#children love being hung from the ceiling by their feet

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

i love having characters just say stuff. did you know you can do that? doesnt even have to be true, you dont even need to know if it's true, just that they believe it. anyway. missy voice: children love me

[thelampisaflashlight]

I work in a very old barn, not the oldest in the county, but quite old indeed.

The ceiling beams are made of full trees with the bark still on.

The walls are carefully laid stone.

And I find a peace in the age of the building.

But the mind does wander.

The ceiling above creaks, the steps of folks walking above my head, and I can trace their movements through the rooms upstairs without seeing the path they'll take.

I know where most everything is, despite the upstairs not being an exact mirror of our shop down below.

There are more nooks and crannies, but after three trips up the stairs for a curious glance, I memorized it, if only due to my fondness for old, once loved things.

I think about the cabinet sat along a narrow hallway lined with children's toys and porcelain knickknacks, and how it was, at a time, filled with old camera's that remind me of a friend.

Lots of little things in that place remind me of someone.

Not all living.

Not all passed.

In a way, that place reminds me of home.

Of objects I lost long ago, all piled up somewhere new.

And I find I don't long for or miss them as much, seeing them organized in a cozy sort of clutter.

But I digress.

As I said, I work in a very old barn, sat beneath a place where other very old, and perhaps older, things come to rest.

A place where old doorways can be seen in the seams of walls.

Where windows sit boarded over and hidden from view behind tall shelves.

And yesterday I wondered aloud, "Who would haunt a place like this?"

A thought that hung in the air.

Brought a laugh from a customer's mouth and a look that seemed all too knowing.

We wave it off.

And as I walked home, following a path by the towering ears of corn, it was kept far from my mind.

Who would haunt a place like this?

As I swing the bag in my hands, tins of cat food bought with money pressed into my palms by the older ladies who insist upon it, "I'll just give you twice as much next time if you don't take it now!"

My boot laces catch for a third time that day, and I am humbled yet more by the stumbling of my own feet and the awkward squawk I let out.

The tips of my ears turn red in my embarrassment, and I am reminded for the third time that day that I need to be more careful walking along the roads here, because there's no sidewalks, only soft earth and plenty of sticks to trip upon.

Who would haunt a place like this?

Leftovers for dinner, a contented cat with a full belly, and thoughts still on the barn.

I would.

[bluebellabubbles24]

Love in the Lunar Cycle

Note: First post kinda free handing this for practice. OcXOc don’t know what I’m doing.

Tags?: A/B/O (with a twist-ish), Lesbian, friends to lovers, fluff, mutual pinning, PG-13…

TW: Possessiveness? (Just to be safe), cursing.

*******************

Everything was fine. Famous words for any one person to utter before some kind of tragedy. Well perhaps a tragedy is a bit of an exaggeration for what is going on in Luella’s life at this time. Her and her best friend were getting ready for the annual ball that they, as newly eligible wolfs, were now expected to attend. Most of her turmoil was because although she was excited to attend she had no desire to meet her supposed mate.

She hears her friend Jun sigh softly beside her as they get all dolled up for the ball her dark forest green eyes looking at herself in the mirror skeptically.

“I know we don’t have a choice but I wish we could skip this.” Jun’s soft voice brakes the comfortable silence they had as they got ready before turning her viridian hues towards Luella.

“I know, but think about who’s all gonna be there. You’ll get to meet other Omegas then you won’t be stuck hanging around this scary Alpha.” Luella grins teasing her friend slightly wanting to cheer up the smaller girl.

In the reflection of the mirror she can see Jun give a small smile before rolling her eyes and continue getting ready.

“Scary Alpha, my butt.” Jun mutters, flipping her long brown hair before it once again curves to frame her soft round face. “Only time you’re scary is when someone tries to steal your food or touch me in front of you”

“I’m a growing girl of course I get protective over what’s mine. Come on now Junjun we got a ball to get to and new friends to make.” Luella smiles brightly turning on the balls of her feet doing a dramatic twirl before walking out the door.

———————————>

It’s loud; that is made obvious before they even walk into the building holding the ball. Jun is looking around nervously as she walks closely behind Luella, her fingers pinching part of Luella’s thin coat much like she did when they were children. Feeling the soft tug on her clothes Luella can’t help but feel a sense of warmth filling her chest knowing her friend still feels safe clinging to her and her alone. Slowly Luella reaches back and laces there fingers together, giving Juns hand a reassuring squeeze as they walk into the building.

The building itself was beautiful. Tall pillars that reach the high vaulted ceilings arch, forming almost a cathedral. The decor was simple, nothing too elaborate or distracting. They walked through the halls before reaching the ball room where a large chandelier hung from the ceiling, illuminating the room with what seemed to be hundreds, if not thousands, of candles.

“It’s gorgeous” Jun whispers. Luella was only able to hear her over the music by being so close to her side.

“It is.” Luella agrees before turning her honey topaz eyes to Jun and smiling. “And you wanted to miss this.” She teases moving closer to her friends ear making sure she was heard clearly.

“Oh hush.” Jun huffs pushing Luella’s face away pretending to get irritated but Luella could see the corners of her friends lips turned up in a hardly hidden smile at her antics.

Luella grins cheekily before smelling something that makes her mouth water. She starts dragging Jun with her as she follows her nose to a buffet table. Juns eyes rolled as soon as it came into their line of sight. Of course Luella’s nose would take her to food instead of her possible mate. Jun wouldn’t be even slightly surprised if Luella’s mate WAS food. However, that would seem too good to true that Luella would not find her mate and just stay with Jun. If she was honest with herself that’s what Jun wanted but she also wanted Luella to be happy.

“Junbug you should try this avocado stuff. It’s so gooood!” Luella moans, moving a chip with some kind of avocado salad stuff on it close to Juns mouth offering a bite. Jun looks at it skeptically as if inspecting it for anything she wouldn’t like in it. “Junjun you know I wouldn’t offer something if I thought you wouldn’t like it. Come on, I know what you like by now.” Luella says in an alluring tone moving the chip side to side trying to entice Jun into taking the bite.

“Actually it’s about fifty fifty on if you are giving me something good or something you know I would hate just to see my reaction.” Jun sighs, looking unmoved by Luella’s attempts to get her to eat the chip.

“Please. I promise it’s good.” She tries again, giving Jun puppy dog eyes that she knows are her weakness. “Please.” She adds once more, a slight whine to her tone.

“Dammit, fine!” Jun groans exasperated, moving to take the chip from Luella only for her to pull it back and grin wickedly.

“Bite.” She says. Her honey eyes almost glowing amber in her delight. Jun smiles and leans forward eating the chip between her fingers careful to not get her hand. Jun looks at Luella and hums in satisfaction tasting the guacamole salad chip dip thing.

“It’s good” She says, smiling. Luella grins back, showing off her white teeth, before taking another bite.

“Told you. I’m gonna go get us something to drink; any requests before I go?” Luella asks curiously.

“Hmm . . . Strawberry Lemonade? If they have it.” Jun says. A small smile graces her lips before she sits down at the closest chair, which happens to be only a few steps away at another table.

“Okay. I’ll be back Junbug, don’t have too much fun without me.” Luella says with a wink, knowing Jun is to much of a wallflower too actually leave that spot till she came back.

Luella leaves and not long after Jun feels eyes on her. She sinks in her chair a bit wanting to hide as her eyes sweep the crowd, tentatively looking for whomever is making her currently feel like prey. After a bit her emerald eyes meet clear sapphire orbs. Juns body tenses as she looks back at the stranger staring at her. It was a woman with long midnight black hair, her dress doing a wonderful job of showing her long, gorgeous legs. . . She was stunning. Feeling flustered and nervous with Luella gone Jun looks down at the table as she sees the woman starting to approach her. The clicking of her heels sound much louder in Jun’s sensitive ears the closer the she gets.

“Hello, My name is Victoria. May I ask your name, darling?” Victoria asks, with a voice as smooth as velvet. She slowly moves to sit across from Jun, propping her elbow on the table to rest her chin on the back of her hand.

“Juniper. . . It’s nice to meet you” Jun’s soft voice comes out a bit shaky as her hands fiddle with the hem of her dress.

“The pleasure is all mine. Would you care for a dance?” Victoria smiles, a strong scent of peppermint and pine hitting Juns nose.

“I-… no thank you. I have two left feet when it comes to dancing.” She says feeling herself getting more anxious. Her eyes darted in the direction Luella went hoping she’ll come back soon.

“I don’t mind. I’ve been told I’m a rather good teacher. If you would like I could show you a few things.” Victoria’s voice comes out as a purr. She moves her free hand across the table, slowly trailing it up Jun’s arm. Jun quickly moves her arm away eyes now fully focused on Victoria.

“Please don’t touch me.” She says. Her voice is trembling a bit and barely over a whisper. She can feel her skin start to prickle before the soothing scent of fresh rain and floral waterlilies makes its way into her nose. The familiar scent made her relax just a bit and soon after she felt Luella’s gentle hand on her shoulder. Luella starts rubbing small circles onto her skin in a calming way causing Jun to lean into her touch as she stares Victoria down.

“Is there a problem here?” Her voice is sharp and straight to the point, her hackles standing on edge. Victoria looks up at her and slowly backs off.

“My apologies. I didn’t realize you already had a mate, little one.” She says, her eyes glancing at Jun before going back to Luella. “You have a lovely mate and a lovely night.” She smiles and calmly takes her leave. Luella stood stiff as a board, her mind racing with what was just revealed to her before looking down at Jun.

“Huh?”

“Wait you mean you didn’t know!?” The surprised tone of her wolf in her subconscious doing very little to snap her out of the confusing thoughts running wild in her head.

“What do you mean ‘wait you didn’t know’? Of course I didn’t know! How did you know before me? Why didn’t you tell me!?” Luella thought through the mental link to her wolf. Jun sitting in silence but the look on her face suggests she is having the same mental conversation with her wolf.

“I thought it was obvious!” Luella’s wolf’s voice almost booms in her head defensively.

“Clearly fucking NOT!” Luella was now blushing a deep red, her hand still on Jun’s shoulder. Luella looks down only able to see a small bit of Jun’s face she leans down, her hand tucking a bit of her brown hair behind her ear so she can see Jun’s face better.

“Hey Jun?” She asks, wanting to get her attention before saying anything else. Jun didn’t respond. Luella’s eyes widen slightly noting a small blush slowly spreading across her cheeks.

“Ah young mates. Remember that?” They hear an older woman not so quietly whisper to her husband, making them blush more. Not wanting any more attention Luella grabs Jun’s hand and drags her outside away from prying eyes and eavesdropping ears. She finds a secluded garden and sits Jun down on a bench.

Luella kneels in front of Jun, her friend… her mate. She slowly lifts her hand to caress Jun’s cheek, her voice soft as she looks at Jun.

“Jun. . . Are you okay?” Her voice is shaky, as if trying to fight something back.

“Fine. Just… I’m your mate.” Jun says. It’s not a question but it doesn’t quite feel like she believes it. “Your mate.” She repeats her green eyes look up locking onto Luella’s topaz irises. Slowly Luella nods her head not braking eye contact.

“Yes… and I’m your mate.” She speaks slowly, trying hard not to naw at her bottom lip. “Is that okay?” She asks unsure, her heart beating a mile a second as she continues to stare at her mate under the full moonlight.

“Okay? Is being my mate okay?” Jun asks slowly before her hands clap over Luella’s cheeks squishing them together. “It’s perfect!” She practically shouts, her eyes wandering all over Luella’s face. Luella can’t help but smile at her words before she starts tearing up. She pulls their faces closer together so their foreheads are resting against one another.

“Perfect… you are so perfect Jun” Luella says with a shaky breaths, feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the emotions.

“So are you.” She whispers breathily.

“Luella?” She asks, getting her attention. Luella can only let out a weak hum in reply, her eyes closing with their heads still resting against each-other.

“May I kiss you?”

The request almost made Luella’s heart stop before beating so fast she thought it might beat out of her chest and she nods. Opening her topaz eyes she leans in, once again pushing a strand of Jun’s hair back behind her ear.

“Of course my love… anything you want.” Luella whispers. Jun leans in and so does she, meeting her halfway as their lips connect. It’s soft and sweet, their lips fitting together like the perfect puzzle pieces.

[restless-soulz]

original story ideas I’ll probably never write

There's a large tower and i'm holding a briefcase of tools to fix electrical equipment at the very top. we go up until there's only room for one person to squeeze themselves through and i go up. I see that there's archers shooting down at the armies below, they are speaking spanish. i don't know spanish.

i know they talk about me, something about being afraid of white people and a shield. shove a shield into my hands and self destruct the tower. tower falls and i land on my feet on top of the rubble. i get pushed through the armies who scatter to the winds and after many days of traveling i end up finding two girls on the road. we go together to a town and see a well lit bus stop and one house stuffed with people. we ask a passing lady and she says it's not safe without light especially at night and goes into the house to ask for room for us cause we helped her.

I turn and Girl 2 has disappeared and so has Jill. I walk to the house beside the well lit one and walk in. The second story there is Girl 2 looking up, shine my light up and Jill is hanging from the ceiling on a coat hanger frozen in fear. I get her down, she's unfrozen but Girl 2 is possessed but I keep breaking her out by repeating our full names aloud to make her laugh. Jill Priscilla Langstrode, has a bow and arrow. Girl 2 has a spear.

NEW STORY:

start out in a small scrooge hideout with a random lady and her kid. lump and like she calls us. i give her the name riley. i'm huey i think, louie and dewey are still sleeping nvm not huey but their sister? any way they're sleeping and riley is wandering around looking for secret passageways. good idea i say, and i start to look too.

there a little dresser and a decorative panel i remove a lever on the inside. pull the lever and the other side of the dresser falls open. how to adopt birds that aren't yours )as in kids) and i hear the lady calling so i close up everything. did you have fun lump n like? yes i say and hand riley over. scrooge comes in and i saw i never knew how many birds you had,  like under the dresser. what. he says getting nervous. yeah those decorative bird strings that fell? i went and hung them back up for you. oh he says. looking calmer and i saw, so why do have adoption forms hiding away in your dresser? 

NEW STORY:

wake up in the heat death of the universe. there's a little pocket dimension created by miraculous ladybug and other powers that be and magic. because of all the magic people who survived got powers. i'm just admiring marinette and adrien who i'm like? shouldn't you be cartoons? you have creation magic and you have destruction magic. they're like, shouldn't you be a cartoon too? you have aquatic powers in a while duck tales characters are here too.

so is the rest of my family, even all cousins and aunts and uncles. i go outside and there's weirdly from the hollow standing at the edge of a pool. i first try getting my foot wet in a sink and willing it to transform. my foot feels heavy and i wipe away the water and run into the pool and my legs grow longer and greener, hands are more webbed even my hair is more like tentacles and wavier. kinda hurt for a moment. some miraculous members are here too. little kids cheer me on from side of the pool as a swim around.

i hated swimming before cause it never felt right but now i loved it. the fence opened ip and aunt michelle has telekinesis powers. ask around, turns out we're all cartoon characters in each others worlds and there ere some differences, duck tales never went on so many adventures seeing as scrooge never wanted risking children and only went alone.

miraculous, they had kwamis but not natural magic like they had in my world. weird guy was an actual person not just an actor now. my world i discovered my family had 7 generations of magic taken away for trying to resurrect a loved one and i was the first granddaughter on both sides of the family suffering under the curse of one side is too much magic Nd the other nine at all, giving me all magic but absolutely no control or teachers, started making my own spell book after i transformed into a water creature. and went on adventures to discover new things about myself in my show. eventually i broke the curses on both sides by sacrificing my memories as a witch and mid everyone gets powers. 

NEW STORY:

rpg isekai. five friends get pulled into a game. 4 of them are gamers and the final one just watches them play. likes history and learning instead. they are all good friends. two blondes, one male and female. one asian, one black, and one brunette. the black girl is like a dragon shifter in game. the asian guy is an octopus. the other three are human. the non gamer gets a pair of scissors and they all work together.

the first boss is actually the royal prince. but it's like a giant star, huge and constantly unraveling. they find an entrance to the middle. there's like a little mail slot from the wall they were pushed out of. non gamer girl discovered a row of teeth, but after accidentally falling in, they don't close. it's like a baby, the food has to be already crushed, but there's teeth. she tears one out, and things start to slow down. everyone helps to tear out the teeth. after finishing they find a new door.

they pass through and the door shuts behind them, the mail says that the princess has decided to follow a new religion. the mission is to fool her into thinking that the object of her religion has come to life to manipulate her into making better decisions for the kingdom. there's a plat form to the right of the wall/door that has stairs. in the middle of the room is black like night and blue fire spitting from four corners of the bed.

there's a figure in the middle of it, sleeping. they go up the stairs and see a room with five beds and a little slot that leads to a ramp with supplies. there's another set of stairs that leads to a town market square. there's a shop keeper that sells adventurer supplies, and dresses. i am the non gamer, i try on a dress and I look like a princess, then i get the idea to dress up like angels of different types to convince the princess.  end dream.

NEW STORY:

Guide to a revolution. Arden/Evangeline?

Idk, has an eventful week of school, she’s prepping to go on choir retreat, so she’s going ahead with an Econ assignment. She’s talking to her teacher about new information: that the US is in a Silent Great Depression. As she’s walking out of the doors, she hears the lockdown alarm go off. Since it’s in passing period, she literally grabs as many people as she can and hauls them into a classroom. There’s a school shooter that’s in the hallway where she was, shoots up her classroom and thought she is shot in her left foot, she’s able to hide underneath the bodies of her classmates along with a few smart other people. The news goes crazy for a few days interviewing survivors of a mass school shooting with multiple shooters, but it dies down in favor of a new abortion law and presidential campaign and a virus that seems to be creeping across the world. 

NEW STORY:

In a little town in a kingdom, I do odd jobs around. My name is Anaisha. Around my tenth birthday there’s a revolution that overthrows the royal family and a lot of refugees come pouring in. I volunteer to help build new houses and shops and so does mom. Mom makes a new friend/older brother with this Japanese man. He takes care of an old woman that never leaves their shelter and is always crying.

Eventually, he opens the crates to show me these old books and I tell him he could work in the bookshop. He does and I call him uncle because my mom and him have gotten close. He freezes and then relaxes so much he looks like a different man. Mom tells me his story that he told her. He calls me anya and tells me that I remind him of someone. Finally get the meet the lady who sits in the back room and she just sobs harder about ghosts while Yuri escorts me back out. He tells me that the lady that’s crying is actually the dowager empress from the overthrown family and that I look a lot like the late princess, Anastasia. 

NEW STORY:

I was on a cruise ship, there was this kinda old lady and her assistant who wanted to get to the bathrooms and then the theater. I volunteered to take them there fast and then I went to find the theater which was starting a program just for teens.

I tried coffee for the first time, and oat latte and an espresso and kinda like the oat latte but k remembered the word of wisdom. And then the theater show scared me so much that I got power and I immediately went to find the lady and assistant. They were on the top deck, and there was another cruise ship playing with large pipes found in the water with a crane starched to it. Or maybe the crane was playing. It was tossing stuff at us, si I grabbed my new mom, assistant and the cat appear and flew us to safety on land.

[punkassbookjockey26]

Story Time - Rowaelin Month, Day 4

Some fluff for ya on Day 4! 

Ratings: None, Warnings: None

Prompt: Libraries/Librarian

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

Wednesdays at Orynth Public Library were Aelin’s favorite day of the week.

She finished setting up for her first Story Time class of the day, pushing back the hair that had fallen in her face, and surveyed her area. The room itself was bright and colorful, a wide array of posters for numbers and letters adorned the walls. Large, vibrant orbs hung from the ceiling with matching labels with the color names in both Common and the Old Language. She laid her books on the table at the front, a small felt easel to the side, and a stuffed cat out of view. All she needed was the children.

No sooner than she had thought it, the door opened and several of her regular kids toddled in, all happy smiles and giggles as they raced up to her to give her big hugs around her legs. Her face brightened significantly, kneeling in front of them to listen as they chattered on about everything and nothing at the same time. Her heart filled to burst with the love she had for these tiny, adorable babies.

They were hers, even if not by blood, but by experience. Aelin hadn’t been so lucky to have any kids of her own, so every Wednesday, she pretended that she had a whole class of them.

“Alright, everyone, let’s get seated. We’ll start class in just a minute.” Her smile was wide as many of the kids ran back to their parents, their laughter filling the small room with such joy. Story Time was the reason why Wednesday was Aelin’s favorite day. Sure, she loved her after-school kids that stopped by for arts and crafts or the book club she started, but there was something so utterly heart-warming and magical about seeing a class full of toddlers engage in a love for reading.

The door at the back of the class creaked open, and Aelin turned her head towards the newcomer. A small head of wild brown curls peeked in with wide, tentative green eyes meeting hers. The head disappeared as quickly, the door sliding shut. Aelin smiled to herself. It wasn’t the first time a shy child had come to Story Time, and it wouldn’t be the last. She just waited patiently for the entrance to open once more.

Sure enough, within a few seconds, the door opened again; this time, that same head of curls was clinging desperately to a towering man, her tiny arms wrapped tightly around his neck. Aelin paused for a second, her grin falling just slightly as she took in the sight before her.

The man was gorgeous. He had to be several inches taller than her, a feat seeing as she was pushing six feet herself. He was wearing a tight t-shirt that clung snugly to his torso, with jeans that had probably seen better days, and his silvery blonde hair was disheveled as if he had spent the better part of the morning running his hands through it. A tattoo snaked down his muscled arm, covering the tan skin in dark words that Aelin couldn’t make out.

