#at least not how it works in publishing rn

[coridallasmultipass]

.

[passthroughtime]

my fucking god, rereading your own wips is such a chore. and no one ever warned me about that.

[isabelckl]

texting loser!ellie that you have nipple piercing in class 4

nerdy loser!ellie x popular mean fem!reader

bored in english, you reply to a girl named E you’ve been talking to on an anonymous gay dating app—without knowing it’s that lesbian nerd girl, ellie williams.

texting loser!ellie that you have nipple piercing in class 5

You were already home when you opened your conversation with her.

E:

i have to tell you something.

You frowned the second your eyes landed on it.

You were already curled into bed—fresh from the shower, hair damp against your neck, oversized shirt slouching soft over your thighs. The room was dim, lit only by the weak orange buzz of your fairy lights. That Friday exhaustion still clung to your bones, but none of it mattered.

You were settled. Cozy. Warm.

There was nothing better than the thought of spending the whole weekend like this—no plans, no noise. Just your room, your phone, and her.

Something about the message hit different. Not her usual caps-locked chaos or horny emoji spiral. Just plain. Sharp. Hanging in the air like a loaded pause.

You stared at it longer than you meant to, thumb hovering.

You:

heyyyy

yeah?

what is it

You watched the read receipt appear, vanish, then return—followed by the word Typing, then nothing, then Typing again, like she was wrestling with whatever it was she couldn’t quite say.

E:

nevermind lol it’s dumb

just had a brain moment

u ever think a thing and go wait no i’m actually insane?

that was me. carry on.

You stared and your frown lingered.

There was something in it. Something unfinished, like she’d swallowed the thought halfway. It pressed at your chest—not hard, but enough to make you pause.

You let it sit there and tapped your thumb slow against the screen.

You:

don’t do that

if it mattered to you, it’s not dumb.

A beat and you double texted her.

You:

but fine. i’ll stop bugging

just tell me when ur ready

even if it’s weird

i like weird

E:

okay but what if it was like “i was possessed by a sexy ghost” weird

or “i’ve been thinking about ur mouth for 5 days straight” weird

bc that’s the category i’m working in rn

You snorted, the knot in your chest loosening instantly.

You:

girl what

E:

this is ur fault.

ur criminally hot and i’m emotionally unstable.

i almost sent u a poem today and had to physically restrain myself

You:

wait u wrote me a poem???

E:

no one’s ever gonna see it

unless i die then u can publish it posthumously

You rolled onto your side, laughing into your pillow, smiling so hard it made your face ache.

You:

SO how was ur day, poet

other than spiraling over my mouth

did the tragic lesbian survive algebra?

E:

barely

i almost died. they tried to silence me.

i doodled boobs on my notes again. staying humble.

You:

u say that like it’s a coping mechanism

E:

it is. ur boobs specifically

You snorted again, tension bleeding out of you with every stupid message that followed.

You:

do u miss them ??

should i send u some again so u can cope better?

E:

don’t tempt me rn i’m weak and unsupervised

You:

so that’s a yes

E:

that’s an always

You bit your lip, grinning into your pillow like an idiot.

She was back to herself—unhinged and dramatic, talking about how her math teacher was probably a demon who fed on the dreams of students. Complete with all-caps outbursts and at least two conspiracy theories. You kept laughing. Kept typing.

Eventually, your thumbs started to cramp.

You:

i swear my thumbs are buff now bc of u

E:

hot

You:

everything i say u turn into gay

E:

it's given

You bit your lip. Your heart thumped—stupid and full.

You didn’t ask again about the message. You didn’t have to. Whatever she’d meant to say, she clearly couldn’t yet.

You stayed texting until your phone went warm in your palm, until your eyes stung from grinning too long. By the time you checked the clock, it was 3AM.

You didn’t mean to stay up that late, but that’s what always happened with her. The later it got, the more chaotic the messages became. If it wasn’t full-blown unhinged, it was weirdly horny. And if it wasn’t horny, it got accidentally deep—like two sleep-deprived idiots trying to figure out the meaning of life between memes and finger-smash typing.

You:

do u ever wonder what we’d be like if we met in real life?

or would we combust instantly?

You barely had time to brace for whatever ridiculous answer that would get when your phone buzzed again—this time from a different notification.

From Ellie.

You blinked at the name—Ellie, already saved in your phone—and still typed:

You:

who is this?

Ellie:

It’s Ellie. From school.

A faint smirk tugged at your lips.

You:

i know

Ellie:

Just wanted to let you know I’m starting the draft for our project. It’s nothing serious, just bullet points. I figured I’d organize ideas before Monday.

You stared at her message, already smiling.

You:

you couldn’t tell me that earlier in class??

Ellie:

I didn’t think of it until now.

Also I'm still awake, so.

You:

why r u still up anyway ?

Ellie:

I wanted to be productive while the ideas were still fresh.

You snorted.

You:

nerd.

Ellie:

Sure.

You paused, glancing at your other chat. E hadn’t replied yet. Your thumb hovered, tempted to double text.

But right before you did—

E:

sorry went blank for a sec i was picturing how u say my name in a whisper lol anyway what were we even talking about

You laughed out loud, the sound muffled into your pillow.

You:

do u want me dead

E:

yes but like sexily

Another buzz.

Ellie:

Let me know if you’d rather read the notes now or wait for Monday. Either way works.

You laid your phone on your chest for a second, staring at the ceiling. One of them wanted to die at your hands. The other was politely offering to share bullet points at 3AM.

And just like that—when you’re happy, when it’s fun—time moved stupidly fast.

The hallway pulsed with the usual Monday mess—shuffling sneakers, lockers clanging shut, someone already yelling, and of course, that one kid running like it’s a sport.

You felt obnoxiously good for a Monday. The kind of good that only came from two straight days of texting someone who made your brain feel like soda bubbles. You were still carrying a smile that hadn’t fully faded since 3AM.

You suddenly spotted Ellie.

Standing at her locker, blue flannel shrugged over her usual black tee, one side of her hair still sleep-creased. Headphones rested around her neck. She looked a little worn—like sleep hadn’t been a priority. Like someone who’d stayed up too late doing something they didn’t regret.

You didn’t stop walking. Just drifted right up beside her locker, leaned against the one next to it like you had all the time in the world.

She didn’t look at you at first—just shifted her books with one hand, nudging her sketchpad into place. Her fingers lingered at the edge of a notebook you knew too well now. The one she said she started drafting in.

Finally, a glance. Quick and dry.

Then a sigh.

You smirked at her reaction. Tilted your head like you were observing something mildly amusing.

“So,” you said. “How was your weekend?”

Ellie didn’t answer right away. Just reached deeper into the locker like she was debating throwing herself inside it.

“Quiet,” she said without looking at you.

You raised your brows. “That’s it?”

She shoved a pencil case into her bag and shut the locker with a dull thud. “What do you want me to say? I spent it drafting our project.”

You leaned in slightly, voice lowering. “Mm. So productive.”

She rolled her eyes. “I can’t help it if you’re easily impressed.”

“Who said I was impressed?” you shot back, one brow raised. “I’m just asking.”

Ellie adjusted the strap of her guitar case on her shoulder, finally meeting your eyes. “Right. You’re just asking. Because you care deeply about how I spent my weekend.”

You shrugged, unfazed. “Maybe I do.”

That got you a blink. A pause. Her gaze flicked over your face—just for a second too long.

You smiled, all teeth.

“Wanna guess how I spent mine?”

Ellie didn’t say anything—just glanced away, too fast to be casual.

You tapped the locker with your knuckles, straightened up slowly. “See you in class, Williams.”

And with that, you walked off and didn’t look back.

But if you had, you might’ve caught the exact moment Ellie muttered under her breath—barely audible over the hallway noise.

“Jesus Christ.”

You slipped into your usual seat, still warm from your walk through the halls and encounter with Ellie. One of your friends tossed a lazy “hey,” but you barely glanced up—already pulling your phone out, screen lighting up with that soft blue glow.

You:

wakey wakey

i’m already in class

don’t blame me again if you end up being late, poet

Your grin was immediate. Unchecked. You bit it back behind your palm, thumbs still hovering when someone cleared their throat right beside you.

You looked up.

Ellie.

You didn’t hide your expression—still smiling like a dumbass, phone in hand.

“Yeah?” you asked, one brow raised.

She was holding out the notebook. The one she told you about. She didn’t quite meet your eyes.

“Just—here,” she muttered, placing it down in front of you.

Your gaze dropped to the familiar cover, then back to her.

You smiled wider. “Thanks. I’ll look over it later.”

She nodded, quiet. “Cool.”

She turned without another word and made her way to her own seat. You tapped the corner of the notebook with your fingers, still smiling.

Your phone buzzed.

E:

why are u like this

i was gonna be late but now i’m getting up just to annoy u

also maybe to see what u look like in class all smug and pretty

You pressed your lips together, trying not to laugh.

You:

haha u wish

i wish u were my classmate for real tho

i can only think of many things 👀

E:

what things ??

You:

idk

maybe like… we’d be seatmates

and i wouldn’t wear any undies on purpose

Three dots appeared immediately. It vanished and came back again.

E:

ok well. i just flatlined in my desk chair.

thanks a lot

You:

just trying to motivate u to get to school on time

E:

I'M ALREADY AT SCHOOL BRUH

i am not responsible for the thoughts i’m having rn

You grinned, legs curled up in your chair, heart stupidly light.

You:

am i making u…?

right now?

Another pause.

Typing..

E:

ma’am this is a public institution

You:

answer the question :)

E:

let’s just say i’m sitting very still rn

and ur going to hell. congrats.

You bit back another grin so hard your cheeks hurt.

You:

worth it.

E:

i hate u

Your thumb hovered over the screen, still smiling like a complete idiot as the bell rang.

You:

ur really gonna hate me when i say

i’m not even wearing a bra rn

E:

YOU’RE A MENACE

i hope you’re proud of yourself for what you're doing to me

You:

just a little

E:

really huh

if i were ur seatmate

i’d sit too close

thighs touching, shoulder to shoulder

and i’d keep dropping my pen just to bend down and grab it

and yk

You:

AND I KNOW WHAT?

GO ON I BEG U

okay actually u don’t need to

because i already am..

E:

good.

that’s what you deserve.

you wanna play? let’s play.

You:

worth it again

every damn single time

Your phone buzzed again, and you bit back another grin.

E:

UR INSANE

You:

okay well tytl nerd

class starts

but thank u i guess for giving me something to think about while i touch myself tonight

or maybe right after this class ;)

Time blurred.

Class, lunch, class again—standard Monday drag. Nothing special. Just the usual shuffle between subjects and half-awake conversations that barely counted as human interaction.

Now, you were in the library for your last period. Final class of the day. The room was quiet in that stiff, almost sacred way libraries get—like if you breathed too loud, someone would smite you.

Ms. Alvarez, who walked in balancing a thick binder and a tired expression. She barely made it past the first five minutes before clearing her throat and announcing, “Alright, class. I have a faculty meeting in ten. You’re allowed to continue working on your project in pairs, but you must stay in the classroom or within school premises. No one leaves early. Understood?”

You were sitting across from Ellie. She was fully immersed in whatever she was typing on her laptop—jaw tight, brows drawn, fingers moving like she was coding national security protocols instead of organizing character arcs.

You tried to match her energy for a grand total of three minutes before your attention span gave out completely.

Your gaze dropped to the window. From the second-floor view, you could see a couple of students loitering around the quad, stretched out across benches and grass. Someone was dramatically eating a banana. You didn’t know why that annoyed you.

Without thinking, you reached for your phone.

One unread message.

E:

WHAT THE FUCK

IF UR GOING TO TELL ME SOMETHING LIKE THAT IN CLASS AT LEAST LET ME WATCH

FOR COMPENSATION

jk

but yes?

You bit your lip hard—so hard it almost hurt—not wanting to smile in front of Ellie. You slipped the phone away like it burned, then reached toward her side of the table.

She didn’t look up when you slid her notebook over, flipping straight to the page.

Possible Story Structure – v1.0

You stared at it for a beat. Then made a face.

“This is so boring,” you muttered.

Ellie kept typing. “Don’t start.”

“I’m serious. This is criminal. Look at this—no dramatic kisses? No one cries? This is actual villain behavior.”

“They’re just notes,” she said without looking up.

“They’re rules. And they suck.”

