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justagalwhowrites · 7 days ago

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Halcyon - Ch. 19: Did You Mean That?

Joel confronts your shared past and potential future. A continuation of Halcyon from the prologue through Ch. 18, a modern no outbreak AU TLOU fic found on Tumblr here.

Pairing: Joel Miller x Female Reader

Warnings: Angst. Modern No Outbreak AU, No use of Y/N, Slow burn, 18+ only, Minors DNI

Length: 6.6k

AO3 | Main Master List | Prologue | Previous Chapter

Joel was frozen for longer than he was proud of, staring at the place you’d left him.

I fucking heard you.

What the fuck did that even mean? Heard what?

He looked back toward Sarah’s room. He shouldn’t just leave her here by herself but he considered it all the same. He’d just… he’d go after you, make you talk to him like he should have done all those years ago. He wasn’t going to just let you disappear again, not this time.

Instead, he called you, still standing on his front stoop, still considering chasing after you. It rang twice but then you sent him to voicemail.

“Fuck!”

His grip got tight on the phone but he resisted the urge to hurl the phone at the brick of his house.

“Dad?” Sarah peered at him from around the doorway, her eyes somehow seeming especially wide.

He sighed.

“Yes, baby girl.”

“You and Aunt Goldie were really in a fight, huh.”

He sighed again, looking at his daughter even though it only made him feel worse. She loved you so much, you were the closest thing she’d ever had to a mother and Joel had fucked that up, too.

“It’s… it’s complicated, baby girl,” he said. “C’mon, let’s go inside, it’s getting late, you should get ready for bed…”

“But,” she huffed. “Dad, it’s Goldie. You can’t just let her leave, she’s family!”

“I know,” he said, a hand on her back as he guided her back inside. “Not gonna just let her go, don’t worry. I just… need to figure out what to do first, OK?”

“Promise you’re not going to just not talk again for years?” She asked, looking up at him. “Because - sorry, Dad - that was bullshit.”

“Hey,” he said. “Language.”

“Dad.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, you’re right. It was bullshit.”

He texted you while Sarah got ready for bed but you left him on read and he ground his teeth. He read his daughter a chapter from a book and resisted her begging to have him read another one before tucking her in, thankful that she still wanted him to do this at all.

“Hey Dad?” She said as he went to leave.

“Yes, baby girl?”

“You’re going to talk to her, right?”

He sighed. She sounded so hopeful.

“I’ll fix it,” he said. “Promise. Love you.”

“Love you too,” she said, sounding more relaxed.

He closed the door behind him and went to the living room, pacing for a moment.

I fucking heard you.

He tried to remember the conversation with Ricky all those years ago, not something he’d really thought about in so long.

Other things from that small window of time had dominated Joel’s memory. He remembered trying to find the words to talk to you, trying to come up with a plan for every possible outcome. If you wanted him, too, then he would figure out a way to be there for Tommy and his mom from afar and go with you. If, heaven forbid, you were pregnant, he would do everything to make sure you could still go to school and still be everything you were meant to be while he took care of the rest. If you wanted nothing to do with him… that had been the one scenario he hadn’t come up with a solution for. Of course, that had been the one he’d been left to reckon with.

He remembered how he felt then, how desperate he’d been. But he couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said to fucking Ricky, something that had apparently stuck out in your mind so much that you’d moved across the country without a fucking word. He went over it again and again but couldn’t remember it, even though it felt like his fucking life depended on it.

Eventually he tried to call you again but it only rang once before you sent him to voicemail.

He listened to your outgoing message, bright and cheery, flexing his hand again and again as he waited, impatiently, for the beep.

“Goldie,” he said when it finally let him record a message. “Not letting you walk out, I’m gonna keep calling. Just… pick up, baby. Please.”

He hung up and immediately called again. Two rings, then voicemail. He called again.

The fourth time, you finally answered, your voice sharp and harsh.

“What!” You snapped. “What more do you want from me?”

“I want to talk to you,” he said, straining to keep calm. “I don’t know what you mean, I don’t remember what the fuck you’re talking about, I…”

You laughed once, derisively.

“Of course you don’t,” you said. “You wouldn’t, would you? Because I was always just another girl to you, wasn’t I? Why would you remember…”

“No,” he cut you off. “No, that’s not…”

“I need some space, Joel,” you said.

“I’m not losing you again, Goldie,” he said, harsher than he really meant to. “Please, let me just…”

“If you don’t want to lose me then do what I’m asking you to do,” you said. “I need space, OK? I can’t just do this with you, I can’t… just don’t call me or text me or whatever, just give me some time.”

“Goldie…”

“I mean it, Joel,” you said. “I need space.”

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Fine,” he said. “I…I can do that.”

“Thank you,” you said. “I’ll talk to later.”

“Will you?” He asked, probably rougher than he should have.

“Eventually,” you said. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice thick. “Yeah, OK.”

You hung up and he sighed, sinking onto the couch and cradling his head in his hands for a moment.

He was on the edge of losing you again, he could feel it. He couldn’t let it happen, not this time. He started thinking again, just like he had all those years ago, trying to think up contingency plans and ways to work through this without you leaving but, really, that’s what it always came back to. He’d do anything - he’d never touch you again, he’d tolerate your shitbag husband, he’d watch you live a life he was agonizingly separate from - if it just meant that you stayed.

Joel got himself a drink, which quickly became two and then three, staring at the ceiling, wondering just how long he was supposed to stay away from you this time before he passed out on the couch.

When he woke up the next day, time seemed to crawl. He couldn’t just ignore you. You were in everything, it seemed. Sarah showed him the books you’d gotten her, excited about reading them. He reviewed his business plan again and again, looking at your notes in the margins. He put on a Longhorns t-shirt and remembered you sitting at his kitchen table, building out your syllabus for the year.

Even Tommy noticed a difference when he was at work on Tuesday, seemingly short tempered and impatient.

“You gonna tell me who pissed in your Cheerios or you gonna leave that a mystery?” Tommy asked as they leaned against his truck during a coffee break.

“What do you mean?” Joel frowned, staring down at the paper cup and thinking about how you took your coffee and wondering what was he supposed to do with that knowledge if you were just gone now.

“I mean you’ve been biting people’s heads off all week,” Tommy said. “I mean, you’re always an asshole but you’ve been in rare form man.”

“Tommy…”

“Don’t feed me some bullshit, either,” he interrupted him. “Know you too well for that.”

Joel looked at Tommy for a moment before he sighed and it all came spilling out of him - prom night, what had been happening between the two of you the last few months, the moment in his kitchen, what you’d yelled at him over the weekend, all of it.

“Jesus,” Tommy said when he was done, just blinking at him, dumbfounded. “I… fuck, man. I always thought there was something between you two but… holy shit.”

“I don’t know what the fuck it is she’s talking about,” Joel said. “I talked with Ricky back then but fuck if I can remember what it was about, that was more than a decade ago, what the fuck am I supposed to do?”

“I mean… do you know how she feels?” Tommy asked, taking a sip of coffee.

“Yeah,” Joel scoffed. “Yeah, I think she’s made that perfectly fuckin’ clear.”

“Has she?” Tommy said. “Because - and maybe you just didn’t mention it - but I don’t think you actually talked about it. Ever. Not once.”

Joel frowned, looking at the ground, going over everything in his mind.

That couldn’t be right, could it?

It sure seemed like you’d talked about it. Maybe not explicitly, but everything you’d said pointed to you seeing him as a friend. You said you wanted to be with someone you could love and that wasn’t him. The first time he’d slept with you again, you asked him not to call you baby and he’d all but begged you to let him. He’d had to fucking comfort you the morning after the concert, tell you that it didn’t mean anything so you didn’t panic because being with him freaked you out that much. You’d never said it, not in so many words, but you didn’t need to.

“Maybe you should ask her,” Tommy said when Joel had been quiet for too long.

“Tommy,” Joel groaned, rolling his eyes. “I can’t just…”

“Can’t you?” Tommy said. “I mean… shit, man. You already blew it all up, what else you got to lose?”

Tommy’s words were still in Joel’s mind when he left the job site that afternoon, going home to get cleaned up before going to the bank for his business loan appointment.

What did he really have to lose? He could at least tell you how he felt, a thought that made his chest tight but brought a sense of relief, too. He’d been holding this in for so long now. It seemed like loving you had become a part of him, one that he was used to keeping to himself but one he didn’t want to hide anymore.

He’d told himself for years that he’d loved you quietly because it’s what you wanted. You weren’t interested, it was unfair to put his feelings on you. Even when you were a country away and not speaking with him, he found it strangely comforting to know that while it might be because he’d caved to his baser instincts and slept with you, it wasn’t because he’d pushed his feelings on you. He had regrets - he’d have given anything to take back that night if it meant you’d just talk to him again - but at least he knew how he felt about you hadn’t been the thing that had driven you away.

Could it really be possible that not telling you had been the thing that sent you running from him? Had he really wasted years of his life not having you all because he’d been too afraid of actually fucking saying it?

He put on his best clothes - wishing he had a suit for the first time in his life - and took a deep breath, looking at himself in the mirror. It felt like his whole life was riding on this, everything he could have sitting there, just out of reach.

He’d never been worthy of you before. Back when he met you, he was barely passing his classes, going nowhere fast. Doomed to spend his life in his hometown, doing some job to get by while trying to keep his kid brother’s nose clean. He hadn’t gotten much better since, staying in the first job he could get, doing his best to raise the child he’d made by accident, trying to make something of himself as he could. It was nothing compared to you. But if he could manage this, actually do something real and tangible, maybe he’d feel worthwhile.

Joel drummed his hands on the steering wheel as he drove, one of the Taylor Swift songs from the concert he’d gone to with you and Sarah coming on the radio and he remembered looking at you that night, remembered how much he wanted to kiss you in a way that actually meant something. He had to do this. He had to.

His stomach was in knots as he sat in the bank waiting room, one foot bouncing as he tried not to crinkle his presentation and application in his hands. He wished you were here. Why was he doing this on his own? What made him think he was even fucking capable of this without you?

After what felt like a small eternity, a woman named Audrey brought him back to her office and Joel took a deep breath before walking her through his business plan.

His heart was pounding the entire time and there was something perverse about talking through a future that you weren’t somehow a part of. He walked Audrey through the financial plans, what the next five years would look like and there was the nagging thought at the back of his mind that he should have talked with you about all of this. How money would be tight for a while, how he’d be extra busy, how much he appreciated the way you’d supported him through all of this so far. He never could have done this without you pushing him, encouraging him, helping him navigate the business world. It felt like your success, too, when Audrey set his presentation down on her desk, nodding.

“Well, Joel,” she said, looking at him with a smile. “I think we have everything we need. Congratulations, you’re getting your loan!”

Joel just laughed for a second, looking next to him quickly before remembering that you weren’t by his side.

“Thank you,” he said. “This is… thank you very much.”

“Looking forward to doing business with you,” she smiled. “Give me just a minute and I’ll be back with some papers so we can get things going.”

Joel took his phone out and stared at his text message conversation with you, the last thing he sent still “I’m sorry.” He wanted to tell you that he’d done it. He was a business owner, he was going to be something, he was becoming someone that Sarah was going to be proud of and it was all because you’d come back into his life. You were who he wanted to share this with and he couldn’t.