But her frown deepened when she noticed how absolutely lost he looked, staring at the class filled with moms and rambunctious toddlers. It wasn’t often that Aelin had a man in one of her classes, and even then, it usually was with a partner. This man had arrived alone, except for the tiny toddler hanging from him with a vice-like grip, burying her face in his neck. The little girl turned her head to look at Aelin, her eyes peeking out through the mess of curls. Aelin smiled at her, waving slightly, and she quickly buried her face back into her companion’s neck with a slight whimper. The man sighed, clutching her a bit tighter to him.

Aelin felt her heart squeeze. It had been a long time since she had a child this shy in her class. She strived to make Story Time a safe and engaging place for children, but it wasn’t easy when those children were adamantly against being in the room. Even now, as the man tried to sit on the floor, Aelin could hear the girl’s cries at being separated from him. Hushed tones followed when he tried to disentangle himself from her grip, but she clung on even tighter, refusing to sit in his lap. Aelin watched him wrap his arms around the girl, running his fingers through her hair to soothe her. It was heartbreaking to see, even worse that she wasn’t sure how to help.

That lost look returned to his face, even as he consoled the tiny child in his arms, and Aelin felt the urge to go back and help him. However, a quick glance at the clock told her that class was about to start, and as much as she wanted to reach out, it would have to wait. She needed to do her job first.

She just hoped that both of them would be able to survive the next half hour.

----

“Alright, class, now that we’re awake and we’ve gotten our wiggles out-” a chorus of silly giggles rang out, making her pause to smile, “-who’s ready for a story?” Aelin received celebratory cheers in response as she turned back to her table. She picked up the book she set out and turned back to the class.

“Today, we’re going to read about a little crab who learns to face his fears when he leaves home for the first time. Can you show me what being scared looks like?”

Not surprisingly, the children contorted their faces into wide-eyed, shock-filled visages that had Aelin biting the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. A few of the kids were even adding whimpers or false cries to add to the effect. “Good job, everyone. Those are some scared-looking faces I see!”

Aelin smiled warmly, her eyes darting over the group of kids before her. It had been a good class so far. No one had any outbursts, and they were listening well, which was a challenge for her toddlers most of the time. But every so often, Aelin would find her eyes drifting towards the back of the room, landing on her two newest attendees. The girl had finally released the stranglehold she had on the man’s neck and faced towards the front, her bright green eyes tentative yet inquisitive.

Aelin counted it as a win. It could have gone either way, based on how the child reacted when she arrived. However, Aelin prided herself on her ability to engage children in ways that eluded most parents, and she was grateful to see that she still was able to reach even the most unwilling of children.

Opening the book, Aelin began to read to the class, her voice rising and falling as she told the story of the little crab facing the big world outside his home for the first time. She hadn’t realized how perfect the book would be for that girl when she selected it, but she couldn’t help but be grateful for the serendipity. While most of the message would be lost on her under-five crowd, Aelin hoped that it might put her tiny friend at ease.

Even still, it surprised her when she felt a sharp tug at her jeans about halfway through the reading, and she looked down to see a wild head of chocolate curls and those curious green eyes focused on her. 

It wasn’t unusual for children to get close to her during Story Time. They wanted to touch the books or the puppets she used or climb on her to monopolize the attention that she doled out willingly. But Aelin would not have bet on that little girl leaving the comfort of her companion’s arms to come to the front of the room. But she had a job to do, and as much as she wanted to turn her attention solely on the brave little girl, she had to finish the story.

“Alright, sweetheart, can you go sit back down?” Aelin asked, rubbing the girl’s back affectionately. She turned back to the story to continue but paused again when she felt another tug on her clothes, followed by a tiny whimper.

The child reached her hands up to the air, wordlessly asking Aelin to lift her up and into her lap. Aelin looked towards the back of the room and caught the eye of her guardian. He looked utterly shocked at his daughter’s position and moved to get up off the floor. Aelin just shook her head slightly and reached down to pick her up.

“Okay, you can sit with me for now.” The little girl burrowed herself into Aelin’s lap, her tiny fists wrapping into her cardigan and her small head leaning against Aelin’s shoulder. Aelin went about reading the story to the rest of the group, completely at ease with the small girl in her arms. It was unusual, mostly because she didn’t typically allow children to sit with her during Story Time. It was vital for them to learn how to follow instructions, and that included sitting quietly on the floor. But, there was something about this child, and the man she was with that had Aelin bending all kinds of rules.

The girl clung to her for the rest of class. When they sat, she crawled right back in Aelin’s lap. When they stood, she insisted on holding Aelin’s hand. Even when they moved, she refused to interact with the other children, staying as close to Aelin as possible. Aelin should have told her to sit back with her guardian or at least sit with the other kids on the floor, but there was something timid in the girl’s expression that made her pause. And she wasn’t going to begrudge this child a good first-time experience simply because she wanted to enforce some arbitrary rules.

At the end of class, Aelin scooped the girl up in her arms, holding her tightly even as she said goodbye to the other kids and parents. When only a few stragglers were left in the room, Aelin walked towards the man in the back.

“I believe this one belongs to you,” Aelin said, untangling herself from the toddler and handing her back to the man. He still looked a bit shaken at how calmly his daughter reacted to being held by a stranger, but he quickly brushed the look away and replaced it with a shy smile, his free hand raking through his silvery hair.

“Yeah…I’m sorry about that. She’s not usually this clingy.”

“No worries,” Aelin said, smiling. “I’m used to it. Is she your daughter?”

“Yeah, she is,” the man said, fondly, smiling at his daughter, who had curled her arms around his neck. “This is my Millie.”

“She’s beautiful,” Aelin cooed, poking the toddler’s belly to evoke a toothy grin “I haven’t seen you around before. Is it your first time here?”

“Yeah. We just moved here, and I figured she could use some socializing with kids her age,” the man said, nodding. He set Millie on the ground, and she immediately wrapped her arms around his leg, pulling herself as close to him as possible.

“No better place than the library, in my opinion,” Aelin chuckled. “I do these Story Time classes a few times a week, so feel free to drop in anytime.”

“Thank you for that. She seemed to have a good time today, so we’ll definitely be back.” He smiled at her, and for the first time since he arrived, Aelin had a moment to appreciate his handsomeness.  Up close, she could tell that his tattoo was written in the Old Language, although she didn’t know enough of it to make it out. He had the same green eyes that his daughter had, a deep pine that reminded her of the trees in Oakwald. And when he smiled, she felt a strange flutter in her chest.

Aelin snapped from her perusal of him when he reached down to grab ahold of Millie’s hand, and she took it reluctantly, her tiny head swiveling to look up at Aelin. “Alright, Mills, say bye-bye.”

At that, Millie launched herself towards Aelin’s legs with a big “No!” Aelin stumbled from the force of the collision and looked down to find a wide pair of tearful green eyes staring back up at her.

“Well, she certainly likes you,” her father said with a laugh.

Aelin smiled at him, her hand absent-mindedly running through Millie’s curls. “It’s what I do best.”

He reached down to scoop Millie back up into his arms, her tiny hands reaching out for Aelin. The librarian ached to reach for her and console her, but she relented. Millie whined a bit as her father walked her toward the door, her little head popping over his shoulder to look at Aelin before she left. 

“I’ll see you soon,” Aelin promised the little girl, offering a sweet wave with an even sweeter smile. Remembering her manners, Aelin called again just before they walked out of her classroom.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name!”

The man turned and looked at her, offering a wide grin that Aelin swore made her heart skip a beat. “It’s Rowan.” Aelin tried not to pick favorites, but she just might have a new one.

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

Tag List:

@faerie-queen-fireheart

@1islessthan3books

@superspiritfestival

@jesstargaryenqueen

@ireallyshouldsleeprn

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@swankii-art-teacher

@rowaelinismyotp

@mariamuses

@booknerdproblems

@story-scribbler

@highqueenofelfhame

[pulchramsolis]

Neither is particularly prone to violence. Abby loathes it, and she remembers the strange sensation of wanting to steal Ser Criston's sword and run it through the Queen and the Lord Hand while Helaena lay at The Stranger's feet. No one had paid for Aemond's injury, surely justice needed to be done for her sister's needless suffering.

"Dreamfyre is intimidating, especially with her princess," Abby smiles. She is always happy to declare her praise and admiration, and remind everyone that the beautiful blue that claimed Heleana was as old and as powerful as Vermithor, maybe even older than The Cannibal. "While I know that you are the most fierce, cutting them from their resources and support would be key. A dragon at their door, the others along the fork and roaming above, perhaps."

She sounded like Aemond in the moment, spouting off tactics from the book he'd been pouring over, and she'd helped him draw out battle tactics in the dirt. Harwin could never be replaced, but Aemond made her feel like she'd gained a new brother. The pair of them comrades in their protectiveness of the remaining two, even if Aegon did not see it (or did and kept her at arm's length? she wasn't sure, but sometimes it seemed like he wanted to lean in for more, and she just wanted to catch him. But if he'd wanted her, then he'd come to her, and not to the street of silk. Right? If childish kisses had been enough of some marriage contract, then they wouldn't be like this. Things would be right.)

Abby huffed a sigh and a nod, a guilty tug at the seven pointed star hung around her own neck - a match to Helaena's. A hiccup escapes her as she tries to hold back a sob, but she remains gazing at the ceiling and imagines the cracks scurrying into little animals. She wants to bury her face in Helaena's belly, wrap her arms around her waist in the way that little children do and cry out her misery. The note of guilt catches her, and Abby reaches to squeeze her hand in reassurance. There'd been no choice. "We were only children," she whispers. The only absolution they had when their parents and guardians had failed them.

She raised an eyebrow and glances over sidelong at her. Bluebells and Lavender. "That's the point. They want me to wed. And I'm very much not wedded right now. I don't want to wed a Tully, or Stark or whomever else they pull out of the woodwork if it means being away from everyone that I love." An ugly thought - throwing herself from one of the towers, only briefly entered her mind but there was not a world that existed where she would voluntarily choose to leave her sister, and this little family they'd made. "What are you weaving in that pretty head of yours, sistermine?" Or was she dreaming something?

pulchramsolis​

The failure of being unable to protect her sister burns at Abby. Her dearest friend, who she watched and prayed over as she fevered in her childbed. There’s been too much loss already, and the idea of losing Helaena to something so terribly unfair, and worse, foolish and unnecessary, had driven her mad for weeks. Before then, nothing she could do no matter how much she tried to speak with the queen about Helaena’s unhappiness with marrying Aegon. (and all while needing to keep secrets bound in love).

All that she could do was dry her sister’s tears on her wedding day and promise that she would not be abandoned.

That might have been the most difficult day of their friendship, but the love they held for one another had gotten them through.

She gnaws on her bottom lip but her gaze does not waver from Helaena’s as she comforts and affirms. The two of them are like puzzle pieces; able to fit into each other’s gaps to make a whole person. To defend and comfort one another when they are unable to themselves. Her chest is so full of longing and love and she rests her cheek against the soft top of Helaena’s silver head, pressing a kiss along the braided crown in her own comfort. She basks in the reassurance, and to offer her own is instinctive.

“I promise. A signal. I’ll expect dragons at my doorstep in a half day.” A slight tease but she knew the seriousness of Helaena’s earlier vengeance, even if it’s somewhat tempered now.

Abrogail loathes how they try to take her claws and teeth and fire from her. To fit her into this delicate flower when Helaena is an Oleander - beautiful and sweet and dangerous beneath. They should not have to fight this way, they should be protected, the way her Papa and Harwin and her poor Mama had protected her. The way she wants to protect her dragons.

“I want our children to grow up together, to love one another the way we do,” she whispers, humming at the dream and combing her fingers through the ends of Helaena’s hair. She can feel more than see the tapping of Helaena’s feet and she offers her the tail end of her embroidered belt with the fringe on the end so she doesn’t have to keep holding her hands.

Quiet settles over them, and Abby hums softly. A light tune, the words lost to her but the melody still clings to her memory. Her half of the sweet roll is forgotten, and her gaze grows distant, just cuddling her sister and clinging to this memory as it forms with both hands. A thought lingers in the back of her mind.

“If I was ruined, they couldn’t sell me to a Tully,” she murmurs softly. The speeches from the Septas about their special gifts that only their husbands could have. However, the one that she longs for has not shown his interest, at least in that way. “But then Uncle Otto might send me somewhere worse as punishment. Could fake my death. Come back with my hair dark as ink and moonlight as your new maid.” She rolls her eyes to the ceiling with a wry little smile on her face. “We could just pack up the children and all escape to Essos somewhere. See what happens to duty when there’s no one left to carry it out.”

“How many dragons would my lady wish for? Will one do, or should I call on my brothers and threaten to do to Riverrun what the Conqueror did to Harrenhal?” The thought of bloodshed in truth is never her first answer, and this is no exception. There are a select few, Helaena thinks, she would dirty her hands for. They do not share the same name, yet they are sisters in every sense of the word (bound in blood, even if that of oath rather than the one coursing through their veins). How could she be unwilling to hurt any who harmed her dearest friend, the one who had stood at her side with unwavering loyalty?

Humor does not soothe her heart, not in truth. They may speak in jest, but her chest aches with the thought of imminent loss, with the suffocating weight of sympathy for how Abby must feel (She knows — she has felt it before, shed her own tears for an unwanted fate, tears Abigail had been there to dry even as her own heart broke; Helaena knows, of course. How could she miss it, in her friend’s glances and words, in how willingly she would have given her heart to him, had he only allowed himself to see?).

It is all wrong, she thinks, the same thought she had when mother had sentenced her to Aegon. He should have been for Abby. She should have been for Aemond. They would stay close, remain in the Keep, and if Aegon was to be king then Aemond may be his Hand and they would all be better for it. (An useless thought. It can never be.)

She takes the offered belt, only then perceiving the restless movement of her feet; it happens often, the ceaseless fidgeting she does not do consciously, but cannot avoid to keep herself under control. There is no need to feign, here, to carry on the heavy mask and perfect behavior that ought to always be in place outside. Yet her feelings can be just as overwhelming, and forcing herself to stay idle always makes it worse later (at least it’s not nails dragging against her skin, hurting herself without taking note of it; her fingers take to play with the fringe of the belt, a constant turning and weaving regardless of her mind not being there).

The silence is not broken, all she can offer the other then and there being her company. Her mind continues to work, trying to think of every possible plan, anything that could prevent this. They could not rely on mother listening; that had failed before. And then Abby herself speaks a sentence so astonishing it causes Helaena to lift her head from the other’s shoulder, wide lavender meeting blue once more.

“If you were ruined, they would never allow me near you again,” The Hightowers had much too close ties to the Faith, and the queen had ensured so would her children. The princess is not naive so much as she is concerned; that would be no way out, that would be a sentence for life. Helaena sighs, watching Abby as the dry smile appears on her lips. She leans against the seat, turns to watch the ceiling as well. “We should have done that before I was married,” The whisper is soft and not devoid of guilt (for what was or what is, she is uncertain). “Dreamfyre could take us and no one would harm us when I have a dragon.”

A quiet follows, though her mind returns to the previous ideas of escape, Abby outrageous words, and perhaps she is thinking no more clearly when she repeats it. “If you were ruined, they couldn’t sell you to a Tully,” A light hum, the restless movement of her fingers maintaining its pattern, and she continues. “ — If you were wedded, they couldn’t do that either.”

“I know I couldn’t go against my own duty,” Quiet admission, a sword that had cut them both. And yet it was what she was raised for; duty was no trifling thing to be ignored and set aside, however unhappy she may be with it. As much as she could never stand against it in favor of her happiness, Helaena would offer no opposition that was truly Abby’s wish for herself. “But if you are seriously considering not going through with it… I stand with you no matter what, sister.”

[hometoursandotherstuff]

Mariea Gosdin says she gave ghosts a place to stay when she bought a property in Greenville, GA. From 1896 until 1986, this structure served as the Meriwether County Jail. Now the section of the building that was once the jailer’s residence is a cozy two-bedroom, 1,450-square-foot home.

Gosdin paid a measly $5,000 for the property back in 2009. It’s now available for $499,000.

“I just so happened to be at a county commissioner’s meeting, and they were about to vote to tear it down, and I just went crazy,” Gosdin says of the day she heard that the property she had always coveted might be available.

Instead of bringing in the wrecking ball, the county decided to accept closed bids. Many folks looked at the property, but in the end, only Gosdin put in a bid.

Despite the paltry offer, the commissioners accepted the bid because it would have cost more than $5,000 to tear the place down.

For Gosdin, the work was only just beginning. What was once the jailer’s residence was completely separate from the jail area. And its walls are about 2 feet thick. The downstairs bathroom used to be a holding cell.

Everything had to be updated, and Gosdin estimates she spent more than $200,000 on the renovations. She said, “Everything had to be torn apart before I could put it back together.”

“It was horrible. There were like nine layers of flooring downstairs and many layers of paint on the upstairs floors, but I finally got down to the hardwood floors,” she says. In a nod to the building’s past, a cell door leads into a toilet in this bathroom.

Despite its history, the renovated home has a cozy feel, with high ceilings and lots of wood and brick.

She has an art studio in the attic. It’s her favorite room in the former jail & offers the best views—but comes with a creepy history. It’s where they hung prisoners. But, in her extensive research about the property, she says she found no evidence of people being hanged in the room.

You could see the mechanics of how it worked,” she explains. “There is a large beam up there with an iron ring screwed into it that they tied a noose to. It was directly over a wooden door, with a lever attached to it.”

Beautiful porch with pecan trees on the property. She loves the home, but wants to build a country house near her children.

The section of the structure that served as the 8,500-square-foot jail hasn’t been touched and awaits a new buyer’s ideas. It used to have at least 48 beds - there’s no power or plumbing.

“It’s peeling paint, rust, steel, and concrete. The beds are still in there that the prisoners slept on. I don’t want to touch it,” she says. “It looks just like it did when they built it, and I don’t want to mess with it.”

While the jail was in operation for nearly a century, it became notorious, and apparently some former residents still voice their complaints. Gosdin laughed when asked about the presence of ghosts.

“Everyone asks me that. I’ve had some weird stuff happen, and I have pictures with my ghost in it,” she says. “My lights go on and off sometimes, doors open and close sometimes, I hear pots and pans. I hear a room full of people talking, and when I notice it, it will abruptly stop. It’s like an auditorium full of people talking, and then it stops.”

The apparitions at least seem friendly. “If they scared me, I would leave. I talk to them,” Gosdin says. The spirits aren’t always around. “Sometimes, I’ll go months and nothing, and then I wonder if I have changed something they don’t like or if I changed something and they do like it and are just letting me know.”

https://www.realtor.com/

[apixrl]

YOUR EREN.

eren jeager x fem!reader

WARNING(S): angst. slight manipulation. s4 spoilers. brief mentions of (but not actually) throwing up at the end.

word count: 5.9k

song: a soulmate who wasn't meant to be // jess benko

note(s): oh, that sound? it's just the sound of my tears whilst writing this oneshot. no biggie

The prison cells underneath headquarters were as dark and dreary as ever as you stood opposite them. Whilst the windows were generously large, the night sky was not so giving. Clouds were gloomy and blocked out the moon and stars, replacing it with a heavy downpour of rain. If you listened closely, you could pick up on the faint 'pitter patter' as droplets met the pebbled ground outside, the sound comforting compared to the echoing silence within the walls. Mattresses were placed in the corners of each cell, old and tattered after years of use by many different faces. You could only imagine their discomfort as you'd never been required to sleep on them, your record in the Scout Regiment practically a clean slate after your years of service. You were someone who took your position as a soldier seriously; respected your superiors and did as told when told.

As for Eren Jeager? It seemed in recent events he was past the point of caring.

Such a fact was blatant as you stared at him through the prison bars, your back pressed against the wall, body stiff and fearful of what would happen if you tried to step closer. Eren's gaze was terrifying to witness even from the odd angle you stared at him. His eyes locked on the ceiling as he lay flat on his back on the bed of his cell. His hair had been pulled back into a messy bun, some strands not long enough to reach so far back were fated to live a life of their own. They glued to his temples and forehead and even entwined with the strands pulled back. You couldn't decide if the look was flattering or not.

"I...," You blurted out without thought of what you planned to actually say, your pathetic attempt at making conversation followed up with a nervous whimper. Eren barely inched a muscle when you broke the quiet, from his eyes to his hands that lay lifeless at his side. He remained laid down as if you weren't even there. That made your heart weep in the worst of ways and your mind qualm - to think the last time you were together he was holding you in his arms as you gazed under the stars. And now he could barely spare you a second glance.

"It's been a while since you were last cooped up in one of these cells," You eventually tried again, calming yourself down as best you could by trying to be light-hearted. "Remember when we would play cards through the bars when I could visit? Those were fun times," You smiled sadly at the memories, eyes drifting away from Eren and towards nothing in particular. The smile then faded, the yearn to experience easier days once more hitting you as hard as stone. "If only we could experience them again,"

Your tone lowered, left unhinged since you knew mourning for what was no more was a waste of time. But you couldn't help yourself. All you wanted was to live in the past, where the titans were slane and the Scouts had reached the sea. All you wanted was to live out your days with your friends, talk and laugh with no need to worry about the rest of the world. All you wanted was to fall into Eren's embrace, to love him with all your might as he did you. There was a short period where that was your life, one filled with simplicity and peace after years of blood and death and gore that haunted your every nightmare. It had been pleasant, and you missed it. More than you were willing to admit.

If only Eren hadn't pushed things too far.

