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crystallinestars · 1 year ago

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To Steal a Detective's Heart

Thief!reader x Heizou oneshot I've been thinking about since April. Wanted to post this for his birthday, but I didn't have enough time to complete it, so here is a super belated birthday present to best detective Heizou.

Reader is female.

You had a rough upbringing. When you were a teenager your father vanished without a trace, leaving his enormous debt for you and your mother to pay off. Your mother had to give up all your valuables and the house to pay them off, leaving you and her to live in the filthy, gloomy streets of the slums. Growing up in the slums without a safe roof over your head or food to eat, you couldn’t help but grow resentful of the rich nobles who didn’t have to go cold and hungry like you did. While they ate delicious steaks, sweet fruits, and buttery pastries, your mother had to work hard to be able to afford a simple loaf of stale bread.

When your mother fell ill and couldn’t work, getting food and shelter proved nearly impossible. To survive, you turned to theft. Nobody would offer you a job since you were a frail street rat living on the slums, so you resulted to stealing what you needed. It was scary at first, and you got caught several times and faced harsh punishments, but you couldn’t give up. The little bit of food you managed to steal from vendors and coin pouches from unsuspecting passersby helped you and your mother to fill your stomachs and buy some new clothes to better protect yourselves from the cold nights.

Over the course of a few years, you perfected your criminal craft and were soon able to sneak into the abodes of the rich merchants and nobles you so despised. After stealing a few of their valuable jewelry and gold-encrusted cups and cutlery, you’d successfully sneak back out in the cover of the night and distribute your haul amongst the other poor families and street urchins since you understood their struggles better than anyone. The poor folk adored you for these gifts, and their happy smiles and fuller stomachs encouraged you to keep at it. You stole more and more valuables from the wealthy and distributed them among the poor, selling whatever was left and bringing the money to your mother in hopes of alleviating her burden of having to support the two of you alone. With the money, you were able to buy a small cottage for the two of you to live in, as well as expensive medicine to cure her illness. When she asked where you got the money from, you lied and said you got a job to prevent her from worrying, though the lie always weighed heavily on your conscience.

Your success earned you a reputation as a scandalous thief among the wealthy. An elusive mongrel who targeted only the rich, but no matter how the nobles strengthened their security with guards and multitude of locks, you were always able to successfully infiltrate and steal from them.

Hearing wind of a nationally renowned detective with a 100% success rate in cracking cases and catching criminals, the town leaders bent over backwards to get him to come and rid the town of this pesky thief. That was how the famous detective Shikanoin Heizou found himself surrounded by indignant nobles that begged him to catch you and be rewarded handsomely if he were successful. He accepted their request because Heizou has been determined since a young age to nip crime in the bud. He lost his dearest friend to hit-and-run, and he’d be damned if he let criminals run amok and ruin people’s lives for their selfish gains, swearing to himself to not let anything like that happen to anyone else.

However, your case was a peculiar one. The more he studied the clues, the more curious he grew regarding you. You only stole from the wealthy and never harmed anyone, and even then you only stole some money and expensive pieces of décor that served no sentimental purpose to their owners. Regardless, it didn’t change the fact that you stole valuable goods and were a criminal that deserved to face justice for her crimes. Heizou was able to deduce who your next target would be, and as night fell, he laid in ambush for you to make your appearance.

You didn’t notice anything amiss when you infiltrated the merchant’s house, sneaking your way into the treasury as usual. However, as you were quietly pocketing several pieces of expensive cutlery into your satchel, a voice sounded from behind you. Startled, you whip around to see an attractive man emerge from the shadows. He looked young, with messy maroon hair pulled back into a low ponytail and piercing green eyes.

A silence hung in the air as the two of you looked at each other for several heartbeats, frozen in place like statues. While Heizou usually wouldn’t hesitate to utter a razor-sharp quip about catching a criminal in the act, this time he was caught off guard by how pretty you were. Even though the upper half of your face was obscured by a hood, there was something attractive about your visage. He could see the surprise in your eyes, your lips parted in silent shock as you stood still, terrified that you were caught.

