instead until the hunter was able to trap Ezra with his legs, and that’s when me and Jai let loose with our blasters. Though the hunter was extremely fast as he dodged and our stray bullets were landing all around Ezra.

“Don’t shoot me, shoot him! Blast it!”

“I’m trying, I’m trying!” “What do you think we’re trying to do blue?!” I yelled back and the hunter was quickly running towards us and quickly dodging our shots so, I lifted up my helmet and force pushed him into a boulder as soon as he made a jump for Jai.

“Jedi.” The bounty hunter stated as Governor Pryce made it use and recognized or faces immediately.

“It’s Bridger and (L/n), blast them!” Pryce ordered.

As shots were coming towards us, me and Ezra took out our lightsabers and started blocking blast. Then the three of us jumped on our speeders.

“How many of them are back there?” Ezra asked then I turned around to check. “More than enough! Let’s try to loose them in there” I replied pointing to the sea of rocks, as I seen the bounty hunter coming towards us with a disrupter and I quickly took out my lightsaber and blocked him.

“Can’t this thing go faster?” I said already tired of this assassin guy.

“Hold him there. Just hold him there!” I looked to see why, just in time to see Jai in front of us going in between two rocks and understood Ezra’s idea. The hunter caught on and turned off from us to keep from crashing. That’s when the troopers behind started firing, but Ezra was able to dodge them. I seen a overhead we were speeding towards and took out a bomb and threw it. Causing the large rock to explode and block the troopers. But the hunter was moving to fast to stop so he sped up making it over the piles of rocks and I took my shot hitting the speeders engine causing it to explode and the assassin jumped off just in time to grasp onto a rock before he could fall, and glared at us. I smirked, then looked forward to see Ezra do his signature two-fingered salute and we sped off to the campsite.

We made it back skidding to a stop and seen Kanan walking towards us. “Good job, looks like our hyperdrive problem is solved.” Kanan said as we got off the speeders.

“Yeeeah well, you know how one problem usually leads to another?” Ezra asked Kanan

“Yeeah?” Kanan question in an annoyed tone knowing where Ezra was going with that question.

“We have another, and its small, creepy, and very dangerous!” I explained dramatically as we started walking towards everyone else.

————————————————————

Jai, Ezra, and I went to change back into our regular clothes, while everyone else was discussing the plan. Just as I was finished fixing my shirt, I felt two arms wrap around me and a nice sensation on my neck. I smiled knowing it was Ezra due to the affection and me sensing him as he was walking towards me. I sighed in relief, finally able to let my muscles release their tension even if it’s only for a minute. I closed my eyes and rested all of my weight into him taking a deep breath, lazily looking over my shoulder as he moved up from kissing my neck to my cheek. I giggled lightly and turned my body slightly to meet my lips with his and the deep soft groan he let out drove me crazy. I ran my fingers through his short soft hair, causing him to groan again, this time a lot stronger, precisely why I did it. I moved my hands down to rest them on top of his, that had started massaging my hips bringing out a soft moan from me. I released his lips and opened my eyes to see his lips chasing after mine to reconnect them. I leaned back still trying to catch my breath, but eventually I gave back in as he knew I would.

“You okay?” He asked while our lips were still pressed together continuously trying claim each others, I almost didn’t hear him.

“Mhm.” Is all I could reply back, but I knew better, when it came to my well-being mumbled answers are never accepted, especially after a mission but with his soft lips intertwined with mine I couldn’t focus. He pulled away causing me to whine and turn around completely wrapping my arms around his neck to pull him back down to me, but he wasn’t having it.

“(Y/n)” was all he said, I opened my eyes and responded back with a sigh.

“I’m fine, Ezra.” He frowned as if he didn’t believe me. “I promise.” I reassured him bringing my hands up to his face gently rubbing the permanent scar on his left cheek. He sighed and leaned into my touch, then leaned back down to capture my lips again. His hands started moving under my shirt, thumbs starting to rub my stomach. Enjoying the sensational buzz it was bringing me, I reached down to the waist of his pants to start unbuttoning them, until we heard someone clearing their throat and we jumped apart from each other. It was Hera. A strong heat immediately went to my cheeks, as I hurriedly fixed my shirt and smiled like everything was normal, awkwardly seeing Ezra out the corner of my eye quickly rebutting and zipping his pants back up before quickly turning around with the same smile.

“Hera! Heyyyy! What’s up?!” I say trying to act casual, but that was way out the window. I could tell with her with the way she was standing. Arms crossed with her hip poking out to the side with a small smirk on her face. I looked up at Ezra to see him turning red as he looked up somewhere over Hera that I couldn’t pinpoint.

“I came to check on you guys, and to see if you wanted to see how Sabine was coming along with the hyperdrive, but I can see you two are already preoccupied.” Hera stated

“Oh no, we weren’t doing anything important, come on let’s go.” I said trying to move pass the awkward moment missing the way Ezra head swung to me with a offended frown on his face.

We made it to the ship Sabine was working on. “How’s it going?” Hera called out.

“Well it wasn’t easy but I got it patched in. Still I give it a 50/50 chance of working.” Sabine explained.

“I’ll have to live with 50/50.” Hera responded back, when I felt Ezra’s dread and turned towards him and seen what he was looking at.

“Oh no.” He whispered. “We’re out of time!”

We quickly finished packing up a speeder-car with the supplies to send with Jai, to our allies.

“We’ll hold off the Empire until you’re clear, we’ll signal rendezvous coordinates later.” Ryder tells Jai

“And if we don’t hear from you?” Jai asked worriedly

“You will.” Ezra reassured him.

“Alright Bridger, good luck.” Jai said then sped off.

We all got ready to defend Hera for her take off, lining up behind some empty crates. I looked over to Sabine after seeing her move out the corner of my eye, seeing her looking at something behind us. I turned to see Hera and Kanan kissing. I smirked still a little shocked. “It’s about time.” I said as we all got ready to defend ourselves.

“We won’t stand long against those tanks.” Zeb stated

“We have that transport and a bike.” Ryder explained until the transport was blown up.

“How many can we get on a bike?” Zeb asked and I playfully rolled my eyes at the question. Until I hear a wolf howling and felt Ezra nudge my arm.

“There! That’s our way out.” He told everyone as continued to stare at the wolf that helped us last night.

“Loth-wolves?” Ryder questioned

“Look they helped us before, we should follow them.” Ezra told Ryder still a little unsure.

“Are you serious?”

“Do you know the way out?!” Ezra asked the wolf who immediately started running in a opposite direction after his question.

“Come on.” Ezra said grabbing my wrist and running to catch up with the wolves.

“Kanan?” Sabine asked worriedly.

“Seems like the best idea we got, let’s go.” He replied breathlessly

“This is good, when it gets strange like this, it’s a good thing.” Zeb reassured Ryder.

“How have you people stayed alive so long?!” Ryder yelled following everyone else.

We all were running after the wolves. Well Ezra was, we were following him.

“Ezra wait up!” Zeb called out which he ignored

“Ezra!” Sabine yelled this time.

“I don’t want to lose them, come on!” Ezra finally replied starting to run after them again, but stopped suddenly seeing the wolves all laying down, lowly growling as everyone else caught up.

“Hold it, stay back.” Ezra warned

“Why have they stopped?” Kanan asked

“I don’t know.” Ezra replied as he started walking towards the white wolf who seemed to be the leader of the three.

“Ezra, wait!” I whispered trying to reach for him but he dodged me.

He walked up to the white wolf slightly crouched and carefully talking to it.

“There is a way out of here, isn’t there?”

“You wanted us to follow you, didn’t you?”

“What are you waiting for?” All these questions Ezra was asking and the only reply the wolf gave was looking up at Kanan. Which made me uncomfortable.

“Kanan? Kanan it’s looking-”

“-At me I know.” He cut Ezra off and walked up to the white wolf. “What does it want?” He asked, that’s when the wolves got up and walked into a cave.

“I guess they were waiting for you.” I said as I walked up to them.

We all walked down into the cave, Sabine turned on her flag light looking at cave drawings.

“There are images here of people, people following a wolf.”

“I guess we’re not the first ones.” Zeb said

“Hold on. Shut your light off.” Ezra told Sabine. We were in complete darkness all we could see was the wolves eyes and listening to the wolves still lowly growling.

“What now, Ezra?” Kanan asked

“I’m not sure.”

“There wasn’t a picture of wolves eating those people was there?” Zeb whispered to Sabine.

All of a sudden the cave started shaking, dust and rocks falling, proving the cave wasn’t going to last long. The wolves looked up growling louder.

“The Empire’s bombing the mountains.” Ryder stated

“We’ve gotta get out of here!” Ezra stated turning seeing the white wolf tail in his face, and looking up to see the wolf nod.

“Everyone join hands.” Grabbing a hold of the wolf tail.

“Ezra?” I said unsure.

“Just do it!”

“The cave is going to collapse.” Zeb stated.

“There’s no way out of here.” Ryder said

“That we know of.” Kanan said trying to reassure everyone.

As we walked deeper into the cave a bright blue glowing light started to appear similar to hyperspace when we walked into it. Next thing I know, we’re all waking up in a cave, but it’s a totally different one.

“Where in blazes are we?” Zeb asked shocked

“Let’s find out.” Ezra said walking outside, the rest of us following.

Sabine came up with a data pad. “Uh, you’re not going to believe this. We were in the northern hemisphere, now we’re in the southern hemisphere. Somehow we’ve moved halfway across the planet.”

“Huh.” I said seeing the wolves go back into the cave with Kanan, so me and Ezra followed.

“Kanan?” I called out making sure he was ok.

“Look around, tell me what you guys see.” Kanan told us.

“This place reminds me of the Jedi temple here on Lothal.” Ezra stated as I walked to the pictures on the walls.

“The walls are telling a story. There are people coming down from the sky, I think they might be Jedi.” I told Kanan.

“There’s a message here for us.” Kanan said.

“What, because we’re Jedi?” I asked confused.

“Dume.” The wolf said.

“What does that mean? The wolf said it before.” Ezra asked.

Kanan took off his mask, shock on his face.

“Dume is my name. Caleb Dume is the name I was born with.” Kanan told us placing his hand in the wolf’s head.

“How does the wolf know that?” I asked even more confused than before.

“It has a deep connection to the force, to the energy of this planet.”

“Don’t all living things?” Ezra asked.

“This is different. More focused. Like it has a purpose.”

“And we’re apart of it?” I said starting understand in a way.

“I’m getting the feeling building the TIE defender isn’t the worst thing the Empire is doing here. There’s something else, something more sinister.” Kanan stated worriedly.

“Dume.” The wolf said while backing up into the shadow disappearing. And as the sunlight made its way further into the cave revealing that nothing was there but a wall with a picture on it, and a crack through the middle of it.

“So? All the paths are coming together, right?” Era asked

“Yeah, I’m just not sure if we’re going to like where they lead.”

“Do we ever?” I said sarcastically causing Kanan to scoff in amusement .

“No and yes.”

“I wonder if Hera made it.” Ezra said worriedly causing me to wonder as well.

“I know she did.” Kanan reassured us, he then placed his hands on our shoulders and walked outside with everyone else, and we followed.

————————————————————

A/N:

Sorry this took me so long anon. I wasn’t sure if I liked this or not. I’ve edited this too many times, but you’ve waited long enough. Just let me if you like it and if not, I’ll try to edit it to how you like. Thank you for requesting anon! I hope enjoy!

#star wars x reader #star wars fanfiction #star wars #ezra bridger x reader #star wars rebels fanfic #ezra bridger #star wars rebels

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chysgoda · 2 months ago

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September 05 Stamp

Resignation

A Desertwalkers story

The edge of the envelope had been worn soft. The letter inside had been written weeks ago, properly addressed, stamped, and never sent. She fidgeted with it several times a week though. She’d taken it as far as the post office door before returning to the boarding house and putting it back in the drawer of her desk. Right now she was sitting on one of the benches outside the boarding house, fidgeting with the envelope and staring down the street in the direction of the post office.

The envelope contained her letter of resignation from the Landsguard.

