#every decision more nonsensical than the last

[gravid-transluna]

Commission for @shhhsecretsideblog, hope you enjoy just as much as I enjoyed writing this!

Final signing of divorce papers. He’d cheated with his secretary on a business trip, she threw him out and filed for divorce. Not long after she realised her period was late and after doing a test she discovered she was pregnant. She tried to hide it from him for as long as she could, but he eventually found out. She made it clear that he would have nothing to do with this child.

The divorce negotiations were messy, lots of drawn out arguments and back and forth with solicitors. It had taken months. She wanted it concluded by now but he was dragging his heels. To what end she didn’t know. But eventually they reached a resolution and he agreed to sign the papers, which was happening this afternoon. The only problem was, she’d gone into labour during the night.

Just You and Me, and No One Else

words: 3142

content: clothing birth, inconvenient birth, birth denial, fpreg

Celia wasn’t one to drag things out, neither in her corporate life or personal life, and certainly not in her romantic life. The divorce lawyer’s name was Mr. Einhardt, and he didn’t tolerate very much nonsense either. He was a sort of neutral party, tasked with settling legal matters amicably between the couple. Between this small thing they had in common, and the circumstances leading to Celia’s divorce with her husband Dave, Mr. Eindhart’s sympathies seemed to lie quite decisively with Celia. Cheating on her with his secretary, a young woman just barely out of college! So cliche it nearly bored Celia to tears. The problems had begun long before the discovery, but Celia had rehashed that story enough times by now.

Negotiations had been messy; fights, late-night arguments in the kitchen, pleading, door-slamming. Dave was acting like a child throughout the whole thing. Which was doubly unfortunate, as Celia had received a second shock after the cheating, staring at a test and two pink lines in the bathroom. She was pregnant. Nine months later, she was wedged in the office seat as Mr. Eindhart recounted estate laws with Dave.

Please, she had been praying for the last hour; please, just let it be over. Incessant questions from Dave. More often than not, about the baby. No, her baby. Celia would be damned if she let that cheating, childish scum get within a mile of her child.

Mr. Eindhart was speaking as patiently as possible, but at this point it had all become a soft drone for Celia. The last issue: she had gone into labor during the night. Regular contractions, tightening her midsection and flaring sharp in her lower back. Standing before the mirror in the light of the morning, she’d been able to see clearly just how much her bump had dropped, hanging low between her hips, stretched completely taut, a reddened torpedo, with not another inch of room for the baby. It had been enough of a chore to get dressed and ready and lug herself into Mr. Eindhart’s office every week. Laboring, it was a superhuman feat.

Her hips burned, jammed into the seat. They had widened over the course of her pregnancy, and now she barely fit into any chair available. This, combined with the massive belly sprawling in her lap whenever she sat down, made for even more discomfort.

“Ms. Greene?” Her maiden name. She saw Dave flinch slightly when Mr. Eindhart used it. “Are you alright? Pardon, but you look quite uncomfortable. Do you need some water?”

“No,” she sighed, brushing his concern away. “No, thank you. When you’re this pregnant, doing anything is uncomfortable.”

Dave was frowning at her. “You sure, hun?”

Celia scowled. She knew the feigned concern had only been prompted by Mr. Eindhart’s comment; nothing more than an excuse to use the word hun. “If you could cut it with the pet names, that would be nice.”

He rolled his eyes, tried to catch Mr. Eindhart’s eye: Women, right? A comment she’d heard frequently during her marriage, even more so with her so-called ‘pregnancy hormones,’ the ‘mood swings’ that were preventing her from thinking straight.

Today, they weren’t entirely unfounded. All she could think about was her belly, the sheet of muscle over her womb, rippling and contracting as she tried to cut Dave off from some long-winded procession of his victimhood. The baby inside, the head positioned right into her cervix, pressing with increasing urgency. She had to ignore her body for the time being. She had to remain calm and collected and—

“Listen,” Celia interrupted, leaning over her tight swell. “Could we please hurry things along?” —glaring at Dave— “We’ve been through these questions enough times, wouldn’t you say?”

“I just want to make sure we have all the information,” he protested, the slimeball. “To make the right choice.”

Celia was about to retort when she felt the familiar banding around her stomach, and clenched in on herself, riding out the waves of pain and pressure once again. She hoped that her gritted teeth and wrinkled brow could be attributed to her impatience.

Her baby squirmed, cramped in her full, brimming belly. She shifted again. Things were really ramping up. As the contraction receded, she thumbed through the pages of legal documents until she reached the last one, the blank line where their joint signatures would go, and stifled a huff of frustration. There were still at least forty pages?! This pressure was a bad sign, she knew. Soon, she’d barely be able to sit, the head felt dangerously low.

The minutes ticked by. Contraction after contraction. Her belly, hot like a furnace, wracked and misshapen with their clenching force.

“Jesus,” Celia muttered unconsciously under her breath. “The pressure….” Then she looked up to see Mr. Eindhart and Dave staring at her.

“Excuse me, my dear?” Mr. Eindhart said, head tilted politely.

Celia cleared her throat, straightened her back. “The pressure he’s been putting me through, lately. It’s, er, getting to be unbearable.”

Dave was shaking his head solemnly. “You can’t even imagine my feelings. You just can’t see the other side.”

“Oh, that’s rich!” Celia covered up her consternation with a sarcastic laugh.

Another fifteen minutes. Contractions about five minutes apart. Celia realized that she had to use the bathroom, and had to use it now. The pressure was beginning to force her legs apart, despite her efforts to keep them tightly pinched together. The weight, god, the heaviness. She felt fuller than ever, an all-encompassing fullness. It stood to reason, she thought, her bladder would be feeling the strain.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I need to use the restroom.” She painstakingly stood, unable to conceal a grunt at the weight of gravity on her sagged, bowed belly. Hoping they didn’t notice the slip of skin under her blouse that certainly hadn’t been there this morning, Celia waddled from the office and found the lady’s room.

On the toilet she suffered a contraction that had her hunched over her stomach, toes curling in her pantyhoes tights. Suddenly, eyes wide, mouth open, she felt a spike in the rising pressure. Then— a release. Liquid gushed from her crotch. Celia moaned loudly at the relief. Then she clamped her mouth shut. She wouldn’t have put it past Dave to wait for her outside the bathroom.

Panting, she rose shakily from the toilet and wiped her inner thighs and crotch. She knew her waters had broken, signaling the rapid advance of her labor.

“Please, little one,” Celia murmured. “Just a little longer. Just until it’s only you and me, no one else.”

Dave was looking at her suspiciously when she returned. Even with her effortful concealment, he’d spent enough time around her to know her more subtle forms of expression. She cleared her throat and smiled.

“Where were we?”

Mr. Eindhart smiled a bit absently as Celia dabbed at the sweat beading on her forehead. He shuffled his papers and continued. Soon another contraction was taking hold of Celia, and she stiffened, bracing herself. Still, she wasn’t quite prepared for the intensity, coming on even more severe without her bag of waters to cushion the skull. Her swollen mound flexed visibly beneath the desk. She set her jaw, her knuckles going pale as she gripped her seat. This time the pain was accompanied by the undeniable urge to push. She nearly gasped aloud. Fuck, she wanted to push. It was like nothing else she’d felt before, the deep, overwhelming desire to bear down as hard as she could against the pressure. She held her breath, counted, blinking quickly as she tried to distract herself from the urge. It only grew stronger, pounding through her body, washing over her like a compulsion.

Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t control her body entirely, and she could feel herself giving small pushes, each one shoving her baby further down through her birth canal. With some mercy the contraction began to ebb, and she floated back into the conversation at hand.

“....and, what if the kid had to list another parent as an emergency contact? That role would go to me, right?”

Celia tried to intercede as smoothly as she could, ignoring the tremble in her voice, the vicious wringing of her womb. “They’re going to have a godmother, and she’ll be listed as a secondary guardian.”

“That’s fine,” Mr. Eindhart said. “Spell her name for me, just in case?”

“Is it Shannon?” Dave asked. “It’s Shannon, isn’t it? I never liked her. A bitch, that’s what she was.”

“Mr. Gardner, I don’t tolerate that kind of language in my office. Another remark and you can go ahead and find a different representative.”

Celia flashed the elderly divorce lawyer a grateful smile before turning her attention back to the impatient baby now beginning to stretch her birth canal wide. She was giving birth at this desk and nobody knew except for her. She could do this.

A hard, clamping pain. She exhaled, suddenly breathless, though it seemed to her company that she was just huffing in annoyance at Dave’s theatrics. When the urge coursed through her, it was nearly impossible to deny.

Don’t push, she told herself. Belly gripping her midsection like a tight closed fist. Don’t push. Internal muscles squeezing around the baby. Don’t—

The need to push was dizzying. She couldn’t help it. Before she knew it, she was bearing down at the desk, thighs spread as far apart as they could manage in her seat. A flush spread to her cheeks. She pushed, and pushed, feeling the baby move downward toward her exit. She couldn’t stop, was barely even aware of her surroundings anymore. All that mattered was the baby coming out of her, the need to get it out, bear down on it with the single-mindedness of a birthing mother.

Her silent straining went unnoticed until she ended her push with a loud grunt. Suddenly there were two heads turned towards her.

“My dear, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Celia?” Dave furrowed his brow. “What kind of sound was that? Didn’t you just use the bathroom, like, thirty minutes ago.”

Exhausted, losing hope that she’d be able to hold this baby in until after the signing, Celia snapped at him. “They’ve been kicking up a damn storm this entire morning, and whose fault is that in the first place? You insist on dragging this out for as long as possible, with me ready to fucking pop” —no comment from Eindhart; he knew better than to lecture a heavily pregnant woman about her language— “so, please, can we just get this over with.”

The head was so big in her canal. The pressure was so bad. She was full to the brim, utterly stretched and gravid with the baby. She couldn’t think about anything else except the need to get it out.

“Yes, well—” blinking, Mr. Eindhart scrambled with the pages. “I suppose we can just skip over a couple of pages…. let’s see here, joint signature, page 87, please.”

“Hey!” Dave protested. “Now, wait a minute.”

Celia was picking up one of Mr. Eindhart’s elegant fountain pens…. Another contraction was coming on, she could feel it broiling in her belly…. every muscle tensing up at once, working with the singular effort to expel her baby…. raising her trembling hand to the page….

To Dave and their lawyer, it may have looked like she had gone stock-still. Really though, she was pushing. Her knuckles shone pale around the pen. She was biting her lip so hard she thought she might draw blood. The baby was moving between her legs, she could feel it. She could have sobbed. The massive head was sliding through her hips, down, down, down towards her exit. She was pushing it out.

Dave took her sudden pause as hesitation. “Oh, honey,” he said. “Look at you! Overcome with emotion, I knew it was just a charade. It’s okay. We don’t have to go through with this.”

The fullness was very low now. A new sensation. The baby was in her vagina! Her labia had begun to bulge grotesquely; the head, of course, was huge. With a laborious effort, Celia scrawled a hasty, spidery signature onto the page. The final step. Done.

She slumped in her chair, push releasing, and her belly sank as her womb muscles relaxed. Her crotch throbbed. The baby’s head was right there, sitting heavily at her entrance, and it felt as if she was perched atop a bowling ball, hips nearly splitting open with the pressure.

Dave looked at the signature with despair. Mr. Eindhart cleared his throat, eyeing him like he suspected Dave might just grab the papers and bolt with them. Instead, he reached for a pen and, even more slowly than Celia had in the throes of giving birth, signed his big, sloppy signature.

“All right,” Mr. Eindhart said, tucking the papers into a folder. “That should be the last of the proceedings!”

Before Celia could react, Dave had stormed from the room. The door swung violently on its hinges.

She knew that she should leave as soon as possible, but getting up from her seat was a monumental task. Still, she struggled valiantly to her feet, containing a scream behind sealed lips as gravity thrust the head further into her nether regions, a wet tent forming in her underwear. She thanked the heavens that she had worn a skirt today. The body, it seemed, was slipping between her hips now, forcing the head down even more. Her gait was less a waddle at this point and more a bowlegged half-squat. She bore the pain and pressure and looked Mr. Eindhart in the eye, smiling as she shook his hand.

“Thank, mm, you. For everything.”

“Please, dear. Get home, get some rest.”

She nodded, unable to speak anymore. The head, god. She was so close to crowning. It was about to come out, she could feel it. She shuffled indelicately from Mr. Eindhart’s office. ‘Getting home’ was not a feasible goal. Celia didn’t even know if she could make it to the lady’s room in time, but she had to try. She couldn’t possibly give birth in these dirty carpeted corridors! One hand following the wall, knees barely supporting herself. She was trailing birthing fluid, leaking through her panties.

Whenever a contraction struck (and they were coming on without pause or respite now) she was forced to stop and squat, grunting the baby further into her nether regions. With every push her lips bulged more and more into the fabric of her underwear, burning with the obscene stretch. Slowly, the head parted them open, and she tried to pant through a contraction, drawing from some intuition that she needed to go slow and let herself stretch, her vagina straining to accommodate the huge head. Instead she loosed a guttural groan, bearing down again until her lips had unfurled into a tight oval. She was limping now, one hand cupped between her thighs as she walked.

As she rounded the hall, the restroom came into view. Almost there, Celia told herself. Just a couple more steps. Dread poured over her as a contraction began to brew in her belly. Oh no— Celia braced herself, steadying her hands against the wall in preparation.

Just then, she heard a shout. “Celia!” Dave had been waiting at the end of the hall, and now he jogged to catch up to her. “Shit, Dave!” Celia hissed as her birth canal wrung her from the inside out. “Fu-u-uck, what could you possibly—urgh! want?!”

Dave caught her arm, too involved in his own self-pity to notice Celia’s wide half-squat, the pinching of her face, the dribbles of liquid from between her spread thighs.

“Just hear me out, okay?” He was upset. His bottom lip quivered like a petulant child’s. He seemed, absurdly, betrayed. “You love me. I know you love me, and that baby is mine. I’m its father, I have a right to meet it.”

Celia stared at him, flabbergasted, the baby crowning into her panties momentarily forgotten. Suddenly she squatted down and bellowed loudly. “OOOOOHHHH!!”

Dave backed away in fear.

“Listennn-mmmfgh!” Celia groaned as she bore down furiously. “Grrrruh! Ugh, ah! I have had it up to here with you. Fuuuuck, I’m only gonna say this one time.” Despite her deep squat, she suddenly seemed to tower over him, red-faced with fury and the exertion of birth.

“Get out of our lives.”

Dave glanced at her in consternation, then scurried down the hall and hopefully out of her life for good.

Celia’s legs finally gave out and she dropped to her knees, unable to withstand the searing pain and pressure spreading her wide open and filling her so completely, it was as if there was no room for anything else anymore; no Dave, no legal documents or income discussions, not even herself or her identity as anything but a mother. Everything was focused on the baby coming out of her, crowning her most sensitive, private region. She gripped her thighs and bore down. Then she pushed her hips back, opening them, and rested her heavy body on her hands and knees. An animalistic urgency coursed through her. This primal position felt good, felt right. This was what she needed to be doing. Pushing, without any other concerns.

Her skirt rode up, exposing the apex of her thighs, her sodden bulging underwear, soaked fabric revealing what was happening behind it. The head slipped further out. Her lips formed a burning circle. Celia’s groans tightened and rose in pitch and she strained, the head unmoving as a boulder for a nerve-wracking second. A full-body shudder. Celia’s eyes rolled back in her head as she pressed her chest to the floor and sloped her rear end into the air, pushing with all she had.

The head burst free, and fluids spattered the hallway wall behind her, soaking the carpet. Celia gasped and panted, but the ordeal wasn’t over yet.