Audrey gave him the paperwork and he went through it page by page, more than a little reminded of when he got his mortgage and felt like he was signing his life away but with more optimism about his future this time.

About halfway through the paperwork, though, the pen started skipping. He tried wetting the tip of it, scratching on a corner of the paper but he couldn’t get it to write smoothly again.

“Do you got another one of these?” Joel asked, holding the pen up. “Can’t get it to work…”

“Oh yeah, sorry about that,” Audrey said, looking around her desk, including at an empty pen cup. “Let me just…”

She opened a desk drawer and took a few things out, piling things on her desk - a purse, water bottle, a book.

Joel cocked his head at the book, the spine of it familiar. So familiar that he couldn’t help but laugh. Of course you’d be here, too.

“What?” She asked as she found a plain, white box and pulled out a handful of pens with the bank’s logo on the side. She dropped them into the pen cup and held one out to Joel.

“Oh, nothin’,” he said, taking the pen and nodding at the novel. “Just… my friend, she wrote that book. Funny seeing someone read it.”

“Wait, really?” She asked, her face lighting up as she held up your book. “You know who wrote this?”

“Yeah,” Joel nodded. “Yeah, she’s my best friend, known her since we were 15. She’s… she’s amazing. She teaches now, over at UT.”

Audrey set the book down, leaning over the desk with her arms folded in front of her like she was going to tell Joel some kind of secret.

“OK can I ask something?” She asked. “Sorry, this is probably hugely unprofessional but I am obsessed with this book, I can’t put it down and my book club is going crazy. Is any of it true? The falling in love and things ending like that? It seems like it has to be at least somewhat based on her life, I don’t see how someone could write this without knowing it, you know?”

“Oh, uh,” Joel cupped the back of his neck awkwardly. “I actually… haven’t read it?”

“Oh,” she said, sitting back a little, looking let down.

“Sorry,” Joel said. “I’ve tried and I know it’ll be amazing but it’s just too weird for me…”

“No, I’m sorry,” she laughed a little. “I overstepped, I shouldn’t have assumed…”

“I should read it,” Joel said quickly. “I got it at home, maybe I’ll give it another go now.”

“You should,” Audrey said. “It’s really, really good.”

The new pen worked and Joel finished the paperwork, staring at his signature on the last page a little too long. He handed the pen and papers back to Audrey.

“You can keep the pen,” she smiled, taking the pages. “Let me make copies of these for your records but otherwise, congratulations, owner of Miller Brothers Construction and Contracting!”

Joel had a bubble of pride in his chest as he drove home, one that seemed too big to keep contained and, against his better judgement, he called you.

He wasn’t entirely sure what he expected, if he thought you were going to send him to voicemail, if you were going to answer and let him actually say something to you or what.

What he didn’t expect was Gale.

“Hello?”

Joel just blinked for a second, recognizing the man’s pompous voice even from just the one word.

“Is this Joel?” Gale - fucking BRAD - said. He took his silence as a yes and laughed. “Was wondering if I’d hear from you. Don’t worry, she’s with me, back where she belongs. Thanks for looking after her while I was gone, though. Appreciate it.”

“Lemme talk to her,” Joel said through clenched teeth.

“I don’t see why that’s necessary,” he said. “Seems like she doesn’t want much to do with you these days. Think you blew it. Thanks for that, too, by the way.”

“We’re just…”

“You’re just nothing,” Gale cut him off. “You were nothing but a childish distraction for her. She went running back here when things got hard - which I take my part of the blame for - and she needed a project to keep herself busy but she doesn’t need you anymore. So go back to the little life you’re meant for and leave us be. She was always too much for you and this place, anyway.”

“No,” Joel said sharply. “No, you put her on the phone, put her on the phone right now!”

“Can’t do that,” Gale said. “But I’ll tell her you called. Take care.”

The line went dead and Joel threw his phone against the dash so hard the screen cracked.

“Fuck!” He yelled, smacking his hands against the steering wheel. He wasn’t going to lose you, not again, not like this.

He ignored Gale. Instead, he drove to your house, pounding sharply on the door, panting for breath as he did but you never answered.

So he went to Anna’s next. He only needed to knock for a minute before she opened the door, Ellie’s beaming, chubby face happy in her arms.

“Hey Joel,” Anna smiled at him. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes! Here to see this one?”

Ellie squirmed in Anna’s arms, cooing and reaching for Joel and he laughed once, he couldn’t help it, before holding his arms out for her. Anna handed him her daughter and Ellie giggled, immediately reaching to tangle her tiny fingers in his curls. He smiled at her for a moment, marveling at the little girl who’d brought you and him together in the way it felt like you were always meant to be.

“Is she here?” Joel asked, bouncing a little with Ellie, watching her smile, her little body a grounding force that eased his racing heart.

“Oh,” Anna frowned, her eyebrows knitting together. “No, sorry, she’s not here too often anymore, just a few times a week… She moved back home, I thought you knew that?”

“No, I did,” Joel said quickly, looking to Anna and offering a finger to Ellie for her to gum at. “She just… wasn’t there, tried callin’ her but…”

“Oh,” Anna pulled her phone out, looking at the time. “She might still be at the school, I can call her for you…”

“No,” Joel said quickly, not wanting to get your sister involved in the mess of whatever the fuck was going on between the two of you. “Don’t… Don’t worry about it, sure I’ll talk to her eventually.”

“OK,” Anna said, still frowning. “Look… It’s not my business but… Is there something going on with you two?”

Joel just looked at Anna for a moment, wondering if he should tell her, too, because fuck it, why not just let the whole world know how much he’d fucked up with you.

But she beat him to it, going from a frown to an absolutely glowing smile in no time at all.

“Oh my God.”

“What?” He asked, adjusting his hold on Ellie.

“You love her!” She sounded practically giddy. “Oh my GOD I knew it! You LOVE her! Have you told her? Does she know? Oh my GOD, JOEL!”

“I… I haven’t exactly said it,” Joel said, his cheeks getting hot. “I don’t want to make it her problem, I don’t want to get in the way of her being happy, I just… I want to be there for it.”

Anna just looked at him for a moment before shaking her head a little.

“Is… Is she happy with him?” Joel asked, watching your sister closely. “Is he what she wants? I didn’t know her when they were really together, I just… it seems like he holds her back and that he’s bad for her and…”

“Joel, did you read her book?” Anna cut him off.

He frowned.

“What? What does that…”

“You wanted to know if he’s what she wants,” Anna said. “She’s never going to actually say it, you know that. At least not to you or to me, she’s always going to try to seem like she’s OK and handle it herself until she can’t and even then she’s not going to actually fucking say it, Joel, but she will write it. She always writes it. Read the book, Joel.”

He gave Ellie back to Anna and went home, trying to focus as he made Sarah dinner and helped her with her homework.

Read the book. Just read the fucking book. Was that all it would take? Could he even do that? If fucking Brad really was what you wanted, could he really sit and read hundreds of pages about how much better your life had been when he wasn’t in it?

He’d never been able to manage it and it wasn’t because he didn’t want to know you through your words and it wasn’t because he didn’t like your writing. It was because he didn’t know if he could stomach reading something you wrote while you were in love with someone else.

But… Anna was right. He knew that. If he wanted to know the truth of any of it, he’d have to read it. So, after he tucked Sarah into bed, he sat on the floor, staring at the box in his closet that held the two copies of your book like it was daring him to actually confront his feelings for a change. Because that had always worked out so well for him in the past, not like every fucking time he’d resolved to actually talk to you he hadn’t found you loving someone else.

“Fuck it,” he muttered, opening the box and pulling out the books. This time, though, he picked the signed copy, the one he’d never tried to read before. There was something different about holding this copy, knowing that you had once, too. He ran his hands over the cover and the spine reverently for a moment before he leaned his back against the wall of the closet and opened the book.

Joel had to force himself to read past the first few paragraphs, his stomach in knots the entire time, but, after a while, he fell into it - to the point that he almost forgot that he was reading your book.

He’d known, from what little he’d managed to read in the past, that the book started in Austin, he just hadn’t expected the story to linger there.

But it did, the narrative following a girl named Cressida. She started out as a quiet, introspective high schooler who had become unlikely friends with a football player named Eli, a friendship that felt so like his with yours. They knew each other, understood each other, their worlds seem to revolve around each other. It seemed natural that it led to them sleeping together. But instead of the immediate implosion that had ended your relationship in real life, theirs devolved over time. Cressida came back to him again and again, the two of them winding up loosely connected every time a relationship of Eli’s fizzled out, her clinging to a heart wrenching longing that hurt to read, one that her friend seemed shockingly oblivious to.

Eventually, though, things came crashing down. This was different too, though, because it ended not with her vanishing but him, a car accident claiming Eli’s life when Cressida had finally resolved to tell him how she felt. They buried him in a sunny corner of the graveyard just before graduation and Cressida, it seemed, never really moved past it.

The other three-quarters of the book followed her as she tried – desperately, devastatingly – to live again, to get over the love she’d never really had to begin with, to find some place to root herself outside of that sun-drenched grave in her hometown.

She never really managed it, the ending almost painfully unsatisfying but feeling true. She’d become something – Cressida delving into the business world instead of the creative one as you had – and she found success away from home but her mind kept going back to that place and that person. She’d had relationships but, when her last boyfriend had proposed, she couldn’t bring herself to say yes. It had felt like a lie, to tell someone she would love him above all others when she’d never love him more than the memory of the boy who had been gone for years. He’d died at the worst time, the part of her life that would always be on a pedestal no matter what she did. Nothing and no one would ever compare and she was stuck, still going back to him again and again even though he was cold in the ground.

The last chapter closed with her bringing home a man who reminded her of her friend, something charming about him that took her back to that brighter place for a while. But when he fell asleep next to her, she had to confront that hollow feeling in her chest. In the last moment of the story, she bought a plane ticket to go back to that sunny grave site, something about the calm that fell over her when she decided to go back making it seem like that grave was her resting place, too.

Joel just stared at the book when he read the final words, the last pages flopping over, revealing your picture on the inside flap of the dust jacket. That knowing smile and piercing gaze gutted him then, no longer the taunt and temptation of knowledge they had once been.

Was Anna right, was this the truth of it? Did you write out your real feelings? Had he really gotten everything this fucking wrong? Had he really spent years wishing things with you were different when they’d been different all along?

He got out his phone and ignored the fact that it was 4:30 in the morning and called you. You didn’t answer. It didn’t even go to voicemail, the phone ringing once before he got some message saying the number was unavailable.

“Fuck,” he sighed, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the wall. He wasn’t positive but, based on his experience trying to track down Sarah’s mom years ago, that meant you’d blocked his number. It’d be just his fucking luck that he thought - hoped? - that, maybe, you felt the way he did at the same time he lost you for good.

He sat there with his eyes closed in the glow of his closet light, next to the box made up of the history of you, trying to pick through his memory from all those years ago, searching for some sort of guarantee that the book was based on what happened between the two of you back then.