Bel liked Stonewood, she wanted to have a place here, but she felt like an intruder more often than not. She was at the end of the day a representative of the Landsguard, a parrot, a fed, and a few other euphemisms that she chose to ignore. Stonewood was the kind of town that didn’t want that kind of attention. Bel couldn’t blame them either.

Her official purpose out here was to investigate and monitor Gaius Baelsar’s activities and expedite getting information and evidence back to the city. The Second Promise was furious with how the innovations he’d introduced were being used. (Unfortunately, Bel did have to agree with her grandfather’s opinion that the Second Promise should have paid more attention to start with.) Bel wasn’t sure how far anything she sent or took to the city was making it though. There were plenty of charges that could be (and should be) leveled at the small fry that licked Baelsar’s boots. Charges that would stick.

She was fairly certain that somewhere above her in the chain of command her grandfather was greasing a palm or three. It was a cost built into his fees after all. That was certainly why Livia never saw the inside of a court house, despite the plentiful evidence against her. Well not never, but her two month stint in prison had more to do with the fact that the flesh she burned up that time had been on the back of a Landsguard agent and the granddaughter of Baelsar’s lawyer. A performative slap on the wrist.

What she was doing wasn’t helping anyone. If she resigned what would she do? She wasn’t sure why but something in Stonewood made her want to put down roots and find a way to fit into the town.

“You are going to wear that envelope out before it ever gets to the Landsguard’s headquarters,” Mother Miounne’s statement made Bel startle badly. Miounne’s eyes weren’t unkind but her mouth was bent in the frown that generally preceded someone getting a lecture. “Give it here, I’ll send it out with everyone else’s mail.”

Bel stared at Miounne’s open hand. “I should be the one to take it down.”

“There’s no shame in accepting a hand along the way Bel. You’re too young to be stressing yourself into grey hairs over quitting a job.” Mother Miounne sighed. Bel swallowed and quickly set the letter in Miounne’s hand and pulled her hand back before she could change her mind. Miounne smiled and nodded approvingly. “Go tell the Sheriff and Deputy Bishop that you resigned your post with the Landsguard and then go treat yourself to lunch at the Black Cat.”

The urge to retort with a mildly sarcastic ‘yes mom’ was almost overpowering. Instead Bel swallowed hard, “Thank you.”

Miounne tapped her on the head with the envelope and then went back inside. Bel straightened her yellow jacket and stood up. She needed to speak with the honest representatives of the law and then go order two of every pastry the Black Cat served. She could think about her next steps while she recovered from the sugar comma the pastries were going to cause.

#ffxiv #ffxivwrite2024 #ffxivwrite #ffxiv weird west au #ffxiv: Desertwalkers

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o0anapher0o · 7 months ago

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20 Questions for Fic Writers

Thank you for tagging me @meraki-yao. I am very happy at the oportunity to shamelessly plug many, many of my fics :D Let’s do this!

How many works do you have on ao3?

What?! When did that happen? And how?

What’s your total ao3 word count?

502,199

Weirdly less surprising, even thought hat number is completely unreal.

What fandoms do you write for?

Interview with the vampire (2022)

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries

Red White and Royal Blue

Star trek: Deep Space Nine

And I have one teeny tiny Thunderbirds fic

Top 5 fics by kudos

Somewhere I have never travelled (ds9)

Petal by Petal (ds9)

Your most frail gesture (ds9)

Watch that man (rwrb)

Personality (ds9)

I feel like I should count the first three as one, since it’s literally parts 1, 2 and 3 of a trilogy.

Surprising how fast my first rwrb fic got up there.

Do you respond to comments?

Always, usually a bit rambly. I love talking to people about my writing :D

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Puh, that’s a hard one. I’m such a happy endings girl. My instinct was one of my iwtv fics, but they’re more angry than angsty lol, so I’m saying it’s between Of all untruths the truest is you (iwtv) and Do no harm (ds9)

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Your most frail gesture ends with a wedding, though actually I like the accepted proposal in Petal by Petal more.

Do you get hate on fics?

None so far (knock on wood).

Do you write smut?

No. A lot of my fics make it clear sex is happing but I don’t write it and I haven’t really any urge to.

Craziest crossover

My TayNick character crossover New Information. Also my only crossover so far, but that’s a side note.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of. Hopefully having all my stuff archivelocked will keep it that way.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

YES! Someone did a translation of Do no harm into Russian. Only one of the coolest things that ever happened to me (though I would have preferred to be asked beforehand rather than simply be presented with a link).

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No. I’m not entirely sure how that would work, but I’d be open to it.

All time favourite ship?

Why do people insist you have to have one favourite over everything else? No, I’m an adult, I can have as many OTPs as I want.

What’s a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

Beneath Lucifer’s claws. I love this story so much, but I have it in me to finish it. I also have an old ATLA fic I love to bits, that has really neat bits but I was such a different person when I wrote it, it would need a complete rewrite and half of my favourite scenes don’t really work anymore.

What are your writing strengths?

I’ve been told my pacing is good. And I think I’m quite good at characters voices right when it comes to fanfic.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Punctuation. And I definitely suffer from ‘why use a period when I can use a comma’ disease XD. Scene transitions always feel clumsy to me, I don’t know if they read like it.

Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

Oh, there’s an essay. If I were to give general advice I’d say, avoid it. It’s fun to read when you speak the language and annoying if you don’t, having to look up stuff all the time interrupts the reading flow. It’s even more annoying when you speak the language and the author clearly didn’t.

I’ve seen it done well once, where it was used so the characters couldexchange information because that was the natural thing to do for them, while keeping it a secret from the reader. That was neat. 'But even that could be done by just saying 'he said something in [language]'.

First fandom you wrote in?

Published or not? My first published fic was Jack’s Desk for mfmm. But I also still have fifteen year old supernatural and vampire diaries fics in a notebook somewhere. The world wasn’t ready yet.

Favourite fic you’ve written?

Something unstoppable and Somewhere I have never travelled. Neither of them came out the way I thought they would but I love how they ended up so much.

tagging @sapphosewrites @xenobotanist and @nalyra-dreaming

#ask game #fanfic writing

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commaclear · 2 years ago

Note

I’m currently violently sobbing on the floor in the dark while listening to abba. I’m hurt. I’ve already taken more than the recommended dose of sleepy time pills so this is gonnr be short but I’ll come back later

Quackity apologist anon, I really don’t know what to say. I think I should start by saying I’m so sorry. I think we both let our feelings distract us from the real problem at hand. And I’m so so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. ÆÆ had me so ready to defend them that I hurt you and I’m sorry.

Now as for you ÆÆ. How fucking could you. You bitch. After I was so willing to have McDonald’s sex with you? Fuck you. And not in the McDonald’s way. I mean it In the get the fuck out of my house way. I can’t believe I trusted you.

You were gonna leave me? You asshole. I can understand you wanting to fuck with me, but wanting to fuck with Wilbur semi defender is something else. I love them to death. More than I’d ever love you. So maybe it’s a good thing you’ve been exposed you lying filthy cheating whore.

You tricked me. And you really have no way to get out of this so don’t even fucking try.

The only person who really has been looking out for me throughout all of this is the cooler qaa. And that’s fucking right. Look. I used their fancy little nickname that I’ve refused to use since it started. Because it’s fucking true. They are cooler. They’re cooler than ÆÆ at least.

Cooler qaa has been with me from the very beginning. Since before any of you other fucking anons even had names. They understand Quackity more than y’all ever fucking will. And even if we have had our problems since forever at least they can see past that and look out for me.

I’m so sorry for anything I’ve ever said to you that might’ve hurt. You deserve better cqaa. Even if our love has died I still care about you and I appreciate that somewhere in that heart of yours, you care about me.

At least you have a fuckinf heart. Unlike ÆÆ. Fuck them. Piece of shit anon. Didn’t even have a name until a fuckinf week ago.

ÆÆ anon wouldn’t be anything without me and my restless fuckjng groin. They need to learn their place. Fuck them. I don’t know if I can ever trust again.

You know you’ve fucked up when I trust my ex more than I trust you. I hate you and you’re fancy fucking pet names. All you did was trick me. I cannot believe this.

Cqaa. I am sorry for everything you’ve been through. If there’s anything I can do to fix it, tell me. I would do anything. And I mean anything.

Comma I am distressed right now. I cannot believe I have spent so long hating the wrong person. I’ve been sucking the wrong dicks. I’m gonna stop becoming a whore after this this is awful

-the Quackity analysis anon

Anon.... you've been sucking the wrong dicks all along

And even so, I'm sorry to see the day it came back to bite you

#like icarus you fucked too close to the sun #anons my beloved #quackity analysis anon #my own personal soap opera

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azvolrien · 3 months ago

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Ireland - Day 7

Columnar Basalt Monday!

I asked again at reception in the morning about switching rooms, but they still didn’t have any others to move to, so I just decided to give up and persevere with my inconvenient room.

I left the hotel and walked over to the tour shop to sign in, not far from where the Dublin bus dropped me off yesterday, before a guide led the tour group on another short walk to where the day’s coach and guide/driver (same person) waited in a side street, there not really being room for a full-size coach to wait outside the shop. The coach was mostly full, but not completely and I had two seats to myself for most of the day.

We set off, and the driver quickly revealed himself to be a chatty ex-Army native of Carrickfergus, with the usual tour-guide mix of interesting local trivia and terrible, terrible jokes. He was therefore quite at home at the first stop of the tour in said town, parking outside the well-preserved Norman castle for a little while. There wasn’t time to actually go in to the castle, but I got plenty of good pictures of the outside looming up on its seaside rock, the surrounding harbour, and the statue of William of Orange that looks more like Captain Hook to me. No hook, of course, but all the other salient features – coat, hat, wig etc.

The Antrim Coast Road continued northwards, snaking around the foot of the cliffs past the towns of Whitehead, Larne and Glenarm to another quick stop at Carnlough, which was used (for about ten seconds) as a filming location in Game of Thrones. Some old stone steps in the harbour stood in for the Braavos canalside where Arya climbs out of the water after being stabbed (the canalside where she fell in being somewhere in Spain, and presumably warmer than the Irish Sea).

Onwards again, we made another brief (and wet) stop at a viewpoint supposedly overlooking the Carrick-a-rede rope bridge, but by then the mist and rain had rolled in in earnest and I couldn’t really see anything but some admittedly atmospheric cliff shapes.

Then, lunch at the hotel at the famous Dark Hedges. By luck we were the first coach group to arrive, so there wasn’t much of a queue other than the one we brought ourselves and we had our pick of the buffet. I’d read some mixed reviews of the place online, but they actually had a half-decent lasagne on offer so I had some of that before making the (still wet) walk over for a look at the Dark Hedges, an atmospheric leafy tunnel formed by an avenue of twisted, spreading old beech trees, which has also been used as a GoT location (and probably in everything else filmed in Northern Ireland).

Typically, the rain cleared up just as we got back on the coach and drove on for a short stop at the “Old Bushmills” distillery (and yes, the inverted commas are on the sign). There wasn’t time for an actual distillery tour, but the outside is quite picturesque. Then another little stop at a viewpoint for the ruined and differently picturesque Dunluce Castle, still mostly perched on its clifftop after a chunk of the kitchens fell into the sea and another GoT location, because Of Course It Fucking Was – specifically, with a bit of extra CGI to spice up the cliff, as the Greyjoy stronghold on the Iron Islands.

Then, at long last, we made it to the final stop of the tour and the coach pulled over in a side road a little away from the official visitor centre car park to let us off for a couple of hours – the longest stop of the day – at the legendary Giant’s Causeway.

There are a few routes down to the stones, either on foot or in a little shuttle bus from the visitor centre, and I elected to go via the clifftop Red Trail footpath to get a view from above before going down to sea level. I walked along the path, past grazing sheep and purple-flowered heather swaying in the sea breeze. At last, I beheld the storied handiwork of Fionn mac Cumhaill for the first time.

And I thought: “Eh.”

I mean, it’s cool (heh). It’s fine. Easily the third-best columnar basalt formation I’ve visited. But it’s not breathtaking the way the Isle of Staffa or the cliffs at Reynisfjara in Iceland are. Its fame has made it crowded, and the famous basalt columns are… just columns. They don’t sweep into otherworldly shapes like strange frozen waves like at Reynisfjara, or arch into a vast natural cathedral like Fingal’s Cave. Most of them aren’t even that tall, though I’ll grant the Causeway might pull ahead slightly in terms of area.