“O-okay, okay, baby.” The shoulders were rotating, she could feel the body turning inside her. The entire head hung from her opening and sagged her panties. “Th-this is iiiittttt-ooooooh!” With one last giant push, the body slid out and a river of fluids gushed freely behind.

Celia sat up on her haunches, scrambling between her tights and underwear with the instinctual desperation of a mother, searching frantically, needing to hold her baby, needing the touch-contact. She brought it from under her skirt to her chest, and heard a gurgling cry. A beautiful girl! Nothing like her father, everything like her mother. Tears streamed from Celia’s eyes and dripped down her nose and cheeks.

“Oh, look at you! Look at you!” She held her to her warm heart. “It’s okay. It’s just us. Just you and me, and no one else.”

[lovings4turn]

ᯓ★  𝐌𝐄 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐖𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐌𝐄𝐀𝐍𝐓 𝐓𝐎 𝐁𝐄 (𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐎 𝐍𝐎𝐑𝐑𝐈𝐒)

— a few days have passed since you last saw lando, yet your feelings are as strong as ever. there’s nothing like another party to finally set the record straight. (3.2k words)

+ aka. part two of don’t delete the kisses (and my longest fic to date on this blog !!)

+ again mentions of drinking and clubbing, largely fluff . lando n reader are only slightly tipsy ! this took far too long to get out but she's finally here - hope you all enjoy !!!

it had been three days since you’d gone to the club, and three days since you’d consequently fled from the club due to your inability to act normally around lando norris.

you hadn’t seen him since then, but you’d texted back and forth from the morning afterwards. you’d felt bad about the whole thing, just leaving without even finding him to say goodbye, and so made up some excuse about getting too overwhelmed and not wanting to ruin his night with your desire to go home.

and because he was an angel, lando didn’t even question you. instead, he instantly accepted your explanation, assuring you it was more than fine as long as you were okay. he could go without a goodbye, if it meant the best for you.

eighty percent of your subsequent conversations were complete nonsense. ever since you had became close all those years ago, lando had taken it upon himself to text you every single thought he ever had, no matter how menial or silly.

embarrassingly, as a result of being down so, completely, horrifically bad for him, you found each and every one endearing. yes, even the god-awful memes he would send you religiously between the hours of two and five am when he couldn’t sleep.

perhaps it was even worse that you’d go on to forward said memes to other friends, pretending that you had found them. you were unable to prevent the laughs that would escape your lips every time your phone buzzed with a notification from lando.

one on hand, you were on top of the world. on the other, you were going insane.

lando had positively taken over your mind, every corner of your head filled with deep brown curls and impish laughter. even the most menial things proved to link back to lando in some way, a tangled red string of association that to anyone else would make zero sense but was obvious to you.

you were icarus, and lando the sun; something to dream of but never to have. you were certain that if you chased him, your wax wings would melt rapidly as you succumbed to your impulses before you crashed onto the harsh ground of reality.

learning to cope with the heavy feeling of yearning was something you could do. suffering with a little heartache to keep lando in your life far outweighed not having lando at all.

being definitive in your decision to bury your feelings didn’t mean it wasn’t a struggle, though.

now more than ever, it seemed impossible to not think about lando, or talk about him, shout his name from the rooftops so the whole world could hear the praises you would sing for him. it appeared to be a pretty clear sign that you were losing any remaining shreds of self control, but what could you do? no matter how many times your head said no, your heart would tell you that it would always be lando, one thousand times over.

a notification lit up your phone screen, and you were convinced it was a sort of cruel taunt from the universe. 

landonorris just posted a photo!

it was borderline masochistic, the way in which you tapped the notification instantly and allowed yourself to be led to lando’s latest instagram photo dump. alongside a few selfies, pictures of him from that night in the club were littered throughout, and though he was posing with friends in each photo, your eyes were focused solely on him.

without really thinking, you pinched the screen, zooming in a little further to admire every detail of lando’s face that had been captured by someone’s iphone. the moles that were dotted across his face like they’d been individually placed there, the unruly curls that begged your fingers to find a home in them, and that fucking smile.

realisation hit soon after, and you caught yourself with a groan. here you were, sitting looking at his pictures with a dopey, love-sick grin on your face, acting like a teenage girl with an innocent classroom crush.

“god! might as well write all over a notebook that he rocks my world or something,” you scoffed, mock disgust lacing your words.

oh great, now you were fucking talking to yourself. christ, what had he done to you?

in an act of frustration, you quickly liked lando’s photo before throwing your phone onto your bed, partially hoping it would get lost amongst the pillows so you couldn’t find it again and fawn over more pictures of your supposed best friend.

a distraction was what you needed. and so you stood up and made your way into the kitchen, praying that maybe cooking a nice meal for yourself would sort you out. either that, or you could hit yourself over the head with a frying pan and hope that the concussion would remove any feelings that breached the label of ‘platonic’.

and for two whole hours, your plan had worked. 

not only were you able to enjoy the delicious meal you’d made, but also got through a good few episodes of the new tv series you had started watching a week or so ago. the lando shaped hole in your mind had been replaced by witty dialogue and pointless character drama, and you were beginning to think that you had everything under control.

that was until you returned to your bedroom and reached for your phone once more, your lockscreen lighting up to display yet another text thread from lando.

lando: going out tomorrow at 10!!!

lando: be there or be square😈

lando: i need my best dance partner w me

fingers dancing across the keyboard, the text was sent before your brain could even think about the invitation.

y/n: i'll b there🥳

it was official: you were absolutely fucked. 

. . .

it was 10:28pm and you were already questioning your decision to come out.

you would say that you had no idea why you’d even agreed to the invitation, but that would be a lie. you knew exactly what had convinced you to get dressed up and leave your house tonight, and that reason was currently grinning at you from his place at the bar, clothed in another stupid button down shirt and sunglasses, of all accessories. 

how he had managed to make sunglasses indoors not only acceptable, but attractive to you was just another sign of the power that the man held over you. you’re sure that if you told your friends, they’d never let you live it down. and hell, you wouldn’t even blame them for it.

from the moment you had arrived, lando had commanded your attention. there wasn’t an inch of your body that wasn’t intently tuned in to every word he spoke, each movement of his limbs and the expressions on his face. he had you completely hooked, and you were letting it happen, swept along in the riptide of your stupid crush,

whether it was from the pulsating house music, the shot lando had shoved into your hand the moment you’d shown your face, or even just lando himself, you felt electric. sparks of lightning rippled beneath your skin, every last nerve in your body buzzing with anticipation for something that you couldn’t even put your finger on.

butterflies swarmed your stomach, and if someone were to tell you you were looking at lando with stars in your eyes, you would have no doubt that it was true. because as he grinned at you once more, the lively groups of club-goers began to fade away leaving only a vignette of his figure.

you were experiencing every romantic cliche in the fucking book, all thanks to him.

you were unsure as to whether it was a minute or a hour before he was standing in front of you again, the scent of his aftershave almost taunting you as it enveloped you. lando was expertly clasping two vodka cokes in one hand and two shots of tequila in the other, sporting a lopsided smile.

“lando!” you groaned, actions betraying your scolding tone as you reached out to pluck the shot from his hand before grabbing your drink, careful not to cause lando to spill anything. 

the last thing you needed right now was to spill a drink on lando’s white shirt. the sight of the material slowly becoming see-through until it offered you a glimpse of his tan, toned skin was more than you would be able to handle. 

lando held up the plastic shot glass with a cheeky expression, a silent toast to god knows what, before he tipped the liquid down his throat. his face quickly soured, and he wasted no time in seeing off a large portion of his drink in an attempt to rid himself of the tequila flavour.

“woah, woah, slow down there,” you laughed, gently pushing the cup away from lando’s mouth. “got the whole night ahead of you.”

watercolour eyes dropped to glance at your hand, lando’s stare lingering even after you had pulled your hand back towards your body hastily, as though merely being in the proximity of his body was enough to burn. 

you would have thought it odd, if lando hadn’t immediately taken your hand into his larger one and stalked off towards the dance floor, gently tugging you along without a word. your mind told you that lando had simply felt the effects of his drink quicker than expected, and it took him a minute to realise that leading you to the dance floor was the mission he would give himself for the night.

flashbacks of the last time you were out clubbing with lando played in the back of your mind like an old movie, something you would put on in the background for comfort yet wouldn’t pay much attention to. 

one dance turned into two, and then three, and before you knew it you had been dancing with lando for the better part of an hour, both of you expertly adapting your moves to match the vibe of whatever song the dj decided to play next.

one of the many perks of attending clubs with formula one drivers was that there was an ever-flowing supply of alcohol. it was something you’d discovered after the first few times you had gone out with lando and his friends: you would finish your drink and before you could blink, someone had shoved a new one into your hand, the cup still marbled with cold condensation.

your current drink had been supplied by max, or maybe even carlos, a far too strong liquor mixed with nowhere near enough soda for your liking. your nose scrunched up at the taste, and lando laughed before gently plucking the cup from you, his fingers brushing against your own for a fleeting moment. 

a fire burned in the pit of your stomach, noticing that lando’s lips landed perfectly over the lipgloss mark you’d left moments ago. an indirect kiss. 

much like your own moments prior, lando’s face twisted up into a grimace at the taste, and he shook his head furiously.

“that's fucking awful,” he claimed, leaning down a little to shout his complaints into your ear. “whoever bought you that has shit taste.”

“says the man who bought a round of tequila earlier in the night.”

lando chuckled, mumbling a ‘fuck off’ that held more adoration than malice, in your humble opinion. like he had rehearsed it, lando smoothly palmed your drink off onto max before delicately taking hold of one of your wrists, twirling you around just like he had done a few nights ago.

possibly driven by a subconscious want to set right the events of your last night out, you repeated your own actions and spun lando under your arm in response.

lando’s grin was almost blinding, and he pulled you towards him, your hands still clasped by his as he moved your limbs around like the world’s worst puppetmaster.

you were convinced that, had he had enough room around him, he would have spun you both around until you were dizzy, a move he’d pulled many times when you were dancing together in one of your kitchen’s to pass the time it took to cook your meal. 

sadly, lando had to settle for flailing arms and uncoordinated shimmies, his priority making you smile rather than trying to look suave amongst the mass of bodies at your every turn. 

a few other drivers started to join your circle, handing you both more drinks as they tried to engage in miscellaneous conversation and playfully poked fun at yours and lando’s lack of coordination or apparent shame.

unable to control who stood where, thanks to the power of free will, you had been separated from lando, instead flanked by oscar and george whilst he was wrapped up in a conversation with max fewtrell.

thanks to his position across from you, lando was able to catch your eye, his brow quirked slightly in a silent question meant only for you to decipher. you nodded, a clear response to his wordless communication.

as though it were planned, you and lando began to leave. this was how your last french exit should have been; no longer were you alone and flustered, stumbling into the back of your uber with the desire to bash your head off of a brick wall.

no, this time you had lando’s hand in yours, the pad of his thumb brushing soft circles against the back of your hand as he expertly manoeuvred you both through the crowd, informing you that a car would already be there to take you back to your flat with him in tow. 

apologetic texts and goodbyes weren’t necessary this time around, if the loud, obnoxious whooping and whistling from pierre and charles were anything to go by. with their propensity for gossip, you were sure that every inhabitant in the club would be informed of your swift exit with lando within the hour. 

the ride home was filled with melodic laughter as lando made it his mission to unload every observation he’d made in the past few hours onto you. he’d taken particular interest in the argument two girls were having when he was waiting at the bar, and left no detail out as he recounted the whole event like some sort of one man show, his only audience you. 

the streetlights you passed caused a flickering glow to dance across lando’s features, and the momentary flashes of illumination caused lando to look otherworldly, all shadows and contours framed by deep curls.

lando was so caught up in his story that he was oblivious to your wonderstruck stare, completely unaware of the way you were drinking in every last inch of him, committing each miniscule detail to memory and storing it away for a rainy day. 

good, you thought. he’d only take the piss anyways.

the alcohol rendered you both a little unsteady on your feet, and you snorted a laugh as lando stumbled through your front door, catching his shoe on the tiny step that led into your apartment. 

whoever lived underneath you would likely be cursing your name right now, as neither you nor lando were too concerned about remaining quiet and light on your feet as you bumbled over to your bedroom. comfort was the only thing on your mind, though you made a mental note to push an apology letter underneath the poor soul’s door the next day. 

making himself at home, lando threw himself down onto your bed, the plush mattress eliciting a soft groan from him. his once closed eyes snapped open as you tossed a pair of his joggers at him, a pair he’d left at yours a few months ago (and that you may or may not have ‘forgotten’ to return to him.)

“i’ll get changed in a sec,” lando promised, sinking back into your sheets. “you can too. just, come on, lie down for a bit.”

lando delivered two quick pats to your bed, perhaps hoping it would prompt you to join him faster than you already would have. secretly, you were glad that he thought you needed convincing to lie down with him for a moment.

you pretended to consider it, eyes flitting over to where your makeup remover sat, before you gave in, mumbling an ‘okay’ as you clumsily removed your shoes and clambered onto the bed next to him.

the gap between you both was barely there. if you moved your hand just slightly, your fingers would brush against lando’s side. how easy it would be, just to grant yourself a slice of heaven for once.

lando’s voice brought you out of your trance. 

“when you left, last time…”

an unfinished question. lando was clearly attempting to seem nonchalant as he broached the topic that you had both been skirting around since it had happened, his eyes trained onto the thread of your duvet that he had busied his hands with. 

in that moment, you didn’t think you could ever lie to him, no matter how humiliating the truth was. 

“it got too much. y’hands on me and everything, i got too flustered. i just didn’t want to make a fool out of myself, i guess,” you admitted as an embarrassed smile played on your lips. 

a giggle trickled from lando’s mouth, prompting you to roll onto your side and face him with a raised brow.

“what’s so funny?”

“nothin’. just the fact you fancied me so much that you had to run away from me,” lando responded, grinning mischievously.

your response came in the form of a pillow hitting lando square in the face.

“oi!”

the pillow came flying back, but missed your body by roughly a couple of inches, the alcohol clearly impairing his usually decent aim. 

“missed me,” you taunted.

unexpectedly lando’s face lit up at your words, and he rolled closer to you, propping himself up onto an elbow so that his face was hovering over yours.

you swallowed thickly at the sudden movement, eyes darting across his face frantically as though his motives would be written into the curve of his smile.

“think there’s a saying about that,” lando mused, a hand trailing up your side so gently that you half believed you were imagining it. “missed me, missed me, now you’ve gotta kiss me, or something.”

and if that wasn’t a sign to press your lips to his, you weren’t sure what was.

you swallowed lando’s sound of surprise as your lips melded with his own, his mouth soft and warm as he more than returned your affections.

clearly not content with the level of control he possessed, lando briefly pulled back and swiped the pad of his thumb across your bottom lip before attaching his lips to your once more, gently sucking the flesh into his mouth and nipping at it with a smirk.

it was slow, and a little sloppy, a blend of tongue and teeth as you desperately tried to taste as much of each other as possible.

your grip on lando’s shirt was vice-like, as though you were scared he would disappear if let out of your hands for even a fleeting second.

“don’t worry, ‘m not going anywhere, pretty girl,” lando teased softly, punctuating his words with another kiss. “y’stuck with me.”

and suddenly, everything had become clear. it was always going to be you and lando, a love that would transcend a lifetime.

tags : @wintfleur @faerieroyal @starriesworlds @itscrzy @ssararuffoni @tbsloneely @onecojg @basicchelsea

[kumabeom]

saudade love 🫧

pilot ; you’re my lover <3

pairing : actor!soobin and actress!yn

love triangles :(

synopsis : actress!yn and actor!soobin are forced by their companies to date as a publicity stunt to promote their latest releases. however what’s to happen when yn and soobin spend more and more time together even though yn’s closest friend is keeping secrets.

“last question..” the mc announces before letting a reporter take the lead on the final question.