“They’re guidelines,” she corrected, finally glancing your way. “And they exist because someone—you—suggested glitter-induced closet sex as a turning point.”

“And yet, you wrote it down.”

Ellie sighed through her nose. “So you’d shut up.”

You jabbed your pen at the “Maybe a forehead touch??” line. “This. Right here. What is this. This is loser behavior.”

“It’s called restraint.”

You let out the fakest gasp imaginable. “Loser and pretentious.”

Ellie leaned back in her chair, folding her arms. “You want them crying in the rain after a juice box incident.”

“Because that’s real storytelling, Ellie.”

“You literally renamed the central conflict The Tragic Juice Box Betrayal of 7th Grade.”

“It was a betrayal. And it was orange. It stained. It’s metaphorical. You just don't understand.”

You were staring back at each other.

You leaned forward just a little. “Also, I know you sketched the supply closet scene in the margin of your algebra notebook.”

“That was a box,” she said flatly. “It was a literal box.”

“Sure,” you said, unconvinced.

Ellie pinched the bridge of her nose like she was trying to summon patience from another plane of existence.

“You’re impossible,” she muttered.

“You’re just repressed.”

She blinked. “Says the girl blushing at her phone two minutes ago.”

You froze.

Ellie tilted her head, a little too smug. “Hmm?”

You cleared your throat. “That’s classified.”

She smirked—barely. “Suspicious.”

You slid the notebook back toward her. “Fix your outline before I submit a new draft with a title you won't really like.”

She rolled her eyes casually, shaking her head as she went back to her laptop.

You leaned back in your chair—annoyed, stretching a little before grabbing your phone again—this time not even pretending to be sneaky about it.

Ellie didn’t look up, but you could feel her noticing.

You opened your chat with E, thumb already moving.

You:

i’m literally sitting across from the most insufferable person alive

she’s so bossy and uptight and acts like she’s above dramatic plotlines

like okay sorry i want EMOTION in my fake scenarios??? sue me???

she actually said “restraint” like it was a flex. loser behavior actually.

You smirked, shot a glance up, then kept typing.

You:

also she keeps pretending she didn’t sketch the closet scene

it was OBVIOUSLY not just a box

You huffed quietly, shifting in your seat. Ellie was still typing—completely zoned in, not looking at you.

You looked back down at your screen.

You:

she’s doing that thing again

getting all serious like we’re submitting this to sundance

like relax. it’s two fictional lesbians and a tragic juice box. let me work.

You paused for a beat, then kept going.

You:

WHATEVER

idk. don’t wanna argue about it

i just wanna talk to you

remember what i said before about making out in the nonfiction aisle?

i’m here at the library ;)

i can imagine our kiss

HOT

i'll have you finger me 'till I cum and my legs shake

and we go back to class like nothing happened

You stared at the message for a second, then laughed under your breath and set your phone down on the table, face-down. You suddenly felt silly—teasing, sure, but also a little giddy. Like you were getting away with something. Especially with Ellie right in front of you, looking like the literal opposite of whatever that text had just suggested.

She was still focused. Still typing. Her MacBook open, her hand flicking her pen across the margins of her notebook. The light hit her rings again. She was chewing her bottom lip.

You grabbed your pen and started doodling in the corner of your notes. Hearts, stars, little lesbian stick figures making out beside bookshelves.

Out of the corner of your eye, you caught something—Ellie’s posture had shifted. Her brow furrowed deeper, her eyes narrowed at the screen.

Then she bit her lip again, harder this time. Her hand came up, fingers scratching just above her eyebrow like she was trying to stay grounded. Her expression pinched for a second—like she was trying to keep her face neutral and failing.

You glanced out the window instead. Golden light, slow-moving clouds. You imagined E, imagined her standing on the other side of this table, all smirking confidence and chaos. You smiled to yourself, tapping your pen twice before reaching back for your phone.

Still no reply.

You frowned a little. Refreshed the app. Nothing.

Right then, Ellie stood up.

You looked up immediately. “Where are you going?”

She didn’t meet your eyes. Just grabbed the edge of her chair like she needed to move. “Getting a book,” she muttered, already walking.

You blinked, confused. “You already have like, four.”

She didn’t answer and just walked off. You watched her disappear down the aisle, your phone still in your hand.Still no message from E.

The empty screen felt louder than it should’ve.

A few minutes passed. Ellie didn’t come back.

You tapped your fingers once against the table, then got up, quietly making your way until the nonfiction aidle, farthest row in the back, where no one really went.

You found her there, tucked at the very end of the aisle, half-hidden behind the shelves. She was leaning slightly against them, phone in hand, her eyes fixed on the screen—expression unreadable, but her ears flushed just a little too pink to ignore.

She didn’t notice you right away.

But the second she did, she quickly lowered her phone and reached for a nearby book, flipping it open like she’d been studying the whole time.

You raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

Instead, you glanced at the shelves around you, trying not to smile—because of course it had to be this aisle. The same one you’d texted E about, half-joking, half-not.

“What’s funny?” Ellie asked without looking up, now looking so serious.

“Nothing,” you said, too fast.

“Really?” Her tone was dry, eyes still on the page.

You grabbed a random book from the shelf and flipped it open. “I just remembered something.”

“Uh huh.” She said it flatly, like she didn’t buy it.

You sighed and rolled your eyes. But you didn’t answer her. Just turned another page, pretending to read.

Ellie shifted beside you, thumbing through her own book.

“What are you even doing in the nonfiction aisle?” you asked, still not looking up. “It’s not like we’re writing nonfiction.”

She didn’t miss a beat. “Well, actually… sometimes good fiction pulls from nonfiction. Real stories. Background stuff. It makes things feel more grounded.”

You peeked over the edge of your book. “Okay, nerd.”

She shrugged. “Just saying.”

You didn’t respond, but your thoughts were anything but neutral.

Okay sorry I'm just here because I’ve been thinking about making out with someone against these shelves for three days straight.

You stared down at the page—something about memory and neural pathways—but none of it stuck.

Your mouth twitched into a grin again. E’s dumb chaotic message echoed in your head.

You couldn’t wait to talk to her again tonight.

You glanced up.

Ellie was still there, head tilted slightly, lips parted in concentration, bathed in soft afternoon light spilling through the high windows.

She looked unreal. Sharp in some ways. Gentle in others.

She wasn’t even trying. Her flannel sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, and her hair was half-messy like she’d forgotten to fix it after leaning against her hand too long. A strand curled near her cheek. Her rings caught the light again when she shifted the book. And her mouth—soft, slightly parted as she read—moved just a little when she wet her lips without thinking.

“Actually…” you started, voice light. “Can I ask you something?”

Ellie didn’t look up. “What?”

You waited a beat. “Have you ever thought about making out with someone in the library?”

That got her attention.

Her head lifted slowly, like she wasn’t sure she heard you right. “What?”

You grinned. Tilted your head. “I mean—have you ever thought about it? Like. Right here. This exact aisle.”

Ellie blinked once. “Do you mean making out with someone who’s… here in the library?”

Her voice had a weird edge. Something unreadable.

You scoffed, playful. “No. Just—like. Making out with someone in a library. Someone you like. A girl or whatever.”

She blinked again. Then scoffed lightly, like you’re ridiculous.

“No.”

You frowned. “Why not?”

She leaned her shoulder against the shelf. “Why would I make out with someone here?” she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s the library.”

You rolled your eyes. “Okay, well—where would you bring them if you wanted to make out with them?”

That made her pause.

You watched her carefully.

She stared at you, then down at the book in your hands.

“You’re impossible,” she muttered.

You grinned. “That’s not an answer.”

She sighed and turned the page, trying to ignore you. “Not everyone makes out in public places, you know.”

“Yeah,” you said, shutting your book and letting it hang at your side. “But it’s fun to think about.”

She looked at you again.

“And you think about it a lot?” she asked, voice casual—but not quite.

“Yeah.” You shrugged. “I do.” You added, a smirk playing in your lips.

Ellie exhaled slowly, her eyes flicking up to your face—and lingering. You could almost feel her gaze pause on your mouth for a second too long.

Then she shook her head, barely, like she was trying to snap herself out of it.

Without another word, she turned and walked off, heading back toward your table with quick, quiet steps—like she needed to leave before she did something she’d regret.

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[lvl1l1]

Heyy!! Can i please request LADS guys' reaction when you try to pay 50/50 on a date ^_^

LaDS men when you offer to split the bill

pairings: Xavier, Zayne, Rafayel, Sylus, Caleb x Reader(separate)

content: fluff, suggestiveness in zayne’s

a/n: oh to have a rich boyfriend. working through reqs rn sorry if they’re taking a while TT

Xavier

You and Xavier were out on your first date night in a while.

You’d both been busy with work, spending time together on missions and at home but you started missing going out with him.

Finishing up at your regular hotpot place, you and Xavier were just talking to now.

Before a waiter could come check in, you took your chance,

“Xavier, let’s do half-half.”

You saw the confusion pass on his face,

“Half-half? But we just finished eating, did you want to get dessert? We can do that.”

A laugh escaped you and his face lit up at the sound as well,

“No, I meant let’s pay half-half.”

The man sitting opposite of you furrowed his brows, still not understanding,

“Why? I can pay for us both.”

You shrugged,

“You always do. I feel bad.”

He quickly shut that down, shaking his head,

“Don’t. I like treating you. I want to pay, I’m your boyfriend.”

You smiled at his words, feeling lucky to have such a sweet partner,

“All right. But the offer’s on the table.”

His eyebrows were still drawn together,

“Well, that’s not necessary.”

Before you could say anything else, he got up, heading to the front of the restaurant to pay.

Zayne

Zayne had wrapped up a week of surgeries back to back.

To relax, you two went out to eat.

You were enjoying each other’s company, happy to finally spend some time together.

Once you two were done eating, you told him.

“Zayne, I want to pay half.”

At that, he frowns,

“Please, don’t. I invited you out.”

You cocked your head, looking at him with big eyes,

“You’ve been working so hard, you won’t let me treat you, so at least let me pay half!”

The frown stayed on his face,

“I appreciate everything you do for me but I’m more than happy to pay for you. I insist, actually.”

You flashed him a sweet smile but reached for your purse regardless.

Though, before you could even pull your wallet out, he called a waiter over and handed them his card.

You went to protest but he quickly reached for your hand, intertwining it with his.

“Darling, I’m grateful for your thoughtfulness, but considering how our quality time together is cut short sometimes due to my work, allow me to spend the money I make from my job on you.”

The sincerity reflected in his eyes makes your heart swell.

You nod, defeated, before a mischievous grin comes onto your face,

“Fine then, I’ll just repay you later tonight.”

The tips of his ears turned red and his eyes widened slightly but before he could respond, the waiter returned with his card.

Zayne could barely focus on anything for the rest of the night, you didn’t miss the shy looks he shot you throughout.

Rafayel

A new art exhibition of his work had been published, to celebrate, you two went out tonight.

Rafayel had it all planned out, a candlelight dinner, a lone table on the balcony, just the two of you.

He was having a great time, until you dared to utter the words,

“Let me pay half.”

He looked like you had personally insulted him.

“You’re asking your rich boyfriend who just had a new art exhibition, if you can pay for your own food?”

Letting out an awkward laugh clearly wasn’t the right course of action, as he started again,

“I love you. You know how much I love you. So, why would you ever ask me that. Was that supposed to be a joke? Because I don’t think it’s funny.”

You scratched your head, unsure of how to respond,

“I didn’t know you were so passionate about this…”

He put his hands on the table, leaning over,

“I’m passionate about providing for my lover.”

You felt surprisingly moved by your boyfriend’s, albeit strange, declaration of affection.

Rafayel sighed,

“I might’ve gotten a bit carried away there at the end but my point stands! Don’t even suggest something like that again. I want to give you nice experiences, that doesn’t include you having to worry about paying.”

You rested your chin on your hand, smiling at him softly,

“Thanks, Rafayel.”

He smiled back at you, his eyes glittering as he looked at you,

“One last thing, if I ever accept that, shoot me on that spot. It has to be a clone, can’t be me.”

He didn’t hide the satisfied look on his face as you laughed.

Sylus

You had been gushing about this new restaurant that had opened near your place.

Sylus had taken you there tonight and it lived up to all your expectations.

Seeing your content expression as you munched on your dessert, left him feeling fulfilled.

You two were engaged in a conversation, before you dropped the bomb on him,

“Sy, let’s split the bill.”

He immediately looked offended,

“Why would we?”