A little further along the Red Trail, however – and it is indeed red with iron-rich mud weathered off the cliffs above – sits an area called the Amphitheatre, where the sea has worn a vast cove into the cliffs, exposing much, much taller columns in a huge semicircle like the world’s biggest pipe organ. Technically, being a semicircle, it would be a theatre, an amphitheatre being completely in the round, but I quibble. Point is, it’s a much more awe-inspiring sight than the Causeway proper.

I walked back up to the visitor centre with the intent of having a browse in the gift shop before rejoining the bus. There I ran headfirst into the deeply flawed logic of the National Trust (which cares for the site), decided ‘fuck that’, and just went back to the bus.

See, access to the actual stones is completely free. You can walk down to the Causeway yourself for nothing. However, in their wisdom the NT have decided that you can only use anything in the visitor centre – toilets, cafe, gift shop, audio guides, exhibitions – if you’ve paid for the full Visitor Experience. I would have been completely willing to spend a tenner or so in the gift shop on a pin badge and a fridge magnet or two. I am not willing to spend an extra £15 on top of that just to get in to the gift shop. So instead of the ten quid I had in mind or the fifteen to twenty-five quid they wanted, I spent no quid whatsoever. Go figure!

We went straight back to Belfast from there, only making a short stop on the way to pick up some people from an affiliated tour whose bus had broken down, so I spent the last half-hour or so sitting next to a Mexican lady whom I suspect would have been a lot chattier if I spoke Spanish.

The coach dropped us back off where we started at about 6.30 in the evening. This was earlier than I would usually eat but late enough that it didn’t really feel worth going back to the hotel and coming back out, so I just went to a pizzeria I’d noticed on the corner of Donegall Square, fittingly enough called Pizza on the Square. They used a different style of pizza to the last place, a bit more like Papilio’s recipe with a more even spread of cheese over the tomato sauce rather than smaller ‘puddles’ of mozzarella.

I also took a short look at the Titanic Memorial Garden in the grounds of the City Hall, its brass plaques listing all the known victims. Turns out, there actually is a ‘Mr J. Dawson’ on the roll of the lost; however, it stands for ‘Joseph’, not ‘Jack’. That was actually in the morning before joining the tour, but I forgot to mention it when I started this entry.

#holiday diary #ireland #belfast

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fairysings · 1 year ago

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june 7, 2023

hello. i font know why im doing this really, but i do know, somewhere, someday, someone will hear these mundane thoughts, just like how i’ve always dreamed of.

as you can see, i’m not a really good writer. i drift off to my thoughts like anyone else’s, i’m no different but i wanted to be. i wanted my thoughts to drift away and find its place in beautiful words and letters and maybe in someone else’s thoughts too. but i wanted those words to be beautiful because who even looks at a thing that’s not pleasing in the eyes, right? but you see, i’m not really the best of friends with words. my grammar is off at some parts, if someone out there really hears my thoughts, then they could be reading it like an english teacher; underlining my incorrect use of “he’s” and “his,” or “your” and “you’re”; my sudden use of “from” instead of “for”; my “an” and “ands”; words a toddler would use in the most mundane thoughts; or maybe my use of commas and periods. because to tell you honestly, sometimes, i get confused where to use my commas. is it before or after the quotation marks? or should i use a period instead?

I don’t really know.

but believe me when i say, i actually know all those. i was always on of the best in writing essays and english classes in all of elementary and highschool. i even remember releasing this short research i made online at 14 and every reply was wondering why the hell and english teacher would write a short study on where this summer scifi teen show was based off of. all these was pretty ironic because i only learned how to read in my own language when I was 6, and then learned to read english at 7. but that didn’t stop me from being the best at my nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, words and sentences, i can even pull some of the most unfamiliar words and place them beautifully in a sentence, like it’s a common word anyone is able to understand. but now, i just drifted away from all of it for some reason.

i blame it all on maturity. my thoughts have started running wilder, maybe it’s because my brain biologically has gotten bigger than it was when i was younger, more space to fill up all those thoughts? and when i write, the thoughts just can’t wait to become words, some words run away scared, the commas and placements are off, suddenly the best in english class younger me didn’t exist.

i’ve always found it ironic. i needed how the little girl inside me to construct my words and sentences beautifully, but i needed my today’s age’s maturity in her words. or maybe not. maybe her innocence will do. but we’ll discuss that for later.

see, this is why i like to write. i started this with the words “i don’t know why i’m doing this,” but being able to gather my thoughts properly through writing helped me figure it out.

i’m writing this to you, whoever you are, because maybe the beauty of how the younger me constructed words and how she made pretty phrases would finally come back to me. i hope so because i need these mundane thoughts to be heard. and they will only be if they will be beautifully weaved together. (weaved, maybe it’s slowly coming back now).

maybe someone out there could be just like me.

connectedness.

#write #maybe i could be a writer again someday #writersociety #writumblr #god i wish i could write beautifully #spilled thoughts

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ostbear · 2 years ago

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The First Thing

“I’m telling you-” “Jack,” she says following him, trying to take his vitals, “you need to-” “Cisco, plot a course to-” “Holy shit, Captain?” Cisco exclaims from the helm controls as Captain Halloway steps onto the bridge, various pieces of medical monitoring equipment hanging off of him. “He’s- Doctor why didn’t you-” Janus Tribley starts, shocked. When she heard his voice she thought perhaps she’d dozed off in the chair. “Cisco, we need to set a course to-” Doctor Halberd scowls at the first officer throwing her hands up. “Seriously Janus? Do you think if I-” Captain Jack Halloway slams his fist on the console next to the captain’s char. His chair. The computer signals an error as everyone goes quiet. “Computer?” “Yes Captain?” the fair and even voice of the computer replies. “Set a course for Drimba 5.” “Aye, aye, Captain.” “Jack,” the doctor starts stepping closer, “you were in a comma. You shouldn’t be-” Jack holds up his hand for a moment, before looking at her briefly. It’s not a look she’s seen much of. Somewhere between fear and determination. She thinks better of arguing with him and just stays quiet. “Listen to me, all of you. The Garrison has already taken Hope’s Fire, and The Locke. They know we’re trying to unlock Apollo’s Seal, and they know we have the arrow. Our only hope is to find the bow, which is on Drimba 5.” “How do you know that?” Janus asks stepping back from the captain’s chair. “Because I wasn’t in a comma, I was in a meeting.” Captain Halloway takes his chair and starts pulling the monitoring equipment off of him, tossing it onto the floor. “With who?” Cisco hesitates to ask? “With whom.” Jack Halloway corrects, pulling the last cable free and closing his armored jumpsuit. “With whom?” Cisco asks again. “The Titan, Gantrithor.” “And he’s helping us, why?” Janus asks, dubious. “Because this is the way reality ends.”

#Writing #twitimported #twitter #canadian

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formulinos · 2 years ago

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Hyperfixation Corner: The Three Brides of Alain Prost

before he was the chauffeur for the ceo of brazilian fascism, nelson piquet was a regular formula 1 quote-giver. to be fair, and don't let the guy know i said it, some of them were undeniable facts - "golf is a sport for old people," in particular, is probably written somewhere in the bible - while many others show us we shouldn't have been exactly surprised at his lack of moral fiber. there is, however, one quote that stands out against many as it could easily be true as it could just be another wattpad fanfic from the same author of "i was better than senna" - the claim that alain prost ruined three marriages.

today, in this special of hyperfixation corner, i try to give you all the evidence i have gathered over the years on whether alain fucked so hard he would ruin the holy instition of matrimony for bants or not.

the claim the first bride: bernadette cottin the second bride: catherine bleynie the third bride: madame x

The Claim

Over the years, Nelson has claimed repeatedly that Alain's modus operandi was to become close friends with someone so that he could sleep with their wife, since this was the only way he could pull chicks since he's, quote unquote, "ugly". I swear to God, I've listened to and heard this sentence so much I could tell it to a doctor after hitting my head BUT until relatively recently, it stopped at "he did this to three people in the paddock" and BITCH. TO WHOM?

Enter Lemyr Martins, a Brazilian writer and photographer who has covered our participation in F1 from Fittipaldi to Barrichello, writing a good chunk of books while he was at it. One of those was "Os Arquivos da Fórmula 1" (The Formula 1 Files, in English), published in 1999 and basically filled with stories from his time of coverage. It contained some small interviews with drivers as Lemyr went through the eras, and at some point Piquet, who had already featured quite a bit in the book, decided to talk a bit about his resentment of Brazilian media's lack of standing up for its drivers. You'll find, though, that the point gets lost so surprisingly quickly you'd think Nelson invented DRS here, 12 years before the real deal.

Look at the difference between French newspapers and ours. How they preserved, for instance, Alain Prost. He is a latte* kind of guy, super political, who has never driven a bad car. But he has always had the backing of his press, something we've never had in Brazil. This Prost wasn't ethical at all in his private life. He ruined the marriage of Didier Pironi (Ferrari driver), Gérard Larrousse's marriage (former driver and Larousse-Lola's team owner) and Jacques Laffite's (French driver), but the French newspapers didn't write a single comma about it. He had the nerve, he would start going to his friends' houses, wouldn't come out and then he'd fuck the wife. That's what he did to Pironi, to Larrousse and to Laffite. But I even think he had to act this way to get something because he is really ugly. I took the piss out of Prost the day he changed the shards of teeth he had for veneers and went out smiling to the world. He would circle around the track not to run into me. He spent half a season running to avoid smiling at me.

* in this context, latte (café-com-leite in Portuguese) means he is a small, weak, bland kind of guy.

I know all of you want to unpack the last few sentences here, and so do I, but we need to stay focused. We got names: Jacques Laffite, Didier Pironi and Gérard Larrousse. From these, one we can tell for sure it was true, one for sure it is fake and one… is inconclusive. Let's start with the juicier of them all.

The First Bride: Bernadette Cottin

Jacques Laffite was Alain Prost before there was an Alain Prost. Now, I'm not saying he was as talented, because the difference between six Grand Prix wins and four WDCs is considerable, but he was a Driver Superstar in France anyway - and still is, considering only Alain and René Arnoux won more GPs than him. Six years Alain's senior, Jacques drove from 1974 to 1986 in F1, basically alternating long stints between Williams and Ligier, a French team. He decided to retire from F1 after suffering a very grisly accident during the 1986 British Grand Prix, where he broke both of his legs.

Piquet had a point in saying the French press wouldn't write a single word on this all because I simply can't find much on the whole thing, so forgive me for my lack of sources. The earliest mention I could find of Jacques' love life was in this Motorsport Magazine article from October 1981. In it, you can find a reference to a girlfriend, named Bernadette, to whom he was linked from 1967. This Bernadette is, in fact, Bernadette Cottin, who would later become Laffite-Cottin after getting married in November 1977.

I'm sick and I can't be arsed with photo edits this time, so here is a Getty pic of Jacques and Bernadette (left) with her sister, Geneviève and her husband, Jean-Pierre Jabouille

Bernadette and Jacques were the real deal, as soon after their wedding they had two kids, Camille (1978) and Margot (1980). While I can't pinpoint for sure if there were rocky times between them during their time together, Bernadette was around the paddock somewhat often, as you can see from pics of the couple double dating on a few occasions. When Jacques had his career ending accident, Bernadette was there to nurse him back to health.

Double date with The Rosbergs, 1983

Bernadette and Jacques together after his accident, 1986

Now this is the part where it becomes a bit of oral history - and I bet it was oral alright for Alain and Bernadette. Again, it hasn't been written in detail, so none of this can be attested for sure, so don't sue me. Alain and Jacques were homies, like apparently on the level of business partners and, even more serious in the world of F1, golf buddies. While I can't for the life of me find out what they were business partners in, exactly, there are enough pics of them interacting to be able to assert they were mates alright.

I had so many other pictures I could choose and yet....

