#credits might be broken/missing

[homestimstuck]

Eridan Ampora board with a simple general theme! [sea/water, cool colors, guns, sparkles]

X | X | X

X | ♒️ | X

X | X | X

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Up until the almost-end-of-the-world, the way Aziraphale and Crowley maintained their relationship was through a collection of well-established and repeated patterns (dances, you might say). These little rituals were what they used to communicate affection, intimacy and trust when they couldn’t say the things they wanted to say out loud. I like spending time with you. You make me happy, and I like making you happy. We’re in this together. I’ll always be there for you, even when your own side is not.

In season 1, as the stress of the impending apocalypse puts more and more pressure on their relationship, we see their patterns start to break down, and it’s very distressing for them. They’ve been communicating like this for so long that they don’t know what to do when one of them doesn’t follow the dance steps.

When we first see them in season 2, they seem in some ways to be closer than ever. They touch each other more easily, Aziraphale in particular. Crowley is comfortable enough in the bookshop that he has a Spot for putting his sunglasses when he takes them off by the door. They’re more open about acknowledging how much time they spend together and how many things in their lives are shared.

And I think, also, we expect them to be happy. They won, didn’t they? So it takes a while for the cracks to start to show.

It wasn’t until this post pointed out that the whole season, we never see them sit down and share a meal together in the present day (no, Crowley doesn’t eat; yes, it still counts) that it started coming together for me. The closer you look, the more you realize the old patterns they’re used to relying on are broken.

Three times, we see them sit down to their usual table for two (at the coffee shop, the bar, and the French restaurant) and then almost immediately get up again. This post also points out that we don’t see present-day Aziraphale eat anything on screen, other than one of the little candies in the Bentley. This in the same season we learn that Crowley is the one who introduced him to food! It’s one of their oldest rituals!

Even one of their most visually recognizable patterns starts to go wonky this season. In season 1, when the blocking allows it, Crowley’s always on Aziraphale’s left. When they’re standing or walking side by side, and most of the time when they’re sitting side by side together (there are some exceptions due to camera angles)…Crowley’s always on Aziraphale’s left (screen right if they’re facing us, screen left if we’re behind them). It’s one of the clues about the body swap that is easy to see when you know what to look for—in Berkeley Square they are each initially sitting on the “wrong” side of the bench. It’s so reliable that Aziraphale hears a little miracle bling in the sushi restaurant in s1 ep1 and turns to his left—because that’s where Crowley would appear—only to be startled by Gabriel on his right.

Go look at the scene where we find out Gabriel and Beez are a couple. You know the one.

And of course, many people have noted that in the end credits, we’d expect their positions on screen to be switched. They’re on the wrong sides. And it’s such a long shot that I think it has to be intentional.

Some people have speculated that this means they swapped bodies again. I don’t really buy that. Rather I think it is supposed to indicate what becomes extremely clear on a second viewing, that things are Off and Wrong. They are not okay.

And the more you watch them you see that Aziraphale’s excitement during his little adventures is manic and brittle, and that he misses having a place and a purpose and a mission to do good. And Crowley is depressed, unhealthily codependent, even more hypervigilant and cagey and angry than he was before. They both have layers and layers of trauma, and no way to talk about it. They have the time and freedom now to talk about what they want to be to each other, now that they don’t have to hide and encode and maintain plausible deniability. But they have no way to talk about that either, because that’s never been an option before. They don’t know how, and they are both so, so afraid.

And in the fights they have in episode 1 and episode 6, you realize they haven’t resolved anything from season 1. They’re having the same fight they had at the bandstand. Crowley wants to run, keep the two of them safe and damn the rest, and Aziraphale wants to stay and help, believing he can make a difference even in an imperfect system, and neither of them really understands the other’s position. It’s the same damn fight. They haven’t been able to move past this impasse, and it’s the exact thing that breaks them in the end.

And it’s just. Fuck. It’s such a human thing to have happened to them. To make it through the fire (metaphorical and literal) and then have everything go to shit afterward because of unaddressed traumas and insecurities and things left unsaid until they fester.

I know this is not at all how I expected the season to go, and I think it took a little while for me to parse what was going with their relationship, because we are predisposed to want them to be happy and to want things to be easy for them now. But it makes so much sense that this is where they ended up at this point in the story.

I know they’ll make it back to each other. They both love each other too much to give up. They’ll fight their way back together, and I know they’ll figure it out in the end.

But goddamn.

[zablife]

Missing You

Benny Cross x gf reader

Summary: After a wreck puts you in the hospital, Benny takes off. Will he return or leave you with more than just a broken leg?

Warnings: hospital setting, injury, brief mention of motorcycle accident, fear of abandonment, angst with fluffy ending

A/N: My first fic for The Bikeriders, pls be kind! Comments are love so leave me some 💕 No spoilers here!

Divider credit @firefly-graphics

Benny Cross Masterlist

You turned in the narrow hospital bed, head throbbing from the pain and the bright overhead light in your eyes. "Benny," you mumbled, head fuzzy and mouth feeling as though it were stuffed with cotton.

"Isn't there anyone else we could call?" a tired voice asked from far away. "A relative? Parents?"

There was a shuffle and whispering that sounded like a passing cloud over your head. "No one...she doesn't speak to...don't make it worse, please. He'll be back."

You tried to sit up to see what was happening, but you felt a wave a nausea which stopped you suddenly. Screwing your eyes shut to will it away, the gentle rocking only continued, making you whimper.

"Shhh, lie back, honey," a warm voice instructed, pressing you down into the soft pillows. You felt the warmth of a hand encasing yours as reassuring words poured over you like honey. "They put you under to fix that busted leg, but you're gonna be fine now. Just need a little rest, that's all."

You blinked slowly and opened your eyes once more, fixing your gaze on Johnny's wife, Betty. She gave you a small smile and you felt yourself relax at the sight of her kind eyes. Much like Johnny had for Benny, she had become a role model for you, teaching you how to make a life with the Vandals. Now she was more of a mother to you than your flesh and blood.

"Wh-where's Benny?" you asked, a bit more coherently than you'd managed before.

Betty busied herself pouring some water into a cup for you and your heart began to race, wondering if she was stalling. The memories were coming back to you in full force now, Benny carrying you into the hospital after the crash, yelling at the nurses and doctors. Had he abandoned you then because of the trouble or later when he learned of the care you'd require? You felt hot tears welling in your lash line as you realized this might be the end.

As she turned back to you with the cup, Betty's face fell. Sighing gently, she confirmed your worst fears. "He's not coming back tonight, Y/n."

You couldn't stop the sobs that wracked your body, shoulders shaking and chest heaving with the weight of her words. She allowed you a moment of despair, a hand stroking down your back in soothing circles. When that didn't seem to comfort you, she asked, "Don't you remember the nurses asking Benny to leave?"

Stifling a cry, you sniffed, "No, what are you talking about?"

"I thought you knew."

"Benny stayed?"

"Sure he did, paced all night. Got himself so worked up, he punched a hole in the wall over there! They told him he had to show himself the door or the cops would," Betty explained, the rush of words leaving her mouth so quickly you barely comprehended it all.

You inhaled a deep breath, feeling lightheaded from the relief. "He still wants me?" you mumbled to yourself. There had always been a deep fear coursing through you that someday Benny would take off and never come back. You'd been warned many times he was a man who liked his freedom.

"He still what?" Betty asked, looking at you in confusion. "Sweetie it's none of my business, but I think you should try to sleep now."

Nodding in agreement, you sunk beneath the hospital blankets, exhaustion quickly overtaking your tired mind.

When your eyes reopened, sunlight was pouring through the blinds. A lazy smile spread across your face as you realized your head was no longer pounding with the incessant pain from yesterday. Though your leg now ached in its place and an irritating itch inside your cast was nagging you, somehow you had a good feeling about the day ahead. Stretching your arms above your head, you startled at the sound of a familiar, deep voice.

"Hi baby."

Your heart caught in your chest, too afraid to look if it was actually him.

"Ain't you gonna say hello?" Benny asked, his handsome face hovering over you like a blue eyed angel.

"Oh, Benny," you whimpered, eyes filling with tears.

"Hey, hey...don't cry," he urged, sweeping your hair away for a cautious kiss. You strained to meet the soft press of his full lips against yours, leaning into the gentle touch of his fingertips lacing through your hair. He kept his weight from you, careful not to worsen the bruising he knew you'd sustained to your ribs.

As his beard brushed your cheek, the gravel in his voice rumbled into your chest along with the words you'd longed to hear, "I missed my girl."

"I missed you. What the hell happened?"

Benny chuckled, his teeth shining in that mischievous grin he wore when he knew he'd been caught. His gaze turned toward the crumbling plaster he'd left in the wake of his anger, straightening his denim jacket as he confessed, "Mighta made some trouble."

"I heard," you said, crossing your arms over your chest. "Betty told me, but she didn't say why," you prodded with a raised eyebrow.

Benny pulled up a chair, taking your hand between his large calloused palms. "Listen, I want you to know somethin."

You furrowed your brow uncertain where he was headed.

He rubbed his thumb over the back of your hand as he spoke, his speech slow and tender as you'd never heard him before. A man of few words you weren't prepared for what came next. "I know you don't have kin...kin that claim you anyway." You stared down at his rings, watching them glimmer in the light as he chewed his lip in concentration, choosing his next words carefully. "We been riding together a couple of years now and you gotta know by now that I'll never leave you behind."

Swallowing a lump in your throat, you realized how wrong you'd been, misjudging your boyfriend in a moment of fear. The reputation Benny had as a loner who only looked out for himself simply wasn't true. The love you felt for each other was real, he was telling you so right now. The thought stirred butterflies in your stomach the likes of which you hadn't felt since you met.

Reaching for his face, you cupped his blonde scruff as you proclaimed, "I want to be with you too."

His eyes fell to the floor, thick lashes downcast as he was overcome by a sudden rush of shyness. Perhaps he'd already said too much, revealed a part of himself he kept hidden for fear of exposing weakness. However, you were reveling in it, especially when he raised his head to add another word of praise just for you.

"I was proud of you when we went down. Took it like a champ, you know?"

It was your turn to look away, blush creeping up your neck as you shook your head in vehement denial.

"No, I mean it. The first thing you asked when they got you in here was when you was gonna ride again!" he chuckled at the memory.

"What?" you asked incredulously.

"Yeah, the nurses all thought you were crazy. Said so too," he recalled, bitterness rolling off his tongue. He sighed heavily as he admitted, "That's why I punched the wall."

Staring up at the ceiling, you finally connected all the pieces and let out a little huff. It was soon followed by a snort, then a rolling wave of laughter as you were unable to contain your amusement at your boyfriend's classic impulsiveness. All the hurt and pain melted away as you realized it had all been a wayward attempt to defend you.

"M glad you think it's funny I almost got arrested," he protested.

"And I got a broken leg, Benny!" you countered sternly.

"You win," he conceded with a grin.

Looking down at the cast you turned sullen. "Can't ride with you now."

"Says who?" he asked, drawing close to you. His bright eyes danced with spirited challenge, daring you to defy him.

"I just thought..." you stumbled, feeling all willpower leave your body. When Benny asked something of you, the only answer was yes.

"You go where I go. We make trouble together, remember?" he said, sliding an arm over your waist and pulling you into him for another slow, sensual kiss.

"Sure do, don't we?" you agreed, moving in unison with him. Clutching onto his jacket you asked, "We going home now? I'm done missing you."

[fallen-gravity]

some thoughts on the moana 2 novelization, as threatened promised <3 under a readmore for spoilers and also because I don't trust myself to keep it short

(friendly reminder that I do not ship Maui and Moana! you can rb, but don't be weird about it)

Genuinely right off the bat I can't get over how loving Moana is described to be? She just loves others so much. She always describes Pua and HeiHei as her friends rather than her pets because of how much she cares about them!! it's so stupid cute that not only does she refer to Pua as her "loyal, adorable friend", but it's also implied that she handmade the little satchel he likes to ride in just for him. It eats me up inside!! She cares so much!!

The center island she's looking for is spelled as Motufetū!! I always love getting confirmation for these things, it makes things so much easier as a fic writer.

One of the souveniers she takes back with her alongside the broken pottery is a "massive clam". hello???? foreshadowing??? did everyone know about the giant clam guardian??

"For a man who had once forbidden her from going beyond the reef, he now spent quite a lot of time beyond it himself." AUUWHAAHHH THAT LINE KILLED ME WE LOVE TO SEE GROWTH FROM TRAUMA

"He loved her enthusiasm, but she seemed overexcited, and she was still his daughter, and he wanted to take care of her" MOANA!!! IS!!! SO LOVED!!!!

Loto's tool is called an adze! also she's apparently only 17?? two years younger than Moana?? not at all what I would've pegged her as, honestly

The storytelling tapestries are called siapos!!! more terminology!!!

"Her eyes darted to the image of Maui carved into the wall. She hadn't seen him since her return to Motunui, and she missed him. Not that she would admit it out loud" STRANGLING YOU STRANGLING YOU STRANGLING YOU

"Humans, were in fact, why he was here now, in this unknown realm of the gods looking at the pinkish white ball in front of him. At least, he thought that might be why he's here. These missions to benefit humans didn't always come with clear instructions" immediately followed by thinking about the trip to Te Fiti with Moana. What a dumbass <3 "I'm doing it for them and I don't know why? totally unrelated note haha that trip to Te Fiti with Moana was fun :)"

Never saw any of that journey coming, never could brute force his way through it, worth every second. Only considers getting the hook back as an afterthougt, ougghhhhhhh

Homeboy sucks at pretending that he doesn't care about Moana. He's talking to Matangi for all of two seconds and he's all "I'm a changed person! For um. no particular reason! It was definitely because of the thousand year isolation and nothing else whatsoever!"

There's no finite explanation for why Maui's there, but he credits Moana for making him a better person for being the reason. Something about breaking the curse? It's never made clear, even in the book.

Mini Maui selling him out for bullshitting about hating Moana is even funnier in the book, like Maui goes "yeah lol that girl was just a tool I uused to get my hook back" and Mini Maui starts pounding on him. Homeboy Moana can't even hear you and you're still mad at Maui for bullshitting, it kills me. Maui tries shooting him down. "Mini Maui wasn't convinced" has me in stitches

Maui's internal dialogue shifting to "oh wait, yeah, I wanted to surprise her with a visit. Oops." while he's tied up also has me in stitches. ffs, maui, get your priorities straight

"He refused to let Moana be hurt or threatened" I am on the floor

Every time Tui calls Moana "my dear" it adds ten years to my lifespan

The siapo of Maui in the storytelling fale is so lifelike that "it's as if he were about to jump off the fabric at any moment and start teasing her." that's so stupid cute!!!! also so stupid sad that she probably talks to it a lot hoping that it'll work someday. ough.

"Maui was having a bad day. Actually, he was having a lot of bad days"." feels like it was pulled right from a fic I would've written in 2018, I'm screaming

"I don't need her to save me...again" swallowing the earth as we speak

Curly still being the default nickname is also taking me out I need to be given financial compensation asap

There's a parallel that got lost in translation from page to movie, there's the bit where Moana's like "I'm sure Maui's off doing important demigod stuff, wherever he is", but there's also a bit of internal monologue where Maui's like "I hope Moana's faring better than I am, wherever she is" I'm gonna conk their heads together y'all need to communicate

The book directly mentions Moana and her crew passing Te Fiti. Did I miss that from the movie? Did they show Te Fiti, or is this a book-exclusive detail?

Their little Kakamora buddy has a name!! Kotu we don't deserve you. Also he's the Chief Kakamora's son! I just thought he was second in command. That's a whole baby

Maui knows who Pua is, somehow! He sees Pua waddling around and his first thought is "okay, this is weird, why do these people have Moana's pig with them?". Doesn't even remotely click that she could be with them. He's actually about to leave until HeiHei shows face and boy is he absolutely mortified. It eats me up inside. Instant shift of "goodbyeeeeee random humans I don't liiiike!!!" to oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, where is she????

Incredibly suspicious that Moana is the human that has all the gods talking. Something too about Maui having to force himself not to care about her. Did someone do a little too much bragging about his favorite human?

"I thought you'd be...more." okay a) I def think Maui's been overhyping her and b) haha More callback we love to see it

Also, Matangi's just a demigoddess! Not a goddess at all. interesting, interesting, interesting

Moana also sucks at priorities, one single mention of Maui and she instantly shifts to oh, oh my god, is he here? is he nearby? where is he?

Moana recognizes the Portal of the Gods as similar to the entrance to Lalotai...does that mean Lalotai is connected to the Realm of the Gods, in some way? are they the same place under a different name? also all :') that the dance she does to open the portal is specifically meant to be a copy of the haka that Maui did in the first movie.

You know, I think you need her just as much as she needs you. WHAT DOES IT MEAAAN? WHAT DOES IT MEAN? WHAT DOES IT MEAN??? WHERE DID THAT COME FROM???? YOU NEED EACH OTHER??? WHY DO THE GODS KNOW?? WHY DO THE GODS KNOW????

The first thing Moana does when she's back on her canoe is look for Maui because she thinks he's gone 🥹 wants to go back and look for him until she realizes he's the reason she's dangling in the air. Did he stop her from falling off the canoe? ough, I'm deceased

I can't get over Moana assuming he just wants to catch up, they are both such chronic babblers.

"His expression was both happy and annoyed." I'm losing my shit.

"But yeah, it is good to see you again" 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹.

"The fire in the sky lead us to you" can we stop with the written in the stars stuff. can we stop. my poor heart can't take it. platonic soulmates fr. "maybe we're supposed to do this together." THE GODS KNOW!!!! THEY KNOW!!!

"Maui bit back a smile." kill me. kill me. i'm dead on the spot. kill me.

Ohhhhh, I always love seeing what they do in place of the songs and the replacement for "Can I Get a Chee-Hoo?" kills me most of all, I think. Maui still goes to sit with her, but when Moana starts talking about all the people she's gonna let down, he comes to a screeching halt when she mentions Simea.

"If anyone should be upset, it should be me. Since when do you have a sister?"

"You would've met her, if you ever came to visit me." OUCH! OUCH! OUCH!!! She's trying to tease him but there's a tinge of hurt in her voice, like she feels like he doesn't care enough about her to take the time for her!! You need her as much as she needs you!!!!!

"Three years is a blip to me, princess," says the liar who thought about her on a near-daily basis!!!!

"Empathy wasn't Maui's strong suit. But he seemed to be trying- for her. and that dulled the pain a little" i am in my grave. i am in my grave.

"Why are you even here?" -> "Because...because I've been low before, and I couldn't see my path. And someone came along who I underestimated and she lifted me up. Someone I don't want to underestimate herself right now." THROWING UP!!!!!

"Wow, you're the worst at this." -> "Maui pretended to look offended" conking their heads together as we speak they are so SWEET!!!!!

Maui giving her all the credit for being the one to defeat Nalo!!! not himself!!!! her!!!!!!!

"Maui said he was better for knowing her. That had to count for something" 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

It still destroys me that Maui's entire priority is keeping Moana safe!!! He's not just diving in to fight, he keeps going back to make sure they're all safe!!! that's all that matters to him!!!

God their little exchanges are so stupid they're killing me. "Nalo doesn't care about you!" "Yes he does! I'm Maui!!" "THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT!!!" dumbasses <3

oooh he really doesn't want to separate, his eyes keep going back and forth between Moana and the monster storm :')

Okay. okay. okay. listen. there's a lot more to Maui's goodbye in the book than in the movie. In the book it's an apology. It's a rushed explanation on why he hadn't gone back to visit her prior. He lied about not having the time for her. All his time has been about and for her.

The reason I didn't visit...was 'cause you made me want to be better. You deserve the whole ocean...I wanted you to have it. Watch yourself out there. I could pull up millions of islands, but if you're not there to land on them, what's the point?

FOR!!!! HER!!!!! EVERYTHING!!!! IS!!!!! FOR!!!!! HER!!!!!

He hated leaving Moana and her crew behind,

He trusted her.

God, coud you imagine? First movie Maui, getting his hook destroyed? Those three words hold more power than anything. He trusted her. If anyone can do this it's her. He trusts her. He trusts her.

His thoughts kept drifting back to Moana. Nothing else matters!!! He could be all full of himself and think about how heroic he's being for The Humans (other) and all he's thinking about is his Favorite Human.

The thought of failing her pushed on him as the weight of the water grew heavy.

WHO WROTE THIS!!!! WHO READ OUR FANFICS!!!!! WHO KNEW!!!!!

His tattoos glowing with the power of the gods the first time he tries lifting Motufetū.....were there other gods that were helping him? are there gods who know?? Te Fiti if you're out there,,,,,,,,,

Moana rushing to protect Maui when lightning barely misses him the first time is.........destroying me?? taking me out??? imagine being protective over a demigod literally pulling an island out of the sea. imagine trying to take many hits for him. using her conch shell to call out to the storm to hit her instead? Maui yelling at her to Not do that? probably because it's breaking his own heart to watch?? ough.

"It went against every instinct, but Moana knew she had to listen to him." THAT'S ALSO GROWTH!!! KEEPING THEM BOTH SAFE BY NOT PUSHING HERSELF FROWARD!!!! GROWTH!!!!!

Maui getting hit by three strikes of lightning, and he uses what he thinks are his last dying moments to say goodbye to Moana. He locks eyes with her, gives her a sad smile, and yells Find your way, kid. Just to her. Just loud enough that she's the only one who can hear. and oh boy is this book brutal about that fourth and "fatal" lightning strike. It's strong enough to fry him. It launches him up so high in the air that Moana can't even see him

So, uh...fun fact! The reason Moana doesn't instantly dive in the water to go after him is because she thinks she's too late and that he's dead on impact. She doesn't even see him hit the water.

"Moana gasped as she felt her necklace pop open and her shell- Simea's shell- toppled out. Frantically,she reached for it, ignoring the danger around her. She couldn't lose that shell. She had already lost so much."

She thinks of everyone she loves when she's about to dive into the water and reach for Motufetū herself and Maui's among them right alongside her family. God. If there were ever a more indirect found family confirmation............

Lightning flashed, illuminating the sky and filtering through the water. Moana hoped that her crew was okay. That Maui had somehow survived. RIGHT!!! FROM!!!! THE FICS!!!! I SWEAR THIS IS PULLED RIGHT FROM THE OLD FICS!!!

His hook was missing, but he didn't care. He dove in after Moana. Hi, yes, 2018-era me is screaming out from inside me. She's clawing her way out of my chest. This is everything she's ever needed.

Fun fact part two! I don't remember how it was in the movie, but Maui watches Moana die too!! I think in the movie he just sees her still body on the surface of Motufetū, but in the book he dives under the water just a moment sooner and helplessly watches the lightning strike through her body. He watches her go still and sink towards the ocean floor :) Now they both have the trauma of watching each other die! :) :)

He tries desperately to catch her before she hits the floor but there are multiple instances of him being knocked back by a shockwave :') The gods sure have found his weakness!!!

He pushed through it. Nothing was stopping him from reaching Moana.

The grieving!!! The grieving is so fierce!!

Isn't it fun?? He practically has a burial ceremony for her! He catches her before her body hits the floor, and he places her gently on the surface of the island so she can fulfill her story! God! I'm unwell! He places Simea's little shell next to her body so Moana can be close to her sister one final time!

Then, kneeling next to her, he put his hand to his heart. It rested on the tattoo of Moana that had appeared after their last adventure. It had been his constant reminder in the three years since how strong a human could be. 🥹🥹🥹😭😭😭😭😭😭🥹😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

It's just...he doesn't even realize the ocean is creating a dome around them! He's that grief-striken!!