At some point, when he was swallowed by his memory of you, he fell asleep. Maybe it was the book, maybe it was the fact that he’d been sifting through ancient history when exhaustion finally caught up with him, maybe it was your words still ringing in his ears, but he remembered then.

In his dream, he was back under the bleachers with Ricky, pacing to work out his nerves. He talked to his friend - the one who was more experienced, the one who wasn’t reckless, the one who would understand exactly why he was so afraid of what he might have just done to you.

But, most importantly, he remembered exactly how that conversation had ended.

It’s Goldie. I wish it were anyone else. It’d be better if it were anyone else.

“Dad!”

Joel jerked awake, the book still open in his hands, your signature there for him to see.

I fucking heard you.

Sarah pounded on his bedroom door again.

“Dad, come on!” She yelled. “I’m gonna be late!”

“Shit,” he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and checked the time before calling to his daughter. “Two minutes, baby girl!”

He got up as quickly as he could, his legs tingling from his awkward sleeping position on the floor of the fucking closet.

Joel got changed quickly, barely paying attention to what he was putting on.

He’d had the answers sitting there for years, he’d just been too afraid to look it in the face but he had and now he knew. He knew how you felt - how you must have felt, why else would his misunderstood words have driven you away? - he knew how much time he’d already fucking wasted by being a coward, he knew it all now.

He just didn’t know what the fuck to do about it.

Joel got Sarah out the door quickly, barely paying attention on his drive to the school. He couldn’t just give up. He already refused to lose you, not again, but now it would be impossible. You were so close, everything he’d ever wanted there in front of him but just out of reach. Even if you’d moved on now, even if you were happier with fucking Brad, he had to tell you. He owed both of you that much.

“Bye Dad!” Sarah poked her head between the two front seats and gave him a peck on the cheek.

“What was that for?” He frowned, turning to look at her.

She just shrugged and smiled.

“Just seemed like you needed it,” she said. “Love you!”

“Love you too!” He called after her as she hopped down from the truck and slammed the door behind her with a little too much force, waving behind her as she ran to the building.

“Alright,” he took a deep breath, looking at the clock on his dashboard. Just after 8 a.m. He’d start at your place because he wasn’t sure what time you went to campus this semester. But he was going to talk to you. He was going to talk to you and he was going to tell you how he felt and he was going to do it today. “I’m comin’, Goldie.”

You weren’t at your place when he got there. He tried not to think about if it was because you’d spent the night with fucking Brad, if you’d gone to his hotel and had never even been here. Instead, he went to campus. He wasn’t sure where you’d be teaching right now but he was pretty sure you wouldn’t be in your office. You always had morning classes with a break in the afternoon.

“Excuse me,” he said to a random passing college student. “I’m lookin’ for… shit, probably creative writing? Or literature? What buildings are those?”

“Oh, um,” the girl looked around quickly. “I’m a physics major but I know I had an English class in that building over there last semester? You could start there?”

She pointed to a building in the distance and Joel kept his groan to himself. He forgot how fucking huge college campuses were.

But he couldn’t just sit and wait. He needed to find you and he needed to do it now.

“Thanks,” he said, giving her a wave and already starting to jog for the building. “Appreciate it!”

But you didn’t have a class in that building. At least not at that time of day. He knew because he looked in all the lecture halls. You weren’t there.

He tried two other buildings after asking for directions - no luck - before checking his watch. If your schedule was anything like it had been the semesters before, you’d be in your office soon. That, at least, he knew how to find.

He jogged there, resisting the urge to run because that would probably make him look utterly insane, and threw his arm out to catch the elevator on its way up.

“Floor 10, please,” he said to one of the college girls looking at him funny as he panted for breath. She did as he asked, though, and he marveled, for a moment, at just how fucking young college kids seemed to him now.

He closed his eyes and focused for a second, trying to figure out exactly what to say to you, but hearing your name pulled him out of his head.

“I don’t think they’re still like… together together, though,” the girl who’d pushed the button said. “Like I know they were married but she said he was visiting. He’d live here if they were married, right? Besides, I really don’t think her husband would be asking for my number with his wife there, would he?”

“I dunno,” the other girl shrugged. “He’s just… isn’t he old? Like old old, not hot old.”

“I like them old,” the first girl giggled. “They know what they’re doing then.”

The elevator chimed and the girls got off and Joel’s heart was beating so hard he could feel the blood in his body. You’d brought fucking Brad here and he’d hit on one of your fucking students - one who looked so young Joel never would have looked twice at her if he saw her on the street. Right in front of you, from the sounds of it. That’s who you’d chosen, that’s who you’d felt like you deserved because he hadn’t opened his fucking mouth years earlier.

When the elevator made it to floor 10, he squeezed out of the doors, not willing to wait for them to open all the way, and ran to your office.

“Excuse me,” the girl behind the front desk said as he went past her. “You can’t just…”

“It’s fine,” he said, catching the door as someone came out of the hall where your office was.

“No, wait!” She called after him but he ignored her.

He ducked around other professors, dodging them and their questions until he was at your door.

It was closed but he didn’t bother to knock, throwing the door open to find you there, standing in front of your desk in the arms of your fucking husband as he kissed you.

Joel moved so fast that neither you nor Gale had noticed he was there but he couldn’t just stand there and watch that fucking guy kiss you, not like that.

Without really thinking about it, he ripped him away from you, just catching a glimpse of the shock on your face as he punched Gale in the head, sending him sprawling into your desk.

“Joel!” You yelled before grabbing his arm and pulling him back before he could hit your goddamn husband again. “What the fuck are you doing!”

“Sorry, baby,” he said, shaking the feel of the punch out of his hand, his knuckles raw. “I couldn’t just watch that fucking guy touch you like that.”

“Well, it’s really not your business how he touches me!” You snapped, shoving him back. “You don’t get to just come in here and hit people because you’re not getting your way anymore!”

“That ain’t what this is,” he said, taking you by the shoulders, something grounding in the fact that could feel you again. “Baby, I read your book…”

“Congratulations!” You snapped. “What, do you want a cookie because you finally got around to supporting me?”

“No,” he shook his head. “Did you mean that? What you wrote, was that…”

“What does it matter!” You asked, your eyes searching his face. “Why do you care! It’s ancient history, it doesn’t…”

“It does matter!” He held you tight, wanting to kiss you more than he ever had before. “It matters because I love you, I love you so much, I’ve loved you since we were fucking kids, I love you so much that I think it might kill me if you don’t let me just say that to you at least this once and if you feel that way, too…”

“You need to leave,” Gale - who Joel had all but forgotten about - said, trying to position himself between you and Joel. “And take your hands off my wife.”

“Oh I haven’t even fuckin’ started with you,” Joel said, rounding on him. “You’re a fucking predator, chasing after her fuckin’ students while you’re here with her? Doing with them what you did with her, that it? Lucky I don’t beat the shit out of you…”

“Joel, I…” you began, but you didn’t get the chance to finish, Gale pulling you back from Joel and going to hit him.

Joel didn’t give him the chance, shoving him away from you before punching him again. Gale fell, landing on your desk again with a sharp crack.

“Joel!” You yelled.

He didn’t get a chance to respond. Instead, he got pulled back, security guards dragging him into the hall and away from you before he knew if he had a shot at really having you for the first time in his life.

A/N: FUCK YOU GALE!

Sorry, I've been picturing that moment since I first thought up the fic. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!

Taglist: @kaseyconnour

#fanfic #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #halcyon #joel miller x oc

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ahli-stuff · 8 months ago

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Radioapple could be better

Back in the old days radioapple was my fan favorite crack ship . How the times change

Before we got our official depiction of Lucifer as we have now, I imagined him to be condescending, sly, manipulative character who would go on to be Alastor’s foil. Now, the only thing of that remains is that he is Alastor’s foil but the subversion of the sexy and powerful Lucifer of pop culture into sad-awkward dad Lucifer is amazing and I’ve grown really fond of it.

But for how popular it is now, there’s still a big itch that fan content for radioapple (or maybe just Lucifer) fails to scratch for me. This isn’t an issue I have that’s exclusive to Lucifer either, I nearly lost my mind about it in Tv series Lucifer(2016) too.

it’s the fact that there’s barely anyone seems to depict Lucifer’s sheer knowledge. If we are going by the finale, 10,000 years ago is when Lucifer first fell. He is at least 10,000 years old.

10,000 years to learn from the millions of stories (in passing and directly) who have fallen into hell. The wars, the disasters, the movements, the people!!! Age does not equate to wisdom, but you cannot live that long and fail to pick up a certain degree of separation from petty grievances of people who have lived only a fraction of the time you have. That’s doesn’t mean you’re immune to doing irrational things or having childish flaws, but those should coexist with the sheer weight of your knowledge. There should be a certain novelty that an immortal feels in being grounded around very young people who treat them like they are human. Because the knowledge and experience that comes with being immortal can be very dehumanizing, and that is especially so for a figure who has been maybe the most demonized in myth and religion ever.

Give me a Lucifer who knows thousands of different writings, religions, traditions, languages. Give me a Lucifer who contemplates the cruelty of some of the most infamous sinners in real life that have fallen into hell. Give me a Lucifer who becomes lost in ancient levels of nostalgia—his halcyon days with Lilith when humanity began to rear up and he was still hopeful.

Give me an Alastor who, beyond his resentment and ego, is deathly curious how Lucifer works. As a kid who likely went to church every Sunday and listened to pastors caution against the devil so many times his ears may fall off, to meet the guy himself? To meet the entity whom the entirety of the god fearing south wanted to scare him to sleep with? To finally meet the dealmaker of dealmakers?

Give me a late night conversation between the two where they discuss the what alastor has heard about Lucifer topside, Lucifer’s genuine curiosity of Alastor’s morality as a human, and the overall smallness of their existences in the largeness of their myths.

#Hazbin hotel #radioapple #lucifer morningstar #alastor #musings #meta #im on my lunch and thinking . things #this is a hill I will absolutely die on I complain about it all the time #the sandman spoiled me on larger than life characters I crave. immortals who act their age #that noncomprehending apathy that sometimes gives way to realizing . that yes you are present in your own life #despite it all you were young once and excited and the people you so look down on now are experiencing the same

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14dyh · 10 months ago

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Sickness | H.Z.

Pairing: Hange Zoë x female reader Summary: Hange takes care of Y/N during a terrible cold. Word count: 1.4k A/N: oh to be taken care of by hange… (btw hange x reader requests are highly encouraged, i love doing them)

The weather changes recently have been a challenge to Y/N's immune system, which may also partly be the reason for her often sickness. Y/N forgot what mornings without a stuffy nose felt like, or a clawing sore throat begging for relief from a distasteful cough syrup. Food barely tasted good, and every night, the dread of running out of tissues at her bedside creeps up on her. Sickness was incredibly mundane after what she had to go through during the war that both ended and began everything. The war demanded her to fight despite bleeding and injury. To think that a soldier trained to withstand any sickness was currently sick in bed was somehow ironic.

Y/N shifted groggily in the sheets, mind still clouded and her breathing quietly desperate for a better airway.

"Hello, love. Good morning," Hange would quietly say every morning accompanied by a tight hug around her chest, snuggling closer as their bodies dipped on the soft mattress.

Y/N would smile but quietly scold Hange for insisting on sleeping beside her despite her sickness.

