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maemelany · 1 month

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RACING HEARTS - Part I: Miami

Well hello,

Life happened, and I didn’t write a fanfic in … three years, lol.

I did write an actual book and will probably publish it sometime next year – but I needed a break from it. So here’s a small something (don’t know if it’s going to be a series, no promises here)

Anyway, I’m back and enjoy

Mae

Summary: y/n is an influencer who is doing very well currently. She has no interest in F1 and only watches races because her little brother is a huge fan. So when a sponsor offers her passes for the Miami weekend with Mercedes, she cannot refuse and decides to surprise her little brother.

But will he be the only one to be surprised?

Warnings: none, just fluff

Word count: 3.2k

Part II here

Friday Practice Sessions

It was hot. You expected the sun to be out because it was Miami, after all, and you were glad you went with that light summer dress you got gifted by a brand after the Paris fashion week a few months ago.

The paddock was full of celebrities, some you recognized and had seen before, and others you were simply starstruck to encounter in such a casual environment. Especially since it was still Friday, not even the actual race day.

Of course, the Miami F1 weekend was big, and getting paddock tickets was a big deal. And even if you suddenly forgot how lucky you were, your little brother was there to remind you.

Of course, you worked hard to get to where you were now. A few years back, brands couldn’t care less about you. You had to work hard, take your content to the next level, and be consistent—all that while working two jobs to invest in what you knew you were born to do.

And it paid off. You were still shocked when people you’d only seen on TV knew your name or actors you fangirled on started conversing with you in red carpet lines.

But really, days like today were what you were most grateful for. The best part of your work was making the people you loved enjoy life, and your brother was ecstatic. With the big age gap between you, you hadn’t had many opportunities to bond. Your brother was eighteen years younger than you and was born after your mother remarried and finally found the happiness she deserved.

You loved your brother more than anything, but he wasn’t usually the most talkative nine-year-old boy around.

Maybe he’d talked more since you’d arrived in Miami than he had this entire year.

But it suddenly stopped when you got to the sponsor’s hospitality suit. Your brother was speechless as soon as he saw the car on display. You found it funny, recording all his reactions to share with your mom later.

“Y/n, this is crazy. Look how big the tires are!” your brother said, kneeling in front of the car.

You laughed and nodded. It still wasn’t your scene, but he made it exciting to be there.

The sponsor’s hospitality suit was something else. Honestly, you weren’t expecting that level of comfort. You had access to free drinks and personalized merch, and they even told you one of the drivers would give you a tour of the circuit later.

“Do you think we’ll see Lewis today?” Your brother asked

You chuckled. You may have been a novice in F1, but Lewis Hamilton, that was a name you recognized.

Not only because he was your little brother’s hero but because you had seen him from afar a few times at events over the years.

“I don’t think so, but we’ll definitely see him drive.”

And, of course, you were wrong.

About an hour after you made that statement, a few gasps, including your brother’s, distracted you from your phone, and you looked up.

They were pretty far from where you stood, but you could see them. Lewis and George were there, all smiles and already talking to people.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god! Y/n, do you see what I see?!” your brother cried out.

You couldn’t help but laugh again. Your brother, who was usually so reserved, was so excited you barely recognized him.

“Well, let’s go meet them before you pass out,” you said, taking his hand.

You made your way to the small group around the drivers, waiting patiently for a chance to interact. You could tell your brother was getting more nervous, his gentle and timid nature taking over.

It was George who noticed and approached you first. He shook your hand and nicely introduced himself to both of you. Your brother tried to keep it cool, only betrayed by how he squeezed your hand. It was only when he asked for a picture with George that things took a turn.

“What tires do you think you’ll use tomorrow? Please don’t go for the hard again; your car is already lacking pace,” your brother suddenly asked.

George looked surprised by the question, and you couldn’t help but laugh. Yep, the geek was back with a vengeance.

Maybe it was George’s face or your loud laugh, but something caught Lewis’ attention, and he stared in your direction before approaching.

“Y/n?” Lewis said, now, close to your small group

George raised an eyebrow. “You guys know each other?”

Lewis did not break eye contact with you and nodded. “You can say that we’ve bumped into each other before.”