The ocean knows them. It knows what they need. He calls it Moana's. Moana's ocean. aUGGHHHHHH.

Hey so all of that talk about Maui not allowing himself to let the gods know that Moana's his friend and then he's begging them. He's begging the gods and her (her? his? huamnity in general?) ancestors to save her because she deserves more than this. she deserves better. If any of the gods knew nothing of the two of them they sure as hell did now, ohhhhhh boy is that gonna screw him over later :')

So the book never explicitly states she's a demigoddess either! It very ominously states that She'll never be the same.

Moana gets to see her ancestors this time! I can't remember if she woke up before they disappeared in the movie, but when she wakes up her thought process goes wait, where am I? to oh, shit, MAUI?!?!? to TAUTAI VASA? TALA?? HELLO??? someone please invent therapy already she's gonna need it pretty desperately

god imagine if she thought maui was also dead?? she doesn't but ohhhh. ohhhhhh the angst potential of her thinking they're all there to see her off. god.

Shock and awe. That's all Moana can get out of Maui's expression when she catches him staring.

Mini Maui, the more accurate voice, is bawling his little eyes out when he sees that Moana's okay

Moana understands the implications instantly. and she knows that she's only alive now because Maui prayed for her

"Arching an eyebrow, she nodded over her shoulder. It was time they raised an island- togehter". SICK!!! TO!!! MY!!! STOMACH!!!

"She saw Maui, a familiar comfort in this uncharted territory" [AGGRESIVE TABLE SLAMMING] THAT'S FOUND FAMILY BAYBEEEEE

:') there's a big group hug with Moana's crew and Maui tries to wiggle his way to the center. That's almost shot for shot a scene from one of the first Moana fics I ever wrote back in December of 2017 :') turning into a little lizard and skittering into the center of the hug where Moana is because he wants a proper hug too :')

Okay so I definitely know for sure that when it says the villagers of Motunui are shocked Maui's there because they've heard so many stories about him that it's just the regular old legacy stories. but listen. let me be deluisional. it's because Moana always tells stories and Moana's like. known around the island as his best friend. so it's like!!! oh!!! there he is!!! Tautai Moana's best friend!!!! :')

He calls Simea Mini Moana!!!! weeping and sobbing

Simea's big brown eyes familiar. He Also calls Simea tugging on his ear Very Familiar. That's so stupid cute. I wonder if he ever visited when Moana was out voyaging and he ran into Simea if he'd be able to tell that she was her little sister? :') also hilarious because I'm sure it implies Moana told him Simea wanted to yell at him and he went "yeah okay that's fair"

(still lowkey sad Maui never gets included in the family hugs. Ohhhh if they ever found out what he did to save her they'd pull him straight in for sure)

MAUI STAYS!!! CONFIRMATION THAT HE STAYS!!!!

He stays long enough for things to calm down. He and Moana head out by themselves to help their little Kakamora buddy reunite with his family (cough cough)

Moana goes from "that kid" to his "dear friend." cherished. beloved. it's not even relelvant to the plot. He just smiles at her and goes "where to now?" and it's just. that's his dear friend!!! god!!!! so beloved!!! that feels like it holds even more weight than best friend!!!

god. god. I really gotta write a fic where they talk about watching each other die

good shit!!! gooood shit!!! I'm gonna be screaming about this forever. god.

[writerbugg]

Good Luck

Chapter # 6 Foggy Fears

Platonic Yandere Dc x reincarnated Reader

Wattpad

Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6 (You are here)

I realized at that moment that there are some whose dread of human beings is so morbid they yearn to see monsters of ever more horrible shapes.

- Junji Ito

(Once again, this chapter was changed quite a bit.)

!!TW!! Death, Blood, Car accident, Sudden switch from first person to second person.

*.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.*

'Dinner was too quiet.' Louis thought as she picked up the plates from the table, slowly bringing them to the sink.

'How could I have missed it?' She thought as she began to scrub the plate in her hand. 'She's my daughter. How could I have not seen it?'

Her grip tightened on the plate, her acrylic nails painfully dug into the plate. 'Am I such a horrible mother that I couldn't even notice my daughter ███ █████ ██?'

Snap

Louis looks down at her broken nail, a stinging pain accompanying the sudden loss of her red nail.

"Mom?"

Louis jumps, quickly turning her head and letting out a sigh of relief when she sees Jon. Placing a hand on her chest, she gives Jon a shaky smile, "Oh, Jon, be careful you almost gave your mother a heart attack."

Jon simply nods, as if not hearing his mother, "Um, Conner is... here." He muttered.

Louis's smile drops briefly before returning with a strained one, "Oh? Really? Well invite him in, it's been forever since he's come to visit."

Giving his mother a concerned look, Jon makes his way back out of the kitchen.

Louis sighs as soon as Jon leaves, running a hand through her hair.

"It's all my fault," She whispered, "It's all my fault..."

──●◎●──

The movie had ended, though Y/n barely noticed. All she could think about was how... ѳЧҭ ѳf ҁћӓГӓҁҭЭГ Clark had acted during the car ride. This wasn't the calm, happy-go-lucky superhero Y/n grew up with in the comics, he seemed so different. More stressed and less stable the Clark Kent from the comics. It all led to one thought;

If he's like this, how would he react if he found out about her reincarnation?

'I just want to go home.' Y/n ran a hand through her hair, her thoughts made her feel guilty, was she being ungrateful? Was Y/n even really Y/n? What if she just took over this Y/n's body? Was it her fault Clark's 'daughter' was gone?

What if he found out-

"Y/n? Are you ok? The credits ended a while ago." Clark's hand on Y/n's shoulder felt like fire. "Let's get going, okay?" Clark said softly, dipping his head down to look into  Y/n's eyes. "I'm sure Bruce (the prick) is anxious to have you back at the manor."

With a hesitant nod, Y/n stands up slowly. "Yeah... You're right, we should go." Clark smiles warmly, complete 180 from earlier. "Before that, I was hoping we could stop by the store on our way back." Clark rubs the back of his neck bashfully, "I might have promised your mother to get groceries while I was out, and the market is on the way to Bruces Mansion." His eyes seem to light up, "Oh! They might even have that snack you like so much! We can pick it up as well."

Y/n nods, "Yeah, I don't mind,"

Clark's smile widens, "Great! Let's get going then!"

Sighing, Y/n follows Clark to his car, 

'DC has Walmarts?' Y/n thought as she followed Clark into the supermarket.

The Walmart looked normal for the most part, there didn't seem to be too many people (probably because it was relatively late and this was still Gotham). Clark grabs a cart before heading into the supermarket, Y/n following closely behind, immediately he heads over to the dairy section browsing the milk and cream aisle.

"What's your favorite creamer?"

Looking over to Clark, Y/n raises a bow "Hmm?" she hums confused. Clark smiles, "I figured I could get some while we're here for when you go back to Bruce." 

An 'ooh' escapes Y/n's mouth before turning to get a better look at the creamers. In Y/n old life, she honestly preferred sweet things and would often put way too much creamer in her coffee, but as of late she's been enjoying less sweet things. 

"Mmm, I think I'm good for now,"  Y/n responded, not missing the way Clark frowned.

"Oh."

Clark grabs a few things before leaving, and you awkwardly follow behind him.

The rest of the shopping trip continues like this, Y/n felt like tearing her hair out, it was just so awkward and uncomfortable. Eventually, the pair ended up in the electronic section of the store.

"- game you really like!" Clark's voice bleeds into existence, breaking Y/n's train of thought. Glancing over, Y/n sees Clark holding a bootleg version of Minecraft. "Y/n? Did you hear me?" Clark frowns a bit, his eye's losing that spark again. "Y/n. I know you have a lot on your mind, but you-"

"AAHHHHHHH!!!"

You and Clark jump at the sudden scream, Clark's eyes quickly scan the store for the source of the screaming.

"OH GOD-"

"GET AWAY FROM ME!"

"THEY'RE IN MY HEAD, MAKE THEM STOP!"

More and more screams start popping up, Clark quickly pulls you close to him and you can feel your heart pounding. What was going on??

"MY SKIN IS BURNING, I'M BURNING ALIVE!"

"I'M FALLING, I CAN'T STOP FALLING!"

"SPIDERS!"

A mist seems to slowly cover the ground, screams of desperation continue to fill the air, only growing more and more unsettling.

"Shit," Clark mutters, he grips your shoulders and swiftly turns you around to face him. 

"Y/n. You need you listen to me." His voice was serious, "No matter what you see, it's not real. Do you understand? It's. Not. Real." 

Y/n's eyes widen, Fear Gas, the mist was fear gas! This was bad! Very very bad! Unlike Clark, Y/n wasn't immune which meant Y/n was about to experience the full effect of the gas.

"Y/n! Y/n just remember! It's not real- it- ot- rea-"

The world seems to blur as a burning sensation enters Y/n's lungs.

__

You sigh tiredly as you walk along the worn-down sidewalk, comic book in hand. It had been a long day, and all you wanted to do was go home and rest. Stopping at the crosswalk, you take a few glances from side to side, you never know when a truck could just barrel through you because you didn't look. 

You step onto the asphalt road.

Your heart was pounding for some strange reason, it suddenly became really hard to breathe. A loud honk rings in the air. Looking to your left, you see a dark blue truck heading towards you, its headlights illuminating a path where you were dead center.

The vehicle's driving was so erratic, you didn't know which way to run. Ultimately, whichever direction you chose didn't matter. The result would undoubtedly have been the same.

The impact was fast, you didn't feel anything at first.

It didn't last very long, though.

You lay on the asphalt road, gasping for air, trying to gain back all the air knocked out of you. That didn't do so well for your broken ribs, of course. The taste of blood indicates that some of your teeth might be missing, based on your guess.

You can't see much of your surroundings either. Aside from that dark blue truck's headlights blinding you, your vision was growing dark.

For a brief moment, you could see the man step out of his truck and go over to you. Then, everything in the world went dark.

__

"-waking up! She's waking up!" a boyish voice rings in Y/n's ear. A pounding headache seems to accompany her as she slowly sits up in her bed.

A few seconds after Clark enters her room. He looked around until he spotted the suitcase next to her closet, he went over and started to put her belongings in it.

"We are leaving." Clark states firmly, "And tomorrow you and I will be having a talk about what you saw." He seemed upset, extremely upset.

Clark... where are we going?" Y/n asked, though she already knew his answer.

"It's dad, not Clark, Y/n." That was all Clark said as he dragged you downstairs towards the manor's doors. 

Bruce was standing by the door with a perplexed look on his face. He seemed stressed and a bit frustrated. Looking over, Bruce glared at Clark, quickly walking in front of him as if to intercept him, but Clark just pushed him aside.

"Clark put her down, we need to talk about this! Her condition could get worse!" Clark ignored him and walked out the door to his car, Bruce hot on his tail.

"I don't need a man who puts his children through hell and back to lecture me or tell me how to parent my kid Bruce." Clark and put you in the car with the suitcase. Then he got in himself and started the car.

"How about you start focusing on how not to kill your own kids before you start worrying about mine"

──●◎●──

Jon gasps. This... this couldn't be right. It was... no it was impossible! But... it was, it was here and it was possible. This changes everything...

──●◎●──

𝚆𝚎𝚕𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚎 𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚔 𝚝𝚘 𝚁𝚎𝙶𝚎𝚗𝚎𝚜𝚒𝚜 𝙴𝚡𝚙𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜 𝙸𝚗𝚌. 𝚆𝚎 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚛𝚎𝚐𝚛𝚎𝚝𝚏𝚞𝚕 𝚝𝚘 𝚒𝚗𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚖 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝 𝚑𝚊𝚜 𝚋𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚋𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚌𝚑𝚎𝚍.

𝚂𝙾𝙼𝙴 𝙾𝙽𝙴 𝙺𝙽𝙾𝚆𝚂!!!

█████ 𝙺𝙽𝙾𝚆𝚂!

*.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.*

TagList - @blublock404 @no-sleep-for-insomniacs @rosecentury

[crownmemes]

Mean Sentences, Vol. 8

(Mean sentences from various sources. Adjust phrasing where needed)

"Do you really think you can win?"

"You really are creepy, you know that?"

"If I kill you right now, no one will remember you! No one will miss you!"

"Oh, you really love yourself, don't you?"

"You know this doesn't make us friends, right?"

"Unless you have an IQ higher than mine, I'm not interested in what you think."

"Wow, you might be the least perceptive person I've ever met."

"Oh, you're really not as smart as I thought you were. I guess I gave you too much credit."

"I still don't think there's anything impressive or romantic about this."

"We are not the same. We are never going to be the same."

"You know, your arrogance is one of the big reasons why you're not further ahead with your career."

"Your ruse is pathetic."

"You must have been a very boring child."

"How do you live like this?"

"Everyone has their button. Push it and they go blind. Yours, obviously, is ego."

"I used to look up to you, but now? Now, you're pathetic."

"Can you just leave me alone? Every time you get near me, something bad happens."

"Now I know how weak you are."

"You know, maybe I'm not the problem? Maybe it's you!"

"You're not someone I really want to work with."

"You've got loose wiring. Probably a sociopath."

"You run around trying to fix everything, but you're the one who is broken."

"Have you deceived and betrayed anyone yet today? It is almost lunchtime, after all."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think about you all too often."

"Nothing interests me less than impressing you."

"Wow. I really got to you, didn't I?"

"Maybe you should do what you do best - run and hide."

"You never did lose well."

"I picked that up reading books. You should try it sometime."

"Was it worth it? Compromising yourself for money?"

"Everything they say about you is true!"

"When was it that you lost your imagination?"

"I'm sure some people find you charming, but I don't."

"You don't even feel, do you?"

"You are like a wad of chewing gum stuck to the bottom of my shoe that I just can't scrape off, you know that?"

"Let's get this straight; I don't like you any more than you like me."

[getitoutofmymindwrites]

Something impulsive | joel miller x f!reader x marcus pike, 7.1k

Summary: The distance between you and Joel grows. You decide to give Marcus a chance. A chance encounter shifts the balance between you and the two men.

Warnings: 18+ MDNI, image just for aesthetic purposes, reader does not have a description, angst, slow-burn, insecurities, first date nervousness, flirting, sexual thoughts, kissing, Joel still being a prick, Joel still being an idiot (bear with him) dog piss (bear with me, too), as always let me know if I missed anything!

A/N: And here I was, thinking that this time I'll keep it short. Who am I kidding. Thank you for taking the time to read anything I write! Love you all!

P.S.: Credits for the final scene go to @jessthebaker and this hilarious comment that I just had to include in the chapter:

Dividers by @cafekitsune & @thecutestgrotto

Main Masterlist | Series Masterlist

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Radio silence.

That is what you would call it.

After your last encounter, you haven't seen or heard from Joel for two long weeks. No text, no phone call, nothing. Were you entering the winter phase again? Most likely.

You regretted the way you had challenged him that night. It wasn't really your style, but that's what happens when you bottle things up. Especially things like desire and longing. Eventually, they erupt like a fucking volcano after a long hibernation. Brutally. And yet you haven't got an ounce or a reaction. Something. Anything at all.

You were terrified that your friendship had been broken. You could have texted him. You should have. You felt it was all your fault anyway. You should have apologized. But you were angry. And selfish. And deep down you blamed him for your reaction, for making you feel helpless, a pawn in his hands.

But was that the case? And can you really blame anyone for your own actions? You were responsible for the way you reacted. You could have done things differently. You knew that. But you did not want to admit that to him.

Whether you were angry or not, you missed him all the same. You missed his presence, his voice, his scent. You missed the sound of his name on your tongue. The warmth of his irises and the softness in his eyes when he looked at you. And boy, did he look at you.

He may not have been a man of many words, but sometimes, just sometimes, his gaze spoke louder than any voice in the room. That's how you got into this mess in the first place.

One evening, on your day off, you hang out with Trish at your place. You needed the company, being alone with your thoughts for too long wasn't a good idea. The two of you sit on the sofa, drinking beer and eating pizza straight out of the box. You had already put your girls to bed and this was your happy hour.

"Are you dating Marcus you little weasel?"

"Where did that come from?", your eyes widen in surprise.

"Joel asked me the other day.", Trish reveals, laughing under her breath.

"WHAT?" you squeal in disbelief. Joel was not the type to ask about other people's private matters. Especially yours and especially to his cousin. "OK, please, elaborate."

"He asked me if you’re seeing him.", she continues.

"When did this happen?", you try to draw an imaginary map in your mind, gathering all the information available to you to understand what might be going through his mind.

"A few days ago, maybe?" she says nonchalantly.

"He asked that explicitly? Those were the exact words he used?", you insist like a hound dog looking for clues.

"Of course not." Trish rolls her eyes, "He danced around it for a while, but I pretended I didn't know what he was talking about -which I obviously don't- and then I made him ask directly."

"Oh god, give the poor man a break!", you exclaim, you could only imagine what a menace could she be when she wanted to.

"Well, are you?"

"No, I’m not. But if he asks again tell him I am."

"Why?", she frowns but looks amused at the same time. Oh, she's up to something.

"So he will leave me alone." Well he already kind of did, but maybe it was for the best to cut the ties once and for all.

"What do you mean? Is he bothering you?" Trish insists, curiosity sparkling in her eyes.

"No- he's- it's not- uh-" where would you even start, it's all a fucking mess, anyway. "Forget I said anything-" you try to end the conversation, but-

"I might have kind of implied that, though?" Trish wrinkles her nose, trying to minimize the damage.

"WHAT?"

"Only because he looked desperate" she rushes to explain, "and honestly you two should really fuck each other. So I thought maybe I could spice things up a bit."

A minute or two passes before you answer her. All this information bombarding your mind left a paralyzing feeling in your mouth. He looked desperate? Why the fuck? Was this the classic 'I want what I can't have'? He wasn't that type. And he could have his way with you if he wanted to. Couldn't he? Did he get the feeling that you weren't interested? What more could you have done, he was the one who went cold and hot all the time. "It's not like that." is all you say.

"The hell it isn't." Trish quips, almost offended.

"We don't want the same things Trish, and I won't make the same mistakes again." you draw the line. "What did he say?", you ask without shame, because you just have to know, even if it hurts you.

"Oh, you know, he put on his usual 'Joel grumpy face' and walked out on me. But honestly, what did you expect?" she shrugs and continues, "So, if 'it's not like that'", she air-quotes you mockingly, "why don't you give Marcus a real chance? He's a good guy and I don't often say that," Trish points her finger at you.

"I'm sure he is Trish, but I can't."

"And why is that?"

"Because it's not honest."

"To whom?"

"To him."

"And..?" she presses you.

You close your eyes, because you really don't want to say it and it feels frustrating but comforting at the same time to have a friend who knows you so well. "And to my heart.", you mumble coyly.

"Oh, baby c'mere. You really like my stupid cousin, don't you?" Trish wraps her arms around your shoulders, squeezing you into a tight hug.

"No, I do not." It's more than that. "And don't push it any further, it's not happening.", it's your turn to point the finger at her.

"Ok.", she sighs troubled. "Ok, look at me and listen carefully.", she makes a serious face, holding your hands in hers as she begins. "Joel's my cousin and he is a good man and I love him, but he has his own issues to deal with-"

"What do you mean?" You interrupt her curiously. You never thought to ask about his past before, it seemed invasive.

"It’s not my place." she cuts you off with a guarded look that seems so foreign on her face and continues, "The point is, you cannot wait for him forever."

"I'm not-" you start to deny it, but Trish grabs your face in her palms, squeezing you gently to make her point and you stop mid-sentence.

"You deserve to be happy. And you can't miss something you've never had." her eyes bore into yours, full of care and concern.

Her last words strike you like a slap on the face.

Oh, but you can. You already are.

Another two weeks have passed and you still haven't heard from Joel. He's stuck in your head like a virus, unable to think of anything else. This is the longest you've gone without talking. It's taking its toll on you, making you fidgety and jumpy, irritated by the simplest things. You've reached your breaking point and you're ready to call him, just to see if he's OK.

And, if you're honest with yourself, to give him a chance to make a move. He might think you don't want him to reach out. That thought makes you even more angry, you sound so pathetic in your head, begging for a man's attention. A man who has never made his intentions clear. You should stand up for yourself, hold your own.

You're at the office, shuffling through your bag, looking for your phone, still debating whether to call him. As you reach deep into your bag, searching through the million things you stuff in there, you feel a hard, papery thing on your fingertips. You fish it out and see that it's Marcus' card. You don't even remember putting that thing in there. But you remember him giving it to you.

He was such a gentleman and so thoughtful that night. He didn't ask for your number and he didn't press to put his on your phone. He gave you his card, clearly stating that he hoped you would get in touch with him.

"..why don't you give Marcus a real chance?.."

You take a deep breath and unlock your phone.

"..You cannot wait for him forever.."

This is it.

"..You deserve to be happy.."

You're going to call him. Right now? Yes, right now.

He picks up after the third ring.

"Agent Pike.", his voice deep and smooth, runs like honey in your ears. You remember how much you liked the sound of it.

You’re taken aback for a moment, you'd almost forgotten what he did for a living. It was strange but interesting to hear him like that, it stirred something in you. "Uh- um-" you lose your train of thought for a second, "hi- I don't know if you rememb-"

Marcus says your name instantly, the surprise evident in his tone. "I was beginning to think you'd either lost my card or I'd made a terrible, terrible first impression on you," he says with a soft laugh, vulnerability coloring his voice.

"No, no, god- no, nothing like that.. It was really nice to meet you!" you reassure him, because it really was.

"Yeah, you too.." Marcus replies and you can hear the smile in his voice. He doesn't say anything else, giving you time to collect yourself.

"I just-" you squeeze your eyes shut, trying not to freak out, pinching the bridge of your nose with your fingers, you hadn't planned this, "I've been really busy, with work and the kids, I haven't had a chance to..." the words catch in your throat as you think of the real reason you've been busy.

Obsessing over unavailable men.

But you don't want to lie to Marcus, he's been so kind and open, so you pause, looking for a way out of the hole you've dug yourself into.

"Hey, it's OK," Marcus takes the lead, sensing your discomfort, "you didn't have to call, but I'm really glad you did. I thought about getting your details from Trish in case you lost my number, but then I didn't want to force you into anything in case you didn't lose my number, you know?" he laughs timidly.

"Yeah, I know; that is so thoughtful of you. I'm- I'm glad I called." It feels strange to admit something like that, something so small, to be honest, to be so open and talk about positive things, to make someone feel good with your words on a personal level. You've spent the last few years just doing it for your daughters, loving them, hyping them up, rooting for them, but it's a change that you welcome and you discover that you really, really missed it.

There's a short silence on the other end, which makes you feel anxious, so you decide not to bother him any more. "I'm sorry I called during office hours, I-"

"No, no, no, don't even think about it, there are no office hours at my line of work anyway, so.." Marcus rushes to put you at ease. "I was just wondering if I should ask you out or if I'm jumping the gun," he blurts out and you can feel his hesitation through the phone.

"Well," you try to lighten the mood, "you're the one asking questions for a living, so why don't you earn your keep?" you bite your lower lip in anticipation and then snicker to yourself. You hear Marcus laughing, amused and impressed by your little stunt, and you have a deep desire to hear it again, knowing that it's your doing.

Marcus is not one to shy away from a challenge, so he delivers quite brilliantly. "It would give me great pleasure if you would go out with me," he says your name softly at the end, "I know it can be tricky with the girls and work and all that, but I'm sure we could work something out; my office hours are very flexible," he informs you, cleverly covering all your possible obstacles.

"I thought you didn't have office hours..." you return playfully, feeling lighter already, the thought of Joel still lingering, but the pain of it fading in your heart.