Shaking off his momentary surprise, Heizou was about to say something witty with a charming smirk, prepared to handcuff you and take you to the station, however you reacted faster than him and were already slipping out the window before he could even utter a word. Luckily it was the first floor, so you jumped out and gripped your satchel tight as you sprinted through the courtyard towards the cover of the streets, abandoning the rest of your loot. Heizou rushed after you, not wanting to let you escape. He was hot on your heels, but you were able to lose him among the winding streets since you were far more familiar with the layout of the town than he was, and he soon lost sight of you completely.

That night, both Heizou and you realized that you met your match. Heizou had never met a criminal that could escape him so easily, though he was loathe to admit that the only reason you got away was because he was too captivated by your looks to react immediately. Meanwhile, you were terrified that someone finally managed to come close to capturing you. If you weren’t as quick as you were, you would have been caught that night.

With Heizou’s arrival in town, your easy victories came to a grinding halt. From then on, you and Heizou had more and more close calls. He grew more proficient in reading your patterns and line of thinking, while you grew more creative in your infiltration and escape attempts.

On one particularly close call, Heizou managed to corner you against a wall after calling for the guards, fully intent on handcuffing you and taking you to the police station, but you thought quickly and tried to engage him in a conversation while you attempted to buy some time in figuring out how to give him the slip.

“Did the snobby aristocrats bribe you with a hefty sum to try and catch me? Are you that desperate to lick their boots that you’d go through all this trouble just to capture me?” you taunted the detective to try and rile him up. Heizou flashed you a charming smirk, understanding what you were trying to do.

“I didn’t become a detective to earn big money. As a matter of fact, I’d catch criminals and put them behind bars regardless of whether I got paid or not. My goal is to prevent crime before it even happens. I want criminals like you to think twice before committing dastardly acts by knowing that I, detective Shikanoin Heizou, will undoubtedly catch every last one of you and bring you to justice,” Heizou replied in a confident yet laidback manner as he nimbly spun the cuffs around his finger, catching them with a metallic clink in preparation to use them on you.

You blinked, not expecting to hear such a noble reason, and your hostility towards him waned slightly.

“Why? Do you want to feel like a hero that badly?” confused, you couldn’t help but ask, momentarily forgetting about your goal of thinking of a way out of your current situation.

Heizou’s expression turned serious, a note of melancholy shined in his green eyes.

“No. It’s not about playing hero. It’s about preventing criminals like you from harming innocent people,” his voice carried a note of resoluteness, and you could tell he was speaking from past experience. “I don’t know what your reasons are for stealing from all these nobles, but your thievery ends today. I won’t let you cause harm to anyone else.”

Heizou’s accusation irked you and you couldn’t help but snap at him.

“I’m not harming anyone! If anything, these stuck-up nobles don’t even need all this wealth, and the poor people in the slums are able to use-“ you abruptly slap a hand over your mouth as dread settled in your belly. You couldn’t believe you let your annoyance get the better of you, causing you to blab some private information to the very detective that has been chasing your tail for weeks, giving him clues to finding you outside of your identity as the town’s thief.

Heizou realized your slip up too and paused. It clicked in his mind that the reason you were doing this was because you wanted to share the stolen goods with the starving people of the slums to help them survive in the unjust world. There was also a good chance you came from the slums yourself, or at the very least were exposed to the horrible life that living on the streets entailed.

Swallowing thickly, you stayed silent, internally panicking that you had messed up in a big way.

Heizou stayed where he was, a pensive expression on his handsome face as he mulled over your words. You were doing what you did out of your own sense of justice, he realized. You wanted to help the less fortunate, just as he wanted to help those affected by unjust acts of crime. Both reasons had their validity, even if one is rooted in crime. He couldn’t deny that you had never harmed anyone physically, and you only targeted those that could stand to lose a few valuables and still be financially sound. And even then, they were never things that would be considered sentimental like engagement rings or items that were clearly used often by their owner. You took things that could be easily replaced, such as a few satchels of gold coins, fancy knickknacks that served no other purpose than to be displayed for decoration, and fancy fabrics.