“soobin and yn, throughout the filming process of saudade love. the two of you were rumored to be seeing each other as more than just friends, can we get some kind of response to that ?” the reporter in front of you asks. you and soobin sitting on a theater-like stage, two high chairs next to each other. while on the other side of the stage was the director of saudade love, and a few supporting cast members.

saudade love was the new film that you had just starred in, alongside soobin, who played the main male lead. the plot was a story about yn meeting chaebol soobin. issues arising within yn’s family, which end up harming her relationship with soobin. never being able to get an end to her family’s ruthless behavior towards her, she only seems to find comfort in soobin. soobin, who comes from a wealthy family, is forced into a marriage, any kind of rebellious actions from soobin during the wedding is covered up. soobin ends up giving in, yn ends up even more hurt as it gets harder and harder to keep their secretive relationship as a healthy relationship. however, the two still only seem to feel happy around each other, the only issue being each other’s families. yet it is enough to keep them apart.

you knew that there were going to be issues with your so-called ‘controversial’ ending, since it wasn’t necessarily a happy ending, not many people were too pleased. but there was another majority of people, or rather yours and soobins fans, that enjoyed the movie due to its rawness. not every single relationship was going to end in the most fairytale way. which was exactly what saudade love’s message was trying to deliver, although it seemed to go over others’ heads.

you laugh a bit into the microphone, knowing exactly what you were supposed to do and how your company wanted you to react. taking the microphone up close to your lips, not exactly letting the two touch. you put on a flushed image, as you turn to look to soobin, who also knew his part of the live script the two of you were supposed to follow. his lips turning upwards, attempting to look rather confident about the situation, and it was working.. after all he was an actor.

“me and soobin…” you pause, taking a second to smile to yourself. looking up instead of looking at the crowd full of photographers, reporters, and journalists, a few fans in the crowd as well. “i thought we had announced a response, but i suppose not. me and soobin have been seeing each other. something about us during filming saudade love.. it just seemed to click.. we’re a few dates into our relationship but i hope that everyone will support us and our decision to be together.”

and with that, the crowd cheers, journalists and reporters typing as quick as they can. photographers snapping their pictures to use on articles that are probably being released within the next second. soobin grinned, bringing his mic up to his mouth. the image of two lovestruck actors up on stage manipulating the minds of the entire media. you looked at soobin with a tiny smile on your face. putting your best heart eyes on display.

“i think the people who have seen saudade love will notice, but the love that the two characters display is not something you can act out..” it’s funny, because he’s completely spewing out nonsense. the two of you are just convincing actors, using all the skills you’ve learned to play out your character. “at one point during filming, i stopped thinking of the script and i just started seeing yn as yn, no character or anything. i think our relationship was inevitable. yn was the sweetest person i could ever meet.” that’s a lie, well you weren’t necessarily mean, but the two of you never even spoke outside of necessary means. “i turned to her when i needed help, and she was always there to listen. not to mention, anytime yn was around, i couldn’t help but feel a certain way..” soobin grinned shyly, trying to convince everyone that he was simply too shy to continue on. which worked as majority of the audience were in complete awe.

the mc picks up his own mic, “let’s give a round of applause to our newly discovered couple !!” he pauses letting the crowd take over with their clapping, “since that was our last question, the cast and crew will give their goodbyes now !”

you stood up along with everyone, giving a bow to thank the crowd for their time and attention. afterwards you link pinkies with soobin, attempting to keep up the image of the new shy couple.

release date: july 13, 24’

4th gen it couple ! ; little minions ! ; soobin’s fave brats !

episode 1 : i was hitting my marks !

episode 2 : thinking it can change the beat of my heart when he touches me, counteract the chemistry and undo the destiny.

episode 3 : that’s my girl, y’know what i mean ?

episode 4 : and so it begins..

episode 5 : i’m gonna marry him !

episode 6 : we’ll make it through, just like we always do.

episode 7 : the thing..

episode 8 : the love of my life

episode 9 : red lipstick 💋

episode 10 : i know i shouldn’t

episode 11 : just a coworker

episode 12 : it meant the world

episode 13 : as slow as you’d like.

episode 14 : i just need a little lovin’

episode 15 : sometimes i laugh whenever im sad

an : AHHHH!! so happy to be back, i feel quite refreshed since im back after seeing txt…. three times 😁😁 BUT im so ready to put out posts, remember how i said i was gonna pre-write ? well that didn’t work out because i had like 0 inspiration, i feel like i work better under pressure…

taglist (send asks !) : @run2seob @soobadooba @mrsyawnzzn @matcha-binz @taehyhunnzly @20crowsinahoodie @lun4kazumii @lunathewritingcat @wonjws @yourenzoo @missychief1404 @304blur @coconutjjun @theycallmelolla @girlz4jaem @everythingvirgoes @pinkhor1zon @nshitae @damn-u-min-yoongi @jiweok @wonderstrucktae @thing89 @pagetammgyu @virgo-and-libra @blossommi @cheekycountesschoi @taysfairies @20-cms @soobiluvr1205 @bloomngspring

[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI is a WMD

I'm in TARTU, ESTONIA! AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (TOMORROW, May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (TOMORROW, May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

Fun fact: "The Tragedy Of the Commons" is a hoax created by the white nationalist Garrett Hardin to justify stealing land from colonized people and moving it from collective ownership, "rescuing" it from the inevitable tragedy by putting it in the hands of a private owner, who will care for it properly, thanks to "rational self-interest":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

Get that? If control over a key resource is diffused among the people who rely on it, then (Garrett claims) those people will all behave like selfish assholes, overusing and undermaintaining the commons. It's only when we let someone own that commons and charge rent for its use that (Hardin says) we will get sound management.

By that logic, Google should be the internet's most competent and reliable manager. After all, the company used its access to the capital markets to buy control over the internet, spending billions every year to make sure that you never try a search-engine other than its own, thus guaranteeing it a 90% market share:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Google seems to think it's got the problem of deciding what we see on the internet licked. Otherwise, why would the company flush $80b down the toilet with a giant stock-buyback, and then do multiple waves of mass layoffs, from last year's 12,000 person bloodbath to this year's deep cuts to the company's "core teams"?

https://qz.com/google-is-laying-off-hundreds-as-it-moves-core-jobs-abr-1851449528

And yet, Google is overrun with scams and spam, which find their way to the very top of the first page of its search results:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

The entire internet is shaped by Google's decisions about what shows up on that first page of listings. When Google decided to prioritize shopping site results over informative discussions and other possible matches, the entire internet shifted its focus to producing affiliate-link-strewn "reviews" that would show up on Google's front door:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

This was catnip to the kind of sociopath who a) owns a hedge-fund and b) hates journalists for being pain-in-the-ass, stick-in-the-mud sticklers for "truth" and "facts" and other impediments to the care and maintenance of a functional reality-distortion field. These dickheads started buying up beloved news sites and converting them to spam-farms, filled with garbage "reviews" and other Google-pleasing, affiliate-fee-generating nonsense.

(These news-sites were vulnerable to acquisition in large part thanks to Google, whose dominance of ad-tech lets it cream 51 cents off every ad dollar and whose mobile OS monopoly lets it steal 30 cents off every in-app subscriber dollar):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Now, the spam on these sites didn't write itself. Much to the chagrin of the tech/finance bros who bought up Sports Illustrated and other venerable news sites, they still needed to pay actual human writers to produce plausible word-salads. This was a waste of money that could be better spent on reverse-engineering Google's ranking algorithm and getting pride-of-place on search results pages:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

That's where AI comes in. Spicy autocomplete absolutely can't replace journalists. The planet-destroying, next-word-guessing programs from Openai and its competitors are incorrigible liars that require so much "supervision" that they cost more than they save in a newsroom:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/29/what-part-of-no/#dont-you-understand

But while a chatbot can't produce truthful and informative articles, it can produce bullshit – at unimaginable scale. Chatbots are the workers that hedge-fund wreckers dream of: tireless, uncomplaining, compliant and obedient producers of nonsense on demand.

That's why the capital class is so insatiably horny for chatbots. Chatbots aren't going to write Hollywood movies, but studio bosses hyperventilated at the prospect of a "writer" that would accept your brilliant idea and diligently turned it into a movie. You prompt an LLM in exactly the same way a studio exec gives writers notes. The difference is that the LLM won't roll its eyes and make sarcastic remarks about your brainwaves like "ET, but starring a dog, with a love plot in the second act and a big car-chase at the end":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/

Similarly, chatbots are a dream come true for a hedge fundie who ends up running a beloved news site, only to have to fight with their own writers to get the profitable nonsense produced at a scale and velocity that will guarantee a high Google ranking and millions in "passive income" from affiliate links.

One of the premier profitable nonsense companies is Advon, which helped usher in an era in which sites from Forbes to Money to USA Today create semi-secret "review" sites that are stuffed full of badly researched top-ten lists for products from air purifiers to cat beds:

https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/

Advon swears that it only uses living humans to produce nonsense, and not AI. This isn't just wildly implausible, it's also belied by easily uncovered evidence, like its own employees' Linkedin profiles, which boast of using AI to create "content":

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Advon-AI-LinkedIn.jpg

It's not true. Advon uses AI to produce its nonsense, at scale. In an excellent, deeply reported piece for Futurism, Maggie Harrison Dupré brings proof that Advon replaced its miserable human nonsense-writers with tireless chatbots:

https://futurism.com/advon-ai-content

Dupré describes how Advon's ability to create botshit at scale contributed to the enshittification of clients from Yoga Journal to the LA Times, "Us Weekly" to the Miami Herald.

All of this is very timely, because this is the week that Google finally bestirred itself to commence downranking publishers who engage in "site reputation abuse" – creating these SEO-stuffed fake reviews with the help of third parties like Advon:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

(Google's policy only forbids site reputation abuse with the help of third parties; if these publishers take their nonsense production in-house, Google may allow them to continue to dominate its search listings):

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies#site-reputation

There's a reason so many people believed Hardin's racist "Tragedy of the Commons" hoax. We have an intuitive understanding that commons are fragile. All it takes is one monster to start shitting in the well where the rest of us get our drinking water and we're all poisoned.

The financial markets love these monsters. Mark Zuckerberg's key insight was that he could make billions by assembling vast dossiers of compromising, sensitive personal information on half the world's population without their consent, but only if he kept his costs down by failing to safeguard that data and the systems for exploiting it. He's like a guy who figures out that if he accumulates enough oily rags, he can extract so much low-grade oil from them that he can grow rich, but only if he doesn't waste money on fire-suppression:

https://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/

Now Zuckerberg and the wealthy, powerful monsters who seized control over our commons are getting a comeuppance. The weak countermeasures they created to maintain the minimum levels of quality to keep their platforms as viable, going concerns are being overwhelmed by AI. This was a totally foreseeable outcome: the history of the internet is a story of bad actors who upended the assumptions built into our security systems by automating their attacks, transforming an assault that wouldn't be economically viable into a global, high-speed crime wave:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/24/automation-is-magic/

But it is possible for a community to maintain a commons. This is something Hardin could have discovered by studying actual commons, instead of inventing imaginary histories in which commons turned tragic. As it happens, someone else did exactly that: Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom:

https://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons/

Ostrom described how commons can be wisely managed, over very long timescales, by communities that self-governed. Part of her work concerns how users of a commons must have the ability to exclude bad actors from their shared resources.

When that breaks down, commons can fail – because there's always someone who thinks it's fine to shit in the well rather than walk 100 yards to the outhouse.

Enshittification is the process by which control over the internet moved from self-governance by members of the commons to acts of wanton destruction committed by despicable, greedy assholes who shit in the well over and over again.

It's not just the spammers who take advantage of Google's lazy incompetence, either. Take "copyleft trolls," who post images using outdated Creative Commons licenses that allow them to terminate the CC license if a user makes minor errors in attributing the images they use:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/

The first copyleft trolls were individuals, but these days, the racket is dominated by a company called Pixsy, which pretends to be a "rights protection" agency that helps photographers track down copyright infringers. In reality, the company is committed to helping copyleft trolls entrap innocent Creative Commons users into paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars to use images that are licensed for free use. Just as Advon upends the economics of spam and deception through automation, Pixsy has figured out how to send legal threats at scale, robolawyering demand letters that aren't signed by lawyers; the company refuses to say whether any lawyer ever reviews these threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/13/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats/

This is shitting in the well, at scale. It's an online WMD, designed to wipe out the commons. Creative Commons has allowed millions of creators to produce a commons with billions of works in it, and Pixsy exploits a minor error in the early versions of CC licenses to indiscriminately manufacture legal land-mines, wantonly blowing off innocent commons-users' legs and laughing all the way to the bank:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/02/commafuckers-versus-the-commons/

We can have an online commons, but only if it's run by and for its users. Google has shown us that any "benevolent dictator" who amasses power in the name of defending the open internet will eventually grow too big to care, and will allow our commons to be demolished by well-shitters:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/09/shitting-in-the-well/#advon

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

Catherine Poh Huay Tan (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/68166820@N08/49729911222/

Laia Balagueró (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/lbalaguero/6551235503/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[faeryarchives]

to my beloved (octavinelle x gn!s/o)

requested by anon: Hello! Welcome back from your hiatus! Hope you’re doing alright and relaxing. For request, may I request headcanons of Azul, Floyd, and Jade please? Pre-established relationship and their gn!s/o who likes to give gifts as a love language? Like handmade gifts or found trinkets/baubles the boys might enjoy. Thank you for your consideration! note: anon u are so sweet 🤍 hihi gift giving love language with octatrio sounds so interesting + SO i got into debate last night with my friends on what pre established means if it has no label yet or just having a crush so i decided to write it at the stat of their relationship recent works: i'm not jealous !! (savanaclaw x gn!reader) & octavinelle with a fischl like female reader! & let me kiss you

💌 azul ashengrotto

"oh, a gift for me? do perhaps need my help?" "oh silly azul! i knitted that octopus keychain for you! don't you want to have a little companion while you work?"

this was new to azul - both being in relationship with you and receiving such gifts because as someone wary of apparent gestures of goodwill and believing that “all contracts come with a price” he isn't use to receiving gifts just because it reminds you of him

is it for real? he tried asking you for the fifth time to confirm only to receive the same answer over and over again

he never met someone as generous as him 😭

"azul! azul! look! i got us matching bracelet, this one actually matches your eyes." "o-oh my word, matching bracelets?! aren't we too young for that?!" "...'zul we just kissed earlie-"

having to receive gifts from you just makes his heart so full especially when you also give him coins! + adds it to his collection

expect to see him putting some of your gifts on a special shelf in his office while your other gifts especially plushies are safely tucked in his bed (he sleeps hugging them)

as much as he loves receiving gifts from you, azul wants to give you with the same thought as you have - giving you the things that reminds him of you

"please my love, accept my gift. you've showered me so much love. it would be just fair if i also shower you the same"

💌 jade leech

at first jade was confused - why are you avoiding his eyes and hiding something behind your back?

"love, what are you hiding behind your back" "jade! funny thing, so the ghosts at the ramshackle dorm got me into knitting and so i was thinking maybe a scarf would be nice so-" "so this is a scarf you made for... me? i love it." "really?!"

giving you a little push was his best decision because before jade knew it - his room is covered with gifts from you

receiving something from you as well as seeing you smiling and happy is the best thing he could ever get as a gift

always show your gift to floyd every time to the point that the other eel start to whine to you about jade bragging

"jade cried?!" "yeah! he was wiping his tears after opening one of your letters with "open when you are happy"!" "he can cry...?"

he couldn't help it you know - receiving small trinkets to small envelops with letters from you? can a person could even love him more than this?

in return, jade would try to give you more practical gifts like the things that needs to be repaired back at your dorm, he would replace it with a functioning one! feeling cold and alone at night even when you are with grim - this eel will give you the most comfortable pillows and blankets and even gift grim a new bed!