Eren's eyes shifted after a prolonged silence, travelling from the ceiling to you across the way. He was quick to take note of your vacancy, your conflict as you stared at him. How you created your own form of a jail cell by restricting yourself to the opposite side of the room. Maintaining a safe distance like you sensed you would get hurt stepping too far. Eren sighed loudly at that fact. Which caught your attention, E/C eyes flicking back to him at the sound. Eren pushed himself upright, eyes leaving you to stare at the floor before he hoisted himself off of the bed. Then, he turned to face you, searching for you through the wisps of his unkempt fringe.

You held your breath when he did, unable to fathom just how uncomfortable his gaze made you feel. Typically, Eren looking your way would send butterflies to your stomach. Your heart would perform somersaults and beat soundly with joy. Your cheeks would heat up, to which he would smile and tease and call it cute - merely deepening your flustered state like it was some fun game.

But this time, upon him meeting your gaze, nausea swiftly followed after. Rising concern over unconditional love based on his expression alone. It was empty. Unreadable. Nothing you had ever seen him display before. You had witnessed most if not all his worst moments up front but none of them - none of them, came close to just how desolately devoid he looked in that moment.

His lips didn't twitch, firmly held together as they added to his glaring aura. His brows arched sterner than Captain Levi's when you failed to clean a room up to standards, you didn't think it was possible for them to be so closely knit. But the worst part that made you truly sick to the stomach at the unfamiliarity of it all, were his eyes. Their usual bright and gleaming jade green blend that had entranced you from the instant you met Eren were now bleaker and more stationary than ever. They no longer held a zest and determination that motivated you to fight another day, no notable twinkle against the dimly lit room. Only a barren vacancy the most broken are succumbed to display.

You felt the need to comment on it, communicate to Eren just how worried you were. That you wanted to help him because you cared about him more than anyone else in the entire world. You were willing to lay your life down for him, and had even nearly become an anonymous number in the ranks because of that sheer will alone. However, before you had the chance to open your mouth, Eren beat you to it.

"Did Hange send you down here to try and sway me?" Eren asked half-rhetorically, taking a couple of steps forwards until the bars of his cell stopped him. "You of all people should know you can't stop me, so why even bother?"

You were taken back by his bluntness, even more so by his disregard for your previous words. Like you had never said them in the first place and he was the one initiating conversation. Perhaps it was so Eren felt he had the control, asserting dominance in a relationship where he already held more than half of it. His aim was unclear, but you persisted nonetheless.

"No, they didn't," You said. "I came here on my own accord, Eren," You shrugged your shoulders aimlessly. "I wanted to see you. I-I've missed you," Eren's eyes narrowed in suspicion, studying your frame for any sign indicating you were lying. He came out with no clear answer as from the instant you had set foot in the room you'd been shaking like a lamb bleating after its mother. Afraid. His arms crossed over his broad chest still in doubt, the action reminding you just how much he'd changed over the last few years. He was taller, looming over you even whilst feet apart. He was no doubt stronger, evident with or without the fact he held the power of three titans within him. Eren was no longer the vigorous and unruly boy he once was, who devoted his strength to rid the world of all the titans. He was now an indestructible force that vouched for freedom, his will to fight unshaken by no one.

"If you missed me so much," He started, looking down at you with what only felt like shame. "What took you so long to visit?" Raising a brow, you realised he held a point with his inquiry. If you proposed you missed him why hadn't you visited? The truth was you were scared of who you would find on the other side when you did. Levi and Hange had given you the option since the first day Eren was placed in his cell. But no matter the undying need to have Eren in your line of sights again, you failed to find the courage to make that final step.

"I wanted to, I-I really did," You said in a panic. "I was just scared! I didn't know what to say or how to speak to you after... after...,"

"After what?" Eren reprimanded, glowering at you as his hands wrapped around the iron bars. Your eyes widened and you whimpered, shaking your head frantically as a means to apologise.

"N-No Eren. I didn't mean it like that I just -," You swallowed thickly, your breathing quickening as Eren's pressing stare intimidated you more and more by the second. You hated how much you were falling apart. Where had your Eren gone?! Your Eren who always fretted over you during and after battles. Your Eren who grew antsy at Jean or Connie if they got a little too comfortable in your company. Your Eren who snuck into your room past curfew to share stories of his life late into the night. Your Eren who crammed his lips on yours when he couldn't hide his feelings any longer, confirming your relationship would turn from friendship to deepened love. You missed your Eren. You wanted your Eren back. Was that so much to ask?!

"You just what?" He spoke harshly, impatience riddled within every letter and syllable. You were quick to notice his grip on the bars tighten to the point you thought he'd snap them clean in two.

"I...," You trailed off, finishing your cut sentence with a defeated sigh. Your hands lowered to your sides as your head hung forwards. Perhaps being upfront with him was the only way you could go. "You killed people, Eren. Innocent people that hadn't done anything wrong! You ate somebody. Women, men and children crushed under debris like they were nothing. Y-You... you made Armin destroy that port and your decision making got Sasha killed!" You brought a hand to your forehead, not realising how distressed you sounded as you recalled that night. Tears started forming in your eyes, lip trembling. "Shit! I nearly... if Jean hadn't shot that Marley soldier first then I would've...,"

You had experienced a rocky start during the raid on Marley. One of your biggest flaws as a soldier was your will to take another life. Life as in... a human life. You despised the concept and did everything in your power to avoid it all costs, even if your fellow soldiers disagreed (especially Levi's, who persisted humans could be just as bad as titans when it came to killing). That exact flaw came forth when you first encountered a Marleyan soldier, and your hesitation almost ended with a bullet between your eyes. Had Jean not been behind you just in time... your grave would have been undoubtedly determined. There was a time where Eren was the same as you, never wanting to act and inflict harm on other humans. But times had changed since then. Oh, how you hated how much it had changed since then. None of it was fair.

A silence ensued, your stifled sobs the only thing willing to break it. Eren watched you motionlessly, the glare still apparent on his face as your emotions got the better of you. You hadn't realised just how shaken up you were from what happened. Sure, you had faced death many times, but always at the hand of titans. Where you had to evade giant swooshing limbs and teeth that could churn your flesh as cows do cud. Never had you looked another human in the eye and watched them contemplate killing you. To aim a gun directly your way and prep the shot as you realised what their intentions were. Then a feeble attempt to escape approaching death, all too distracted with your life flashing before your eyes for you to see the way out. That was one of the scariest moments of your life. You never wanted to endure it again. Never.

"Come here,"

You stiffened up, looking at Eren amidst dishevelled strands of H/C hair falling over your face. His glare had left and his face had returned to its neutral state, his eyes boring into you with his demand lingering in the air. You wiped your nose on your sleeve as well as your eyes, confused by the abrupt change in atmosphere. A truly weird circumstance and turn of events you weren't expecting indeed. At first, you weren't sure doing as Eren said was a smart idea, having heard Hange's experience with him during a debrief. You didn't believe Eren would treat you with the same sort of disrespect, but you also didn't want to take that risk just in case.

"B-But...,"

"Just do it," He roughly snapped, suspense in his tone kicking you up the hind to move. With a yelp, you pushed yourself off of the wall - back sighing out in bliss after starting to ache because of the uneven rocky surface. You gingerly stepped towards Eren, biting down on your lip to stop it trembling in fright. You came to a stop once close enough to the iron bars, hands going to wrap themselves around them, around the same ones as Eren. Whether you intended for that or it was just subconscious instinct you didn't know. Finally, your eyes dropped to the floor, lost on where to focus. Eren hummed a complacent sigh at your actions, head tilting to the side as he looked you up and down. You couldn't find an answer to what was running through his mind, blank gaze concealing all form of emotion and clarity. Then, just as you thought the silence couldn't grow any more powerful, Eren lifted his hand and reached out for you.

You gasped at the sudden contact, the feeling of Eren's hand cupping your face sending all sorts of sensations through you. His palm was warm despite the cool air of the prison cell. It was as though his hand was constructed to cradle your cheek, moulded into the perfect structure to which you filled in the empty spaces. His hand felt soft even after years of wear and tear of fighting and training, fingers long but not at all discomforting. You had forgotten just how pleasant the feel of Eren's thumb across your cheekbone was until he initiated the motion, almost a way to lure you in. And with your deprivation of his touch - of him. That was enough to have you wrapped around his finger.

"I forgot how nice it was to hold you like this," Eren declared monotonously, though his expression betrayed his lack of care. Something about it had calmed, but he didn't allow it to stay for long, gone so fast that if you blinked you would have missed it. You inhaled deeply, head tilting to the side as you nuzzled into his hand. Seeming satisfied with that, Eren proceeded. "That and just how easily you melt under my touch,"

"Eren," You uttered no louder than a whisper, eyes closing tight as you welcomed his touch. You despised how much he was correct, that you became putty without him even needing to try. That was the impact of love, after all, it makes people act in crazy ways and do some incredibly crazy things. But you couldn't ignore the odd funny feeling still pitting your gut, begging you to stop falling to Eren's will before it was too late. You couldn't get carried away, he had committed obscene criminal acts without jurisdiction. That was more than enough to get him locked up for life, regardless of the war you were fighting. You should be disgusted by his actions, his corrupted thinking and the way he went behind the Military's backs to further his own idea of freedom. You were disgusted.

But you also loved him. Way, way more than you were disgusted.

A frown merged onto your face, blending awkwardly with the once peaceful content that Eren noticed as fast as it appeared. He managed to figure out the thoughts running through your mind also, the young adult lamenting a sigh and he opened his mouth to speak. Not before his hand drifted down to your chin, tilting your head up to make you look at him. His thumb planted on your bottom lip as he grazed over it.

"I'm trying to build a future for Eldia, Y/N," Eren spoke firmly, your heart having a brief elation to the way he said your name. It had been far too long since you had heard him say it. "A future for us, where we can be free and live our lives the way we want to,"

"I know," You began, eyes opening to meet Eren's. "But there are other ways, Eren. More humane ways. We don't have to kill anymore if we just-,"

"There isn't another way," Eren interrupted, his ministrations of stroking your chin coming to an abrupt halt. "We've tried other ways and they haven't worked," Eren evaded your disheartened stare. "I'm sick of it not working,"

"We all are, Eren. Stop making out that you're the only victim here," You paid no mind to Eren's reaction. "We're all victims of this shitshow that's our reality, and we're all just as much the culprits of it as well! All w-we do is fight fire with fire and add more ashes to the pile with each person we slaughter," You felt your grip tighten on the bars, gritting your teeth harshly together. "I'm sick of all the violence and suffering! I just want to go back to the days when we could be at peace. Where we could laugh and joke because the main problem - the titans, were dealt with! I became a soldier to fight titans, not to embark on an endless war where both sides are human and neither is willing to cooperate with the other,"

"Those days are gone," Eren spoke sternly, though it softened up when he noticed you look away. "But they can return," He pressed his forehead against the iron bars, staring at you through deadened eyes. "We can live a life of freedom together once I finish what I started, all I need you to do is stay by my side and to have faith,"

Your eyes widened, gawking at Eren with complete and utter disbelief at his words. His persistence came off like the cruellest of sicknesses, corrupting Eren's mind to the point of insanity. His moral compass was in shambles as was his sense of humanity. The way his eyes were numbed right down to their pupils, blinded by his visions of a future for Eldia that came with the cost of the rest of the world's suffering. It pained you to witness such a change, to witness Eren's descent into madness as war took over his every thought and breath. Suddenly that foreign feeling in your stomach became clear as day, and you abhorred it with a deadly passion.

"I don't want to be free in a world built on other people's suffering," Your hands fell down to your sides, heartbeat racing as you avoided Eren's gaze. He quirked a brow, eyes piercing into you once he realised what you meant, and his chosen tone suggested he didn't like that one bit.

"What are you trying to say?"

You faltered, both as a mental brace and a state of refusal to your next actions. A second or so passed before you took a step back, creating a distance that did more damage than healing. With a shaky breath, you answered his question.

"I love you Eren, with everything I am. B-but I can't stand by your side if this is the path you're going to take," The tears were already brewing, doing everything you could to blink them away. "I won't sit by and watch the rest of the world crumble because of your selfish desires,"

You hated the words you were saying, how you said them and who you were saying them to. That it had all come to this, where Eren became the threat to humanity rather than its saviour. He only had so much time left and had you known that his way of spending it was to spiral the world into chaos - perhaps you wouldn't have grown so attached.

"I can't - I...," Since he hadn't said anything, you felt the urgency to speak. "Eren you have no idea how much I want to but this isn't how I saw our future -,"

"What future?" Eren persisted, not giving you a chance to reply. "Eldia has no future within the walls, these cages! It's time we give the world a taste of its own medicine, so what if a couple of lives are taken out on the way? It's not like they give a damn about ours," Eren scoffed when you shook your head, tears pricking at your eyes and the stinging sensation that came with it was painful to deal with.

"Please, Eren. Think about what you're saying," You pleaded and begged. But you knew it was no use, Eren too fixated on his 'destiny' to see logical reason. Merely the look in his eyes was proof enough to tell you that. "What happened to you? When did you become so heartless? Where's the Eren I knew all those years ago gone? Don't you miss it back then? When we weren't cheating death and we could simply be us? Be two dumb teens in love and the only thing that mattered was that love we shared? Do you even think about that anymore? About me? What about -,"

"Stop it," Eren stopped you, voice acting as a silencer to your blubbering drabble. Flinching at the interruption your mouth clamped shut, and your eyes darted for Eren in surprise. Despite locked behind bars, you were still terrified, and it felt more like you were the prisoner of the pair. With a low growl, Eren raised a clenched fist and thrashed it harshly against the bars. It made a low but loud 'thunk!' sound that hit your ears like impending doom, deafening all around you excluding that of Eren and the words he uttered next. "I'm sick of listening to you whine about shit that's not even important,"

"W-what?" You stammered in question, voice unsteady. "What do you mean it's not important?"

"Do you really think that amidst all of this I have time to be playing boyfriend?" Eren half-mocked. "I've got bigger priorities than you right now," He didn't look you in the eye, nostrils flared as his gaze lingered on the floor. Your legs nearly gave way at what you were hearing, each word a fatal stab to the stomach. Each stab even more malicious than the last. So that was it? You didn't matter anymore? Were you just some pawn in Eren's plan until he didn't feel he needed you anymore? Had his love ever been real or was it all a hoax to manipulate your every waking thought?

A minute passed of still silence, one of the many that evening. Your eyes never left Eren, searching for something to indicate he was joking. As well as contemplating pinching yourself in hopes you woke up from this horrible nightmare. Maybe you'd wake up in your Eren's arms, safe and secure as you lay beside him - his gentle breaths from deep sleep tickling the back of your neck and helping you forget the entire reason you woke up. But sadly, no such thing happened. You never woke up from anything but were instead left to face an Eren you barely knew anymore. Endure the pain as he pounded words into your head that gashed crueller than the worst of war wounds.

Realising this, you felt an urge to laugh, unsure what else there was you really could do. Crying was ineffective, and there was no way you could let Eren get the better of you. That's probably what he wanted anyway, for you to turn around and beg on your hands and knees. So as your hand met your face, you released the smallest of chuckles, lacking in humour but overwhelmed with an unforeseen emptiness. It definitely caught Eren by surprise, but he was fast to not hide it as he pressured that vacant stare onto you yet again.

"You insist your plan is the only way to get us our future, but I'm not even sure what future you mean anymore," You hesitated, trying to gain control of your lip which began to quiver erratically. "Clearly it's not the one we imagined together when we were younger,"

"If only you weren't so blinded by your emotions," Eren avoided your words, something you noticed and felt more agonised by than relieved. "Stop thinking with your feelings and see the logic, already. It's so annoying,"

Almost choking on the sob you tried to hold down, you bit down harshly on your lip - any harder and you probably would have drawn blood. You did everything you could to ignore Eren's words, but you were so hurt that you were losing the means to do so.

But you couldn't let his words consume you and manifest them into truth. You had to be strong, use whatever power you had left to regain your composure and come out the bigger person. Eren had always been a stubborn brat, Levi's nickname reigning true now more than ever.

"Use your head and think, Y/N," Eren spoke slowly, leaning his weight back onto one foot. He stretched his arm out towards you, held out for you to take. "Maybe if you stop caring for those that'll just kill you off for sport you'll actually comprehend why you're following the wrong cause,"

His words were suffocating and barbaric, not at all inspiring or persuading in the slightest. It didn't make you feel hopeful, it made you feel trapped. All you wanted was for it to stop. It wasn't love no matter how much you adored him. It wasn't healthy no matter the good memories you had shared. You had to stop the past messing with your head. You had to stop Eren messing with your head. You wanted to get out and escape. You needed to and as soon as possible. So, taking a moment to regain your composure, your hands raised to adjust the collar of your jacket and you looked over at Eren. An apologetic expression on your face for deciding to cut the visit short.

"I think I should... should go check on Armin and the others," You started, not sure what Eren would make of that. He appeared to show confusion, blinking once your words processed and frowning based on how sudden they were.

"Why would you need to do that?"

"They've been busy, and they're probably looking for me," You made up on the spot. "I didn't tell them I was coming to see you," Eren was silent, eyeing you up and down before he scoffed.

"You know I can tell you're lying, right?"

"W-Why would I lie?"

"For the same reason all people lie," Eren said. "To avoid what you're too scared to face," The way Eren spoke made everything feel much, much worse. A heavy amount of disrespect originated from this new flesh of conceit that Eren displayed on full. He had always been one to boast, but never in the form he showed in the present.

Listening to his slander any longer was something you simply couldn't handle. Not today, anyway. Fatigue was starting to claim control over your thought process, emotionally drained from talking to Eren. He had selfishly left you in a constant state of confusion and agony, making you ask yourself more questions than answering them. It utterly and totally sucked, being honest, and you had no clue where your relationship stood. Was it over? Were you still even together? Had he even seen you both as a couple this entire time or was it all just a big lie?

"So what were you trying to avoid when you spent all those months lying to us?" You were tempted to leave without another word said, but you knew you'd regret not asking your question. Which had popped into your head at the last moment as you pondered on Eren's words. Using them against you seemed to strike a nerve, as when you expected Eren to talk he did no such thing. Instead, he glared at you for being caught out, prompting your next words to follow. "I'll... I'll see you later, Eren,"

And with that, you started walking away.

You did everything in your power to not look back, focusing your gaze on the exit that was a little way ahead. Eren's stare etched itself into your back on the way out, leaving an even deeper wound than before which would probably scar for sure. Your footsteps dragged across the floor like you hauled twice your body weight behind you. Walking upstairs had never been such a demanding challenge before in your life. To think that you possessed the energy to traverse the walls but absolutely none to conquer thirteen mediocre steps.

You made it around ten steps up, just about to reach out for the door handle - when Eren's voice finally filled the room again. It brought your rushed exit to a halt with ease, much to your dismay, and what he had to say did nothing to help your situation.

"Who's to say I ever lied?"

Your heart both soared and sank at the same time, the conflict in your head skyrocketing as your thoughts drove you mad. What did Eren mean by that? Lie about what exactly? It was the way his words were always so devoid of clarity that hurt the most. The brunette was exceedingly blunt yet always left you inquiring more, prying further until it was too late. A mind game that pulled you in and kept you playing. You admittedly almost swayed.

But so close to the door, your hand wavering in the air just begging to open it - it was enough to prevent such a thing a happening. You knew if you headed back it would be the end, you would somehow get more hurt than you already had. It was a risky move you didn't want to place your bets on, you had come too far to be foolish.

So taking a deep breath you reached out for the handle and gripped it tight. You turned the knob and braced yourself to leave, blocking Eren from your mind as you lifted your foot to the eleventh step. Then the twelfth. Then the thirteenth, and finally onto the floor above the jail cells.

Closing that door behind you felt like the freshest of cleanses, your body sighing out in relief when it clicked shut.

Sadly though, you didn't have time to celebrate. The whole encounter surely caught up with you, as did the tears you had been saving for when you were finally alone. Just like they guaranteed, the hot, salty liquid singed the corners of your eyes and the tears returned. Before you could do anything, a cry broke out and you staggered until your back hit the door. The hinges jolted loudly, most likely attracting the attention of someone nearby. Whether it be a guard around the corner or one of your friends in search of your location. Maybe even Hange or Levi coming to check up on you. Whichever it was, they were in for a shock.

Your heart raced with anxiety, mind and body overwhelmed by inner turmoil that made you sick to your gut. The nausea was so bad you had to hold your stomach with your spare arm, fighting the urge to violently vomit all whilst controlling your reckless sobs that didn't cease their slander. Your vision went blurry from how much you broke down, unable to blink the tears away no matter your efforts.

Fearing the unknown had always been a part of who you were. But had somewhat simmered down as you grew older and developed mentally through being a soldier. However, all that progress reversed in an instant as your mind flashed back to the thought of Eren. How someone who used to possess so much passion now resorted to an empty vessel. The way he admitted to your insignificance with such little struggle, only to proceed to confuse you even more by implying he had never told a single lie. Was he even talking about you when he said that? Or something else completely unrelated?

A little bit of confirmation wouldn't hurt anybody.

It was odd to have Eren be the reason for your tears after so many years of him typically being the one to dry them off your face. Though thinking about it, he had been the leading cause for a lot of things as of late. The number a very concerning amount indeed. You barely even recognised him anymore. The once caring soul you fell in love with was no longer there, replaced with a man who had discovered the bittersweet lust for power based on a corrupted idealogy. Such a ruthless lust that it no longer mattered how that idealogy came to be, just as long as he managed to taste an essence of it.

You hated it. You hated that of all people it was Eren who tumbled down that drain. How did you allow yourself to fall in love with someone so possible of committing such atrocities? To worship him and give him everything you had, only to be told it was all for nothing and you were fighting a losing battle. You knew it was hopeless to hold on and believe that your Eren might return but at this rate that seemed unattainable. Not after witnessing him firsthand. The only thing left now was to move on and pray the world was on your side.