Well. After Jacques recovered from the broken legs, he decided to give a go to competing again, mainly focusing on DTM and the 24 hours of Le Mans. However, he also liked to dibby dabby on the Paris-Dakar Rally, and word on the street is that when he got home earlier one year after flopping, he caught Bernadette and Alain together. Genuinely struggled to pinpoint the year here as people accuse it of happening either in 1989 or 1990, BUT there are two points to consider:

In that period, the Dakar rally usually happened in March (1988, 1989) and in 1990 it literally started on Christmas day. If you consider Alain had a limit to being a slag and he spent Christmas at home, that leaves 1988 and 1989 available only. From those two years, the F1 season started April 3rd in 1988, while in 1989 the first race happened on March 26th. While it looks like Alain would have more free time for Bernadette in 1988, he went to check their activities out in that year as you can see here:

Another point is that Sacha Prost was born on 30 May 1990, which means that Alain and his first wife, Anne-Marie must have been together at least until September 1989 for her to get pregnant. I'm not saying that it is completely impossible for him to have been caught, then forgiven by the lady wife, then they had a band-aid baby before deciding to separate for good but it is less likely than Alain and Bernadette being caught having an affair later than 1990 and the following separations ensuing. Therefore, I have to call bullshit on the Paris-Dakar story for now.

Either way, the fact is that Bernadette and Jacques officially divorced in 1992, also known as the year that Alain Prost spent out of F1. While Alain and Anne-Marie remained officially married until 2017, Alain and Bernadette started living together and had a child, Victoria, in 1996.

According to Prostfan, they still live together in Switzerland, so at least there's that. And hey, time heals all wounds, as Alain and Jacques have occasionally mingled over the years after the whole deed was done.

Playing cards together on a train in 1998... Like girl Victoria was just two back then, I don't know how no one threw punches there.

A bit more "recent", 2013 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. That I can understand, it's been over 15 years at that point and they're both balding and grey by then.

Was Nelson right? Yeah, probably. While no one can tell for certain, it's the one story that's passed around with more detail, so….

The Second Bride: Catherine Bleynie

So. This is a funny one. I mean, sort of, if you have a weird sense of humour.

It was April of 1982. Didier Pironi was, at the time, doing REALLY well. Professionally, he was at the top of the world, driving for Scuderia Ferrari, which is even better than winning as we all know. On a personal level, he was about to get married to his girlfriend, Catherine Bleynie. In fact, they were in a bit of a hurry, since Didier was about to race in a fortnight. Didier and Catherine didn't know it yet, but this was the end. Why? Because the race was in fact, the 1982 San Marino Grand Prix.

Catherine and Didier on their wedding day, 14 April 1982. I lack the explanation for the chef guard of honour.

Just two weeks later, Pironi fought on track with Gilles Villeneuve and won the GP. He also fought with him off track, and Gilles swore never to talk to him again. He kept that promise alright, as he died in an accident during the qualifying for the next race, in Zolder. Needless to say, this was a bit of a headfuck to Didier who was forcibly linked to this disastrous turn of events for the rest of his life, even though he wasn't to blame for it (and neither Gilles, we've already been through this). Just a few months later, in August, it was Didier's turn to retire from the sport after an accident that almost had him need both legs amputated. Naturally, he was emotionally sensitive after going from championship frontrunner to retiree in less than a year, so he really relied on the support of his partner…. Véronique Jannot.

I? What?

Now, if you were paying attention, then you know that Didier had just got married in April, to Catherine. Yet, it's August and he's with a whole other woman doing covershoots about his accident. What happened?

Well, we have no clue. Streets say he cheated, streets say she cheated, but again, the French media sweeped it under the rug and all we know for sure is that by July of 1982, Didier and Catherine were on separate paths. In fact, Catherine was about to live lavish on the jetset, also featuring on many high society events and magazines with her boyfriend, French legend Alain…………………..

……… wait for it…………………

Delon.

ENOUGH!!!!!

I shit you not. Catherine's rebound guy was fucking Alain Delon, whom she dated for 3 years from 1985. Catherine and Alain weren't strangers, in fact they met 14 years prior when Catherine was a wee intern for a couturier who designed clothes for him. However, they only became friends after meeting again on a flight to Rio de Janeiro in 1982. Catherine was off to see Didier race while Alain was off for a festival with his then wife, Mireille Darc. Considering the three year gap and the fact Alain had another girlfriend before making it official with Catherine, it doesn't sound like he was responsible for the doom of the Pironis. However, it does make it hilarious imo as it means that Nelson Piquet mistook Alain Prost with Alain Delon. Like.

The two Alains together at the 1990 Japanese Grand Prix. In case you are confused, Alain Prost is on the left

Imagine being so Frenchphobic you think these guys are the same person somehow? Amazing. A clear L for Nelson Piquet on this one.

The Third Bride: Madame X

Two wives down, one to go. The reason I saved this one for last is that I just don't fucking know what happened here, ok? I don't even know the woman's name, let alone if they really banged or not! You see, Nelson Piquet claimed it was Gérard Larrousse's wife, but in some versions of the story it's a random untitled senior Renault executive who got cucked.

Alain and the guy he supposedly cucked, Gérard Larrousse, during their Renault tenure

Here's what we know: Alain had already managed to get close to the WDC with Renault twice, getting to 4th place in 82 by only a 10 point difference to Keke Rosberg, the champion. Renault were the pioneers of turbo engines, but hadn't managed to master its reliability, which makes it even more astonishing that Alain still managed to contend for the championship when he had 16 DNFs in two seasons. When you consider that each season had 15/16 races back then, my guy literally had one full championship of retirements with Renault at that point.

Obviously, it was getting embarrassing and all parties vowed they wouldn't act like fools in 1983 and to be fair, they solved the reliability issue, for Alain at least. In fact, Prost was doing well in the lead, followed by Piquet and the two Ferraris (<3). This meant nothing to the team though, as inside the boxes the turmoil was so great that it led to Alain's Mercedes being burned at his home by Renault workers after he criticised the team. He ended up moving to Switzerland and got turned off the whole thing. Four races to the end, my guy crashed into Piquet while trying to overtake him in the Netherlands and the lead went down the drain with two turbo failures in two of the other races remaining, losing the championship to Nelson "Prost Whistleblower" Piquet himself.

As a good Frenchman would, Alain took the defeat with the grace of a giraffe walking on a slippery ice rank, and proceeded to talk shit to the press:

The team was torn apart in every way. Instead of leaving it to competent men, the decisions were taken by the upper management [...] Renault did everything not to win the championship, because they were scared of winning anything at all.

Damn. Who hurt you Alain ?

To be fair to him, Renault had factually ran out of money to keep developing the car in 1983, according to Bernard Dudot, an engineer for the team at the time. Back then, Renault was fully in the ownership of the French government, the inventors of bureaucracy. So, while there was no budget cap and Renault was a constructor with an endless amount of cash in comparison to other teams, there was just no way to expand the budget in the middle of the season. Prost was sacked mere two days after his defeat in Kyalami and the sore comments were attributed as the official reason… but were they?

Dudot says that "The truth remains that he made some mistakes that contributed to our loss." The Holland accident is the key moment, but this doesn't take away from the fact the other two DNFs were mechanical failures and that he had only been out of points in three other races, spending most of the time on the podium. Like sure, he wasn't invested in Renault after getting his car burned but he was still very much down to win a championship and his form showed it. So the reason couldn't be individual mistakes because they were seldom there, especially knowing he lost the championship lead literally in the last race.

This brings us to the conspiracy theory that I mentioned at the start of this section. The lore is that Alain got caught banging the wife of then team principal Gérard Larrousse, who only didn't sack him then and there because it was the middle of the season. The story is still embellished, depending on the source, with the fact that this all supposedly went down during the 1983 Dutch Grand Prix and this is why Alain crashed into Piquet. He was such a pile of nerves he made an uncharacteristic mistake. Still, the story changes a lot and I've even seen claims that Alain screwed the wife of the Renault CEO at the time, so it genuinely sounds like an urban legend. Still, it is worth noticing that the people working in F1 are, first of all, major gossipers, so if Nelson was openly talking about it, it means at the very least that it's a Known Story in the paddock (or at least it was back then). So, while I can't say for sure it's true, I guess only the people involved can say for sure if it's false.

To conclude, did Alain Prost wreck three marriages as Nelson Piquet claimed? No, just one. Two, tops, but we lack enough information on this. As much as Alain fucks, he doesn't fuck that hard, he is just French. That's what they do. Either way, I needed to get this out of my chest so that I could forget about it for a bit. I'll keep looking for info on Gérard Larrousse's wife because this is the one we know the least about, if any of you have any info on the subject feel free to share with the class! In the meantime, screw you guys, I'm going home.

PS: Here's the video of Alain trying to bag a fourth wife, in the shape of Jean Alesi's then girlfriend in 1991:

youtube

I have to stan a man who isn't scared of his reputation!

#hyperfixation corner #alain prost #nelson piquet #<- this one is for the black list #fuck them racists!#I went insane but it was worth it because I got some old René Arnoux tea on the way so #this might be a peak shitpost truly

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wonderful-writes · 3 years ago

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I see your eyes, and I know everything will be alright

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x fem!Reader

Word Count: 1.8k (1,832)

Summary: A self-indulgent fic about a lovers’ quarrel and the aftermath.

Warnings: possible cursing

Author’s Note: I’m notorious for using grammatical errors on purpose for stylistic effect, so if you see a comma splice, it was done on purpose! I get it, I know it can be a bother to some sticklers (which is a category I fall into at times), but just deal with it ig…

It had been a nasty fight.

The last mission had been hard on both of you, and you had taken it out on each other. Harsh words were exchanged, ones that should have never been uttered between people who loved each other.

You called him reckless, he called you a fool. He had thrown himself into a direct line of fire, and you had risked your own life trying to protect him.

“You shouldn’t have done that!” he yelled in frustration.

You hadn’t been home for two minutes before Bucky was already yelling at you. At least he had the decency to hold it in until you were in your shared room, away from the concerned eyes and ears of the rest of the team.

“I wouldn’t have had to run after you if you just followed orders!” you screamed back. “Who runs into a building full of armed guards?”

“There were hostages! You can’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing!”

You knew he was right. Of course you would have done the same thing. No matter how mad you got at him for risking his life, you knew that you would also have done anything it took to save the civilians.

He took your silence for disagreement. “Or would you not have saved the innocent people? Would you have let them die? Is that it?”

“Stop, you know I would-”

But he cut you off. “Little Miss Y/N, always the perfect superhero. Always the moral compass of the Avengers. How would the team feel, the rest of the world, if they knew you’d let civilians die to save yourself?”

“What are you even saying?” you yelled back at him incredulously.

You knew he was only saying it out of anger, out of a momentary desire to hurt you. You knew he didn’t mean any of it, but it still cut deeper than any wound an enemy agent could have given you.

Bucky chuckled humorlessly. “You know exactly what I’m saying, sweetheart. You’re not as perfect as you look. And the fact that you ran in there just because I did shows that you’re not as smart as you look either.”

That was the last straw. You blinked back all semblance of emotion before it could trickle down your face.

“I don’t know who you think you are, Barnes, but if you think you can talk to me like that, then maybe you aren’t as smart as you look.” Your face hardened as you grabbed your duffle bag, thankfully still unpacked from the mission.

At the time, it had seemed like a smart choice to leave. You were both worked up from the taxing mission, a mission during which you both barely escaped with your lives after rescuing the hostages. You both needed space, and it seemed like a perfect solution to move into a spare bedroom until things cooled down.

But now, you weren’t sure it was such a good idea.

You thought you would just need a few hours, a day max, to think things over. Just some time apart to realize how you were both idiots who should apologize for your mistakes. But three days later and still no word from Bucky, you didn’t know what to think anymore.

“Where are you going?” he asked in a slight panic as he saw you storming towards the door.

“Somewhere I can get peace of mind,” you answered coldly. “I don’t need you voicing what you think is wrong with me.”

You walked into the common area to see Sam sitting on the sofa, a movie playing on the TV and a bag of chips beside him.

“Hey, have you seen Bucky?” you asked.

Sam glanced up at you in confusion. “He’s not back yet.”