"Pfft, I won't get sick," Hange would reason, even going as far as proving it with a few kisses. "See? Sickness itself is scared of me."

Hange's humorous attitude alleviated the discomfort within Y/N. The sickness often irritates her because of how much it restricts her actions around the house. After the war, the house she envisioned with Hange gradually became a reality and became where they settled. It has a wonderful view of a riverside and vast greenery. The neighbors are few and everyone has been kind, mostly because of Hange's charm and friendliness.

Hange insisted on tending to the house when Y/N got sick. They learned to clean up and organize the house in functions that would favor them both. It was a scene Y/N always envisioned as she gripped her sword to fight. This is the peace she fought for. A quiet, married life with her most beloved in a serene countryside.

"Hm, awake already? How'd you feel?" Hange approached the bed, carrying a tray of steaming food over the bed.

"Terrible, but not very much," Y/N muttered, sitting up before coughing on a fresh tissue. She would look at the food Hange prepared and smile, knowing that Hange had been exploring more cookbooks on their bookshelf. They have been fascinated by the outside world cuisine, always eager to try something new and pick the best ones for Y/N. Hange would usually sit by the bed as Y/N ate, flipping through the cookbooks and telling her the contents, what looked tasty, or what they would try next. Y/N could not help but give Hange a loving stare as they rambled on, appreciating how Hange used their curiosity as a love language.

Y/N cherished these days despite the sickness as it was nothing compared to their life before the war. She longed for this resolute peace, creating these halcyon memories to remember.

Y/N, consumed by her current happiness, is unaware that she is slowly deteriorating. Darkness slowly spreads underneath her once lively eyes. Her skin appears more sickly than ever, and a strange lack of reflection plagues the mirrorless house. The setting sun never fades into darkness, and the ticking clocks of life have paused.

The morning... or what she thought it was... was nothing like any before. She awoke shaking and panting violently, her fists clenched and unclenched the sheets as if trying to hold to reality and reality itself. She squeezed her eyes shut, pinching her nose as if to compress the horrors of the past. Was it another nightmare of the war? The same recurring dream of losing Hange? It was unbearable to watch like a memory violently forced into the forefront of her mind.

"It's just a dream..." She muttered to herself, holding onto the pillow.

No sooner, Hange entered the room carrying the breakfast they prepared for Y/N. A worried expression passed over their face as they saw the disheveled, panicked state of their sick wife on the bed. Hange sat beside Y/N, wrapping the blankets around her until they were intertwined in each other's arms.

"I dreamed about it again..." Y/N muttered, almost shakily. "I lost you... You died in that war..." Y/N sniffled, leaning closer to the warmth of her lover, letting her ears be filled with the sound of their heartbeat. Hange remained silent, slowly stroking her hair.

Then Hange broke the silence and whispered, "Why do you think so?"

"We can't pretend like this anymore," Hange whispered back in response, a morose sigh passing over their lips as they almost trembled holding her. Y/N felt her heart lodged in her throat, a deep pit in her stomach eating her away.

Y/N shrugged and shook her head lightly, her hand finding a way around Hange's. "I don't know, probably just my head messing with me," she muttered.

A long silence followed and it filled Y/N with discomfort as though there was something lurking beneath her terrible dreams.

"Hange, what do you mean...?" Y/N wanted to take it back, her words almost like a terrible mistake to trigger a ticking bomb.

Y/N was overcome with the gentle shudders from Hange as they sobbed on her shoulder. Their eyes watering with desperation and grief, they finally mustered the courage to face her, tracing a thumb over her cheeks. The lightness of her touch seemed insignificant against the deeper pallor of her face and the dark circles that enveloped her eyes, signs of her deep internal illness.

Y/N sniffled, partly because of the cold and partly because a dreadful truth began clawing on her insides, demanding to be let out. She could not meet the gaze of her spouse this time.

"I'm so sorry..." Hange whispered. "I wish things could be different."

Hange paused and brought their lips to her cold hands.

"That doesn't matter now, though." Hange's tears began to trickle down their lover's hand, a transitory warmth passing over. "You have to wake up now."

"What...?" It was weak, a persistent cry from her throat, wishing that her ears were fooling her this time.

"Wake up now, I'll always be here," Hange held her tight, their actions betraying their words. They don't want to let go. But holding on would only hurt her.

Y/N shook her head furiously, a string of no's spilling from her lips as she held on to Hange with her eyes closed.

"Please, sweetheart," Hange pleaded, their thumb wiping away the tears that fell on their lover's face. "You have to let me go."

"What are you saying...? Please don't leave me..." Y/N gripped Hange's arms, afraid to let them go again. Afraid that she would lose them again the way she did back then.

Was it all a dream? Y/N thought to herself. Then why does the sun feel so warm, why were Hange's heartbeats so real against her ear? Y/N broke into tears as the world began to shift back to reality once again. The warmth. Hange's heartbeats. They felt so strong yet so desperately hollow...

Unreal.

"I love you, I always will." Hange loosened the grip, letting Y/N return to the world they fought for.

Y/N woke up crying on the cold sheets of what their room should have been. A heavy storm pounded against the roofs and windows, the sound forming a euphonious symphony to be heard inside. Y/N let the obsidian sky cry with her, the emptiness of the house consuming her bit by bit. The same place Hange promised to build a life with her became nothing but a hungry space, waiting to consume her as well.

Y/N shook her head, refusing for things to end this way. She cried and cried, she showed this place that she wouldn't be consumed... she was meant to live. That's what Hange would have wanted.

Y/N fell asleep crying, peaceful at once as she drifted back to unconsciousness.

That morning, Y/N felt the balmy rays of the sun spilling warmth through her skin. Her eyes fluttered open, still puffy and weak from crying. She cried with the sky so much that night. So hard that her nose cleared up, regaining her airways once again.

She could breathe again, no longer suffocating, no longer a prey to be consumed by her grief... The empty grave of her lover felt so close yet so illusory in the backyard of the house they once dreamt of together.

"Thank you, Hange..." she mumbled as her eyes fluttered close once again. A tell-tale embrace enveloped her in warmth as she drifted back to a peaceful slumber.

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literaryvein-reblogs · 8 months ago

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A List of "Poetic" Words

to include in your next poem

Ambrosian: Anything particularly delightful to taste or smell.

Amort: Spiritless; lifeless.

Apollonian: Harmonious, measured, ordered or balanced in character.

Ariose: Characterized by melody; songlike.

Aureate: Golden, gilded, brilliant or splendid.

Caliginous: Misty, dim, murky, obscure or dark.

Gossamer: Something extremely light, flimsy, or delicate.

Halcyon: Calm, quiet, peaceful or undisturbed (usually accompanied by ‘days’).

Inveigle: To entice, lure, or ensnare by flattery or artful talk or inducements.

Mawkish: Sentimental in an exaggerated or false way.

Motley: Being of different colors combined.

Nebulous: Cloudy or cloudlike.

Panacea: A remedy for all disease or ills; cure-all.

Pellucid: Allowing the maximum passage of light, as glass; translucent.

Penumbra: A half-shadow, or the edge of a shadow.

Puerile: Of or pertaining to a child or to childhood.

Quiddity: The quality that makes a thing what it is; the essential nature of a thing.

Quintessential: The purest, most typical or refined example of its kind.

Scurrilous: Something coarse or indecent in the language it uses; or, as the early lexicographer Samuel Johnson put it: ‘using such language as only the licence of a buffoon can warrant’.

Seraphic: Blissfully serene; rapt.

Serendipity: When a happy and unexpected discovery occurs by accident.

Slattern: A woman or girl untidy or slovenly in person, habits and surroundings.

Sylphlike: A slender, graceful woman or girl. One of a race of supernatural beings supposed to inhabit the air.

Vellichor: Refers to the appealing mystique of an old bookshop.

Sanguinolency: Something bloody or something related to blood.

If any of these words make it into your next poem/s or stories, please tag me or leave a link in the replies. I would love to read them!

Sources: 1 2 3 ⚜ More: Word Lists

#writing prompt #writing #writers on tumblr #writeblr #creative writing #literature #poetry #words #poets on tumblr #langblr #studyblr #word list

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genevievefangirl · 1 month ago

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Gen's Top 100 DBDA Fics - PART 4

For all caveats/rules/backstory, please read the Master Post

Halcyon Days By: cordelianoir @cordelia-noir Rating: T Tags: AU - Modern Setting, AU - High School, AU - Heartstopper, Protective Charles, Protective Edwin Payne Summary: There were a lot of reasons why Charles Rowland had changed schools. His suffering grades, constant reprimands over being out of dress code and the school’s growing suspicions about his home life were only some of the reasons why Charles’ mother enrolled him in boarding school for sixth form. There was really only one problem… well two problems, maybe three. ------------ When Cricket-star Charles transfers to St. Hilarion's, he urgently needs a Latin tutor. Enter Edwin Payne, a language genius but not very popular. As the two become friends, the past rears its head in ugly ways. Can the two navigate such a new, odd-couple friendship in the face of their pasts? And what happens if that friendship starts to blossom into more? My Notes: The most adorable (yet sometimes dark) boarding school AU there is! I think I speak for a lot of us in the fandom when I say this fic warms my heart. I'm not usually a fluff person, but this fic balences the fluff with the hurt very well. I highly recommend if you haven't read it already

half of my soul, as the poets say By: thegirlofthorns @edwinspaynes Rating: T Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, gravestones Summary: Edwin existed, just as Charles had. Charles, who occupied a space in loving memory. A much-deserved space – Edwin would have wanted it no other way – but the core of him wanted to scream that he had been here, too. He never would be again, but he had lived, and he had breathed and laughed and moved with too much frippery and frill to continue on breathing, and he had been a whole person, once. And it had not mattered. So looked at CHARLES ROWLAND through tears, allowed himself to. Even Charles's hammer on metal on stone was not enough to dull the pain, but it was enough to remind him that he was still here, even if he was no longer living. It was an awful sound, a jarring sound, and tears shone in Charles’s eyes as he focused intently on carving out the A in his surname, but it was something. They were there, together, and they were feeling. - Or, Charles finds Edwin's unmarked grave and will, in the lightest of terms, not be having it. My Notes: I love Charles being angry at the world for how Edwin died and how little anyone cared about him. This fic expands on that and the epithet that Charles puts on Edwin's gravestone is perfection.

head in the clouds but my gravity's centered By: shadowquill17 @shadowquill17 Rating: T Tags: Feelings Realization, Love Confessions, Protective Charles Rowland Summary: Charles touched Edwin’s face when they were in Hell, and it made them both feel better. So of course he keeps doing it. And of course it escalates. My Notes: Who doesn't love some intimate face touching from their best mate? I think this is a great tactic to use to pull Edwin out of his own head lol