Part of you didn't want to move on though, so familiar with Eren as your crutch that a world without him sounded terrifying. You had grown so used to his presence in your life that all of this still felt so surreal no matter the fact you were very much living in it. Living in an endless hell that never allowed anyone a moment's peace. Not you. Not even Eren. Not a single human being on the planet. Nobody.

Just... where along the line had it all gone so painfully wrong?

[mycrofts-gunbrella]

Caring is the Greatest Advantage- Mycroft Holmes x Reader (Part 11)

A/N- Okay so this is just a short 2k fill in chapter! It’s kinda cute and kinda sad but it was too long to add to the last chapter, and it doesn’t fit in with the theme of the next chapter (though it sets it up quite nicely!). The next chapter is likely going to be a bit angsty but I promise it’ll have a rewarding ending to it! I hope to have it written and up sooner rather than later but, until then, enjoy this little piece.

Word Count- 2028

The ten minute drive from Baker Street to the Natural History Museum went by in a flash- most of it being spent by Mycroft giving you a mental tour of the building's various rooms and the 'most appropriate route to take'. Though it did also take a minute or two for you to convince him to not get everybody kicked out for a private visit, no matter how many people were there.. Admittedly, you hadn't been to the museum for 6 years or so now- after living so long in London it feels less of a luxury being only round the corner from it- but walking through the doors made you feel like a child again. Entry to the museum was free, but that didn't mean you didn't see Mycroft swiftly pushing a few notes into the donation bin at the front before guiding you forwards. Glancing up, you eyed the blue whale skeleton that hung from the ceiling and frowned. Mycroft caught your look and spoke up.

"Ah yes, Hope has been a relatively recent addition to the museum. She was found dead on an Irish beach back in 1891. It's a rather beautiful marvel to gaze upon, though, large as she is, she doesn't quite fill the hole in my heart that was left after my beloved Dippy was removed." Your eyes scanned the skeleton of the large mammal once more before looking back at Mycroft. "I did try to convince the board to keep the diplodocus somewhere but all attempts were futile. There's only so much force you can put into such a topic without exposing yourself as-"

"As a man who loves dinosaur bones more than he loves people?" Mycroft shoved his hands in his pockets and sighed.

"The very thing." Lifting your arm, you rested your hand at the crook of Mycroft's elbow to encourage him to move on.

"When we get home and have dinner we can raise a toast in Dippy's honour.. but for now, my mind's been taken over by that huge statue of Darwin." And the pair of you headed off, your hand very much staying place at Mycroft's arm as you wandered through the rooms- Mycroft more than willing to reel off facts about every deceased animal of history and, more often than not, even impressing the workers with his spiel of facts. Though you were very much enjoying wandering aimlessly through the room of human evolution, you most definitely noticed the pull from the man beside you as he was eager to reach his beloved dino-pals. As you turned the corner into the slightly darkened dinosaur room, you tripped over your feet slightly as you felt Mycroft stop in his tracks, his eyes wide and taking everything in. He looked as happy as a boy at Christmas and, quite frankly, it was adorable. You nudged him slightly when he still didn't move. "You okay?"

"Sorry, it just seems as though, no matter how many times I come here, it always feels like the first." He had shaken his head as though to bring his thoughts back to focus before taking a few steps into the gallery and leading you over to the skeletal remains of a Baryonyx. "The name Baryonyx roughly translates to 'Heavy Claw' from the Ancient Greek's 'Barys' meaning heavy and 'onyx' being claw or talon." He spoke, his voice smooth and relaxed as his fingers brushed over the board that announced the name of the creature within the glass. "It was also an excellent swimmer which it would use to its advantage while hunting." You listened to his every word as he spoke, grinning as he excitedly told you how many teeth it had and it's preferred techniques for capturing food before he moved you onto the next one.

"Oh these beauties have always been my favourite." You almost whispered, taking in the sight of the huge triceratops skull. You barely noticed Mycroft's hand shift from his pocket until you felt the heat of his palm against the small of your back, fingers squeezing slightly by your hip as he spoke.

"Mine too. Sherlock used to say they were boring and that we might as well have gone to the zoo to look at rhinos. He ended up spending 5 months trying to prove that the rhinos were descendants from the triceratops and then avoided me for 3 weeks when he realised there was no connection at all."

"That sounds about right. Though I can't imagine Sherlock enjoying it here very much anyway.." Mycroft began to guide you to a small bench just off the side to sit down, still giving you the view of the beautiful dinosaur bones.

"He didn't. When we were much younger he would kick off until Mummy and Father would tell us it's time to go and I had to go with them.. Then as we got a little older and Sherlock properly found his legs, he would simply run from the doors round to the science museum. Of course mummy and father had to follow him as he was so young, but one time I decided to stay here. They didn't realise I hadn't followed them until it was time to go home 5 hours later." Mycroft spoke quietly.

"Found his legs? That's at, what, four? Five? How young were you?"

"I was 9 the first time, I think." Now, Mycroft, you don't just 'think'; you know. Your hand moved to rest above his own on his knee, brushing your thumb fondly over his knuckles. "But it isn't all bad. Some of my best days as a child were spent here, and a lot of the staff were very kind and would teach me extra facts that weren't displayed. There was one gentleman who even gave me his own copies of some books that they had here. I'd wander the whole museum in time but I always found myself back here on this bench just.. watching. This room felt more like home than my very house sometimes. It was the room where I could escape the real world and find peace. Eventually Mummy, Father and Sherlock stopped bothering with the visits because Sherlock found the science museum boring after he'd prove them wrong on something each time, but I'd still pop back in on occasion without them.. Coming to think about it, I've never actually brought anybody here with me at all." You squeezed at his fingers and settled back into the bench.

"Well I am incredibly glad that I found out about your little interest, and I feel even more honoured that you let me come here with you." You beamed. And it was the truth. Evidently, this little museum meant much more to Mycroft than you could have ever imagined and it warmed your heart to know that he trusted you to see him nerd out over some bones.

"Eventually I used this very building as the scaffolding to build my mind palace. My files on Sherlock, very appropriately, are nestled in the human biology room. But most people's information is either stored in the entrance, where Dippy remains over Hope, might I add, or in a few of the rooms I find less interesting.." You didn't have to ask to know he was referencing 'that room with all the bloody rocks'. "I love most of the galleries too much to taint them with information on people that aren't important. The likes of Gregory and Doctor Watson now reside in Hintze Hall as the years have passed." His eyes remained focused in front of him, unblinking, as though he was wandering the very halls at that moment.

"And where.. where are my files?" You had to ask, really. Since he was on the subject anyway. "If you've put them in the marine reptiles room when you know I'm terrified of the ocean I shall never forgive you." Mycroft's hand flipped beneath yours so the pads of your fingers brushed before he blinked and looked over to you, a small smile on his face.

"Here." Oh. Well that's.. something. You shifted to give him a quick kiss on his cheek, knowing he wasn't overly fond of PDA and tugged him to stand.

"And on that note, I think we should go and grab some lunch before you make me cry in front of the dinosaurs."

---

After lunch, you both spent a few more hours walking from room to room (and of course circling round to the dinosaur gallery again) before you decided to call it a day at 4pm. Before departing, you headed towards the toilets that happened to be beside the little gift shop and you had a browse while Mycroft was occupied. Grinning, you picked up a deep blue plush triceratops and stroked a finger across its back. It was just small enough that, after purchasing, you could hide the little guy in the loose fabric of the sweatshirt you wore, acting innocent as you waited back outside near the wall. After going to the bathroom yourself, the pair of you headed outside where a car was waiting for you. Sliding in the back seat, you couldn't contain your little gift anymore.

"Surprise!" You laughed, producing the small toy from under your clothes and into the hands of the man beside you. He studied it briefly before beginning to laugh himself as he reached into his inner pocket and handed you the matching dinosaur, though purple in colour. "God, we're such children aren't we?" You noted as you swapped plushie companions, each of you brushing a finger on its nose as though it were a small pet. "I daren't think what your colleagues would say if they knew you were now the proud owner of a baby triceratops teddy that's.." You glanced at the tag. "..Suitable for children aged 12 months plus!"

"Probably nothing as bad as if they realised said triceratops was going to take proud placement on my desk at home." He beamed. "Thank you, this really does mean a great deal to me." You knew he wasn't just talking about the toy that rolled around his long fingers and you shifted to rest your head lightly on his shoulder.

"We can come back any time. I, for one, know I'll never get bored of looking through the galleries.. Or I'll never get bored of watching you light up as we walk through said galleries. Either or works, really." He hummed in response, his emotions slightly overwhelmed from the day and its revelations into his past. "Plus there were about 10 other little dinos in the shop and I've always been one to want a full collection.. so, if we pace ourselves, that's at least 10 more trips."

"13.. Although that could be tripled if we take the colour variations into account."

"Oh, of course! Can't half-arse a collection or it's just pointless."

"I concur."

"That's settled then. Almost 40 more trips to finish off our collection.. And thennnn we can move onto the figurines." Mycroft let out a laugh beside you and tilted to rest his head atop yours for the remainder of the journey home.

---

The evening between you was shared over a meal (where, as promised, a small toast was made to the memory of Sir Dippy) before Mycroft sat to finish the papers for Greg. Eventually you collapsed into bed at a relatively reasonable time, groaning at the throbbing in your legs from the day's adventure before finally slipping into rest.

---

The next day passed relatively quickly. The morning was spent visiting Greg in his office to drop off the papers before the pair of you took a small stroll through the streets of London. Eventually, Mycroft and yourself even got a text message from Sherlock giving a (albeit half-arsed) apology for his behaviour the day before and the rest of the day was spent in bliss. That was until exactly 17 minutes after you got back home when Mycroft's mobile began to ring. He swallowed deeply, showing you the caller ID of the person he had been dreading to speak to post-Eurus and answering.

"Ah, yes.. Hello, Mummy."

[trash-gobby]

How does plus size p.o.c find out (accepts) decker is you know what ?

Summary: In which the the Reader discovers Decker is Ol’ Button Face.

A/N: This took really looooooong to write and I feel like I still struggle with writing good endings. However, I hope you still enjoy. I want to get back on track with writing more stuff. Thanks for being so patient and sending in the request! :D

Word Count: 3K

Pairing: Decker X Plus Size POC!Reader

Character: Philip K. Decker, Reader

Citrus Scale: 🍊

RATING: PG 16+

⚠️Warnings!: Angst, gore, blood, dead bodies, murdered children, mention of abuse

______________________________________________________________

Darkness enveloped the house as you slowly opened the ajar front door. Shadows jumped out at you from all angles, sharp and jagged with teeth that could rend and tear flesh. At least that's how sinister they felt, dwarfing you with their utter mystery of what lay within them. All was still and quiet, like no one was home, but a soft thump coming from the second floor made it clear that wasn't the case.

You felt insane doing what you were about to do, entering this quiet home, following a hunch that had been niggling at the back of your mind for weeks. A hunch that the man you thought you knew, the one you'd come to love so completely was hiding a secret.

______________________________________________________________

He'd leave late at night on occasion when he thought you were fast asleep in bed beside him. The first time you'd felt him stir from his rest, you'd dismissed it as restlessness and went back to sleep. However, as these nights of restlessness became more and more frequent you made a point of bringing it up over a steaming cup of coffee one morning.

Decker looked at you squarely in the eye, and for the first time in your entire relationship you felt something more than just puzzled confusion was behind the expression he gave you. There was something buried deep behind those icy blue eyes which made a shiver run up your spine.

"I sometimes feel restless so I go for a walk at night. It helps clear the cobwebs." The explanation felt legitimate in the earnest and sincere way he placed the idea forward to you. A simple solution to something that had been nagging you for countless sleepless nights.

For a while your curiosity was sated, until that one fateful night. You'd gotten up again finding the cold empty space next to you where Decker would be, comforter tucked around you. For a moment you lay there staring at the ceiling trying to muster up the energy to get back to sleep, but found that it was as elusive as your boyfriend. The night was quiet and the bed felt colder than usual, and a deep pit started to form within your stomach. A hole created by something you couldn't quite describe with words, but closest comparison could be called uneasiness. Turning over onto your side, the buzzing light of the street lamp met your eyes through the crack in the curtains, causing you to wince at its intrusion on your sleepless night.

Clearly you must not have closed them tight enough, you thought, grumbling as you pushed the covers aside and placed your feet onto the cold hardwood floor. It creak softly as you stood up and padded over to the window.

Wiping your eyes of the flakes of sleep collected at the corners, your fingers wrapped around either side of the curtain, preparing to pull it shut. You had hoped this would help you get back to into the mood for laying in bed, coaxing sleep to come.

However, something catches your eye as you prepare to close the intruding light. Under the fluorescent harsh glow of the streetlight you make out a shadow lumbering slowly into the light. It catches your attention with it's hunched frame, large and inky black turning to something more comprehensible in the light.

His hair was a mess, some sticking to his head, brow sweaty as he took deep breaths. The coat hung heavily around Decker's frame as he staggered into the light. What really caught you the most about this tableau was the expression etched onto his face. Something almost primal with an undertone of delight. One would think your mind would go straight to the obvious first thought.

He must be cheating. He must be seeing someone else.

However, there was something... Something in the gait of his walk, the sharp intakes of breath pluming out in clouds of mist with each exhale as he walked swiftly as a shadow across the road, most likely not making a sound as he went. It felt not right, not normal, almost unnatural.

His eyes roamed the outlines of the houses, back and forth, making you think less of someone nervous of being caught and more like a predator stalking its territory on its way back from a hunt, blood still freshly smeared face, gore stuck in between its incisors. The image you'd painted in your mind sent a violent shiver up your spine, and your legs felt almost weak from the image in your mind.

Those piercing eyes eventually landed squarely on the window you were standing at, causing you to step back far into the shadows, away from the view and sight, heart starting to race in your chest. Had he seen you? Why did you feel like something very bad would happen if he did? Why did it feel like you'd witnessed something that you shouldn't? Like being nearly caught with a jar of cookies that mother had placed high on the shelf out of reach.

You stumble backwards, knocking the back of your knees against the bed frame causing you to sit down heavily on the edge of the bed. Quickly as you could, you slipped under the covers and lay with your back to the door, waiting for the sounds of the door opening and the heavy footsteps that would follow.

What followed was a tense silence which stretched out into minutes which felt more like hours. Your back was to the door and eyes focused squarely onto the window with it's curtains half drawn. In the pit of your stomach you felt something squirm, making you nauseous, and fearful of what you had seen. At that moment you knew, as you closed your eyes and tried to look like you had been asleep all this time, as the bed dipped beside you, that you had to follow Decker the next time he left.

What you needed more than anything was the truth.

______________________________________________________________

Now under the cover of darkness you slowly made your way into the house, your footsteps muffled by the carpet lining the floor under your feet. You kept to the shadows, eyes darting towards the open doorways you passed, though you were fairly sure the rooms that lay inside them were empty. A living room with a half-finished monopoly game left abandoned on a coffee table, and a dining room with it's polished wooden table and fancy white linen tablecloth. The silver candle holders shone dimly in the moonlight, showing the rich quality of the company who owned this house. Most likely whoever lived here was quite rich or well off.

Reaching the stairs leading up to the second floor, you strained your eyes looking up into the gloom of the upper level. All you could make out were the vague outlines of the doors lining the beginning of the upstairs hall. A soft shuffling sound came from somewhere upstairs, so faint you almost imagined it was in your head. However, the overwhelming fear which had been building up for the past couple weeks. The anxiety of not knowing or understanding what Decker's nighttime adventures were about and your sneaking suspicions that it was more then something as mundane as a, affair, had made your senses heightened with tension.

Your begin your slow ascent, fearing each step that the wood might creek under you and give away your position. Family photos are your only witnesses. They smile out at you with their glittering perfect bliss that can only be achieved through an artificial set up for a family portrait taken by a professional photographer. The mother and father stand shoulder to shoulder, his arm holding her conservatively from behind her back, like you he’s a waiter guiding her to her seat in a fancy restaurant. The two children sit in front. A girl and a boy, most likely only a couple years apart in age, if not twins. Their expressions clearly manufactured by their parents demanding of them to stop making silly faces at the camera and smile like normal little cherubs.

You can’t imagine being in a family like that. One that’s faces feel so false to you, so surreally embodying the “American Dream.” A false dream built into a house of cards, which begins to crumble when daddy takes to drinking after being fired from his job and mommy starts to cry in the bathroom late at night, hiding the bruises from her children. Children who grow into restless teens who would kill to get out of their prison of mundanity only to end up living the same crappy lives of their parents. Then the cycle begins again.

These thoughts overcame you along with all the other noise in your head as you made your way past each frame, and finally up onto the landing. You held your breath, as your eyes adjusted to the darkness, praying that something wouldn't jump out at you in this vulnerable state. However, you were alone. Or at least in the upstairs hallway you were alone. Someone was up here with you, moving around behind the door at the other end of the hall.

All along the wide landing doors lay shut to rooms you hoped lay empty, except for one. Making your way down the hall as quietly as you could, a sliver of light was escaping one of the doors on your left. Something small was propping the door open just enough so that you could see the faint yellow glow of the nightlight illuminating the eggshell blue of a child's bedroom.

Your heart that had been lightly thumping in your chest felt like it began to race harder, making your way closer and closer to the door. Looking down, and squinting your eyes to see better you finally made out what it was keeping the door from closing. You felt your mouth run dry and almost instinctively you flinched back, knocking your elbow against the wall and letting out an audible gasp which you tried to catch.

The hand was small, and looked to pale in the strange glow of the nightlight. It almost looked fake to you when you saw it. You hoped it was fake, but it wasn't. It wouldn't make sense would it? It could be a toy, a doll perhaps. But it looked so real. So cold in the light, not like porcelain but like flesh left out to rot in the dark.

Your back hit the wall as you collapsed against it in shock, hand still covering your mouth and eyes wide as saucers. That's when you noticed it. Heavy breathing. The sound deep and almost guttural. Primal.

The shadowy mass at the end of the hall, framed in the doorway took on an almost inhuman presence in the dark. When you can't quite see where the sharp edges of an object begin to become one with the infinite abyss of the inky darkness. The shape in the doorway slowly morphed from this abyss becoming more tangible in its form.

From what little you could make out the figure was tall and wearing a long coat, and as it reached out to you with one of its large gloved hands its face came more into focus. You felt a scream catch in your throat as you tried to command your legs to move, but you were caught staring into those black button eyes.

It was like something out of a nightmare. The potato sack adhered to its head like a second skin, stretched almost to bursting. The lip a black zipper gash off-Center on the face, almost as if some cruel soul had used a knife to cut it then tried to overlay the zipper crudely on top. It lifted its hand to unzip its lips let out a deep sigh that felt less human and more like a large animal.

“Y/N,” it was deep, almost a growl, but in pain. It was a voice you recognized but you wished you didn’t. Oh you wished this was all in your head. The child’s body, the figure, all of it.

The hand reaching out for you changed course, clicking on a lamp on an end table which had laid in shadow, bathing the hallway in a dim orange glow. This illumination revealed more to your eyes, the already dark coat stained darker on its hem by some fluid you didn't even want to begin to think about.

You finally found the willpower in your limbs to push yourself away from the figure, clumsily raising halfway to your feet. However, no sooner had you moved the figure was upon you like a flash of lightning. One second it was standing at the end of the hallway, halfway toward you, and the next the figure had almost appeared to materialize in your mind before you.

It reached out as you flinched away, trying to back quickly toward the stairs, catching your arm in it's grip. The leather of it's glove felt slightly tacky as the fingers dug deeply into your skin, causing you to let out a yelp pulling away. However, the figure held you firm and yanked you toward it.

"Let me go!" You screamed, finally finding your voice, hoping that someone from one of the other nearby houses would hear you. However, the figure merely used it's free hand to shove you into the wall knocking the breath out of your lungs and clamping it's other hand firmly over your mouth. The wetness of tears were beginning to build up in your eyes as you tried in vain to struggle free, but the figure held you firm. Moving in close to your face so that you were both level, you could smell the stench of malice on his breath.

One of his hands reached up and over to the back of his mask slowly slipping off this hideous second skin to what lay underneath. The sheer shock of your dark eyes meeting those eyes you knew so well for their blue sparkle, now hard and almost emotionless.

"Decker," your voice comes out in a whimper mixed with shock and fear. This felt like a nightmare, one you knew you'd walked into of your own free will. If anything that made it even more horrifying, like this was all inevitable and fate had been leading you to this moment.

"Y/N... What are you doing here?" His tone was accusatory, like she was a child caught doing something they really shouldn't have, and you felt like you had.

Decker's hands moved to your shoulders, a grip so firm that you knew if you even tried to move there would be no point. He had you locked into place.

"What are you doing here?" He shook you slightly as he asked again.

"Decker.. What? What the hell is this?" You felt the tears that had built up start to finally slide down your face. "I thought, I thought you were seeing someone... I don't know what I thought." His countenance seemed to relax slightly but Decker's grip remained firm.

"Why didn't you talk to me?"

"I was afraid. I saw you coming home at night and there was something in your eyes. Something that... It just scared me. I guess there was a reason to be afraid," you said looking back over to the limp form of the child still there, the elephant in the room.

"I never would have thought that..." The words died in your mouth, but the both of you knew what was going to be said.

"That I do this. That I work to remove what is unclean from this world." His eyes are back staring into yours and your not sure what to feel anymore.

"But, they were just a kid. They don't look more than six years old."

"You see the kid is a smokescreen. This house, these people. They are all a smokescreen to what lies deeper. Under all this Americana is something rotting." Decker steps back finally letting you go, but you don't move cause the second you try he's sure to stop you from going anywhere.