“Back from where?” you inquired, plopping down on the couch next to your friend.

“He left on a mission with Steve two days ago. They left the day after you guys got back from that hostage situation in The Hague. Did he not tell you?”

“No,” you answered him. “Do you know when they’ll be back?” You felt like an idiot asking for information about your own boyfriend, but you had to know.

“Friday, I think,” Sam replied. “Is there something going on between you and Barnes? Shouldn’t he have already told you all this?”

You sighed. There was no use it denying anything at this point. “We got into a fight after that last mission. I took my stuff and slept in a separate room, and we haven’t talked to each other since.”

Sam sympathetically offered you some chips. “I’m sorry, Y/N/N. Do you mind me asking what it was about?”

You sighed again and told him about the argument. You told him how you had been mad at Bucky for being so reckless, how Bucky had been mad at you for following him into danger, and how you both had been mad at each other for calling each other out.

At the end of your retelling, you couldn’t help but feel like it was all so stupid. You were only arguing in the first place because you cared about each other. Was a petty fight about who was more reckless than who really worth Bucky being mad at you? So mad that he didn’t even bother to say goodbye before he left for another mission?

Sam tried to offer you advice, but it all ended in ‘everything is going to be okay’ and ‘he’ll come around.’ While it was a kind gesture, you weren’t so sure about the validity of his statements, considering how you and Bucky had left off.

“Well, thanks for lending me an ear, Sam,” you said as you finally got up from the couch, “and for letting me steal your chips.”

“Any time, Y/N” he chirped back as he watched you walk away. “But before you get your pretty little hair all up in a twist, remember that this is Barnes we’re talking about. The man is crazy about you.”

—

It was Thursday morning, and Bucky and Steve were scheduled to come back the next day.

A part of you wanted to do something nice for Bucky, to show that you loved him and that you were sorry for the things you said. But another part of you remembered that he had also been in the wrong, and the things he said about you were inexcusable.

You had moved back into your shared room when you found out that Bucky was away, but it didn’t have the same comfort it usually had. While it did have all your possessions, from clothes you only ever wore once to sentimental keepsakes, it might as well have been the guest bedroom you temporarily used. Without him, it wasn’t home.

—

You were laying in bed, trying your hardest to focus on the book in your hands, but every thought became tainted by him.

Your Bucky.

Steve and Bucky had returned sooner than expected, arriving at the Tower a little after noon on Thursday. The reason for their early return was that the mission had been completed successfully, albeit at a cost.

Bucky had gotten hurt, knocked unconscious by some sort of high tech photon beam that left him unable to hold himself up for more than a few minutes.

If you had been anxious to see him before, it was nothing compared to how you felt now.

Steve had told you that it wasn’t deadly, that Bucky would be okay after some medication, but that he needed to be held up in the med bay for proper examinations before he could be released.

He’ll be out to you in no time, sugar, Steve had assured you. You only hoped he was right.

—

As the seconds ticked on, staring at blurry lines in a book turned into counting the textured specks on the ceiling, and then eventually, making your way down to the med bay.

You couldn’t take another second of not knowing whether the man you were sure was the love of your life would be okay.

You ran into Dr. Cho in the waiting room, who informed you that Bucky was doing fine. He was conscious, alert, and showing no signs of permanent injury. Thanks to the supersoldier serum, the effects of the photon beam that he had been hit with wore off soon after he arrived home.

You sighed with relief. “Thank you, doctor.”

“You can see him if you want,” she said with a smile. “He’s just resting right now, and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind some company.”

You nodded graciously as she walked away.

You approached the hospital room that Bucky was staying in, but you hesitated at the door. Would he want to see you after all that was said?

“I’d appreciate it if you weren’t such a blundering oaf all the time.”

“I’m sorry that I’m such an inconvenience to you, but at least I don’t blindly follow people into danger.”

“I wouldn’t have to follow you into danger if you never ran into danger! Do you hear how idiotic you sound?”

Before you could let your insecurities get the best of you, the voice of the man in question sounded from inside the room. “I can hear you out there, sweetheart.”

God, you missed his voice. Even when it was muffled through the door, it was unmistakably Bucky.

With a sheepish smile, you made your way inside.

You were met with your boyfriend, clad in sweatpants and a hoodie you knew for a fact was yours. He looked exactly the same as when you last saw him, although you couldn’t be sure why you thought he would change.

“Hi, hon,” he said with a soft smile, sitting up from the bed.

“Hey, Buck.” You pulled a chair over to the side of the bed, careful to step around the pile of tactical clothes that Bucky probably peeled off prior to his medical examination. “How are you feeling?”

“‘M’fine,” he answered. “Missed you.”

“I missed you too,” you replied, picking up his hands. “Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving?”

“Didn’t want to bother you,” he shrugged. “Thought you were mad at me.”

“I was mad,” you told him. “But I’m sorry for what I said. I shouldn’t have let my emotions get the best of me.”

“I’m the one who should be sorry, sweetheart.” His big, blue eyes peered deep into yours. “I said all those awful things about you out of anger, and I shouldn’t have. I didn’t mean any of them, but that doesn’t make it okay.”

“Looks like we both messed up, huh, Buck?” you asked with a light laugh.

“Looks like we did.” He grinned, and you knew everything would be okay.

You brought his hands up to your lips and kissed his knuckles. “You’re forgiven, by the way.”

He laughed, and you were sure you saw the stars in his eyes. “So are you.”

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #can you tell this is my first time publishing a bucky fic?#i don’t love this but I’ll have other chances to improve my characterization of bucky and y/n in the future

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unfoundhoney · 4 years ago

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being tommyinnit’s older sister ↠

↠ tommyinnit x older sister!reader ; fluff

↠ masterlist

↠ younger sister ver.

the unimaginable amount of patience you would need to be this child’s sister oml

you’ve had to learn to not let him get under your skin because if you let him win, he gets worse

this demon child is such a handful

he lives to make your life a living hell

but he also has a lot of respect & adoration of you??

it’s a nice balance of “i’m gonna be as annoying as possible” & “wow my sis is so cool”

you two are honestly really close

we know how clingy tommy is no matter how much he tries to deny it

he will beg you to go with him to mcdonald’s for an hour straight then call you clingy when you want to see a movie together

will complain about you sitting in his room while he games then whine when you aren’t there

what a brat

you helped set up his first pc way back when

not because you’re particularly good w/ computers but because you actually watched the videos & read the instructions on how to set it up properly

you also helped him figure out how to start streaming

& you edited some of his first videos

then taught him how to do it

look

he may be a brat

but he's your brat & you would do anything for his annoying ass

while you are comfortable in this knowledge, big man tommy wouldn't be caught dead admitting to the same

in his heart he knows he'd do anything for you too but he has a reputation to uphold ok? ok.

he mentions you in his streams/videos all the time

as much as he may try to deny it, you two do basically everything together

so whenever he’s telling a story you’re usually mentioned

“me and my big sister have been watching...”

“i went to the corner store with my big sister the other day...”

“...my big sister...”

there is a video titled “tommyinnit saying ‘my big sister’ for 3 minutes & 17 seconds straight” & it is a masterpiece

when tommy went to brighton for the meet up w/ will & fundy & all them, you were his chaperone

you drove him to tubbo’s house (& got to meet him; you love tubbo)

you took them to the beach & just chilled on the sand while they were out goofing around on tubbo’s paddle board

then you drove him to meet up w/ his other friends

you were just gonna drop him off, briefly meet his friends then go find a cafe somewhere to do uni work

(you) tommy, introduce me to your friends

(tommy) oh right, guys, this is my big sister y/n. y/n, this is... everyone

(you) hi, i’m y/n. anyway, don’t kidnap my little brother & sell him to human traffickers, please. i’m gonna head off. thomas, behave.

(tommy) when am i not behaved, n/n?

(you) ...do you want an honest answer?

(tommy) i reckon probably not

(you) smart boy. i’ll see you later. it was nice meeting you all!

tbh honest beyond your voice in the background of streams & videos & tommy mentioning you a lot, you’ve never really been on camera ever

there are those few photos you posted to your instagram before privating it that people found but other than that tommy’s fans don’t really know much about you

you are content with that

you don’t necessarily want to be perceived by tens of thousands of people more than you already are

however comma

around the time tommy first spoke to drista, he started asking you if you would guest on one of his streams

you said no & at first he was cool with it

but then he spoke to lani & skepina

so he had been begging you for about two months to guest on one of his streams

he went as far as offering to not use a face cam if you’d just stream with him

you eventually gave in

because this is your lil bro tommy we’re talking about

you didn’t hold him to the no face cam thing though

he gave no warning to his fans either he just jumped on twitch one day & did his whole introduction bit while prefacing that he has “a very special guest”

(tommy) now, before we log in, there is someone very special you all are going to meet. we all know me, little brother tommyinnit. but the one person who i am not just “like” a little brother to but am actually related to is my big sister!

cue chat going crazy bc even though tommy’s fans have never really seen you they love your & tommy’s relationship

(tommy) that’s right, boys. say hello to big sisterinnit!

do you want to be called big sisterinnit by a couple million people on the internet from here on out?

not really, but you go with it anyway and rolled into frame

(you) hello!

you did introduce yourself as y/n but it’s too late; you are big sisterinnit now

tommy had you playing on his account, telling you where to go & what different things are

tubbo popped in pretty early on in the stream & took over as tour guide

you are,,,, very popular among the server members

everyone who was on initially greeted you in some way

more people joined just to meet you

they have heard stories of the one person able to “tame” tommy & had been very eager to meet you

were you a little overwhelmed?

yes

but for the most part you just played it cool & met everyone

chat could not get over you two for the entire stream

because you’re just so used to tommy’s antics & just roll with all his bits (༎ຶ _｣ ༎ຶ ) (༎ຶ _｣ ༎ຶ )

his viewers love you

after that stream, there’s a joke that tommy’s viewers & all the smp members like you more than him

it makes him become angryinnit whenever it’s mentioned

but also like yeah his sister is really great ahem

#sisterinnit #tommyinnit #mcyt #fluff #mcyt x reader #tommyinnit x reader #minecraft youtubers #tommyinnit fluff #tommyinnit fanfic #tommyinnit fanfiction #mcyt fanfic #mcyt fanfiction #mcyt fluff #mcyt imagine #tommyinnit imagine #dream smp #dsmp #mcyt x sister!reader #sister!reader

2K notes · View notes

willowser · 4 years ago

Text

and there's this burning, just like there's always been—

fushiguro megumi x reader

wc: 5.5k+

warnings: 18+, explicit language, angst, underage drinking, light smut, loss of virginity, struggles with mental health, i use too many commas, toji is a bad dad, gojo is a menace, fwb, end of long-term relationship, college/university au

Melancholy has always been a blade at Fushiguro’s throat.

Even as a child, six or seven, Megumi can remember how uninterested he was in the activities Gojo tried to put him in, the books Tsumiki read to him — the life he lived. There’s always been a flat line on his face, even when his knuckles were reddening over the skin of someone’s cheekbone, and there are very few moments he can look back on and realize that heaviness hadn’t been behind his eyes.

Toji is a piece of shit dad, but most of those moments are all with him.

And Megumi knows better than that, to think the fleeting dates with his father meant anything at all, but it still made his chest pound when he thought of seeing Toji coming to check him out of school early, to buy him ice cream and take him to the arcade in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon. Laser tag and pizza, that motorcycle game and a handful of stuffed animals from the claw machine, the dinosaur themed shootout; Toji had racked up more than 400 tickets that day, let Megumi use them to buy a giant toy gun and walkie-talkies (they were cheap as shit, probably came from a 99-cent store somewhere, but he’d earned them, with the little tickets those machines spit out — and that mattered).

All those memories are ruined, of course, by the tears that kissed out the flames of his birthday candles instead of his breath. Surrounded by adults he didn’t care about — Utahime, Shoko, Gojo, and even Nanami — Tsumiki told him to make a wish, but Megumi hadn’t gotten the chance, wouldn’t have taken it anyway, because a wish wasn’t going to earn him enough tickets to buy another afternoon with Toji (just one, that’s all he wanted).