"jade, i don't think i deserve it?" "nonsense, you deserve everything in this world has to offer."

💌 floyd leech

"floyd, do you have a moment?" "what's up shrimpy- oh, a shrimp brooch?" "i found it while going on shopping with grim earlier at sam's shop, i just thought you might like it."

like it? floyd loves it! you will never catch him not having that brooch on him every day + wears it like a medal

but there was so much more he didn't expect like you to have more under your sleeves!

"an explosion box for me? shrimpy, i thought you were busy this whole week?" "i did! but i will be never busy in creating and giving you something while i am away."

floyd is more like a physical touch giver but seeing you putting so much effort in your gifts - giving him from small to big valuable things it would be unfair if he doesn't give anything back (or so he thought)

this eel tried asking what you want only to receive vague answers

"what do you want shrimpy?" "i don't really need anything in return you know? i gave you gifts because i love to shower you with it." "so it's okay to also give you anything?"

and by mean of anything - you were in for a ride because you two meant things differently 😭

floyd is the type to always let you borrow his clothes from time to time and sometimes gifts you the same jacket for you to guys match + seeing an eel plushie? bought and giving it to you for you to hug your child every night (he said its your child now)

it doesn't take too long for both of you showering each other with gifts 😭 he never knew it would be this fun to think something for you

"you were looking at that necklace when we were walking around town, so i thought it would be a perfect fit for you. do you love it, shrimpy?"

[flamingpudding]

Fictober23 Prompt: 9 - "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Fandom: DPxDC

Rating: T

Warnings: Red Hood's swearing, mention of character death

Danny blinked a couple of times before he realized what exactly happened. He had been with Alfred making some cookies for the rest of the family after Oracle had reported they would all come back uninjured. And Danny had decided to help Alfred in hopes to get back on Damian's good side. The boy had been pretty short and huffy with him ever since Danny had admitted that he didn't plan on getting reinstated as hero.

The rest of the family had taken it sort or well, sure there were the occasional side comments in hopes to maybe convince him to come on patrol with one of them every now and then but otherwise his decision was greatly accepted. Alfred had appeared especially happy when Danny had announced that after having lived with the Waynes for little more than a year now.

Of course Phantom would still come out to help if his ghostly rogues decided to show up and pester his new family or Lady Gotham needed help with something or when Lazarus Pits were involved. But this certainly did not include a situation like that.

Looking down at his gloved hands, Danny breathed out a sigh of relief, noting that he had gotten summoned as Phantom at least. Pretransfomred. Last time he got summoned and had appeared shortly as plain old Danny before changing into Phantom, Tim, as Red Robin of course, had gaslighted the cultists into believing they hallucinated seeing Daniel 'Danny' Fenton-Wayne for a brief moment. The press still had a field day with the nonsense the arrested cultist spouted.

At least now they wouldn't have to deal with another media drama that could result in Vlad trying to fight Bruce for custody again. Still, Danny frowned, they had summoned him right out of a late night baking session with Alfred and knowing his family the way he does now it was only a matter of time before they all stormed this place or at least some of them.

Bruce had put a tracker on him specifically for this kind of situation, aside from the fact that he was also still pestering the Justice League Dark to find a way to stop it from happening in the first place.

"You do realize that you are in deep shit right?" The occult leader looked at Danny for only a short moment before continuing his spiel about how with the power of the summoned they would lead the world back to the balance it's supposed to have and bla bla bla. Being the Ancient of Balance Danny never thought he would even get summoned, aren't cultists in books more interested in evil demons, masters of chaos, Cthulhu and so on?

Knocking with his fist against the barrier lightly, the halfa noted that he would probably be stuck in place until his family showed up to disturb the chalk writing on the floor. For a moment he wondered if he should attempt to break out but then remembered the lecture Bruce had made him sit through the first time he broke a magical barrier and got injured in the process. It was probably better to wait.

"You know the last time I got summoned out of family time, one of my brothers went apeshit on the cultists." Danny continued to interrupt the leader's speech, just to be a little shit. He needed to pass the time somehow. Plus he wasn't lying. He had gotten summoned right out of movie night with his siblings, it's no understatement to say that they were not amused. Jason was especially pissed for some reason. "And the time before that it was my younger brother, that was a whole lot more bloody but no one died anyway in the end.

"Silence spirit of balance, you will listen to me. I was the one that summoned you."

"Yea… buddy that's not how this whole summoning thing actually works. You read a couple of fictional books." Danny retorted until he saw what the leader pulled out and flinched back.

How was that possible? Danny was sure that after his parents death, Bruce had bought all the rights of Fenton Works, including the patents and put it all in Danny's name no matter how much some tried to fight it. If it wasn't willed to Danny then Bruce had bought it. They had stopped any production of his parents' inventions, they had forced the GIW to cough up all the inventions they bought and then disband the governmental organization through the Justice League.

Of course Danny had known that some of his parents inventions were still on the black market and then there were also Vlads inventions but, the cult leader was holding up a Fenton bracelet Danny had specifically created for his brother to help him control the corrupted ectoplasm in his system until his treatment with Frostbite was done. How was it possible for them to get a hold of it? No wait it looked slightly modified from the one he made for his brother.

"This will make you listen to me." Danny's eye widened as he noticed a shard of a very familiar red crystal embedded in the bracelet when the leader waved it around triumphantly at Danny's reaction. It wasn't enough to brainwash him by simply holding it to his face but if he made direct contact with it? Danny wasn't so sure.

"How did you get that!"

"Oh not so mouthy anymore are we?"

His core quivered and all his eyes could do was focus on the red shiny stone as flashback ran through his mind as he pressed as far away from the leader as he could. His back hit the other end of the barrier he was in and Danny contemplated breaking the barrier and high speed flying home to the Wayne manor even if it risked injury.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." The calm but familiar voice broke Danny out of his panic as he saw a blade sneak around the leader's neck. Robin was standing right behind the man seemingly having appeared out of nowhere.

"Robin! B said to wait for his signal!" Another voice appeared and Danny heard the thud next to him with the flutter of a cape. Relieved, he turned his head ever so slightly to find Red Robin next to the barrier, looking unimpressed at the fact that Robin, from the looks of it, had run ahead of them once again.

Robin clicked his tongue and Danny finally relaxed enough to snicker at his siblings' banter. Before he could add in his own two cents to the banter a window crashed in and Red Hood added himself to the rescue party.

"Can't any of you follow a fucking plan?" The man announced his presence loudly while also landing boot first on some random cultist members. That instantly scattered, their stunned frozeness, caused by their leader getting held at blade point, broken now.

"You're one to talk. Since when do you simply follow B's plans anyway?" Red Robin huffed back, taking the bracelet from the leader as well as destroying the barrier seal with his boot by smudging the chalk writing.

"Point taken." The other answered as he started to knock out any cultist that was in his reach. Red Robin joined him once he gave Danny a look over and was certain that the barrier no longer existed.

Robin once more clicked his tongue causing Danny to look over, the leader now knocked out cold before his feed. "Phantom, you need to stop getting summoned by these incompetent…"

"Imbeciles!"

"Scoundrels!"

"Asshats!"

"Scum!"

"Fucktards!"

"Lunatics!"

"I do not require your input!" Robin shouted across the room at their older siblings that were currently giving the rest of the cult members the beat down of their life.

"Fruitloops?" Danny offered chuckling at the seething glare Robin directed at him for that and he lifted the palm of his hands in a sign of peace.

[aquasarsstuff]

Arrange Marriage ft. Lilia Vanrouge x gn!Reader part 4

Tags: Not for people who hates sweets, not proofread, twisted wonderland, fan fiction

Summary: You sneak away with Lilia, and you find what he has in store for you.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Masterlist

---

ʻʻI have eaten more than I need for today, Lilia,ʼʼ you tried to stop him from going to every stall he sees you stared for a second too long. In truth, you were more worried of draining his pockets than actually gaining weight.

ʻʻWith how harsh the weather is today; you might faint in this heat. I'll go get refreshments for us. There's a small queue, but the wait will be worth it. Let's go, before the line gets longer,ʼʼ he pulls your hand. This time, all your reasoning fell on deaf ears. You flap your hand over face. The roof of the stall only provided shade to the ones in in front. You looked down to see Lilia basking under your shade, using his short stature to see his advantage.

ʻʻDon't you feel stuffy with that hood on?ʼʼ you were already drowning in your sweat under the hood. It was only then when Lilia took a glance up to you that your realized he was blessed.

ʻʻNot only a face of a baby but also has a skin like one,ʼʼ you murmured under your breath.

"Hm?"

Curse whoever gave him sharp senses.

ʻʻI'll leave the decision of choosing the flavor to you,ʼʼ you said first before he can even ask.

ʻʻHow about this one? It's limited for this season, and the ice would help us cool off. Not to mention, the fruits added here are sweet and nutritious.ʼʼ

ʻʻSure, it sounds nice.ʼʼ

Lilia nodded and began talking to the vendor. As you both waited for your orders to be served, you find every crunch of ice satisfying as it's crushed the size of a salt. It was followed by a sweet smell that the fruits let out with every slice.

Your eyes almost shone with ebullience when you were handed the refreshment. You scooped a small piece out of the plastic cup. ʻʻMy expectations weren't that high... but I could now say that he has the skills to work for a rich family. I would definitely come back here. Thanks, Lilia. This is good.ʼʼ

ʻʻDid I just hear that right?ʼʼ

ʻʻWhat right?ʼʼ

ʻʻWas that a ʻthank youʼ I just heard from your lips? I thought I've just ascended and heard the angels singing at me,ʼʼ his lidded eyes bore into you while he takes a bite of his own dessert. You just raised one of your brows at him and turned to the vendor to hand him two silver taels.

ʻʻI was the the one who ask you out; I'm the one supposed to pay,ʼʼ he protested when the vendor took your payment..

ʻʻYou have quite the persistent lover. Let him have this one. Otherwise, you'll have to deal with his nonsense the whole day,ʼʼ the old man laughs and gave you back the money. Lilia happily pulled out a gold tael in his pocket and gave it to the vendor while you still in a daze from embarrassment.

ʻʻConsider the rest as a thanks for making my sweetcheeks satisfied,ʼʼ he placed his index finger on his lips. Lilia then tugged you out of your thoughts before the old man can protest with the large sum he bestowed upon him. He took your hand boldly and wrapped it around his.

ʻʻI can't eat with one hand, Lilia,ʼʼ you squirmed out of his hold, but his deft fingers were quick to hold your palms against his.

ʻʻNo can do, sweetcheeks!ʼʼ

ʻʻThe ice won't last long under this weather. I don't want to munch on a puddle of water. ʼʼ

He leads you to an open space. There were a few acacias trees planted across the area, providing shade to the grassy land below. He plopped into the ground, patting the space beside him and beckoning you to sit there.

ʻʻI'm not sitting on soil.ʼʼ

ʻʻHow about this?ʼʼ he began to unclasp his hood.

ʻʻDon't. You'll get your robes dirty,ʼʼ you walked to the spot he invited you at and laid your back onto the rough bark of the tree, finally getting to enjoy your dessert.

Lilia glanced at you and then above you. He grinned when an idea popped in his head. He asked you to hold his food, and you didn't miss how his hands lingered on yours far longer. A few seconds later, you yelped.

The culprit laughed at you as your feet dangled below the soft grass.

ʻʻLilia! Let me down!ʼʼ you glared at him, unable to do anything with both of your hands occupied.

ʻʻNow now. Don't screech too loud, you might disrupt the sleep of our little hosts,ʼʼ he hoisted you up to a branch. When you were able to balance, Lilia climbed the tree to join you. You didn't mind the company, preferring this way to eat your dessert.

You almost tried to take a bite out of your spoon when you realized the one you're holding was different from what was in front of you. Lilia was looking at you expectantly.

ʻʻYou've already used that, Lilia.ʼʼ

ʻʻI have no infectious diseases currently or,ʼʼ he leaned closer to you. ʻʻYou're worried that I will be able to read your thoughts. This is your chance to kiss me,ʼʼ he closes his eyes and maneuvered his pouting lips to your face. Without thinking, you shoved the spoon he offered earlier to his throat.

ʻʻI'm engaged.ʼʼ

ʻʻEven better. You'll make your dearest fiancé be happy if you practice with me. Besides, the more taboo, the sweeter it is to do, don't you think?ʼʼ

ʻʻNo.ʼʼ

His brows furrowed at your rejection. He exaggeratedly pursued out his lips that it was almost comical. A small laugh escaped you.

---

A/N: Sorry if this one took longer. I didn't like the first scene I made in my draft, so I rewrite it again, but it just didn't work out, so I removed it in my final output. I'm glad I did because I feel much better sharing this one with you guys. This series will probably go longer than I intended. I'm also a reader, so I know the feeling of reading something good, only for it to be cut short 😭 I hope you like this chapter as I do 🤭❤️. Enjoy reading!

[xoxochb]

— the perfect universe

warnings: pre marriage, angst with tons of fluff pairing: apollo x daughter of aphrodite and ares a/n: do ya’ll know that one scene in young sheldon when mary was losing her faith because that one girl died and then sheldon sits on the porch swing with her and he’s like “there’s (something) billion people on the earth what are the odds that you’re the perfect mom for me?” or something like that well I’m rewatching the show right now and I wanted to write something using that quote so here we are sorry for yapping hope you enjoy this 🫶🏼

back, forth, back, and forth, and back again. the silence of the slight breeze and your silky nightdress brushing against the stairs is all that fills your ears. the sun god’s hands rub over your knuckles slowly, taking his time going over each one as to keep you aware of his comfort. you close your eyes and take in a deep breath, letting it out as slow as humanly possible. you restrict the tears brewing in your eyes from streaming down your cheeks. a large pit had formed in your stomach when you had awoken this morning, throughout the entirety of the day it hadn’t left your body. the thoughts, the voices, scolding you for every stupid decision you make. “he’s going to leave you” “you’re going to end up alone” “what kind of god would settle down with an idiotic goddess like you?” “what speciality to you have?”

you couldn’t physically or mentally understand why these voices took up your mind. but what if he did hate you? what if he thought you had gotten hideous since your first meeting? what if he had already met another women more beautiful than you?

breathe. in, and out, he’s here, he loves you, it’s okay

“look at me, darling”

you open your eyes as soon as the sound waves travel to your ears, turning to apollo, meeting his golden eyes as asked. he cups your cheek with his free hand and pulls your head to rest over his chest, placing a kiss to your hair. he rests that same hand on your back and rubs up and down with the patterns of your breath

at last, he speaks again, “did you know if the universe was slightly more powerful the world would collapse?”

you take in his statement. since when was the god of the sun interested in outer space? you shake your head regardlesss

“and did you know if it was slightly less powerful the earth would fly away?”

you furrow your brows and lift your head up from his chest. “where are you going with this?”

“well gravity is exactly where it’s supposed to be. any less or any more and earth would cease to exist. what are the odds of that?”

“get to the point, please” you whisper and roll your teary eyes

“there’s eight billion people on this earth and you’re the perfect lover for me. what are the odds of that?”

your lips quiver, and for only a quick second you can hold back tears before your eyes deceive you and you let out an uncontrollable sob, returning your head back to its spot on his chest. you clutch at the fabric of his clothes, and release wherever water was left in your body until you had finally calmed down, every breath still shaky as you return to a normal state. you sigh and lift your head again to find the god already looking over at you

you sigh before speaking, “I don’t know why you’re so persistent to prove you love me when any other god would have moved on by now”

“the other gods haven’t been granted with the ability to know what it’s like to be in love. real love”

“you can’t love me. you of all gods”

“listen, my love” he removes both hands from around you and cups your face between them, kissing each tear that drops “if I have to bind my soul to the river styx to prove to you I will never love another woman for the rest of my life then so be it”

“you’re immortal, you’re bound to find-”

“darling, as much as I love nothing more than listening to your voice, I loathe when you use it to speak such nonsense”

“will you do it? bind your soul?”