"Did you know Geoff the father, he has been laundering money through the company he works for? And Mary-Beth the wife, she's addicted to painkillers, so high out of her mind she didn't even notice me when I walked into the bathroom. All this fancy dressing, pretending this American Dream. It's all just lies and rot. The kid was better dead than growing up to be like either of his parents and having his own spawn to continue the cycle." He is almost manic in his explanation, high on his own twisted beliefs. Was this the same man you'd fallen in love with? How could you still feel that same love even now with this reveal of what truly lay beneath his mask?

"You don't know for certain that kid would have grown up to be anything like them."

"But I do, I do," He rounds on you with wild eyes and comes in close, slamming his palms on either side of the wall, you between them. He seems to shake his head slowly, composing himself and reeling in this terrifying new set of emotions that have been revealed to you.

"I was that kid, and look at me now. Look at what I am. Do you think the world wants more of this? I'm doing them all a favor. This blight needs to be removed, I can do that, I'm the only one fit to." He takes a deep breath and lets it out in one long sigh. There is a long pause, and you're sure he's letting you sit with this revelation.

What you least expect is for your arms wrapping around him, taking him into a warm embrace. You are really crying now, sobbing. You should hate him, should resent him, but you don't. There is shock and there is anger, but your love for him is still there.

"I love you. Whatever happens next." He doesn't seem to know what to do with himself, clearly not expecting this reaction.

"I love you too, more than you know." He said, finally embracing you back. Whatever happened next, you were both going to live in this moment with this revelation.

[ethanesimp]

THE OAK TREE // ZERO E.T. 

Pairing: Ethan Torchio x GN! Reader

Summary: Everyone at the Oakes Academy is aware of the rivalry that exists between two of the school’s best students, Ethan Torchio and Y/N L/N. What nobody knows is what a brilliant team they are when they’re at risk of their reputations being damaged and a killer’s on the loose.

Word Count: 2.6k

Warnings: Just Ethan and Y/N behaving like children, mentions of killing someone (as a joke), swearing.

Masterlist // Taglist link in bio

TEASER

A/N: This is the first chapter of The Oak Tree! I hope you guys enjoy :) Huge thanks to @night-girl-301​ for proofreading this and cheering me on! I was like... scared as shit to post it so yeah.

Taglist (strike means it won’t let me tag you):  @oro-e-diamanti @gretavanfleetlove @victoriadeangeliswifey @cheese-toastie-11 @selenophiliaxx @superchrystaldrug @petit-poussin @bidet-and-legolas @fallingforyou123 @ethaneskin @soft-boy-ethan @teenyweenynightghost @reputationdamiano @cantaraiilmionome @tabi-toast @queen-of-brokenhearts @geklutst-ei @juststalking @cruz-ata @ohtorchio​ @ethan-torchio-angelo​ @unitermoonshine​ @everythingisdefinitelynotfine​

It was only a few minutes past two-thirty when you managed to open the door that led to the greenhouse. The key, more often than not, would get stuck in the lock, and you’d have to spend a few minutes trying to yank it free, but this time around luck seemed to be on your side.

You placed your large black backpack on the stool that was always by the door before closing the entrance again. Mr. Murphy was still watering the plants, completely oblivious to your presence thanks to the loud music coming from the small stereo he kept near the gardening tools. You tapped his shoulder gently not to startle him; it wouldn’t be the first time you’d come into the place unannounced and you didn’t want to be the reason why he had to walk around with a cast on his arm again. 

He smiled fondly at you and adjusted his large glasses that were starting to slide down his nose. Mr. Murphy was an old man with long white hair and kind blue eyes, he’d been in charge of the greenhouse at the Oakes Academy for almost twenty years and had been the first person to show you kindness after you first arrived at the place years back.

“I thought I told you to take the afternoon free, Y/N,” He shook his head disapprovingly and you could only shrug. You had to work at the greenhouse at least three hours a week to maintain your scholarship per the Academy’s rules and it’d been long since it stopped being a task and instead became your favorite part of each day. 

“We were let out of Philosophy earlier so I thought I’d come by before I go study. Can I help with anything?” The older man sighed but nodded. He adjusted his glasses once again and wiped the dirt from his jeans.

He pointed at the corner where all the pink anthuriums were kept, shielded from direct sunlight, “Please water those, put a bit of fertilizer on the ones that arrived on Wednesday, and if you’ve got time, can you please feed the worms?” 

“Sure thing, anything else?”

“Just those three things. I’ve got to go help unload the groceries so please lock up both doors once you’re done,” He asked with a smile on his face as he buttoned his coat and grabbed his walking cane from where he’d dumped it on the floor right next to him. Back when you’d only known him for a few days, you’d always rushed to his side to pick up his cane and help him, but quickly realized it was a thing that annoyed him because of how independent and stubborn he was. “Oh and, before I forget, the kid’s outside. I don't want to come back and see you two trying to tear each other's heads off."

A laugh escaped past your lips and you shook your head as you tilted your head to the side so you could look through the hole in one of the windows. Just like he’d said, the boy with the long hair was sitting outside by the oak tree reading a book. You looked back at Mr. Murphy and shrugged, "No promises."

"I'm serious. You're smart Y/N, and I'm pretty sure you could easily find something you've got in common. That much hatred isn't good for either of you." Those were Mr. Murphy's last words before he walked out of the room.

You stood by the plants for a few minutes as you played around with the headphones that hung around your neck. You’d already sort of been startled by the topic you’d seen during Philosophy that day and you hoped that being at the greenhouse would serve as a little distraction but Mr. Murphy’s words hadn’t helped much.

You huffed and looked around for the hose to water the pretty anthuriums to get your mind off of everything that had gone down that day.

-

Hours later, you were still unable to shake Mr. Murphy’s words off. It wasn’t the first time he’d insisted on voicing his thoughts against that rivalry you had going on with the person standing between you and your biggest dream coming true. The thing that pissed you off though, was that his words had reminded you of what your best friend, Rory, had told you just the previous night while you did your usual hate rant. According to them, it was a good way to destress yourself.

You scoffed at the thought alone and let your chin rest on your palm as a frown appeared on your forehead. There was not a thing you could name that made you even remotely similar to the person sitting only a few feet away from you at the quiet school library. Ethan Torchio, a.k.a. Your archnemesis, the person you disliked the most in the face of the earth, was biting on the tip of his pencil as he concentrated hard on the thin black book he was holding up. Those dark eyes that shone honey whenever light hit them just right and those long strands of hair that graciously fell down his back accompanied by his signature turtlenecks and pretty smile were enough to make someone’s knees weak, but they only made you gag. 

You were sure he felt your eyes bore holes into the dark depths of his soul because it didn’t take long for him to look over his shoulder and meet your stare. Ethan smirked and his eyebrows shot up as he sent you a wink and a small wave. You knew that expression of his, he was teasing you, riling you up, hell, maybe he was trying to intimidate you. As crazy —and maybe a bit pathetic— as it made you sound, a simple smirk wasn’t just that when it came to him, never had been. Those dark eyes of his communicated his devilish intentions to you while he looked like an innocent child who’d never break a plate to anyone else.

You held his stare and mirrored his expression, which made him chuckle softly. It was nothing more than a silly game you’d play with one another to see who’d get tired of it first. The stare-off didn’t last too long that time around because his attention was stolen by one of his friends, Thomas. You simply shrugged and went back annotating on your copy of the black book. It was nothing more than one of those books written for the sole purpose of boring people to death. You loved reading, but when it came to those school-issued books that took around three pages to describe the sky-blue sofas in the main character’s living room, you couldn’t read more than a few pages before wanting to aggressively chuck it out the window. 

In a desperate attempt to distract yourself from the book that did nothing other than make you feel miserable, you stood up. You walked over to the large window that went from floor to ceiling. To your delight, the curtains were drawn back, which allowed sunlight to illuminate the otherwise dark library with its beautiful hues of orange and yellow. The librarian was a grumpy woman that loved when the curtains covered all the windows and blocked any source of light that wasn’t the soft glow of the lamps placed all over the dark room. You were almost convinced this woman had never felt the warmth of the sun against her pale and ashy skin, sometimes you even thought of her as a vampire that’d burn to death if she dared to stand outside for a few minutes. 

You looked out the window and admired the green gardens that adorned the front yard of the Academy’s largest building. The Oakes Academy was old and had been around since 1057. However, unlike most ancient schools like this one, the school board hadn’t been too interested in renovating the place outside of simply reinforcing the structure enough to fulfill the basic safety guidelines and the installation of optical fiber wires for a better internet connection. Even then, it was still considered to be one of the most prestigious schools to study at, and if it hadn’t been for the generous scholarship you were offered, you wouldn’t have been able to afford it anyway.

“Still plotting that little plan of yours to end the human race?” You bit down on your bottom lip to stop the colorful curse words from spilling as you turned sideways to look at Ethan. He’d decided to wear one of those annoyingly tight black turtlenecks of his and a pair of plaid trousers that made him look taller than he already was.

“Yes, and I’ll start with you first,” You smiled sarcastically at him, “In fact, I’ll swing by your dorm and murder you in your sleep,” You added while you choked the air for dramatic effect.

Ethan laughed and rolled his eyes. He had that spark of hate in his eyes that was always present when he was talking to you. That look alone told you that all that hatred and disgust you felt towards him was returned in the same magnitude. This rivalry of yours that consisted of dirty looks and constant arguments had been going on since eighth grade and it just seemed to get progressively worse as graduation approached. 

Everyone at Oakes knew how much Ethan and you despised each other, it wasn’t a secret. Even the Head Professor had been a witness of plenty of your many petty fights and you didn’t doubt that the people in charge of the Student Welfare department were sick of the many reports you’d filed against each other for breaking the ‘student rules of politeness’. No one remotely important cared much about your reports anyways because they were far from serious and, more often than not, childish.

“How cute. Although I don’t think that’d work too well for you, would it amore? If something were to happen to me they’d know it was you,” He commented. You shrugged and bit your lip in anger at the nickname he knew very well you detested. 

You casually leaned against the window, “Meh, it’d be worth it if I knew I wouldn’t have to see your face again. Now please get away before someone starts getting the sick idea that we’re friends.”

Ethan rolled his eyes but backed up a few steps either way, “God forbid someone would think such a horrific thing," He scoffed and raised his hand only to show you his middle finger when he knew the librarian wasn’t looking.

Before either of you could utter out another word, Damiano, one of Ethan’s closest friends, walked up to where you two were standing, effectively ending the conversation between you.

He waved at you and offered you a kind smile, which you immediately returned. Unlike his best friend, Damiano was a delight to be around. He was one of the kindest and nicest people you had ever met. You were quite close thanks to the fact that he’d been dating Rory for a while and you got used to spending long nights with the two of them doing silly things like playing board games or watching films. You were basically their third wheel, but neither of you minded much, if at all. 

“Hey, what’s up?” Damiano smacked Ethan on the shoulder as he started a conversation with him. You took it as your chance to leave and just awkwardly walked away after mumbling something about having to find Rory. They had told you something about eating dinner together, and while you’d initially refused because you were supposed to finish the book and start on your report, you were tempted to accept their offer and forget about the stupid book for a little bit more.

Just as you were about to leave the library, your phone vibrated inside the pocket of your warm cardigan. You took it out and chuckled when you read Rory’s message about their new phone but groaned when you realized they wanted to see you after curfew. You sighed and left the library as you tried to think of a great excuse to tell your roommate Emilia so she’d cover for you while you snuck out.

Ethan had his eyes focused on your figure as you left the library but turned back to look at Damiano when he spoke up, “If you’d only talk to them Ethan, I-” He sighed and interrupted his best friend, already irritated by the conversation he’d had with you.

“No, I will not talk to them, okay? Not like we can even talk because we start arguing like two toddlers,” Ethan mumbled out the last part and took a deep breath in. Truth be told, no part of him wanted to talk to you. You were annoying, rude, and didn’t seem to have more than one brain cell in his eyes, so why lose his time talking to you? Not like there’d be anything to talk about.

“They’re just so exasperating!” He spoke up and Damiano rolled his eyes as he saw his hate rant start approaching. They were both aware that once he started, he wouldn’t be able to stop, “I just- They try so hard and it’s annoying. Like I swear they’re also a huge hypocrite. I know you don’t see it but I do, I’ve never met anyone mo-”

Before he could end his last sentence, he felt a body slam into his and arms snake around his waist. Ethan huffed at the impact but wrapped his arms around her frame once he noticed it was Adeline Rossi, or Addie as everyone liked to call her. 

She pulled back and looked at both Damiano and Ethan excitedly, “You will never believe this but the craziest thing just happened… Hey, where’s Vic?” She trailed off as she started looking around for her friend.

Ethan chuckled lightly when he saw Thomas quietly approach Addie while she was distracted. They all knew she was the easiest person to scare, so it didn’t take more than a slight push and a soft boo for her green eyes to go wide and for her to jump. She was quick to turn to where Thomas was standing and didn’t think twice before smacking his shoulder with the heavy book she was carrying.

Thomas put his hands up in defeat as he took a step back and rubbed his shoulder, “Okay, okay shit. Stop, that actually hurts,” He whined and Addie only shrugged as Damiano and Ethan watched the whole interaction with amusement. 

“Right, so, ignoring all that,” Addie spoke up once again and shifted her attention back to Ethan, “Since she is nowhere to be seen, could you please help me with some stuff? It’s just this little interview for one class of mine and I’ve already interviewed Damià and Thomas but I need just one more.”

He nodded and said a quick goodbye to his two best friends before following the shorter girl out of the library. However, while he was walking, he felt his phone vibrate inside the pocket of his jeans. He fished it out and frowned as he read the text that had just been sent to him but laughed once he noticed it was only his girlfriend Emilia from her new phone. 

Then he sighed and rolled his eyes once he realized she wanted to see him past curfew again and he knew Will would ask him for money in exchange for not ratting him out. He quickly texted her back and slipped his phone back into his pocket as he followed Addie to her dorm.

Next

GOOGLE DRIVE 

[harrysgloves]

Three’s Company

Harry Styles x Reader x Florence Pugh

Story Summary: The relationship of Harry Styles, Florence Pugh, and Y/N are kept under wraps... until it all falls apart. 

Word Count: 3.4k

Warnings: Language // Angst 

Authors Note: Please ignore the fact I’ve had writters block for over a month... Hope this is at least (semi) close to what you wanted anon! I kind of been carried away in daydreams of a poly relationship with Harry and Florence lately... xx

>>>Kind of a continuation of this fic<<< (Not necessary to read first)

PART TWO

>>><<<

"Come on." Harry breathed out the words onto your skin. His lips pressed against the smooth sensitive velvet of your inner legs. "Jus' wanna make yeh feel good, baby."

"I gotta go." You whined, your head pressed down into your pillow on his bed as you pouted up at the ceiling. It was 11:32 and you had exactly 28 minutes until you needed to be across town for this dumb lunch you promised your friends you'd show up to.

"Only need five minutes." He smirked into your skin. Playful green eyes shot up from between your legs when you out a huff.

"Shut up." You mumbled, your legs snapped closed as you tried to roll out of his oversized bed. His long, lanky, arms around your waist trying their best to stop you from leaving.

"Wait!" He pouted, his head rested on your shoulder.

"Harry." You groaned, your head leaned back as your feet dangled off the bed, inches away from the floor, and towards the plans, you were starting to regret making for the day.

"Sweetheart, 've missed yeh." His calloused hands wandered down your waist, under the shirt you'd stolen from his closet for your impromptu nights stay.

You were starting to wonder why you even bothered having an apartment of your own when those fucking hands started soothing motions on your breast. Rough fingers swirling your nipples into a hard peak.

Your soft sigh floated through the air as his lips curled against your neck. You could tell he thought he won this time, his gloating smirk, a self-satisfied hum drifting from that damn mouth that you simultaneously wanted to smack and grind against. He always knew how to do this, he managed to find all your weak spots in less than a month.

The bastard.

"You two always start without me." The voice of your girlfriend broke through that foggy haze of lust in your mind. You jumped away from Harry. Your bare feet hit the floor with a loud slap.

"Ugh." Harry groaned as he slammed back into the soft mattress, his eyes glared at Florence. "Now she's gonna leave."

"What? No…." She drew out in a whine. Perfectly pink lips pouted at you from the corner of Harry's bed.

"I promised them I'd go this time." You mumbled as you tossed articles of clothing that didn't belong to you across the room.

You three needed a cleaning system.

"But…" Florence sighed as she took down her hair from the towel on top of her head. "Today's our day off."

"You guys can still do stuff." You said as you wiggled quickly into your jeans, not at all paying attention to the worried look on both of their faces.

It had been a little less than a month of dating and the two of them hadn't gone anywhere without you. Sure, you'd done things separately with the both of them. Separate dates, divided time between both their apartments, and long nights with either one of them in a bed.

You'd done just as much together as you had apart but neither one of them wanted to push the bounds of the slightly new relationship. That left you with one boyfriend and one girlfriend, who really didn't seem to be dating each other, only you.

"We've talked about this." You groaned as you slid your bra around your bare stomach. Harry's shirt bunched around your neck as you threaded each arm through a strap. "Go out on a date, fuck each other."

"We do!" Florence protested, her arms crossed against her bare chest, the towel in her hair fell slightly as she pouted to you.

You couldn't have rolled your eyes harder if you tried.

"Without me." You said as you tucked Harry's shirt into the top of your jeans. His head popped up from the bed, a dimpled smile across his face when he saw you wearing his clothes for the day.

"We wanna give yeh time to get used to it." He said as he rested on his elbow. His soft curly hair hung in his eyes.

"I know," you sighed as you sat down on the edge of the bed to put on your socks. " I appreciate it but really, you two are dating too."

"Won't change your mind?" Florence asked after a second too long of you three being in silence.

"Flor," you cooed in a soft voice when your eyes lifted to see her looking so vulnerable. "I'm not going anywhere. I want this."

Your hand cupped around her face, thumb stroking her cheek. Her head nodded in agreement before you leaned in to capture her lips with your own.

This would be good for all of you, you thought. A chance for the three of you to become a solid unit, not separate moving parts. You smiled softly at her as you leaned back from her. Her eyes still held a look of disbelief hidden deep in them.

"Promise I'm not going anywhere."

>>>

"You're late!" Your best friend yelled way too loudly at you as soon as you rounded the corner of the sidewalk. Your cheeks flamed as you glared at him, thankful your sunglasses hid you at least a little bit from the seemingly millions of people, now staring at you.

"Get famous friends and now you think you can be late."

Your elbow dug into his side as you passed him. The doors to the sports bar, you used to be a regular at, opened with a ring as he mumbled under his breath, dutifully following behind you as he rubbed the sore spot on his side.

The long table that was once filled with your handful of single friends was now filled to the brim with the original three and their partners. You were the only singleton, the lone warrior, or at least that's what they all thought.

The decision to not go public was made almost immediately by the three of you. No media coverage seemed like the smart move for everyone involved.

The only exception you made to the keep-it-under-wraps rule was your immediate family and your one best friend, Sam, who promptly told his own girlfriend.

"You should go out with our travel agent, Y/N, he's really sweet. Not much of a looker though." Lisa, a girl you didn't even like, piped up halfway through your pasta dish. Your teeth ground together as you smiled up to her over your fork.

"Might as well, Y/N." Sam's girlfriend, Casey, snickered from the other side of you. Her laughter was cut short by your foot kicking her leg under the table, hard.

"I'm good." You huffed, you didn't know how much longer you could take sitting here with all of them trying to set you up with friends of friends, or worse their sad sympathetic smiles everytime one of the couples at the table did something cute.

"You could tell them." Sam whispered to you when he saw your mounting frustration with the situation. Most of your friends had married assholes who had no problem voicing their opinions about your love life.

By the third beer and your slice of cheesecake, you had relaxed a bit. The conversation had finally gone from your lack of love life towards everyone's children or careers. The end of the long lunch was finally on the horizon and you could successfully ditch having to hang out with all of them again for at least another 6 months when your phone started buzzing out of control from your purse behind you.

All 6 people who sat around the table with you seemed to be more invasive than you originally thought. All set of eyes stared you down as you unlocked your phone to silence it, when the notifications caught your attention.

So many fucking notifications.

Every account you had, countless tags and mentions, tweets from every person in America, it felt like.

Thank fuck, @Y/N_Y/L/N can FINALLY leave @Harry_Styles alone!

Ding, Dong, the third wheel is DEAD @Y/N_Y/L/N

Hope @Y/N_Y/L/N is recovering well from @Harry_Styles choosing the better girl @Florence_Pugh

#Florencerry #Farry #Florry CONFIRMED. #ByebyebyeY/N

That familiar feeling of dread flooded your stomach, your tongue grew thick with anxiety as your eyes scanned so many messages. Your silence covered the entire table, or maybe it was the ringing in your ears that made it feel that way.

You said you wanted them to go on a date, not this.

No, this, this was awful. A picture of your two partners with their tongue shoved down each other's throats. They were in a corner, away from everybody, trying to be as private as possible. Harry's hand wrapped in her hair, her own hands grasped the back of his shirt.

Why wouldn't they be more careful? Where did this leave you three?

Where did it leave you?

"Everything okay?" Sam's voice sliced through your anxious thoughts.

"Just my brother." You lied as smoothly as you could. Your phone quickly locked and placed back into your purse, a wad of money thrown on the table for your meal. "He's at my apartment, got to go let him in."

"Okay?" Sam's voice trailed behind you as you rushed through the doors to the restaurant and back to the safety of your own apartment.

>>>

"What the fuck?" Florence groaned, her pillow thrown off the bed, towards Harry's phone that wouldn't stop ringing.