Heizou’s brain was in disarray as his mind battled with his heart over whether to see you as a plain criminal or someone with a just cause like him. At that moment, there were the sounds of footsteps rushing towards the room you were in. The guards and police were coming. Your breath hitched as you felt the impending doom of your capture. Making a last-ditch effort, you grabbed a nearby book and threw it at Heizou to distract him, before making a break for the window.

Heizou easily caught the book and turned his head to watch you crawl through the window. He still had plenty of time to stride over and catch you—you both knew it. Yet for some reason, he didn’t. Instead, he simply watched you slip out the window.

You glanced back at him with furrowed brows, confused why he hadn’t made any attempts to stop you yet. But Heizou was just as confused as you were, and by the time his mind spurred him on to do the right thing and reach a hand towards you, it was too late. You had successfully escaped with another small haul stored away in your satchel.

When the guards arrived, they found Heizou standing and staring out an open window. When questioned about what happened, the detective gave a sheepish smile and said you gave him the slip again, but that he was extremely close to catching you this time.

From then on, Heizou tried to corner you more often to get more of these conversations with you. He amped up his charm and wit, even cracking a few jokes that made you laugh despite your better judgement and made you open up to him. During the day, he would venture out into the slums and question the people there about the mysterious lady thief. Most refused to disclose any information, but a few kids let slip that a girl by the name of y/n would help their families by giving them expensive looking trinkets, before being hastily pulled away by their mothers. That’s how Heizou learned your real name—a beautiful name for a beautiful thief that stole his heart.

It was a strange relationship for the both of you. You were both each other’s greatest enemy, yet neither could honestly say they thought badly of the other. There was an undeniable respect between you, and also a hint of something romantic. You weren’t oblivious to how Heizou would word his sentences in slightly flirtatious and sometimes even suggestive ways, while Heizou wasn’t blind to your coy smiles, flushed cheeks, and fluttering lashes.

You were both aware there were romantic feelings involved and that they were reciprocated by the other. However, Heizou was starting to get pressure from the police and the town’s nobles for taking too long to capture you despite being regarded as a genius detective, meanwhile you were still reluctant to give up your thieving ways since other professions available to you wouldn’t earn you the money you desperately needed. Caught at a crossroads, each of you had to decide whether to give up your goals for the sake of your love, or to pursue them and lose this budding connection you had.

What choice will you make?

#genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #heizou shikanoin x reader #shikanoin heizou x reader #heizou x reader

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leviathanlazarus · 1 year ago

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Reaching for Stardust - Part I

Read Looking for Space here.

Listen to the LFS playlist / RFS playlist (all fic playlists get updated even to this day!!)

Word Count: ~3300

Warnings: none

A/N: Y'all...I'm so happy to be here, immersed in this new series. I began writing this back in April after I, seemingly out of thin air, came up with a foundation that seemed solid enough to even attempt writing a sequel to my beloved LFS. Ever since I finished that fic, I thought that one day, I might return for more. I have a very hard time letting any series go and LFS was truly a momentous project in my life--the fact that so many people have read it and continue to read it brings me so much joy, I can't even tell you.

Having been a fan of GVF for about five years now, I do feel a lot of sentimentality and nostalgia surrounding the band, the music and definitely my own fics, too, particularly all my series. I can still remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I was mapping out certain pieces of them in my mind. I felt a huge rush of nostalgia recently when I revisited my city's planetarium for a star show, which was a huge source of inspiration for LFS, and I realized that it was literally this same month, August, in 2019 that I was just finishing up the first 8 chapters of LFS, not even planning on making it a 30-something part series (LOL!). You'll see, if you read, that some of these feelings find their way into RFS. This isn't because it's a self-insert fic, rather that's inspired by how much this fandom has seen, experienced and grown over the years. I imagine my friends and readers who were back there in the pre-pandemic GVF era can relate to some level of nostalgia. A big theme in RFS is change. I think we all can absolutely relate to that, too. One thing remains the same though--this is a love story, through and through.