Heaven To No One Else But Me By: coloursflyaway @coloursflyaway Rating: T Tags: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Feelings Realization Summary: We would like to offer you a gift, Edwin Payne, the entity says, and holds out its hand; Charles has to force himself to stay put and not step between it and Edwin, because it feels like danger, even if it shouldn’t. The entity wouldn’t hurt Edwin, he tells himself, and he knows it’s true, it’s just that it is so powerful that even the slightest touch is terrifying and Charles is terrified about losing Edwin all the time anyway. “Why me?”, Edwin asks, head raised high and the entity’s light reflecting off his skin in a way that makes it look like porcelain, fragile and translucent and beautiful, “Why not Charles?” There is nothing we could offer Charles Rowland to take his pain away, the entity says and its voice rings out in Charles’ head. But you, we could erase yours. If you wish us to. Edwin gets the opportunity to go back in time and change his life so he will never have to go to Hell, but price of it is losing Charles; Charles can only stand next to him and wait for his decision. My Notes: Edwin sees flashes of the life he could have while Charles just stands by thinking Edwin is going to leave him. It is so painful, but also so good.

hell or high water - Series By: oddessea @oddessea Rating: T Tags: AU - Different First Meeting, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Charles Rowland, Protective Edwin Payne Summary: Together - After decades of searching for a way out of Hell between being eaten by a large spider made of baby dolls, Edwin Payne is ready to try anything. When he finds a torture chamber in an out-of-the way part of the Doll House, he meets a boy his age named Charles Rowland. But, more importantly, he realizes that he might not be the only one who doesn't belong in Hell, and that, maybe, escaping is easier when you aren't alone. Feel - Every good detective agency needs an office, and every good detective needs a break. After escaping from Hell, Edwin and Charles want nothing more than to have a nice, long rest. Charles worries that something irreparable has been done to him by his time in Hell, but he can't worry about that now. The Dead Boy Detectives have their first case, and if they solve it, they may just earn their very own office and, hopefully, somewhere safe for them to land. My Notes: The boys meeting in Hell greatly shifts their bond and dynamic in this fic and I LOVE IT! They are so attached to each other and I can't! Like you think they are codependent in canon? Read this!

holding on to patience (like a sunrise) By: toomoon (jjjat3am) @toomoonfic Rating: T Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Touch-Starved, Getting Together Summary: In the aftermath of their appointment to the Lost and Found Department, Charles and Edwin's hug lingers. or, 5 times Charles touched Edwin, and one time Edwin touched him first. My Note: We can all agree that hug in ep 8 was great right? Well here's a fic expanding on their various touches after that!

I dont think I could stand to be (Where You Dont See Me) By: BadBoyDeanAsf @thepopsicle Rating: T Tags: Protective Charles Rowland, Depression, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Trauma, PTSD Summary: So Charles decides then and there with his eyes boring into the image of a woman who couldn’t have possibly been half as lucky as them that he would confess to Edwin. He wasn’t sure when or even how but he knows without a doubt that his partner deserved to know he was loved, that his feelings weren’t unrequited. - Six months after the events of S1 canon, the boys are trying to return to normal in London and deal with their own struggles. Edwin is fighting the grief of losing Niko and Charles struggles between worrying for Edwin and attempting to unpack his feelings. My Note: Charles worries so much about Edwin in this one that it makes my heart hurt. He just wants Edwin to be well again and takes him to see some art to try and make him feel better and it turns into some deep thoughts.

I Turned Back One Last Time (just to prove you were there) By: isnt_that_wizard @skateboardtotheheart Rating: T Tags: AU - Canon Divergence, Protective Charles Rowland, Touching, Touch Starved, PTSD, Hurt/Comfort, Angst Summary: Since they'd fallen out of hell, the Night Nurse slamming the door on the awful baby doll demon behind them, Charles had been itching to touch Edwin. And it wasn't like his usual touch-oriented personality just wishing to have some sort of contact. He could control that easily enough after all this time. No, this was something different. This felt like a desperation. A need to be in Edwin's personal space, to keep his hands on him. He wanted to wrap his best friend in a hug and never let go, he wanted to sit as close as possible as they heard a new case. He wanted to take Niko’s place as she grabbed Edwin's hand to drag him to watch another one of her shows. He wanted to tuck Edwin against him as they sat on the couch. He would wrap an arm around Crystal and wish it was Edwin, who was merely across the room. --- After Hell, Charles is terrified of letting Edwin out of his reach for fear that he might get taken away again. He is, of course, being very subtle in his attempts to keep Edwin close. or a series of moments when charles can't stop touching edwin to remind himself that he's real and safe, until it all finally catches up to him and he snaps My Note: Charles is freaking out in this and the tension is palatable. In particular the end of chapter 2 into the beginning of chapter 3 gives me such strong emotions. I have reread this one so many times

i’d be the choiceless hope in grief [that drove him underground] By: Laney_Rockin @laney-rockin Rating: T Tags: Hurt No Comfort, Hell, Unhappy Ending, Angst, Orpheus and Eurydice, Love Confessions, Time Loop Summary: Charles had a bad feeling that when Edwin stopped running up those spiral stairs the first time something terrible would occur. An awful gnawing feeling deep within that he chalked up to a ghostly intuition. If he was alive he'd think it was a stomachache, almost on the edge of making him sick. He hated when he was right. ---- Or: Charles becomes much more like Orpheus than he'd like. Edwin doesn't blame him for it. He doesn't think he ever could. My Notes: We love Hell time loops! But also you want sad? Here you go. This line in particular sticks with me, I love it so much. (spoilers ahead!) - "I said the ending was tragic, not that the love Orpheus and Eurydice had for each other was. In fact, it was perhaps the greatest part of the story. Eurydice holds no ill will towards her husband even as she dies a second time. Knowing and comforted in the fact that she was utterly adored by him."

If I could hold you for a minute By: HistoriaGloria @historia-gloria Rating: G Tags: Case Fic, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Whump, Protective Edwin Payne Summary: "For as vicious as it can be for ghosts, iron is not as common as you would think. It is rare, in Edwin’s experience, that the supernatural forces they are dealing with actually know that iron hurts as much as it does. Rare, but not rare enough." Charles is hurt on a case, leaving Edwin and Crystal to pick up the pieces. My Notes: The fight scene in this fic really stands out, it is super well done. And Crystal gets to help the boys!

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carsthatnevermadeitetc · 10 months ago

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Chrysler Halcyon Concept, 2024. A prototype for Chrysler's new electric saloon that reveals the design language for their future electric range. Their first new electric model, a crossover, is due next year but the saloon is further alway.

#Chrysler #Chrysler Halcyon #Chrysler Halcyon Concept #EV #electric car #concept #prototype #design study #2024 #futuristic #suicide doors #Stellantis

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myreia · 2 months ago

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Sketches of Times Lost

ao3 | tumblr tag | my writing

short stories include spoilers from a realm reborn to endwalker. all stories are set in aureia malathar's canon. [❤] = fave entry/fic that I am proud of [g] = general (all audiences), [t] = teen (some language, more difficult themes), [m] = mature (implied sex, sensuality, strong language, and/or violence), [e] = explicit (mature themes, explicit sex scenes)

Week I

Week II

Week III

Week IV

#ffxiv #ff14 #final fantasy xiv #ffxiv fanfic #ffxiv fanfiction #ffxivwrite #ffxivwrite2024 #writing tag #myreiawrites2024 #aureia malathar

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follow-the-compass-home · 5 months ago

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Halcyon - Chapter 1 [Of Small Gods and Short Prayers AU]

Fandom: Hermitcraft

AU: Gods & Goddesses

Genre: Fantasy

WC: 733 of ~8k total

Relationship: Grian & Gem + many minor relationships, all platonic except for Joel / Lizzie

Language: English

Status: 1 out of 7 chapters

Warnings: Past-main character death, temporary character death, grief, mourning, loss, minor character death, reincarnation.

Author's Note: The warnings related to death are all things that happened before the fic and are only mentioned in conversation or vaguely through flashbacks.

Summary:

Grian is a forgotten patron god of fishermen, who was known for being able to summon favorable winds and calm the waters. As he's fallen into oblivion, he's forgotten all about himself, until Gem, a brave sailor, awakens him and asks for his protection.

This fic was made for the @mcyt-co-create event! Go support everyone there c:

#hermitcraft #hermitcraft fanfic #of small gods and short prayers au #osgasp au #hermitblr

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woneuntonzz · 10 months ago

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what's it like to love ? 𓇢𓆸

anton lee x afab!reader (part 5/5)

• part 1

• part 2

• part 3

• part 4

warnings: cussing!

genre: fluff -`♡´- highschool love

word count: 2.8k words!!

[note!!: hiii i'd just like to quickly say that this is my first post ever and i'm still a bit insecure with my writing, and english is not my first language so bare with me now 🙏 open for any forms of feedback

please do take note that i will take longer to update/respond to anything because of school, thank you!!! ]

[Day 99]

It's been a few weeks since your senior year began, though, the path to take after overcoming highschool is still a little unclear to you. Still, you don't rush yourself.

“Psychology's quite interesting.” you said as your fingers glided through the array of vinyls.

“You wanna be a therapist?” Anton was at the other side of the tall steel shelf that divided the two of you.

Your fingers stopped on a vinyl of your favorite The Smiths song. You walked over to the record player, just in time when Queen had sung the last lines to Don't Stop Me Now. Anton crept up behind you and laid his hands on your shoulders.

“That song reminds me of the time when I first fell for you.” he would whisper in your ear.

You turned your head and looked up at him with raised brows. “Really?”

“Yeah. I've liked you since freshman year. I can remember very vividly. I felt so tired from training at the time and kinda hated that I still had to go to school the next morning. I was sleeping in the classroom during lunch time, and, like, I had my head down and couldn't see anything, then I suddenly heard you singing 'There's a light, and it never goes out'.” Anton sang the last part right into your ear.

When the record started to play the song, you turned around to face him.

“How'd you know it was me if you couldn't see?” you posed him a question followed by a low chuckle.

“That's the thing. I wanted to know who it was so bad, but I didn't know how. I'm still a total loser at the end of the day.” His words got you shaking your head at a mild pace, laughing. “I guess it took me about 3 weeks to figure it out. You would always sing it randomly. At some point I thought you were doing it on purpose to get to me.”

Disbelief was displayed on your face as you looked at him. “Wow, I can't— why would I even try to 'get to you' when you never even talked to me unless you really needed to.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. It's just that —well, I just thought you were like the other girls back then that snuck love letters underneath my desk and stuff.” your smile grew to a cackle that infected him.

The sweet sound of your harmonious laughter and the music marked another halcyon for the two of you to look back on.

“Okay 'Mr. Chick-magnet'.” you joked as you hugged his waist and buried your face in his chest.

As a response, he wraps an arm around your body, and the other would reach behind your head, caressing your hair as the two of you slowly and subtly swayed to the music.

You two have been together for almost 3 months now. Not much has changed since then other than being more open and touchy with each other and no longer caring if people gave you piercing looks for being so enamored towards each other.

The record store would end up being a hotspot for you two —though, it would only be when you weren't able to go to your grandfather's flower fields. The record store owner grew fond of seeing you and Anton lost in each other's visage, and the music. He saw the way you would stare into each other's eyes and wondered what kind of film played in them to cause so much immersion from the two of you.

“I thought it was easy to play the cello.” you mumbled against his chest.

“Yeah. It is, you just don't know how.” you giggled at his light-hearted retort.

You looked up at him with gleaming eyes.

“Am I a bad teacher?” he asked softly.