"For you I do." Marcus deadpans with an amazing ability to not make it sound cheesy. And you know exactly what kind of ability it is.

The one of honesty.

Your heart is in your mouth. You're sure of it. You can taste your heartbeat on the tip of your tongue. As much as you've tried to play it down, you're nervous, your stomach is in knots. You spend most of the evening whining to Trish on the phone, freaking out about what to wear and ending up with a "What does it matter anyway? It's one date and that's it, he's not sticking around. Yeah, he's not. I'm good, I'm fine, this is fine." you shrug as you look at yourself in your bedroom mirror.

Trish's voice brings you back to reality, "None of that, everything's going to be fine, you're going to have a good time and you're going to keep having a good time." You looked sideways at the phone as if Trish could see you through it, glancing at the time. "Ok Trish, thanks for the pep talk, but I have to go or I'll be late."

"Sure thing babe, have a great night-"

"Thanks Trish-" you speak over her voice sure she's done with the pleasantries, but-

"-and don't forget to fuck 'im."

The line goes dead before you can reply.

Jesus Christ.

"You got this. You got this. You got this," you chant to yourself, pacing the living room, checking the time on your phone every thirty seconds. "Yeah," you exhale with nervous conviction, "you got this." The doorbell rings and your stomach clenches. Conviction my ass, "No, you don't." you mutter before rushing to answer the door.

Your heels click on the wooden floor and you pin the hem of your dress down once more, just to be sure. It wasn't terribly short, but still, you haven't dressed for a date in God knows how long.

You open the door and your breath catches in your throat. But you could say the same about Marcus. You look at one another for a moment, both admiring each other. He looks sharp, clean-shaven, with a prominent jawline that makes you want to suck on it from side to side.

His hair is combed back and slightly to the side. He looks so handsome and then he smiles at you. A real smile, big and toothy and bright and beautiful. His eyes crinkle and his plush lips stretch with the force of it. His suit is elegant and clean, neatly pressed, and the two top buttons of his shirt are undone, showing a hint of his tanned chest, making it more casual.

"Hey.." Marcus speaks first, pulling himself out of his haze. His eyes drink you in, unable to land on one spot, admiring your simple but elegant black dress that stops mid-thigh, the softness of your exposed skin, the curves of your body and the features of your face.

"Hi..." you say back shyly, noticing his admiration.

"I- Christ-", he stutters almost confused.

"What's wrong?" you fidget with the fabric of your dress, your nerves getting the better of you once again.

"I almost forgot how beautiful you are-" Marcus admits, his eyebrows raised, a hint of pink spreading across his cheeks. "-you look amazing," he compliments, raising his arm and pointing his open palm in your direction.

You pray that you can fast-forward to the actual date and stay right here on the threshold of your house at the same time. "Oh, thank you -" you reply quietly, with a shy smile on your lips.

"These-" Marcus raises his other hand, suddenly remembering what he's holding, "these are for you," he hands you a beautiful bunch of flowers, obviously made specifically for you by a florist, wrapped in a beautiful ribbon. What is it about this man that turns the most clichéd things into thoughtful actions?

"These are so beautiful, thank you, let me-" you point towards the house so you can put them in a vase, signaling him to come in with your head.

"Hope it's not too much..", Marcus wonders as he enters the hall of the house.

"It's perfect," you smile warmly as you return from the kitchen with the filled vase and place it on the entryway furniture, admiring the arrangement. You place the palm of your hand on his bicep, reassuring him as you turn to leave.

His eyes shine with appreciation as he takes your palm in his warm hand, planting a soft kiss on the pulse point of your wrist. His scent fills your nostrils, sweet and masculine, and you can almost smell his shampoo as he leans forward. Your lips part and your eyes widen at the intimate contact, but instead of feeling pressured, all you want is for him to do it again on any part of your skin he likes. His plush lips are warm and soft, leaving the slightest trace of moisture as they part your skin, sending a wave of shivers through your body.

You stifle a gasp but you can't hide the dilation of your irises and he can't hide the hunger behind his. He cups your cheek in his hand, stroking your cheekbone with his thumb. "Ready?" he asks in a hushed tone.

"As I'll ever be."

The drive is bathed in bits of small talk and comfortable silence, appreciating each other's presence without having to fill the quiet of the cabin every second. Marcus' gaze is split between the road ahead and you at his side. He drives with one hand, his right resting comfortably on the gearbox.

God, you're such a cliché, noticing the way his broad palm rests there, the veins bulging between his fingers and on his hand and it makes you squirm in your seat. Your date hasn't even started yet and you're already feeling uncomfortable in your underwear. Are you that needy? Or is it him? Is he doing this to you?

Joel.

No, stop. Don’t think about him. Not right now. Stop.

Joel.

No.

Joel.

NO.

You don't realize you're holding your breath until Marcus is asking if you're all right.

"What?" you snap out of your haze, jerking your head to look at him. He looks worried, his forehead forming a deep crease between his eyebrows. "I lost you there for a minute, what happened?"

"Nothing, nothing, I'm fine."

"You don't gotta do that, you know."

"Do what?"

"Say you're fine. You're allowed not to be."

You start to contradict him, but then you realize he's right.

"You're right," you admit, looking at him sheepishly. "I'm just nervous- and it's not your fault-" you hasten to explain, "I just haven't done this in so long that it feels like it's happening to someone else, like I'm watching myself from a distance."

He smiles at you knowingly and you add frustratedly, "That's so uncool, I'm sorry, I should be-"

"Moment of truth?" Marcus cuts you off before you can finish your thought.

"Um- OK?"

"I'm already hooked." he bites his lip, stealing a glance in your direction, his shoulders shrugging as if he had just told you the most natural thing in the world.

"Excuse m-" you look at him in bewilderment.

"I know I should play hard to get and do all the stuff everyone does on a first date, act cool and whatnot," he gestures in the air with his free hand, "but really? I'm hooked. Captivated. So-" he takes a deep breath, exhaling forcefully, "if anyone should be anything, it's me, scared that I'm going to screw this up, somehow. But you know what?" he looks at you expectantly, waiting for a response.

"What?" you manage to croak, your whole body buzzing with anticipation.

"I'm going to choose to enjoy this night by being myself-" he stops and scrunches his eyes in thought, "-well, ok, I'm going to hold back a bit," he jokes playfully, making you both laugh at that, relieving some of the tension and he takes your hand in his, squeezing it gently, "because I don't know if I'll get another chance. I can only hope that at the end of the night you'll choose to see me again."

He brings your intertwined hands to his lips and kisses your knuckles tenderly. He's said all the right things, everything you want to hear and dear God, he makes you want to climb him like a tree. You bite your lower lip so hard you're afraid you'll draw blood.

He studies your face and your fluttered expression for a moment, a smile of accomplishment painted on his perfect mouth, before he adds, "And you shouldn't be anything other than what you want to be. Neither of us should."

The date was not what you expected, because it was actually a success. Zero awkwardness, lots to talk about, mutual humor and gentle glances. You started with dinner in a not-too-casual-not-too-formal restaurant and ended up in a great bar, lively but not too loud, where you had delicious cocktails over and over again. Not Marcus though, because he was driving. So responsible, you wanted to sink your teeth into his neck.

Marcus was truly interested in you. He asked you about everything, he really wanted to know about your life. You didn't delve much into the divorce and he didn't push it. But you told him more about your background, your work, your daughters, the challenges of being a single mother and to your surprise, he listened. Actively. When you told him it was his turn to spill the beans, he told you about his job and his specialty; his move to Texas for a fresh start and when you asked him why he felt he needed one, he reluctantly told you about proposing to his girlfriend of two months.

"I know, I know-" he raises his hand in defence as he shakes his head in disbelief, "I don't know what the hell I was thinking, I guess-" he looks down at his empty glass as if searching for answers, "sometimes I have a hard time letting things go."

He dares to meet your eyes through his lashes, to study your reaction. But your expression is neutral, no judgment on your part. "But I'm working on it, letting things happen naturally, you know? If it's meant to be, it's meant to be." he shrugs casually.

"That must be hard for you to deal with." you observe.

"Why would you think that?" he seems curious to know what you think of him, smiling crookedly.

"You strike me as someone who really tries to work things out, to fix what's broken. You don't give up easily, do you?"

His eyes bore into yours as he confirms, "No, I don't," smirking at you. You break eye contact and look down at your lap, biting back a smile of your own.

Suddenly you hear your name being called and you scan the room to find the source. You see Tommy just a few meters away, coming towards you to say hello. Marcus looks between the two of you, his eyes finally landing on yours, catching your faltering smile. "Hey, Tommy, how are you?" you hug him gently and then introduce the two men.

"Hi, nice to meet you." Tommy holds out his hand as Marcus extends his own, "You too."

"Who's the lucky girl this time, Tommy?" you tease with a devilish grin as you wink at him.

"The lucky girl is actually my brother." Tommy laughs breathlessly and your face immediately falls as he points his thumb behind him.

Joel is there at the other end of the bar, sitting on a table, his gaze fixed on you, his whole posture stiff, his jaw clenched and his eyes hard on you. You raise your arm weakly and wave at him, and he nods back sternly.

Marcus misses absolutely none of this.

How long had they been there? How much did he see? Did you do anything inappropriate? you keep checking yourself for any flawed behavior. But then you realize that you don't have to answer to him or anyone else. You can do as you please. So why do you keep hoping you haven't let him down?

"You wanna join us? There's plenty of room, come on.", Tommy invites you to their table.

You feel your legs give out just at the thought of this gathering and you try to decline politely, "We wouldn't want to impose, it's OK-"

Tommy gives you a confused look, as if you haven't spent the best part of the last two years hanging out together. "What the hell are you talking about, love? Come on, move that ass of yours." he waves his head in their direction. You glance swiftly from Tommy to Marcus and then back to Tommy, hoping he'll get the message, but he doesn't. Damn it, Tommy.

Marcus notices your apprehension and puts the palm of his hand on your forearm, caressing your skin with his thumb.

"Are you OK? Do you want to go instead?" he says in a quiet voice, just for you to hear.

You almost jump at his suggestion, "No, no, I just don't want you to think I'm not having a good time with you…" you lower your eyes, feeling vulnerable.

"Hey, hey, look at me." Marcus lowers his head to meet your gaze, "I think I'd know if this date was going south. But if for some reason it is and I'm too smitten to see it, I'm all ears." Marcus searches your eyes and you shake your head with conviction.

"It's not," is all you say, and you lean forward to place a kiss on his cheek, on the side of his face that is hidden from Joel's inspection. As if that would make what you just did any less obvious. Marcus' lips part, and he turns his head sideways to look at your profile, almost brushing it with his own.

His eyes linger on your mouth as you lean back to your seat, and then he licks his lower lip like a starving man preparing for his favorite meal. "Let's go meet your friends before I do something impulsive," he whispers in your ear, his grip on your arm tightening, his nose pressing against your temple and his lips brushing your earlobe.

Goosebumps spread across your skin and you have half a mind to get the fuck out of here and drag him back to your house. But instead you giggle like a schoolgirl and lead the way to hell, feeling the warmth of his hand on your lower back and the moisture of your pussy running down your thigh.

If a person could combust out of stillness, it would be Joel. You're not even sure he's breathing at this point. You train your eyes on his chest, trying to follow the rise and fall of his rib-cage, just to make sure he doesn't faint.

He's sitting directly opposite you, next to his brother, who's sitting opposite Marcus. He's nursing a beer with one hand, the other behind Tommy's seat. He barely speaks to you, he avoids looking at you and that makes you feel like you’re doing something wrong and he's giving you the cold shoulder. It takes everything you've got to swallow the lump in your throat and the tears behind your eyes, but you do it.

The same waitress who took your previous orders comes back and asks what you and Marcus are having. You order a beer, and before Marcus can place his own, Joel spits, "If you're driving her back, you shouldn't be drinking," giving him a disapproving look.

Your cheeks flush with embarrassment, your eyes dart from the waitress to Joel and then to Marcus, ready to apologize on his behalf. You knew Joel could be abrasive, but never so blatantly rude. Those were the first words he said to him.

Jesus, what is his problem?

Marcus seems to be able to handle his own, answering to you instead of Joel without missing a beat. "Good to know you have such protective friends," he says with a twinkle in his eye and then he orders, "I'll have the same as before, thank you.", shifting his gaze to the waitress. "One soda with a slice of orange coming up," she says politely and leaves to get your drinks.

You glare at Joel, but he doesn't seem to be paying attention, although he flinched almost imperceptibly when he heard Marcus' choice of drink. Marcus gives you a gentle kiss on the temple and you begin to suspect that he knows exactly what's going on between you and Joel, whose jaw is twitching at the sight of Marcus' public display of affection towards you.

You envy Tommy at the moment because he seems blissfully unaware, so you turn the conversation to him. Or at least you try, because as soon as you open your mouth to speak, Joel cuts you off and asks Marcus what he does for a living.

You can't help but think that after your first meeting in that god’s forsaken bar, it took him months to strike up a conversation with you, but tonight, for some reason, he just can't seem to shut up.

Marcus, being as polite as ever, gives him the general answer that he works for the government.

"Ah, a white collar," Joel replies condescendingly and your eyes bulge out of their sockets, "must be nice, relaxed." still not looking at you and God does he tick you off. Tommy shifts uncomfortably in his seat, stealing glances at you, not sure what's going on. In any other case you would have found it endearing. Not so much now.

You too are squirming in your seat, trying to think of a way out of this awkward situation. This is not how you imagined your first date would end. And it's certainly not how you expected to meet Joel after all these weeks.

Marcus seems unfazed by the veiled hostility coming his way, smiling back at Joel, almost enjoying the antagonism. "Not necessarily, but I can't talk about it either." This catches Joel's attention and he looks at you questioningly for the first time. You tilt your head slightly to the side, signaling what are you doing? but Joel takes his eyes off you, sipping his beer nonchalantly.

"What about you? What do you do for a living?" Marcus returns the question.

"We're contractors, me and Joel; we're brothers," he gestures between himself and Joel, "and we work together." Tommy chimes in quickly, having reached his limit of awkwardness at the table. You breathe a sigh of relief, but it's not long lived.

"And how do you all know each other?" is the next natural question to come out of Marcus' mouth.

Joel's eyes land on you briefly, something flashes past them and before you can stop him-

"She and I actually met in a bar..." Joel smirks at Marcus, but you speak at the same time-

"Joel-" Your voice is firm as a warning, fully accepting that your tone might be alarming to your unsuspecting company.

"What?" Tommy's voice falters, laughing uncomfortably, completely at a loss. Marcus reads the table, his eyes darting between the three of you, at the same time placing a protective hand over your shoulder, rubbing soothing circles with his thumb.

"What?" Joel repeats in a different tenor to his brother and he shrugs, smiling, "It's no big deal, tell them," he has the audacity to put you on the spot, nodding his chin at you.

You feel the contents of your stomach move up your esophagus, cold sweat coats your skin in a thin layer. Betrayal. That's all you can think of. "Uh-", you try to find the words, but nothing comes out, betrayal, you're not good at it, lying doesn't come easy to you, betrayal, especially with three sets of eyes on you. Joel just sits there with a smug look on his face and you wish you had the guts to slap it out of him.

Betrayal.

Marcus' voice brings you back to the present, are you all right?, a soft whisper caresses your ear and soothes your insides. The bile in your throat begins to return to its rightful place, but your eyes are already moist, your waterline glassy, a look of defeat and disappointment painted on your soft face. Joel sees it all written on those contours of yours that he has come to know and marvel at from afar, and it is as if a sudden realization hits him, snapping him out of his asshole behavior. He is cruel to you.

"All right, all right," he rolls his eyes and continues with a sigh, and Tommy's eyes return to his brother, but Marcus' remains fixed on you. "We met in a bar and we had a heated..." he stops abruptly and your face takes on a look of horror as he searches for the right word. "...argument." Joel finally adds. "We exchanged a few words, but then we ran into each other at my cousin's house and the rest is history." he laughs as he waves his hand in the air and winks at you.

You bite your lower lip as hard as you can to keep your chin from trembling, but a single tear of relief or suppressed anger, you're not sure anymore, escapes from the side of your face that only Joel can see, as you give him a forced, watery smile.

Luckily the bar is dimly lit, otherwise they would all be able to see the redness spreading across your chest, the rage manifesting itself on your body. Used and played is how you feel, and Joel is the last person you would have thought would put you in this position. You'd bet all your money on it.

"Why didn't you say anything?" Tommy wonders aloud, looking between you and Joel. You clear your throat and have no choice but to confirm Joel's lie. "It felt awkward at the time, so we pretended we didn't know each other. It was an unfortunate moment, one I deeply regret," you lock eyes with Joel and see his facade almost crumbling, "that will never recur, ever again." you continue to stare at him as you speak the last words with concealed bitterness. For the first time that night, he looked down at his lap in shame and regret, pretending to peel the label off his bottle with his thumb.

The ride home was silent, you were emotionally drained, something Marcus picked up on easily, so he simply offered his open palm, which you gladly accepted, tucking your fingers between his own. He continued to caress your skin, back and forth, and it was all you needed to calm your nerves.

As he walked you to the front door of your house, you felt compelled to apologize to him in a profound way. "I'm so sorry about Joel," you shake your head, looking down at your feet, your fingers scratching your forehead, a worried look on your face, "he can be intense sometimes -" why are you defending him?

Marcus lifts your chin with a gentle finger under it, his thumb caressing your jawline. "I don't care about Joel." With one simple sentence, he has erased him from your conversation. No more room for him to steal any longer of your night with Marcus.

“But-”

“I'm the one standing on your porch right now am I not?”, the implication clear in his voice and words.

“I'm not sure what-” you try to avoid confirming or denying his assumptions.

"Mhm," he smiles knowingly, his eyes fixed on yours, searching for something. You feel safe with him, but you can't shake the feeling that you've ruined everything. Marcus' eyes drop to your lips and he slowly leans forward, stopping just inches from you, waiting for you to initiate. You can feel yourself unable to relax, your body stiff, frozen. But you want to, you really do, so you ask instead, "Are you going to do something impulsive now?"

He smiles and leans even closer to your lips, his breath gently fanning across your plump skin. His nose gently nudges yours, "Yes, I think I might."

Your lips almost touch when a muffled voice followed by loud barks startles you both, causing you to pull away and look around for the source of the disruption. After a few seconds, you both see a medium-sized dog running down the street. You wait to see if its owner follows, but no one appears. You turn to look at each other, giggling at the strange interruption.

Marcus caresses your cheek with the back of his knuckles and you lean into his touch, the moment gone and lost. "I hope you had a decent time because I know I had a great one and I really hope I get to see you again."

"Marcus," you scowl at him, "are you fishing for compliments?" you chastise him teasingly.

"Well, a man can dream," he smirks playfully as he tries to get some distance between you in case he comes on too strong.

"You don't have to," you coo, grabbing his collar to crush your lips against his.

After the initial shock, Marcus holds your head in his hands, tilting it to return the kiss and deepen it. His soft lips massage yours, sucking and nibbling at your lower lip. His upper lip and tongue capture yours, tugging gently, sending waves of pleasure through your body. He licks into your mouth, exploring every soft cavity, and you suck on his tongue in return.

He grunts into your welcoming cavern and you fist the fabric of his shirt that adorns his chest tighter. He presses his body into yours, trying to keep his pelvic area from pressing into your lower abdomen, but you can feel his growing erection inescapably.

You come up for air and murmur into his mouth, "I had a great time and I'd like to do it again".

This time it is he who presses his mouth to yours, kissing you fervently, sucking all the air out of your lungs. Your body is on fire, your abdomen tingling with desire.

You whimper against his lips as you reach for the short curls at the back of his neck, tugging them gently between your fingers, causing him to growl against your wet flesh, and he can feel your nipples poking at his chest through the thin material of your dress as you press your torso against his in sheer determination.

He's sure he's going to lose it and fuck you in front of your house for all your neighbors to see if he doesn't stop now. He breaks the kiss, panting, his eyes boring into yours, your foreheads touching. "Christ, woman," he closes his eyes and laughs to himself, "you're going to give me a heart attack."

"Better me than old age, right?" you try to hide your teasing smile behind your tightly pressed lips.

"Hey, I'm about to arrest you for threatening a government official," he warns without any conviction or authority.

"Are you going to handcuff me, Agent?" you ask, looking at him through your lashes and it comes out more breathless than it should.

"Jesus." Marcus mutters through his teeth, his resolve hanging by a thread. "OK." he gives you a sharp look, "I'm going to leave for the sake of both of us," he says, but his grip on your hip tightens, as if he's afraid you'll disappear.

"You could come in, you know," you offer, looking at him sheepishly.

His expression is pained when he has to turn you down. "And I'd like nothing more, but I want to do this right. Please, let me do this right." Marcus pleads softly, rolling his forehead over yours in desperation.

"What does that even mean?" you ask, a bit embarrassed by his rejection.

"Means I want to wine and dine you, spoil you, give you the perfect date," he coos into the soft skin beneath your ear, making you shudder at his soft promise. "And when you think you can't go another second without my touch, then I'll come in and spoil you some more," he continues, brushing his moist lips along the pillar of your neck. "I will spoil you in all the ways you deserve." he finishes, planting an open-mouthed kiss on your pulse point under your jaw. Your knees buck and your pussy contracts, squeezing out your sweetness at the feel of his warm and wet tongue.

"OK," you breathe out in a shaky voice, nodding dumbly, cupping his face in your hands and planting a small kiss on the tip of his nose.

He smiles and presses his lips to your forehead murmuring "God, you're something," and his heart swells at your tender gesture.

Marcus takes a deep breath, pauses and seems hesitant, but speaks his mind anyway. "OK, I'm going to skip the whole 'three day rule' and call you tomorrow. Is that OK?" he looks anxiously into your eyes, "Am I rushing you?"

A spontaneous laugh escapes your lips at the sound of that. "I just invited you into my house, you think a phone call is going to rush me?" you frown, "You can call me whenever you want.", you say matter of factly. You turn to leave, but change your mind and face him again. "Actually," you bite your lip mischievously, "I need to make sure I can rely on the American authorities, so I'm counting on your word. I'll be expecting a call by tomorrow," you stifle a grin by pressing your lips together.

"Yes, ma'am." Marcus nods in amusement and gives you one last kiss, pressing his lips to yours for as long as he can before ushering you into the house. "Good night," he breathes against your lips.

"Good night," you whisper back with a shy smile and close the door behind you. Marcus walks to his car with a stupid grin plastered on his face, gets in and drives away, but not before making sure you have closed and locked your front door.

In the stillness of the night, Joel takes a moment to assess the situation and satisfied that the coast is clear, he carefully emerges from the large bush he was hiding behind.

He glances down at his dog pissed shoe and mutters to himself,

"Fuck."

previous |

[imtryingbuck]

Possible Happy Ending

~ gif not mine credit to owner ~

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x fem!Reader, past Steve x fem!Reader

Summary: It’s been three years since Reader left Steve, after bumping into someone she might have the chance of a happy ending.

Word count: 1,156

Warnings: swearing, self-doubting. I’m pretty sure that’s it.

Masterlist

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

Three years have been and gone since you finally decided to leave Steve it hasn’t gotten any easier but you’re doing okay. Your mum rang you a few days after you left panicking saying Steve had showed up that you and your stuff had gone. A month after you left Steve and Sharon went public with their relationship, you were devastated so you went to the local shelter and got two kittens why? You’re not entirely sure but you love them both so much.