“I would do it whether or not you trusted I’ll never love anyone else”

a shaky breath escapes your mouth. you accept his statement, aware he’s entirely telling the truth about doing what he pleases to make you happy regardless of how you feel it may harm him. slowly, but surely eventually— your lips both meet in the middle, to a kiss that would say more than words ever could (actions do speak louder than words as the mortals say). and the next morning, a vow and a binding would be made to cement tonight’s words

[ohimsummer]

you wake up in an AIRPORT…

— mentions of death, an interpretation of limbo/the afterlife??, poly! stsg x reader, slight angst (comfort ending), this is a bunchhhh of word vomit so not proofread (prob a lil nonsensical too) idrc :3

there are bright lights when your eyes flutter open, and you’re originally left with the vague thought of ‘when did I go to sleep?’.

thinking on it harder, you recall a calm sensation of fading away, even though everything around you was anything but; raging blue oceans which lulled you to sleep, the frantic tone of a usually collected voice, and the suffocating feeling of being squeezed. someone begging you not to close your eyes but you were just so tired. surely a little nap couldn’t hurt? so you go to sleep, and wake up in an airport.

you chalk it up to just being a dream, even though everything is so vivid and real. the entire building is empty, void of any life besides decorative plants and yourself. speakers murmur out song lyrics, ones that don’t even reach the walls of the room but you can’t seem to make them out, anyway. it’s strange, and a little creepy; it feels like a liminal space.

time passes, though you only know that due to the hands of the clock. daytime never seems to end. you grow to miss the sunsets, sunrises, the company of other people. you miss your boyfriends, suguru and satoru, and your friends, shoko and utahime and nanami. you wonder how they’re doing and if they’re okay. where are they? how long are you going to be stuck in this airport?

haibara is the first person you meet in a while. he’s the same as when you last saw him: wide, gleaming eyes that hold such eagerness and enthusiasm, accompanied by a big, welcoming smile. he walks through the door and those big, brown eyes light up at the sight of you.

“l/n!”, he greets you with open arms, engulfing you in a hug. “i can’t believe it’s you!”

his company is welcome, you’re glad to finally have someone here with you. haibara livens things up for a while, trails behind like a loyal dog to accompany you around the building. you show him around this place, every nook and cranny you’ve long memorized since coming to inhabit here. the gift shop where you can now name every single item, the various cafes and restaurants with food that never seems to spoil, though hunger leaves you be, anyway. 

more time passes. nothing changes, but haibara never seems to grow bored, always excited to talk about something or other. he’s talking about shoko and gojo and geto and he mentions how they haven’t really been the same since a mission from a couple years prior, due to someone dying. you realize what you’re doing here now. and it sucks, it makes your stomach hurt, but now he’s chattering about the dessert he ate with nanami the day before he arrived here, and you can’t bring yourself to ask about further details relating to yourself.

one day, your heart threatens to leap out of your chest. haibara has wandered off to look for something to do, so he misses the next guest who enters. but you don’t. and you watch suguru walk through.

familiar, violet eyes widen at the sight of you, and neither of you speak as he approaches. it’s slow, cautious, almost like he’s afraid you’ll run away if he reaches you too quickly. he looks older than when you last saw him. hair a little longer, body a little more matured. eyes a little more tired.

“mind telling me what you’re doing here so early, sir?” you tilt your head at him, a smile pulling at the corners of your lips.

he returns your grin. a hand rubs through his longer, black mane, other one tucked into his pocket, and he looks away before answering, “i maybe fucked up. just a little.”

you pat the spot beside you. “okay, suguru, come tell me about it.”

and he does tell you about it. explains his reasons, his motives, your death playing a huge part in the decision. his endgame, his loss, his last conversation with satoru. part of you is regretful and heartbroken that gojo’s alone out there now. another—selfish—part of you is elated that at least one of them is here with you again.

“there’s a plane outside.” suguru points it out through the huge, towering windows. he’s silent afterwards.

“yeah.” you sigh. “i don’t want to get on, yet.”

he hums, tightens his laced fingers through yours. there’s a silent agreement between you two, one to keep waiting for as long as it takes.

nanami joins you three next. he doesn’t look confused like you did when you first arrived, just resigned. there’s a change in his expression at the sight of you, and suguru, and haibara. like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders. he gives you two a short greeting before haibara is swooping him away to show him around the airport, departing with a smile and a wave as the boy begins talking his ear off. nanami looks at peace.

“he’s taking forever.” you giggle, leaning a head on suguru’s shoulder.

“well, you don’t want him in here too quickly, do you?” geto tilts his own head to rest atop yours, black strands tickling your nose. he’s good at masking his own anticipation.

the clock ticks again, and you and suguru wait patiently in each other’s company. sometimes you two grow bored and opt to nibble on the various treats or food in the surrounding stores. or try on the different clothing adorning the racks inside the gift shops. never too far, always within view of that main area and the entrance. watching, waiting for your third piece.

it feels like ages before anyone else arrives. geto’s about to doze off in your lap before you’re patting him awake, nudging his shoulder and he can just feel this sense of urgency in your actions.

“well, look who finally decided to show up!”

there is a familiar laughter that follows your statement. suguru’s eyes find the source immediately, a snowy-haired young man casually waltzing towards you both with hands tucked into his pockets.

“sorry to keep my darlings waiting for so long.” gojo leans down to give you a peck on the lips, and then geto another on the forehead. “must’ve been pretty boring without your favorite person here.”

geto sighs, sits up. “maybe a little.”

satoru’s grin widens. “aww, see, i knew you guys missed m—!”

he’s cut off by both of you grabbing at his arms, tugging him forward to sit between you two. his hands move to wrap around either of your waists, pulling you both in as you pepper kisses on his cheek and geto nuzzles into his collar.

“we did miss you, satoru.” you whisper against his skin. you can’t tell if the wetness is from his tears or yours. “took you long enough to get here.”

he presses a kiss to your nose. “are you saying you wanted me to die sooner?”

“whatever it takes.” suguru teases him.

gojo pouts at him. “oh you guys suck.” but the tender look in his eyes disagree.

the airport has a new feel to it now. like you’ve overstayed your welcome at someone’s home.

“let’s get on the plane.”, satoru gazes at the huge aircraft out on the runway. “what are we still doing here?”

“you don’t wanna look around before we go?” your steps are staggered beneath gojo’s heavy weight on your body. “and god, you’re just as clingy as I remember.“

“i think i have a right to be.” he doesn’t say more, but you understand where he’s coming from. if he or suguru had died in your arms, you’d be melting into them too when you reunited.

“there’s lots of sweets in the shops.,” suguru mentions. “wanna at least grab some before we go?”

that grabs gojo’s attention, and he sprints into the nearest gift shop to stuff his pockets full. they’re comically large at the end of his rampage, lumpy and bulging and he’s adamant on filling both you and suguru’s pockets as well.

“oh, come on, you have so much space in there!” gojo chases geto, leaving a trail of candy behind as the other tries to protect his empty pockets. “get back here!”

“get the hell away from me, satoru!”, suguru laughs behind him, and their shenanigans make you giggle. it feels like centuries since you’ve last had this, the privilege of seeing their silly antics and being in their company, hogging their embrace like you’ll have to leave them again. but this is it. now it’ll never end.

tagz: @staryukis @anthoosies @hellkaiserinphoenix @astral-hydromancy @flvffybunny @exinqiu @luvr-exe @reallifepearl @purplegemadventures @roseqzpd @sataraxia @trafalgarrattata @snackeyalleyjuice @apatauaia @leilalilox @getouolgy @elleflying07 @ha-zel-art @ratedrrrr @mynahx3 @ivy-vivii @squishies0102 @peachyaone @kayleegomez @zzzlevislothzzz @starsharkz @manic-bongwater @froggkat @idkluvv

[atopvisenyashill]

not to keep harping on but definitely the complaint i see that really sticks in my craw is that the only reason or the main reason robb planned to banish catelyn to seaguard was because of their argument over jon. it’s certainly a factor but they have spent the entire war arguing over every decision robb makes! ned tells robb “keep your mother in your council” but robb really does not! he has her there, yes, he lets her speak, yes, but oftentimes he will disregard her advice without any appeasement, misstep badly, and be worse off politically in the exact way she warned him of. she’s not the only person he blows off - he’s not exactly nice to edmure either, for example - but cat is right when she suspects there’s an element of “kings are not supposed to have mothers” and “wedded to his war" and she clocks this long before the argument over jon! robb tries to get rid of her at the beginning of a clash of kings when all cat has done is urge him to continue peaceful negotiations with the lannisters!

robb is angry because he’s in over his head and he knows it, and it's got very little to do with jon! robb is losing this war and his best friend was the son of a man who crowned himself and lost the war!! robb knows exactly what’s going to happen to the north if he loses and despite everything, he cannot seem to win despite being a near prodigy in battle tactics. and here his mother has been this whole time, fighting him on every front - just like the lords but he cant punish them for disagreeing can he? - and being so frustratingly right about more things than his lords, and now they’re picking at this wound in their family that has never been allowed to heal and a lot of resentment that both robb and catelyn are feeling at their general situation gets focused in on each other. this is such a tully thing too (pls remember these are canonically unpleasant people!) because look at lysa projecting years of resentment onto sansa, look at the entire cat, hoster, edmure situation, or even hoster & blackfish’s relationship. family is so important to them but in times of stress, “doing everything for family” becomes an anchor pulling them down, until the only thing left is to lash out at each other.

most of the lords are happy to let this nonsense play out! catelyn does not even have the privilege maege & dacey mormont do at being head of their own house - she’s just a wife, just a mother, just a first born daughter. when she disagrees, they don’t see an equal arguing with them, they see a woman sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong. they do not give a single solitary shit about like, ~the plight of bastards~ they just believe, like robb, that sansa is currently “tainted” by her marriage to a lannister and can’t be allowed to inherit, that arya is dead, that the boys are dead, that jeyne is not yet pregnant, and a bastard boy castle raised who looks like ned is better than no boy at all (see edric storm, addam of hull, and larence snow). these men have not spent the last fourteen years cooking in their resentment over this situation the way catelyn and robb have!

jon is a reason. but so is rickard karstark, jaime lannister, willem lannister, tion frey, renly baratheon, walder frey, and theon greyjoy. ned is a reason as well, and bran, sansa, rickon, arya, hoster, edmure, perhaps even lysa and sweetrobin. jon is the final straw but robb isn’t (only) sending catelyn away because of some righteous fury on his brother’s behalf! he’s sending her away because she is an easy, socially acceptable target for all his frustrations and failures and fears that he can project on, and punish, in a way he cannot punish his enemies, his lords, or himself.

and catelyn is as always very aware of the deeper motivations in her son’s mind, and resentful that she doesn’t have the power to push back; she’s just a mother, after all.

[jnnul]

peaches

sum.: when you pie your [really-hot] neighbor in the face on accident, you never imagine that you’re gonna have to be wheeling him to the hospital because who the fuck is allergic to peaches? yang jungwon, apparently. but you come to learn that yang jungwon is so much more than his unfortunate allergy to peaches and his pretty face and you’re stuck wondering if falling in love with someone you can’t have is worth it.

word count: 2.9k

tags: this one’s sad bois, bullet fic, like ngl, when i was planning this one, i teared up a little bit, sorry in advance tw: major character death, terminal illness, just...not meant for the weak-hearted

a/n: literally all i can say i’m sorry :( can’t believe my first fic for jungwon is this sad nonsense i conjured up literally last year

you didn’t mean to pie your extremely attractive neighbor in the face

and you definitely didn’t mean to have to take him to the hospital because apparently, your hot neighbor was allergic to peaches

who’s fucking allergic to peaches?

yang jungwon, apparently

you didn’t even know what he looked like until you had to drive him to the hospital in your stupid beat up toyota bc his face was bright red and splotchy

and he kept itching it

which then meant that you had to swat at his hand every so often

it was not the first impression you wanted to make on such a pretty man

you vividly remember sitting in the waiting room, knee bouncing in fear that you may have accidentally killed the hottest man you’ve ever seen in your life

or that you would have to pay his hospital bills for the rest of his life

fuck american healthcare (and the collegiate system)

only to find out that he was absolutely fine. in fact. he knew the doctor there. not only did he know the doctor. he worked for the doctor. 

he had insurance.

you had been betrayed.

not really. you didn’t exactly give him a chance to tell you that you didn’t need to take out a debt creating loan to pay his hospital bills

you were too busy trying not to cry as you sped down the interstate in hopes that your decision to take the toyota instead of paying another $4000 for the ambulatory fee was the correct decision

it was.

so when jungwon walks out with an itemized bill and a sheepish, almost silly smile, you nearly fall to your knees in gratitude in the middle of the waiting room

you’re pretty sure that some of those people are convinced jungwon beat cancer bc of the relief on your face when you see the 0 next to copay on the bill

you could kiss jungwon but his face still looks a little too splotchy to be doing that

and you tell him as much but he just laughs, shaking his head a little bit

“so you’re saying you would kiss me if i didn’t look so splotchy?”

“i’m saying i’m going to kiss your insurance provider and i’m switching mine to yours today.”

anyway

after nearly losing your hot neighbor to justin bieber’s hit song, you finally start getting closer to him

it turns out that you had meant to pie yours and jungwon’s mututal friend and down the hall neighbor, jake sim, from whom he was renting out the apartment for the summer

but jake had the reflexes of a fucking ninja and had ducked and jungwon had the privilege of being pied instead

you had knocked on jake’s door and as soon as someone opened the door, you pied them with no thoughts and no turnback

jungwon had opened the door though, and the rest was history

you guys had a very neighborly relationship

jungwon would come home after a long day of summer classes, internships, and work and you cook jungwon (peach-less) baked goods that he could die for

and when you would complain abt your broke ass, he would buy enough groceries for the two of you and you would go to his place or he would come to yours

the stubborn struggling artist in you always protested

“i can’t let you buy this for me! groceries are so expensive nowadays!”

“if it makes you feel better, these aren’t organic. in fact that avocado looks like it’s on life support.”

“...”

but you also end up coming over to his place whenever he has a quick repair or smth bc the landlord doesn’t know a screw from a lightbulb

so he insists that it all cancels out in the end

but you hates taking jungwon’s help (or any help in general you stubborn ass)

so you got onto the summer job hunt grind

but it was pretty late, almost the middle of june, and not many places were hiring

thankfully, jake sim was loaded

and he was going to europe for the rest of the summer

randomly

bc apparently that’s what rich people do

so you were able to take his role temporarily at the local dance studio that jake taught at

not that jake needed the money

but he said smth about “passing on the passion” and “encouraging the next generation of dancers”

you kinda stopped listening once you saw pics of him in leotards that left nothing to the imagination

scrubbing the mental image from your mind was hard enough

you weren’t the best ballet dancer, but you had danced for 10 years in contemporary before a foot injury knocked you out of dancing for good

so you definitely had the experience (and a semi-healed foot) that you needed

and besides! as an education major, you needed experience with working with students anyway

or at least that’s what you tell yourself

because you forget how terrifying little human beings are until you step into the studio

and every single one of them is wearing some lululemon or aritzia variation

and you’re...kinda just wearing your old tights and a loose shirt

not in a quirky “i’m not like other dancers” type of way

a more humble “i can’t afford luxury brands” type of way

no shame in the college grind game

but other than the fact that you felt like you were on an episode of dance moms every day, the classes weren’t that bad

the kids were pretty polite and they generally didn’t really mind that they had a new teacher - although one of them did say that jake was really good eye candy

and that you were gorgeous but not really their type

hey. you’re gorgeous. you’re everyone’s type. in fact, they’d be lucky if you were one’s type.

but you’re also thankful bc it’d be really awkward if your prepubescent students had a crush on you...

speaking of crushes

jungwon was fucking oblivious to yours

he says shit that makes you think that he’s caught on

that he knows that you would cosplay anastasia steele for the rest of your life if it meant he went for a roll in the hay with you

or you know, took you out on a nice, romantic date

you don’t really know how it works nowadays

but every time you think you’ve been discovered, he proceeds to completely do a 180

one time, the two of you were sitting on the couch watching, aptly enough, the notebook

when jungwon leans over incriminatingly, close enough to kiss you and you’re just about to turn your head, excited that jungwon has decided to make the first move

only for him to grab the remote and turn up the volume

which, in hindsight, does nothing to confirm that jungwon feels the same way about you as you feel about him

but it doesn’t really matter

we live in a delusional world and you’re the reigning monarch so it all works in your head

but other than the fact that you were most definitely crushing on your neighbor

the two of you were basically inseparable

it was like some higher being wanted you to suffer

bc you and jungwon got along SO WELL

and he just...didn’t even connect the dots

or if he did, he didn’t say anything about the tension between you two (that you might’ve accidentally somewhat have made up)

but all in all, jungwon and you had a pretty nice summer

some days you’d go to the beach and just watch the stars while drinking beers

some days you’d go to the little kiddie theme park that the neighboring town has just because their fried ice cream was insanely good

“we’re probably going to get diabetes, three different heart conditions, and certified obesity from these things.”