“No, not at all. I guess I'm just really distracted.” a chuckle escapes his mouth by the end of your answer.

“Distracted by what?” he prodded at you with his words, and his eyes as he pressed his forehead against yours.

You grin knowing both you and him already know the answer to that.

“By you.”

He took you to his house after another one of his swimming matches. Well, it was actually his mom who had asked you to come to their home for dinner and drove you along. Anton wordlessly thanked his mom for inviting you over, he wanted to do so himself, but he got scared you would decline.

After dinner, he took you to his room and there you finally saw the cello that would always be in the background when you two facetimed, that he sometimes would play to you through call. He played you your favorite ballad and asked you to sing to it. His mind would adrift from the walls of his room and would follow the mist of your dulcet voice. You loved the way he closed his eyes as he played, and how he'd slowly flutter his eyes open to meet yours. His sobriety shattered as he got drunk in your grace and how your head would tilt to peek in his reverie, and it almost slipped out of his mouth —I love you, but something held him back.

After a while, he would go on to teach you. He'd position himself behind you, and guide your hands with his own. His hands would linger on your skin which made you unable to follow his directions or comprehend anything he said clearly.

After everything that went down, he truly never wanted to let go of your hand as you stepped into the gate of your own home. His smile urged you to drag him along with you, but you resisted, and gave him a quick peck on his cheek before saying goodbye.

“You know when you'd always lecture me on the lessons I can't understand?”

You and Anton were now seated on the little sofa in the store, you laid your head on his shoulder as he played with your hands.

“Hmm~ what about it?” you asked him back.

“At some point I constantly lied about not getting it so you can teach me over and over again.” he says, almost in a laugh, laying his head against yours.

“Are you saying that because I jokingly called you stupid one time…” you felt him frantically shake his head.

“No! I'm being for real.” he laughed.

“Yeah, okay…” you kept your wary tone from which he dragged your hand near his mouth and bit it lightly. “What are you doing?”

You two were giggling against each other. It was only with each other that you reached true serenity. You were lucky to have the record store all to yourselves. It would always be empty —at least at the times you'd visit— as if it was being reserved for the two of you.

————— ୨୧ —————

You sat on your desk, typing out an essay given by your English teacher as an assignment to be submitted the next day. You hopped on a call with your friends who were given the same assignment.

“Our essay topic is just 'memories', she just gave us that word, said nothing else about it and left!” Yuna grumbled.

“Tell me about it. Anyways, what topic was given to your class Y/n?” Liz asked.

“Love. Just love.” you replied, continuously typing on your laptop.

“Dang. That's kinda easy.” you couldn't help but grin at the slight frustration in Liz's voice.

“'Memories' is not that bad. You're both school journalists, you can do it!” you gave them words of encouragement in hopes that they'd start to restlessly type too.

“Okay, okay. Game mode on.”

You couldn't stop your lips from forming a smile as you read through what you had already typed. The only reason this was easy for you was because of the given topic. It gave you the opportunity to give an answer to the life-long question you've had in your head.

“Finally finished! I feel so tired. I'm gonna head out first, I might bang my head against my desk if I don't go to sleep, bye lovies! See you tomorrow!” Danielle yawned before leaving the call.

“Me too guys hehe.” Yuna spoke.

“Y/n? you're still not done?” Xen asked.

“Yep. Just doing revisions. I'll be done in a few minutes.” you were in fact not done, not doing revisions just yet, you just had a lot to say.

“Well, let's end the call and get some sleep. Go to sleep as soon as you finish, yeah?” you looked over to your phone screen and gave Xen a dozy nod. “Okay, bye babes!”

“Bye-bye!”

“See y'all tomorrow!”

You turned your attention back to your essay, deep in thought. An idea suddenly crossed your mind. You would finish your essay, but would end up sleeping way later as your head ran with thoughts about tomorrow.

————— ୨୧ —————

[Day 100]

You woke up to your mom assisting you to the kitchen to eat breakfast. Your temperature spiked up and you felt light-headed the whole time. It was still early in the morning, but you were already receiving sought messages from your friends, including Anton.

You chuckled before getting up from where you sat. You realized it would take you all the strength you had to get to your room to retrieve your laptop, still, you persisted and was back in the kitchen with your laptop within minutes. You hurriedly sent him the file, but then you remembered. You had intended to give it to him after it had been graded by your teacher —as a love letter. It sounds cheesy, but there's more to that. It contains your genuine thoughts and feelings, the big and the small that you languished over, and most importantly, it contains the words both you and him have yet to utter.

It was really only recently when you'd find yourself thinking about it. Maybe it's too early —was enough to shut down your thoughts. It had only been 2 months, but you happily embraced his affection, his words, his voice, his touch, every moment with him felt enchanting to you. You were certain he felt the same and he would often express it with his eyes and the placement of his hands and indirectly if he was being vocal. The shared passion for one another was undeniable, and it only seems to be growing more and more as time goes by that even after the first heated argument you've had with him a while back, you two were able to recover and came out better than ever.

“Eat well hun'. It's better if you lay for the rest of the day.” your mom went over to you to caress your hair.

She had decided to call in sick for work to take care of you today, and you couldn't be more thankful.

You did what your mom advised you to and the whole day, you laid on your bed as you listened to the playlist Anton put together for you for your first monthsary to help you sleep or relax yourself.

————— ୨୧ —————

When you woke up, the sun was already setting. You weren't feeling any better from when you had fallen asleep which frustrated you a bit. You stood up and stayed there for a little bit, feeling dizzy. You suddenly heard a knock at your door. You weren't sure if it was your hazy mind making up the sounds or if it was real, but you still took weak steps to the door to answer it.

“Tonii?” you were engulfed in Anton's arms the moment you opened the door. “Why are you here?”

Anton didn't speak and led you back to your bed.

He had that look in his eyes again. It was the same eyes you saw that night at the flower fields.

“I love you too.”

Your heart was throbbing loudly and it was the only thing you could hear right after Anton's voice faded into your soul.

He didn't wait for you to respond as he knew you were feeling too weak to continuously speak, and so he cupped your cheek with his hand, while the other held your hand as he leaned in for his lips to slowly collide with yours.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

It was Anton's first time going into the student council office without you. He stood by the printer quietly trying to brush off the student council officers eyeing him as if he was eating up all the printing paper. He immediately rushed out once he got your essay printed.

He still couldn't believe the length of your essay as it was three pages long, even then, he was intrigued and wanted to read what you had put that made it so lengthy.

He decided to stay back in the classroom a little longer when lunch came around. He sat on his seat with his back against the wall next to him and started to read.

What's it like to love? an atypical query to have as a child, as you would think most in the age of innocence could only make time and thought for leisure and the attainment of joy, but young minds are always curious. The very first time I caught a glimpse of love was in the form of a field of flowers…

Anton was hooked and mesmerized with your potency.

…It was from it that I realized that if you truly loved, any ounce of pain, blood, or sweat will be overlooked. I failed to completely understand it back then, throughout my years of adolescence, I've had my fair share of misfortunes when it came to love. I was easily convinced that what I was feeling during those times were love despite the lack of sincerity from those who had taken my heart for granted. It took some time to accept that being 'young and stupid' is not just a phrase being thrown around as an excuse, but it's an indication of vulnerability. I had my time to heal and embarked on a journey to self-betterment, and I thought maybe love is waiting for me at some other point in my life, and this thought would later be contradicted…

Anton flipped over to the next page with a vivid mind.

…I am admittedly afraid of what the future holds. This man that had me smitten was one I never even acknowledged fully until much later. I had no idea what took so long for me to see him when he's been around since I've begun recklessly handing my heart out to others. To think back, if I had handed him my heart back then, maybe I would've been spared from all the tears I have shed because I know he would hold it dearly, close to his own…

…feelings I have never felt before, that I never even knew of, are now all I yearn for when the sky's painted black. It was with him that I understood what it was truly like to be appreciated, to be loved with no conditions. It's a pain to think that it could all disappear with a blink of an eye, but when he holds me close and looks into my eyes, I am assured. What's it like to love? to love, is him. It is he, my love, my one and only. I had liked you for 100 days, and today I declare, I love you, Anton Lee.

Your words plunged deep into his heart. Seeing his name after those words made him feel dazed, warm and just so, so in love. He wanted to see you, to feel you. He looked over to your empty desk and could see the specter of your smile against the light of the sun.

It had seemed as though you had written him a love letter with not much intention of receiving a high mark for your sleepless effort. But even if this task was not assigned, you would still plan on expressing everything you had written to him directly, for the 100th day.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

You pushed Anton away gently, and very weakly so. You weren't able to actually make him back away, but he got the message and pulled back.

“You're gonna get sick too.” you faintly voiced out your worry.

Anton bit his lip and proceeded to make the heat in your body rise even more as he smiled. He gently pulled you closer to him, laying your head on his chest and wrapping you with his warm embrace.

“I love you so much.” he uttered under his breath, burying his face in your hair.

You just remained quiet, and snuggled even closer to him. Your arms would lazily make their way around his neck, and you would look up and express your love with your lips once more.

Anton went home with a sanguine tint on his cheeks, feeling so warm and fuzzy inside. Let's just say the warmth would become more literal than figurative, and you would definitely be the one to visit him the next day.

Fin.

｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈• ｡ﾟ

#riize #riize au #riize fanfic #anton lee #briize #riize anton #riize fluff #riize x reader #Spotify

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dragonomatopoeia · 1 year ago

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Air's End-of-Year Youtube Video Rec-List Round-Up

In light of recent events and also because I wanted to, I have put together a rec list of various (mostly longform) videos that I've enjoyed this year. Not all of these videos were released this year, however-- I just happened to see them for the first time in 2023. For readability and quality of life purposes, I have put this list under a readmore and divided the videos up by category, then creator, which means that some youtube channels might appear in multiple categories

I reserve the right to edit this later as I remember more videos, but I feel comfortable publishing it as is, considering it has almost 100 videos on it at this point

Cooking

Get Curried Chili Garlic Rosemary Chicken Recipe | How to Make Chili Garlic Rosemary Chicken at Home | Prateek Anardana Chicken Recipe | Delicious Himachal Style Anardana Chicken Recipe at Home | Chef Prateek Old Delhi Style Tangdi Kebab | How to Make Indian Starter Tangdi Kebab Recipe | Chef Prateek Dhawan

How to Cook That The $10 Million dollar lie (Betty Crocker) Debunking the Pink Sauce Controversy | How To Cook That Ann Reardon Top 7 Best Easy Lemon Recipes 🍋 | How To Cook That Ann Reardon Toxic Foods promoted on TikTok! | How To Cook That Ann Reardon Why is Pyrex exploding? | How To Cook That Ann Reardon

Library of Congress' Youtube Channel El Camino del Mole a New Orleans El Camino del Pan a Baltimore

Immaculate Bites LEMON BUNDT CAKE FIRECRACKER SHRIMP

Simply Mamá Cooks 3 EASY Beef Pot Roast Recipes perfect for the cold weather EASY Chicken Tamales Recipe | How To Make Tamales Easy NO-KNEAD Soft Dinner Rolls + FLUFFY From Scratch Milk Rolls Recipe Zuppa Toscana Recipe EASY | Olive Garden Potato Sausage Soup Recipe

Fraud, Grifts, and Scams

FoldingIdeas Contrepreneurs: The Mikkelsen Twins The Future is a Dead Mall - Decentraland and the Metaverse In Search Of A Flat Earth This is Financial Advice

Maggie Mae Fish Is the "Off-Grid" Lifestyle a Lie??