Four months after you left, you’re walking to the local cafe when suddenly you bump into someone straight away your spluttering apologies when your name is suddenly said. Bucky is standing in front of you with a big smile on his face asking where you have been; how you’ve been. You both head to the cafe to talk and it’s going amazingly well. He tells you he missed seeing you around and that Steve looked for you everywhere. You exchange numbers with him promising not to tell Steve, even though he’s with Sharon now you don’t want him showing up as you just simply can’t deal with that anymore.

In the following weeks and months after meeting Bucky again he becomes your best friend (your only friend too) he comes to the apartment every Friday and even sometimes stays until Sunday. He truly is the sweetest man ever, his favourite thing to do is wind the cats up and getting them hyper just before he leaves. It drives you crazy you complain with a smile on your face as you can’t even imagine to be mad at him not when he has that stupid beautiful smile on his face. 

Now you’re not exactly sure when it started but the feelings for Bucky were starting to get out of hand, you knew yourself it would be so wrong to say anything to him about how you had this butterfly tingling feeling in your stomach which has now turned into pterodactyls trying to break out of your stomach every time he looks at you. It’s wrong. He’s your ex-boyfriends best friend. Plus he’s James Buchanan Barnes he’s not going to like you the only reason why he’s here at your apartment every weekend ordering pizza or Chinese and talking to you about anything and everything for hours is because he feels sorry for you. Idiot.

A year after you left it went public that the it couple known as Steve and Sharon had broken up. From what Bucky told you Steve apparently walked into the apartment he shared with you and caught Sharon cheating with a guy Steve had been suspicious of. According to Buck Steve was crying out your name and begging up at the ceiling for you to come home.

A few days after that Steve was seen with a new woman on his arm. Your sister.

Your heart shattered, ringing your mum she told you that everyone thought it was okay for your sister to date you ex because he was your ex. You hung up and cried. The tears didn’t last long though as Bucky let himself into your apartment and found you in bed crying so he climbed into bed with you and cuddled you. You’re pretty sure you both ended up watching The Big Bang Theory but couldn’t remember as you were too busy watching Bucky laughing and stroking one of the cats.

Your sister and Steve didn’t last two months because every time they had sex it was your name finally spilling from his mouth.

It’s your birthday and the plan was to have a nice hot relaxing bath then order yourself a Chinese and curl up on the couch with the cats and watch your favourite show. Simple and plain. That was until your favourite person knocked on the door with a huge bouquet of your favourite flowers, Chinese food and a bag with ‘happy birthday’ written across it. He tells you that you shouldn’t be spending your birthday on your own, so you point to the cats and with that he lets out that sound that makes your heart flutter. Halfway through the fourth episode of the series he suggested, you notice him looking at you, so you pull a weird face which again makes him let out that sound. You mentally scold your idiotic heart to stop fluttering.

“Y/n I need to tell you something” he speaks so softly and instantly you can tell he’s nervous.

“What’s up Buck” trying to hard not to stumble over three simple words.

“I-um w-well I need y I-I need to tell you s-s-something” he’s struggling and that gets you scared.

“B-Bucky you can tell me anything you know this” God if you’re real please kill me. Now.

Taking a deep breath, he says “iminlovewithyou”

“What? Say that again Buck but slower” did I just hear correctly? No. He didn’t just say that you idiot. Wishful thinking though pal.

“I’m in love with you. I have been since you stitched up my arm even though I heal fast six years ago. W-when he told me you two was dating, I was crushed and I knew it was wrong your was my best friends girlfriend but I couldn’t help it. You’re an angel absolutely perfect. When you broke up with him I was more devastated than him because I knew I wouldn’t get to see you again but then we bumped into each other a-and them feelings was still ther - oh shit Y/N shit I didn’t mean to make you cry im sor-“ he didn’t get to finish that word because you kissed him. 

You kissed him.

Holy shit. 

What do you do?

Do you stop?

Do you continue?

Oh. 

He’s kissing you back.

Took you long enough Bucky, jeez.

After what felt like an eternity you both pulled apart breathless with huge dopey smiles on your faces. 

“Are you sure Bucky? Are you sure that this is how you really feel?” Shut up! Why are you asking?

“Baby I’m in love with you. My heart aches when I’m not with you. You’re the first thing on my mind when I wake up and the last thing when I close my eyes and even then, you just follow me into my dreams” There isn’t any hesitation or hint that this could all be a wind up.

“I’m in love with you too. I know it’s terrible since who your best friend is but I can’t hel-“ this time he cuts you off with his perfect plumb lips on yours. 

Bucky picks you up like you weigh nothing and carries you to bed. He kisses every stretch mark, scar, beauty mark on your entire body as he makes love to you, he tells you how much he loves you. Laying in his arms sweaty and breathless you can’t help it when a few rogue tears slip onto his chest.

Tags: @bruher @cjand10 @themotherof10 @spngingerbread21 @behindmygreyeyes @hnnhbananananana @reguluscrystals

~ banners credit goes to @sweetpeapod ~

[so-i-did-this-thing]

Hello! I hope you're doing well and I'd like to thank you for being the rad trans uncle of Tumblr. I'm in a fuckin' crimson state that's quite unfriendly to trans people and I'm afraid I won't be able to leave until 2028 at the earliest. Might I ask if there's anything you'd recommend doing? Anywho, I hope the leaves were great where you are! Peace!

It's been weird, but I'm glad to be here. :) As for recommendations, well, while you are not in a great place for trans rights, thinking ahead towards a move a few years down the road *is* good. Stuff you should be considering:

Get your finances in order.

Start with making a budget (I like the tool YNAB), tracking your habits, and looking for places to reduce spending. I know that can mean squeezing blood from a stone, but even saving up gas money for a cross-country trip can move up your moving timeline.

You also want to start planning your moving expenses. For example, buying boxes, using a moving service, cost to service your car, calming meds for your pets, etc. Just make a spreadsheet and keep adding as you think of things. Have a rolling total and track against your savings.

Lastly, get your credit score in order. A free service like Credit Karma is fine, but as you get closer to having to apply for rent or a mortgage, sign up with each credit agency and pull your report. Get caught up on any delinquencies asap and do not miss any payments from now until you are moved - missed payments take the longest of ANYTHING to fall off your score.

If you've changed your legal name, make sure it matches with all the credit bureaus. If you feel responsible with credit, ask for a credit line increase every 6 months - that will help with your debt ratio if you are currently trying to pay down a balance. Plan a credit score timeline with a hard stop at least 2 months before you apply for a loan/rent -- after that, no more making any big purchases or applying for new cards. Try to have no more of 10% of your total credit line actually on your cards by the end of your timeline. Aka, if your line of credit is $1,000, you only want $100 on the cards.

2. Start paring down your stuff

Gt crafty hobbies? Stop adding to your stash. Stop it. Start getting rid of broken things, clothes that don't fit, stuff you don't see yourself using, or stuff that is cheaper to sell & buy at your new place, rather than pay to move. If this all feels hard, put the items you're questioning in a box now, and then open it next year and see how you feel. Don't buy anything you wouldn't want to move.

3. Start your research

Make lists of towns that look promising. See how their local government works. Check the local reddits and facebook groups to get the vibes. Make lists of "must haves" and "nice to haves" at the state, city, neighborhood, and even house level. Get an idea for what the cost of living will be in your new place. Decide what your deal-breakers will be.

4. Work on your job skills

Four years is a lot of time to improve yourself for a good salary hike. It's a lot of time to get marketable for remote jobs, which will broaden your opportunities to live where you want. If remote work interests you, start looking at job listings and note the requirements. Make a plan to be qualified within 3 years.

5. Make a bucket list of things to do in your current state

There must be some good things about your state. There were in mine. Afford yourself grace and do some fun things that you might not have the chance to do again when you move. Hang out especially with local friends and family you care about.

6. Keep an eye on what's happening wrt trans rights.

Follow trans pundits and your local trans rights orgs. Get in the habit of learning what's going down in your municipality, down to the school board level. Be prepared to have to adjust your moving timeline if shit hits the fan.

7. Stay on top of your healthcare and legal stuff

No passport yet? Apply now. Forgetful about getting your HRT renewed? Set reminders and work hard to stay on top of everything. As you get closer to moving, research healthcare options in your new home and get appointments lined up asap.

8. If you're selling & buying a house, be prepared for it to take nearly a year

Seriously, it can take forever for everything to work out. Work with realtors in your new state who specialize in remote sales & relocations. Start repairing your current place by year 3 and start packing months in advance of the final move.

tldr; Treat the next 4 years like you're at college and your degree is Getting the Hell Outta Dodge. Plan as much as you can with to-do lists and spreadsheets, with some kind of monthly goal at first, then weekly and daily goals as your move approaches. It can feel overwhelming, but knowing *now* that you are going to move means you can plan as much as possible and reduce the amount of panic-decisions.

Good luck!

[ahgasegotarmy116]

Do it for Him | Do You Even Love Me? | Jeon Jungkook

Summary: Voicing the thoughts that had been on your mind for so long leaves you broken and regretting every decision you've ever made. Pairing: Daughter in law reader x Father in Law Jungkook (Yändere) Word Count: 1.1k~ Warnings: An argument and some explicit language (kinda but not really) a/n: This is a hypothetical situation and is NOT what happens in the story. Oc and Jungkook don't end up together and I'll be writing another bonus chapter about how everything ends but this is simply a longer drabble that I just decided to make into a bonus chapter since I think some of you would be interested in reading it 😁 P.s. Requested by an annon 💜 (also written in one sitting so ignore any mistakes lol) Series Masterlist

"How was your day today?" I ask half heartedly, wondering if he'll actually speak to me like a human being today or skip to having sex again like he's done almost every time he's come to visit lately.

"It was fine but I don't want to talk about work since it looks like someone's been missing me huh?" he taunts, taking my want for interaction with him as a sign of an insatiable hunger he wishes I shared.

"I did miss you but I missed being with you, not just sex" I say, pressing on his chest to keep some space between us to show I'm serious and want to talk about this.

He stops and waits for me to continue but his eyes don't leave my body for a second.

"When I told you I loved you I didn't mean for our life to end up like this" I say, referring to the way we've been living for the past year.

"What's wrong? Did you need something else? You have my credit card and I told you before that you didn't have to ask me for anything. If you want it then get it. It's the least I could do for my beautiful Angel" he says while caressing my face but I take a step back, not letting him put me under his spell again.

"I'm not talking about money Jungkook. I'm talking about how I told you I didn't want to live as 'The other woman'. You told me you were going to get a divorce and let the children and I move in with you. Not just have you pop by at this separate house you have us living in" I say. 

He turns around and heads to the kitchen, gulping down a glass of water and placing the cup down on the counter. "I told you I would take care of it" he growls out while leaning both hands against the sink, clearly not appreciating the topic of conversation when all he had been looking for was a quick fuck.

"You told me that a year ago and from what I've seen you've been lying to me this whole time. Have you even filed the papers? You know that neither of you love each other so what's the point of keeping this whole charade going?" I say, following after him and standing my ground, not letting him drop this.

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, trying to center himself so he won't blow up on me like he has in the past. "These things take time Angel, plus going through a divorce would make my company take a big hit and might ruin some of the relationships I've built" he tries to explain but I'm not having it.

"If your company is all you care about then maybe all of this was a mistake" I say, turning around to walk into my bedroom with him following lazily behind me.

"You know I care about you too Angel" he says, leaning in the doorway while I've decided to plot down on the bed, running my fingers through my hair and trying to figure out if any of this was a good idea.

From the looks of it to any outsider this whole relationship was bound to go up in flames sooner or later. My life wasn't supposed to be like this. Was I really that naïve to think that somehow things would change if we were actually together? Did I really think that he was capable of loving me too?

"No I don't know that. I know that you love my body and that you love having sex with me and the idea of being with me and stealing me away from your son but I don't even know if you actually love me. Y/n. Not Angel, not the mother of your children, not the daughter in law that you took advantage of, just me" I spout off everything that's been on my mind and I can see that he starts to more or less assess our relationship and I really hope I'm going to get the answer I'm hoping for.

"You knew who I was when you first met me. You knew who I was when you married my son and you definitely knew what you were getting yourself into when you left him to be with me. I'm not this loving and kind husband that you want me to be and deep down you know that too. Do I care about you? Yes, I do. Do I love you? I don't know. I don't know if I do and I don't know if I ever will and if that's not good enough for you then be my guest, say the word and we can end this right now" he says and every condescending word that falls from his lips is like a knife through my heart.

I choke back a sob as my eyes glass over leaving him rolling his eyes, clearly not having the patience to deal with this today. 

"Seems like you've got some stuff to think about and from the looks of it I've got some business to attend to" he says, hinting at the headache it's going to be for him to go through with this divorce. 

He strides over to the bed where I'm sat with my head down, trying and failing to hold back my tears and picks up my chin. "Just remember who you're dealing with Angel okay? It will make all of ours lives so much easier if you stop thinking that you can change me" he says, caressing my face again, driving the knife deeper. 

"I am who I am and if you can't accept that then I think we have some hard decisions we'll need to make here" he says a wipes away a few of my tears before tapping underneath my chin twice and walking away. 

"Where are you going?" I ask, getting up and following him out, my vision going glossy. "It seems you're not in the mood that I thought you might be in so I think it's best if I go. Give my love to the children" he says over his shoulder and walks out, leaving me speechless and beyond heart broken, mourning the life I had with his son all over again and missing the feeling of loving someone and being loved in return. 

"What have I done?" I whimper, sinking to the floor and sobbing, wishing that I could take it all back. That I could start over and never get mixed up with this family no matter how in love I was with his son. I never knew that a love that was once so pure would be traded for one that is so devastatingly one sided, wrecking my life beyond compare and stealing what little pieces of me I had left. 

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[stedesparasol]

i'm seeing a lot of takes about how the original 2.06 makeover plotline would have been bad because stede doesn't need a makeover (especially one which makes him more masculine) but like... idk man like i haven't read the script, obviously, but i don't know why we're assuming that would even be the message of the episode, given everything we know about these writers. like, this isn't the breakfast club, the ofmd writers have a far more nuanced grasp on gender, and 'stede wears more manly clothing and suddenly ed can't resist him' doesn't make any sense as a writing choice when ed was initially attracted to stede's love of flamboyant fashion. it seems far more likely to me that there would literally be a point in the episode where ed states that stede didn't need a makeover, or that he loves him either way but misses his fancy clothes. obviously none of us know all the details (and maybe after i've broken into david's house and stolen the original script, i'll eat my words) but this kind of plotline being played straight doesn't make much sense to me, especially for a show like this. i'd like to give the writers more credit.

(i also think that the more masculine-presenting stede we got throughout this season was supposed to be him trying to become a more macho pirate because that's what he thought he should be, and honestly a conversation like that with ed where he reassured him he doesn't have to change might have been a significant moment in an arc that ultimately wasn't really addressed at all... but that's maybe that's a post for another day)

[keehomania]

hello! can I please ask for dom xiaojun with afab reader and creampie stuff? i felt like not many story abt him here

SWEET HOME — XIÀO DÉJÙN (肖德俊) (18+)

✧ MDNI (NSFW)

why did people endure the bad life threw at them? why was the path ahead always so rocky? you crossed all the bridges laid out for you, not for the thrill of the journey, but for one reason and one reason only—to reach the other side. the other side was always promised to be warmer, more forgiving, more welcoming. the other side kissed scarred knuckles and brought life back to weak pulse points. it held the kind of peace that made you believe the hardships were just a fleeting dream, a memory easily forgotten in the haze of new beginnings.

but the truth lingered, no matter how hard you tried to forget. the hardships were real. they were carved into the person you’d become, shaping you like clay pressed under relentless hands. they were the reason you could stand tall now, feet firmly planted on the ground, even when everything inside felt like it was floating, uncertain. they were the cruel, quiet moments of crying into your hands, panicking over assignments left undone, opportunities missed. you were in your senior year—why hadn’t you done more? why hadn’t you pushed yourself harder, sought out those extra credits that could’ve given you some sense of security? the weight of that regret felt unbearable sometimes, pressing down on your chest until you could barely breathe.

and then came the anxiety. the thick, consuming realization that college acceptance meant more than just a new chapter in your life—it meant you were no longer anybody’s little girl. you were no longer wrapped in the warmth and familiarity of your sweet home, no longer protected by those walls that had once made the world outside seem so far away. now, it was right in front of you, towering and daunting, filled with the unknown. a new place, new people, new responsibilities. it was all so unfamiliar, and you weren’t used to any of it.

falling in love for the first time was supposed to be beautiful, wasn’t it? that’s what everyone said—love was the one thing that was supposed to make everything better. but how could something so beautiful be so terrifying? why did it feel like every emotion was heightened, every glance, every word loaded with meaning? why was déjùn ignoring you when just last week, he had been everything you needed? why were you so mad at him, when you couldn’t even remember what had sparked the argument in the first place?

the cycle was exhausting. déjùn would get worried, you’d get upset. you’d break up, convinced it was the end, only to stalk each other like prey around campus, neither one of you willing to fully let go. and then, inevitably, you’d make up, but it never seemed to get any easier. somehow, no matter how broken things felt, life never kept you too far apart. maybe there was a reason for that. there was.

there was a reason. a reason that went deeper than anything fate could’ve scripted for you. it wasn’t just about watching déjùn smile or listening to his voice as he mumbled sleepily into your neck on those nights where time seemed to slow, letting you savor every heartbeat. no, it was more than that. it was to warm the hands that kept you going, to shelter the body that melted so perfectly against yours, as if you’d been carved from the same stone. the reason transcended the simple notion of destiny; it went beyond what the universe might have planned for you both.

you knew it when you saw him cry for the first time, and everything changed. he was always the composed one—the one who kept it together when the world felt like it was unraveling. his cool exterior never faltered, or at least, that’s what you thought until the night it all fell apart. it happened in your dorm, the quiet, familiar space suddenly feeling like a place for unraveling instead of refuge. he had broken down in front of you like he hadn’t in front of anyone else. the sobs came from deep within him, raw and uncontrolled, shaking his body in a way that left you speechless.

he had sat on your bed, hands covering his face, broken sobs echoing off the walls. His whole body shuddered with each breath, the pain pouring out of him like a dam had finally burst. you didn’t know why. he never told you, and you never asked. you never had to. it wasn’t the words that mattered in that moment, it was the feeling, the weight of his pain heavy enough to crush both of you. and so you wept with him. his tears fell, unfiltered, washing over your heart, the same heart that beat for him without hesitation.

you had held him, arms wrapped around his shaking frame, fingers tangled in his hair, and cried until his sobs finally quieted. until his breathing evened out, and the room fell silent again, save for the occasional hitch in his breath. but even that moment—intimate, raw, and unforgettable—wasn’t the full reason. the reason went beyond every touch, every kiss, every whispered promise he had never once broken. he had given you a home in his arms, a place where you belonged, where the rest of the world didn’t matter. and you were determined to give him that same home, something tangible, something sweet that he could call his own.

the house was more than just a dream. it was real, a piece of you given to him. nestled between the fields and the trees, with a creek nearby and a church hidden deep within the forest. the barn and pens were close, but they never reeked of animals. instead, the air smelled of freshwater and lilies, just like you had always imagined it would. the subtle scent of freshly baked bread lingered from the home bakery nearby, the kind of smell that made your stomach rumble in anticipation.

the house itself was two stories, painted in a soft white that reflected the sun’s warmth. but it wasn’t just white—it was touched with dabs of his favorite color. that dear green of his, the one that reminded you of life and renewal, stained the edges of the house in delicate patterns, blending into the scenery in a way that felt right, not overdone. the front steps led up to a porch where a swing swayed gently, waiting for the two of you to sit on it together, watching the sky stretch out before you. lamps stood at every corner, offering light even in the house’s darkest moments, casting a glow that felt as comforting as his presence beside you.

inside, the hallway stretched long, tiled floors echoing the soft sound of your footsteps. at the end of the hall, the bathroom sat to the right, perfectly positioned for convenience, though you barely noticed those details now. the front door led to the stairs, winding up to the second floor where your future awaited. through the door at the end of the hallway, the kitchen and living room intertwined, open and welcoming. only a small, dainty dining table separated the two spaces, enough to give the illusion of division but keeping the warmth of the home intact.

it was a place meant for sharing, for filling with memories. you could already picture yangyang sprawled across the couch, controllers in hand, keeping déjùn company when you were too busy. the boys would all gather here, because it was home. it wasn’t just a house—it was the place he had always needed, filled with laughter and warmth, with the scent of lilies and bread and the sound of friends filling the space with life. the first time he saw it, his eyes welled up, and he broke down again, not in pain this time, but in pure, unfiltered joy. you cried with him, standing there on the porch, the two of you holding each other in the doorway of the life you had built together. it was everything he had ever wanted, and it was given to him by the only person he had ever truly needed.

you stood by the stove, the warm, cozy glow of the kitchen wrapping around you like a familiar hug. the room was your sanctuary, every little detail curated to your liking, but there were traces of déjùn everywhere. a coffee mug he always used, a soft green tea towel he’d picked out, even the way the pots were arranged had his influence. it was a constant reminder that he was always there, woven into every corner of your life. you could feel him in the air, in the way the sun filtered through the windows, and in the gentle way the house creaked, as though it was alive with both of your memories.

you were making one of his favorites—peanut noodles with chili crisp. the rich scent filled the air as you prepped, hands working deftly, slicing and mixing with a practiced ease. a batch of iced green tea waited for him in the fridge, the condensation slowly forming on the glass, just the way he liked it. everything you did for him was done with care, every detail proving the love that pulsed through you. it had always been this way. every action, every gesture, was imbued with a purpose, because everything you did was for him.

you were so immersed in it, focused on the rhythm of your movements, that you hadn’t heard him come in. he stood there, just behind you, watching quietly. he didn’t want to intrude, but the scent had drawn him in, and now the sight of you convinced him to stay. you looked so pretty. your hair was tied up in a loose bun, strands falling just out of place, framing your face in a way that made you glow. your brows furrowed in concentration, your lips, soft and pink, pouted just slightly as you worked. a pink apron tied neatly at your back over your sundress, making you look both delicate and capable all at once. you were perfect.

he couldn’t believe he had you—couldn’t believe that someone so good, so kind, was his. the sight of you, standing there in your shared kitchen, cooking for him in a house that may not have been made by you, but had been turned into a home because of you. the thought of anyone else seeing you like this, of anyone else getting even a glimpse of you, stirred something possessive deep inside him. no one deserved that. no one but him.

you didn’t notice his presence until you felt it—his warmth, his breath ghosting over your ear, so close it made the hairs on your neck stand up. your body tensed for a moment, but then you softened, melting into his familiar touch. a smile tugged at your lips as you felt his arms snake around your waist, pulling you close. “everything okay?” you murmured, your voice soft, your expression relaxed now that he was near. his arms tightened around you, and you felt his face press into the crook of your neck, the closeness sending a wave of warmth over you.

your voice was like honey to him, sweet and soothing. you felt so small in his grasp, so helpless in the best way possible. his presence was overwhelming in the most intoxicating way, and you loved it. he made you feel safe but also powerless, as though the mere act of him holding you was enough to remind you who you belonged to. “i love you so much,” déjùn murmured against your skin, his voice low, breath hot as his teeth grazed the sensitive spot on your neck, sending a shiver down your spine.

“i love you too,” you whispered back, your voice shaky, hands trembling slightly around the knife you still held. the sensation of his lips on your neck, the possessiveness of his hold, it was too much. you didn’t even realize how much your hands were shaking until his fingers, large and sure, gently closed around yours, guiding the knife out of your grip and setting it on the counter. his touch was careful, but there was no mistaking the dominance in it. he took your hand into his, long fingers wrapping around your much smaller ones, grounding you.