This probably seems like major overkill to introduce fan fiction but this is how I feel. Many of my old GVF friends have moved on in some way or another and I've often felt alone the past few years with still being so tethered to this group of beautiful, silly, fascinating boys that spark so much joy and fantasy for all of us. So, as always, thank you so, so much for reading my fics. I really hope you enjoy

P.S. I am cross-posting to wattpad (comments bring me life!)

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I was getting lost in the pictures of Alaska–deep, shiny blue water, towering, white-capped mountains, a vivid stream of neon green in the Aurora Borealis, lush green forests. Even enormous, graceful whales surfacing, their tails nearly popping out of my screen as I unconsciously leaned in closer, hovering over my desk. I blinked hard as I turned my attention to the next picture that had been emailed over to me–a huge white ship, lined with windows that seemed endless–and huffed, shifting in my squeaky second-hand office chair. I didn’t even have a true desire to go on a cruise or even go to Alaska, but the neverending research into foreign lands nagged at me, reminded me that it felt like a very a long time since I’d been anywhere new. At least not anywhere exciting, really.

I grabbed my phone and opened the gallery to scroll through the last trip Josh and I had been on. It’d been a long weekend about nine months prior, which reminded me that it wasn’t all that long ago at all but it still felt like ages since returning to the normalcy of day to day life. It had been a gorgeous summer excursion where we’d had a comfortable, clean hotel room, a warm pool and three nights out all to ourselves, and I found myself yearning for that freedom and escapism again. Plus the sunshine and heat. Michigan winters persisted, long and brutal, and we hadn’t broken through into any real spring weather until just the past week, which had at least given Sam a nice birthday. Josh and Jakes’ birthday was coming up fast. I thought it’d be nice to do something for them, with all of us–go somewhere for real again, all four of us, run amok in a hotel or airbnb. Or just have a nice dinner together followed by bar-hopping. Whatever the twins wanted, really.

The picture I’d secretly snapped of Josh in our hotel room wandering out of the bathroom completely naked save for a towel twirled around his head came up after a dual selfie of us at the pool and I laughed loudly to myself, throwing my hand to my mouth. I’d nearly forgotten about so many of the little moments. It was so easy to forget when time kept slipping by like the wind, each good moment gone in the blink of an eye and each bad moment suspended in the air until something else came along, and the minutes turned to days and the days turned to weeks and months and before I even knew it, years had gone by and it felt like nothing and everything had changed all at once.

Next I scrolled to a picture of the best breakfast I’d ever had, this amazing brie-stuffed French toast with a warm berry compote and housemade whipped cream, then the picture of Josh’s breakfast, which had been a skillet full of chorizo, bell peppers, eggs and queso that he’d deemed to be “orgasmic.” My stomach clenched in response and I looked at my phone clock, suddenly eager for dinner once again. My hours were almost up with 5 p.m. creeping on me and my mind turned its attention to Josh and I’s relatively new Friday night ritual–binging on Chinese and watching the most obscure, nonsensical horror movie we could find. With that, I swiveled around to stretch my legs in the sun through the window and pulled up the menu on my phone, trading pictures of Alaskan mountains for pictures of fried dumplings and greasy lo mein; a few seconds later, a very appropriate text popped up:

Hey mama, I’m gonna be a little late tonight. Want me to pick up dinner on the way home?

Yes please. What’s your ETA?

8ish? What’s on the menu tonight?

I’m gonna do the orange chicken and an egg roll. Wanna share some crab rangoon?

yes I do. What about dumplings?

obviously!

;) see you soon

I’d need something to hold myself over until Josh got home, though I was glad to have this part of our routine to look forward to. Stability was important and even Josh had come to understand that more and more. I turned my attention back to Alaska, mulling over the images and cycling through words in my head that I could bring to the page and entice people with, as if cruises needed more promotional materials and marketing to bring in profit. They were relatively cheap, all-inclusive and easy for people to handle and reminding myself of this made me bitter all over again–why couldn’t my company make one of their perks a free trip for employees once a year? I didn’t know their exact state of finances but I bet it could be done. They just didn’t want to. And the irony was that they didn’t pay most of their employees enough to take extravagant trips of their own.