"'M up." He mumbled, his blurry eyes barely opening. They definitely shouldn't have had all those drinks with lunch.

"Wot?" He grumbled, half-asleep into his phone, not even paying attention to the name that flashed across the screen.

"Why didn't you tell me you're going out with Florence? This is great for the movie!" Jeff cheered, loudly, way too loudly. Harry's eyebrows pulled together as he pulled the phone back from his face.

Florence gasped, shooting up from her place, phone in hand as she panicked. Her eyes widened larger and larger, the longer she looked at her phone.

"Oh no." She whispered, her phone pushed in Harry's face that fell into a frown the second his eyes focused on the bright screen.

"Well, 'm not-" he cleared his throat that suddenly seemed like the desert. "'M dating her and Y/N."

"At the same time?" Jeff said after a very long and uncomfortable pause. Harry's hand ran through his hair as Florence signaled for him to put Jeff on speaker.

"Yeh, we're all datin'." Harry's lips pursed as he hit the speakerphone button. He wasn't exactly sure what Jeff would say. Sure, he was supportive in the past but this was new territory, at least for Harry.

"Harry…" Jeff sighed through the phone. His voice seemed to make the room go completely still. Everything paused in time. "You can't- listen, it's not a good idea to go public with that."

"Not really y'choice."

"Give it till the movie's over. You and Florence date publicly and promote the movie, once it's done go public then if you still want to."

"We'll talk 'bout it." Harry muttered, the phone call ended as quickly as it started. His phone thrown haphazardly back onto the nightstand beside the bed as he let out a long groan, his hands ran down his face.

"God, Y/N had to see that already. She's probably freaking out." Florence said as she got out of bed, determined to go check on her girlfriend no matter how late it was.

"Jeff was right." Harry said softly, his eyes fixed on the wall opposite of him. The small amount of light that filled the room was barely enough to see the shocked look across Florence's face, but Harry didn't have to see it to know it was there.

Even he was surprised at his own words.

Was he really prepared to give you both up to save his career? Or could he take all the stigma from dating two girls at once? He didn't know and he didn't have time to process.

"You did not just say that."

"What would people think, Flor? 'M a guy, dating two women! I'd be a womanizer and yeh two the bimbos who put up with me datin' each other."

"Wow, Harry." Florence's voice boomed around the room as she threw on her clothes. Angrily stomping around until she was clothed.

"Yeh knew what I meant." He sighed, his head rested in his hands.

"I don't want to hide who I'm with. I'm happy with you two and I can't believe you want to hide that!" She shrieked, her foot stomped on the floor as she glared at him.

Logically, she could understand his reasoning. Emotionally, she was pissed. How could he be thinking of hiding away what you three had? You were the perfect girlfriend and the three of you worked so well together.

"I wanna give it time!" He snapped back, his voice sharp with an anger she hadn't heard before.

"Why?" She asked in a huff, her hands crossed over her chest as she glared at him.

"People are gonna eat her alive. She'll always be the third wheel. If we wait til after the movie maybe it won't be so bad" Harry's words sucked the life right out of Florence. Her chest seemed to deflate as she stared at Harry. Stress, anxiety, and about a million other feelings ran through her all at once.

"Oh." She sighed, the edge of the bed dipped in as she sat down. Both of them silently staring at random objects in the room that suddenly become the most interesting thing.

Both of them wondering where this left the three of you.

>>>

It had been three months, three long and hard months of feeling like the outsider in your relationship. Maybe not in private but in public, you were always the odd man out.

Don't stand too close to Harry.

Don't be too friendly with Florence.

Don't laugh too hard.

Don't smile too much, and for the love of God, do not let anyone catch you hugging each other for too long.

It was hard but as the holidays grew closer and the final scenes of the movie were filmed, you knew the end was just on the horizon. You'd finally be able to hold hands with them in public again. You'd be able to fix Florence's hair or adjust Harry's shirt without being murdered online.

The trivial things that you used to not pay any mind to doing every day were hard to stop doing in public at first. It was a hard road, with too much speculation from fans and a lot of rude tweets about you, but it was worth it. You'd spend your nights wrapped up with the both of them, a smile on your face as you drifted to sleep.

It was hard but worth it. You'd repeat to yourself almost daily.

They cared about you.

They wanted to be with you.

You loved them both.

"Hello?" Your voice cracked as your one hand rubbed the sleep out of your eyes, the other barely opening the front door of Harry's house.

You didn't think he was expecting anyone.

"Is, uh, is my brother here?" Gemma asked from the other side.

"Oh, he and Florence are at an interview for the movie." You said as you opened the door fully for her. Your bare legs that weren't covered by Harry's t-shirt raised at the cool air that ran in. "You can wait for him if you want."

"Yeah, okay." She mumbled as she walked passed you, her eyes barely made contact with your own as she made a fast-paced walk to the living room.

"I'm sorry, if I'd known you were coming I would have picked up or you know, made tea or something." You said awkwardly from the entryway. Your arms crossed over your chest as you walked further into the room.

"No offense or anything," she started as she looked over the semi-messy room and back over to you, "why are you here?"

"What?" You asked with an uncomfortable chuckle, the smile that was there fell from your face.

"This is Harry's house and he's not here. Plus, he's dating Florence." Her pointed words stung deep as her eyes sliced into you.

"He's, he didn't- wait," you stuttered out as you circled to where she was standing, your eyebrows pulled tightly together as you looked into her stern face. "Did he not tell you?"

"Tell me what? That you're Florence's friend?"

The lung was sucked out of your lungs so quickly it felt like you were a fish out of water. Your tongue wetting your lips was the only signal to your brain that you were still alive and moving around, breathing but barely.

"Florence friend, right." You said softly, your eyes stung as you scoffed. You shook your head as you stared at the floor.

It took a millisecond for you to get a hold of yourself. You gave her a sad smile as you walked past her towards the bedroom. His shirt left on the bed and all of your belongings that were in sight packed into your oversized purse.

You were done.

You were so done being the third wheel. You could handle it for a little bit, maybe even forever if it was just with the public, but this was his sister. His family, his inner circle, and he hadn't told her.

"Y/N?" You heard her panicked call of your name from the other room. Your heart sank into the pit of your stomach. Your head thrown back as the tears started to flow down your cheeks.

You couldn't be with one and not the other.

"Where are you going?" Her voice broke as she saw you standing there, your bags packed, his shirt on the bed.

"Y/N?" His voice stung, the betrayal burned in your throat.

"I'm leaving." You said from the middle of the bedroom, your back still faced them as they stood in the doorway.

"You'll be back tomorrow, right?"

"No, Flor, I'm not coming back." You whispered, tears flooded your eyes as you heard her suck in a deep breath.

"Y/N, 'S almost over, one more interview and I prom-"

"Fuck your promises." You yelled as you turned furiously in your spot, your vision blurred as you glared at him.

"Wha-"

"Ask your sister." You scoffed as you stormed past them, your shoulder knocked his as you pushed through the doorway.

"What does that mean?" Florence yelled as she trailed after you. Harry's shocked face and slumped shoulder not deterring her at all from chasing you down.

"It means I'm done." You sniffed, the sleeve of your sweater used as a tissue. "I'm your girlfriend not some slut you welcome in your bed from time to time."

"We don't think that at all!" Florence cried harder, her hands cupped your face as she closed in on you. Your shoulders shrugged, your own hands pushed hers away as you sucked in a deep breath.

"I can't Flor. I just can't."

"Baby, please, lemme explain…" Harry pleaded as he walked up behind Florence, his hands rested on her shoulders, his own green eyes watering. "I didn't it to get out before we were ready. Jus' a little longer and then it goes back to normal."

"This is normal. This will always be our normal." You sobbed, your hands covered your eyes as you turned from the both of them. Your arms hugged around yourself for comfort. "I'm always going to be the one who's in the middle of your relationship."

"You're not!" Florence choked as she held onto Harry's hand.

"I'll fix all of this, please, jus' stay." Harry's hand reached for your own but you jerked your body away.

You couldn't say anything, nothing more would come out. No words made sense to you right now. Your heart was broken and so were you. You turned to leave, walking tight past the shocked Gemma and towards the door.

"I love you." Her words made you pause but only for a second, the doorknob turned in your hand before you could give it a second thought.

Leaving was harder than you ever imagined but you couldn't stay where you felt unwanted. Your sniffling nose and shallow breathing was your only company as you walked the long street back to your car then back to your lonely apartment that shined with object after object that reminded you of them.

[iamverysmall-andihavenomoney]

Babysitting with Tsukishima Kei

As with most everything I write, this is pretty much entirely self-indulgent 😅 But I don’t mind writing for other characters, if you’d like!

Haikyū!! Masterlist

Pairing: Tsukishima Kei x Gender Neutral! Reader

Warnings: Children, soft Kei.

Tsukishima hated this so much. With a large palm pressed to his head, he let out a quiet groan. He was in college. He was the equivalent of a child.

   But how could he not fall in love with the sight of you interacting with these kids? 

   It started out as your boyfriend accompanying you to babysit your cousins four kids. First, he’d given you a firm ‘no,’ before pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose and returning his eyes to his notes. Though, that same night, after you’d taken care of him, massaging his shoulders when he grew to tense, washing his hair in the shower, cleaning his dirtied glasses for him, gently massaging his scalp while you ran your towel through it... Well, after you’d been the epitome of the perfect human being to him, he begrudgingly caved.

   The oldest of the kids was a nine-year-old girl who had enough of an attitude to give your boyfriend a run for his money. The second was another girl, though she was only three and one of the most amusing kids you’d met, consistently trying to hand Kei a plate of ‘food,’ only to get mad and stomp her feet, when he didn’t play along, the way she wanted. The third child was a little two-year-old boy, who did anything and everything that would cause you and Kei trouble (he’d attempted to break the T.V. with a toy broom, twice now.) And the youngest was another little boy, not even a year old, yet; he was the calmest of the bunch, though that was a given.

   Your cousin was off to a wedding and stated that she and her husband wouldn’t be back for a while.

   Go figure, Kei silently complained, watching the way the kids wreaked havoc about the room. It looked like a damn circus had been let run rampant through the home. It was eleven o’clock, why weren’t these kids tired, yet?

Watching you chase these kids around was pretty amusing, though. This wasn’t your first time babysitting them and it showed.

   Kei knew he wasn’t being of much help, simply doing his best to keep the three-year-girl, Setsuko, entertained. And by extension, he kept the nine-year-old with the crush on him, Mitsuki, entertained as well. Meanwhile, you took care of the baby boys. The youngest, Jirou, was stationed in your arms, eyes heavy as he sleepily took the bottle you fed him, and the second-to-youngest, Ryuu, clawed at your calf, wanting up into your arms, as well.

   All of the kids were sleepy, though you’d warned Kei earlier that kids never wanted to sleep when they had babysitters. They may be exhausted, but unless you could get them to settle down long enough for sleep to take over, they’d be up, all night.

   Looking away from Jirou, your eyes lock onto Kei, who is sitting there, now with a dinosaur toy at hand, playing some type of game with the two little girls, who had probably pulled the dinosaurs out of their brother’s room to impress the older man (who had refused to take off his dinosaur hoodie since he got here.) Though you’d be an idiot not to catch how often adoring eyes shifted to you. Even if he might deny it, anyone could tell that he looked at you as if you had hung the stars. Catching his eyes, his soft smile is replaced by a snarky mouthing - though you can’t quite focus on his words.

   Instead, you were focused on how sweetly he played with the kids and how gentle he was when he spoke to them. Despite his hesitancy to come, he was enjoying himself. It made you wonder if there would ever be a family in the cards for you two.

   It wasn’t long before you were taking Jirou to put him to sleep, Ryuu replacing the infant in your arms, not even a few moments after you’d gotten the younger to sleep. Turning on the baby monitor, you shut off the light and pull the door closed behind you, joining Kei in the living room, once again. Though, he was apparently a few steps ahead of you in your plans to settle the kids down.

   After having seemingly convinced the girls to watch a movie, they were both off to get in pajamas, your tall middle blocker boyfriend walking around the room and collecting some of the toys to toss them into their respective bins. Smiling to yourself, you move to prepare the couch, tossing a few blankets on for all of you, before placing Ryuu down and walking to turn the T.V. on to play a movie.

   The two girls come racing back in, in fits of giggles while they do, quickly jumping onto the couch to get comfortable, both you and Kei sitting down with them. Mitsuki was on one side of Kei, Setsuko seated in between you both, and Ryuu practically on top of you.

   And one by one, the three began to fall asleep. First it was Setsuko, and shortly after was Mitsuki, who Kei promptly carried to their respective beds, as well. While he was tucking them in, you managed to get Ryuu to sleep, gently lifting him in your arms to take him to his bed. While in the hallway that held the doors to the children’s bedrooms, you found Kei gently closing the door to Mitsuki’s room.

   Meeting you in the hallway, he couldn’t help but blink owlishly. A tired expression painted both of your faces, you were putting children to bed, your clothes slightly askew from a long day and the rambunctious kids tugging on them... It felt so domestic. 

   Kei hadn’t ever been one to really want kids or a family. The domestic lifestyle just hadn’t seemed for him. But here he was, just wanting to see you smile and to have his own kids with you. No matter whether they were biological or adopted, he just knew he wanted to see this everyday.

   Kei silently stands in the doorway, while you tuck Ryuu into his bed, before turning towards your boyfriend. He outstretches a hand for you to take, and once you do, he gently leads you out of the room.

   “After college.” he speaks. Though he doesn’t say anything more, guiding you to the couch to lay with him, you know what he means.

   “After college,” you quietly confirm, face tucked into his chest, whilst you lay on top of him. 

   While your eyes droop and you find yourself drifting to sleep, Kei stares at the ceiling, trying to fight the smile threatening to emerge. Because all he could think about was coming home to you and a family, now.

General Taglist:

@thathoneybee3

[miracleonice87]

4 // Coney Island for our boy Tyler

from the evermore prompt list

“The question pounds my head, What's a lifetime of achievement / If I pushed you to the edge?” - coney island

He couldn’t possibly be doing this.

As you and your three children, five and under, stood waiting in the hallway, you found yourself glancing at the clock hung on the wall every thirty seconds or so. With each minute that passed, the sinking within you opened up wider, threatening to swallow you whole.

Tyler should’ve been home by now. The game ended an hour and a half ago, and you and the kids had left the arena with a couple minutes left to ensure you’d make it home in time to pull off the surprise. The kids had burst through the door to grab the cards they had made earlier in the week, and you headed to the freezer to retrieve the cake you’d arranged to have sent all the way from Tyler’s favorite bakery in Brampton.

You sighed as you heard the kids excitedly buzzing around the first floor, wishing that you could feel even an inkling of the giddiness they had ahead of their father’s arrival. Things between you and Tyler had been strained for many months, and you had to battle your own bitterness to even acknowledge his birthday at all. You told yourself you were doing this for your kids. For the kids — not for him.

But as the clock neared 11 with no sign of Tyler, anxiety hummed within you. He had bailed countless times in the last few months — hell, in the last few years, if you were being honest with yourself. But today was his 35th birthday. The kids had been at school and daycare all day and hadn’t yet been able to give him the traditional birthday hugs and kisses that had become customary in your family since your oldest was born. He knew you were here waiting, the kids now long past their typical bedtimes.

There was just no way he could possibly do this.

Just as you were about to suggest that the kids head upstairs and put their pajamas on while they waited, your phone buzzed in your back pocket, the blood draining from your face as the hope drained from your heart.

The kids were still giggling and bouncing around, entertaining each other, blissfully unaware of the chaos brewing inside you. You took the opportunity to silently slip through the French doors into Tyler’s office to take the phone call.

Of course, it was him. You wondered what excuse he would carelessly toss your way this time around.

“Hello?” you answered, keeping your voice low.

In the background, you heard a commotion, jovial voices sounding like those of his teammates.

“Hey,” Tyler said dryly. “I, uh, I just wanted to let you know that some of the guys and I decided to hop a flight to Vegas tonight instead of going with the team tomorrow. So I won’t be coming home.”

You leaned against his desk and laughed humorlessly, switching your phone to the other ear.

“That’s great,” you breathed. “That’s just fucking... that’s fantastic, Tyler. Thank you for telling me now.”

He scoffed. “Yeah, this is why I don’t tell you shit,” he threw back. “I’m always the bad guy.”

Red hot rage boiled in your throat as you growled through gritted teeth, “Your children are waiting for you, Tyler.”

You heard him sigh, seeming to weigh what to say next. When he said nothing, you pushed. “What am I supposed to tell them? Huh? What would you like me to tell our kids, who have been waiting all day to see you and hug you and kiss you and eat birthday cake with you? Should I just tell them Daddy decided he’d rather go drink and gamble and party with his friends than come home to us?”

“No!” Tyler spat. “That’s not true. I—“

“Oh, it’s not?” you asked, your voice inadvertently rising. “Then tell me, Tyler, why the fuck are you doing it?”

You heard him draw a breath, expecting an immediate rebuttal, but instead you heard only his teammates calling for him.

“I have to go,” Tyler said, his voice raspy. “Tell the kids I love them and I’ll be home after the game tomorrow night.”

“You’re joking,” you huffed. “You’re really going to do this?”

As you spoke, tears brimmed in your eyes and you gazed across the dim room at your framed wedding photo that sat on the bookshelf. The two people in the picture looked like strangers to you now. You doubted you would ever know them again.

“I gotta go,” Tyler repeated in monotone. With that, he hung up.

Anger surged through you, and you allowed a few broken sobs to pass through your lips before shoving your phone in your pocket and swiping beneath your eyes to dry your tears. With a deep breath, you forced a smile and walked back into the hall.

“Mommy, where is Daddy?” your three-and-a-half year old daughter asked. You scooped her up and kissed her smooth cheek, devastated that Tyler could choose anything over these moments with your kids.

“You know what, Uncle Jamie asked Daddy to come with him early to Las Vegas to, um, to get in lots of good practice before they play the Golden Knights tomorrow night,” you told her as you smoothed your five-year-old son’s hair, the disappointment visible on the faces of these eldest two. “But, you know what? He told us to go ahead and have a slice of birthday cake before we go to bed. How does that sound?”

At that, they all cheered, even your newly two-year-old little boy, who clapped excitedly beside his brother, bringing a sad smile to your face.

“Can we still sing Happy Birfday?” your daughter asked, twirling your hair around her little hand affectionately and shattering you further.

You weren’t sure how much heartbreak you could handle at this point. You kissed the tip of her nose and nodded.

“Sure, baby,” you obliged, sniffling. “We can if you want to.”

_____

To some, it was sure to seem sudden.

To you, it seemed like it had been a long time coming.

When you heard the door slam and the dogs start barking, you knew the time for a reckoning had finally come.

“Hello?” Tyler called into the house, his voice echoing off the high ceilings. You didn’t bother to provide a reply.

Eventually, after you heard him drop his bags and greet the dogs, he climbed the stairs, and you hated the way your heart rate sped up automatically. He called your name, but again, you gave no response. He eventually found you in the bedroom, alone and silent.

“What are you doing?” Tyler asked, eyes scanning the suitcases lining the wall. “Where are the kids?”

You sighed, sitting back on your haunches and pausing folding your clothes.

“I’m packing, Tyler,” you answered, unable to look him in the eye. “The kids are in Fort Worth with my parents.”

“What do you mean, packing?” Tyler asked, brow furrowed as he took quick steps toward you. “Packing for what?”

You leaned back on your palms, rolling your head to try to ease the ever present tension in your neck, preparing for battle before slowly standing to your feet. You crossed your arms across your chest and found his startled gaze.

“Packing to leave, Tyler,” you answered, faking confidence. “Last night was the final nail in the coffin for me. I cannot, and will not, continue to do this to my children. To myself. I just, I won’t.”

Tyler’s eyes were wild as he came closer, grabbing your upper arms desperately.

“Baby, please, I don’t—“ he began, stuttering. “How can I fix this? How can I keep you here?”

You pried his fingers from your biceps and shot him an infuriated look.

“You know what would have been a good start?” you fumed. “Coming home to see your children on your birthday. Spending the night with your family instead of hopping a flight to Vegas. But Tyler, honestly, this has been over long before last night. Let’s not kid ourselves.”

As you moved past him to gather a bundle of your shoes from the closet, Tyler was hot on your heels.

“Listen,” Tyler said pleadingly, holding his hands up in front of him in surrender. “I know things haven’t been good lately. But please, just... just don’t do this. Don’t do this to me.”

You spun around in a blur, the ice in your gaze freezing Tyler in place.

“Do this to you?” you scoffed. “What about our children, Tyler? What about me? Huh? Do you think I actually want to leave the father of my kids? Of course I fucking don’t. Never in a million years could I have thought that this would happen. But here we are. Living separate lives. It’s about fucking time I just make it official.”

Tyler was nearly panting now and he heard his heartbeat within his own ears, spinning his wheels as he wrestled with what to do, what to say, next. You pushed past him with a newfound sense of urgency to finish packing as quickly as possible and get the fuck out.

Finally, Tyler found his voice again, though it was choppy with subdued sobs.

“But what does all of it matter if you’re not here?” he found himself asking as he watched you zip the bags. You shook your head from where you knelt on the floor.

“Maybe you should’ve asked yourself that earlier, Ty,” you suggested angrily, glancing at him in fury.

With that, Tyler sunk to the bench at the end of the bed, beginning to hyperventilate as he watched you stack the kids’ bags on top of your own. He held his head in his hands and begged, “No, no, please, don’t go, please, please forgive me,” as you readied the last of the belongings you were taking with you.