“i'm almost done, okay?” you asked, trying to steady your breath, trying to focus on anything but the heat pooling low in your stomach.

his response was a quiet, “i'm not patient enough,” his voice was gravelly, deeper now, filled with something darker, as his lips found the curve of your neck again. this time, he didn’t stop. “i'm not patient enough to resist you,” he said, his words sending a fresh wave of heat through you.

before you could respond, his hands were on your hips, gripping you firmly as he turned you around in one fluid motion. a surprised yelp escaped your lips, but it was quickly swallowed by the intensity of his gaze. his fingers spread over your thighs, slipping under the hem of your dress, teasingly close to where you were already aching for him. he lifted you effortlessly, and instinctively, your legs wrapped around his waist. “so pretty,” déjùn murmured, his voice soft but filled with adoration as he pressed a lingering kiss to your cheek, his lips wet and warm. “aren't you?”

you were flushed, the heat creeping up from your chest to your face, and all you could do was nod, unable to form coherent words as his lips found yours. the kiss wasn’t hurried or sloppy; it was purposeful. his lips moved against yours with a confidence that made your knees weak, though you didn’t need to stand. he was holding you, carrying you with ease as he walked, never breaking the kiss as he made his way up the stairs.

by the time you reached the bedroom, your breathing had quickened, but he was steady, holding you like you were the most precious thing in the world. he kicked the door open with his foot, crossing the threshold with a grin that made your heart flutter. when he laid you down on the bed, his body hovered over yours, his hands trailing down to your thighs once more. his touch was electric, and all you could do was let yourself melt into him, the weight of the world disappearing as his lips claimed yours again.

the kiss deepened, his lips moving slowly, deliberately, as if savoring each moment, each taste of you. his hands, though gentle, had a strength that made you feel small beneath him, yet cherished. his fingers, impossibly long and deft, found the apron tied over your dress, pulling at the knot with ease. the fabric loosened and fell away, forgotten, as his attention shifted to the way your knees bent, your legs spreading just slightly, enough for him to notice the hitch in your breath.

his eyes followed the movement, lingering where your dress had bunched up, revealing the soft cotton of your pink panties. his gaze dropped to the faint dampness staining the fabric, and a slow, knowing smile spread across his face. his thumb traced the outline of your swollen lips, his touch feather-light but sending a ripple of anticipation through your body.

“what do you want, baby?” his voice was low, almost a whisper, as his thumb pressed lightly against your bottom lip. the question hung in the air between you, heavy and full of promise, but the words you wanted to say tangled in your throat. you let out a small, pathetic whimper, your mouth parting slightly as his thumb pushed past your lips, pressing against your tongue.

“you know i’ll give my girl whatever she wants if she uses her words, right?” he murmured, his tone teasing but affectionate, the dark timber of it wrapping around you like a velvet rope. his thumb pressed deeper, your lips wrapping around the knuckle as you instinctively closed your mouth around him. the weight of his finger, the intimacy of it, made your breath hitch, a broken sound escaping your throat as you struggled to find your voice. you nodded, tears gathering at the corners of your eyes as his thumb pressed further into your mouth, deeper until it filled the space, until he was satisfied. your teeth grazed lightly against his skin as you tried to speak around him, your voice muffled, rasping out a soft, desperate plea. “want you, xiao, please.”

his eyes darkened at your words, his free hand cupping your cheek as his thumb finally withdrew, leaving you gasping for breath. his gaze roamed over your face, taking in the tears clinging to your lashes, the flush of your cheeks, the way your lips were swollen and parted. his thumb brushed across your cheek, wiping away the tear that had slipped free, his lips curving into a gentle smile that didn’t quite reach the hunger in his eyes. “god, you’re too much,” he murmured, his voice thick with something darker, something possessive. his hand slipped down to your waist, fingers skimming the sensitive skin just above your panties. your breath hitched again, the sensation of his fingers so close to where you needed him most almost unbearable.

déjùn's knuckle grazed over your clothed pussy, the pressure sending a jolt of pleasure through you that made your nails dig into his arm. your fingertips brushed against the prominent veins running down his forearm, feeling his pulse beneath your touch. you were aching, desperate for more, but just when you thought he'd finally give you what you craved, he stopped. the loss of contact made your body tense with frustration, and you pouted, your lips parting in disappointment. he caught your expression and smiled, his fingers stroking the soft skin of your thigh. his touch was gentle, teasing, as he asked, “can you do something for me?”

you nodded eagerly, desperate for him to stop teasing, to finally get on with what you both so clearly wanted. “take everything off,” he said, his voice low, thick with desire, “and put your apron back on.”

the request caught you off guard, a moment of surprise flashing in your eyes, but you couldn’t deny the way your body responded to the thought. the sight of you in nothing but the apron—cooking for him, being his—was enough to drive him insane. it made you feel delicate, pretty, like you belonged to him completely. you could feel your pulse quickening at the idea, the excitement building as you imagined how his gaze would devour you.

standing on the bed, your hands trembled slightly as you reached for the hem of your sundress. déjùn was on his knees beneath you, his hands gently guiding you, helping to pull the fabric over your head. his lips followed the path of your dress as it lifted, leaving soft, lingering kisses down your stomach, his nose brushing against your skin. when the fabric pooled at your feet, his lips reached the top of your thighs, kissing just above your panties, his breath warm against the sensitive skin. the ache between his legs was becoming unbearable, the sight of you, the taste of your skin—it was overwhelming. hos hands slid up the back of your thighs, his fingers pressing into the soft flesh, gripping you like he never wanted to let go.

your hands were shy, hesitant, as you reached behind your back to unhook your bra. the strap loosened, and déjùn’s hands were quick to pull it down, his eyes dark with desire as the material fell away. he leaned upward, his lips finding the bare skin of your breast, his tongue darting out to trace slow, tantalizing circles around your nipple. a soft moan escaped your lips, your back arching slightly as his mouth closed over you, sucking gently. “keep going, baby,” he murmured against your skin, his breath hot against your nipple. his voice was low, laced with hunger, urging you on.

you did as you were told, your fingers trembling as you hooked your thumbs into the waistband of your panties, tugging them down your thighs. déjùn's mouth left your breast, but his hand replaced it, groping and tugging at the sensitive flesh as he shifted his attention lower. he was utterly entranced by the sweet smell of your core, the way your body trembled as you exposed yourself to him. his free hand moved to spread your thighs apart, his fingers gentle but firm, guiding you to open for him. his lips brushed against your inner thigh, trailing soft kisses as he moved closer to where you needed him most. you could feel his breath hot against your folds, his nose grazing your entrance, teasing you, making you shake beneath his touch.

“xiao—” you began to beg, your voice a broken whisper, but he cut you off with a soft shush, his lips brushing against your thigh as he did. the vibration of his voice shot straight through you, making your core tighten in anticipation. “almost there,” he murmured, his voice soft, soothing, but full of promise. you let out a small whimper, your hips shifting slightly, aching for him to stop teasing. but instead of giving in, he licked a slow, deliberate stripe up your thigh, his nose brushing dangerously close to your core without touching. he inhaled deeply, savoring the scent of your arousal, and it took everything in him to resist the temptation to devour you.

you reached for the apron, your hands shaking as you pulled it over your head, the thin straps tightening around your neck as you adjusted it. déjùn pulled back just enough to watch, his eyes dark and hungry as they roamed over your body. the front of the apron barely covered you, the fabric tight around your waist, your breasts spilling out from the sides. from his angle, your core was still exposed, and the sight made his breath hitch.

with a groan, he reached for you, his hands gripping your hips as he turned you around, his gaze taking in the sight of your ass peeking out from the back of the apron. his fingers trembled slightly as he hastily tied the strings behind you, pulling you back down onto the bed. “you drive me insane,” he murmured, his voice thick with desire, his hands gripping you firmly as he tugged the knot tight.

déjùn laid you down gently on your back, his body hovering over yours, and for a moment, the world felt still. his lips found yours in a kiss so soft, so slow, that it made your heart stutter. his eyes scanned over you, lingering on the way the apron clung to your body, leaving so much exposed yet teasingly hidden. “you like it?” you asked shyly, your voice barely a whisper, your breath catching as his gaze turned heavy with desire.

without a word, his hands shot up, grabbing your breasts where they spilled shamelessly out of the apron’s sides, kneading them with an intensity that made your entire body flush with heat. “so much,” he groaned, his voice thick with hunger. “look so perfect, so pretty. the prettiest wife.” your breath hitched, a soft whimper escaping your lips as his words sank into you. but it was what he said next that made your body tremble, made the air in the room feel heavier, thicker. “you’ll be an even prettier mommy.”

the thought made you squirm beneath him, your thighs pressing together instinctively as his hands worked over your body. the idea of being his—entirely, fully, and forever—drove him wild. he didn’t just want you. he wanted to claim you, to breed you, to see you swollen with the weight of his children. the thought of you, plump and heavy with his seed, your belly round and your breasts full, helpless and tender for him—he needed it. he could already picture it: kissing your feet to soothe your exhaustion, cradling your swollen belly, watching you as you moved around his home, his perfect, precious wife. it was the most enchanting image, one that fueled the fire already burning inside him.

“gonna let me make you one, yeah?” his voice was soft, almost a plea, though there was nothing but certainty in his eyes. even with the unbearable strain in his pants, he was patient, waiting for your answer. “yeah,” you murmured, your voice shaking with need, “put a baby in me.” you would give him whatever he wanted because you wanted it just as much, maybe even more. the thought of being his, completely his, sent shivers down your spine, and you could feel the tension building inside him, the way his body shuddered at your words.

a grunt escaped him as he pushed your knees to your chest, spreading you wide open for him. his head dipped between your thighs, and instead of diving in like you expected, he pressed his face into your core, breathing you in deeply. his groan reverberated through your body, and your fingers tangled in his hair, tugging gently as you moaned. he had no idea just how wet you were, how ready you were for him. your slick clung to his nose and cheeks as he nuzzled deeper, the heat of his breath and the pressure of his face sending waves of pleasure through your core. you could feel the wetness slipping down your thighs, soaking his skin, and it only made you need him more.

“you’re making a mess, baby,” he grunted, his voice rough as his hands kneaded your thighs, fingers tracing the edge of the apron. “fuck, getting me all fucking dirty.” your response was nothing more than a pitiful whine, your body arching beneath him, lips parting as tears welled in your eyes from the overwhelming need for more. the sensation of his face pressed against you, his nose grazing your clit, was driving you mad.

then, his tongue flicked out, wrapping around your clit with a precision that made you see stars. he sucked at it gently at first, teasing you, then harder, his lips closing over your entire core. his tongue darted out, licking up and down your slit, collecting every bit of your juices, savoring the taste of you. “too much,” you shuddered, your voice barely a whisper as you tried to hold back. “wanna cum on your dick, please.”

you could beg all you liked, but déjùn was as mean as he was generous. he didn’t listen, didn’t stop. his pace quickened, his nose pressing into your clit while his tongue worked over your folds, licking up the slick that dripped down your thighs. you tasted so sweet, so familiar, and the more he tasted, the more he wanted. your core throbbed beneath his touch, your walls tightening as the pleasure built, unbearable, almost too much. you whimpered as he slipped a finger inside you, curling it, hitting that soft, spongy spot that made you cry out.

you sobbed quietly, the sensation overwhelming, your body on the brink of release. but just when you thought you’d fall over the edge, he pulled away. the loss of his mouth, of his touch, left you trembling, a frustrated whine escaping your lips. he was so mean. so mean. but then, his face softened, a gentle smile gracing his lips as he leaned over, pressing a kiss to your mouth. his chin was slick with your juices, his breath hot against your lips, and his fingers brushed away the tears that had spilled from your eyes.

“gonna stretch you out so good,” he groaned against your mouth, his words laced with promise, with need. “baby’s gonna pop right out once i’m done with you.” the taste of your arousal lingered on your tongue as his lips moved over yours, his hands roaming your body, his touch firm yet tender. you could feel the heat radiating from him, the way his body trembled with restraint as he hovered above you, his cock hard and aching against your thigh.

he made you watch as he peeled his clothes away, but you would’ve watched either way. how could you not? how could you look away, when he looked so good? his dark hair clung to his forehead, slick with sweat. in fact, he was sweaty all around. his chin and fingers were still wet with your arousal, but every other part of him was wet with sweat, and he’s never looked better. what really had your attention was his boxers, the sight of the tip of his cock peeking out from the top, hard and angry, pressing against his abs, eager to escape its confinement.

he chuckled as he watched your concentration, disrupting your thoughts. it only encouraged him to continue, tugging his boxers down his thighs eagerly. he let out a shameless groan as his cock collided with his stomach, upright and hard to the touch, the cool air grazing it and flooding him with temporary relief. he was so big, so so big, and you would never get used to it. every vein was prominent, blue clashing with the angry shade of red his cock was, begging for attention in every way. he seemed smug, pleased with how shocked you were as he took your frail hand and wrapped it around the base.

“oh, fuck,” he growled at the feeling of your fingers wrapped around him so generously. you looked up at him with doe eyes, innocent and sweet as if you weren’t a filthy mess for him. you stroked him from the base of his cock to the tip, your thumb dancing around the slit where pre-cum had started dribbling down his shaft. you savored the sounds he was making as you collected his seed with your thumb, releasing his dick just to plop your thumb into your mouth. he watched with a sinister gaze as your lips wrapped around your finger, sucking off the salty mess he was starting to make.

just like that, it was over. he pushed your knees up to your chest once more, eyes glazing over your weeping cunt a final time as he grabbed his dick, alligning it with your cunt. you could feel the tip against your clit, rock hard and thick as he tapped it against your pussy. “xiao, please, need you to fuck me,” you begged through unshed tears. you were about to press down against him, to stir up the smallest bit of friction, but he was mean. he held your hip down with his free hand, just to release his dick from his other one.

then, it unfolded before you could predict it. his free hand came down against your pussy, harsh and unforgiving with a squelch as his palm collided with a smack. your hips stuttered at the pain and sinful pleasure as a tear fell down your cheek, the weight of his cruel gaze unmatched. he spread his fingers in front of your face with a subtle smirk. “see how wet you are?” he cooed, gesturing to the slick dripping down his palm. “see how wet i make you?” all you could do was nod, too ashamed and too desperate to talk. he was plased, all too pleased with just how abused your cunt looked from a single slap.

it urged him on, encouraging him to bring his cock right back to your core. this time, there was no teasing. he would so generously give you what you were looking for, no matter how much it hurt—and it definitely hurt. no matter how many times he fucked you, no matter how hard, you would never adjust to his size. you moaned in synchronization as he eased his dick past your folds, your walls clamping down on him the second he entered you. you could feel every inch, every vein and every pulse. it was raw, it was painful, and it felt too good.

his eyes locked with yours as he slammed into you, the sound of your moans and the slap of his skin against yours echoing in the room. your tits bounced with every thrust, smacking against your chin as your knees were forced into your chest. you felt so full, so used, so utterly owned by this man. and yet, you craved more. “deeper,” you panted, your nails digging into the bed as your body begged for release. “deeper, xiao, need more.” he would oblige, he wanted it more than you did. he was determined to put a baby in you.

his strokes grew more erratic, his breaths shallower as he fucked you like it was his life's mission. your eyes never left his, the connection between you palpable. his cock was like a piston, relentlessly plunging into your tight pussy, hitting that spot that made you scream his name with every thrust. your walls quivered around him, desperately trying to keep him in, to keep that feeling forever. “this pussy was made for my cock, yeah?” he slurred, circling his hips before slamming right back into you. tears slid down your cheeks at the sensation of it, you wanted to be owned by him.

his hand tightened around your hip, his other gripping your chin to force your gaze up to his. “tell me how much you love it, baby. tell me how much you want my cum inside you,” he demanded, his voice thick with need. and you did, you told him just how much you loved it, how much you needed it. you begged him to fill you up, to breed you, to make you his. “fill me up with your cum, dont let any spill out,” you begged through your tears as they coated his hand. “get me pregnant, knock me up, xiao—fuck—” he was relentless, absolutely relentless with his hands on your knees, pushing you back to let him go deeper, his balls slapping against the flesh of your ass as he threw his head back with a groan.

you watched as his abs tensed, his cock thickening even more as he picked up his pace. the smack of skin on skin grew louder, your moans turning into screams as he hit your sweet spot over and over again. it was agonizingly beautiful, the way his body moved with yours, the way your cunt clamped down on him as he drove deeper, the way your tits jiggled with every thrust. you felt yourself getting closer, your walls tightening around his dick, the pressure building. he was gonna breed your cunt, make an oven out of your pussy.

his thumb found your clit, rubbing it in firm circles as he fucked you harder, the friction setting your nerves alight. “i’m gonna cum,” you gasped, your voice high and desperate. “i’m gonna cum on your cock, xiao.” he grunted, his hips slamming into you, his own orgasm just as imminent. “yes, baby, cum for me,” he whispered, his eyes dark with lust. “cum all over me, show me how much you want it.” and just like that, you did. your body tensed, your back arched, and a scream tore from your throat as your pussy spasmed around his cock, clenching tight as you came harder than you ever had before.

his rhythm didn't falter, though. if anything, it grew more intense, more punishing. “not yet,” he said, his voice strained. “i’m not done with you.” his thumb kept working your clit, pushing you into another orgasm, and another, until your cries were nothing but desperate pleas for mercy. but mercy wasn't something déjùn knew how to give, not when he had you like this, not when he could feel you milking him, begging for his seed.

his eyes were wild with lust, his pupils blown wide as he watched you come undone beneath him. “you’re gonna take every drop,” he promised, his strokes growing shallower as he chased his own release. “you’re gonna be pregnant with my baby, you're gonna carry it and grow it and push it out just for me.” the thought sent a shiver down your spine, a mix of fear and excitement that had you trembling all over.

his thumb never left your clit, even as his hips stuttered, his cock pulsing with the beginnings of his orgasm. “xiao,” you whispered, “i’m gonna—” but he silenced you with a kiss, his tongue sliding into your mouth, tasting the salt of your tears and the sweetness of your cries. he groaned against your lips, his hand leaving your chin to wrap around the base of his cock as he pushed in one final, deep thrust. you felt the warmth of his cum fill you, the pressure building until it was almost too much. your eyes rolled back in your head as your body was hit with a final wave of pleasure, his seed spilling into your womb. “yes,” you chanted, your voice muffled by his mouth. “yes, yes, yes—”

his body tensed above you, his muscles tight as he emptied himself inside you. his cock jerked, pulsing, and you could feel every drop of his cum coating your insides. when he finally pulled out, a string of it followed, connecting his cock to your pussy before snapping, leaving a trail of white on your skin. “so good,” he murmured, kissing down your neck as his hands softened on your hips. “so fucking good.” he was pleased, too pleased. all with the sight of your pussy coated in white—coated in his white.

✧

a/n: what would you do if when you okay so he said yes would GO 💜 thank you for requesting ily

[leclsrc]

stay, at least for breakfast ✴︎ cl16

genre: angst, just. angst, fluff

word count: 9.2k

You love once and miss always.

notes... internet translated ita/fre, non linear format so might b a tad confusing but thats it

auds here... this fic is a tad long sry. many thanks to mack who recommended the most painful songs to me that got me through writing the last couple of scenes. ik i said i wasn’t sure when i’d release this but here it is :)

You’re the only person Pierre knows in New York, so you’re the first one he calls. You suggest you meet just at your place, so you can smoke more freely, because so many people complain about the smell these days. You stall. You say the L train is broken. You say you’re tied up with work at the firm. But Pierre sees through you and eventually you meet anyway.

He looks the same, and just seeing him reminds you of so much. Shadows and outlines of memories long gone. You try to keep up the pretense of being okay, to remember that truly, your mind has been elsewhere lately—off everything, off the memories, on work, on cases. You try not to bring him up, even if it’s inevitable that he arises; you keep conversation to a polite minimum. 

Pierre offers a cigarette, a Camel light. You’re a fourth’s way through the stick.

“He asks about you, sometimes.” And then just like that, your world has ceased to turn.

“Oh?” A beat. “What do you say?”

“Just the usual. You’re working on this and that case for the law firm… you went to Greece in the summer.”

You and Pierre are still close, but it’s difficult to forget why. You two are connected by Charles, by a friendship so sacred it warranted a dinner for a Pierre-exclusive introduction. You’d grown close then, and when the breakup happened, it became hard for Pierre to maintain close contact with both of you. 

Selfishly, you wanted him to see how broken you were, so he could report it all back to Charles, etch every last detail of your pain. But Pierre is more mature than he’s given credit for.

“Okay.” You say blankly, unsure of how to bridge a less tense topic.

Perhaps sensing the apprehension, Pierre does it instead. “Do you remember when we bought shaving cream and made Charles look like Santa?”

It was in here in Manhattan, you recall, when Charles had dragged Pierre along with him to visit you over winter, when he’d been dating you for nearly two years at the time. Your flat was just above a bodega that had a comical amount of cheap cans of shaving cream that you and Pierre had found so absolutely silly, birthing a series of Charles-related pranks. After your grocery run, you’d returned to your place, where your boyfriend was fast asleep, mouth half open.

Shh. Quiet, you’d said, spurting shaving cream along his chin, his jaw, laughing silently.

Pierre had followed suit until finally, a beard of Nivea Men bounded down to Charles’ torso. You’d snapped a picture; the shutter sound had woken him up to a red-faced you and Pierre.

He was a good sport about it, kissed you with laughter, so you, too, had a beard of froth. Pierre took a Polaroid with a gifted camera of you on Charles’ lap, arms entwined around his neck, both of you bubbly with the cream, cheeks achy with smiles and laughter. You pretend to forget where it is, to forget that it’s tucked in a box you open once in a while. 

“I miss him sometimes, you know.” The confession rips through you, exacerbated by the cigarette.

“I know.” Says Pierre, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. You realize maybe it is.

I still have so much love for him, you wish to say. But where will I put it? Will I keep this inside of me forever? A great, monstrous, shameful thing it is, to love somebody who’s left. But here I am doing it, trying to fill a void that feels like a crater. Where do I put this love? Maybe I can give it to somebody else, somebody new—but I’d say it’s not the same.

You think you’ll always hold a torch to Charles, even when the fire burns through the wood, ash trickling onto your arm until it hurts. And even then, when the light’s gone, when the flame’s wounded you and licked deep into your heart and bones, like it has now, you’ll linger, still holding this torch, still yearning, still unwanting to let go. Still loving. How desperate, you think. How human.

You clear your tobacco-flavoured throat. “It’s em—it’s embarrassing,” you say instead, throat closing up midway, in a futile attempt to water down your intense emotions. They threaten to crawl up your throat, force secrets out of you with the ease of ripping a piece of paper in half.

“Is it?” He asks, open-ended. “N’est-il pas honorable d'être si aimant?”

“Pas si ce n’est pas réciproque.” You scoff.

But he’s relentless, persistent in his pursuit to prove a point. “No. Love isn’t embarrassing, or pathetic, when it’s one-sided. It means more that way, when it’s not reciprocated. It means you’re selfless. It means the love is real.” He turns toward you, and in a billow of smoke, asks, “Does it not?”

You stare, left speechless. All you muster is: “Va te faire foutre.” 

—

You exit the room at eight-thirty with your toothbrush still foaming in your mouth. You stretch your arms over your head, combing a hand through your bedhead. Your eyes are half-shut, and already you smell it before you see it.

Pausing in your tracks, you rub the sleep out of your eyes. “Charles?” You call out, still out of the kitchen’s view. You try to remember if he was in bed when you crawled out, but your mind was still cloudy then, and the desire to pee took precedence.

You turn toward the bedroom door. “Charles, come out here. I think something’s on fire in the kitchen. Babe!”