“...well the universe shouldn’t have made the human body too weak for fried ice cream then.”

“has it ever crossed your mind that fried ice cream simply should just not exist?”

“never.”

that summed up pretty much your entire friendship with jungwon

but no matter how close you became with him, it still felt like he was holding himself back a little bit - although, it killed you, you understood

for starters, he’d disappear off the face of the planet for two or three days before coming back to you with the same calm yet insane energy that only jungwon could carry

on top of that, he seemed to be losing a lot of weight lately - which was probably what was leading to the hair loss as well

and whenever you guys weren’t hanging out, he was pretty much always at the hospital

you’d mentioned gently a couple times that you were worried for him bc you were worried that his job was working him too hard (so as to not tip him off)

(hence the long hours at the hospital and the weight/hair loss)

but jungwon always gave you a tight smile and changed the subject

so you slowly learned to just drop it and not push him

you had no clue that jungwon was struggling with how to tell you the truth behind all those hours and the weight loss

you had no clue that jungwon was head over heels in love with you

you, y/n l/n, were completely unaware that jungwon knew exactly how you felt because he felt the same exact way

you had no clue that you were catching feelings for the terminally ill jungwon yang - according to jungwon yang

jungwon had liked you from the beginning, honestly

the almost comical way you fretted over him when you accidentally pied him, only to see rashes on his neck

the way that your eyes would light up when you were talking about how you wanted to teach

the way that your nose crinkled when jungwon brought home asparagus for you to experiment with one day

the way your eyes fall to his lips and then back up hurriedly, as if you’re scared that he’s going to find out you like him the same way that he likes you

which he does.

but jungwon yang also has terminal cancer.

which meant that he was absolutely never going to tell you about his feelings and let you tell him about yours

because he didn’t want to know that when he left this earth, he left someone who loved him behind on it

he’s scared

he’s scared that you wouldn’t move on (was that his ego speaking? perhaps)

or that you wouldn’t understand why jungwon had taken so long to acknowledge his feelings

or worst of all, jungwon was so fucking terrified that you would leave his side if you knew that he had terminal cancer

because that’s a burden that not many people were willing to take on voluntarily

so he stuff his feelings down deep into his stomach, where his heart can’t reach them

and it is the one thing that he regrets most

little does he know that you’re well aware of the fact that jungwon had cancer

jake had called you one day, out of breath and shaken to the core with worry

his friend jungwon had called jake and collapsed mid-call, three days before you met jungwon officially, and the line had gone silent

jake had begged you to drive jungwon to the hospital

which you obviously did, the second you found jake’s spare key

and managed to haul jungwon into your beat up toyota

and even in his semi-conscious state, you couldn’t help but think that he was the most gorgeous person that you’d ever seen in your life

and that you really wanted to get to know him

jungwon never knew that you were the one who had driven him to the hospital, since jake was the only one in the room when he awoke, finding out from the doctor that he had collapsed due to the toll of treatment on his body

you’d instructed jake to keep the news of you driving jungwon a secret

jungwon’s cancer wasn’t exactly public information, and you hated to think that jungwon would have a certain impression of you and that you’d never be able to speak to him normally

which is why you figure that jungwon simply just doesn’t want to want anyone at this point in his life

but you can’t help it

you like him so much that it starts to hurt

and you have to let it out

you have to tell him just how much you love him

before the love starts eating you from inside out

jungwon is silent when you blurt it out one day, while the two of you are standing in the kitchen, cooking with a random louis armstrong song playing in the background

you’re somewhat aware of what jungwon is going to say before he says it

but you let him say it anyway

“i’m not sure i want to get into a relationship right now.”

“that’s fine. i didn’t tell you because i wanted you to respond; i told you because i wanted you to know that i like you. a lot.”

the louis armstrong song just continues to play and the two of you continue to cook in silence

it never grows awkward between the two of you

even with your feelings out in the open, everything stays the same

the two of you still tiptoe the line of friends and something more without ever crossing over to the other side

until that one day

jungwon had planned to finally put his big boy pants on and tell you how he feels

fuck the cancer

fuck his hesitation

fuck everything

he just wanted you to know that he liked you too

and that you were the reason why he was still smiling and dancing his way through this summer, even though he’d thought that he wouldn’t be able to smile like that anymore

he was all ready too

he’d gotten you flowers, put on your favorite song and cooked you your favorite food

he pushes down the funny feeling in his stomach that had been bugging him for the past couple of days, chalking it up to nerves because he was finally acting on his feelings

but that would be the nail in the coffin

the last thing that jungwon remembered was the feeling of swaying before falling to the floor, seeing jake sim’s shoes run over to where he was

and then everything went black

when jungwon woke up, the doctor had to inform him once again that he had collapsed

that the funny feeling in his stomach was no silly joke, but the cancer attacking him from inside out aggressively

they tell him that they had to perform emergency surgery to replace his kidney, which was damaged beyond repair, something that no one had been able to trace previously

he was lucky, the doctor said to them

there was a patient who was in a car crash in the operating next to him and the kidney had been in perfect condition

the doctor continued, saying how lucky jungwon was that the kidney had been compatible for his body, stating that the likelihood of his body being able to beat the cancer that had been destroying him increasing significantly

but jungwon isn’t listening

everything felt wrong.

jungwon could feel it in his heart

it wasn’t right

he swallows and asks the doctor the name of the patient

but he knows the doctor cannot reveal information like that

it doesn’t matter

once he sees jake burst through the doors, tears streaming down his cheeks, jungwon knows

“it was her, wasn’t it.”

jake just falls to his knees, sobs wracking his body and the doctor sees himself out

“she wanted me to tell you that she was happy that it was her before you.”

jungwon just falls back against the pillow, staring up the ceiling, unable to feel or think of anything

he just felt numb

even at your funeral, just a week later, jungwon is unable to think

he’s numb

completely frozen

unable to move on

and when he’s asked to pay his respects, all he can do is touch your coffin, his tears finally falling

“i’m so grateful you pied me in the face that day, y/n. i wish i had - i wish i had told you, i like you too. and i’ll get pied in the face with a truckload of peaches if it meant that you could come back to me. to come back to me to at least let me tell you that i like you. the same way you like me.”

he laughed cynically through his tears.

“you don’t have to respond. i just wanted to tell you because i wanted you to know that i like you. a lot.”

jungwon never falls in love again after that, unable to forget the memories the two of you had shared in that short but sweet summer.

and every year, on the year that you’d given your life to jungwon, he eats a peach pie, wishing that you were there to chide him and eat it with you, louis armstrong playing in the background

[leonw4nter]

Don't Go To Sleep, Don't Rest Your Head

Dad!RE6!Leon x F!Reader

This is a sequel to Holding Our Dreams As You Lie To Rest. Use of D/N for Daughter's Name.

Oh, how tiny his beloved daughter was; when all 7 pounds of her could fit snugly in the nook of his arm; when she could still sit on his broad shoulders and feel the sky beneath her tiny fingers, the only weight he proudly bore on shoulders that usually held humanity’s suffering; when she would be carried home in his arms whenever she grew tired from walking. He missed being able to hold the world in his arms, push her stroller, and help her with the laces of her shoes but she’s a big girl now, ready to take on life outside of the comforts of her home, beyond her father’s reach.

“Honey, call me if you need anything okay?” Leon repeats for the nth time that day, arms crossed as he looks over her things again.

“Yes dad, I will. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.” she reiterates. Her smile boasts confidence, sure of herself that she can do this away from her comfort zone.

Leon’s heart squeezes a bit, the transition from “daddy” to simply “dad” making him feel a bit more sentimental though he swears it’s just him missing his little miracle before she’s even really left.

“Remember: no boys and no excessive drinking. Got it?” he sternly adds as he gently strokes her hair. Hair that reminded him of her mother in every way possible.

“Yes, dad. No boys and no drinking–”

“And no caving in to reckless behavior. Also, careful with sororities; they can do more harm than good. Find friends who are up to the standards you set for yourself,” Leon adds.

His daughter groans slightly before nodding, promising she won’t do any of the things Leon doesn’t want her to do.

“Dad, I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do, okay? I’ll be fine. Besides, I’m grown now. I’m perfectly capable of making sound decisions, I’m not a little girl anymore.”

“Nonsense, you’ll always be my little girl no matter what,” Leon retorts with a teasing grin as he practically fights the tears threatening to spill from his waterline, bringing her in for one last papa bear hug before sending her off to college. Though she won’t admit it, she knew that deep down she’ll always be his little girl; he would always be there for her– for every victory and for every frustration. Just yesterday Leon was guiding her hand in writing her name for the first time; life is certainly a fickle little thing.

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Not less than a few months later, Leon and his team are deployed for a mission. Leon’s faced plenty of outbreaks, always expecting the same outcome: mass casualty and the loss of members on his team but this mission unsettles him the most; the outbreak parameter encompasses where his daughter studies and currently lives in and judging from the intel provided by his superiors and news outlets, things are looking very grim for the inhabitants of that city. He’s tried phoning her multiple times and her signs of activity are short bursts, her responses being quick and short; many times she’s messaged that a call wouldn’t be safe because there’s “creatures” that react to even the faintest sound. The first time she sent that message, Leon immediately got up to pack his things and head to the headquarters to deploy himself into that mission, breaking his daughter’s rule on not letting him go on far missions. He swore to her mother that he would not let anything get to their daughter and he is bent on keeping this promise up, at the cost of his own life if this is how the situation plays out. Finally, their choppers arrive at the area and once again, everything is reminiscent of Raccoon City and Tall Oaks; cars littering the streets, burning fires scattered on the damp road, closed shops, and bloodied roads. Not a single noise can be heard and not a single sign of life can be detected; it doesn’t take dying to see Hell when you are standing right in the middle of the decay of a city, once bustling with life. Leon recognizes the place, spotting a signage with chipping paint nearby, displaying all the top locations in that city like malls, zoos, hospitals, and colleges. “Fuck, I’m only 15 minutes away from D/N.” he thinks. He contemplates moving to where her dorm is but he knows she’s smarter than that; she’s moved somewhere safer. He taught her after all, she learned from one of the best agents in the D.S.O. Mumbling a quick prayer, he reaches into his phone and tries to contact her number and prays that her ringtone doesn’t go off mid-escape. After waiting for a few minutes, she doesn’t pick up. Once more, his worry grows as he notices that she was last active 2 days ago. Their team is given instruction to start moving so they move, keeping their footfalls light and as muted as possible to avoid drawing attention to them.

Night fell and the sun rose, a warm glow cast over the shell of a city’s former glory. All night, Leon and his partner had walked around the place but not seeing any survivors, only more of the infected. Though they had wandered around the city almost all night long, there was a spot that they hadn’t gone to yet. Walking over to an abandoned apartment complex, Leon hears faint taps against a wall. The taps were rhythmic, an intentional beat created with each tap; soon, a hoarse voice calling for help could be heard, his heart lodging itself in his throat. Him and his partner split up, inspecting different floors before meeting up once again. He climbs the stairs, his heart feeling more like a ticking time bomb than an actual organ. He inspects each room, a keen eye not missing a single detail until he reaches an empty apartment with doors broken down.

“Dad!” He hears her, he hears his girl. His feet take him where he hears her voice, nothing else in the world mattering besides coming to her rescue and getting her out of that hellhole. He finally sees her and pulls her in for a hug, a hand coming up to cradle the back of her head as he presses kisses to the crown of her head. A part of him feels relieved to have found her still breathing but another part of him feels like a failure for exposing her to the world’s ugly side, a side he never dreamt of ever showing to her.

“Honey, a-are you alright?” he worriedly asks as he scans her up and down. Her clothes are torn and there's a bloody spot somewhere in her knee then he sees it: a fresh bite.

“D/N, we have to move now. There’s a vaccine that’s on trials right now and so far it’s doing good on tests so I’m going to have you vaccinated, okay? We’ll get out alive, you’ll be fine. Keep that bite covered for me, sweetie.”

He presses one more kiss against her forehead, not missing how cold she’s gotten and almost all color from her face disappearing. She looks at him through glossy eyes, nodding before wrapping her arm around his neck as he helps her out of the spot.

“I’ve located my daughter. She’s a survivor, send medical help.” he radioes.

“I’ve got you, sweetie. Stay strong, we got this right?” he softly asks with a weak grin.

“Y-yeah. W-we… do…” she mumbles, her response almost coming out in a whisper.

She doesn’t have much time left before the infection progresses; her temperature is dropping fast, her eyes are turning pinker with each moment, and her pulse is absolutely speeding so he does his best to urge her to hurry. Finally, they’re out of the building and near the extraction point.

He turns to face D/N to tell her that they’re almost there but is instead met with a low groan. A groan similar to that of the infected. One look at the greenish tinge to her skin is enough to tell him about his daughter’s current situation. D/N lifts her head up, cloudy irises zeroing in on Leon’s neck as the smell of death emanates from her bloodied mouth.

“D/N, please, hold on just a little longer– we’re almost there–” Leon persuaded her. He looked into her eyes again and saw a tiny flicker of his little girl flash on irises that grew even cloudier with each moment– scared and confused. She’s holding on, for his and her sake. She’s hanging by a thin thread but she knows she has her dad to pull her back up and deliver her from this hell; he’ll always protect her. Leon is not a man to break promises.

Despite being a few steps away from the extraction point, there isn’t a chopper or armored car in sight. D/N emits another low groan, this time much louder than earlier. With each movement of her mouth, he can hear the audible clicking of her jaw. She pulls away from him hastily, keeping her head away from his vision so he wouldn’t see the state of utter decay and decomposition her face is morphing into. The face, where her dearly departed mother lived through, is now morphing into a mass of bloody growths and putrid boils; it’s as if she’s defacing the face who carried her for a long nine months, a mockery of the love her father and mother shared. She felt immense guilt for failing to keep herself safe, putting her father into a state of more turmoil but she can’t stop it; no longer can she continue to keep the urge to dive in to a nice, warm neck at bay. Before she can get a chance to hold herself back and try to grapple with her humanity, a switch is turned. Gone is the sweet, loving, and saintly girl there was days ago.

“D/N? D/N, listen to me. Listen to my voice–” Leon says but his words are cut off when she pounces at him, teeth bared to try and yank out his innards.