Spoon in mouth, you blinked at him,

“It was my idea to come here, it’s only right.”

His eyes narrowed slightly,

“I brought you here.”

You hummed, still not backing down,

“Doesn’t matter, you’ve been paying for everything lately…”

His look of disapproval almost made your lips curl up,

“As I should. Sweetie, what’s the point of having so much money, if not to spend it on you?”

You ate another bite, feeling charmed.

He smirked and you knew he was onto you,

“Also, while I do think it’s sweet you offered, if I’m not mistaken, you didn’t bring your wallet.”

You stilled, spoon midair, before looking up at him, bashful.

You fluttering your eyelashes at him, not answering.

His laugh that sounded like it could buy the whole building brought a cheeky grin to your face.

“You should really try this, it tastes great!”

“Very smooth, kitten.”

Caleb

Caleb finally took his vacation days and you two went on a trip to a nearby town.

It was your last day there and you decided to have a nice dinner at a fancy restaurant.

You were sitting across each other, Caleb was done eating before you, so you made him eat the rest of your food, that you couldn’t finish.

He was listening to you talk with a lovesick look on his face.

You kept yapping until he was almost done eating,

“Alrighty, let’s do 50/50.”

He stopped, eyes flickering up to your face, his smile dropping,

“What do you mean, pips?”

Giggling, you elaborated,

“Let’s split the bill 50/50!”

He squinted at you,

“No.”

You looked taken aback by his blunt response,

“Why not?”

He stacked the plates over one another, before his gaze met yours again,

“For one, I ate half your food. And even if I didn’t, I don’t want you to pay for anything when I’m with you.”

A chuckle left you as you leaned back in your seat,

“You paid for the whole vacation, Caleb. Let me take this one.”

That charming, boyish grin he flashed you caused you to push a strand of hair behind your ear.

He was so good at winning you over,

“I like taking care of you, honey. You’re not paying for anything.”

You sighed,

“You’re too good to me.”

He looked at you, like you had just said something outlandish.

“Yeah, let’s get you three servings of dessert for that. You deserve everything, pipsqueak.”

You whined his name, feeling shy.

He always looked at you like you had hung all the stars in the sky.

He’d be damned if he didn’t at least try to give you the whole world.

[sugary-strawberry-shortcake]

Blossom Reverse (Yandere Batfam x Neglected! Poison Ivy‘s Daughter! Reader)

Chapter 9

A/N: IT‘S FINALLY OUT!! no real interactions between batfam and y/n in this one butttt there are some revelations and thoughts 👀 I can‘t promise when I will publish the next chapter though🩷 as I said I’m a bit busy rn!! But when I’m back I will start the work 🥰 I will write Drabble though!! Also tell me your thoughts about this chapter!! I love reading all your reactions and comments 🥹 - poppy

The apartment smelled like damp walls and mildew that never quite left, no matter how many windows she opened or how much lemon cleaner she used. The floor creaked when she moved, and the pipes rattled every time the neighbor above her flushed their toilet—but it was hers.

Hers, in the loosest, most fragile sense of the word.

Rent was due in two days. She had $7 in her wallet. Her breakfast had been an expired protein bar she found in the bottom of her backpack, and dinner would probably be the rest of the rice she cooked yesterday.

But she was alive.

And most importantly—she was free.

The tiny kitchen was quiet as she knelt by the potted plants that lined the inside of her single window. They weren’t thriving, but they were trying—just like her. She sprayed their leaves with a light mist, humming softly under her breath, careful not to wake the baby next door or Gary upstairs.

Gary was the landlord. The one that gave her this place.

Old, grouchy, mostly harmless. He paid her to care for the flowers he sold in his rundown shop two blocks away. It wasn’t enough to live off of, but it was better than nothing. He didn’t ask questions either. Not about her name, age or family. Not about why she paid in cash. Not about why she always kept the hood of her coat pulled low when she ran errands.

It had been thirty-two days since she left the manor.

Thirty-two days since she’d lied to Alfred’s face.

Since she’d walked past the gates with her bag and never looked back.

Since she’d become someone else. Or at least tried to.

Her fingers trembled slightly as she reached for the tiny case on her desk.

The contact lenses were cheap, but they worked. A flat, soft brown that covered the bright, unnatural green of her mother’s legacy. She blinked slowly as she put them in, fingers steady despite how often her stomach cramped from hunger or how the floor still spun when she stood too fast.

She had to blend in.

Be no one.

Be small.

Still, some nights—especially when the sun fell too fast or the wrong person looked at her too long—the fear returned. Heavy and loud in her chest. That someone had seen her. That someone had recognised her. That he had finally found out she was gone.

She didn’t know why she kept expecting the family to knock on her door. They hadn’t cared then. Why would they care now?

The apartment was still cold when the morning light slipped through the cracked blinds.

Y/N rubbed her arms and breathed into her palms, waiting for the kettle to hum. The gas burner made a clicking noise before catching. She moved carefully, not wanting to wake the baby next door. The walls were thin—like the ones in her memories.

She glanced toward her plants lining the windowsill. They were her secret. Hydrangeas blooming out of season. Tiny wildflowers that hadn’t existed in this hemisphere in decades. The old roses that Gary had given up on now sprawled over their pot, heavy and full of color.

“I must have a green thumb,” she’d said once, and Gary had barked a laugh and said, “Kid, if that’s a thumb, I want a whole hand of yours.”

She’d smiled.

She always smiled.

Even when it was thin. Even when it was shaking.

⸻

The fake ID in her wallet said Emilia Forenzi, age 18, born in Venice. She’d forged the name, the history, the accent. She wasn’t very good at faking the accent, but people didn’t really listen to it in this part of Gotham.

They saw a pretty girl with sweet eyes and perfect manners.

Not a Wayne.

Not Poison Ivy’s daughter.

Just her.

She tried to get a job last week at a diner near the outskirts. The man behind the counter said she looked too soft for waitressing in Gotham, but she’d promised to learn quickly. He hadn’t called her back.

Still, she kept looking.

She only made just enough with Gary’s shop and the flowers in the nearby park he quietly “claimed” as his own. He was gruff, but he gave her an extra five dollars the other day when he saw her feeding a stray cat half her dinner.

“Don’t starve for that flea-ball,” he’d said.

She had smiled, then handed the cat the last bit of her rice anyway.

____

The nightmares came every other night.

She didn’t scream anymore. She learned to bite her lip in the Manor. But her pillow was often damp by morning.

They weren’t always the same—sometimes it was the manor again, the long corridors and cold dinners and the silence when she tried to speak. Sometimes it was the moment it happened. When they looked too late. When they reached too slowly. When they mourned too little.

But more recently … more often… she dreamt of her mother.

It had been so long since she’d let herself remember Pamela Isley. Ivy.

Green eyes like hers. A lullaby voice. Warm hands and flowery perfume.

She hadn’t thought about her in years—not really. Not since Bruce took her in and no one ever said her name again. Not since she learned that “Poison Ivy is a criminal, not a mother.”

But now, alone in her silence, in her little room with its stolen furniture and secondhand blankets, Y/N wondered.

Where was she?

Was she still in Arkham?

Did she know that her daughter was dead once? That she lived again?

A part of her felt guilty for not trying to reach out.

Another part of her was too afraid.

Because even her mother might not want her.

_________________

Y/N’s POV

Y/N had no working television, but the city didn’t need one to scream at her.

It screamed through the streets. Through the rising hum of sirens. Through the headlines splattered across cracked newspaper boxes she passed on her walks.

“Vigilante Brutality Increases in Crime Alley.”

“Masked Assault in the Narrows: Third Criminal Hospitalized This Week.”

“Batarangs Found at Scene.”

Some nights, she swore she recognized the marks.

A broken window too clean. A blood trail that vanished before it reached the curb. A body left in the perfect shape of Jason’s rage. A rooftop cracked in the exact angle Dick once used to land his kicks. A cigarette packet crushed under a boot with too much calculation—Tim.

And the shadow that never missed a target—Bruce.

They were out there. All of them.

Stalking the night harder than they had in years.

And she still told herself:

It’s not for me.

It couldn’t be.

Because if it was, what would that even mean?

⸻

Gary had warned her. Again and again.

That the streets weren’t safe. That something was shifting in Gotham—something darker, tighter, more personal.

“Stay in after dusk,” he’d told her tonight, setting a paper bag of groceries on the table. “These days, Gotham’s bleeding from the inside out.”

She nodded sweetly. Smiled, even.

Then locked the door the second he left.

But she wasn’t afraid of the men in alleyways.

Not the thieves. Not the dealers. Not the hungry strangers who eyed her when she passed by.

She was afraid of the people whom she used to see as brothers.

Because if she ever saw them again—if she ever looked into those familiar eyes and saw that distant, practiced guilt or the too-late affection…

She didn’t trust herself not to cry.

Not to break.

Not to forgive them too easily.

And she couldn’t.

Not after everything.

Not again.

Damian’s POV

It had been twenty-nine days and eleven hours since Damian had last seen his sister.

Not that he was counting.

Not that he had a tally scratched into the underside of his desk.

Not that he stared at the empty seat beside him in every class like it was mocking him.

But he knew.

And it infuriated him.

The others said she’d vanished.

The others said she’d slipped past them all.

But she hadn’t slipped past him.

Not really.

She’d looked him in the eye that morning—after their fight.

After he’d grabbed her. Cornered her. Called her a liar.

“It’s nothing that will matter to you soon anyway.”

He hadn’t understood it then.

He did now.

She’d meant goodbye.

At school, her name still came up.

Y/N Wayne.

The girl who suddenly “returned to Italy.”

Back to her “supermodel mother”—at least, that’s what her friends claimed. It’s what she had told them.

They all bought it.

They called it romantic. Mysterious.

Like she’d left for a glamorous life.

But Damian knew better.

The softness in her eyes before she left wasn’t joy.

It was resignation.

He had tried—quietly at first.

Digging behind the scenes. Asking questions without being obvious.

Then, after a week, subtlety died.

He skipped class.

He hacked into school servers, city cameras, bus routes.

He threatened. Intimidated. Pressured.

He found Silas. Beat him within an inch of expulsion. Again.

And when the school didn’t act fast enough, he made them.

Silas was gone the next morning.

But it didn’t satisfy him, because Y/N wasn’t anywhere.

At night, Robin bled through Gotham.

Damian stalked rooftops not for criminals—but for a slip of movement that might be her.

He shattered kneecaps for a name. Broke ribs for a whisper.

Even the villains noticed.

“Robin’s gotten… personal again,” Harley had murmured after escaping a busted safehouse.

But nothing helped.

Each time he paused, high above the city in the bitter dark, he swore he could feel her.

Somewhere below.

Somewhere lonely.

And not calling for him.

He hated her for that.

He hated himself more.

She belonged to them. To him.

To the family. To the house. To his routine. His mornings. His world.

And now she was gone.

_____

Dick’s POV

He hadn’t been back to Bludhaven in three weeks.

The people were worried.

The criminals were thrilled.

But Dick didn’t care.

He told Bruce he wasn’t capable of “handling other lives” until he found the one life that actually mattered.

And no one argued.

Not anymore.

At first, he’d tried to believe it was all temporary.

That she had just… run off to prove a point.

That she’d come back, pouty but forgiving, with that innocent little laugh and into his arms held open like a truce.

But one month later—there were no illusions left.

His little flower was gone.

And something in him had gone cold.

The smile?

Gone.

The charm?

Buried.

Even Jason said it once—gruff and to the point:

“You look more like Bruce every damn day.”

And Dick hadn’t answered.

Because Dick wasn’t Bruce.

Bruce had forgotten her.

He had abandoned her.

But Dick had known. He’d seen.

He just didn’t act.

She used to leave notes.

Little drawings tucked into his gear bag when he’d visit.

He’d find doodles of himself and her—with giant goofy smiles—under his glove cases.

He hadn’t kept a single one.

He told himself he was busy.

She was a kid.

She’d grow out of it.

But now?

Now he was in her room every other day—just sitting, just looking.

Searching every inch of that now-empty drawer like it was a crime scene.

And maybe it was.

Because something had died in that room.

He’d found the old plush once.

The elephant one.

Alfred said she took it with her—so the one he found was a decoy.

“She knew someone would check,” Tim had whispered.

“She planned this.”

And that shattered Dick in a way fists never had.

She didn’t even trust them to miss her.

He walked the alleys at night.