Whatever. There were other, more important things I told myself, getting up to stretch and find something from the fridge or snack cupboard. In 32 more minutes I could clock out and put these wild places out of my head for a bit–the weather called for a long walk somewhere.

It was the nicest day we’d had so far, which I fully realized once I was driving and headed out to a familiar, easy forest trail Josh and I often did together on the weekends. But we had a busy weekend coming up, actually. We desperately needed to stock up on groceries–my most recent find of an old packet of peanuts as my last snack was testament to that–and then the boys had a show at Waterstreet. Sunday wouldn’t be as fun–my sister was repainting the entire interior of her new house and had somehow roped Josh and I into helping, in part because we were just that nice, according to Josh anyway, and also because she let each of us pick one color for one room each. Josh had chosen a shade of dusky desert red for the den and I’d chosen something called “spring morning,” a pale lilac, for the powder room, which seemed pretty fitting for the time of year she was making these renovations.

The trail was bustling, which I wasn’t surprised by, and much of my walk was spent nodding and smiling to other people passing by. The break in weather was infectious for all of us in the area–everyone seemed to be in better moods finally, myself included even despite the gripes I had with work and money and everything else. Sometimes it felt like just yesterday that Josh and I were lying on our backs in the deep black night, gazing up at infinite stars and trying to come up with material for that poetry class that had been the catalyst to bring us together. The warm sun above me while I continued down the dirt path also reminded me of days past, of the first hike Josh and I ever had together when we both stripped down to our feelings, laughed, kissed through sweat, and had decided that was it. We’d made a lot of decisions over the years, so many that I felt like I hadn’t even noticed some of them, but I’d never decided to let fog cloud my memories. I hated that it happened regardless. And sometimes I absolutely hated what changes all the decisions had led to. I wanted to go back in time every once in a while to relive those moments and those days and it made my heart ache to know I couldn’t. Josh would assure me that the future would be just as good–and sometimes even better–than what those memories had to offer.

And he was often right. Life was good, and I reminded myself of that as I narrowly avoided tripping over an obtuse rock sticking out of the dirt, it was just more challenging now. There was no school to fall back on–I hadn’t realized how much of a safety net that had really been at the time–and less free time. There were more financial worries. More pressures in life. But if nothing else, I had the best people in my life possible; if nothing else, Josh and I were rock solid. He didn’t let a week go by without reminding me that we were soulmates and I agreed wholeheartedly–no matter what might happen, we’d have each other.

After my walk, I thought about running our necessary errands on my own but ultimately decided that’d be a deviation in routine I didn’t want to make. Josh was the best person to go grocery shopping with, being surprisingly focused and deliberate in his choices. He also was the best at picking out produce, somehow always able to discern which fruit was just the right amount of ripe, and he was good at finding the best deals. He was the coupon cutter, which always made me laugh, and I was the one who followed instinct more than the list we mutually made the day before. I would get caught up in being frivolous, more often than not tossing special treats into the cart that I couldn’t excuse beyond something like, “Come on, you like them too” to which Josh would agree with his cheeky little grin.

And that same grin was on his face later that night when he came home with the bag bursting with Chinese takeout. His voice and the smell of soy sauce and that syrupy orange stuff made me hop up from the couch, excited for all the things, but mostly him.

Josh gave a little groan as he headed into the kitchen, his backpack still over his shoulders while he carried the white plastic bag in his right hand and his keys in his left. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, shuffling and rustling all the way out of my sight. “Stephanie needed extra time–she’s having trouble with the new cameras. And to be fair, they do have a steep learning curve. You remember how much trouble I had with them last week?”

I followed him in, taking the bag out of his hand so he could zip back out and discard his keys and backpack. “Which one is Stephanie again? The one who’s obsessed with ‘film noir?’”

Josh chuckled from beyond the walls before appearing again, pink-cheeked and smiling. “Yeah, that’s her. And that’s another thing–I’m gonna have to review how these cameras even film in black and white because for the life of me I can’t remember right now.”