Tears spill from his face, blurring his vision. How cruel must fate be that out of all the possibilities his little girl could make her exit from this world, this undignified death is what is set for her. His gun is right by his side and with a simple pull of a trigger, another infected is gone but this is not another infected, she’s his daughter. She’s his flesh and blood, the personification of two souls who loved in one. She is the parting gift of his Y/N, the maker of all his dreams. He can’t bring himself to take her out, though it’s the most merciful thing he can give her rather than have her linger for long in this form. He manages to push her away, sending her stumbling back. He reaches for his gun and keeps his finger trained on the trigger but he doesn’t pull; he can’t and doesn’t want to.

“Y/N, I’m so sorry.” is all he can say.

He knows that her mother is probably missing her, only having seen her grow from her place above and never actually having the chance to embrace her yet he couldn't help but grow a little selfish. Was it wrong for him to want her to stay alive? Was it wrong for him to have more time with the last thing keeping him going?

“I know you want to see our daughter but must you see her this soon? I want her around for just a little longer, honey. Can’t you do that? Can I be selfish for a bit?”, he silently pleads to her.

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────

“This letter for my precious flower D/N from her dear dad (and mom). Only read when moving out of our home to start your life away from me :) To my dear daughter, you were anticipated and cherished before we even saw you on a monitor. Ever since I held and raised you, these sensations only seemed to have grown a thousandfold. You are my precious D/N and before you grow before my eyes (as well as your mom in heaven), there’s things I want you to know: I love your mother very much. I am not a very prayerful man but I sincerely pray with all that I have that you will find someone who will treat you the way I treated you and your mother. It won’t matter if me and whoever you will love don’t get along in terms of interests but as long as they look at you with the twinkle of love in their eyes even when you’re doing something weird, I find comfort that I can entrust your heart to them. You never have to be alone and although there’s going to be times where I won’t get this “being a dad” thing right, I’m always doing my best for you.”

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────

D/N lunges towards him again and narrowly avoids her, moving out of her way as his mind grapples with one idea that seems most desirable in that moment.. D/N advances towards his direction again but he doesn’t move, craning his neck to expose more skin, in order to get a better bite. He shuts his eyes, sadly chuckling to himself. A family reunion doesn’t sound so bad. Somewhere nice, somewhere warm…

A rancid whiff of decay hits his nostril sharply, causing him to gag slightly but he keeps his neck still free for her to feast on. She bellows an ear-splitting screech but a gunshot follows after that. D/N’s zombified body falls limp against Leon but she’s still moving, shrieking. He sees his partner with his gun trained on his daughter’s head, the first shot of his being on her leg.

“This is my little girl! Don’t shoot! Don’t–”

A shot rings through the air, a ringing that will haunt him for the rest of his cursed life.

D/N finally falls limp, blood staining his gear as she lays motionless against his body. He sinks down, cradling her in his arms as he rocks her back and forth. Her body is curled up against him, just like when she was but a tiny baby. To Leon, she still is. Always was.

“My baby,” he mutters as he lets choked sobs free. He cries the hardest he’s ever done; he cries for himself, his daughter, his wife, his broken promises, for all the parents that have seen their child die in their arms. For the life his daughter never got to fully live out.

“My little D/N. Daddy’s here, daddy’s got you. It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re safe now. You can rest my beautiful angel.”

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────

“You’re going to see a whole lot of interesting places and by now, you’ve figured that you and I are tiny things in a grand scheme of things; life is interesting not because of the comforts but because of the challenges, the experiences you get from these things. I’ve always hated being away from your mother when she was still pregnant with you but when I was out there, I thought about her and the beautiful little girl she’s carrying in her belly and suddenly I had a reason to live, to keep fighting. I had to do what I did so that the future you live in will be peaceful; you won’t have to be afraid of monsters under your bed or monsters in your closet. Know that even when you’re a big girl, it’s still okay to cry and it’s definitely okay to ask for help. Don’t push your emotions away and feel them; don’t resort to alcohol, trust me– you’re going to harm yourself and the people who care about you. Indulge in some fun, it won’t hurt to be happy but don’t indulge too much– too much of something is bad (just as too little of something).

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────

9 years ago.

D/N’s team was losing by 5 points, her team rattled and tense from all the pressure dawning in on them. It was kind of funny, seeing all these nine-year-olds faces go from smiles and giggles to knitted eyebrows and deep frowns. Everyone’s uniforms were dirty, dark soil staining every kid’s formerly white knee-socks, much to the dismay of some mothers on the benches tasked with laundry in their respective homes– not that Leon cared, he can always get his sweet daughter a new pair; all that matters is that she isn’t afraid to get a little sweaty and play rough.

By now, every parent invested in this game is standing up with their hands on their hips and heads tilted towards the scoreboard. The air feels electric, cheering and chanting from both sides growing louder with each passing moment. Then, a kid from the opposing team hits a home run and scores for her team which triggers the parents of the opposing team to express their joy at the success. D/N doesn’t look too disappointed but she doesn’t look too happy either, just very tired. Her eyes scan the crowd, looking for her dad. Chris had to send her to the game since Leon was still on a mission earlier on that day but luckily, he managed to get it done fast and zipped for the stadium. Finally she spots him, her dad waving at her from the benches and quickly making his way down the stairs and towards her with his arms opened wide.

“Daddy!” she beams. “You’re here!”

She drops her glove and rushes to him, her own little arms opened. He catches up to her, bending down to scoop her into a bone-crushingly, breath-stealing hug. Mud and bits of grass will probably stick on his navy blue polo, the mud drying up and causing a stubborn stain but he could not careless; what’s there to worry about when D/N is all smiles and pure happiness?

“Yeah, I’m here honey. I can’t miss your big game, just couldn’t do it,” he responds while still hugging her. He pulls away before taking out a towel from a bag he brought, wiping her sweaty forehead. Flyaways are everywhere in her braided hair, other smaller strands sticking to her forehead; some dust is also sticking to her flushed face but she looks ecstatic nevertheless.

“Daddy I lost!” she exclaims. Not a single trace of defeat is on her face– she doesn’t even look the least bit exhausted from all that running and catching.

“It’s okay, sweetpea. It’s alright, we’re all still very proud of you,” the “we” in question being her uncles, aunts, Leon, and Y/N.

“You did great out there, champ! You were absolutely speeding back there, you looked really cool!” he comments as he throws her two thumbs up. D/N’s eyes sparkle, chest puffing with confidence upon hearing from Leon about how well she performed in that game.

“Thanks, dad! But I’m really tired, my legs feel like jelly. Ice cream?” she suggests as she throws him the most soft-looking, puppy-dog eyes she can muster. The thing is, she didn’t need to do puppy eyes when he already planned to take her out for some celebratory sweets.

“Of course! Anything for my pro baseball player,” he responds. Standing back up, he puts the towel back in his bag and puts some alcohol in her hands. Taking her tinier ones in his, they make their way out of the field and into the car, where she’ll enjoy her sweet treat.

The loss of her team doesn’t matter when to Leon’s eyes, she will always be his big winner.

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────

“My hands are getting a little sore (sorry honey, I’m not the biggest fan of writing) and I’m running out of the most flowery words to say but basically, the main takeaways of this entire letter are simple: I love you, I’d do anything for you, and that I wish you would choose me to be your dad in every universe. In every twisted reality, in the next life and the lives after those, you would give me the highest honor of having you call me ‘dad’. Well, if I’m not going to be your dad then I guess the most I can contribute for you is that hopefully, you will have the most patient, kind, and understanding dad ever. He’ll be able to provide for you and your mother’s needs and will be willing to let down his life for the two of you, at any cost. Don’t worry though, I might watch over you as a tiny little firefly. That’s all and don’t you ever, ever, ever forget that you always have me and your mother and you’re always welcome home. All my love, your dad (and mom).”

NOTE - I finally finished this after 2 days of working!!!!!! It ended up a little longer than I intended it to so I'm a lil sorry for that... I'm not sure if you guys prefer medium-length fics to longer fics so just feel free to put your preferences in the comments :) Also this is my first RE6!Leon fic so yeah there's that!!!!!!! Gallagher from HSR kinda badd... like... he kinda hot... I don't play HSR but bro he looks so hot, they better make this man 46 like PLEASE. Anyways, that's it and thanks for reading my fics!!!!!! I <333 YOUUU

The chain dividers are from @cafekitsune , the images are made by me (sourced from Pinterest).

[quixotical-lymbo]

hiii could I request a tiny fluff/crack fic of just Macaque x Waking x gn!reader going to couple therapy (Sandy could be the therapist if you want cause it's silly) cause they have a bickering problem (reader has a hot temperament too)

and basically the three of them try to work it out even if they keep throwing snarky comments and everything

Pairing: Wukong x Macaque x gn!Reader Rating: SFW Summary: Mixing monkeys and therapy isn't a good idea.  Warnings/Tags: Silly banter, Sandy trying his best, Mo cameo, canon typical violence, therapy, Sandy is NOT licensed, and crack. Word Count: 600+ words

It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. 

Sandy's eyes flicked between all three of his 'clients' and sipped his tea. Clearing his throat caught the attention of two of the monkeys sitting beside each other. 

"So, uhhh, does anyone want to start us off with a 'I feel' statement?" Sandy smiled.

"I feel like this is a waste of time." 

"I feel like someone should have thought about that before being the reason we're here in the first place." 

"I feel like I want to strangle someone." 

"...great…great start everyone!" Sandy weakly applauded. 

"Look, Sandy, as much as we appreciate this, I don't think we-" 

"-Nonsense! If MK entrusted me to help you three through your issues, then I am more than happy to help!" Sandy's eyes shimmered. "I wouldn't wanna let my little buddy down!" 

"...right," Wukong deflated as he realized there wasn't any way of getting out of this without feeling guilty. Sandy nodded and turned to you, who was sitting with their arms crossed over their chest and their eyes studying the decorations on the walls of his ship. 

"How about you tell me what brings you all here with me today?" Sandy called out your name as he reached for his cup of tea again. Macaque, who sat in the middle of both of his partners, tensed as he tapped his sharp nails along his arm. Wukong, much to his nonchalant attitude, looked carefree but he was nibbling on his bottom lip as his brow furrowed proved otherwise. 

"Where to fucking start," You glanced at the blue gentle giant, who's smile did nothing to ease the flames of anger that began to rise. In fact, you rose from your seat and began pacing around the room. "Let me begin, those two always arguing like an old married couple for every single decision we have to make as a throuple-" 

"Hey! We don't bicker every time."

"-and do you know how infuriating it is to argue over what we should eat every.single.night?" You sent a mean look at Wukong who stuck his tongue out at you.

"I think that's a bit of a stretch." Macaque met your dirty look with his own shit-eating grin/scowl. 

"Don't get me started on how long it takes for us to fuc-" 

 

"-OOOOKAY!" Sandy jumped up from his seat and held a hand to stop you from continuing. "I think I have an idea on what we should do to help you guys!" 

 

"Oh really?" You sat back down, arms crossed, and one leg over the other. Your glare didn't relax until you felt something soft cuddle into your bicep. You peered out of the corner of your eye to see Mo rubbing his cheek against your arm. Despite your contorted face, you grabbed the kitty cat and placed him on your lap to pet. 

 

"Yep! It's simple really," Sandy pulled out a chart from behind the couch. "You guys can take alternating turns on who chooses what for that day!" 

Sandy pointed to a purple square on a random Tuesday. "Here, Macaque gets to choose what you guys eat for dinner, where you'll go on dates, and all of that good stuff!" 

Sandy pointed to a (f/c) square, "And then you'll choose, and vice versa for monkey king!" 

"Why am I last?" 

 

"Don't complain." 

 "I am not-" 

"If you two don't shut up and listen to Sandy, I'll make you shut the fuck up." 

Both monkeys winced before following your command. 

"...right," Sandy continued. "If anyone has any complaints or starts a fight over something that could've been communicated properly, then they lose a day and it's given to the next person who's supposed to choose next." 

"Alright, sounds good," You rubbed under Mo's chin and felt yourself relax as the cat purred. "We'll try that, thank you, Sandy." 

"Yeah, thanks!"

 

"Hm." 

"Great! I'll see you guys next week then! Keep me updated, you silly gooses!" Sandy took Mo from you before ushering you all out of his boat. He closed the door and slid onto the floor while sighing. 

"They're gonna fight again, aren't they?"

Mo shrugged. 

🍜 - I do not give permission for anyone to translate, copy, republish, or plagiarize any of my written works. I provide no permission for any of my literary works to be used in artificial intelligence. sparkle banner(s) by @adornedwithlight !!

[dumbasslesbi2]

Let Me Read To You ~ Chapter 1 (Agatha x Rio Bookstore AU)

Summary:

Agatha has just finished finalizing her divorce to Wanda and now has to move to a new town with her son Nicholas. When she moves in her neighbors recommend she joins the lesbian book club. However she can't help but fall for the owner of the store, Rio Vidal.

Notes:

Hi! Omg we're back with another series! This one may or may not be longer than the last one and we may or may not be smut in this one.

Agatha needed to leave, she needed a new place to go. She needed a place that would be safe for Nicky, her precious baby boy. She had recently been divorced by her ex wife Wanda, even though she was the toxic one. For the years they were together she had been cheating on Agatha and now basically had a whole other family that Agatha never knew about. Luckily for Agatha, Wanda wanted no custody of their child but that didn't mean the divorce went easily. Agatha said fuck it and drove. She drove and drove with Nicholas until she found a quaint place, Westview. She was able to afford a house there and since she did remote work it didn't matter where they lived. The house had everything she needed, 2 bedrooms and an office for her to work in. She couldn't have been happier with her decision.

“Hi! You must be the new neighbor, I'm Jennifer but you can just call me Jen. Do you need any help?” Jen said, walking up to Agatha who was getting boxes out of her car. “ Oh perfect! Could you please? I didn't realize how much of a pain it would be to take the boxes out of the car than putting them in. My name's Agatha” she told Jen, putting down a box to shake her hand. It was then after the handshake that Agatha heard crying in the house and ran inside to go check on Nicholas. She had already set up his playpen and let him have his tablet but of course he still wanted attention. “What's wrong my precious prince?” She asked Nicholas as she lifted him up. “Wanted Mommy” he said in-between sniffles. “Well, I'm right here, we still need to unpack baby.“ She said, kissing the crown of her son. “Hey Agatha where do you want me to put this one?” Jen asked as she entered the house. “Right here in the living room is fine for now, it's just more of Nicholas’s toys” she told her, still holding her child. “Nicholas, say hello to Jen” she told her son with a smile. “Hi Jen!” He said, giggling. “Why hello there mister. Looks like we're going to be neighbors now” Jen said, taking the small child's hand and shaking it. Nicholas couldn't help but laugh more. Agatha put him back in his play pen and unloaded the rest of the boxes. They got all of them squared away and Agatha thanked Jen for all her help. “If you ever need help just come on over, me or my wife should be home” Jen told Agatha before taking her leave. “Noted, thanks again for all the help!” Agatha said before tending back to Nicholas. 

It took Agatha a couple days to become adjusted to their new lives, she enrolled Nicholas into pre-school since he was only three and he had a tough time being away from his mother. She felt heartbroken that he was crying so often for her but the teachers reassured her that it just takes children a bit to adjust and that he’ll get used to it. She talked to Jen more and even met her wife Alice, after learning about Agatha’s situation they both recommended that she join them for the sapphic book club. Apparently the town had a famous lesbian bookstore that had a lesbian book club that met every saturday. She gave it some thought and said heck with it, she even made sure to book a babysitter for Nicholas. “I’m so happy you agreed to come with us!” Alice said as she was starting the car. “Thank you guys so much for inviting me, I really have to repay you two for all the help you’ve done for me” Agatha said as she was putting on her seatbelt. “Nonsense, everyone deserves friends and a support system” Jen said, fixing her makeup. 