It follows him everywhere, the end of that knife, and there is a long period of his life that Fushiguro feels really, really alone — and this is all before college, all before Itadori and Nobara. All before you.

It’s the summer after he graduates high school that he finds comfort in someone that isn’t Toji, for the first time.

Fushiguro wouldn’t have ever considered someone like Kamo his friend. They’d been through school together, shared classes and projects, ate lunch together when there was no one else to sit with — more of an acquaintance than a friend, and though he thought the guy was a bit of an asshole, Megumi can’t forget the night they’d been standing around a fire at Maki’s house and Kamo slurred out,

"I respect you, Fushiguro, for never backing down.”

It had been completely unprecedented and all eyes moved from the fire to him, which Megumi hated, and all he’d done was nod and mutter out a quiet "thanks”.

That’s when you’d come out, quietly, Mai in tow, to slip between the other six bodies standing around, to slither up to Kamo, to place your hand in his. Megumi didn’t really think about you at that point, when he was seventeen and quiet and alone, but he knew your name, knew you and Kamo had been together since the two of you were barely fifteen. Young love — the two of you seemed determined to make it last.

He didn’t think about you then, not at that point, but you’d always been nice, casual; you looked in his eyes when he spoke and asked his opinion if he was silent when a question was asked to the group, you laughed (maybe because you felt like you should) if he said some witty, asshole kind of thing. But Kamo’s arm was around your shoulders, your lip gloss was on his cheek, and Fushiguro isn’t that guy, knows better than to pine over a woman on another man’s arm.

It isn’t until another year later, six months after he’d turned eighteen — and Gojo still hadn’t kicked him out, like he always said he would — that he found you in the grass outside of Miwa’s house, that he found another woman on Kamo’s arm. That sight had sent him searching for you (maybe because he felt like he should), absentmindedly, ignoring the warm buzz beer was producing in his chest.

Toji wasn’t ever going to help him get a truck, even if he’d said it one weekend in January, when he’d bought Megumi cigarettes for the first time, and there was no asking Gojo for assistance, so the little truck he managed to save for was sitting in the street. Your feet were against the wheels, kicking them without any real force, and when you looked up at him, Fushiguro recognized the heartbreak on your face.

“I can’t find my phone,” The mascara running down your cheeks was quickly wiped away before you patted the grass drunkenly, pulling some of the blades out with a little, angry grunt. It had been underneath you; Fushiguro asked for your number and called it, a little tune from a Sci-Fi movie you’ve talked about playing from underneath your butt. That’s when he’d offered you a ride home, since you looked about as miserable as he felt.

The truck cab had been filled with only the sounds of your sniffling, your hiccups, all the way across town as he drove, and the little bit of alcohol in his system hadn’t let him feel like it was weird of him to do. Out in the grass, crying as the love of your life got hot and heavy with a college girl — why wouldn’t he offer you a way out? If you felt awkward, he had no idea, you just kept tucking your hair behind your ear, yawning, picking at your cuticles as the street lights grazed across your face.

When Fushiguro turned the truck off in your driveway, the both of you just stared at the garage door, left half open by your younger brother to allow you a silent sneak inside. That’s when you asked,

“Why doesn’t he want me anymore?”

There wasn’t anyone more ill-equipped to answer that question than him. It dawned on Fushiguro that he should’ve said something positive, something motivating about not needing Kamo, but Megumi has never listened to that bullshit — especially not from Tsumiki — and he wasn’t about to be a hypocrite.

“I don’t know.” Is all he said, all he knew to say.

How many tickets do you have? Megumi wanted to ask. Maybe the two of you could pool them together, get another night with Kamo, taste whiskey for the second time with Toji in the harsh fluorescent light of a liquor store. If the two of you tried hard enough, they’d come back. If the two of you blew out the candles together.

But Fushiguro hadn’t said that, just nodded when you said goodnight, watched you crawl into the darkness of your garage. And then he went home.

Two weeks later, Gojo wouldn’t stop asking him about college, if he was going, in that annoying way he does, when he acts like he doesn’t care — but he wouldn’t have been asking so much if that were true. It had been the kind of night where Fushiguro knew he wasn’t going to get any sleep, and he knew right away; there are very few things in the world that make him as content as crawling into the warmth of his blankets, shutting off his brain and emotions and turmoil long enough that he lay, suspended, time passing him by and not hurting like it usually does, so when his eyes hadn’t fallen shut after twenty minutes of honest-to-god trying — Megumi knew.

Your number hadn’t even been saved to his phone, just sitting in his call log, staring back at him as he tried to understand why he’d even thought about you. It had been late Saturday, early Sunday morning really, and the chances of you being awake were slim, even slimmer than the chance that you would answer. There wasn’t any way his number was saved to your phone, no way, and a call in the middle of the night — morning? — was something that was likely to go ignored.

Even before he pressed ‘call’, Fushiguro regretted it, but you answered after the second ring. You said his name in a question when the line picked up.

“Hey,” he said quietly, digging his fingers into his eyes because he was a fucking idiot. “Wanna go for a drive?”

Between the tears and sadness and longing coating your throat, you croaked out, “Yes.”

There hadn’t been any destination in mind, not at 2 in the morning, and you still sat beside him and sniffed and cried as he drove aimlessly. There was a shirt on your frame that was too large and, even though it smelt like you, it had been obvious why you’re wearing it, who it belonged to, and the sweatpants on your legs had little rice balls all over them (not that he had been wearing much better). It’s not like you wore that much makeup, but he’d never seen you so bare-faced; eyes red and swollen, nose raw from rubbing it, lips peeling because you couldn’t stop biting them. Even after Miwa’s party, mascara had been enough of a mask on your sad, pretty face that he hadn’t looked too close.

But then, as you played with a string coming loose from your seatbelt, watching the long-closed buildings pass you by, Megumi wondered if he looked like you. The stupid name had always made him feel unintentionally feminine, not to mention that Tsumiki called him a pretty boy, but he’d been just as bare-faced as you — eyes red, nose stinging, lips chapped. It made him feel like he wasn’t so alone, for the first time.

Fushiguro pulled into a parking lot eventually, a spot as far away from the lights as he could find, and he’d been about to start crying, too, encouraged by your shamelessness, when you turned to him.

“What are we doing?” The way you asked made it sound like something else had been going on, something besides two lonely souls trying to understand why they aren’t enough.

“I don’t know,” Fushiguro said — again — then he worried you were expecting something from him. Did you smoke weed? Is that what you thought he meant? Fushiguro never had, but there were cigarettes in the glove box if you wanted one. “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” It sounded like another wave of heartbreak was about to crack you open, the way you clutched your stomach and groaned quietly. In some dark, disgusting way, Fushiguro hoped it would — then he could let go, and maybe he could trust you not to say anything. “Are you a virgin?”

That had him choking on the lump in his throat as his face lit up the inside of the cab. “What?”

You faced the parking lot again, tucking hair behind your ear as you spoke away from him. “Because if you are, then I’m not gonna do this.”

This. His mind started racing, trying to remember how his voice had sounded when he called you, if — somehow — he had made you think this is what he wanted from you. It wasn’t, hadn’t even been a thought in his head until just then. Was he that guy? The kind that takes advantage of girls that are heartbroken and crying, searching for comfort from a boy just as lost?

“No,” Fushiguro breathed, “I just wanted to —”

To sit and cry with you? About the ache in your chest, because he had it, too?

“It’s okay,” With a sniff, you shrugged, finally looking back at him, and then he realized you weren’t crying anymore. “I just didn’t know if you were —” a frown split your face, like what you were about to say hit too close to home, “— saving it for someone.”

Fushiguro had watched porn plenty of times — something he insists to himself is out of curiosity and not because he’s some horny bastard like Toji — and he’d flown straight through puberty. Gojo took out a new girl almost every week, even had the audacity to bring them back to the apartment and hang a sock on the door, which always made Megumi scarce for at least two hours. There hadn’t been any girls in school that seemed worthy enough of the effort it would take to unveil himself, to take out the broken parts of him and arrange them in a way they could understand, and so he hadn’t.

The this you’re referencing made his whole body hot, turned him into that horny bastard he didn’t want to be, and he should’ve told you yes, that he was a virgin and no, he wasn’t saving it for anyone, but he hadn’t. There had been enough want pumping through his blood to cloud his head, especially as you shuffled around to get rid of your cute, little sweatpants, and crawled to straddle him in the truck. When you scratched your fingers against his scalp, he was already half-hard, even when you told him,

“I’m not going to kiss you, though, is that okay?”

It’s a good thing you wouldn’t; Fushiguro just nodded.

Gojo bought him condoms for his eighteenth birthday, arranged them in the shape of a dick in front of everyone — adults he didn’t care about; Utahima, Shoko, even Nanami — and Megumi had thrown them into the glove box, furious, afterwards. When he reached to grab one for himself, the pack of cigarettes fell out; there were only two missing: the one he smoked, the one Toji bummed.

"They’re extra lubed up,” Gojo had told him, grinning like an asshole and patting his shoulder, "because you probably won’t get her very wet the first time.”

Fuck him, he’d been right.

The feel of your breath against his neck, the way your nose nudged just under his ear, the flutter of your eyelashes against his skin; Fushiguro was embarrassed at how hot it made him, how quick he got rock solid without so much as a kiss from you. The way you’d started rubbing your clit told him you’d done this before, especially since you didn’t so much as cringe when sinking all the way down on him.

Nothing had ever been as difficult as not cumming on the spot for Fushiguro.

The whole interaction lasted about six minutes and had been painfully awkward, especially since he hadn’t even held you, just gripped the seat underneath him so hard his knuckles turned white, and because he filled up that condom long before you finished around him. His legs were made of jelly when he slumped out of the truck to toss it in the dumpster and your sweatpants were on when he came back. The two of you just sat in silence, breathing evening out, while staring at the parking lot.

If you had started crying again, Fushiguro would have felt really bad, even worse than he already did as the cloud of lust faded from his mind, but he tried to find solace in the fact that you didn’t look bothered. You tucked hair behind your ear again and had the courage to smile sadly at him, which made him realize he was probably in love with you.

“I was gonna follow him to college, you know?” The reminder of Kamo had him flinching, “Even though it wasn’t my first choice school, but —” you shrugged, “— he wanted to go alone.”

Fushiguro wouldn’t have ever considered someone like Kamo his friend, but he did consider him to be a giant idiot. It’s really cliche, the way he felt about you after that, especially since the quiet way you mourned over a guy that wasn’t thinking twice about you seemed all too familiar.

“My dad,” Fushiguro breathed, wiping a damp hand against his sweatpants, “is a fucking asshole.”

It didn’t have anything to do with what you were saying and you cast him a quizzical glance. It didn’t have anything to do with what you were saying, and yet it did.

Maybe Fushiguro had been imagining it, since he’d started seeing you in a rose-colored light, but it seemed like you understood. “Kamo is a fucking asshole, too.”

That made the both of you laugh, bitterly, and then you started crying again.

That summer, it only happened three more times before coming to an end. It hadn’t been all that special and he always came before you, but he’d say something about Toji (“I’ll never be like him, for as long as I live. I’ll kill myself before letting that happen.”) and you’d say something about Kamo (“I just don’t know what I did wrong, what I did to make him change his mind.”) and it felt a little like the two of you were lying in the grass, looking for the phone, kicking the wheels of someone’s truck together. Like the candles were lit and both of you were crying and neither of you were making the wish, because it didn’t matter.

Neither of you were enough and it had been comforting, in some weird, sick way.

The second and third time happened in the bed of his truck, because you almost hit your head multiple times when riding him, and he gathered all the blankets in the apartment to bring with him — casually — when he picked you up again. And the last, because he was a fucking idiot, had been in his room.

Gojo had that nice shirt on again, so Fushiguro had been watching from the window, waiting any minute for his car to disappear from the driveway before you came over, but it never did. Everytime he peeked out into the living area, Gojo had been just sitting in the kitchen, picking idly at a book, at his phone, inspecting his sunglasses as if they were broken. Of course Fushiguro hadn’t mentioned you’d be coming over, because that would have only started a grand shit-show, but, nevertheless, when you came walking up the driveway in a dress, he’d had to slide down the wood floor in his socks before Gojo could answer the door.