You started to feel your resolve wearing thin, tears threatening to spill and weaken the brave face you were pulling. You forced yourself to cross the room, pull off your rings, and place them on top of Tyler’s dresser. He watched on helplessly, and as you leaned back against the familiar piece of furniture, you finally summoned the courage to say the words you’d been preparing in your heart for months now.

“I fell for this illusion of this life I’d get to live with you, Ty,” you began. “This life filled with this passionate love we found when we were so young, and evolving into this everlasting commitment to growing a family together, not to mention never having to worry about earning a living, and getting to watch you do what you love night in and night out, with our kids. But somewhere along the line, that illusion finally faded for me. You coaxed me into this life and then you left me here.” As you spoke, tears fell from Tyler’s brown eyes, filled with sorrow and regret. It used to wreck you when he cried. Now it just made you angry. You pressed on.

“I go to bed at night and you’re not here, and I wake up and you’re not here, and even when you’re here, you’re not here. I don’t even think you wanna be. Our kids don’t even think you wanna be.”

Your voice wavered as you delivered those words, and Tyler hung his head.

“You used to be the one place I wanted to be, Tyler,” you continued. “And for a year now, I’ve broken my soul in two looking for you. But I can’t find you. I can’t find the person you used to be. You leave me hanging every single day. Despite the times I’ve begged you over and over again to come back to us. I won’t let you continue to disappoint our family like this.”

You wiped your tears away with the backs of your thumbs and pushed off the dresser, approaching the suitcases and preparing to begin the hardest task you’d ever had to attempt — living a life without Tyler.

“I’m sorry,” he cried in despair, sniffling as he watched you approach the doorway.

“I’ll always love you, Tyler,” you offered softly. “I just can’t do this anymore.”

As he watched you walk out on him, Tyler questioned everything he thought he knew about the life he was leading. What’s a lifetime’s worth of accolades, awards, and achievements if he pushed the ones he loved to the edge?

[pomegranates-and-blood]

Lips of an Angel (Modern!AU)

My Masterlist  

Pairing: Ivar/Reader, Ivar/Freydis, Reader/OC

Summary: “Well, I had this idea of Ivar x reader based off the song Lips of an Angel. (If you feel like a Modern AU works best that's fine) Where Ivar is with Freydis, but Ivar never let go of his feelings for the reader and she never let go of hers, and you can decide how you want it to end.”

Word Count: 2.8k

Warnings: Angst, lost love, implied/mentioned sex/cheating, teeny tiny mentions of sub!Ivar (couldn’t help myself, sorry)

A/N: So here’s the modern version of this request, bc I’m a mess and couldn’t decide. I hope I did okay, and that the lovely anon that requested this is happy with how it turned out. Thank you so much!

You can find the Viking Era version of this request right here

“He asked me to marry him.”

Your words drop on Ivar’s chest with such weight he almost gasps, and parted lips try bringing air to lungs that cannot function, that remain paralyzed.

You’re marrying someone else.

He tells you to wait, or he thinks he does, hopes he does. All he can think of is getting out of this fucking bed and being able to talk to you, to…to make sense of the world again.

You haven’t called him in…Gods, in so long. All he has had of you for almost two years is the polite smiles and the civil conversations to be held when your family and his get together.

But now, now you call him in the middle of the night, saying his name like you used to, and telling him…telling him…

You’re marrying someone else.

Getting onto his chair has never proven so difficult, with shaking hands and panicked breaths. He moves towards the leaving room, leaving behind a bedroom of two people that have seen someone else when they whisper their I love you’s for months now, that have pretended not to hear names not their own when they lose themselves in each other since the beginning.

“Talk to me, princess.” Ivar asks once he gets to the living room, free hand tapping anxiously at the wheel of his chair as he hears you take a few deep breaths.

“Emil asked me to marry him.”

He grits his teeth, “I got that part.”

“I…I don’t know why I called, I just…” “I should have said yes. He’s…he’s a sweet guy, and my dad loves him, and…”

Ivar refuses to sit there like an idiot and hear you sing praises to the man you’re dating, and it is with a bubble of anger and resentment that he calls out your name, stopping you.

You sigh, and it feels so familiar his chest pulls tight, “It’s been so long since you’ve said my name.”

His eyes fall closed, and he drags a hand over his face, trying to find some sort of stability in this madness. He hates how you still have this hold over him, how with only a few words you turn him inside out, leave him raw and vulnerable.

“Wh-Why do you tell me this?” He asks, tilting his head back and resting his head on the backrest of the chair, looking up at a darkened ceiling. “To torture me? To play some kind of-…”

“Because I couldn’t say yes,” You whisper, and at the way you seem to be so close to crying his own chest hurts. “Ivar, I…I…”

“What, princess?” He presses, because he cannot hold his breath any longer, because you pulled him under with the sweet sound of his name on your lips and he hasn’t been able to breathe properly since you called.

“I shouldn’t have called,” You mutter, almost to yourself, “You’re with someone else, I-…”

“She isn’t you.” Ivar tells you, too-late regretting being so honest, sounding so pathetically desperate.

You remain silent for so long he almost wants to hang up, to end this whirlwind that has made his world be upside down, to save himself the humiliation of a rejection.

“I never moved on, Ivar,” You confess, and in a sigh that he can close his eyes and feel by his ear as if you were there, you seem to find your strength. Because after a moment, you clear your throat and sentence, “But I have to.”

He’s left alone with silence on the other line.

He’s angry and drunk and he feels broken, and you have to answer for what you’ve done to him His fingers are tapping on the call button before he can think twice about it, but all that meets him is silence.

And sitting alone in a darkened living room of a place he doesn’t know, because he had to leave his last apartment haunted by the ghost of you; he finds himself alone and heartbroken.

You’re marrying someone else.

Someone that isn’t him.

You’re loving someone else.

Someone that isn’t him.

He feels the prick of tears in his eyes, the tightening of his throat, the restless energy to do something, stop this…this chaos you put inside of him, this mess you’ve made of his heart or whatever is left of it.

You always did breeze -barrel- into his life and turn everything upside down, made him lose control over his heart, his mind, his everything. Since the beginning.

And now you call him to…to what? To tell him the woman he loves is getting engaged to some fucking guy that doesn’t deserve her, that could never love her the way he could? To let him know you’ve moved on and are going to marry this fucker and have his children and all that while still holding Ivar’s heart with an iron grip?

No, no, he won’t be played with, he won’t be humiliated like this.

Ivar pulls out his phone with shaking hands, jaw set so tight he fears his teeth will break.

Two can play that game. Two can ‘move on’. Two can inflict pain.

He’s searching for an engagement ring before he can think twice about it. Scrolls down countless diamond rings, trying to find the most expensive-looking one.

Freydis will agree, she is as lost as he is, she will agree. He can convince her if she has doubts, he is sure of it.

Imagining putting a ring on her finger feels wrong, so fucking wrong when he still holds on to the one he won for you at that stupid fair you forced him to go to.

You extend your left hand excitedly, almost bouncing on your feet, and for a moment Ivar can pretend it isn’t a plastic ring what he’s putting on your finger. You bring his lips to yours and seal a smile against his lips, “This one will do till you give me the real one, Lothbrok.”

The night everything fell to pieces you gave him back that plastic ring, like it meant something, like he’d meant something. And he still has it, he still keeps it safe next to the arm ring his father gifted him.

That last night -it wasn’t the last time he ever saw you, he has seen you afterwards many times, but it was the last night of the two of you, of what had been and what could be- still replays in his head in his worst times. And his best too. Ivar cannot let go of the could have been’s, cannot move on from you, not when his legs are worse than usual and he feels alone and cursed, not when his father praises his work in the family business and he feels like he’s on top of the world.

And that night that repeats in his head taunts him with the last -not the last, but in a way they were- words you said to him, “I wish we could be strangers again.”

It is with an angry twist of his lips, with a frustrated growl that is kept at bay by gritted teeth that Ivar stops searching for the engagement ring to give Freydis.

What will change, if he makes her his fiancée? You will still be with someone else, marrying someone else, loving someone else.

Before he closes the browser where some expensive and pretentious-looking store offers him rings to cover up regret, his eye catches on one of the diamond pieces. It is strikingly similar to the one he gifted you as a joke that ended up being so much more, and when he taps to see the name, Ivar’s breath catches.

Angel.

Your eyes are adorably focused on the red marks on his chest, a small frown between your brows.

It is almost without thinking, almost startling him, that you lean closer and press the softest of kisses over one of the marks, making Ivar feel so unbearably warm.

He finds himself smiling, like the lovesick idiot he is. And for the brief moment where your lips are pressed against his skin and your warmth is enveloping him and he is still riding that high of feeling utterly yours¸ he finds that he doesn’t care if he is playing the part of the enthralled fool chasing after a girl that is so out of his reach. Because in these small instants where it is just him and just you, he feels loved.

“Are you trying to heal me with kisses, princess?”

“Maybe,” You mumble, before offering him a smile that is almost blinding. “I’m good with kisses.”

“Mhm, you are,” For good measure Ivar puts his hand at the back of your head and brings your lips to his own. After a few breaths, he continues, “You got the lips of an angel.”

He manages to make you snort with a roll of your eyes, clearly flustered even if you try to write it off as cheesiness.

“That’s a song, and you know it.”

He moves closer to you, pressing a kiss right over the dip of your collarbones, “Is it?”

Your answering laugh sounds breathy and soft by his ear.

He doesn’t give himself time to think it through before he’s given his credit card number and made the necessary arrangements.

He is calling you before he can think about it and back out too.

“I b-bought plane tickets, and booked a hotel. Vestfold.”

“Vestfold? The same h-…”

“Yes,” He interrupts, although some of his anxiety recedes at the fact that you don’t immediately laugh and hung up. “A week. Will you be there?”

“Ivar…”

This is madness, he is being crazy and impulsive and desperate, but he finds he doesn’t care.

“You aren’t sure, you wouldn’t have called me if you were sure and happy with him,” He presses, hand tightening over the phone, “One week, princess.”

The silence that follows his words is deafening, and Ivar feels like he is dangling over the edge of a cliff, needing but one word to either fall or return to safety.

You sigh, and it sounds tremulous, “What time does the plane take off?”

____

He knows it is not rational, he knows it is stupid and crazy. But Ivar finds himself trying to convince you to stay with him with sex.

Whoever this other man is can probably give you more stability than Ivar ever did, with his anger and his pain and his jealousy. He can probably give you a normal life where the name Lothbrok doesn’t hang over your head with the promises of unfaithfulness and broken marriages. He can probably give you much more than he can.

But he can’t make you feel like Ivar can.

He can’t make your lips -hypnotizing, dangerous, lips- part in ecstasy like Ivar can, he can’t make you moan and whimper and say his name in that sweet way of yours, he can’t make you shed that pretend softness and let you draw pleasure and pain and blood and pleas from his lips, he can’t make you come like he can.

And in the week he gets to have you, both of you pretending there’s nothing wrong with this, both of you satiating more than a year’s worth of hunger on each other’s skin; Ivar does try his best to show you this.

To show you that if nothing else, he can make sure your body will never forget him.

That for all the thing a life with him would take from you, it would give you this, whatever it is worth. His body, his heart, him.

He isn’t a sucker for punishment, or…not that kind of punishment, so of course he doesn’t say anything. He pretends, alongside you, that there’s not a world past this, that there isn’t a choice to make at the end of this brief paradise.

And it is easy, to forget, to pretend.

Waking up every day to the sight of the snow covering the small hotel in the middle of nowhere, with you pressed against him in some way or another; getting to wake you up by making you moan his name, getting to play idly with your fingers as you both look out the window and watch the sun rise; it lets him keep this fantasy alive.

Spending the day and night lost in you, in your scent and your touch and your lips, it lets him pretend the last year never happened, it lets him pretend this is his life. What it always has been, what it always should be.

And Ivar dares think it is the same for you, because your left hand holds no ring and your eyes are loving and warm as you look at him, because your smiles are easy and your kisses are as if the time apart never happened.

For the first time in a long time, Ivar feels happy, Ivar feels -naively, wretchedly maybe- loved.

But, all good things end, especially for him.

And soon it has been a week since you agreed to meet him here.

You wake him up with the delicate and warm caress of your fingers up and down his back, and all Ivar can offer in response to your good morning is a hum as he sinks further into the pillows.

After a moment, he lifts a heavy hand and lets it find a home on your thigh, moving up and down and delighting himself in the way you fidget whenever he creeps too high up.

But because one of you has to say it, Ivar turns his head on the pillow so he can see you where you sit cross-legged at his side, and whispers, “Time’s up, isn’t it?”

“Mhm,” You tell him with a nod. After a few moments of silence, you sigh, “I should have known…earlier. I should have been strong enough to face the truth.”

He swallows down the apprehension, the knot of tension in his stomach, “Which is?”

“I could have never accepted that ring,” You sentence, and with almost as man words as that night a week ago when you called and dropped the weight of the world on Ivar’s chest, now you free him of it. You shake your head at yourself, “I feel like a monster. He went down on one knee, gave me some speech about how he loved me, and how…how he wanted to deserve me; and I couldn’t answer him.

Ivar sits up when he hears the bitter laugh that leaves your lips.

“My boyfriend proposed to me, and the first thing I did wasn’t call my mom or my sister to tell them the news, or…or take a picture of the ring and post an announcement, or…I don’t know, fucking my fiancé!” Your words end with a shout, and you drop your head to your hands, “No, the first thing I did was call you. Because…Gods, Ivar, despite everything, I don’t see the rest of my life with anyone but you.”

Nothing could stop him then from leaning close to you, from having his hand find yours and your fingers intertwine. He lifts your hand to his mouth and presses a kiss to your fingers.

“Do you think it is any different for me, hm?”

This time you do smile, and it looks freer than earlier, and you still look at him with the same softness and the same warmth even if the fantasy is over.

“We are hopeless, aren’t we?”

“You told me once that you wished we could be strangers again, start over,” Looking into your eyes he lowers his voice and promises, “We can do that.”

“We’ve spent the last week in a hotel room together. That isn’t something strangers do.”

He shrugs, a downward curve of his mouth, “Could be. When our children ask, we’ll say we met on some bar while on holiday, and spent the best week of our lives so far fucking each other in some hotel in Vestfold.”

His heart beats fast in his chest because Gods, he is getting ahead of himself, he is being reckless and crazy and…

“That’s not something you can tell the children, Ivar.”

He laughs with you, not so much at the levity of the situation, but at the weight you lift from his heart with the curve of your smile.

When the moment passes, the smile you offer him is the same one he remembers, the excited and scared and loving curve of your lips -tempting, perfect, lips- of that day when he offered you a plastic ring and a promise.

“I didn’t call too late, did I?”

And he gets to kiss you again, this time not in borrowed time, not in fantasy, not in fear of what is to come.

____ ____ ____

I hope you enjoyed, and thank you so much for reading!

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius @xbellaxcarolinax @1950schick @ietss  @peachyboneless​ @encounterthepast​ @maggiescarborough​ @chibisgotovalhalla​​ @fae-sedai​

[miss-kittys-magical-library]

Waiting For A Star To Fall

Nikolai x Selina

Word Count: 6k

Warnings: minor angst and fluff, oral sex (m/f receiving), brief thigh riding, penetration, use of sex toys, language gif by @vousnavezrienvu

A/N: Selina and Nikolai's first date turns into more than they ever imagined. 

This took a stupid amount of time to write and became a pure labor of love. Thank you @magic-multicolored-miracle and @neuroticpuppy for being with me the ENTIRE way.  And @bisexualnathanyoung and @forenschik for being my guinea pig

September 1992

Selina’s phone rang, but Sunny beat her to it as he threw himself over the arm of the futon in her minuscule apartment.  His elbow rammed into the wall, and Selina insisted he deserved it.

“Hello?” 

There was a momentary pause.  Selina stood cross-armed with a frown on her face.

“I don't recall anyone with that name living here.  It's just my sister, myself, and the guy from the sixth floor who was murdered in 1985.” 

“SUNNY!!” 

He waved her off,  “Why would I be fucking with you?  You called here.  My sister didn't give you this number, she's a virtual nun!  She's not one to take up with strange foreign men.”

Selina launched herself at her little brother.  He held the cordless phone above his head and levitated the ten feet towards the ceiling.  His legs curled up underneath so she couldn't grab him by the ankle. 

“UNFAIR!!”  

“EVOLUTIONARY ADVANTAGE!” he shouted and stuck out his tongue.  “You were saying?”

“You aren't evolution!  You're a science experiment that was implanted in our mother by The Men In Black.”

“Low blow.” Sunny flipped Selina off and went back to the caller.  “I mean that may or may not be the woman you ravished lakeside.  I know my sister is her own woman.  You scandalized her though.  I think you made her feel.. feelings.  Rude.” 

“NICKLAUS ELTON KOSTAS GIVE ME MY PHONE!”

He held up his hand.  “HEY! I can speak Russian you know.”  And then Sunny did for the next several minutes occasionally glancing down at his sister.  

Finally, he came back to the couch and held out the receiver to Selina.  “It's for you.  He's very perturbed, and Slavic.  And sexy.”

She yanked the phone from her brother and flipped him off.  “Klaus should've left you in 1989.”  Her voice softened and her cheeks flushed as she finally answered, “Hi.” 

Sunny hovered a few feet off the ground as Selina blabbered on in flirtatious Russian.  He sneered and poked fun at the way his sister wound her finger up in her hair and then released it.  When that didn't work, craving her attention, he began to hold an imaginary conversation with an exaggerated Russian accent.  

Selina threw the first thing she could at her little brother.  The remote control sailed across the room at Sunny who simply held up his hand, palm towards his sister.  The remote hung in the air like he did.  Then he narrowed his eyes which caused the object to lower to the floor. Selina sighed and returned to the conversation. 

“Wait, you wanna take me out?”  A pause.  “You don't have to repay me.  I'm just practicing for when I'm ethically obligated to save someone.” Pause. “Arsonists and thieves too!”  Selina smiled wide as the flames licked her cheeks and ears now.  “How attractive you are doesn't alter Samaritan laws, Nikolai.” 

Sunny rolled his eyes flabbergasted at how his sister’s entire demeanor changed the moment she began to speak to the Russian from Sway Lake.  She was being coy.  Dare he say seductive as she ignored everything he managed to garner attention.  

Sunny had always been the object of his sister’s devotion.  EVERYONE’S devotion really.  As the youngest of eight “children,” it was his birthright.  Now here he was, slowly becoming Selina’s third favorite person.  Not a single soul, no matter how rakish or good in bed, would ever replace Leon. 

“Sure.  Yeah, I’d like that.”  Selina had a dopey grin on her face.  “Tonight?!  I mean can you even get reservations?”  “Trust you?  I don't know why I should, but I guess I will.  I'll meet you there. Do svidaniya, Nik.. KOLYA.”  

Selina hung up the phone and threw a pillow this time at Sunny.  He crashed to the floor having been caught off guard and rubbed his ass.  

“Just be HUMAN FOR FIVE MINUTES.” 

“I AM HUMAN!! I'M JUST.. Super.” 

“Super egotistical.”

“I can't help that the love of our parents turned me into a badass.” 

“I just pray Reginald never finds you.  You're the success to his failure with Klaus.”  Selina meant that last bit with her entire being.  “Now get out, I've a date tonight.” 

---

“Nikolai, I can't run that fast in these boots!”  Selina yelled as she desperately tried to catch up to her date.  She could hear a fast-approaching man behind her yelling obscenities in a dialect she wasn't familiar with.  Bulgarian or Lithuanian maybe. 

He stopped at the corner.  “We are wearing the same ones, look how fast I'm moving.  I think it must be the several rum and cokes you had.  Come,” Nikolai held out his hand, “we will go faster together.” 

Selina rolled her eyes but linked her hand with his.  Nikolai took off, and she started to laugh.  The exhilaration and adrenaline coursed through her veins.  Never in a million years would she have imagined dining and ditching.  

Nik was so calm as he spoke to the waiter in the dialect they were being bellowed at.  He never blinked.  Then the waiter nodded, took something from him and walked away.  Nikolai stood and clasped Selina’s hand and began to make his way towards the door. 

“Nikolai, shouldn't you pay?” 

There was a slight shake to his head.  He never looked back, just kept going with Selina tight to his side.  They made it to the door before they both had to give chase. 

Selina swung out into the street.  She waved and whistled loudly at an oncoming taxi.  To her shock, it stopped to pull over for them.  Nik was incredulous but had no choice except join his date as she yanked him inside the cab.  

“Bleecker and Christopher, please,” she instructed the taxi driver.  Selina turned to the Russian beside her,  “Are we going to break the law EVERY time we're together?”  

“Yes.  Like a new Bonnie and Clyde.”  Nikolai lifted the hand Selina hadn't realized he was still holding.  His lips brushed the back of it, “Without being shot to death by the FBI.” 

Selina's heart pounded in her ears.  She couldn't remember seeing anyone look attractive in the color orange.  Yet here was the man beside her, currently with a look she could only describe as voracious, pulling it off.  Her cheeks grew hot under the weight of his stare. 

“What?!” came out in an embarrassing giggle. 

“I cannot look at something beautiful?” 

“You don't have to lay it on THAT thick.  I'm taking you back to my apartment already.” 

“I'm not trying to trick you, Lina.  I think you are beautiful. I almost blew my own mission.  Especially under the moonlight.  You made me forget what I was doing.  Your willingness to allow me to do unspeakable things to your body helped,” he teased.  

Selina decided to play coy as the taxi stopped in front of her building.  “Let's see what happens under this month’s full moon.” 

---

Selina and Nikolai on the fire escape outside her living room window.  Selina a few beers in and a few steps above.  Nikolai nursing a beer of his own while settled between her knees.  His arm under her knee to snake around her calf.  His fingers mindlessly stroked her ankle to the naked foot dangling in his lap. 