As the three pulled up to the bookstore Agatha couldn’t help but admire it for a moment. It looked old and relic but in a good way, she loved the vintage look of things. “Come on girl!” Jen said to Agatha holding the door. As the three went through Agatha couldn’t help but space out and stare once again. “Rio! We got a new member, this is Agatha!” Alice said, getting the bookstore owner. “Perfect, we really need to recruit more people” Rio said, coming out from the back of the store. Agatha turned around to greet the woman but was speechless. She was absolutely stunned by the woman that appeared before her. Rio was wearing an oversized sweatshirt and some jeans with her big nerdy glasses that she always wore but Agatha couldn’t help but find her adorable. “Oh uh, hi! I’m Agatha” she said to Rio, shaking her head slightly to take herself out of her daze. Little did Agatha know that Rio was doing the exact same thing Agatha was. Rio couldn’t stop herself from checking out the total milf that Agatha was. Even though Agatha was also in casual wear just wearing a button of shirt and some jean, Rio thought Agatha was the sexiest milf she ever laid eyes on. “Hi, I’m Rio” she said, taking Agatha’s hand and kissing her knuckles. Jen and Alice couldn’t help but snicker, they kind of planned on this happening especially since Rio was a total milf lover. “Follow us to the next room, that’s where we hold our meeting, we should be all set to start” Rio said, showing Agatha over to their reading room. It was a candle lit room with a very calming vibe that Agatha couldn’t only think of as eternal and unworldly. In the room was already another woman, much older than the rest of the group. “Oh a new member, how exciting!” said the lady, already sitting down. “Lilia, this is Agatha, our newest member” Rio said as she was grabbing a book. “Hi! It’s nice to meet you” Agatha said, taking Lilia’s hand and shaking it. 

The women spent two hours talking about different sapphic books but also talked about town drama and problems in their own lives. Also complaining how homophonic the small town could be. Agatha didn’t know anything about the town before moving but she learnt that the town had deemed them as “witches” and thought of their book club as a “coven of witches”. Agatha couldn’t help but laugh at the names, being unused to such labels since she came from a big city. “Besides that though, most town folk don’t care about us and leave us alone” said Alice, giggling with Agatha. “You should have seen this town before the club and bookstore, it used to be horrible when I was growing up. Now you all can at least be yourselves” Lilia said, thinking of her olden days. “That’s why I built this bookstore as soon as I got enough from all my books,” Rio said with a chuckle. “Books? Do you write?” Agatha asked, looking over at Rio. “Yeah, my Rio Vidal if that helps” Rio said before getting up to get some snacks and drinks for the club. Agatha was starstruck, she thought Rio’s name sounded familiar. Rio was a famous sapphic author, known for writing pure lesbian smut. She had actually gotten into hot water since one of her books were being picked up by a large teen audience and many parents thought Rio was trying to turn their kids gay. Once Rio came back with the snack, the group picked up conversation again for about an hour or so before everyone deemed it time to leave. 

“Oh Agatha, can I actually talk to you before you leave?” Rio asked, winking at Jen and Alice. “We’ll be waiting in the car!” Jen said to her before Agatha could even respond. “I- oh, sure, what is it Rio?” Agatha asked, helping Rio clean up. “By any chance are you free tonight or maybe tomorrow? I would love to take a lady like you out and about” Rio said, smiling at her. “Oh! Um, I think tonight would be good, I have a babysitter for the day so I’m free right now if you wanna maybe go out?” Agatha, trying her best to maintain eye contact with Rio. “Perfect, why don’t you tell Jen and Alice while I close up shop” Rio said, hurrying to clean the store. Agatha went outside and told Jen and Alice what happened, getting an instant approval and congrats from the two. Rio was outside quickly, with a jacket on while she was locking the store. “Have a fun date you two!” Alice said before the two of them drove away. Agatha couldn’t help but blush, it only just hit her right then that she was on a date with the Rio Vidal. “So, what’s on the agenda?” Agatha asked, looking up at the woman. “I was thinking maybe a small stroll in the park and dinner? They’re both walking distance from here so up to you” Rio said, offering her arm.

“So what made you pick a quiet and small town like Westview to move to?” Rio asked as they arrived at the park. “I don’t want to spoil the mood but let’s just say I unfortunately got a divorce” Agatha said, wincing hoping that Rio would still want her. “Ouch, that’s rough. If you wanna ever talk about it, I’m all ears.” Rio said, tugging on Agatha’s arm more. Agatha couldn’t help but smile at Rio’s response, it was the first time she felt actually comfortable and open with someone since the divorce. “Thank you, it’s just been rough having to raise a three year old on my own” Agatha said with a groan. “Aw I’m sorry, I bet you have a cute kid though” Rio said, smiling down at Agatha again. “The cutest, his name’s Nicholas” Agatha told her, getting her phone out to show her a picture. “Yup, I was right. Cutest kid I’ve ever seen” Rio said with a chuckle. “Thank you” Agatha said, giving Rio a kiss on the cheek. She couldn’t help herself anymore, she thought Rio was so cute laughing and the least she could do was kiss her on the cheek. Rio instantly blushed and tried to calm herself down. “Do you wanna sit at that bench? We’ve been walking for a minute” Rio asked, hoping that sitting would help her from being flustered. “Sure!” Agatha said, letting Rio take the lead. “So what made an author like yourself choose such a small town to live in?” Agatha asked, playing with Rio’s fingers. “Honestly, I got tired of the big city and wanted a break from so many people,” Rio said, still blushing. “Oh I couldn’t agree more. I just hope Nicholas doesn’t mind growing up here” Agatha said with a sigh. “He’ll be fine as long as he has you” Rio said, smiling once again at Agatha. There was a moment of quietness as the two just enjoyed each other’s company. Agatha hadn’t felt this at ease with someone else for some time now and was relishing in the feeling. “Do you wanna head over to the restaurant, it’s only a block away from here” Rio asked. “Yeah, that sounds good” Agatha said, clearing her throat to take her mind off of wanting to kiss Rio. 

As they walked to the restaurant they kept asking questions about each other, trying to get more info out of each other. As they arrived at the place, Rio held the door out like the gentleman, well gentlewoman in this case, that she was. They got situated in a booth and ate while also drinking a glass of wine each. Agatha hadn’t had a date go this well since the divorce and was scared of how much she was attracted to Rio. Rio couldn’t help but feel the same, it had been long since she had a date go this well, especially in a small town like this with such a small lesbian population. Agatha couldn’t help herself and excused herself to go to the bathroom to calm down. However, Rio decided to follow her after a minute of waiting. As soon as Rio saw it was just Agatha in the bathroom, she held her by the hips and kissed her. Agatha was taken aback for a moment but then reciprocated the kiss. They stayed like that for a minute or two before leaving the kiss. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself” Rio said with a giggle and her and Agatha’s foreheads touched. “No don’t worry, I’m happy you followed me” Agatha said, also laughing at their antics. “Making me feel like I'm in highschool” Agatha told Rio, pecking her lips. “How about I pay for the bill and we get out of here” Rio asked,swaying their bodies. “That sounds perfect, thank you” Agatha said, stealing another kiss. 

As the two walked back to Rio’s bookstore they couldn’t help but laugh and steal kisses here and there. “Let me drive you home gorgeous,” Rio said as they stopped at her bookstore. “Well, if you insist” Agatha said, giggling and kissing her cheek. “I do, come on” Rio said, taking Agatha’s hand and taking her behind the bookstore. Rio opened the passenger door for Agatha to which Agatha couldn’t help but tease her about it. “Quite the charmer I see” Agatha said, giving Rio another peck on the cheek. Rio closed the door gently as she ran over to the driver’s side. “What can I say, I can’t help myself with such a pretty lady” Rio told her, shifting the car to drive. The car ride was silent but that was only because of how much Agatha was admiring Rio. As Rio pulled up to Agatha’s home she was almost sad that their time together was ending. “I don’t know if this is too forward but can I see you tomorrow?” Rio asked, playing with the rings on her hand. “Let me ask if Jen and Alice can look after Nicholas. If they say yes then I would love nothing more but to see you tomorrow” Agatha said, taking Rio’s hand and kissing it. Rio couldn’t help but blush, “If they say no, they’re banned from book club” she said jokingly. “I wouldn’t mind if we kicked out everyone and just had it be the two of us” Agatha told Rio, winking at her. Rio short circuited and had no snarky reply, she could only blush and be flustered in her seat. Agatha reached in her purse to give her number to Rio before giving her a goodbye kiss. “Call me” she said with a wink before getting out of the car. Rio sighed a breath of relief as she started putting Agatha’s number in her cell. 

Agatha greeted her son and the babysitter. She thanked them for taking care of her son and paid them for their service. Once she was alone with her son, she sat on their couch and let out a sigh she didn’t know she was holding. She felt her phone buzz and already saw a text message from Rio. 

Hi sexy lady. Can’t wait to see you tomorrow, tonight was amazing 💚

Agatha couldn’t help but smile at the text as she was replying back with her own snarky remarks

Sexy? Have you not seen yourself honey? We’ll see what Jen and Alice say about tomorrow. Hopefully we can see each other. Tonight was perfect, can’t wait till the next time 😘💖💖

Agatha put her phone away and spent the rest of the night getting Nicky to bed while also doing her own night routine. She thought about all the kisses her and Rio shared while laying in bed, hoping that she could see Rio tomorrow . It had been less than a day and she was already falling for her. 

[munsonbrackets]

“who will pray for you?”

The words echoed through Tav’s head, his muscle pounding into unmoving skull.

“who will pray for you?”

They repeat, excessively and tentatively. They grow and plaster themselves into any available thought, like a vine overgrowing the moment you turn your back. The moment you let down your guard.

Tav checks around the bend of another tree and there he is. Astarion.

He’s huddled on his knees, his back is slumped downwards and the feeling of melancholy rings through the air, carried by the breeze as if it was weightless.

Astarion’s hands feel around as well as they can, over his back, on the bottom of his shoulder blades. His hands feel every bump, every crevice, every scar that hurts.

And the words ring through Tav’s head once more. Who will pray for you.

Tav’s legs move on their own, his mind overgrown with worry, he moves, prospers on his own two feet and his body makes a decision before his brain can properly fall into a pit of despair likewise to Astarion’s-

It isn’t until he feels his arms wrap around Astarion’s stomach, it isn’t until he feels Astarion’s back press against his front, it isn’t until he feels the same cuts and bruises and coldness that his brain catches up.

Astarion let’s out a sigh between utter relief and surprise. If Astarion’s thoughts were any clearer, if his unspoken words were said.

‘Thank you.‘

Because his pain was gone. The itchy, cold, bruised and bumpy feelings that litter in obnoxious and all too inconsiderate places all over his back was no longer felt. In fact, Astarion almost felt warm. As though he could feel Tav’s heat spread through his back. Maybe that was what made the pain stop.

The warmth of another person-

But Tav could feel the prickly knife cut across his back, he could practically feel himself protecting Astarion from Cazador’s blade, rewriting and reciting in big bold letters all for the purpose of his own superior immorale.

Tav hurt, and he was cold, and all he could think was those words. All he could remember where those words being said, all he could do was feel ice over his back as he withheld Astarion’s pain within himself.

And Tav hated it. No matter how many times he did this, took someone else’s pain from them, he would only feel hate. He would take all of their pain away, whether it was for their last moment, their last dying breath leaving them, or just a laceration that had mistakingly struck too deep into them. Tav hated taking the pain of others. All he could remember was being forced to do so. His sick idea of a job.

Astarion wasn’t part of ‘others‘, Astarion was the light. Astarion’s breath of relief sounded like soothing pitter patter from a light rain hitting a storm roof. It reminded Tav of home.

The fireplace cackling as Tav got ever too close to the flames, a cup of hot cocoa held tight in his hands.

“Careful of the flames, Junior!” His dad would yell from across the room. His mom hearing and rushing over to grab Tav’s sneaking hand that wanted to touch the pretty flames.

And they never scolded him, never yelled, other than to warn him of the dangers. Of the pain. They just didn’t want him to hurt.

Astarion reminded Tav of the time before he had heard those words. A time before such nonsensical mutterings were just anxiety playing a muck in his head.

Astarion’s pain always made Tav love every piece of pain he could take after he become only of his own command.

Maybe because Astarion understood.

Maybe because Astarion knew what it was like to lack complete control over every fiber of your being.

Or maybe it was because Astarion didn’t know that Tav was taking away his pain and that it wasn’t just a figment of Astarion’s own imagination.

[prosepoetryanddrama]

Sirius Black Faces the Woes of a High School Crush (wolfstar)

Sirius Black made a lot of, often questionable, decisions, but he had never made a more questionable decision in his life than jotting down his name on the sign up sheet for the "Swot Team", also known as Student Council. 

That was the thought running through his brain as he forlornly walked down a corridor in Hogwarts High School. This corridor did not lead to the cafeteria with it's mouth watering pumpkin pastries, nor to the locker rooms for the Gryffindor team, or to the tables near the field outside, where Sirius and his cronies ruled over the peasants, better known as students. 

No, this corridor led to the dreaded room that held Hogwarts Student Council meetings every Friday at lunch. Sirius, of course, spent Fridays normally doing much more interesting things like throwing paper balls at Slytherins or holding court over the team, laughing with James, while also subtly looking around to grab a peek at a flash of tawny hair near the end of lunch break. That last reason was why he was here in the first place. 

Sirius Black was tall and broad and handsome and rich and charming and had never wanted something and not gotten it. Of course, except for Remus Lupin.

It was not that Remus Lupin had rejected Sirius, in fact the two of them had not had more than a handful of conversations, consisting of "good mornings" and "hellos", in the two years that Sirius had known him. No, Remus Lupin had not rejected him, as Sirius Black had not even made a move.

Sirius remembered the first time he had seen him, when Remus had enrolled in Hogwarts, two years ago, having come from some random French school to England with his family.

He had been all cinnamon, soft hair and wide caramel eyes. His body had been all lithe, dressed in a thick sweater, and Sirius had wanted. 

Sirius had, in fact, never wanted anything as bad in his life, as he wanted Remus. Yet, for that exact reason, Sirius did not have him.

No, Sirius did not drive to school in the morning in his ostentatious car with Remus smiling in the passenger seat. Sirius did not make Remus that Chamomile tea with milk and honey that Remus prepared in the cafeteria, sipped delicately in the bleachers, bundled up against that redhead. Sirius did not grab Remus’s hand and interlock with his as he passed by him in the corridor, and he definitely did not cut Remus off as he rambled about his favourite book by pressing his lips to his. No, Sirius did not do any of this, but he yearned to.

For some reason, most likely the universe trying to punish him for being too perfect or some curse placed upon him from that time in third year that he accidentally brushed up against Snape, Sirius could do nothing but stupidly blink or release a string of garbled nonsense, every time he was in the company of Remus Lupin.

Sirius had long accepted this and spent his time watching Remus from afar these last two years. But now, they were in their last year, and Sirius was running out of time. 

That was the thought he held in his head as he reached the door, that when opened, would reveal a room with Remus Lupin in it, and course several other nerds, but they were not important. 

Sirius had one school year left before graduation, before they left Hogwarts and Remus floated away to go be a professor or some other job where he passionately did book people things. One school year before Remus floated away from Sirius, that is if Sirius remained as he was. That is why he had signed up, to finally have an opportunity to be around Remus and slowly worm himself into his heart, and eventually, perhaps other places.

Now was his time to act, and have the chance to perhaps be allowed to exist in Remus’s orbit. Yes, Sirius around Remus was tongue-tied, blustering and red. But he was also Sirius Black and he was brave and confident, and when he wasn’t, he faked it. He was going to get what he wanted, and what he wanted was Remus Lupin 

_____

Hehe this was fun little drabble. If anyone is interested in getting more parts or like an actual story, let me know!