Not as Nightwing.

Just as someone looking for a ghost in a little green sweater.

The one she wore all the time when she was younger—the one that matched the flowers she grew.

He used to call her his little flower.

She used to love that.

She even wrote it in one of those diary entries he found—buried in the box of discarded drawings they’d all ignored:

“I wish he would call me little flower again. I think I’d feel like he loves me if he did.”

Dick never cried. Not even when his parents died.

But when he read that—he’d just sat down right on the floor and shook.

“You were the soft one,” Jason had thrown at him last week.

“Where the hell were you when she needed you?”

He didn’t answer then either.

Because the truth was brutal:

He’d been smiling for everyone else.

Just not her.

Now he didn’t smile at all.

And when he caught anyone slacking on patrol, skipping a corner, missing a lead—he snapped.

“We are finding her.”

It wasn’t just a command.

It was a vow.

A curse.

And every night, when he sat in the shadows of her room, that vow echoed again and again like a prayer to a flower-shaped ghost:

“I’m gonna find you, Y/N”

“I don’t care what it takes.”

_____

Jason was never good at guilt.

He could shoot it in the face, bury it in the ground, drink it away.

But not this.

Not when the guilt had a name.

A voice.

A laugh.

A heartbeat he couldn’t find anymore.

Y/N.

Red Hood didn’t patrol anymore. He hunted.

He tore through the underworld like a rabid dog, taking names, putting bodies in the ER, slamming faces into pavement hard enough to shatter teeth. Criminals whispered about it. That something had snapped in the Red Hood. That he’d gone fully off-leash.

They were right.

Because she was gone.

And someone had to pay for it.

He blamed Bruce, obviously. Jason always blamed Bruce. For being cold. For being blind. For never knowing what to do with someone soft. For burying himself in work while she withered upstairs. How the hell do you forget your own daughter?

But blame was easy.

What wasn’t easy was looking at himself.

He remembered the first time she came up to him. Little thing. Barely past toddler years, wide-eyed and sticky with jam, calling him “Jayshu” in that babbling baby voice.

He didn’t say anything back.

He remembered her knocking on his door when he returned after dying — begging him to come down for cookies she made.

He told her to leave him the hell alone.

He remembered yelling. Something about Poison Ivy. Something about how she was just a seed of villainy waiting to sprout.

She cried.

And he did nothing.

She never stopped being sweet after that. She just stopped hoping.

God.

She’d always tried.

And now she was gone — not kidnapped, not taken. She left.

She left them.

Left him.

She was somewhere out there in Gotham. Cold, starving, maybe scared, and trying to make a life for herself with whatever pieces she thought she could carry.

Because they’d convinced her — all of them — that the mansion didn’t have room for her. That she was a footnote in her own damn home.

Jason swore if she was dead—

No.

She wasn’t dead.

She couldn’t be.

He refused to believe that.

He was going to find her.

If he had to burn down every alley, question every creep, put a bullet in every bastard that even looked at a girl wrong—

He was going to find his baby sister.

And this time, he wasn’t letting her go.

Not until she knew what she meant to him.

Even if he had to drag her home, kicking and crying and hating him.

Because hate was better than fear.

Hate meant she was alive.

And he could live with that.

——————
TIm’s POV

Tim hadn’t slept in thirty-two hours. His fingers trembled faintly over the keyboard, dark half-moons carved under bloodshot eyes, the whites gone dull with insomnia and stimulants. The walls of his room were drowned in screens, all reflecting her face — what little he could still find of it.

Her school file. Old pictures. Surveillance footage from Gotham Academy — months old. The last known digital remnants of Y/N Eloise Wayne.

But it wasn’t enough.

He’d run every facial match algorithm. Every public transport log. Hacked through every ID registration, health record, housing file under her legal name. And she was gone.

“She’s too smart,” he muttered under his breath, rubbing his temple. “She lied. She planned. She’s not Y/N Eloise Wayne anymore.”

The revelation haunted him. It burned, rotted somewhere behind his ribs. She had vanished under his nose, wearing a false name like a cloak — and he hadn’t seen it coming.

He had gone through every file they owned on her. Every school note, every doctor visit, every written scrawl from her elementary notebooks. He replayed her school performance clips over and over, like decoding a cipher. Her smile made his chest cave in. The applause that followed felt like mockery now.

He didn’t even know her.

He thought he did.

Now, even the way she looked at him — polite, soft, cautious — seemed like a stranger’s ghost haunting his memory.

It was always her that tried. She came to him, not the other way around. He’d been too cold. Too preoccupied. Too… utilitarian. And now she was gone.

______

Bruce

Wayne Manor was silent.

It had been a tomb since the day she left.

Bruce sat in the cave beneath it, not the man in the suit but the shell. His cowl sat on the table beside a half-finished bottle of bourbon, the second one tonight. Or maybe the third. He didn’t count anymore. What was the point?

He hadn’t shaved. Hadn’t stepped into the office in days. Lucius had called. He didn’t answer. No one in the company knew why Bruce Wayne had vanished. But Gotham still had Batman.

Only, he wasn’t Batman anymore. He was something else now. Something starving.

At night he stalked the rooftops with animal focus. Interrogated criminals with bone-breaking efficiency. Asked questions. Searched every corner of the city. Every district. Every shadow. He didn’t rest. He didn’t breathe unless it was with her name in his mind.

His daughter. His daughter.

It repeated like a pulse in his ears.

It burned behind his eyes.

She was all he had left of Ivy — that mistake, that moment — but she had been more than that. From the instant he saw her, frail and bright-eyed, he knew. She wasn’t like any of them.

She was good.

And he’d abandoned her. Buried her behind patrol logs and briefing reports and other children. The guilt made him flinch from his own reflection. He wasn’t fit to be her father.

But he would bring her back. He would. He would find her, cradle her against his chest, and keep her. Lock the doors. Watch over her like a warden, not a parent. If that’s what it took.

Because the world wasn’t safe. And neither was he.

⸻

None of them spoke about the dreams.

Not Dick. Not Tim. Not Bruce. Not even Damien, who barely slept at all.

But each night they saw her.

Not the girl who vanished. Not the child who used to smile at them and draw them flowers.

No, in their dreams, she was older. Just a little. Sixteen, seventeen, maybe eighteen — and dying.

Sometimes she was bloodied. Sometimes drowned. Sometimes strangled. Her eyes always wide, always shocked, always alone.

They woke up breathless. Sometimes screaming. Always cold. Always guilty.

None of them could explain it.

She hadn’t died. Had she?

They told themselves it was the mind, punishing them for failing her. But something deeper twisted in their stomachs, something that whispered:

You weren’t just too late.

You were never there at all.

______

Tim

Tim hadn’t slept in forty-three hours.

His coffee was cold.

His shirt was wrinkled.

His hands trembled at the keyboard.

But he wasn’t stopping.

The Batcave was silent except for the hum of outdated servers and the sharp clack of his fingers moving too fast. The screens were filled with dead ends. Burned leads. Traffic cams from the docks. Street-side black markets. Pawn shop ledgers. None of them led to her.

Y/N Wayne.

Y/N Eloise Wayne.

Y/N Eloise Isley.

All versions. Dead files.

He stared at the access logs of the encrypted folder Alfred once backed up manually. The old section of the system not even connected to the current grid. Half of it was still mirrored from the pre-reset servers Bruce had shut down after the Joker War.

Tim was about to close it.

But then his cursor hovered over something.

CASE FILE_413-A — DECEASED: WAYNE, Y/N E.

He froze.

Click.

His breath caught.

The screen flickered to life with a full-color dossier.

A Bat-file.

Compiled. Stamped. Finalized.

Tim’s pupils dilated as the first image loaded.

It was a crime scene photo.

A girl — slender frame, (Y/S) skin, long tangled hair matted in blood — lay crumpled in a side alley.

Her body was twisted. There were vines curled around her hands like she had tried, in the end, to summon something. The file dated her death at age eighteen. The location: Gotham Lower East.

Another picture followed.

A toe tag. Her name.

Y/N Eloise Wayne.

Tim recoiled in the chair, the metal frame screeching against the floor.

He clutched the edge of the desk, knuckles white. The blood in his veins ran ice cold.

“No…”

The file was real.

Old. Buried.

Made by them.

There was Bruce’s signature. His own encrypted seal. A medical report from Leslie. Postmortem autopsy. She’d been stabbed. Multiple times. Lungs collapsed. Defensive wounds.

Motive listed: “Targeted for her parentage. Daughter of Poison Ivy. Daughter of Bruce Wayne.”

She died alone.

Tim’s stomach turned. Images blurred behind his lashes as his heart pounded in his throat. Then — faint, like an echo —

a memory.

her voice.

“It’s okay, Tim… I know you’re busy. Maybe next time…”

His hand clenched.

It made sense now. Her withdrawn smile. Her evasiveness. The way she flinched when someone used her name too sweetly. The edge of fear under her fake smiles. The lies about school. About friends.

She remembered.

“She knew,” he whispered. “Oh my god… she knew.”

Tim’s eyes scanned through the final page of the report.

A line written in someone’s hand. His own, maybe.

“We were too late.”

“She died thinking she wasn’t loved.”

“We never made it in time.”

He stood up fast, the chair clattering behind him.

No one else had seen this yet.

They didn’t know.

They couldn’t know.

But they would.

Tonight.

“They have to know,” Tim said, eyes still locked on the glowing screen. “We all failed her once. We don’t get to fail her again.”

____

The group chat pinged three times.

Then ten.

Then twenty.

❝ Everyone get to the Cave. Now. ❞

❝ I found something. ❞

❝ It’s about her. ❞

No one responded at first.

Damian left him on “Read.”

Dick ignored it.

Jason sent back a single skull emoji.

He should have expected these reactions since he has been sending the same sentence every day for the past few days.

So Tim lied.

❝ I know where she is. ❞

Within minutes, the Cave roared to life with engines and boots slamming against concrete.

Jason was the first to storm in, eyes bloodshot and helmet still on.

Damian followed, jaw clenched, already starting to bark—

“Where is she, Drake?! Where is my sister—”

Tim stood near the console, arms crossed.

“I lied.”

Jason lunged.

Fist in Tim’s collar. Slam. Back against the wall.

“You what—?!”

“I lied,” Tim repeated, voice low. “Because I had to get you all here. Because I found something.”

Bruce’s silhouette broke through the Cave entrance — suit half-on, stubble dark along his jaw, shadows under his eyes like bruises.

“Enough.”

Jason didn’t let go. Not yet.

“If this is another theory—”

“It’s not.”

Tim shoved Jason off. Hard.

The screen behind him lit up.

CASE FILE_413-A

Subject: Y/N Eloise Wayne

Status: DECEASED

Age: 18

COD: Homicide. Multiple stab wounds. Cause: Confirmed assassination.

Perpetrator: Unidentified rogue faction. Targeted for her parentage.

The room went still.

“What the hell is this,” Dick asked, already stepping closer.

Bruce’s breath hitched. Damian’s eyes narrowed. Jason froze.

“A fake?” Dick suggested.

Tim shook his head.

“Timestamped. Five years from now. This is from before. A different timeline.”

Damian scoffed. “You’re saying she died in the future?”

“She did die,” Tim said. “We all just forgot.”

They stared.

He opened the rest of the file. Images, recordings. Surveillance. Her body. Blood pooled in the alley. The report showed Bruce petitioned Zatanna and Constantine. There was a time ritual. Risky. Forbidden.

“You risked time to bring her back?” Jason muttered.

Bruce didn’t answer.

Tim’s voice cut in. Cold.

“We failed her once. She died alone. We didn’t protect her. Not any of us.”

Jason turned toward the screen. The photo flickered —

her eyes still open.

blood across her temple.

dirt under her nails like she fought to crawl away.

Damian took a step back. “No…”

“She knew,” Tim said. “That’s why she looked at us like that. Why she avoided us. She came back. And she remembered.”

No one moved.

The room was silent, suffocating beneath the cold glare of the screen where Y/N’s death flickered like an echo. The air clung to their lungs like ash — thick, bitter, and impossible to swallow. Damian had dropped to the floor, arms wrapped tight around himself, his head bowed low as if sheer will could reverse time. His lips moved soundlessly, whispering her name over and over, as if it was a prayer. As if saying it enough times would call her back.