You speedwalk, concern taking over—you didn’t pay enough attention to fire drills in primary school, clearly. Once you peek into the kitchen, however, your concern is only exacerbated, but not nearly as much as the extreme confusion that begins to well up inside you. There, at your stove, is your boyfriend himself, clearly fully awake and conscious, and holding a frying pan in mid-air that’s billowing smoke.

Having heard your voice already, he feels your presence and turns slowly. His gaze blinks from the pan in his grip to your totally incredulous stare.

“I can…” He pauses. “I’ll try to explain.”

“Very smart save, babe,” you say, but it’s muffled by your toothbrush.

“You sound stupid,” he retorts.

You remove the toothbrush and try to speak as coherently as you can through the spearmint foam. “I don’t think you’re in a position to be giving me criticism right now.”

“Fair,” he says, flitting his gaze over to where he holds the frying pan in mid-air. “I will explain as soon as you rinse your mouth. I promise.” You narrow your eyes, wondering if maybe this is another tactic to get himself out of trouble, but you figure it makes sense. If you’re going to scold him, might as well not spray toothpaste everywhere.

You grab your phone on your way back, where the disarray has not subsided in the least. He’s wearing your kiss the chef apron, stained with grease and pancake batter, both vital ingredients to bacon and flapjacks, neither of which are to be seen anywhere.

“What’s going on, Charles?”

“I wanted to cook you a surprise breakfast. But I can’t get the stove right.”

“Tu es fou.” You laugh, inspecting the smoke-scented pan. “Pourquoi n'avez-vous pas simplement pris à emporter?”

“Je voulais être pensif!” He defends, pouting. “Sorry. I’ll clean up the mess.” He deposits a batch of dishes at the sink as you watch in amusement. Your boyfriend is usually a good cook, you’ll say—he makes a mean stack of pancakes, and anybody can cook bacon, really. You suppose this is all just one honest mistake, born from a desire to surprise you on this morning.

He’s scrubbing at the pan when you wrap your arms around him in a backhug. “Thank you anyway. You’re the sweetest, Charles.”

He turns, a bubble of dish soap on the tip of his nose and hums. “Does this get me boyfriend points?”

“Alright, Jesus, a hundred of them.” You smile fondly, meeting his lips in a soft kiss. He makes you toast as compensation, takes the time to cut the crusts off the bread and the pulp out of the orange juice and the big bits out of the jam. He does his best, perfecting the art of toast and breakfast and, by extension, making you happy.

—

“Un amaretto sour, une bouteille de rose et un dirty martini,” you order smilingly in smooth, sure French.

The waiter nods and after thanks are exchanged, he leaves your table alone. In your limited knowledge of Paris, you’ve chalked it up to a few things: many people will be rude, the serving sizes will be petite, and the men will be anything but trustworthy. You’ve tried them before and they all go the same way, slipping out of hotel rooms with disarming desolés, buttoning their polos as they go.

So here you are, characteristically silent, because your friend is flirting with a guy and you refuse to do the same. 

“You speak French?” The guy across you asks curiously. He talks like he’s always smiling, eyes turning into half-crescents. He’s accented, but you’re unsure of the origin—it sounds French, in the same way it kind of doesn’t. You nod politely.

“Ah? Où est-ce que vous l'avez appris?”

“Université,” you respond. “J’ai etudie le langue français, mais… est trés difficil.” He laughs, nodding like you’ve said the funniest thing in the world. Half-crescents.

“I’m Charles. I grew up—I’m from Monaco, so I speak it. And Italian. Joris and I.” He elbows his friend, who your friend is flirting with. Oh, Monaco. So… not French.

“I’ve never been,” you say, letting yourself loosen up a bit more. 

“It’s very small. You should go sometime.” An implication of something hangs in the air, like clouds over France. You smile, bashful, nodding along. 

“I’ll make sure to.” The drinks arrive and flow through the night, laughter passed along the table like wine. At some point you and Charles get up to dance, but are quickly put to your chairs by the waiter—you mutter some slurred remark about how why play music if you can’t dance?! 

But he is funny, and charming, and pretty. You find yourself staring at him in a very desperate, schoolgirl crush way, lip bitten and cheeks warm when he catches you.

Later that night, tipsy off the alcohol, Charles the Monegasque presses a kiss to your cheek and asks, shyly, if you’d like to come to his hotel. You tease him, just to see the half-crescents again, and then you’re in his car and in his room, top pulled off and bra unclasped, laughing drunkenly into his neck when the pleasure reaches its crux. And you hope he doesn’t ask you to leave the next day, drifting into sleep with his arm slung over your waist.

—

You like Charles’ voice in real life.

This is because it means you feel it more than hear it, a low thrum through his chest and into your ear. It lets you know he’s close by, which is the best kind of reassurance, because he never usually is. It doesn’t matter what he talks about—the day past or about to begin, racing, family—all you can really digest is the amount of love and care he puts into his words.

Most of the time you hear his voice through the layered, stuffy audio of your phone or your laptop, when they can’t quite catch up to his lips, when the Internet lag is just that awful. If you’re lucky, he sounds more like himself, but nothing compares to hearing it for real, the whispers and murmurs and roughness of it all. He’s here, and you’re home, content just to listen.

You’re in Monaco; it’s your fourth day here. You’re off school for two weeks before you dive into midterms, so you spend it in Europe, because you haven’t seen Charles in ages. Lately he’s been pixels, voice memos, bubbles of words. But now he’s Charles, real, tangible, yours.

Life has become easier when he’s around, a fact wholly owed to his presence. When he’s here, you feel at ease, like laughter is effortless and loving is natural. But there is a ticking timebomb you sleep on, and it’s your impending departure, your flight back to the city, your resuming of normal life. Of life without him.

“I’ll be in Geneva next week,” he tells you, voice throaty from having just woken up. They’re the first words out of his mouth after he hangs up the early morning phone with Andrea. It’s an invite, even if it’s phrased as a statement; he awaits your affirmation, should it come. He invites you to these things often, as a way to introduce you more into his world. The words rumble through him, slowly onto your fingertips that waltz silently across his bare chest. They skate while you formulate a response.

“Okay,” you say quietly, half-asleep still. “I have… a huge recitation coming up, so I don’t think I can make it. Criminal law.”

He tenses, and you feel it. But his words say something else. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I wish I could,” you say, as compensation. It’s what you’ve both grown used to lately, wishing. Wishes that, for all your trying, never seem to come true. I wish I could make it. I wish I could visit. I wish we could celebrate together. I wish I was there for the podium, or the grades release, or the job offer phone call. I wish, I wish, I wish, and not much of anything else. Just wishing. Wishing, wanting, never getting.

“Yeah,” he says, sighing. “I wish you could, too.”

The dissonance between the voice that rumbles through him and into you—comforting—and the words that leave—a touch too sharp—strikes through you like electricity. “I’m sorry,” you say achingly, and the morning is silent as you both fall back into ignorant, blissful sleep.

—

“Aaaaand that pretty much evens us out to a solid 12-3.”

You finish tracking the score on your Notes app, closing your phone and facing your boyfriend’s pouting face of defeat. 

As always, the loser packs up the chessboard first—the wooden pieces click noisily against each other as he folds up the game, to be won (by you, no doubt) another time. Between work and the general upkeep of a relationship that’s constantly long distance, you and Charles find it difficult to begin and maintain romantic traditions.

But there’s always the assurance of chess. To air out grievances, to pass the time, to play footsie under the table. You and Charles always play, keeping a seasonal tally of near-daily games—during flights, pre and post race, after sex, at brunches with family.

“You’ve been cheating,” he accuses jokingly, storing the chessboard and inviting you onto his lap.

You’re in Nice today, housesitting for a friend while Charles spends time off racing. He claims it’s sufficient practice for when you one day buy a place together; two, at that: one in New York and one in Monaco. The days have passed in chess games, pots of coffee, and slow dances in the kitchen while you wait for pasta to boil or rice to cook. 

“You’re just jealous,” you tease, clambering atop him. Your arms loop around his neck, his around your waist. “Don’t worry. The tally will restart in September.”

“I’ll best you then.” Here, in this still moment of silence, where the sunlight from outside filters in just right and illuminates every detail of Charles’ face, you can almost feel your heart swell to an unimaginable size. You connect the moles and freckles with the tip of your pinky, traveling lower until it rests softly against his lips. He smiles, flexing against your touch. 

“Sore loser,” you say, flirtatious, playing with his hair.

“I think I keep losing,” he starts, hands tightening around your frame, “because every time I see you, I forget how to do the most ordinary things.”

You bite back a smile. “Hey, don’t try to charm yourself into a win.”

“Can’t help it, the winner’s too pretty,” he teases back; your lack of retort leads you to press your face into his chest. He smells like he always smells, clean and woody and a bit like your own perfume, your pretty boy. You inhale, breathe him in and ground yourself. Here, miles away from Monaco, even farther from Manhattan, you are home.

—

“How do you tell people you broke up?”

“I say we wanted different things,” you reply, two puffs into your second Camel.

A white lie, a half-truth, a rehearsed answer after being asked the same repetitive question so many times. You and Charles broke up because at that point, nothing about you made sense. You were growing older, and with age came the stupefying realization that nonsense wasn’t always romantic. If it didn’t make sense, it never would. But you did want the same things, you suppose, at least to some extent.

You know you wanted marriage. After law school, it had to be, and in Europe, somewhere sunny and windy and flowery with a sea nearby. A small affair, family and friends. You know you wanted kids, two or three, a bunch of Charles lookalikes, tufts of light hair and bouts of crazy energy. You know you wanted a house—not a flat, a house, a brownstone in Manhattan, a big property in Monaco. You wanted so much of the same things.

Perhaps that is why Pierre will never understand the magnitude of the way you miss Charles. You dream of him when you’re awake, of the times you spent together that finished abruptly. You look for him in everyday objects. You keep the tissue paper conversations, you want to say, even if it’s so, so mortifying, so raw to admit it.

“But you didn’t,” says Pierre, because he knows it.

“We didn’t. But what other explanation is there?” Where a concrete summary of your breakup is supposed to be, there lies grey matter, webs of explanation spanning years and months and questions unanswered. 

“I get it,” he replies. But he’s not you, or Charles, so he doesn’t.

—

Charles looks at you and imagines your smiling face in every moment of his future. Holding a child, under a veil, half-asleep in the morning, flushed and warm after a few beers.

You’re—you’re you, and he just loves you, in a way he will never be able to articulate. He drives for a living—he looks at all kinds of statistics, worded and encoded onto machines and computer screens. But this love isn’t quantifiable. Not in numbers, not in speed, not in words, stanzas of Italian. His love for you is indescribable; it exists in a wordless plane, massive and all-encompassing, carved and chiseled finely.

When you’re absent, the world seems duller, a bit more empty. But it’s okay, he thinks—you’re here now, across the room, in nothing but lingerie, your dress pooled at your feet. You’ve both just arrived from another social gathering, with so many people, and an afterparty arranged by Max.

You’d utilized your well-used secret signal for parties that directly translated to “let’s go home”—bringing up peanut butter meant you were well past exhausted and needed to leave. One “the dessert would’ve been so good with peanut butter” later and you’re here. Years of being together means you’ve both created a vocabulary all your own, lexicon and phonetics making up a language of love and familiarity. Nobody else will ever get this, he thinks. It’s just yours.

You’re removing your makeup in the mirror, and oh, well, you’re beautiful. He wonders what he has to do now to be able to find you in the next life, to be able to meet your eyes again for the first time and fall in love with you the way he did.

You’re what he looks for after a race, after a win, after a DNF. So he can, if just for a moment, let his guard down and allow himself to be yours, yours and only yours, collapse into your arms from ache and overwhelm and find reprieve there. With you, he lets himself go, lets the façade fall, lets himself stay in your touch before he deems himself ready to be with the rest of the world.

“Hey, you,” you call, and he blinks. “Eyes up here, buddy.”

“I just love you,” he says sleepily. 

You tug on a nightshirt—his, from ages ago—and crawl into bed beside him, raising a teasing brow. “Sex is off the table.”

He laughs. “I wasn’t trying to get into your pants.”

“Good,” you half-yawn, yanking the lamplight closed and nestling yourself beside him. “I look horribly un-sexy.”

“The shirt’s kinda doing it for me.”

“Go to sleep.”

—

It’s raining today, for the first time in a dull stretch of weeks. The fall comes in angry, noisy sheets, made more furious by the wind. Wrapped in one of his hoodies, you clasp a mug in your hands, staring sullenly out the window, wondering when Charles will be home. Something has shifted in the weeks since you last saw each other, since you flew back out to New York and Charles didn’t finish in the last race.

Sometimes everything feels impossible to touch, like you don’t know what the next step is, let alone how to take it. There’s a certain uncertainty to where you stand, a possibility that, if the seconds tick just right, everything will crash down. This isn’t a feeling you’ve ever had before, but you suppose this is the only way to learn how to deal with it.

It’s comforting, then, when you hear the keys jingle at the door.

Your flat, as expensive as it is, has a quirk to it; the door only opens when you jerk it with your knee twice. You hear it, the double thump, and in almost childish excitement, you set your mug down and pad gently over to the foyer, so you’re ready for him when the door opens. Everytime you’re apart for this long, the routine is standard, and first thing you do is hug—so hard, so tight, your legs wrapped around his waist, his face in your neck.

“Hey,” Charles says, seeing you wait idly by the front door. You inch forward, but freeze. He heaves his luggage in, smiling softly, tiredly almost, pressing a brief kiss to your cheek and then disappears into the bedroom. The lump in your throat doesn’t go away when you slowly realize the hug you’d awaited, prepared for even, does not come.

You follow him instead, to the bedroom, where he’s still quiet, shirtless and picking out something from the drawers. He turns when he hears you. “Have you seen my grey hoodie?”

“Yeah, it’s in the wash.” You pause. “I used it last week, sorry.”

“I tol—it’s,” he says, inhaling, “it’s fine.”

“I’m sorry,” you repeat, taken aback by how affected he is. “I can get it dried.”

“It’s okay.” He insists, a bit sharply, tugging on a different shirt instead.

The air is thick, threatening to break, and you’re hopeless, lost, left wondering—what the hell is going on. You try your best anyway, humming as you take a seat on the bed and fold the bits of laundry you’d abandoned in the morning.

“Pascale’s inviting us over tomorrow,” you open, finishing a pair of shorts and depositing them into the drawers. Your arms wrap around him, and he holds them there. This is good, you think. This is okay. “For brunch, because Arthur’s going to be home. I told her okay—since I’m back in New York by Tuesday and you’ll be in Italy then, too. We haven’t had brunch with your family in forever. God, they’re going to be asking questions about marriage, and engagement, and ki—”

“Stop.” The room goes still. “Why did you tell her okay?” He asks, disengaging the hug and turning toward you fully. 

You’re like a deer in the headlights, confused, lost all over again.

“Charles?” You prod, gently. “Is… are you okay? I mean, we always greenlight brunch.”

You watch him pinch his nose bridge, exhale, close his eyes. 

“What’s wrong?” You echo, stepping forward. He steps back, avoidant.

“Don’t,” he says. “Please, just… don’t.”

You’ve heard this often lately. In fact, no—you’ve maybe felt this more than heard it. This—this distance, this space, this push. Every call unanswered, every flight missed, every text answered with a brief, apathetic OK. You can’t quell the fear, the panic swelling in your chest, because you can feel him floating away, just out of grasp.

“Talk to me,” you say, because it’s the only thing that can bring itself to leave your mouth. It’s weak, it’s desperate, lacking composure and firmness. “Nous pouvons travailler à travers cela.”

“Non,” he says, as if he knows it already. “This, I—I just. I think I just need some space.”

Space.

“Okay,” you say. “I’ll be in the living room.”

“No, I’ll go,” he insists, like he’s doing you a favor. I’ll save us the nasty fight, he seems to convey. I’ll go. So he does—grabs a coat and wrestles himself out of the door, with barely anything left to reassure you, just a short kiss and a hand on your hair. It’s performative, you know this, but you’ll take it. You don’t have much to accept these days.

The night passes, still and quiet, without the jingle of keys or the double thump at the door.

Even in memory and introspection you will come to find this moment and remain capable of recounting every thread of detail, ones as small as the eyes of needles, every prick of pain that pokes at you. Because even if you see him the day next, and even if he greets you with a kiss, and pulls you aside to apologize profusely, and even if you feel so loved in this very moment, with hugs from Pascale and jokes from Arthur and check-ins with Lorenzo, the fact has secured, burrowed itself into the dark crevice of your heart.

You will look back on this one day, and think, with the kind of certainty so crushingly absolute: yes, this is when it all went wrong.

—

“Is he seeing anybody?” Halfway through the third stick.

“No,” Pierre says, blowing smoke out into the air.

“Be honest.”

He snorts. “D’accord. An Italian girl, few months ago, but it’s over. It was quick. Very. And you?”

The information makes you weak in ways you refuse to share. “Just… testing things out with this guy.”

“Does he know about Charles?”

The silence is telling. “About Charles” is an awfully broad topic. 

Charles was such a big part of who you are, and who you’ve been, and what you’ve been through. How would you even begin telling somebody about you both? The bits and pieces, the great figure eight, the tiny infinity. The moments within the moments, memories within memories. The love. The way you loved, the way you sought him, the way you have yet to replicate the feeling of loving him, the way you wait for the next life, so you can seek him all over again. 

There is “does he know Charles,” and there is “does he know about Charles,” and the two are so cruelly separate and different. Anyone can know Charles; he is, after all, world-famous. You don’t know how he’s doing in motorsport these days, because a lot of the time the Google search for his name suggests ex girlfriend right beside it, and that’s enough to stun you into not searching again. But still he’s famous and renowned, so of course he’d be known. But for someone to know about him, what he meant to you—it feels like you’d be reciting a novel in an effort to explain how the both of you began, became, and ended. Reciting sonnets and stanzas of prose, of moments painfully intimate, of habits that have yet to die, of things you wished to be taught by him. 

“So, no.” You nod softly.

—

The possibility of spending Christmas with either of your families grows thin as December begins. Between final exams and racing meetings, neither of you give, discussing over hours-long calls and coordinating calendars. You find that your only common free day is the seventh of January, which is effectively well past the holidays. You’ve sunk into a pile of misery at the very real chance of spending the holidays by yourself. It’s not a pretty idea, despite the fact that you’ve befriended loneliness lately.

Outside your window, Manhattan is caked in snow; it reminds you of Santa Claus Charles, with his foamy frizzy beard and kisses of froth and the Polaroid on the fridge. You wonder if Charles, wherever he is in Europe now—traveling multiple times a day—remembers you, too, in these little mundane things.

He’d called on the third of December, when it was three in the morning in New York. You picked up after two rings, busy studying, and mumbled a sleepy hello into the receiver.

“Merry Christmas,” he said, clearly excited over something. 

“Bit early, honey.” You’d said back amusedly, highlighting phrases on the textbook.

“Just saying it now, because the next time you hear me say these words, it’ll be in New York.”

You didn’t register his words until you realized you’d tinted two entire paragraphs fluorescent yellow.

You blinked. “Wait, what’d you say?” 

“I’m there by the twenty-fifth, evening. Found a sweet spot in my calendar thanks to Joris.”

“If you’re joking, Charles, I swear—”

“I’ll see you then,” he had said; even then you could hear his smile through the scratchy audio of international calls.

That’s what you’re doing here, over your stove cooking chicken to commemorate your first Christmas together. You stick a thermometer inside it, busying your mind with thoughts of dinner instead of the fact that you haven’t spoken to your supposed guest in over a week.

Like many fights lately, this began over something irrational and grew into a serious, temperamental discussion about your future.

About moving in together and how impossible it seemed. About raising kids or getting engaged. Everything was written on different pages for the two of you. Your plans were always years too early, years too late, never aligning. Bilingual paragraphs eventually devolved into exhausted intermittent texts, check-ins if it mattered, and barely any concrete discussion at all.

It’s mortifying to have to say the phrases “like many fights lately.” You wonder what it proves about the two of you, about the relationship you share. Has it gone sour? No, you tell yourself. But this yogurt dip will, if I don’t put it in the fridge. You wipe your hands off after you do, rechecking your phone; still no texts or calls or updates. He’d texted this morning, a brief and simple see you soon, but hadn’t responded to your text.

Chicken, mashed potatoes, candles ready to be lit. You fiddle with the pink Bic, lighting and unlighting, sighing. 

You dial the airline eventually. They man both public and private flights, so they should know something about his jet. Something, anything—any tidbit of information is useful to you right now. You’re embarrassed, alone on Christmas in a dress you thought was beautiful hours ago but now only seems over the top and mocking. A woman picks up your call after it’s transferred thrice.

I just need to know the ETA of this flight, you say. Under Charles Leclerc. He gave me the flight code. 

Silence. You hear the bustle of the airport on the other end and wonder if Charles is there in that bustle, in his puffer jacket he uses in the winter, holding a suitcase and waiting for the delayed plane. Or maybe he’s already here in your timezone, in a cab bumbling with excitement, or in the elevator, or right outside, fist posed in front of the door—

A snowstorm, she says, her voice tinny through the phone. The pity in her voice makes you want to smash the landline to pieces. So sorry. If you’d gotten your husband to book just two days earlier, you two would’ve been together. Why don’t you call him, sweetie?

She is right about the unsolicited booking advice, wrong about the title. Charles is not your husband. You hang up after mumbling something you can no longer remember, too exhausted to be rude or polite at this point, and turn to face your dining room. Your texts go unanswered, and in your earlier effort to save energy, the lack of heating has caused your phone screen to grow cold to the touch. The roast chicken is getting cold now, too, the mashed potatoes cool, the sourdough stale, the butter melted into ugly coagulated puddles, the wine sweating all over the table.

You eat two bites before depositing a clean plate at the sink. The flat smells of pine and citrus; it’s stronger because you’re by yourself, with no Charles to cloud the room with his own scent. Your phone remains silent, your heart drowning slowly in a cloud of imprecise sorrow. And you realize, remembering the airline officer’s words as you unplug the lights from the Christmas tree and let the moonlight swallow the room, that Charles is not your boyfriend, either.

He texts the morning next, says he’ll make it on the next flight, twenty-six. He doesn’t apologize and you unwrap presents alone, from friends, shipped from family. You wallow in your loneliness, humiliated by your need for him, a need that is met only on the seventh of January.

—

“Are you and Charles okay?”

Lorenzo is always the first to ask. He’s intuitive, and you think maybe it comes with age, but damn if it isn’t infuriating when he knows something is up before anyone else. You purse your lips, hope your laugh is a good enough substitute for an answer.

“Are you?” Obviously, it’s not.

“We’re… we’re just working through things.” You’ve had two glasses of bourbon, and your eyesight is blurring the way your words do. You’re in a big Manhattan ballroom, just several floors underneath your hotel room. Charles is somewhere socializing, because of course he is, and you can’t take your mind off school, because of course you can’t.

“But you’re good, right?” He sounds hopeful, like your answer is the only thing that can convince him. Does he think you aren’t? What has Charles been telling him? Your breathing quickens, grows frantic.

“Yeah.” It convinces nobody, not even yourself. He nods, smart enough to drop the subject, and you’re alone again. This is the umpteenth gala you’ve been to this week alone, all for something or other along racing. You grow used to the faces, the introductions, the gentle nos when asked if you two are engaged, because why would you be? It’s a farfetched idea, engagement. 

The bathroom is half-full when you usher yourself inside in your gown, almost tripping with how fast you try to make it to the mirrors. There are two middle-aged women beside you lazily drawing lipstick onto their faces, their French accents thick as they converse.

“…So I decided to divorce him.”