“Myfriendiscomingover.” Is what he’d spit out, standing as still and straight as the pencil poised between Gojo’s fingers. When the doorbell rang, when he pulled it open to reveal you, wearing a less-than-sincere smile, his roommate had grinned.

“Oooooh, who’s this?”

It had been a giant mistake, to bring you there, but Gojo was supposed to be long gone, not in all his menacing glory, asking you your name and where you came from, how much money Fushiguro paid you to come over. Everything got worse when Gojo insisted he wasn’t going anywhere, that the two of them were about to start cooking a three course meal, if she was hungry, because he’s a fabulous cook, did you know? Don’t be shy, Megumi-chan!

You kissed him that time, after he’d finally gotten you into his room and his pants off (just before Gojo had knocked and asked, “I’m going outside, need anything from the car?”; he didn’t, he’d gone to get them from his truck yesterday). It was hopeless, how he felt about you, which is why he’d stolen Gojo’s cologne and put on a shirt he hadn’t worn since the last Zen'in reunion, trying — and failing — to remain casual, and it’s why he tried to take the lead and be on top that time.

He told himself it had been an accident, when you placed your hands lightly on his shoulders and leaned up, mid-thrust, to kiss the lip that was throbbing between his teeth. When you did it again, then he knew, and it made his hips stutter in a way that told him he was a lot closer to finishing than he wanted to be, so he just stilled inside you and moved his mouth against yours until his lungs began to ache.

Just for once, Fushiguro was enough. At least, that’s what it felt like.

Gojo actually had gone to the car, and then to a place down the street to get food for the three of you, and Fushiguro — as usual — was done in a heartbeat, before he got back. You did stay for dinner and laughed at the dumb things Gojo said and did. The two of you were left alone again, just to watch a movie on the couch, and you sat next to him and held his hand, leaned your head against your shoulder and only left after the film was over. Before getting in your car, you’d even kissed him again.

It felt like something he had always wanted and always needed, the calm kind of serenity that most people were born with, the kind Toji had robbed him of long ago. Even Nanami commented on it, once more when they were pestering him about college — Tsumiki was pissed, when she came home from University one weekend to find out about it from Satoru, of all people.

The traitor that is his heart wondered (a lot) if his dad would like you, if he’d meet you — even once, just once. Maybe Toji would be proud of him, scoring a girl like you.

The next time Fushiguro called you, it had been screened almost immediately, and he was halfway into over analyzing the text he’d been typing out when yours came across the screen first.

I still want to be friends, but I feel like I should let you know Noritoshi and I are back together.

The two of you didn’t stay friends, didn’t speak again before you followed Kamo out of the city, off to college.

When Nobara finally gets to the library, where Itadori and Fushiguro are waiting, there are three cans of watermelon Redbull in her arms, along with her books and pencil case. As usual, she sits down in a huff and whacks Yuuji when he reaches for one, chastising him, “the last thing you need is any more energy than you already have, idiot”. It makes him smile when Itadori whines about it, when they get into a whisper-war about name calling.

These days, at college, with friends that remind him he isn’t as alone as he once thought, Megumi smiles a lot more, feels threatened by that blade a little less.

It had taken a year for Gojo — with the help of Utahime and Shoko, even Nanami — to finally convince Fushiguro to enroll in a local college. All the money his “guardian” had been collecting, all this time, for raising him mysteriously materialized when he finally applied; to this day, Gojo insists he spent that money on clothes, cologne, women whose names he didn’t remember. He was behind them, Nobara and Itadori, but it only made them better study partners.

The Redbull should have been a dead give away; Kugisaki likes them — the taste more than the rush of caffeine they provide her — but she never drinks more than two in one sitting.

She doesn’t look up, avoids eye contact with Fushiguro completely, when you sit down beside her, squeezing her bicep and whispering, “sorry i’m late”.

“It’s okay,” Nobara whispers back, “I just got here, too.”

It’s only after you pop the top of the can that you peer at him, over the lip of the energy drink. Nothing flashes over your face, not recognition, not shame or surprise, and he just gapes at you.

Fushiguro just gapes at the tan-line around your ring finger.

It had been late August when the Zen'in’s had their reunion again. Fushiguro hated them, all of them, but he only went because Mai felt left out when Maki started strutting around, making her presence known, being the pest she thrived on being. To his surprise, Mai had taken a cigarette from his pack when he’d pulled it from his back pocket — after the summer ended, he started smoking them more, even if they made his lungs ache, because he was searching them, trying to understand what Toji liked about them so much. If he found out, then maybe he would understand his piece of shit dad a little more.

The two of them had been leaning against a tree outside, ignoring all the talking and bullshit reminiscing. Mai had been in the middle of complaining about the way Naoya spoke down to her, threatening to kick his ass, when she’d tried to show him whatever she’d been absentmindedly scrolling through on her phone.

“Him, too,” She spat, angling her phone in a second attempt to make Fushiguro look at it; he didn’t care what was on her Instagram, honestly. “Kamo was always a fucking asshole. I can’t believe she’s gonna marry him.”

The ring he bought you was nice, because he came from a wealthy family and could afford it, and in the photo of you, showing it off with a great, giant, teary smile, Fushiguro noticed that you’d cut your hair, that you looked as if you’d lost a little bit of weight since he’d kissed you. The caption you put read, and they lived happily ever after. It had a bunch of likes, comments from your friends — even Mai double-tapped it, though she’d just been fuming about it.

The last known number Megumi had for his father was one from a shitty complex a few towns over, which made the chances of Toji answering dismal. Fushiguro called from a pay-phone, because maybe, if his dad didn’t know it was his son calling, he’d pick it up — and he had.

Megumi wanted Toji to sound tired or drunk, as if he really was out there, addicted to or busy with something that could justify the absence in his son’s life, but he hadn’t. Toji sounded fine, normal, casual.

“I’m glad mom left you because you never deserved her, not a second of her fucking time.” Fushiguro spat, “You’re a goddamn disgrace and leaving you and me was the smartest thing she ever did because you’re a fucking curse, you know that? And I’m doomed, just like you, to die in this world without anything or anyone.”

And then he hit the pay phone against the receiver, over and over again, until change started shaking out of it, until the plastic cracked and the dial tone finally went quiet.

Itadori looks surprised when he sees you at the table, too, but you don’t look at his face for very long, you only smile, as if you’re shy, before scooting closer to Nobara.

“Hi,” Yuuji whispers, a friendly grin quirking up on his lips. “Nice to meet you.”

Kugisaki rolls her eyes — and finally spares Fushiguro a quick glance. “Don’t be weird.”

“All I said was hello!”

“Hey, Megumi,” Your eyes are on your notes when you say it, writing something in your loopy, pretty hand-writing. When you look up at him, his face goes red, just like it had in the truck. The smile you send him is sincere this time, for the first time.

“Hey.”

Now Yuuji looks really surprised, looking between the two of you, even as Nobara kicks him under the table. “You know each other? Ow! Knock it off!”.

The lead in Kugisaki’s pencil breaks with how hard she presses it into her paper. “I told you already, Itadori. Remember?”

He leans across the table, as if you aren’t going to hear him loudly whisper, “I would have remembered if you told me about Fushiguro knowing —”

Another kick silences him, this time from Megumi himself. Yuuji looks at him with a frown, shrugging as if he can’t understand what he’s doing wrong.

“Yes,” You lean a little forward into the table, eyes dancing over Fushiguro’s face in a way that’s too studious, “we know each other. We graduated high school together.”

There are rings on your fingers, little silver ones, but none of them are the diamond you had shown off in that picture, four years ago. Fushiguro is twenty-two now, he’s kissed and slept with a few other girls since then, but the sight of you — looking at him like that — breaks and heals his heart all over again. Young love — it’s determined not to die out, no matter how hard he wants it to.

“Do you have the notes from Yaga’s class last week?” You ask, tucking hair behind your ear. “I missed and I’m struggling to get caught back up.”

Fushiguro snaps his eyes back down to the notebook on the table, suddenly insecure of everything about him — his handwriting, the smell of his deodorant, the crinkles in his clothes, the messiness of his hair. “Uh, which lecture?”

With a sigh, you say, “All of them from that week.”

“She’s behind, too,” Nobara says casually, looking up at Megumi pointedly from underneath her eyelashes. “I think the two of you even have all the same classes.”

Does she know?

You send Kugisaki a red look, full of embarrassment, and she shamelessly nudges your shoulder with hers. It makes him hot, the idea that Nobara knows the intimacies of whatever fragments of a relationship the two of you had, the idea that there has been a time when you’ve sat down and explained it all to her. The idea that you’ve thought about him.

The semester is well worn in — they’re all studying for midterms — and he’s never seen you on campus before. How could he have missed you, if you had all the same classes? If you had even one together? How could he have missed the gentle sight of you, when you were supposed to be cities away, living your happily ever after?

(There is a part of him that’s proud that he’s missed you, as if it’s a testament to how far removed from your hold he is, how over you he is. But then Yuuji pipes in with something about his own notes, how he’ll find his old ones and share if Fushiguro won’t, and the genuine grin on your face is so blinding.)

“Of course,” His words come out clipped and he sends Itadori a look he never has before, one that’s green with unjustified jealousy. “Of course I’ll share mine.”

It’s dark outside when Nobara reaches across the table to pinch Itadori in the arm, when she gives him an obvious look and tells the two of you that they are going back to their dorm, because they’re tired. "If you wanna stay and keep studying,” nothing about Kugisaki is casual, “that’s totally cool.”

“I’m tired, too.” A yawn accompanies your words, as if to prove it, and he tries not to feel a little disappointed.

“Don’t you live off campus?” Nobara asks, “Maybe Fushiguro can give you a ride.”

Everyone is looking at him, which he hates.

“Yeah,” You answer and it’s only because of the light in the library that he can see the shyness in your eyes. It’s giving him whiplash; Fushiguro doesn’t have a memory of the two of you where his face wasn’t bright and hot, where he wasn’t the nervous one. “I live with my parents right now.”

There isn’t a ring, there isn’t any sign of Kamo — Fushiguro wonders if this will end like it had before, when he was alone again, when he wasn’t enough. The thought makes his entire chest hurt, but he already knows he’ll let you do it, ruin him.

Maybe he shouldn’t, but as soon as the two of you are outside, away from the hawkish gaze of Kugisaki, he stops on the stairs and asks, “Do you ever think about that summer?”

When you spin around, there isn’t a mask in sight; the heartbroken look on your face is as plain as day, much darker than the smile you’d worn all afternoon. “Yes.” Already you’re crying, hands clenching into fists, and Fushiguro regrets asking. “Do you?”

None of it had been particularly special, but there had always been a quiet peace, when that blade wasn’t nicking him, when he didn’t feel ashamed to bear his emotions to the world — to you — when the feeling of you in his arms was enough. It hadn’t really been about the sex, and Fushiguro is certain that summer would have wounded him even without it, even if his lips had never met yours.

“Too much.” The way he felt about you was cliche, but it would have happened all the same, because he’s cursed.

“Me too.” It’s whispered, since your voice can’t go much higher than that without breaking. “I thought about you —” then your voice raises, and your chin wobbles with the effort it takes for you to form the words, “— more than I should have, more than I ever did. Even after —” You can’t continue anymore and it’s pitiful, how frustrated you seem at yourself, the way your hands come up to cover your face as you sob into them. Faintly, from behind your palms, he eventually hears you cry, “— even after he came back, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

And it’s like maybe you’re doomed, too.