Jason stood with his jaw clenched so tight it cracked. His eyes — wild and bloodshot — stayed locked on the image of her body. He didn’t look away, not even once. The blood. The dirt. The way she had died like a stranger in the street. He saw it every night in his head now, but nothing compared to seeing it in full color. The walls around his heart — already thin when it came to her — collapsed completely.

Dick had turned away. Not from shame, but from grief so raw it left his hands shaking. He dug his nails into his palms to stop the trembling. He wanted to scream. He wanted to tear the Cave apart and rebuild it out of something softer, something warmer — something that had room for little girls with flowers in their hands and letters in their drawers that he never read.

Tim stood with arms crossed, but his composure was an illusion. His voice was hollow. His shoulders slumped beneath the weight of knowing. He had chased every digital ghost in Gotham trying to find her — but this file was not just a clue. It was a memory clawing its way back. A record of a crime they all committed through silence, through neglect, through absence.

And Bruce… he hadn’t spoken since the image loaded. His breath had gone still. He looked at his daughter’s face on the screen — the girl he had summoned back into this world with rituals and desperation — and he saw her dying again. Just like before. All over again. She had called him “Daddy” in her last breath. He heard it in his sleep now.

They didn’t speak. Not for a long time. Each of them lost in the torment of the realization that this wasn’t just about a runaway child. It was about the daughter they failed — a second time. About the signs they missed. The eyes that begged them to remember.

They had dismissed her heartbreak. They had questioned her distance. They had shrugged off her quiet smiles as teenage moodiness. But now the pieces came together with devastating clarity.

She remembered. That’s why she changed. That’s why she ran. She remembered dying alone while they forgot her.

No one needed to say it out loud.

The mission had changed. This wasn’t about finding her anymore.

This was about getting her back before Gotham swallowed her whole again.

And this time —

none of them would let fate take her.

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@justafank

[beetle-ze-bub]

I have this Au idea based on The Deal by Mitski cause for whatever that feels like a Stan Pines song and I can't fully explain why.

Anyways, basically, during Stan's drifter days he stays in some pretty unusual places with more than a few weird characters. So, at some point or another, he somehow hears about this deal you can make with the Night itself. Midnight, walk alone, etc, etc. Just like the song.

Stan has never been one to believe, or even just be interested in spirituality or magic or whatever; that was his brother. But he decides to keep the story in his back pocket, if for no other reason than to have an interesting story to tell people.

But maybe at some point when he's feeling like he's at rock bottom, after something especially bad happened (idk the Tijuana incident or the trunk, or losing his kidney, something like that) – and/or while drunk – he decides, 'Fuck it, I got nothing else to lose', and decides to try the deal just for the sake of it. The worst that could happen is nothing, right?

Like in the song, he tries to give away his soul, because he really is pretty sick of all the hurting and the pain and shit. Also reasoning that, since nothing will likely happen, he might as well go big.

This is where it diverges from the song somewhat. Because for what he'd take I think it'd depend.

If he was drunk and/or in an especially bad spot, I wouldn't be surprised if he said, like the song did, he would only take the consequences. But, at the same time, I think he knows enough about bad deals to realize that if – on the very off chance this is real – he's giving his soul away, it should at least be for something good. Maybe he'd ask to get Rico off his back, or for that million dollars, or make it so he never broke Ford’s project (though I feel like this isn't likely as even in its divine grace, the Night can not change the past. Maybe Stan would even get a feeling somehow, as though the Night tells him this.), or even just to keep Ford safe and/or happy. Idk rn, but yeah.

After the deal is struck, Stan feels lighter somehow. Like something is missing. It's not bad that it's gone. It's not good either. It's just missing.

He'd probably still have the same talk with the bird, but after that I feel like he'd keep drifting across the country. Not out of a need to escape, or hit his big break, but just instinct. Habit.

He'd probably still call his mom, but it's almost professional in how he talks to her, clinical. There's no attachment there, really. He loves her, or at least likes her, to some degree. But it's muffled and smothered, and so, so quiet that he can't make out the sound of it anymore. Like a soft tap at the back of his brain, so light he can hardly recognize it happened. He can't say for sure whether he'd feel much if something happened to her.

Maybe Ford, depending on what Stan wished for, suddenly finds the night welcoming. Something caring and kind and protective of him in a way he can't really explain. Obviously it can't be, it's the night; just a time of day. It's not doing anything. But he still can't help but feel that way.

Or maybe even his life has suddenly gotten so much better. He's suddenly been offered a bunch of grants, people are vying for his research or his reviews of their work. He's being offered hundreds of prestigious positions and people are dying to have him give interviews or lectures. And while Ford is obviously ecstatic, and riding the high of all this praise and his accomplishments being recognized and getting everything he's ever wanted (what about his brother?), he can't exactly… remember, what he accomplished or published that got him all this attention.

But that doesn't matter! He's sure it'll come to him! He's just too focused on his now busy schedule, that's why he forgot. After that he has to get back to his current anomaly research too. But he's sure it'll come to him in time.

Again, depending on what Stan wished for exactly, and even what time he made the wish, maybe Ford sends the postcard to Stan again; whether it's about Bill or something else, idk. But when Stan comes something's wrong. It looks like Stan, talks relatively like Stan.

But he's empty. As though he's been drained of everything Ford remembers made Stan Stan. He was ready for a hot-headed, angry brother. Not this… shell.

If Ford still opened the door with his crossbow, he would be visibly surprised, sure. His eyes widened, his mouth opened in shock, he even took a step or 2 back. But there was no scream. There was no snarky comment or angry blow up at his behavior. If Ford still shone a light in his eyes Stan still pushed him off him and frowned, but he only said “Stop that.” in a mildly upset voice. When Ford apologized Stan said “It's fine”.

…And that was it. No biting remarks or angry glares. Just an awkward silence as Ford stared at this facsimile of his brother.

When he tells Stan he has to show him something he wouldn't believe, he only asks “What is it?” Even when staring the portal down, while, again, he is shocked. It's only in the generic way you'd see in something like a stock photo, or some guide book on emotions. Only in the basest, least-effort way you could get someone to understand you were displaying shock.

Because that's what it felt like, Ford realizes. A display. Like the emotions weren't real. Or if they were, they were so shallow that might as well be. The display wouldn't even last long. The briefest of flashes before fizzling out unceremoniously and disappearing completely.

Idk maybe something something, Ford finds out what happened somehow, goes bird hunting in some fairytale, fae esque trial of character way or something. My main idea was the Stan making the deal and the empty birdcage Stan that comes as a result.

[nebrasska-alasska]

Is chapter 17 of “we’re gay so let’s have our wrists tethered” really coming out this Sunday?🤭 Is it a juicy one?

I’m so sorry for being so bold asking that, it’s ok if you don’t want to give spoilers or anything, it’s just that I really really love your fics and you got me horribly obssesed,😀 I’m literally in med school rn and can’t stop thinking about those gay hedgehogs😔, I remember refreshing my page in an unhealthy way when you were releasing chapters from The Secrets In Our Quills.

Also I take this opportunity to tell you that I remember you answering an ask and saying that you think your writing is not feeling the same to you anymore or something similar to that, I just want you to know there are thousands of us out here who really value it, cherish it and love it very much and can’t wait for more of your work to be released so pleaseee don’t doubt yourself in that aspect🙏🏻🙏🏻 .I hope you’re doing good yourself and with your school, I have friends and my sister also in dental school and know how hard clinics can be and I as a medical student can understand high pressure😣 so I really hope you’re also saving some time for yourself and your peace of mind.

I’m so sorry this came out so long lmao. Greetings and love from México!!🫶

Yes currently the plan is to publish the next chapter of 'Tethered at the Wrist' (we’re gay so let’s have our wrists tethered trololol) tomorrow! As of right now. Might change. I guess we'll all find out tomorrow evening ;)))

And omg yes it is a juicy one! THE juicy one of the fic, at least, in my opinion. Like obviously fun stuff will still happen after this chapter, but this is kind of what a lot of the story has been building up to. So I've been having a blast finally writing it!!! :D

And thank you so much for your kind words about my writing!!! Truly, brought a tear to my eye, that means so much to me! I actually decided to take a short break this part week from writing and dedicated myself to spending time with my family and focusing on making the hard decision of where I want to go and practice for the next chapter of my life (and truthfully, the weight of it has left me feeling a bit depressed and fatigued). But now that I've sat down to work on the next chapter of 'Tethered at the Wrist,' I can say that the break was very much needed. I'm really pleased with how it's been turning out so far, and I hope it lives up to the juicy hype ;))) But yes, thank you again for your lovely comments!!! <3

[sl-vega]

Hi Vee, I would like to request a sick! gn reader with some of the genshin characters (Yae Miko, Wanderer, Albedo, and Kazuha) where reader can’t really talk all to well cause of said sickness. What sort of shenanigans would ensue as our dear reader tries to communicate. It’d also be really cool if the reader knew a bit of sign language and tried to communicate that way (your choice on whether the characters know it or don’t). Have a lovely morning/day/evening!

NOW I'M (LOVE)SICK

pairings: Yae Miko, Albedo, Wanderer, Kazuha x [GN!] Reader

genre: fluff, established relationship, headcanons/drabbles, canon compliant, sick! reader, reader knows sign language

synopsis: in which your s/o tries their best to make you feel better since you've fallen ill

CW: mild language, potentially ooc, vee doesn't know how to do headcanons so you have been warned

additional notes: lol perfect timing for this request cuz I'm actually sick rn // header credits: yae header by @/k1aya on pinterest, albedo header by @/kuno on pinterest, wanderer header by @/ggoldiz on pinterest, Kazuha header by @/detailuffy on pinterest

YAE MIKO-Divina Vulpes

miss girl would be babying you 100%

kinda acts more like your mom than your s/o in this case tbh

"I told you not to go adventuring in the rain!" but then she goes back to saying shit like "aww you poor thing~, let me get some soup for you"

yae would also tease you too, cuz yk, she's yae miko

since she's not human, I don't think she can get sick, well not any human diseases at least

she tries her best to be there for you though, probably reads a bunch of light novels from her publishing house to help you fall asleep

if you try to communicate via sign language to her, she probably just hushes you and grabs your hands so you stop frantically making hand signs

cuz she wants you to get your rest

I think she does know a little sign language, but she never really committed to learning it, she'd gladly start for you though

ALSO

i think she'd turn into her fox form and let you cuddle with her like she's a stuffed animal

totally not projecting rn

ALBEDO-Princeps Cretaceus

he'd def send sucrose over to check on you if he's busy, but once he's done with his work, he is SPRINTING over to check on you

✨he's a runner he's a track star✨

maybe it's just me but I feel like Albedo would be the type of boyfriend that worries over you a lot

when he does come over, he probably has lots of concoctions that are supposed to clear your throat, but they're probably made of...

less than delicious materials

and you aren't becoming your boyfriend's personal test subject no thank you, not today

since he has a little sister, he knows how to take care of you

probably has experience cuz klee would get super sick after running around in the rain for too long-

makes you chicken soup, and tea, the usual

if you try to communicate with him via sign language due to losing your voice, he'll probably have the same reaction as yae

just forces you to go back to sleep

he def knows sign language (mr. genius🙄) but he wants you to get better as soon as possible

klee also comes over at some point, probably tells you some crazy story about how she tried to blow up dawn winery with diona or smth-

her and Albedo also make some get well cards for you once you fall asleep as well <3

WANDERER-Peregrinus

this mf

if you've heard his voice lines you already know what this bastard would say to you

he'd call you weak and say shit like "a small illness has already rendered you helpless? how pathetic..."

THE FACT I CAN PERFECTLY HEAR HIM SAY THAT-

he's a puppet so he's never been sick cuz he can't get sick either

nahida would probably slap him and scold him and tell him to be nicer though

on the inside he's super concerned about you

lowkey, he's afraid of losing you

not that he'd ever admit it-

(tsundere scara for the win)

he's worried that you're going to end up like the child he used to live with, and that you'll become "powerless before your mortality" as he'd like to say

same as yae + albedo, if you'd try to communicate with him via sign language he'll tell you to sleep

(in a slightly aggressive way but he's scara what do you expect?)

i don't think he knows sign language at all tbh

he'll ask nahida about it and he'll probably start borrowing books from the akidemiya and practices in secret for you

he WILL ruin his sleep schedule for you but he'll probably just brush it off and be like: "meh, it was easy."

when in reality this mf has spent an AGONIZING amount of time just to try and impress you

he'll make you tea too, the bitter kind

the VERY bitter kind

oml this sounds like scara slander 😭 dw I actually really like him

KAEDEHARA KAZUHA-Acer Palmatum

like albedo, he'd be super worried about you

tells beidou that he needs to make sure you're okay before the crux leaves for it's next destination

brings you tea, soup, and writes cute little love poems for you while you rest in his lap

tells you stories about his travels while holding your hand and sappy stuff like that

kazuha is a top tier boyfriend fr fr

unlike the others, if you tried to communicate with him via sign language, he let you teach him certain phrases

i think he knows a little bit due to his travels so he's picked up on a bit of it

he thinks it's really cute of how you try to explain things to him since you can't speak so you probably alternate between the hand signs themselves and pen and paper

VERY attentive to you

"slow down love, we have all the time in the world."