You stare deep into the mirror. You look like a caricature of yourself, a puppet. Where is Charles? He overestimates your capability to be alone.

The other woman goes, “I can’t believe he didn’t see it coming.”

“I know! You’d think he would notice, no? Bah, men.”

“You’d felt it for a while then, too.”

“Tch, I really did. Just goes to show.”

Before you digest it, you’re turning and intrusively asking: “How did you know you wanted to divorce him?”

They exchange a look that’s as condescending as it is patronizing. Here you are, a naive twenty-something asking for relationship advice like you’re some know-it-all. You feel like a child suddenly, meek and curling in on yourself. Answer me, you want to say, tell me how it feels, tell me how you knew. You look petulant.

“Well,” she says, eyes meeting yours as she closes the tube of lipstick, “sometimes, dear, you just know.” It clicks closed.

“Yes,” says the other. “You just know. When you wake up one day and you feel it, that’s just it.”

Bullshit. Easy answer. You won’t know, you want to say.

No matter how stupid, how cliché, it sounds, you’ll never know this feeling. This feeling of nonchalance over a relationship lost, of laughter over unsuccessful love, of casually coloring the same lips that talk so abrasively of a lover. Because you have Charles, and Charles has you, and what else is there to know?

The rest are candles on a cake, kisses under a blanket, orange juice served over toast, arguments that end with compromise and a hug. The rest is love. These two know nothing about it. They know hurt and heartbreak and denial. They know nothing but this sad, sad feeling.

It must be sad to know, you think, even if the exact suffocating feeling crawls up your spine and wraps around your throat on the elevator ride back to the room.

—

This is boring

You scan over the scribbled phrase on the embossed, no doubt above asking price, tissue paper given at this (granted, boring) charity ball. Stifling a laugh, you fish a pen out of your purse, rereading the words and judging your outgoing response. In neater penmanship, you quickly write a message below it.

OK let’s end things.

He laughs when he reads it, eyes crinkling into half-crescents, mouth in a wide, silent smile. He mulls over a response and when you get it—

No goodbye sex? Quelle poisse. You giggle, rolling your eyes and squeezing his hand underneath the table, putting your little game on pause lest you get in trouble for not listening to the speaker onstage. This kind of lovely, comedic push and pull is what keeps you always entertained with Charles; he always, without fail, manages to make you laugh. Your easy, instant, but equally profound connection to one another constantly has you revisiting the idea of soulmates, of destiny.

Prior to meeting, your and Charles’ lives were barely entwined. You were a law student in America, Charles a racing driver based in Europe. A year ago, to the date, you’d been in Paris on vacation, when a friend invited you out to get drinks somewhere along the Seine. You had three case studies waiting on your laptop, but something tugged at you to accept the invite. 

Had you not been up for drinks in Paris that night, for instance—you’d never have met. And the drinks wouldn’t have been suggested in the first place if Charles got home from a meeting early, expressing boredom over the phone to Joris, who relayed it to the girl he was currently flirting with, who relayed it to you. You would never have talked if you didn’t order cocktails in French, prompting him to ask where you learned the language. 

And if you hadn’t, in a haze of rosé and amaretto sours, accepted the handsome guy’s invite back to his hotel—where would you be now? The series of little things make up where you are now. 

“Je t’aime,” he whispers into your hair.

But, then again, Charles has never felt like a stranger. You’re so sure that if you’d declined, or if Charles’ meeting ended on time, or if Joris was single, or if you ordered in meek English instead, you’d still be here, laughing over irrelevant tissue paper conversations, holding Charles’ hand under the table.

“Moi aussi,” you murmur. So sure.

—

God is the best scapegoat.

You first realize this when you’re ten and your favorite necklace snaps in half. You’d been running around, you moved too fast, it stuck on a branch, and became forever unfixable. You’d skipped on the usual nightly prayers as some sort of petulant, rebellious counterattack. You’re fifteen when you’re friendzoned, a first for you. You convince yourself it’s God playing tricks on you. You’re sixteen when you get an F for skipping class too often; you tweet God wtf is happening to me and you giddily watch it get thirteen likes. You’re not alone in this revolt, you think. You’re seventeen and a half when you lose your virginity; it sucks. You’re on top and you learn the art of faking. So you lay on your bed and bemoan Him for the misleading introduction to sex.

It becomes easy to blame God, moreso than usual, when the matter is one of life and death and danger. Being with Charles puts you in this position often. You curse God when something happens during a race that causes your heart to snag in itself and skip a beat or go five times faster. Inversely, it’s dreadfully difficult for you, innately unreligious, to pay thanks to God. Charles knows this, and is always the first to say “thank God” when a race goes well.

You throw around the phrase a few times, but it’s rare. Most, many, all times—it’s “oh, thank fuck” or “I’m so happy you’re safe.” It’s almost like you actively avoid the phrase, so whenever you say it, Charles is momentarily stunned; sometimes it’s after a particularly nasty circuit, or a rainy race day when you physically cannot withstand the stress of watching the love of your life drive fast under such bad conditions.

You have nothing to thank God for.

The hotel room is thin-walled and cold. Just last night you’d been tangled into each other for warmth, but now you’re throwing your suitcase onto the same bed and shoving laundry inside. No folding. No organizing. You make quick, messy work of it to avoid the conversation Charles so desperately tries to coerce out of both of you. The chessboard from last night’s game—5-7—lies abandoned, folded up at the foot of the bed. You ignore it. 

“I’m sorry I left you alone,” he says, lazy almost. He seems to say oh, fine. If you need me to say sorry I’ll say it, here.

“You don’t understand.” You say, cutting phrases short to avoid saying anything you’d rather harbor inside yourself.

“Then enlighten me,” he shoots back. “Please, really. Dis moi tout.” He sounds sarcastic.

“I don’t fit here,” you respond cuttingly. If he chooses to be sarcastic, you think—then be it. You’ll be blunt. You’ll exaggerate. You’ll be impulsive, if for once in your life, you have to be.

“Here, in your life.” You clutch a shirt to your chest. “We don’t make sense. We never did, and you know what? We never will. I honestly don’t know why we keep trying. It’s pointless to believe this could ever work. In between our careers, friends, and schedules, it takes more work for us to see each other for just a day than to push a fucking rock uphill. Ç’est inutile et tu le sais—tout ce travail pour rien.”

Your words sting, join the draft leaving through the crack in the window, turn into dew that stains the vines of the hotel exterior. The ones about to leave his mouth, though, stay put, cement themselves in the grooves of your brain. You’ll think of this exchange years from now, and the words will never blur, sore on your tender heart.

A pregnant silence follows your soliloquy, prompting you to look up and meet his eyes. He says it then. “Pourquoi se disputer pour rien? Let’s just end things.”

“Fine, let’s just end things.” You repeat. Struck, hurt, and angry, you say one last thing, in a valiant attempt to get the last word in. “Thank God.”

The seconds tick by like days, where you look at one another, thinking the same thing. So that’s it? When did it all turn to this? You push past him, bearing your suitcase and messily wiping your face of tears, pretending not to notice the hitch in his voice when he mumbles a quiet goodbye.

Your steps to the elevator tick by like hours, and you take the time to think of how you’d lived much of your relationship thinking that, with how strong your and Charles’ personalities are, a breakup would be messy. Loud. A yelled out fight, tears, thrown curses and hurtful names. You’d always thought, with much conviction, that you would end with a bang.

Many previous fights had gone something like that. There was Thanksgiving, where you ushered him out of your family home to avoid anything escalating into a yelling match. Bang.

There was post-race, where, in the throes of frustration, you two had a heated exchange and you left the paddock in tears. Bang.

There was nothing, however, that couldn’t be solved without a shag and a kiss and an apology. So, reasonably, you expected the final fight to be the loudest. The angriest. This relationship, you were so sure—this would end in a bang. Because you and Charles love the same way: strongly, with so much conviction and noise, and the line between love and spite is more frail than you think. A great big bang, where finally you collided in ways you’d never done before, every frustration, every complaint, thrown back and forth like comets, like war.

But you are wrong. It doesn’t. 

It ends with you softly sighing, arms crossed over your torso to shield yourself from the ache in your chest, tears slipping then falling unstoppingly in the elevator. It ends with a night’s sleep taking up one side of the bed. It ends with Charles deceiving himself into thinking you didn’t just thank the Lord that your relationship has just crumbled to nothing in the bounds of this thin-walled, cold hotel room.

—

“Say something to me,” you say quietly, like you’re afraid to disturb the still morning silence of Paris. “In Italian.”

It’s a corny, cheesy request, no doubt inflamed by the butterflies in your stomach when you think about the night before and one romantic comedy too many. But you ask for it, anyway, your leg bumping his under the too-thin cotton blanket of his hotel. You found yourself here this morning after a night of sweet French alcohol and slurred, flirty conversation.

“Assomigli al resto della mia vita.” He says, smiling.

“Okay. What’s it mean?”

“I won’t translate it for you, because it’s a bit cliché.” He narrows his eyes.

“All of European language is cliché.” You laugh. “Come on, tell me.”

“I will one day,” he says, “I promise. I swear!”

The promise of “one day” is upsettingly romantic. Barely a day after you first met, first bonded, first kissed, first had sex. Okay, fine, you two hadn’t really gone the traditional route of dating, but here he is waxing poetic in Italian, finger tracing your bare arm. “One day,” you say, just so you’re sure.

“Yeah. One day.”

His hand finds yours, and fingers are laced together. Words wrestle themselves out of your throat nervously, a question that might seal the morning. “Should I go?”

The question rests in the air. How do you want your eggs, he wants to ask. Or would you want pancakes or waffles or bacon? Or bread, a croissant with coffee and compote? He wants to know all these things, hear all your answers, watch your eyes twinkle with amusement at the silly questions. So he’ll ask them, he figures. He’ll ask them if you don’t go.

“Stay,” he says. “At least for breakfast.”

—

Pierre leaves after a few more hours. He says Yuki texted him about some Mexican place they need to try. The night next, he is brought up in conversation: “Who were you with last night?”

“A friend,” you explain. “He’s an old friend, Henry.”

Henry Maxwell, the Wall Street guy you’re seeing, who’s inviting you to a charity ball a month into dating. To you, that’s basically a sign to end things, but you allow him to explain his invitation. Babe, don’t you think networking in New York is a gold mine for everything great these days? Don’t you think we need to network if we ever move in together?

“Henry, n—I mean. It’s just going to be another one of those stuffy city galas where everyone tries to out-wealthy one another,” you half-joke. In truth, the reason why you’re so adamant on not going is because this is just about the worst first date idea ever conceived—from experience, you’re sure you’ll have barely any time alone to get to know each other, whisked away to socialize with groups of other people.

“Oh, lighten up,” says Henry, with a sheepish smile. “You’re my plus one on the RSVP, so you can’t complain.”

“Am I?” You ask, chuckling. It’s a bit weird. But he’s excited, and asking, and convincing, so you tug a green silk dress out of your closet and take an Uber to the hotel address. Nevermind the fact that you’ve been here before.

You squeeze Henry’s hand when you walk into the massive ballroom, and not five minutes later you’re facing a crowd of people, drowning in taffeta skirts and wool suits and champagne and snooty small talk. Henry is charming, Henry is kind, Henry is a smooth talker.

He’s the ideal prototype of a guy you should be dating right now. His hand never leaves the small of your back, playing with the satin of your dress, laughing into your neck. You’ve faced several groups of business magnates and supermodels; right now, he’s introducing you to a big journalist for the Post.

She’s in the middle of talking about some hippie retreat to Thailand or somewhere or other when your eyes glide across the room, bored, searching for something to occupy you. To be frank, you really don’t care about ayahuasca.

The hands on the clock seem to halt just for you, just for now, suspending this moment in time like a mosquito in amber. Your eyes meet—and if you’d been less careful or maybe more tipsy, you might have mistaken his gaze for a stranger’s. But your heart demands hurt, demands the memories, demands the sick, sweet nostalgia threading through you like needle to cloth. Your heart demands you to remember, but the demand is so painfully easy to obey because you’ve never forgotten. All at once hate and love arise in you, like great big waves conflicting against one another, until you feel swollen with longing and spite, finding reprieve in the green of his eyes.

Timing, destiny, God. Whatever it is, it’s decided to play some silly joke, because here you are. In the precarious balance of a memory and a figment of your imagination, here you are. In the gap between never and always, here you are. You might appear to be strangers, stranded across opposite ends of this marble ballroom, but to both of you, the idea is almost unfathomable. No, not strangers; you two are anything but.

You are you, and he is Charles, here again in the place where it all ended.

He is never a stranger, and he could never be. He is Charles, your Charles, the beautiful boy who took up years of your life and explored every inch of your heart and mind. He is Charles, who broke your heart, he is Charles, whose heart you broke. But now, he is just Charles Leclerc, racing driver and charity gala attendee, conversing with the same crowds, mingling as he always does. Did. The usage of past tense is a painful pill to swallow.

Charles feels like it’s torture, suffering, a slow punishment, to be rooted to the ground and to do nothing but look. How can he look away now? He is rooted to the tiles, thick vines keeping him here, even if his heart tells him to go, run, now. He is stuck, tacked by the stillness of the memories that play back through his head, the love and the sorrow. You’re still you, hair a little shorter, brows a little darker, but you’re still you. The you he had once, held once, loved and lost once. The you he wishes to have, hold, and love once again.

For a moment, a fleeting, short, moment, he wishes to blink, to nod and to signal for you to meet him outside, on the balcony, so he can straighten his tie and press a polite hand to this person’s shoulder and say excuse me and leave, slip quietly into the night. So maybe you can tug on Henry’s suit jacket and say I’m sorry and join the crowd of gowns and satin and leave, run, go. Because you’re you. And what a sweet lie it would be if he said he wouldn’t do anything for you.

In the end you stay, and you stare, rooted still, time moving the way grass grows. When he smiles, you smile back, and the answers to what if are quietly fabricated in the limits of your imagination.

—

“I miss you. I know it’s—I know this is weird to say, after so long. After not talking for such a long time.”

“No, I understand. I miss you, too.”

“Right… well, how have you been?”

“Same old. You?”

“Yeah, same. How’s everything?”

“It’s… it’s okay. How’s life?”

“Tough, but great.”

“I noticed you were with someone.”

“Yeah, no. That’s—it’s sort of—I don’t see it going anywhere, really. It’s kind of over.”

“Oh? Is it?”

“Listen, I’m… sorry. For—just for everything. I’ve lived the past few years thinking about everything and still hoping I could someday apologize properly. I’m just glad I’ve been given the chance. And I think things ended without… without… I just don’t think we were mature enough. And sometimes now I think—it’s you, it’s still you.”

“Don’t apologize. Can you believe it happened right here?”

“I know. It’s almost crazy—”

“You left a bottle of scent at my place. It’s… it’s still half full. Sometimes I—nevermind. I mean, I think of you a lot. Probably too much for my own good. I think of us, our past, our relationship.”

“So do I.”

“—I love you. I try to stop it, I keep trying but I always end up here. Always here, back here, loving you.”

“If you didn’t see me tonight—would you have felt this way?”

“Oh, I feel… I feel it everyday. I think I’m always going to love you.”

“I’m always going to love you, too.”

[myillicitaffair]

One of your girls part two | Carlos Sainz Jr

Summary: after a fateful outcome, Carlos wants to fix what he unintentionally broke.

Warnings: english not being my mother tongue, angst, alcohol consumption, dirty dancing, small description of throwing up, cheating, mentions of sex, messed up dynamics, slight swearing.

Notes: second part of this fic. i also wanted to say i’m currently taking request, to anyone who might be interested xx.

Credits: the gif used belongs to @neymarhamilton ‘s tumblr account, so all credits belong to them. this part, just like the one before, is inspired by the song “one of your girls” by Troye Sivan.

1.8k

SIX MONTHS AGO:

A chilly night welcomes my friend group as we make our way through a prestigious and crowded restaurant situated in the heart of Madrid.

Being born and raised in Spain´s capital city, the girls now walking into the facilities have been by my side my whole life; faith brought us together our first day of school, just three frightened little kids trying to survive elementary.

I like to believe that we complement each other, even if we hadn´t met all those years ago, life would have found a way to connect us.

A girl’s night out is a rare occurrence between us; always being on the shy side, we very much prefer staying in, drowning ourselves in sweet treats while marathoning our comfort romcoms.

The reason why we´re summoned tonight is quite simple… my very first broken heart.

You see, in an attempt to lighten the mood, my friends brought us to an extremely exclusive eatery, one where we clearly didn´t fit in. The difference was quite notorious, surrounded by leggy models and their handsome companions, I quite frankly begin to wonder why I ever agreed.

With a deep breath, I straighten my back and let the hostess remove my coat. “In for a penny, in for a pound” I think with a resigned shrug of the shoulders.

As we´re carried to our spot, I try and take the essence of the place in. I start noticing its eccentric décor, dim lights brightening the burgundy walls, leather booths scattered all over the classy tile floor.

What makes an ordinary dinner such a big success? Its bizarre modality.

Our table is filled with strangers, completely engulfed in their different conversations. The main reason for my friends to take us to this unconventional location was exactly this; the inexorable need to engage in conversations with foreign people.

The first round of dirty martinis arrives as the last costumers take their places next to me, with a lousy cheer I pour the drink down my throat, feeling its pleasant burning down my body, warming me up, making me forget.

“Easy there tiger”- the man sited by my side chuckles, gesturing towards my empty glass.

I take a moment to wander across his features. Thick eyebrows, big brown eyes, plump lips. Definitely attractive, exactly what I need.

A smile creeps up my face, the wires in my brain getting to work.

I notice an elegantly worn designer shirt hugging his chest, his forearms resting against the wooden surface, his attentive stare trying to read my thoughts.

“And you are?”- I condescendingly tease him.

“Carlos”- his hand travels to mine, embracing me with his warm- “Carlos Sainz.”

The subtle body hair covering his fist tickling my naked skin, igniting a fire deep inside me.

And in that moment, I simply knew there was no getting out, not anybody else as long as he kept staring at me like this, eating me raw with his gaze.

That was the first night I ever came back home with him.

————

FOUR MONTHS AGO:

Carlos is away for the weekend, oceans separating us, palpable distance every time he races through my mind.

I try convincing myself It’s the sex I miss, the obvious physical attraction, the invisible force that pulls us towards the other, the feeling of his warm skin being impossibly closer to mine.

Truth being told, I’m sitting immovable on my bed, nervously waiting for a call.

I can’t help but recall his soft locks intertwined with my fingers, his tongue inching towards my neck, how he never fails to make my blood boil with a simple grin.

My phone brings me out of my daydreams, screaming for attention as a call enters it. His name glistening on the screen, filling me with pure bliss and forcing me to hold my giggles.

Acting like a schoolgirl with a crush while being a full-grown adult… how pathetic!

Two rings go by before i pick up, bitting my bottom lip to keep my voice calm as if I wasn’t desperately clinging to it seconds ago.

“Gorgeous, you got a minute to spare?”- he asks, clear amusement in his tone, abusing the charm he knows he has.

“That depends, Carlos, who’s asking?”

I’m gobsmacked at how composed I sound, nowhere near how I actually feel.

My knuckles turn white from grasping my sheets.

“Don’t be like that, princess, I know you miss me”- his smile visible through his speech.

My heart skips a beat, can his words be revealing my true feelings?

“Oh honey, keep lying to yourself if it helps you sleep at night…”

I’m met with his scandalous laugh filling the line, raising my pulse until it’s beating on my ears.

Everything stops, everything keeps going.

I close my eyes in acknowledgement, being forced to admit what i’ve been denying ever since I met him.

Oh, how screwed I am!

———

TWO MONTHS AGO:

The music rumbles at the disco, throbbing on my skin with its intensity.

Being dragged to a hip party, my friends and I are bundled up in the comfort of our own group, dancing between ourselves.

As I rock my body to meet the pulsating rhythm, I embrace Carlos’s presence behind me, tightly grabbing my waggling hips.

He presses himself into me and I rub against his growing erection, purposely torturing him. His kisses start straying while sucking visible red marks into my neck.

His penetrating cologne invades my nostrils, clinging into my bare skin like a golden tattoo.

The mix of the alcohol I insisted on chugging and his hands shaping my whole body becoming intoxicating.

A foreign touch on my shoulder makes me open my eyes, leaving me to face my friend staring at me like i’ve grown a second head.

“You’re coming with me”- she pronounces as she drags me away from Carlos, who snorts in disbelief.

“What? Why?”- I ask as i’m forced to take a seat at the bar.

“Have you gone mad? You two were literally dry humping each other in the middle of the crowd!”- She hisses worriedly, forcing me to drink the water bottle she bought for me.

As she sits next to me, I prepare myself for the lecture she’s about to impart me, letting my eyes wonder across the dance floor.

I catch a glimpse of Carlos standing against a wall, hemmed by complete darkness, sometimes interrupted by one of the dj's lights.

When the spotlight lands on him, I start noticing the delicate hands hugging his broad shoulders, the almost nonexistent distance between him and the blonde caressing his cheeks.

Bile climbs up my throat, threatening to be ejected thanks to the scene before me.

Her lips all over his neck, staining the collar of his white shirt with lipstick.

Realizing i’m not paying an iota of attention to her, my friends follows my gaze stumbling across the sequence.

Effortlessly, she yanks me away from the enclosed space and into the garden.

Without being able to stop myself, I empty the contents of my stomach into the ground, constantly replaying the flashbacks of their sensual dance.

“Everything’s okay now, love”- My friend states while caressing my tangled up hair. Her fingertips come into contact with my cheeks, brushing my tears away.

Sobs are quick to scape my lungs, becoming more and more erratic as I imagine the second by second unfolding inside the disco.

———

PRESENT:

After running away from Carlos’s house, in the middle of a Madrilenian night, I’m fast to hide into the loneliness of my apartment.

I can’t even find comfort in blaming him as I was the one to agree with our “no exclusivity policy”, believing I could make it work.

How stupid of me to think I would be capable of not being trapped into his nets.

Clearly the only solution I can possibly come up with is crying it out, and that’s how I found myself in this situation; puffy eyes, completely ruined mascara, quivering eyes from shedding way too many tears.

Could I have been more stupid? I can’t even resonate one good reason why I would ever accept what he’s willing to offer me while wanting him in his entirety.

My determination is easily devastated as desperate fists bang against my door.

“Please, open up”- A too familiar voice implores from outside the apartment.

“I don’t ever wanna see you again”- I manage to scream through whimpers.

“I beg of you, please let me in! I swear I can explain.”

Standing right on the other side of the door, I feel my hand toying with the doorknob, trying to determinate whether or not to listen to his pleas.

“There’s nothing to explain, Carlos!”- I say, above a whisper, my voice to fragile for anything else.

“There’s been a while since i’ve been with anyone else, alright? Not since all I could think about was you!”

An unbreakable silence fills the hallways of the building, only the sound of his pantings and heavy breathing interrupting the stillness.

Without much hesitation, I open the hinges separating us.

Clearly, I was nowhere near prepared for the view before me; his full brown eyes now shimmering with unshed orbs, accumulated in his tear ducts.

“How about the girl from the voicemail?”- I ask, almost scared to find out this is all a product of my imagination.

“I know what that seemed like, but I promise you it’s not what you think!”- he says, piercing me with his gaze- “That was my ex girlfriend. She has a hard time letting go of me, even though there’s been more than a year since we’ve last been together. I never answer her calls and that’s why she’s getting more and more desesperate.”

Everything around me stops just to listen to his next words, my heart betting so out of control he might even hear it.

“Back at my apartment you told me you were enamored by me, well, there’s no use in trying to deny i’m in love with you”- he whispers, just loud enough for me to hear- “so much it’s physically painful, it’s all I can think about.”