Münecat I Debunked Every "Body Language Expert" on Youtube The Problem with Tony Robbins (Deep-Dive - Pt.1) The Problem with Tony Robbins (Deep-Dive - Pt. 2)

Super Eyepatch Wolf The Bizarre World of Fake Martial Arts The Bizarre World of Fake Psychics, Faith Healers, and Mediums Influencer Courses are Garbage: The Dark Side of Content Creation Tom Nicholas Griftonomics: Why Scams are Everywhere Now

We're In Hell A History of Spam on the Internet Hustling America: I Can't Believe This Show Is Real The Problem with Voluntourism WE Charity & the Nonprofit Industrial Complex

Gaming

Hbomberguy Halcyon Dreams: The Legacy of Dragon's Lair

Jacob Geller Games that Aren't Games How Can We Bear to Throw Anything Away?

Li Speaks An Exploration of the Avata Star Sue-niverse It's Time For You To Play Flash Games Again The Strange Case of Kissing and Flirting Games Untangling the Lore of Devilish Hairdresser

Mandaloregaming The Mystery of the Druids: A Bizarre Adventure Game

People Make Games The Games Industry Must Not Stay Silent on Palestine Investigation: Who’s Telling the Truth about Disco Elysium? Working at Valve: 'A Fearless Adventure' or 'Lord of the Flies'?

PowerPak Dead Space 3 Is Worse Than I Thought King's Quest - The First Adventure Game King's Quest 2 - A Bridge Too Far... MyHouse.WAD - Inside Doom's Most Terrifying Mod Squirrel Stapler is Absolutely Nuts Tunic is Deceptively Brilliant

Super Bunnyhop Perusing Pentiment's Boisterous Bibliography

History

BobbyBroccoli The image you can't submit to journals anymore

Cambrian Chronicles Wikipedia's King who Doesn't Exist

Defunctland Journey to EPCOT Center: A Symphonic History

Elliot Sang How Tea Became European McMindfulness: When Capitalism Goes Buddhist

Intelexual Media Creating The Conservative New Right In The 1970s A Buffet of Black Food History

Kaz Rowe A Deep Dive into the Deadly World of Victorian Patent Medicine Why Have So Many People Seen Ghost Ships? Why the Myth of the Library of Alexandria Is Wrong

Kendra Gaylord 500 years of dollhouses and what it meant to teach girls Alice Austen, the 1880s photographer: her house, her photos, her love life What happened to cheap food? Diners, Automats, and affordable eating

Nerdsync Bonkers origins of superhero memes The Scandalous REAL Origin of Superman's Lois Lane Superman's Uncomfortable History with Nuclear Weapons

Premodernist Advice for time traveling to medieval Europe

Stepback History How The Vietnam War Birthed a Generation of White Terrorists OK Fine I’ll Talk About Ancient Apocalypse

Tantacrul Notation Must Die: The Battle For How We Read Music

Film and Television

Be Kind Rewind How Breakfast at Tiffany's Turned into a Totally Different Movie | Adapting a Classic Casting the Women of Valley of the Dolls | PT 1 The Making of Valley of the Dolls | PT 2 How the "Old Ladies N' Hijinks" Subgenre Became a Thing How a "Sacrilegious" Film Changed Hollywood Forever... So I watched BLONDE... Why Tallulah Bankhead Never Became a Movie Star

Big Joel The Song That Broke West Side Story

Cherrybepsi Can We Kill the Final Girl Trope Already?

Hazel weird & kinda scary tokusatsu girls

Jane Mulcahy The Lunacy of Teen Wolf (Part 1) What is the 'psycho biddy' genre?

Maggie Mae Fish BLACK CHRISTMAS Before & After "Me Too" The War on "Woke" Hollywood: A History of Blacklists and Strikes Why is Clint Eastwood

Princess Weekes Black Trauma vs. Black Horror Why Are There So Many Confederate Vampires? Why Don't Worry Darling Doesn't Work ...

Shanspeare EUPHORIA: Sam Levinson’s Unfulfilled Fantasy The Girlboss-ification of the Horror Genre TikTok Femininity Coaching and Aestheticizing Racism

Science and Technology

BobbyBroccoli The $21,000,000,000 hole in Texas The man who faked human cloning How to catch a criminal cloner

Eastman Museum's Youtube Channel Photographic Processes Series

Technology Connections What's the deal with the popcorn button?

Practical Engineering How Flood Tunnels Work What's the Difference Between Paint and Coatings? Why Is Desalination So Difficult? Why Railroads Don't Need Expansion Joints

#rec list #youtube video rec list

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justagalwhowrites · 1 year ago

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Halcyon - Prologue: Prom Night

Your best friend, Joel Miller, takes you to prom. The first chapter of Halcyon, a modern no outbreak AU TLOU fic found on Tumblr here.

Pairing: Joel Miller x Female Reader

Warnings: Modern No Outbreak AU, No use of Y/N, Slow burn, 18+ only, Minors DNI

Length: 3.7K

AO3

A/N: This fic is a modern no outbreak AU fic. All but this chapter will be set in 2022/2023

Austin, Texas

May, 2008

“I can’t believe you still have the keys to the press box!”

“Shhhh!” You hissed at your best friend as you climbed the stairs to the top of the stadium, the bottom of your blue satin prom dress clutched up around your thighs so you wouldn’t trip. “Just announce it so the whole school can hear why don’t you.”

“No one is over here,” you heard him roll his eyes. “Everyone is still at the dance there’s no one here to hear me. I just can’t believe golden girl Goldie didn’t return the keys…”

“Shove it.”

“Stealin’ shit,” he teased.

“Joel…”

“This is probably breaking and entering, you know,” he said cheerfully. “They can try us both as adults now since you caught up…”

“Fuck you, Miller.”

“Awfully adult language comin’ from that smart mouth…”

You rounded on him, taller than him for a change from your perch a few steps ahead.

“Didn’t you just say they could try us both as adults now that I’m 18, too?” You raised your eyebrows at him. He rolled his eyes. “Pretty sure that means I can swear. And if you’re not careful and I’ll shove you down these stairs…”

Joel scoffed.

“They’d try you as an adult for that, too.”

“Not once I testify about how annoying you are they won’t.”

He scoffed again. You turned back around and kept climbing the stairs.

“This view had better be worth it is all I’m saying,” he said, sounding short of breath.

“Oh quit your bitchin’,” you replied, hoping you didn’t sound breathless, too. “Which one of us is in heels?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

You made it to the top of the stadium and dropped the hem of your dress before selecting the large, utilitarian key from the keyring in your clutch, letting yourselves in.

The press box was dark and so was the field below. You gathered your dress again and made your way to the windows, the city lights beyond casting the desk against the glass in a warm glow.

“Damn,” Joel whispered, coming up alongside you and looking out at the view of the city.

“Told you,” you said, smug. But you were awed, too.

From here, you could see the Capitol all but glowing in the distance, the skyscrapers lit up along the Colorado River beyond, the UT tower standing tall.

“Never seen it without the stadium lights on,” you said quietly, looking out at the city. “Wanted to experience it at least once before I left.”

“See why,” Joel said, serious for a change. You could feel his eyes on you. “Can’t deny that view.”

You felt your cheeks get hot for a moment and Joel cleared his throat.

“So,” his teasing tone was back. “Could you even tell it was me playing from up here?”

“Oh sure,” you smirked, glancing at him for a second before pointing at the sideline. “You always rode the bench right there on the end…”

“Shut the fuck up,” he elbowed you lightly and you laughed.

“No, I could tell it was you,” you smiled up at him before looking back out at the field. He’d gotten so much taller since you’d first met him, shooting up half a foot over the span of a few months after you became friends in the first place. “Always head and shoulders taller than all the other jocks out there, spaghetti noodles for arms… Also the fact that you have a number on your shirt helped, you dork.”

He snorted and you looked back over at him again, the way the light fell on his skin. It was almost like he was glowing, too, like he was made up of everything on the horizon in front of you. He turned to look at you, smirking.

“Wanna drink?”

The two of you perched on the desk against the glass, facing out toward the city. You bunched the restrictive skirt around the top your thighs so you could actually move and Joel loosened his tie and unbuttoned the collar of his crisp white dress shirt before reaching into the pocket of his suit coat. He pulled out a flask wrapped in worn leather, the name Miller elegantly stamped into the front of it, and offered it to you.

“Fancy shit,” you said, taking it from him. You took a swig, cheap rum burning as it went down. You handed it back to him. “Where’d you get it?”

“It was my dad’s,” he said, looking at it for a second, his eyes tracing over the lettering before taking a drink himself. He flinched as it went down. “So was the rum, actually. Not sure what I’m gonna do once we burn through it all, my mom never buys the shit. Lucky for me that means she never checks it, either…”

You laughed a little. He held the flask back out. You took it.

“Yeah, that would not work in my house,” you said, taking a sip. “Even when we were living with my dad, my mom watched that shit like a hawk. Never had a chance. Now it’s just not allowed under her roof. That’ll be one perk to college, I suppose. Don’t have to dodge him and don’t have to hide the beer from her.”

You passed it back. He took it and took a sip before he wrapped his arms around his knees in front of him and sighed.

“So you’re really leavin’ huh?” He asked, looking over at you.

“Yup,” you nodded. “Getting the fuck out of this damn place.”

“So sorry to be such a let down,” he teased, but there was a hint of hurt in his voice.

“Hey,” you looked over at him. “You know you’re the only thing I have here that makes life worth living, right?”

“You’re just sayin’ that because I was willing to be your back up prom date,” he smirked. You rolled your eyes.

You weren’t joking when you said that. Joel was, easily, the best thing in your life. The only thing you’d really miss when you moved away to go to college.

When you’d moved across the city just before your sophomore year of high school, you’d expected it to be hell and you’d been right. The school you transferred to was cliquey and close knit. Everyone had known each other all their lives, they had their own groups and ways of doing things and you were an outsider, an interloper.

Which would have been fine if they’d have just let you keep to yourself, but they weren’t content with that, either. One of the guys at school grabbed your ass as you stood at your locker your second day of class and a friend of his girlfriend saw it. The girlfriend decided it was far better to hate you, the new girl, than actually confront her shit head boyfriend and you were suddenly stuck bearing the brunt of her toxic relationship’s misery.

That’s how you’d met Joel. This girl - fucking Hannah - had sicced her older brother and his friends on you. They had you pinned down against a stadium wall, your heart in your throat as you clutched your diary to your chest.

“Like tryin’ to take shit that ain’t yours?” The biggest boy - more man, really - said as he crowded in toward you. “Maybe I should…”

“Hey!”

The new voice was surprisingly deep, you half expected a teacher to come running over. Instead it was a boy about your age, baby fat still on his stomach and cheeks, his curls messy. But he didn’t move like a teenaged boy, he moved like a grown man who knew how to bend the world to his will. The others seemed to recognize it, parting like water, giving him a clear path to you.