[liriostigre]

would you tell me your 4 favorite books as if it was letterboxd ☺️

Hi 💌 I think I can only make a top 4 of something like, idk, ice cream flavors, but movies or books or songs... that's very hard. You'd have to ask me on my deathbed!

So I'm going to do what I do on Letterboxd, which is the 4 that are on my mind a lot lately:

(Btw, apologies for not mentioning ANYTHING about the plot of these novels! I just like it better this way 😬)

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin — Not only a perfect, brilliant novel but also a perfect TITLE (more talk of this and other titles here). It's a very short novel but it's so packed with complex themes and ideas and underlying meanings. It is just so rich and so entertaining AND so dark! It's bleak as hell! Also James Baldwin's writing is everything. If you don't fw him you don't fw art itself.

The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa — I'm not a big fan of the whole prodigy thing when it comes to artists but this guy was 25 when he published his first novel (this one), meaning he wrote it in in his early 20s, or earlier. It's a masterpiece btw, and it started a whole literary movement in Latin America. This novel is it for me; it is THE Latin American novel (rn! so far!). Unfortunately, the author himself said that the English translation sucked. I mean, they even changed the title for idk what reason! It should be a literal translation: The City and the Dogs, how was that so hard to do? It drives me mad! It really does, I'm always talking about it! (here and here)

January by Sara Gallardo — I haven't mentioned this work or this author but I'm fascinated by her. This novella is what they call a hidden gem. It's devastating. I don't know how she put all that sorrow in it! It broke my heart. Also, what I particularly love about it is that the author doesn't underestimate the reader, not for one second! The whole time I felt as if she really trusted me to understand even the smallest details, as if she fully trusted me to deduce the characters' motivations and their most private feelings even when she described the least telling behaviors.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger — My most recent (re)read and I've been mentioning it a lot lately (here and here). Also a perfect, brilliant, no notes novel. Btw, Franny and Zooey is on my mind a lot too, all the time. I think Salinger is just so sickening and I'm obsessed with his work. He had an exceptional ability to turn the narration over to his characters; completely hand it to them and give them the most authentic voice possible.

[bluewatersfairy]

after hours - j.p.

Read part one here

a/n: sorry this took 8 million years to publish, post-grad lowkey kicking my ass rn.

synopsis: reader is given the green light on a series with Jordan on a trial basis and is determined to show her higher ups that she has what it takes to make a difference in their media engagement.

warnings: none! look at me go 🤠

word count: 2.7k

•••

The next morning, you gave a 30-minute pitch including the “superhero” type story and graphic you’d been working on the night before, and bringing back the mini mic series with Jordan Poole.  Everyone took the superhero story well and you were told to make it into a graphic that could be used for home games, and the season opener.  This was a big deal and you were still riding that high when your boss broke the rather shitty news regarding the mini mic series.

It turns out the reason they didn’t pursue it further the previous season was because it took up a lot of time.  Editing it together, getting footage for it and finding stuff that would engage Jordan past his introduction – it was all too much.  Some members of the team agreed that it was good publicity, but it was a lot of work.  Instead of saying yes or no, your boss gave you a proposal because they could tell how much this idea meant to you. 

You had a one-month-trial to run the series.  In that time, you would have to produce at least six videos.  If they did well and you still wanted to continue doing them at the end of the month, they would allow that.  But for this one-month-trial, you would not be paid overtime for the extra work you would put in for the series, and everyone was pretty sure that you were going to have to work overtime. 

Perhaps it wasn’t your smartest move, but you accepted it.  One month and six videos didn’t seem like all that much work, plus they’d just said they loved your superhero story.  This was bound to be an even bigger hit.  If anything, the Jordan Poole stans would eat it up, and he actually talked openly with you.  At least he had at midnight the night before.  You were set. 

You didn’t see Jordan until you were on your way out for the day.  You’d been sent home early because they had found out how late you’d stayed the night before and no one was exactly happy with you.  It turns out it wasn’t just the overtime you’d be working on the mini-mic project that would go unpaid, but all of it.  

“Oh, I have good news,” you said to Jordan, grabbing his hand and pulling him into your office.  He visibly lit up seeing you and you took this as a sign of friendship and let your excitement kind of take over.  

“Yeah, what’s up?” Jordan smiled down at you.  

He was glad to see you were more put together when the sun was up.  As much as he’d enjoyed talking to you, you had left clearly giddy in your own head.  He went as far as calling it cute before shoving the thought elsewhere.  Not appropriate, he reminded himself.  

“They’re gonna let me do a mini-mic series with you, if you’re in?” you smiled hopefully up at him and the hand behind your back had your fingers crossed.  

“Hell yeah,” Jordan said with a massive smile on his face, “I miss them mini mics.”

Your excitement was so clear in that moment and Jordan thought you might actually burst, or hug him.  Instead, you got him to sit down in your chair and pulled up a document you’d spent a majority of the day working on.  

You bent down so you were eye level with the screen and started explaining everything to Jordan.  He took turns between watching your face as you spoke and looking at the screen to see what you were pointing at.  The less professional part of him was hyper aware of how close together you both were.  He could smell your perfume and the shampoo you used and it was something like a spell.  Again, he felt like he’d met you before, more than just seeing you at a game.  Even your voice sounded familiar.  He just couldn’t shake it.

“So,” Jordan started talking after you’d finished your whole breakdown, “we’re gonna do six videos in the next month and if they do well, we get to do them for the rest of the season?”  

“Exactly,” you nodded your head, “these are some of the topics I think would catch people's attention,” you pointed to a small section of the screen, “and these are the dates I think they’ll be more likely to do well on.” 

“You’ve thought this all out, huh?” he turned to face you just as you did and your eyes met.  Your eyes were bright with promise and hope, he felt like he owed you its success.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about it last night,” you confessed with a shrug of your shoulders, “you lit up talking about the mini-mic interviews and we sort of owe you some good publicity.  As much as this is me trying to leave a good impression on my boss, this is me trying to give you something good too.”

Jordan’s smile was genuine and big.  He stood up without thinking it through and wrapped his arms around you.  It surprised you but you returned the hug without a second thought. 

“Thank you,” he mumbled quietly, “it feels like it’s been a while since I’ve seen someone in the media be so on my side.”

“Always,” you found yourself saying without a second thought, “you’ve got a say in this too.”  You pulled out of his hug and took a step back and glanced at the wall clock quickly.

“If there’s ever a topic or question you don’t want to answer, you say the word and I’ll make something up out of thin air if I have to.”  

Slowly, Jordan nodded his head.  What you’d shown him seemed pretty tame and he was open to most questions, especially if they let him have a bit of fun in front of the camera again.  He did enjoy being in front of the camera.  He was pretty sure if this whole basketball thing didn’t work out he could make something of himself as a media personality.

“When do you want to shoot the first video?”

The first video came out three days later at 1:24pm.  The general theme was the return of the mic and Jordan’s summer.  You asked questions about his travels and he gave a funny story that you were able to add picture evidence of to the video.  He was smiley and his happy, goofy self, so naturally, the video took off.  

For things to be somewhat successful, you had decided, the first video needed to blow up and reach as many corners of the internet as possible, not just the basketball community.  As it had been a summer of edits of just about anyone to ever exist, basketball player or not, you made sure to get some “edit-worthy” clips of Jordan in there.  When you asked him what the first thing he did when he got back to the facility, you made sure to have a clip of him shirtless, sweaty, and yummy to accompany it.  

Respectfully, Jordan was one of the most beautiful men you’d had the pleasure of meeting, and anything you captured on camera didn’t do him justice.  Not only did he look good, his natural charm pulled you in in a way that can only be thought of as primal.  It wasn’t so much that you wanted to do things to and with him, but more than you felt wanted and desired under his gaze.  Like he was actually looking at you and taking you in, rather than someone you see in passing.  

You’d hoped you’d captured all that on camera, and it seemed you had.  Literally, the first comment you saw when you opened up Tik Tok when you got home was ‘I need him in a biblical way.’  That was the type of response that was gonna keep people coming back and it was for sure, going to make people want to watch.  

Over the next 24 hours, you watched the comments, likes, and views come in.  The Wizards following was going up and the views on the recent videos were more than triple the previous ones.  More importantly, people wanted more of Jordan and the mini-mic.  This type of response was going to guarantee you a season long series.  You were so excited.  

The following video did just as well. Jordan talked about his cats and what they’re like and a bit about his Mum and how she had told him that there was no excuse for missing from the free throw line because there was no one guarding him.  You’d stayed late one night with Jordan to get shots of him practising and had made sure to get some thirst-trap worthy footage when he was at the free throw line.  

“Respectfully,” Jordan grinned as you’d scrolled through the photos and videos with him after the fact, “no one has ever captured me like this.  Whatever you’re doing is working.” 

The first time a Jordan-edit crossed your FYP with footage from your videos, you’d jumped up and screamed.  Your roommate had actually come running from the kitchen with a shoe in hand, assuming there was a bug somewhere.  When you’d told them why you’d screamed, still jumping around happily with your phone replaying the same part of ‘heartbreaker’ by Justin Bieber, they’d just thrown the shoe at you and left.  This felt like things were working out how you wanted them too and your dreams were coming true. 

“Can I ask you a question?” Jordan had said one day when he’d come into your office to approve of the third video you wanted to put out.  You were going for a different vibe with this one to switch it up and hopefully show that you had variety. 

“What’s up?” you asked in return as you turned to face him in your chair.

He smiled at you and turned to look over your whiteboard quickly.  His eyes were cast to his shoes for a second, his hands shoved in his short pockets.  

“What is the job you actually want to be in?” he asked, only looking up to meet your eyes after he finished his sentence.  “You’ve put too much into this to just want to be a photographer.”

You smiled at him and chewed at your bottom lip nervously, “I went to school for political journalism, so you would be right.”

“So why are you here?”  he leant forward as he asked and you felt yourself grow warm.  You weren’t sure if it was his question or the way he was looking at you but it was a pleasant type of warmth – like getting into a warm bed in a freezing cold room. 

“When it popped up, it felt like it was meant to be,” you shrugged, answering honestly, “the way I feel about this team, it never mattered if we were losing or bottom of the league.  I was happy to be here and I was gonna keep supporting, regardless.  I figured that’d be a good quality for someone on the media team, so I applied without really thinking too much about it.”

“I’m glad you did,” Jordan responded quietly, sincerely.  He nodded his head at you before standing up properly and taking a step closer to you.  

“How did the ASMR turn out?”

You turned back to face your computer screen and handed him your earphones.  You’d spent a lot of time on this asmr segment of the mini-mic series – you even recorded some extra sounds for the layered effect.  You wanted it to be relaxing, but to also highlight the smoothness of Jordan’s voice.  You’d edited a separate bloopers video for it as well so it would count as one of the six for the month.  Depending how it performed, you thought I’d be a fun thing to do once a month.  

“You might be a lil too good at all this,” Jordan grinned as he took the earphones out, “I don’t even know how you can pull all this shit together so quickly.”  He shook his head and you looked up at him smiling. 

“You make it so easy,” you shrugged, “most people have some awkward habits in front of the camera, but you make it all look like second nature.  If I did this with any other player, it wouldn’t be this good, I promise you.”

“I feel like Kyle would be smooth,” he countered, “he’s slick on camera.”

“Nah,” you shook your head, “he’s not like you and me though.  That’s part of the magic, y’know?  Our chemistry.  It makes everything that much better.”

Chemistry, Jordan turned the word over in his head a few times.  You were aware of the chemistry you had with one another.  It wasn’t something he was making up in his head.  

“You and me,” he agreed slowly with a smile, “we’re the dream team.”