“Does she have any movie recs?” I asked as I opened a cupboard to get plates. “We gotta figure out what we’re watching tonight.”

“What about Night of the Reaper? You haven’t seen that one yet.”

“Yeah, but you've seen it,” I replied, wagging a pair of chopsticks at him. “That’s like, cheating. We gotta watch something we both haven’t seen.”

“We’ll find something.” Josh moved in close and pressed a quick kiss to my cheek and my heart fluttered–it always did. “What about you? What’d you get up today in my absence?”

“I went to the Hemlock Trail. It was busy,” I told him while we both plated our respective dishes, my stomach growling. “It was nice though. Looks like we’re gonna have good weather for your birthday.”

“That would be ideal but I’m going to be cautiously optimistic. Last year we had snow, remember?”

“Yeah, like a dusting,” I said with a little laugh, purposefully knocking my hip into his. “I’m gonna be blatantly optimistic and say it’ll be good. And we still gotta figure out what you wanna do.”

“We'll figure it out, my love.” Josh led the way to the living room and sank into the couch which we could have probably done with replacing; he set his can of sparkling water on the end table then grabbed the remote. “I’m so excited for these dumplings. I don’t care if it’s cat food.”

“They do kind of taste like cat food, don’t they?” I concurred, settling down on the other side of the couch. I put my plate on the coffee table in front of us and pulled it closer.

“They smell like cat food, too,” Josh said, picking a dumpling up between his pair of chopsticks. “I don’t mind. They’re fucking delicious.”

“I really don’t get how you’ve always known how to use chopsticks,” I remarked, opting for a fork instead to pierce my own dumpling while Josh fished through the cushions for the remote as he chewed. “It’s not fair.”

“I’ve tried to teach you, doll.”

“And I haven’t learned, so either you’re a shit teacher or I’m a shit student.”

Josh laughed and swatted my arm with the remote. “Hush! I’ll have you know that my students love me.”

I nodded, chewing. “So I’m a shitty student after all.”

“You are not. There’s a learning curve to chopsticks too, ya know.” Josh took another bite of his dumpling then leaned forward, peering at the TV. “Okay, so–what’re we watching?”

I followed his scrolling through our shared list of choices while I tackled the orange chicken. “What about that one?” I asked when he paused on the title Devil’s Ground. “It looks pretty obscure. 1983, a director I’ve never heard of, looks grainy and weird.”

“It’s been on our list forever,” Josh said, clicking the play button. “Let’s give it a shot.”

The movie really did turn out to be obscure–the protagonist was a teenage girl who finds an old well in the middle of the woods and climbs down into it, for some reason believing that her missing brother would be down there. Josh and I chided about the already well-known fairytale parallels, except in this movie the girl encountered creatures in the world beyond the well even weirder than those in Alice in Wonderland or Labyrinth, and ended up having to get betrothed to some menacing demon, played by a giant puppet, to save her brother. Then she and her brother kill the demon and find their way out of the strange world and back in their world.

Josh laughed loudly as the movie came to an end. “That was ridiculous. One of the best ones we’ve seen so far.”

“Those puppets were something else,” I commented, watching the credits roll and hoping everyone on that production went on to do better things. “The little blue one with teeth was my favorite.”

“Why didn’t they just get a real actor for the demon?” Josh asked, shaking his head. “Good god. It was a travesty but also kind of brilliant. I could show this to my students to demonstrate the use of close-up shots.”

“The close-up on the puppet demon when he was being slaughtered seemed unnecessary.”

Josh got up and stretched, gathering all of our plates and silverware and his chopsticks. “It really was. You want me to do the dishes?”

I turned the TV off and followed him, carrying in our empty drinks. “I thought another part of our Friday night tradition was saving the dishes for the next day and we can argue about it then.”

“No argument. You get to do them since I got the food,” Josh said as he set the plates into the sink with a clatter, then pinched my side. “Deal?”

I giggled, shrinking away from his ticklish touch. “Deal.”