“The fuck you doin’, Young?” He demanded. “Threatening some girl?”

“Fuck off, Miller,” he snapped. “Not you business.”

“Makin’ it my business,” the newcomer positioned himself in front of you. The first boy had a few inches on him and plenty of muscle but it didn’t seem to bother him. “Happy to make punching your fuckin’ face my business, too.”

“You think just because…”

“Think coach’ll let you play Friday if he finds out you were gonna hit a girl?” The boy cut him off. “Heard UT is already scoutin’, don’t think they’ll be interested in some jackass ridin’ the bench.”

The older boy glowered at him but, eventually, looked over him to you.

“Keep your hands off my sister’s boyfriend.”

You didn’t bother to fight him on the specifics of what happened. You weren’t sure you were able to speak to do it, anyway. Instead, you just nodded and clutched your diary tight to you. He nodded once, face stern, and stalked off with his posse, leaving just you and the other boy. He waited until he knew they were gone to turn to face you.

“You OK?” He asked, looking you up and down. You just nodded again. “Good. You really go after Hannah Young’s boyfriend?”

“No!” You said, your ability to speak almost surprising you. “I’m not going after anyone’s anything, he just grabbed my ass yesterday in the hall and…”

The boy laughed.

“I’m fucking with you, Goldie,” he smiled. “No one in their right mind would go after him. Bryce is a jackass and Hannah’s a dumbass. They’re a match made in heaven. I’m Joel.”

You frowned.

“Nice to meet you,” you said. “But my name isn’t Goldie…”

“Be a hell of a coincidence if it was,” he smirked and nodded at your diary, the cover gold glitter with an elastic loop holding a matching pen. “But sure seems like you like the color well enough.”

You looked down at the diary, your prized possession, the one thing that kept you sane. You wrote in it constantly, everything from your thoughts to what happened to you during the day to ideas for stories to poems. You filled up the notebooks that slipped into the gold cover in a matter of weeks, had stacks and stacks of them sitting in your closet at home. It had been the one thing you’d made sure you packed when leaving your dad’s house.

You looked back at Joel and gave him your name and he nodded, like he was considering it, trying to figure out if it suited you.

“You’re new,” Joel said after he’d apparently decided about your name. “Freshman?”

“Sophomore,” you said. “Just moved.”

“Me too!” He said, sounding a little excited. “Well, not just, we got here about 2 years ago now but feels like just. Everyone here has known each other since they were fuckin’ born. You get used to it.”

Joel showed you how to get into the stands even when the main gates were locked and sat with you, telling you the basics about the school, figuring out that you’d moved into an apartment complex that was only about a five minute walk from his house, learning that you both were excited about the new Curtis and Viper movie coming out in a few weeks.

“Have you watched the director’s commentary for the third one?” You asked. “It’s like that man thought they were making the next Citizen Kane, it’s hilarious…”

“Miller!”

Joel’s head snapped around to the field where a bunch of other boys in uniform were flooding out of the locker room and onto the turf.

“You just itchin’ to go on tour?”

“No Coach!” Joel said.

“Then get your ass dressed!” The man yelled. “Move it!”

Joel jumped up and waited for the coach to turn his back before turning back to you.

“What’s on tour mean?” You frowned. Joel laughed.

“He means runnin’ all the stairs in the stadium. His favorite punishment. If you wanna hang out for a bit, I can give you a ride after practice. I technically don’t have my license yet but I’m turning 16 in a few weeks and I already saved up for my truck and my mom’s so busy she’s just happy she doesn’t need to haul my ass around anymore.”

“Yeah,” you smiled. “Yeah, that would be great. Thank you.”

“Cool,” he smiled back.

“Miller!”

Joel flinched.

“Yeah, I gotta move my ass or it’s gonna get chewed out. But I’ll see you in a bit, Goldie!”

You watched him jump the railing at the base of the stands onto the track below, making you gasp and scramble to your feet to see if he was alright. But Joel was already jogging into the locker room when you made it to the end of the bleachers, like what he’d done was nothing at all.

The two of you had been inseparable ever since. He dropped you off that night and, the next morning, you opened your front door to find him there, playing his steering wheel like a snare drum with his fingers, like the plan had always been to pick you up and drive you to school. Even when you started working at the school paper and Joel made it to the first string of the football team you saw each other every day. You didn’t knock when you came to his house, you just let yourself in, his mom calling you Dorada - golden in Spanish - and telling Joel to listen when you tried to get him to study. Your little sister, Anna, had Joel wrapped around her finger to the point that he had a stash of fun sized candy bars in his locker that he’d raid before coming to your apartment so he had one to present to her.

Even when you started dating Steven, your now ex-boyfriend, you saw Joel all the time. Steven never seemed to like him much but, to his credit, didn’t seem threatened by Joel.

Which made sense. You knew better than to think Joel was interested in you that way. You were certain he saw you like a sister, like family. You weren’t someone he could look at and want. He was Joel Miller. He was handsome and funny and scored the winning touchdown in the playoff game that sent your school to the final. Boys like that weren’t interested in the girls who spent all their spare time with their nose in a book and tracked the GPAs of the other top students in the class to know where she fell in the fight for valedictorian. You were lucky he was friends with you at all. It didn’t matter how you felt about him, you weren’t about to press your luck.

But when Steven dumped you two weeks before prom and you showed up outside Joel’s last class with eyes that were red from tears, he jumped up, grabbed his backpack and just gave his teacher a wave before slinging his arm over your shoulder and guiding you to his truck.

“You know what’s so stupid?” You sniffed, perched on the gate of his truck as you poked at the Blizzard you’d gotten at Dairy Queen but couldn’t bring yourself to eat much of. “I think I’m more upset about the fact that now I can’t go to prom and I got the best dress for it. I know it’s insane but I was going to actually look kinda hot and I’ve never gone to a dance with a guy and…”

“Why can’t you go to prom?” Joel frowned, reaching his long, red spoon into your ice cream cup. You rolled your eyes and tilted it his direction.

“Because you can’t go by yourself,” you said. “That’s pathetic. Especially not when you just got dumped.”

“I’ll go with you,” Joel shrugged. “My mom keeps sayin’ that she thinks I could wear some of my dad’s old shit now, he had at least one suit.”

“I’m not about to ask you to cramp your style with the ladies by being my prom date,” you rolled your eyes. Joel had gone out on at least one date with every hot girl in your year and a few of the junior and sophomore girls, too. The longest anyone had lasted was Carly Smith, who held the prestigious title of Joel Miller’s almost girlfriend for 10 days and the three class periods before lunch when he told her he wasn’t interested before asking you if you wanted to run to Whataburger.

He scoffed.

“Not interested in any of them,” he said. “Setting my sights a little higher these days.”

“College girls?” You teased.

He laughed, reaching his spoon over for your ice cream again. You tilted it in his direction and shook your head a little as you did.

“Somethin’ like that,” he said. “C’mon. Let me take you. It’ll be fun and you can still wear the fancy dress.”

You ate another bite of your Blizzard, thinking for a second as you sucked on the spoon, the plastic edges sharp on your tongue.

“Alright Miller,” you said eventually. “Let’s do this thing. You and me at prom.”

“Gonna be fun, Goldie,” he said. “Promise.”

He was right. It had been fun. Really, really fun. Honestly, way more fun than you’d ever have with Steven, anyway. Joel picked you up in his suit that was a little big around the middle but actually fit his broad shoulders and long legs. He’d gotten his truck washed and he’d even vacuumed the inside and he came to your door with a corsage in a box that was still cool from being kept in his fridge until he came to get you. Your mom took pictures of the two of you together and you hoped you didn’t look as stupid as you felt when you posed with your hand on Joel’s chest, tucked against his side like a real date while your heart was beating so fast it felt like it was threatening to burst from your ribs. Your dress was long and sleek and fit you just right, highlighting the womanly curves you’d grown into through your teenaged years. Your mom styled your hair so that it was elegant but still framed your face just so and you spent an hour working on your makeup.

“Steven is gonna feel like a total fucking dumbass,” Joel said as he drove you to the hotel near campus where prom was being held. “You weren’t kidding about that dress.”

You laughed.

“You clean up pretty good yourself,” you said and he winked at you, making your heart flutter.

The two of you danced and laughed and you took silly pictures next to the over the top decorations with the disposable camera you’d bought just for the occasion.

But as prom wound down, Joel talked you into slow dancing with him, his hands warm and soft besides the callus he had from playing guitar and football on your exposed back. You had to fight to stay focused on the fact that it was Joel. He was your best friend, not your boyfriend. He was slow dancing with you because that was the nice thing to do when you took someone to prom, not because he was interested in you. Even though his eyes were on yours in a way that didn’t feel like was just to be nice and the way his fingers sank into your skin made it seem like it was more than just being nice.

“Wanna get out of here?” He asked quietly as the song wound down.

You tried to think of a place you could go that wouldn’t just be his truck or wouldn’t involve the two of you humoring Anna or his little brother, Tommy. For some reason, you wanted to be with just Joel.

“Yeah,” you nodded. “Think I know a place.”

You looked at the Capitol dome in the distance, the soft glow of it, and sighed.

“You don’t have to leave, you know,” Joel said quietly after a moment. “Could just go to UT. Shit, we could even be roommates, I’ve already got a job lined up…”

“If I stay I’m just going to get swallowed up by my mom’s needs and Anna’s and my dad is going to keep trying to fuck everything up…” you sighed. “And do you really think you’re going to move out? Or are you going to end up basically living at home so you can help your mom with Tommy?”

“I’d move out if it was with you,” he said.

You scoffed.

“Sure you would,” you said, incredulous. “Joel, I love you, but we both know you’d be right back at home the second Tommy acted out at school again.”

Joel sighed.

“He’ll get his shit together eventually,” he said. “It won’t be forever. Stay.”

“I can’t just be in one place my whole life,” you said softly, looking over at him. “I need to try to be someone somewhere that isn’t here.”

He sighed heavily.

“I know,” he took another drink. You scooted closer to him and rested your head on his shoulder, taking a deep breath as you just looked out the window a bit longer.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do without you,” you said softly after a few minutes.

“You’ll be fine,” he waved you off. “You’re the smart one, the one with the real skills and shit. You were always going to do great things, Goldie. Just liked being close enough to you to see you do it.”

You tilted your head just enough to see that he was looking at you, watching you, his brown eyes glistening in the hazy light of the city. You realized, suddenly, that you were close to him. Very close, so close that your nose brushed his cheek when you lifted your head from his shoulder, your eyes still on his. Your heart was pounding.

“Joel…” you breathed.

Your heart kept pounding as your best friend kissed you. It didn’t stop pounding for a while.

A/N: Welcome to Halcyon! This is a totally different kind of Joel Miller and I'm so excited to share him - and Goldie - with you all.

You can expect weekly updates as we watch these two try to navigate all the curve balls life throws their way.

Thank you thank you thank you for being here! Follow my updates account here and subscribe to get alerts when new chapters are posted.

I can't wait to go on this adventure with you all. Love you!!

#fanfic #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #slow burn #joel miller x oc #high school best friend!joel miller x you

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