“Exactly!” you exclaimed with a smile that would have melted the ice caps.  “That’s why this has got to be a season-long series.  You’re too good of a person and ball player to get buried under criticism.”  You nudged him with your shoulder as you complimented him and you watched as his ears got red.  Were you really making him shy?

“Y/N,” your boss boomed from your doorway, forcing both you and Jordan to return to serious faces, “can I speak to you in my office please?”  They walked off before you could answer and you and Jordan shared a look.

“It could be good news,” he tried to reassure you with a hopeful smile.  You shrugged, took a deep breath and started to shoo him out of your office.  

“Go do your job,” you ushered him off and he playfully acted hurt before winking at you and jogging off towards the locker rooms.  

“This isn’t an easy conversation to have,” your boss said as you sat down across from her.  You were more nervous now than before but you knew you hadn’t done anything wrong, whatever it was, it was a word of warning or caution.  You were okay. 

“We have strict rules here that there is to be no romantic relationships between our media staff and the players.  Technically, we are separate from them but everything we do revolves around them.” She paused and you took that as the moment to defend yourself.

“I promise, ma’am, there’s nothing going on between me and any of the players-”

“This isn’t just about what is currently happening,” she cut you off, “it’s what is ultimately going to happen if you continue to have such close relationships with the players.”

Players, plural, but you knew where this was going.  How could you not?  Jordan was in your office every day and you were constantly editing videos of him.  Truthfully, you were rarely not thinking about Jordan.  When you weren’t editing, you were planning and if you weren’t planning, you were checking on how the videos were doing, and when you weren’t doing all that, sometimes you really were just thinking about Jordan.  

“I like you, Y/N,” your boss interrupted your thoughts, “you are incredibly creative and have made it clear that you’re here to make this team better, not just to work.  But you and I both know this isn’t the job you see yourself doing in 20 years, and I don’t want something to happen that will affect the rest of your career.  Politics is a lot more cutthroat than sports, and it’s even worse when you’re a woman.  I’m saying this as someone who has been in your shoes, not as your boss,” she reached her hand out to grab yours.

“Be smart and put your career first.  He’s just a basketball player.”

Except he wasn’t just a basketball player, you thought to yourself as you walked out of the office, he was your friend.  Beyond that, he was a man that actually looked at you, and saw you.  He could read your moods and always knew the right thing to say.  Worst of all, you’d only known him for a few weeks.  Imagining how much closer the two of you would get over this season, after that conversation, made you feel sick.  

Maybe this all wasn’t such a good idea.

[seireiteifics]

KNOW YOUR WRITER

For @bleachsmutfest. 😊🩷

Blog Name

Seireiteifics

Masterlist link or link to ao3 etc

AO3, Tumblr

When did you start writing fan fiction?

Uh… I wanna say 2010? (Too young, that’s for sure.)

When did you start writing Bleach fan fiction?

I began properly at the beginning of this year!

What got you into writing fan fiction in general?

I think it was because I wanted to be like my aunt who is 7 years older than me. She was more like a sister figure to me than anything so I always wanted to be doing what she was. I looked up fanfic on fanfiction.net one day, was writing a POTC/Naruto fic the next. 🫣

Do you write smut?

I’m trying to start!

Favourite Kinks to write (if you write smut)

Breeding

Least favourite kinks to write: (will write them but don't like them)

Uhhh not sure yet

Will never write these kinks

Watersports, tbh any piss kink, vore, dub-con/non-con, etc, etc.

Favourite Characters to write

Assuming this is for Bleach: Shunsui, Kenpachi, Jushiro, Kisuke

Any characters you would not write?

Yhwach, minors, it’s too late to think but that covers a large portion of who I won’t write for from Bleach

Link one of your favourite Bleach fic you have written:

It’s Just A Sign of the Times

Why is that fic your favourite?

I love fics where the characters are older, maybe more settled down. My current fixation is old man Shunsui so that’s another reason too.

Do you currently take requests?

No

Favorite Bleach quote

"Honor? Is that what you are all talking about? Then let us speak instead of our duty to the Gotei 13. Honor will not protect the world. I do not believe that using evil to defeat evil is itself an evil act."

Favorite color

I don’t have one but the most pleasing color to me ig is pastel blue 😅

Choice of beverage when you are in writing mode:

Coffee

If comfortable, share some of your struggles as a writer:

All of it. 🫠😂 The current struggle is trying to figure out that line with smut between making the actions clear and mixing emotion into it.

Any word of advice you want to share with new writers who have yet to publish something but are shy/scared?

Sometimes you just have to start. It’s going to be scary, but everyone starts somewhere. Practice makes progress. No matter how much you put it off you will always have room to grow. So if you wish to publish your works then just go ahead!

A message to your readers?

Surprise! None of my entries (as of rn at least) are Shunsui!! More diversity. 🤣

[e77y]

i love LOVE ur writing (& understand that sometimes things take a while.. lol i haven't posted in months) BUT i would love to hear about some things ur working on. or even just ideas u have.! obviously i am obsessed w grant (partially bc of how u write him actually haha ) but i would also love to hear abt any dndads fics in general ! ^_^

AHH TYSM!! This is so so sweet :’) I really love how you write Grant too! like sooo much. And I would love to hear about any of your ideas/drafts too actually 🙏

And YEAH as always there are a billion DnDads fic ideas (and lots of D20 stuff rn too) swirling around in my head haha, but I haven’t had a lot of time or energy for fic writing in a long time :( It makes me so sad bc I really WANT to but I just. can’t 😭 This semester in particular has been kind of draining creatively, because I’ve been doing a lot more creative writing in my courses/extracurriculars, which has been SUPER cool (I’m getting some published work and performances out there!!) buuuut sometimes a girl just needs to write his silly fanfic yk? 💔

ANYWAY ramble aside.. I think the main thing is that I really want to finish the final chapter of that one incomplete Scary/Lincoln fic I have. The annoying thing is that I’m like 70% done with it and have been for like a YEAR, but then I hit perhaps the most intense patch of writer’s block I’ve ever had 😭 Sighhh. I need to sit down and finish it someday soon bc I hate leaving it unfinished, but I also really truly want to revisit it. Perhaps this summer 🤞 which is. scarily soon omg. I still have so much left to do this semester 😭😭

But ofc the BIG project I want to work on is my Silver Linings series. I have three additional planned fics (shorter than the first part): one about Grant’s high school years (9-12th grade) with a focus on his friendships with the other guys (and also Andy lol); one about Grant and Marco reconnecting when Grant moves back to San Dimas for his librarian internship the summer going into his Library Science MA (so they’re like 23 or 24-ish?), and one concurrent with the original fic (set in 8th grade) but from Darryl’s perspective instead of Grant’s that looks more into Darryl’s relationships with Carol and the Oak-Garcias and his own mental health. I have ALL of them outlined, albeit not super thoroughly, but I can barely get through the first like 100 words of any of them before I get frustrated and overwhelmed by the scope of the project haha. I think it’s bc Silver Linings was originally something I went into not thinking I was even going to finish, let alone post, let alone write MORE chapters of and actually complete them all 😭 so I wasn’t so intimidated as I am now. Since I want my additions to the series to be at least half-decent yk

Some other DnDads things… there’s a big Wilsons-centric character study (who would’ve guessed HAHA) about dance that I really want to write. Because lots of them have some connection to dance! Darryl does his secret dancing classes, Grant and Marco do ballroom, Lincoln also took dance classes, and even Scary “when the beat drops, I can’t stop” Marlowe lol. I have a bunch of vignettes outlined for it. Same for a Darryl character study I want to do bc that man IS aromantic and I have a million little anecdotes I want to write about, but it’s such a Big thing that it’s daunting

Hmm what else brb opening my Google Docs ummmmmmm lol the first thing is a very silly crack-treated-seriously explicit Henry/Mercedes draft that I started for a word randomizer prompt challenge thingy. They are having bizarre hippie crystal sex. There is also a Nark one which is kinda crazy for me but the concept is um. It just works best with these two characters. I’m not gonna nsfwpost on main since I’m not gonna tag this post or whatever but like LOL. I might actually finish that one soon…? Would be an insane comeback to fic writing 😭 but I have actually been working on it for funsies so

Apart from that, I’ve got lots of oneshot ideas floating around. Mostly Grant angst or Darryl angst or Lincoln angst HAHAHHAA but also a healthy dose of Lark and/or Sparrow angst. No super interesting concepts, but maybe I’ll look closer or remember something good and rb this with more stuff. AND also a huge polydads (yes I am including Ron in this. Ron is always included. to me 🫶) teacher AU that I don’t think I’ll ever write anything for, but I do have a loose plot for it and teaching positions for all the dads hehe. Otherwise, it’s been mostly D20 Fantasy High stuff (specifically Riz- and/or Fabian-centric angst bc obvi. also lots of Fabian/Mazey stuff bc I like them. and I like dance as a lens through which to examine relationships and gender roles within them) and also um…. my superrrrr old fandoms that I’ve been revisiting for nostalgia’s sake 🫣

Okay sorry for the massive ramble omg I just realized how much I’ve typed? And it’s like. not even really coherent at all. But thank you for asking omg!! And for always being so supportive about my writing (and in general)! :’D ❤️❤️

[cvntoid]

Get to know your mutuals :)

ttthhhhhhannkkkssss for tagging me, darling @strang3lov3 :)))

What’s the origin of your blog title?: i’ve talked about this quite a few times, but to reduce it very concisely, it’s a bastardization and a nod to a fertility festival and fictional town in Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series. it’s a reference to… you know. cum. and fertility. there’s a traditional song about “come, commala”.

favourite fandoms: the culkinfolk. that’s just…. my bread and butter rn. also the dastmalchianfuckers. but i do write so much culkin content right now it’s insane. it’s just the most relaxed fuckin gross group of people that truly seem to appreciate what’s going down and don’t get weird. well - yknow. not weird in a bad way, at least :)))

otp(s)/shipname: no. although, consider @strang3lov3 // me. uhhhh

favorite color: blue and purple, but especially combined.

favorite game: ANIMAL CROSSING NEW HORIZONS!!! honorable mentions include Mischief Makers for the N64 and The Grinch for Gameboy Color.

song stuck in your head: i’m actively listening to “dried up, tied, and dead to the world” by marilyn manson. he’s a fuckin gutterfuck piece of shit, but nostalgia rules everything around me and it makes my clit hard so fuck off and tell your mama if you’re mad

weirdest habit/trait?: rubbing and tugging my eyebrows. pushing my septum plug around. cracking my… everything. needing to fold my legs up somehow in every seat i have or i’m extremely uncomfortable (read: queer)

hobbies: writing porn, long ass fucking walks/bike rides, talking shit, reality tv and rotting.

if you work, what’s your profession?: not willing to share my job, nextttt

if you could have any job you wish what would it be?: a mortician, or perhaps a published author.

something you’re good at: noticing everything at all times. writing porn. untying knots. doodling. making people laugh. dropping things constantly.

something you’re bad at: math. focusing. both folding AND putting away laundry in one go.

something you love: clouds. when i say something stupid and it makes somebody unexpectedly laugh.

something you could talk about for hours off the cuff: historical UFO and cryptic sightings and cases and especially how it relates to the pacific northwest, and also notes on the history of spirit photography and the advent of early versions of photoshopping and seance schemes.

something you hate: moths. cilantro. when i wash my hands and it makes my sleeves wet.

something you forget: everything, all the time, constantly.

what’s your love language?: bitchy banter. cooking for them. being thought of, a la “this reminded me of you!”

favorite movie/tv show: early-aughts reality tv - Jersey Shore is my ultimate comfort show. horror movies, especially found footage. bad romcoms. stuff that’ll make me fuckin cry.

favorite food: olives, mushrooms, nachos, umm…. SOUPS.

favorite animal: little bitchy dogs. otters. snakes. cats. jellyfish.

are you musical?: i can hold a note? so. idk

what were you like as a child?: weird, super friendly, getting into trouble for making people laugh and being like, the annoying funny/weird kid in class.

favorite subject at school: art and english.

least favorite subject: history, math.

what’s your best character trait?: i'm real big on listening and being empathic and like, trying to be mindful and thoughtful of my people. also... again.... i'm pretty good at crackin a damn joke.

what’s your worst character trait?: i'm really sensitive and needy. i cry easy. i ignore everything around me and hibernate when i'm in a funk.

if you could change any detail of your day right now what it it be?: mmmm, gathering the willpower to do a few chores instead of being a lazy horny shit.

if you could travel in time who would you like to meet?: jeez, uh... Gef the Mongoose.

recommend on your your favorite fanfics (spread the love): i'm reaching waaaaay back into my ancient fandom days, here, to recommend Hiddle Me This on AO3. this thing is a fucking beast and, despite not being into Tom Hiddleston anymore (outside like, hot Loki shit) it's such a famous fucking wild monster and such a throwback. stalking, control, slow sexy build up, like.... it's massive and insane.

tagging @angelsanarchy @kappasbbgirl @starry-eyed-wild-child @xmunsn @luiscarrutherss

[bandedbulbussnarfblat]

Get to know your mutuals :)

Thank you for tagging me, @queer-is-future 💜

Reading: Stanyan Street & Other Sorrows by Rod McKuen. Published way back in the 60s. Rod Mckuen apparently was a big deal as a song writer, and was the best-selling poet in America for a bit. I got it for free from somewhere, one of those bins you can put free books in for strangers to take. It was a birthday gift to someone back in 1969, though I can't read the hand-writing well enough to make out the names. The ink is pretty faded. The whole thing is about love and loss, and it's mostly romantic relationships, but there's this sorrow that seeps into it all that's relatable to anyone whose ever grieved the loss of a person from their life, whether a friend you lost touch with, or someone who died.