“Anyway, my darling,” Josh began to say, twirling away from me and to another kitchen cabinet. I watched, amused at how he always struggled to reach far enough up to get the wine glasses. “There’s a full moon tonight. Let’s go see it.”

“What? There is?” I asked, trying to peek at wherever it may have been through the kitchen window, our third-story apartment giving us a halfway decent view of the sky most of the time. That was one of the few perks of this place–we’d moved in last year, sizing up so I could have my “office” and enough space in general for both of us to not be completely on top of one another–though Josh never complained about that–but the building was old and lacking a number of things, namely outdoor space. Our little balcony was all we had anymore.

Josh trailed out, wine glasses tinkling in one hand while he held the mostly full bottle of red wine in the other, and I followed again, feeling a sense of eagerness for the night sky which I hadn’t felt in, well, about a month. Our life together was full of tradition, I had come to realize in time, and a viewing party of the full moon whenever possible was certainly one of them. I’d just been too wrapped up in Alaskan cruises to remember this one on the calendar.

The night air was chilly–a tingle ran down my spine and Josh noticed this as I sat down next to him on the cushioned bench we’d garbage-picked right after moving in. He skillfully and quickly poured each of us wine, set the bottle down and wrapped his free arm around my shoulders, pulling me in close.

“It’s gorgeous,” he declared, his voice as rich as ever but a softness brushed through those words. I always loved whenever he got so starstruck over something that he couldn’t help but be concise.

“It really is,” I agreed, pulling my gaze away from Josh’s equally–if not more so–gorgeous face to take in the huge globe of bright cool white above us. “I can’t believe I forgot about it. Sometimes I feel like I don’t even know what planet I’m on.”

Josh laughed, light and affectionate. “You’re on planet earth. It’s disappointing sometimes, I know, but if we weren’t here, I’m not sure we’d be able to see the moon and the stars like this.”

I took a drink, already lulled by Josh’s voice and his warm, strong arm around me. He’d always been strong, considerable muscle secure beneath silky tan skin, but he’d gotten stronger still; the muscles had become even more obvious and I sometimes poked fun, and a little bit of envy, at him for being a “hard-body” because, well, he was. I’d learned to memorize the curves and lines of his body throughout the changes, tracing every plain and valley with my fingers whenever I had the chance.“Probably not, no. We’re really lucky after all, aren’t we?” I said, reaching up to stroke his hand over my shoulder.

“I think we are. Especially if we can see the stars wherever we go.”

“Speaking of–earlier I was thinking about how it’s been a while since we took a trip anywhere.”

“Yeah? Well, where would you want to go?” Josh asked, bringing his wine to his lips. “Not Alaska, I assume.”

“No, not Alaska. But I don’t know, Josh, I feel like we should go somewhere soon.”

Josh took another drink, looking ahead through the darkness that was interrupted by various porch lights from the other apartments rather than up at the jeweled sky. I’d expected enthusiasm–he’d have more free time soon with the semester coming to an end and I still had a lot of vacation days left, making the whole thing easy in theory–but he was uncharacteristically quiet.

“What?” I prodded, tugging at his wrist.

“No, nothing,” he assured me, coming alive again with his body squirming beside me, his hand grabbing mine in reciprocity. “I was just thinking about it. We should both think about it some more.”

I returned my attention back to the moon and the stars and a memory overcame me so viscerally it actually hurt–the abandoned barn, the vast field, the endless sky hanging overhead the two of us. “Alright, let’s think about it,” I concluded, wishing that the place we could travel to was back in time.

Josh sighed and curled around me. “I feel like a dumpling,” he said, lifting a hand to pat his stomach, and I laughed right into the night along with him.

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Tagging no one because my list is so outdated that none of those people are even in the fandom or use tumblr anymore LOL please let me know if you'd like to be tagged in this series!

#josh kiszka #josh gvf #greta van fleet #gvf #gvf fic #josh fic #josh kiszka x reader #jake kiszka #danny wagner #sam kszka #sam gvf #danny gvf #jake gvf #lfs #rfs #I'M BACK!!!!

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