They had fallen into a contented silence after nearly two hours of talking.  Sharing stories in Russian and English.  Nik’s curiosity about the photos and books and records she owned was endless.  Selina had a hard time keeping up and answering as he flitted along from keepsake to keepsake. 

Yes, that's Elton John.  Somehow he and her parents were old friends.  He dedicated “Your Song” to her parents every concert they went to.  Selina could never figure out why. 

The somehow dower, yet smiling man, with a giant cigar in his mouth that tossed Selina in the air while little Sunny hung from his back was her Godfather, Tom.  He had been a CIA agent that now lived in a cabin with his beautiful French wife, Ella.  That's where she had been  staying up at Sway Lake.  Yes he did always look like a lion with a thorn in his paw, but he was soft and kind and loving.  

The Lady Godiva on the horse was her mother, Honey, back when she frequented Studio 54.  Selina recalled her hair rivaled only Cher’s at that stage.  Raven colored and long enough to hide her naked body (barely) as she sat side saddle on the white mare.  Her head resting against the back of an equally nude man. Her one arm wrapped around his thin waist. 

Nope, Nik was totally not imagining things.  The man holding the reins did strongly resemble her brother and himself.  That was HER papa, Leon. His hair in perfectly wild curls to his shoulders. His face full of confidence and sex. 

The questions began to wear Selina down.  No one had ever been this inquisitive or interested in her life.  Her family.  Her.  The endless questions, punctuated by making out until their lips chapped, about her personally.  Then, between an anecdote about Luther and rollerskating and tongues fighting for dominance they stopped.  

Now Nikolai lifted Selina’s foot and kissed the top of it.  Then his mouth made its way up her shin.  When he reached her knee, Nik turned abruptly to face the woman behind him.  He set the bottle down on the windowsill before kneeling on the stairs.  He slid the hem of her dress up, fingers hooked into the fabric of her panties to tug them off.  He kissed her inner thigh before letting his tongue trace painfully slow along her sex. 

Selina could only grasp the railing.  Her fingers curved around the cold metal and she cried out in pleasure as Nikolai slipped his tongue inside of her.  

It slid in and out before eventually discovering her clit.  His hands on her ass so that he could pull her onto his face.  Encourage her to ride him as his tongue flicked in circles and then snaked in and out. 

Selina started to lose herself.  Her free hand tugged at Nik’s hair while her hips bucked and the spark grew.  She twitched and cried out louder as his mouth and tongue worked faster.  She opened her eyes to look down at the man keen to make her cum. 

Almost as if he could feel her eyes on him, Nikolai looked up at Selina.  She felt strange, shameless and used her own thumb to wipe away what was on his lips.  She sucked on it briefly then grabbed Nik by the shirt towards her.  Wanting for a kiss.  

Selina revelled in the way she tasted on his lips and inside her own mouth.  Like beer and bitterness.  She had never done that before Nikolai and the lake.  She wanted to do it again, and every time he went down on her.  She wanted to put him in her mouth.  To suck and lick and make him bend and writhe.  

She could, she thought, now.  Selina pushed Nik away at arms length meaning to have him sit on the stairs so she could give him head.  Her fingers deft at the belt buckle and buttons on his pants. She laughed full of nerves as he fumbled, THE OVERCONFIDENT RUSSIAN FUMBLED!! 

Nikolai fumbled with the buttons on his dress shirt before he finally came loose.  He yanked his pants and boxers over his hips and held his cock in his hand. Nik parted her legs and started to push inside, but Selina held up her hands.

“What are you doing?”

“Do you not want me to have sex with you?”  He was more shocked than angry. 

Selina ran her hands over his chest and stomach then up around his neck.  “I very much want to fuck you.” Nikolai huffed, but Selina continued, “I mean I've seen you naked and can't get over how fucking sexy you are.”  

“Then what is wrong?  Not here?  Maybe this is not comfortable for you.  We’ll go inside.”  He stood and held out his hand.

“It's probably the same as fucking on a bunch of sticks and acorns.”

Nikolai sniffed again at the use of the word “fucking.”  “Then what is wrong?”

Selina stood and climbed in through the windows.  Her date followed.  “There's an international health crisis.   A incurable disease that passes mostly via sex and fluids?” she shouted from her room as she rummaged through drawers. 

“Do you mean The..AIDS?  Is that not for,” he chose his words carefully, “The gay men?” 

Selina could tell Nik was more confused than anything.  She heard this all the time at the clinic where she volunteered. “Or you could be bisexual or pansexual like my brothers.  Contract it from a man and pass it to a female partner.”  

She appeared in the living room now with a small foil package.  “Or an IV drug user, also like my brother, and get it that way.” 

Selina started to unwrap the condom without noticing that Nikolai was standing completely nude in her living room.  “This is usually where most guys bail.  They're not interested in protection or rubbers.  Mostly just a pump and..” she looked up and paused in her tracks. She was distracted by his body and neck and eyes and jawline.  “Christ on a cracker.”

“What?”  he chuckled.  

“Sorry! I know. I know.  AIDS talk is a bummer.  I get this close to just.. sitting on a dick and I panic?  Everyone in my family got the sexual confidence memo but me.” 

“Why are you panicking now?  You did not freak out by Sway Lake.”  

Nikolai couldn't help the teasing in his voice.  He reached out for Selina to draw her close to his body.  His knee inside of her thighs just like that night.  

Now he unzipped and helped her out of the dress.  “I think it's very sexy when you talk like a nurse. So smart and commanding.”  His hands ran over her bare back and down to her ass as he brushed his nose along her neck up to her ear.  He nipped at the lobe, “That can be very erotic putting a condom on.” 

“Nik,” Selina could only squeak out.  Her body involuntarily started to rock back and forth. 

“It's Kolya.  In Russian we use end of names,” he breathed in her ear.  “Like your sister, Vanya.   Little Ivan.”

“Ok,” Selina didn't want to hear about Vanya right now.  Or Klaus.  Or Diego.  Instead she got down on her knees.  The condom was still in her hand as she used the other to hold his erection towards her mouth.

“Lina, what are you doing?”  

She looked up through her bangs, her tongue darted out to trace around the head of the cock.  “Sucking your dick.  What else does it look like?”  She took it fully in her mouth, letting the tip hit the back of her throat.  

“Fuck,” he mumbled in Russian.  “Dorogoya, stop.”  

Selina sat back with a popping sound, “Did I do it wrong?  I'm like, the LEAST experienced person in this family.”

“You don't have to be an expert.  A blow job is a blow job, we can practice another time.  I want to be inside of you.  And I have been very patient.”

Selina stood, but Nikolai lifted her completely off the ground.  She wrapped her arms and legs around him as they stumbled towards the futon.  Mouths and tongues at war as Nik sat her down on the cushions.  Selina held eye contact as she expertly unrolled the condom down the length of his cock.  She kissed his stomach as he noticeably shuddered.  

Nikolai let his fingers caress Selina’s bottom lip before crawling on top of her.  She still held his erection in her hand as he threw one of her legs over his shoulder.  He held her bent knee to the side as she taunted him with her sex.  Guiding it just inside before digging her nails into his ass so that he buried himself to the hilt. 

Selina clawed at his back as Nik started to undulate.  Over and over, further inside each time.  Their bodies rocked wildly as Selina’s muscles started to shake from the position she was in.  She clung to him desperately as he searched for her neck and chest with his lips.  

Nikolai’s mouth devoured one of her breasts.  He sucked and bit at Selina’s nipple.  She cried out in shock at the sensation.  The sound egged him on to go harder.  

“So you like that too?” His voice raspy in her cleavage. His suckling and biting increased.  She mewled in reply. 

Selina was worried that it wasn't working.  That she couldn't or wouldn't orgasm.  Not like she did when he went down on her.  How she hung from the cliff.  

She WAS being pleasured.  Nikolai was hitting the right spots, but she was so nervous about what she looked like under the lamplight.  His rhythm and pounding, it was pounding, into her was unmatched.  She cried out with exaggeration to indicate she had cum hoping he wouldn't notice. 

“Fuck!” he cried out and propped himself up by the back of the futon.  

Nik’s body arched while his hips made circular motion.  He spasmed and shuddered as his body immediately went into shut down mode.  His face covered in a sheen of sweat as he pressed his forehead into Selina’s neck then pecked it a few times. 

“I.. am sorry, Lina.” There was disappointment in the Russian’s voice as he held the condom so he could pull out.

“For what?”   Her arms and legs still enclosed around his back and hips.  

“You did not.. cum,” Nik’s eyes searched the woman below him.  “I should have tried better.  I just was so turned on by you.”  He swept the damp hair away from her forehead. 

“You were fine!  It was good.  Really good.  I got in my own head is all.  Maybe next time?” 

“You mean later tonight,” he winked then pecked the tip of her nose. “I won't leave until you are honestly screaming my name.”  There were four dimples Selina counted in his smile.  

“Then we’ll sleep on it first.” 

---- 

Selina tip toed out to the kitchen both starved and thirsty.  She thought about Nikolai's playful threat about not leaving until she got off and chuckled to herself.  Then she peered around the wall to see him asleep on the futon.  His mouth slightly agape and one hand under his cheek. 

Would it be so bad with him around all the time? She thought as she cracked open a beer.  To not be alone when she came home from a shift?  How nice it would be to have conversations with someone not “related” in some form or another. 

And Nikolai was interested in Selina.  He still dodged questions about himself, answering straightforwardly with no details.  She knew it was because he didn't trust her just yet.  It wasn't like she didn't have secrets of her own, but the more open she COULD be, the more she knew Nik would reciprocate.  It had to be lonely with only one confidante. 

Selina turned around and jumped a mile in the air.  “Motherfucker!”

Nikolai was casually leaning against the doorway watching her contemplate life and drinking a beer.  “She IS very sexy,” he replied with a cheeky grin. 

Selina rolled her eyes and walked towards her kitchen table to keep distance between herself and the Russian.  As if she were daring him to chase her.  Nik made her feel so contradictory.  In control and submissive.  Safe yet dangerous.  Lustful.  

There was no opposite to that, she realized.  The light from her small kitchen window illuminated the lines and definition of his chest and shoulders.  The collarbone that met in the middle and moved up into his thick neck with its Adam's Apple bobbing along as he swallowed.  A sharp intake of breath before he clenched his jaw.  

Selina’s heart pumped into her ears as he casually reached across the table for her, but she ducked out of the way.  His eyebrows knit together in confusion as they danced around for only a few moments until she allowed him to grab her by the elbow.  Her world stood still as he took her in his arms, back to his chest. 

“I have been thinking, rypka, about our little challenge,” Nikolai settled one hand on her breast which he massaged lightly paying close attention to her nipple.  His mouth somewhere behind her ear as his other hand dropped to her sex. 

A finger found its way inside of Selina and she lost the air in her lungs.  It curved and hooked before making a lazy swirl around her clit.  “Already?” was all she managed.  Her nails closed around his wrist and urged him on. 

“I would like to try a different way of having sex with you.  I just don't want you to be offended.”  

Nik let go of Selina and placed her arms on the tabletop.  He spread her hands out; bent her forward so that her top half was pressed into the wood surface.  Then he grabbed her hips so that her ass was flush with his hardened cock.

“No anal,” she moaned.  “Wear a condom,” another instruction. “Bathroom shelf.” She grazed against him. 

“If you insist,” Nikolai replied in Russian. “I will obey.”  

There was a playful slap on Selina’s ass, and she felt herself swell and throb.  A first time for everything. If she enjoyed it, wet from the sting of being struck, it was.. genetic.  

Her brothers, father, even Honey mentioned the occasional pain got them going.  Klaus and Sunny with varying degrees of punishment.  She knew from eavesdropping or snooping that her parents preferred it light: spanking or hair pulling.  Maybe she did as well.  Too vanilla to ask.  Inexperienced to what she wanted from a partner. 

“Do it again?” Selina tried not to sound desperate as Nikolai tore into the condom wrapper.  She almost presented herself to him as she felt the smooth surface on her cheek.

“What?” he was distracted.  There was a strange snap of latex as he adjusted it.  Then taunted Selina with the head of his cock.  He rubbed it along her slit, marveling at how easy it was to slide in. 

“Hitting me?” she asked timidly. 

“Why would I hit you?” Nikolai was offended.  His hand flat on Selina's back as it traveled to her neck and hair.  His fingers combed and intertwined with her dark waves then lightly tugged. 

Selina braced herself as he lost himself up to the hilt.  Nikolai's pelvis met her ass and pulled out to just the tip.  He repeated this until he gained friction.  Her head and hips were his anchor so he could thrust quicker. Their bodies make a clapping noise. 

“My ass.  Like you did.  Hit it.”  She was willing to try anything.  Wanted to cum for him.  She knew she could, she did it alone all the time.

“Really?” Nik was surprised.  His pace was even faster and the table started to creak under the motion.  “Did you like it then?” His hand cracked her flesh but only slightly harder than before.  

Selina cried out.  Her sex ached and was swollen.  Nikolai did it one more time, but she could tell it wasn't really his thing.  Sensed that it bothered him to be serious about erotic corporal punishment.  Playing was different.  His hand did tighten in her hair to bend her head back. 

“I don't know,” was all he mumbled in Russian.  

The hand that spanked Selina now encompassed her own on the table.  He bent to kiss her shoulder as he found his breakneck rhythm. 

“Then just go harder,” Selina found her voice now.  She relaxed and allowed her body to take how deeply he penetrated her.  His cock at that angle hitting a spot she found mythical. 

Nikolai railed into Selina.  The table and their bodies shook almost violently as he pounded into her.  His shaft lost until she felt a pressure in her womb.  He stood straight and clutched at the thick of her hips.  Her curves she inherited from her mother.  They cushioned her as his body and cock pleased her.  That spark and wave rolled over Selina like on the couch.  

They weren't quiet.  Both forgetting about neighbors as Selina mewled and screamed out. Nikolai growled and uttered obscenities in his first language.  They were certain this would be it, that Selina would orgasm and Nik would feel satisfied that he could please her.  

Instead, his body violently shuddered as he exploded inside the condom.  His muscles and adrenaline gave way to Nik almost collapsing on top of Selina.  He faltered prior to catching her up in his arms again.  He held her and whispered apologies to her as they kissed. 

“Kolya,” she whispered back.  “It's fine.  I was really close.  We have other times to  experiment.”  Selina swept his damp curls back. 

Nikolai leaned into her hand, “You want to keep being with me?” 

“That's what dating is,” she laughed under her breath. “I like being with you.  I wanna know more about YOU though.  Come on,” Selina took his hand.  “Let's actually go to bed and talk.”

---

Selina reached blindly for Nikolai after her alarm went off.  Sitting up, she slammed the clock and turned to see an empty space on the side of the bed he had fallen asleep on. 

She knew he wasn't obligated to be there when she woke up.  This time waking up alone left a weird knot in her stomach.  

“Fuck,” she tossed herself back and threw a pillow over her head to scream.  Her arms and legs failed around like a toddler throwing a fit. 

How long was enough before she called him?  Would he just disappear now? Klaus called it, funnily enough, ghosting.  Why did everything Nik say tread a weird line between romantic and calculating?  And why did Selina want him to keep saying things, anything at all, to her? 

How does someone know they're falling in love? How did Honey and Leon?  Klaus and Dave.  Allison and Ray.  Diego and Patch or Lila.  Vanya and Sissy.  Uncle Tom and Aunt Ella.  Poor Luther.

Selina’s family had a knack for impulsive behavior when it came to attraction.  Her mom moved to a foreign country with a man she had slept with for money.  Klaus fought in Vietnam for a closeted man that kissed him once. Sunny went home with, to Selina’s chagrin, anyone who showered him with the simplest of affection. And Selina had laid down and spread her legs for a Russian committing arson.  

“Lina you are awake?” Nikolai asked from the other room. 

She threw a bathrobe on and wandered into the kitchen.  “You came back.”

Nik was reaching above her tiny sink for coffee mugs and plates.  “Did you not want me to?”

He set the dishes out and opened a box to pull out some pastries and bagels.  Then poured coffee and handed Selina the cup. 

“I wasn’t sure what you liked,” he offered her the plate.  “Greek, Italian and Russian,” a satisfied grin flashed across his face.

“Well that was kind of you,” she smiled back and helped herself to a cannoli and Russian tea cookie.  “Yes, I wanted you to come back. I think I kinda always do?” she questioned her own intentions with a mouthful of pastry. 

Nik leaned over and kissed Selina.  His tongue darted out to taste the sweet ricotta filling on her lips; she reciprocated.  Her own slipping to the back of his mouth to catch him off guard. Nik steadied himself on her hips. 

There was a muddled sound of pleasure when Selina’s fingers unbuttoned Nikolai’s shirt in expert time.  Their mouths never separated as she went to work on his belt and pants as he struggled to take his boots off. 

“This was not my plan for this morning,” Nik breathed heavily in Russian. 

“I'm just really interested in us reaching that goal,” Selina helped him out of his clothes.  

Kissing again, they could feel their lips start to chap already as Selina began backing Nik into her room until he hit the foot of her bed.  As he leaned back, she climbed on his lap.  Her hands seized his cock and settled it in the folds of her sex.  Selina rolled her hips.

“What are you doing!?” Nikolai could only cry out. Astonished by the lack of a condom.  

“I'm sick of being the safe one,” she raised up on her knees so that she was above him.  Her hands on his face and neck as she snaked her tongue to the back of his teeth again.  

Selina shoved him back on the bed and threw off her robe.  She straddled Nikolai like a woman possessed, took his hands and placed them on her breasts as she rode him.  Still not penetrated.

Nik lost himself for a moment.  He massaged the breasts.  One hand teased a nipple, pinched it,  before sitting up to devour it.  Selina held him to her chest, clung to the hair on the back of his head and pulled in her excitement.  Her fingers found the gnarly scar and she rocked harder on his lap. 

“I want you to fuck me until I cum.” 

Nikolai looked up and held her back, “It is not fucking at this point.  Not for me, Lina.  Also you must not compromise your principles for anyone.  I do not want this for you.”  

Selina groaned with exasperation.  Her walls were swollen and slick and wanting.  “It's not a compromise, Nik.  Everyone jumps in my family and trusts they’ll fly while I stand on the cliff pacing back and forth.” 

He blinked, mouth just slightly agape.  That face.  Selina knew that face.  She loved that face.  She loved this face. “Lina, you are extraordinary.  You don't need to have a big life just yet.  It will happen.” 

“Kolya,” her words softer now as she relaxed, “I love you.”

“Do you?!” a dopey grin spread across Nikolai's face.  “It is the same for me I think?  I've never done this, you know.  “That I love you.”  

He kissed Selina before turning under her to rummage around the nightstand drawer. “Now we will go back to the way you prefer?  If I need to I will get..” he stopped and held something aloft.  Now his smile and dimples were devilish. 

He studied it before making it buzz with a push of a button.  “Pocket Rocket?! Lina, are you secretly naughty?" he giggled. 

"I don't think it's a secret to you anymore,” she reached for it.  Her cheeks turned red. 

"Who do you fantasize about when you use it?" Nikolai held it to Selina’s breasts.  He watched with fascination as her nipples hardened.  He let it travel over her stomach and back up. 

Selina moaned and twisted. "You're just trying to get me to say you, but I've had it since I turned twenty.  So mostly you know.. Keanu Reeves..”  

“But not me?" his eyebrow cocked.  Nikolai traced the vibrator along her hips and over her pelvic bone.  

"Once in a while,” her words came out breathless.

"As a Russian, I'm already superior at using it because rocket?” he waggled his brows now.  “We can now?  With you on top?”

The toy found her slit and slid inside easily.  It buzzed and made the air rush out of Selina’s lungs.  She dug her nails into Nikolai's chest while he started to use the vibrator to have sex with her.  Found a pattern of in and out while she bucked and writhed.  

Selina reached back to anchor herself on one of Nik’s thighs. It allowed him better access to her clit.  He Marveled at the way she agonized under his hand as it manipulated her.  His free hand on her ass to coax her faster as SHE undulated now as he had done on the couch.  Her hips danced separately from her upper half.

Nikolai rolled Selina on her back all of a sudden.  Her hair hung off the bed as he propped up on an elbow.  He worked the vibrator in circles.  In and out of her slick walls before going after the clit.  

Selina got tangled up in the sheets as she felt a warmth spread from her stomach to her sex.  Her thighs started to tighten around Nik's hand as she thrust her hips off the bed.  Eyes clamped shut as the first wave washed over her body.  Neck exposed for him to suck and bite which urged another orgasm to burn through her.  

Nikolai was stunned by her silence.  Selina’s mouth opened in a silent cry as she came a third time in succession.  This last time she managed a strangled scream of his name which he swallowed with a kiss.  

A shiver ran through Selina while she relaxed.  Her fingers traced patterns along Nikolai's bicep as her eyes closed.  Cumming was like a sedative.  Nikolai cupping her face and drawing it to his for a lazy kiss was a sedative.  The rain she had no idea was pouring in buckets outside her window was also a sedative.  

The vibrator continued buzzing until it didn't.  The room grew quiet save for the breaths that came from Nik’s nose.  Still heavy with his still hardened bulge pressed into Selina’s hip.  There was no move to get on top of her.  To have sex with her so he, too, could cum.  She started to idly jerk him off. 

“Lina stop,” he gently took her hand.  “This was about you, not me.  It'll go away eventually.  Like I will,” he said that last bit with a challenge in his voice.  

Selina curled on her side towards Nikolai.  “Or maybe don't go?” 

“Ty khochesh', chtoby ya ostalsya?” You want me to stay?

“Po krayney mere, yeshche odno polnoluniye.”

At least one more full moon.

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