Last song: Only Love Can Hurt Like This - Paloma Faith

Last film: Tbh, I can't remember the last movie I had it through. I think Sinners. Movies are so long these days. I can't pay attention for a whole 2 hours. That's why I prefer shows, the episodes are shorter and I can take breaks between them to give my brain a break.

Last series: Sirens on Netflix. I love media that has complicated sibling relationships, especially if there's some sort of issue with one of the parents. And this show gave me that. We had a messy older sister who dropped out of school to take care of her younger sister, then later gets stuck caring for their sick father alone, something she is clearly in over her head with. A younger sister who will do anything to run away from her past and wants nothing to do with her negligent father. I can't say the plotting or pacing was perfect, and the ending felt off, but I did enjoy the sisters' relationship, and how they both reacted so differently to their childhood trauma.

Sweet/salty/savory: Sweet. I've always had a sweet tooth. Chocolate, caramel, butterscotch, all the flavors. Cake, pies, muffins, cupcakes, cheesecakes, cinnamon rolls, honey, turnovers, donuts, pastries, candied pecans, desserts of all kinds (except if it has coconut; coconut only belongs in a pina colada, and I can't drink anymore on my meds). Unfortunately, dessert foods tend to be heavy in dairy and I'm lactose intolerant. But it's worth the pain, even with the lactaid pills.

Coffee or tea: Coffee. I've been drinking at least a cup every morning since I was 8. (I had undiagnosed ADHD; the caffeine didn't make me hyper, so my parents were cool with it. I just wanted to use my cool The Little Mermaid mug, bc I was obsessed with that movie as a kid. I'd watch it every.single.day.) At one point in my life I was drinking 2 pots of coffee a day. I'm drinking it rn, bc I don't want to sleep. It isn't actually gonna help me stay awake bc it's just normal coffee and I need like, at least 3 shots of espresso to do anything.

I do have to mention I like sweet tea, bc I'm from the south where we measure things like sugar and butter with our hearts, not tools, so the iced tea is extra sweet. And my Momma just sent me some today, and she makes it right, whereas my Daddy, bless his heart, thinks 1 cup of sugar means 1 cup. Not that you take your measuring cup and scoop down as deep as you can get so you have a little sugar castle.

Working on: So many different fics that desperately need updating. Also a few prompt lists/generators. And a handful of other creative stuff to keep my brain busy. But also, trying to gather all the documents I need for the disability bastards who I've been fighting what feels like forever. Despite the fact both my psychiatrist and my therapist say I'm unable to work, as I can't leave my house without having panic attacks or complete meltdowns. But I digress.

Not fun: The panic inducing nightmares I've been having nearly every night lately. I've always had very vivid (and weird) dreams, and I can usually recall them pretty well. These I can't. I just wake up terrified, with the only memory that something bad happened to me, something wrong. Waking up and immediately launching into a panic attack is the opposite of fun. Also, my physician thinks I may have fibromyalgia, so I have to go back and get labs done to check for that and rheumatoid arthritis, bc my muscles are so stiff I physically can't relax and it hurts all the time. Especially my jaws and neck. But no one ever takes me seriously when I tell them about that. They just act like I'm exaggerating. Until now. During the phase of my life where I literally can't drive myself anywhere, bc I'm a danger to myself and others on the road due to the panic attacks.

Fun: Playing with my dog. Writing. Doing my silly creative projects. Tbh, I'm not in a good place rn, so I'm not having a lot of fun.

I know I'm supposed to tag some mutuals, but y'all follow me. If you see this and we're mutuals consider yourself tagged. Whoever wants to play can, whoever doesn't can keep scrolling. ✌

[simonnebethel]

Writeblr Introduction

Just learned what a writeblr intro is so I'm gonna make one before I go to bed lol

I've already done something like this a few days ago but that was when I had no clue what I was doing lmao, so might as well make a more in depth one

About me:

20, she/her, bi

American

I write mostly fantasy and urban fantasy, and honestly i dont think i've ever written a story that was non-fantasy lol

Started writing when I was 10, but it was mostly Warrior Cats fanfiction on Wattpad lol. I went through a writing slump for most of highschool but last year I decided to get back into it since I'm not doing anything else lol

I like to read fantasy and classic lit, also anything with vampires. I also have a soft spot for slowburn romances where the main characters dont kiss until, like, the 4th book heehee

In love with anything gothic, vampire, and wlw 👩‍❤‍💋‍👩

I think one of my more niche interests is any early 2000s fantasy/sci-fi movie with a nu-metal/rock/alternative soundtrack like Queen of the Damned and The Crow. They are just...*chefs kiss*

My current stories:

A Chant for Blood (Formerly known as Account of Calamity)

Account of Calamity is a gothic victorian fantasy about a Grand Marshal, Karliah Helisende, and a blood-drinking fiend, Yorick Gwynplaine, who work together to investigate the mysterious portals that spawn dangerous creatures into the city of Isarnan, all the while Karliah is being haunted by the mysterious ancient temple that watches over her every move.

I'm currently working on the second draft, and I may start looking for beta readers once I'm finished, although I know I'm not far from finished with this novel. I also plan to make it a 4 or 5 book series, and slowly add a slowburn romance.

12/30/24 - Second draft has been finished!!

Looking for beta readers! Look here!

Our Demonic Hearts - The Craven Pact Series #1

Our Demonic Hearts is a urban fantasy about a cambion woman, Ana Kravens, haunted by her past. Taking place in a small Mississippi town, a man she went through a traumatic incident with, Beau Motloe, shows up on her doorstep one day with a deal; help him find his missing mother, and he'll give back the memories she lost during the traumatic incident. Her father, a demonic creature of unknown origin, wants nothing more than the Motloes dead, claiming that they were the very reason his daughter was almost killed 6 years ago. Ana goes against her father's wishes and accepts Beau's deal, suspecting that her father isn't telling the whole truth about that fatal night.

It is completed and available on Wattpad and Royal Road!! It was just a small project I had done for Nanowrimo, and has been edited at least once before being published. However, I plan to make it a trilogy and maybe have some spin-offs. This story is fairly new, but most of the characters are at least 5 years old and I love them very much <3

My Plans for 2025:

Finish my fantasy romance novel, To Hear a Lovebird by February 28(currently sitting at 48k out of an estimated 60k!)...and give it a new name 😅

Start the first draft of The Craven Pact #2, which is called Our Sacred Memories!

Down the road, I may start another short story...I am not sure.

Create a Instagram account for writing...I'm not sure. We will see.

Begin the next editing phase for my Victorian fantasy novel, A Chant for Blood! I am itching to get back to working on it. I have many plans for it.

What I planned for 2024:

Finish the second draft of A Chant for Blood and look for beta readers(In the beta reader phase!) ✅

Start the second novel of The Craven Pact Series(Outline complete)

Write a short story/novella or two taking place within the A Chant for Blood universe. My brain is currently exploding with ideas rn ✅

Write a short story about Ana Kraven's mom and how she met Marchosias, Ana's father. ❌

Plan something for Nano?? Idk where I'll be in November lol (Finish a project I started in february, which is To Hear a Lovebird!)(14/22 chapters done!)

I'm interested in following other writers and reading everybody's stories! I would also be interested in a beta read/beta swap ^^

Other sites I'm on:

Wattpad: LillithOfBees

Royal Road: SimonneBethel

Bluesky: Simonne-Bethel

18+ Writing discord!!!

[atouchofireland]

PR Perception & Consequences: Luke Newton

[This analysis is from the perspective of a lover of story with a Masters in Publishing & Writing, with ties to a publicist with 20+ years experience.]

I didn't watch Bridgerton until a while after s2 came out. Partly because I hesitate with new shows and mainly because I hate waiting years between seasons.

I LOVE Derry Girls because it clicks with my mainly Irish family. So, I knew who Nicola was as Clare before watching Bridgerton, but nothing else.

That leads into the LN assumptions.

From what I can tell as a general viewer of the show and Social Media, he came from musical theater and Disney stuff in the UK before landing the Colin role in his mid 20's.

During this time, aka 2019/2020-2023, LN had a gf named Jade for that whole time.

Media reported that they'd broken up some time at the end of filming in June 2023. Then, there is some reports saying he got with his current partner, mere months later in at least 8/23 if not sooner. (Nic is known for keeping her even longterm relationships a secret, but Luke's previous gf would post a few pics and vids here and there.)

This is where PR should've started to protect his image before the first premiere and press tour even happened.

At this point, late 2023, Luke has not posted even a hint of his supposed app gf anywhere. Then he leaves for a 6-month world tour with his friend, of 5 years that he has easy chemistry with, but now they both are not with longtime partners.

LN leaned into the romantic press interviews with his friend because he was comfortable with her and it promoted the show.

Here's where his friends as PR shows dumbass judgment.

I believe I saw something about the app gf attending the 1st premier in London, before the tour, but it wasn't paparazzi-d. Whereas, after the WT, the 1st LN news was pap photos with this girl at the after party 2nd half premier. Basically, PURPOSEFULLY taking the romance illusion away from the couple that the actors built for the months leading up to this.

Bad PR leads off from here: self-described introvert Luke goes to Milan with 'gf',' fair enough it's fashion week. But, THEN he's BACK in Italy on "holiday." Getting paparazzi pics of him they didn't even get on his World Press Tour. Then possibly in Greece, continuing some vacation? So much of this shit makes zero sense both PR-wise and normal person-wise.

For example of good PR capitalizing on lead roles: Nicola is on a movie rn, she's part of A-list representation, she's possibly a future bond girl. Johnny Bailey was shooting a drama, Wicked, and his Bridgerton cameos at the same time. Simone is starring in a motion picture out soon.

The rumors of LN's friend Rory running his socials is horrible because: 1) Rory seems like a douchebag who wants more shirtless pictures of himself on his non-famous account than of his gf. 2) He puts Luke's skinny "similar to his gf" wannabe influencer gf on his instagram without hyping up any on Luke's actual work and projects.

This all gives off the vibe of this friend being resentful, taking advantage of Luke breaking up with his longterm gf and deciding to get more built for the show, and convincing him he needs the "hot rebound" for himself and image. As always, that gross straight man is wrong. All his friends say he's so sweet and quiet and genuine.

How I perceive him from his own press: Had a supportive, longterm gf who was also an aspiring actor as they were both coming up in their early 20's. LN started working out so much to get lean & abs to feel on-par with the other Bridgerton guys. Him and his gf grew apart, maybe even felt resentment, while LN was shooting so long for BS3. Shooting raps.

This is the overall perception that makes me and I think many others so mad: Luke had a sweet, curvy, talented gf for 4 years. And he was a thicker tall guy, not fat, not skinny, not ripped but amazingly curvy in the male way that's rare. He got all built for Bridgerton when Nic refused cuz it isn't necessary for the characters. And after all this real-life and on-screen romance with a mid-size woman, after becoming a "muscly man," he shows up with a stick-figure wanna be dance influencer.

His actions of allowing his pr/friend to paint him as if he gets "hot women" now that he's "desirable" is what makes me fucking sick about the perception of him and I think this is why so many Bridgerton fans in the SM sphere got the ick.