It dawns on Fushiguro that he should say something positive, something to cheer you up or to comfort you, but he’s never been good at that. When he wraps an arm around your shoulders and pulls you, when he rests his mouth against your hairline as you gasp, he says,

“Hey, wanna go for a drive?”

an: thank you for reading !! i post all my works on ao3 and i also have a twitter :3

#if this looks like shit #i'm so sorry #i haven't made an actual formatted text post on tumblr in like 7 years pffffft #megumi x reader #fushiguro x reader #fushiguro megumi x reader #megumi x you #fushiguro x you #idk how to tag anything #megumi smut #it's like very light and more-so implied but it's there #megumi angst #fushiguro x y/n #megumi imagine #fushiguro megumi #this is admittedly /not/ my best work #but this story is actually very -- come se dice -- personal to me #I'VE NEVER BEEN SO ALONE ALONE #AND I'VE AND I'VE NEVER been so alive #so alive #motorcycle drive by is the title song so good #while editing i made a few slight changes -- nothing important -- so it might look a pinch different than the one on ao3 #but i will update that too lol #i'm about to be late for work but i tried so hard to get all the <em>'s out i hope i did lmao #[ ☆ willow writes ]#[ ☆ multi chap: megumi ]#[ ☆ and there's this burning: megumi ]

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keldae · 3 years ago

Text

Common Interests

Tau was usually more strict with punctuality, Arn had come to realize over the course of his apprenticeship to her. She was notorious for being early for everything -- training, meditation, meetings with Master Gnost-Dural. And she expected nothing less than punctuality for her Padawan. But apparently meetings with Master Xaja were known to run for longer than expected -- especially where Lord Beniko and a stack of datapads were involved. Odessen's residents had gotten used to it over the past few years of the Alliance. Arn obviously hadn't.

He closed his eyes and leaned against the metal wall of the Odessen base, basking in the warm sunlight and trying to summon the patience that Jedi were legendary for. It wasn't nearly as easy as his old masters had made it out to be. Tau had been in that meeting for over an hour already. Arn was in his twenties, certainly not a child anymore – but that didn’t stop him from wanting to groan at how bored he was.

A cough from somewhere to his left drew Arn's attention from his own boredom back to his surroundings. "Excuse me -- is the Commander still in her meeting with Master Idair?" asked a low baritone voice.

"Yes, she--" Arn cracked an eye open and nearly squawked in alarm when he recognized the human man addressing him. If being around Sith (or ex-Sith, in Darth Imperius's case) made him anxious, being around the former Emperor of Zakuul himself was terrifying. His voice cracked with his alarm -- he had to swallow hard before he made even more a fool of himself. "Yes, they're, uh, still in their meeting."

Ex-Emperor Arcann, Tyrant of Zakuul and conqueror of the galaxy, nodded and politely stepped back from Arn. It was one thing to know in the abstract that Master Xaja had her old nemesis working for her, and quite another thing entirely to have him standing only a metre or so away! "You are another one of the Jedi that came from the Republic with Master Idair?"

"Er, uh, yes. Arn Peralun, Jedi Padawan. Tau -- er, Master Idair is my Master." It never hurt to be polite with former tyrants, especially when said former tyrants were powerful enough with the Force that Arn could all but feel it radiating from the other man, strong enough to make Tau look almost Force-blind in comparison.

"A pleasure to meet you, Arn Peralun," Arcann's voice rumbled. “I am Arcann -- although you probably already knew that.” He shifted his feet, looking as awkward as Arn felt -- but that was impossible. Why would someone as powerful as him ever feel awkward and unsure? "May I wait with you? I have some reports for the Comma -- for Master Taerich to see."

"Uhh…" Every instinct of Arn's wanted to tell the Zakuulan man to kriff off, or better yet, to run like hell to the opposite end of the base. But what came out of his mouth was "Yeah, sure, go ahead."

Arcann nodded his thanks and moved to stand a little further from Arn while he waited. His hands clasped a datapad in front of him -- one of those hands, Arn realized, was a cybernetic prosthetic. So the rumors concerning that, at least, were true. I wonder if his arm used to really be a Skytrooper limb? He couldn't stop himself from curiously looking over and eyeing the other man's left hand, just visible under the white sleeve covering his arm.

Wait, you're gonna make it weird. He sheepishly glanced up to Arcann's face, in time to see the former Emperor quickly look away from him, ears flushing red, much to Arn's surprise. Was he… checking out my own prosthetics? Had to be, unless he was eyeing up a Jedi Padawan for a fight. But would he pick a fight right here in the middle of the base?

"Dakot Seven," he finally said, making Arcann start in surprise. "My old Master and I were escorting refugees and got hit by artillery fire. He died, but I survived. More or less. Is that what you were wondering?"

Arcann hesitated, then nodded. "I am sorry," he rumbled. "You must get a lot of people staring at your cybernetics."

Arn forced himself to shrug. "So do you, probably." Between the scars on the other man's face, the cybernetic hand, and the notorious reputation, Arcann must not be able to go anywhere in the galaxy without being gawked at.

Arcann nodded in confirmation. "Korriban," he murmured. "I got in the way of a grenade." He ruefully chuckled. "There's very little that hurts as much as a field fitting for a prosthetic."

Arn winced in sympathy. "I can imagine. Dakot Seven, where I was… they don't use kolto, so it was cybernetics to fix everything. I mean, it saved my life, so…"

"That is definitely the important thing," Arcann agreed. "Zakuul didn't have kolto at all, although even if they had, it wouldn't have made a difference for me. That grenade took everything off in one blow."

"Ouch."

"I would say you have no idea, but you're probably the only person in this base who does."

Arn nodded, then decided to indulge his curiosity. "So if they had to do a field fitting for your arm, was it a Skytrooper arm, or…?"

"The original one was," Arcann nodded. "I lost that one in a fight with Master Taerich some years ago. This one was made custom for me, after she finished beating sense into me." He rolled his sleeve up as much as he could to show off the gleaming black metal. "Doctor Oggurobb and his team are very good at what they do."

Suppressing his glee at finally knowing that Emperor Arcann had once had a Skytrooper arm, Arn leaned over to inspect the other man's prosthetic, briefly forgetting his fear. "They did good work," he agreed. “Maybe I should talk to him about upgrades for my own prosthetics.”

Arcann nodded his agreement, then gave Arn's cybernetic torso a critical look. "Yours look like they wouldn't need upgrades for some time though. The people of Dakot Seven know their cybernetics well, it seems."

"Well, when you can't use kolto due to genetic incompatibility, I guess you get good at cybernetics pretty fast," Arn shrugged. "Worked out for me, anyway. Just wish they'd had a kolto tank for offworlders when…"

"I don't blame you," Arcann quietly said. "Your wounds were earned with honour, though. Mine… weren't."

An awkward silence fell for a moment before Arn forced himself to chuckle. "Hey, you got those fighting Imps on Korriban. Coming from a Jedi, that's not bad." He suddenly paled and quickly looked around for either Lord Beniko or Darth Imperius. "Just don't tell anyone I said that."

A grin showed itself on Arcann's face. "Your secret is safe with me," he promised with a wink of his good eye. "If you would permit a question?"

"Yeah, sure." Having the former Emperor of Zakuul ask permission for a question was definitely not something that Arn had expected. But then, he also hadn't expected Arcann to be so quiet and awkward, or polite.

"I would be terrified at the idea of doing maintenance on life support cybernetics," Arcann admitted. "Doing maintenance on my arm is bad enough. When yours take damage or need maintenance done, how do you do it?"

"Honestly? It hasn't really come up much. My cybernetics are pretty tough," Arn proudly said. "If anything, it's my eye that gives me more of a headache. Agent Shan and Cipher Nine both said they'd help me with upgrades for that, though." He glanced down at his abdomen for a second. "If these did get damaged… I guess I'd just have to hope for a medcentre where the medics know how to deal with prosthetics. Or hope I'm near here, or Dakot Seven."

"I hope it's not an issue you ever have to deal with," Arcann said. "But a cybernetic eye… perhaps I should talk to Doctor Oggurobb. My eye hasn't been the same since the grenade incident. I used to wear a mask, and it helped to augment my vision, but I will never wear that thing again."

A memory flashed through Arn's mind, of Arcann's face half covered with a terrible durasteel mask and his features frozen in a permanent glower that would have made a Sith pause. He shook his head and tried to focus on the present moment, like Tau had told him in previous lessons. "Might not be a bad idea," he agreed. "And Agent Shan says he knows a guy who can work in upgrades like bioscans and HUD overlays and stuff. He's got a couple of those in his own implants. I think Cipher Nine has some too."

"I can imagine those would be invaluable, in their line of work," Arcann mused. "And for a Jedi, certainly. Considering you already have the prosthetic, I would look into the upgrades. I'm sure Master Taerich wouldn't have a problem with you speaking to Doctor Oggurobb about it. Would Master Idair?"

Arn tilted his head in thought. "I can't see her having an issue with it," he finally said. "It'll all depend on --"

With a whoosh, the door slid open, and Tau stepped out with Master Xaja, Lord Beniko trailing a step behind the two Jedi women. "... and I still say that it could work as an additional fallback point for the Order, should shit start flying again," the diminutive redhead was saying as she looked up at Tau's much-taller frame.

"I know the old man will see merit in that," Tau agreed with a nod. "But Ossus is already compromised. We need a place where the Imps don't already know where it is."

"Or a place they'd never expect us to try again," Master Xaja said. She glanced to Arn and Arcann, and graced them both with a smile. "Sorry about that. If I had known that being in charge of this crew would require so many meetings and that much paperwork, I would have made my brother do it."

Arcann snorted a laugh. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Commander, but I have an addition to your workload, from Sana-Rae." He handed over his datapad, seemingly trying to not heed Tau's open frown at him.

Master Xaja dramatically groaned and accepted the datapad. "You do realize I blame you for me being the designated leader, yes? The whole carbonite thing and all?"

"I thought we agreed all the blame could go to Valkorion," Arcann protested.

"Yeah, but you also stabbed me the one time, so you get some of the fault back."

"That was still mostly his fault."

"Mostly." From the smirk on Master Xaja's face, she didn't seem to be taking the subject too seriously. "Thank you, Arcann. I'll get back to Sana-Rae on this once I have time."

Arcann nodded and offered Master Xaja a bow, then turned to take his leave of the Jedi. "It was good to speak with you, Arn Peralun," he said as he paused in his motions. "I hope we can find more opportunities to talk in the future."

"I'm sure we will," Arn said with a nod as he returned Arcann's bow. "It was good talking to you too." And it was, he realized with a bit of surprise. The former tyrant was soft-spoken, and seemed to be making a conscious effort to be gentle and careful with his words. It was a far cry from the figure Arn had seen in his nightmares during Zakuul’s invasion of the galaxy a few short years ago.

Tau watched with a suspicious frown as Arcann left, then looked over at Arn. “All good?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. Protective concern flickered along their training bond.

Arn nodded in confirmation. “Yep, all good,” he said. “He’s surprisingly easy to get along with. More than I’d expected.”

“Arcann has come a long way since I kicked his ass off the Eternal Throne,” Master Xaja mused. “And he’s constantly making the effort to be a better person than what he was before. I feel confident calling him a friend now – which, believe me, was not something I had expected to do a few years ago.”

“None of us saw that coming,” Lord Beniko remarked. “Although you did say you let him into the Alliance initially to irritate Valkorion. You’re the only Jedi I know who would make a friend out of sheer spite…”

Master Xaja laughed, green eyes sparkling in the sunlight. “It’s a unique talent I have. But that being said, I definitely trust and respect Arcann. He won’t go back to what he used to be.”

“If you trust him,” Tau finally said, “then I suppose I do too.” She seemed to finally relax as she looked over at Arn. “Have anything else you need to get done before we head back to Coruscant?”

Arn hesitated for a moment. “If we have time, can we stop by Doctor Oggurobb’s lab? Arcann suggested seeing him for upgrades to my cybernetics.”

Tau nodded. “Sure, we have time for that. Let’s go see what he has to say about your prosthetics.”

Waving farewell to Master Xaja and Lord Beniko, Arn started out toward the lift leading down to the Alliance’s lab, Tau at his side. After seeing Arcann’s prosthetic arm, he was interested to see what Doctor Oggurobb could do with his own cybernetics. He would never feel fully whole again, like he had before Dakot Seven, but he would take any improvements that he could.

#SWTOR #Kel writes #friendship #Arcann #Arn Peralun #bonding over common interests #Xaja #listen I've had a mental image of Arn and Arcann discussing cybernetic prosthetics for AGES now #I don't care that they haven't met in canon yet #they're still gonna be buddies as far as I'm concerned #Tau is concerned #discussion of prosthetics #Odessen

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