My brain turned into mush as his confession sinks in. I almost want to laugh at how ridiculous the idea seems to me; the man I love, probably the only one i’ll ever love, stating that my feelings are reciprocate.

A sigh leaves my parted lips as a quiet tear runs down my face.

“I know i’ve made my mistakes and believe me when I say i’ll regret them every minute i’m on this earth, but I promise you, that if you give me the chance, i’ll make it up to you until my dying breath”- his voice sounds shaky, as if he couldn’t believe the words coming out of him.

I don’t think I ever reacted as fast as now, jumping into his embrace, wrapping my arms around his neck and my legs around his torso. Little giggles leave both of our mouths at the ridiculous situation.

“I love you”- He murmurs, muffled by the kisses he’s pressing against my checks.

“I love you too”- I answer back, with our bodies still entwined.

[5five5five5five5five5five]

I'm thinking about drunk wedding five again. post him singing and Luther and Sloane dancing, he makes the hotel man "play our song. please just one more..." pans to him slow dancing "with himself" well this song plays

(credit to this amazing post for saying this was a Fivelores song. you are so right. well writing this, i had no idea what song to add and then saw your post again and went THAT ONE THANK YOU. so thank u so much :3) anyway, five mumbling sweet nothings to a Delores that's not physically there. he can say he let her go all he wants but well wasted and at a wedding, she appears for him for one last dance. the wedding he always wanted for them.....

the camera spins around and each time he gets covered by one of the dance hall pillars, he changes from a young man dancing alone to his older self and Delores dancing their final dance. back and forth, young to old. real to imaginary. from the door way, Viktor and Luther lean on the door frames and watch. V: "....He went though a lot. he deserves this." L: "he tries to act all tough but, man, this wedding might have broken him....i feel kinda bad." V: "i don't think so. he's been though worse.....he just misses his wife...." L: "....the mannequin....?" V: ".......she was more then that....shes with him right now...." L: ".....i feel so bad for him....he's just a little guy...". V: *chuckles softly*

[fantasyescapes17]

Candle (Part 3, Final)

You have always received the best of everything life has to offer: be it education, family, fortune or happiness. Mr. Yoon Jeonghan- one of the ton's renowned villains- cannot possibly bring you happiness of any kind, never mind wedded bliss. But can you evade Jeonghan's charms? Or will you find yourself falling victim to this clever rogue?

Genre: Yoon Jeonghan x female!reader. Regency!AU (It's sort of Bridgerton-esque in the sense that I give zero attention to historical accuracy and prioritize aesthetics lmao) You are Wonwoo's sister so your last name is Jeon, but the reader has no other specific characteristics, physical or otherwise.

Word Count: 4.2k+

Part 1 Part 2

Series Masterlist [I would recommend reading the first story in this series, Patience, before this one but it's not strictly necessary.]

You returned Ella's little book when you saw your friend next at the Hasting's ball. Fortunately, she was far too occupied by her new and exciting courtship with Mr. Xu to notice that you had ripped out an entire page. 

"Found what you need?" Ella teased you. 

"I found that I didn't need it," you replied lightly. 

She did not push you for a more elaborate response, but seemed surprised when you were approached by none other than Mr. Yoon Jeonghan himself, dressed in the most dapper black dress coat and seeking to escort you to the dance that you had promised him. 

"You are an excellent dancer, Mr. Yoon," you complimented him when he took your hand gently in his. 

"I can hardly accept that compliment. You have had much more practice than I; your movements are very graceful," Jeonghan replied kindly. He did not give himself enough credit. His dark eyes never broke eye contact with you for a moment, and his step never faltered.

"I hope you are not trying to lure me into a false sense of security so that you may swipe something else from my person. What shall it be this time? My earrings?" you teased. 

Jeonghan chuckled. "I assure you I am not quite so nimble, nor so talented a pickpocket."

You narrowed your eyes at him. "But the pearls-"

"-had already fallen off your neck and onto the floor. I noticed them and picked them up when I pulled out your chair," Jeonghan admitted. "I hope you are not terribly disappointed that I did not actually swipe them from you."

"So you were not a thief but the hero who found my necklace?" you asked with a dramatic sigh. "I was wondering why the clasp was broken. It is not nearly as exciting, but I suppose it will have to do."

"If it pleases you, there is something I might try to steal from you yet," Jeonghan suggested. 

Your eyes brightened. 

"Oh? And what would that be?"

"Well if I told you, you would guard it too well," he protested. "It is the golden rule of any pickpocket. The victim must be caught unawares."

You narrowed your eyes. "That will prove a difficult challenge, then, Mr. Yoon. I am already far too aware of you."

Jeonghan smiled. His hand came up to meet your gloved one. 

"I am up for the challenge, Miss Jeon."

"And you think it is a good idea to challenge the woman who is currently holding her tongue with your secrets? I would be careful, Mr. Yoon. If you become too light-fingered, then I may become loose-lipped," you warned teasingly. 

"I can think of ways to keep your lips occupied, so that they have no leisure to be spilling secrets."

You gasped at Jeonghan's audacity and your cheeks instantly felt hot at the suggestion. You opened and closed your mouth like a goldfish for a moment until the dance came to an end, and Jeonghan gave you a smirk and a bow. 

"Have a nice evening, Miss Jeon," he said lightly. "I will see you when it is time for me to pay my next instalment."

—-------------------------------

It was difficult not to be swept up in the whirlwind of emotions that Yoon Jeonghan brought with him over the next few weeks. It was a never-ending game. Jeonghan was the perfect gentleman on the surface. He helped you down from your horse after a pleasant ride at the park, opened doors and pulled out chairs for you- but every now and then, when nobody else was listening, he would let something suggestive slip in that low, mischievous tone of his that made your face heat up, and your heart pound. 

You were rapidly becoming quite enamoured with the man, and inevitably, others  began to take notice. 

"Oh, look," Ella commented one afternoon, during a pleasant walk that you were both sharing in the park. "It's your new admirer."

You tried to mask your enthusiasm. You were not formally courting Mr. Yoon (yet), and despite your ongoing flirtations, he had not confessed any serious intentions towards you. 

"He is not my admirer-"

Ella scoffed. "Well he certainly never looks at any woman but you. Have you not noticed? Whenever you are in the room his eyes are always on you." 

You bit your lip. "Do you really think so?"

"You should be careful, my friend. You know what they say about Mr. Yoon, he is quite the villain-"

"Yes, I know," you cut her off sharply. You disliked hearing Jeonghan spoken about that way. "I have not found anything villainous about his manners so far. He has been a perfect gentleman in his behaviour towards me."

Ella looked at you with surprise. "Miss Jeon, do you perhaps really have feelings for-"

She was interrupted by the approach of Mr. Yoon Jeonghan. To your surprise, Jeonghan was accompanied by your brother. Although the two men were indeed known to be friends and a stroll through the park was not unusual or remarkable, you knew better. 

Wonwoo did not trouble himself to take afternoon strolls in the park for no good reason. 

"What a lovely surprise Miss Jeon, Miss Williams," Mr. Yoon greeted you both pleasantly. "I see you ladies noticed that the weather was pleasant enough for a stroll. May we join you?"

Ella giggled. "Of course, we would never refuse the company of two gentlemen."

There was a subtle but evidently intentional manoeuvring that took place immediately upon Ella's invitation. The path was not wide enough for four people to walk side-by-side. Your brother squeezed into the gap beside Miss Williams, and left you to fall a little behind them with Jeonghan by your side. 

"Miss Williams," your brother could be heard saying in front of you. "Could I persuade you to walk alongside the trees with me? I am afraid my eyes are rather sensitive to the sunlight and I would appreciate the shade."

Ella seemed surprised. "Oh- yes, of course, Mr. Jeon…"

They drifted a little further away and you felt your heartbeat quicken as you looked up at the handsome man that stood beside you. Jeonghan's hair gently ruffled in the afternoon breeze but his eyes stayed fixed firmly on you.

"Well," you said to him with a smile. "If you have persuaded Wonwoo to step into the park on a pleasant spring afternoon, then you must have something very important to say to me indeed," you teased. 

Jeonghan chuckled. "Was it so evident?"

"You could have written to me, if you wished to convey something in confidence."

"I did not know that you wished for me to write to you," Jeonghan admitted lightly. "But all the same, I believe some things are best discussed in person. Including the question of whether you really wish for us to initiate a… written correspondence."

You flushed. He made it sound so intimate.  Yoon Jeonghan left no room for doubt that it was only the most romantic of correspondences that he referred to. 

"Then do tell me what has brought you- and my brother- here this afternoon," you questioned. 

"It has not escaped my attention that over the last few weeks, you and I have been engaging in increasingly flirtatious conversations," Jeonghan began. He had a small smile on his face. "I am sure you know this- but you are the most beautiful, intelligent and striking woman of my acquaintance."

Your embarrassment was evident. It was a surprisingly straightforward compliment coming from Jeonghan. You could not think of any way to play it off in a teasing or light-hearted manner. 

"T-thank you," you mumbled. "I am quite flattered that you hold me in such high regard."

"I hold you in excessively high regard," Jeonghan reassured you. "Which is why I do not wish for there to be any confusion or misunderstanding. My intentions- my advances towards you, however playful, have always been backed by honourable intentions."

"And what are these honourable intentions?" you asked quietly. 

"I would very much like to begin a formal courtship with you, Miss Jeon. That would be the natural progression of our relationship. Unless I am sorely mistaken- you have perhaps been waiting for me to make such a request."

You could not lie. 

You nodded. 

Jeonghan sighed. "Perhaps I have been selfish. I indulged my affections and attraction towards you too openly. But the truth is, Miss Jeon, my current familial situation is… complicated. I fear that any woman I publicly court would become the subject of much negative attention and suffer public scorn."

You looked at him with surprise. "I do not understand. Is this regarding your sisters? Or your step-mother?"

"My step-mother has some very specific anxieties," Jeonghan admitted. "She is not an unkind woman but she is worried about her future, and my father failed to provide for her in his will. I have promised that I will provide for her for as long as she lives but she doesn't trust me."

You bit your lip. "I see."

"She has already painted me as a villain before the ton- a fact you are well aware of. Any woman I court or marry will suffer the same fate. She will accuse you of stealing from her and her daughters and tarnish your reputation. I do not want you to face her scorn. You are well-loved by the ton- and rightly so."

You took a deep breath and turned to look at Jeonghan. There was honesty in his eyes and worry; worry for you, you realised. He was worried about the impact his complicated family would have on your happiness and reputation. 

"Mr. Yoon," you said slowly. "I will not pretend that my reputation means nothing to me. But there are things that I am prepared to sacrifice it for."

"You should not have to make such a sacrifice."

"I would rather not," you admitted. "But I must ask. Is there no way to resolve your step-mother's worries?"

"I have initiated proceedings to transfer property to her name," Jeonghan explained. "And to set up a trust for her. But there are legal complications and it is a lengthy process. Once my sister is finally married, my stepmother may feel more comfortable as she will be able to rely on her son-in-law for financial security. I worry that she may always perceive my efforts as underhanded."

"I-I see."

Jeonghan took a deep breath and took your hand gently in his. He glanced around the park furtively to make sure none of the other occupants were looking at you- and then quickly lifted your hand to his mouth and pressed his lips to your knuckles. 

You were speechless. "I-I…"

"I do not know what to do, Miss Jeon. I agreed to become a villain to help my sister but I never imagined that I might fall in love, or that my beloved would have to share in my sacrifices. I cannot ask you to bear this burden for me. It may be years until it is fully resolved."

Your hand felt warm. 

"Are you asking me to wait for you, Mr. Yoon?" you whispered. 

"I do not presume to ask anything of you," Jeonghan told you gently. "I am yours. I shall do whatever you ask of me-without objection."

Your heart leapt. It was a strange feeling- perhaps you should have hoped for a more traditional confession, something along the lines of I will die unless you marry me, my love! but somehow this was even more romantic. 

Mr. Yoon Jeonghan was not begging or pleading or persuading you. 

No, he had simply placed his cards on the table and given you the power to make his next move. 

It struck you in a sudden moment how much you loved this man. This handsome, selfless caring man with a mischievous streak who looked at you with his angelic face and intense eyes and lit a fire in your heart. He had given you more respect in this moment than most gentlemen would ever willingly offer a lady in their lifetime. 

"Then ask me to court you," you whispered. "I believe we have both proven that we can be trusted to keep a secret."

Jeonghan smiled softly. "Is that what you wish? A secret courtship?"

"It would be the most thrilling thing we have done so far- and you stole my pearls the first time we spoke, so the standard was not particularly low to begin with."

Jeonghan laughed. 

"Then it is done. You may prepare yourself to be passionately wooed, Miss Jeon- in secret."

—--------------------------------------------

Wonwoo was not pleased with the turn of events. 

"Yes, I agreed to accompany him to the park so that he might speak to you about his intentions," your brother admitted. "But I did not expect that I would become a courier boy to deliver love letters back and forth while you both played at a clandestine dalliance."

You raised your eyebrows at your brother. "What did you expect?"

"That Jeonghan would either propose to you or end your flirtation."

"He will propose to me. Once his sister is married, and he has cleared his name in society," you replied simply. 

"If you wish to court each other then you should do it with our parents permission," Wonwoo pressed, as though it was obvious. "Mother may be disappointed that you managed to choose the only man in the ton with a reputation for stealing dowries but surely she could be made to see reason eventually."

You sighed. "Wonwoo."

"What?"

"Your own reputation in society is hardly spotless enough. I overheard Viscount Hong's younger sister talking about you during a ladies' tea the other day. She used some select words to describe you, and none of them were pleasant. What did you do to offend her?"

Wonwoo flushed. "Do not speak to me of her. She is quite mad."

You laughed. "Miss Hong? But she is said to be a sweet little creature."

"You are changing the subject," Wonwoo accused. "I will deliver your love letters for now but when the time comes, I expect you will repay my debt."

"I would be delighted to deliver any love letters you wish to send."

Wonwoo sighed and turned back to his book while you giggled. 

—-----------------------------------------------------------

It became necessary, in due course, to reveal your secret courtship to Ella Williams once you detected her increasing suspicion. She was surprisingly accepting of the news- and although you did not reveal the exact nature of Jeonghan’s familial secrets, you reassured her that Jeonghan was simply quite misunderstood. 

“I cannot believe it,” Ella gushed, happy for you. “Has he declared his love for you yet?” 

You hesitated. “Not in those exact words, no, but he has made his affections quite clear.” 

“How shocking! To think that of all the eligible men in my book, you should have fallen in love with Mr Yoon Jeonghan! I had set my heart on Viscount Hong for you. But it is just as well; it appears that Joshua has made a proposal to a young lady and they are now engaged to be married next week.”

You raised an eyebrow with interest. 

“Oh? Who is the fortunate young lady?” 

“One of the elder Lee girls. It is so strange; she is not particularly beautiful, nor does she have a dowry worth boasting of. There are so many siblings in the Lee family, you know, the estate is stretched quite thin among them. But I suppose love can be unpredictable. Apparently Joshua has been smitten with Miss Lee for some time now,” Ella mused.  

You giggled. “And what news of your dear Mr. Xu?” 

“Oh!” Ella cried. “Do not speak to me of him, I am quite heartbroken. He resumes his travels in Asia next week, and he has promised to write to me regularly but you know how long it takes for letters to be delivered from overseas. I fear I shall not see him until the next season.” 

Your smile faltered as the thought of the season nearing its end struck you.

“Yes… once the season ends Mr. Yoon shall return to his estate with his family for the winter.” 

Ella smiled at you sympathetically. “Are you worried about him?” 

“We see each other once or twice a week while we are both in London. That will not be possible once he returns to the countryside. I am sure he might try to meet me, but I am afraid that we shall to satisfy ourselves with letters in the meantime. I have always been so terrible at writing letters! I shall suffer the consequences now.” 

"I am sure your courtship will last. Mr. Yoon does not seem like the kind of gentleman to give up what is important to him," Ella reassured you. 

"I certainly hope not."

—-------------------------------------------------------

The evening before Jeonghan was set to leave for the countryside for the rest of the year, you had a brief moment alone with him in the gardens behind the assembly rooms. This secret rendez-vous was enabled, to your surprise, by Viscount Hong. He assured you and Jeonghan that he and Miss Lee (now newly Viscountess Hong) had used the tiny cove behind a clump of trees in the garden to have private conversations many times before. 

You would have expected such scandalous behaviour from Kim Mingyu, perhaps, but certainly not from Viscount Hong. 

In any case, you were not inclined to prod or complain. 

"Do you promise to write to me every week?" you asked Jeonghan. He was smiling down at you, and his hands reached out to clasp yours tightly. 

"I promise I will write," he reassured you. 

"I will be extremely upset if you do not. If I do not receive a letter from you for more than a week, then I shall assume that you have fallen in love with someone else and mean to end our courtship," you insisted with a pout.

"That would be a fair assumption."

"Mr. Yoon!" 

He laughed and boldly lifted his hand to stroke his thumb across your cheek. Your face became hot under his touch. It was an innocent but bold gesture and you struggled not to look too affected. 

“Perhaps,” Jeonghan suggested boldly. “It would be easier for me to remember to write to you every week if you gave me a token of your affection- something to remember you by?”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “I hope you are not trying to swipe more of my jewellery.” 

“Something more… intimate.” 

 “Such as?” 

Jeonghan leaned closer and brought his lips near your ear. You could feel his warm breath on the side of your face and all your senses were suddenly flooded and overwhelmed with the physical proximity of this handsome and charming man. 

“Let me have a lock of your hair, my love.” 

You stared up at Jeonghan as his hand gently lifted a lock of your hair and he twirled his index finger around it. He never failed to surprise you; although you should have expected, knowing his mischievous nature, that it was only a matter of time until he suggested something so romantic and scandalous.

He lifted your hair to his lips and kissed it softly. 

“Mr. Yoon,” you choked out, flustered. 

“You had better start calling me Jeonghan, love. I hardly think that formalities will be required between us once I have placed this lock of your hair in my locket and tasted your sweet lips,” he replied. 

Before you could even think to object, Jeonghan took both. 

First, he leaned forward to press his lips to yours. The kiss was sweet and bold; he was gentle yet there was no hesitation in his movements. In response, you pressed yourself closer to him and returned the kiss. You would not see him for many months so this was hardly the time to act coy. You let your hands slide up into his tousled hair and melted into his passionate embrace. 

After a prolonged embrace and many eager kisses, Jeonghan pulled back. You were both slightly out of breath. Your heart was racing and you found yourself instinctively leaning into him again, begging him for another kiss. But Jeonghan had other plans. He pulled out a small pocket-knife and with a single fluid movement, sliced off a tiny lock of your hair. 

You stared at him as he opened a small locket and placed the lock inside of it. 

“I will return this to you,” he whispered in your ear softly. “When I have a wedding ring to give you in return.” 

You bit your lip and nodded. 

“Then I will pray you return it soon.”

“I will, my love.” 

—----------------------------------------------------------

Epilogue

The winter was a difficult one. Jeonghan wrote to you regularly and even came to visit you once under the guise of visiting your brother. Yet it was incredibly difficult to be apart from him. You had never had much patience for sitting and writing letters, preferring the intimacy of conversation, and the secrecy of your courtship meant that you could not confide in anyone about how much you missed your lover. 

(While your brother Wonwoo would begrudgingly carry your correspondence and pass messages to Jeonghan from you, he did not make for the best confidante.) 

You spent every waking moment waiting for the upcoming season, and for Jeonghan’s return to London. 

The moment finally arrived; you had been waiting all morning at the window to the upstairs library when you spotted him riding down the cobblestone street on his dark horse. Your heart leapt when Jeonghan dismounted in front of the entrance. You stood, dropping the knitting that you had been pretending to be doing. 

Your father, sitting across the room at his desk, raised a questioning eyebrow at you. 

“I-I left some of my sewing thread downstairs,” you explained vaguely before rushing out of the library and running down the stairs. You arrived just in time to see Jeonghan enter the lobby in his riding coat. 

The butler bowed to him and conveyed his apologies. 

“My regrets, Mr. Yoon,” the butler was saying to him politely. “But Mr, Jeon Wonwoo is not at home at present. Perhaps you may wish to return later this evening?” 

Jeonghan looked up at you and his eyes widened when they met yours. Your heart leapt in delight at the sight of him and you could not bear to watch the butler send him away simply because your brother was not home. It had been months since you had spoken to him. 

“Oh- I am sure Wonwoo will be back very soon,” you interrupted hurriedly. “Mr. Yoon can perhaps wait in the drawing room until my brother returns-” 

"There is no need for that."

You whirled around at the sound of your father's voice. In your eagerness to see Jeonghan, you had not even realised that your father had followed you out of the library and down the stairs. He had a rather serious expression on his face. 

You swallowed. "Father…"

"Mr. Yoon can come join me in the library. And you, my dear daughter, will be kind enough to wait downstairs."

You turned to Jeonghan who looked slightly alarmed, but nodded. You watched in silent horror as Jeonghan took off his hat and followed your father up the stairs. 

Oh no. 

This was not normal. Your father- much like your brother- rarely took an interest in people or company unless prompted to do so.  There was no doubt in your mind that if your father wished to speak to Jeonghan alone, then your secret courtship had been discovered. 

You turned to the butler desperately. "You must send word to my brother to come at once!" 

The butler was startled. "Miss Jeon, are you-"

"Tell him to come immediately and send a servant upstairs to listen in on my father and Mr. Yoon's conversation in the library, I beg you!"

You paced the drawing room nervously for at least twenty minutes. There was no sign of Wonwoo, the servant that had gone upstairs to the library had never returned, and you had no option but to pace nervously up and down the room imagining all the worst possible situations. Would your father take down his hunting rifle and shoot Jeonghan? Would he challenge him to a duel? Perhaps it was nothing- perhaps your father had no idea of your courtship and simply wished to speak to Jeonghan about matters of business-

The large doors to the drawing room opened and Jeonghan entered alone. 

Your eyes widened. 

“What happened?” 

Jeonghan looked slightly tense. He forced a smile when he saw you, and took both of your hands in his before guiding you to sit down in one of the armchair. He kneeled in front of your chair; entwined hands placed in your lap. 

“Does he know?” you whispered. 

“He… had his suspicions,” Jeonghan replied slowly. “It appears that when a woman who can rarely be persuaded to sit still long enough to pen down a quick note suddenly begins to spend hours locked in her room writing letters that she insists on delivering to the post office herself, other members of the family take notice.” 

You flushed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-” 

“I did not think it was right to lie to him. I told him the truth,” Jeonghan told you quietly. 

“What did he say?” 

“What any good father would have said upon making such a discovery.” 

You frowned. “Now is not the time for games, Mr. Yoon Jeonghan-” 

Jeonghan brought your entwined hands up to his lips and he kissed your knuckles softly before looking up at you with a playful smile. His dark eyes twinkled in the bright morning light that streamed through the curtains. 

“Miss Jeon… would you do me the honour of becoming my wife?”

—------------------------------------------------------------------------

A/N: If you want to see the fallout of this proposal from Jeonghan's sister's perspective, then go read 'Patience' lmao.

Thank you so much again for all your support! I'm shocked by how many notes my chapter are receiving considering that I barely started my blog a month ago and thank you SO MUCH to everyone that reads, likes, reblogs or leaves a comment. I can be a little flaky but this is one series I really hope to finish and it's really encouraging that people seem to enjoy it too.

I might put up a poll on my blog to decide which member I write next- feel free to check it out later!

And as always, feel free to leave any feedback or thoughts. I'm not sensitive lol.