You bit your lip. You wished he had forgotten that. It was the weirdest exchange you’d ever had. You did talk to Lewis once in New York. The event organizer had introduced you, and Lewis was a sweetheart. He was all smiles and shook your hand. He had introduced himself in such a humble way as if half the world did not know who he was.

But when it was your turn to introduce yourself, things went wrong. You couldn’t pinpoint what destabilized you so much, his angelic face or how he looked at you, but you mumbled something you weren’t sure he understood and then said the most cringy thing ever. ‘I love your dog’

The awkward gene was either running in the family, or there was something about F1 drivers that brought out people's weirdness.

“I didn’t think you’d remember that,” you finally said, blinking a few times.

“Oh, I do remember,” Lewis said with a mischievous smile.

Your brother squeezed your hand, reminding you that people were still around you.

“Oh, and this is my little brother, y/b/n. He’s a huge fan of yours,” you said

Lewis kneeled in front of your brother to be at his height. “Nice to meet you, y/b/n. I’m Lewis.”

Your brother frowned and looked at Lewis, then the hand that he was reaching out to him.

Watching your baby brother meet his idol was the funniest thing, and you took out your camera to record it.

Your brother finally shook Lewis’s hand, telling him how much he loved him.

“Aww,” you whispered, watching the interaction from your camera lens.

Lewis looked up at you and smiled before focusing again on your brother. He spent a good ten minutes talking to you both, answering every question your brother had, and even laughing with you at the odd ones your brother shot his way.

“Lewis, we have to go.” a man approached you and said

Lewis finally stood up and looked at you with a huge smile. You could feel your cheeks getting warmer and tinkling. Lewis was hot, making it even more destabilizing because he wasn’t even trying. His natural charm and kindness were already enough, but his looks were just a bonus - A bonus you weren’t complaining about.

“It was really nice chatting with you. And I can’t wait to compete against you in a few years, big guy.” Lewis said

Your brother frowned. “I’m still karting; you will be gone by the time I’m in F1.”

Lewis laughed, not at all offended by your brother taking things so literally.

“I’ll try to wait for you.”

He smiled one last time at you before saying goodbye.

None of you said a word for a few minutes. Both of you sinking in what had just happened.

“Lewis Hamilton is a cool guy,” your brother finally said

“Yep, he is,” you said, chuckling.

Your brother had explained what would happen today, but you did not pay attention to his explanation. But now, it suddenly felt more interesting than you thought it would be.

The cars were fast—faster than on TV, and nothing compared to the many karting races you’ve watched your brother run.

“And they do that for hours on Sunday?” you asked

“Yep,” your brother said, a massive smile on his face.

You could tell he was imagining himself in one of those fast cars one day. And you promised yourself to do whatever you could to help him achieve his dreams.

Lewis did great during the practice sessions, at least according to your brother's detailed commentary when you asked him if he enjoyed his day.

You were about to leave the paddock with your brother when you heard someone shout your name.

You turn around to find a man running after you. You frowned, trying to remember if you knew him but couldn’t remember ever meeting that person.

Still, you stopped, waiting for him to reach you.

“I’m so sorry for screaming like that. I’m Jamie, I’m on Lewis’s PR team.”

“Oh, okay…”

You weren’t sure what to say or why someone from Lewis’ team was looking for you. You patiently waited for the man to catch his breath and tell you what was happening.

“Sorry… you two walk pretty fast, you know,” he said, chuckling

He then handed you two yellow passes. You were even more confused.

“These are VIP tickets for tomorrow and Sunday. Lewis wanted you to have it.”

The confusion was only growing now. Why did Lewis want you to have VIP tickets? Weren’t the paddock tickets already VIP ones? This day, this sport was only getting weirder by the second.

Jamie must have spotted your confusion because he proceeded to explain what the tickets would allow you to do. Basically, they would allow you access to the garage, the cars, and the Mercedes team during the races.

“Sick!” your brother said, excited.

You thanked him and returned to your hotel, wondering why Lewis gave you the tickets.

Once in your hotel room, you kept thinking about it. You decided not to read too much about it and to accept that it must be a kind gesture to your little brother. Lewis must have seen how passionate he was about F1 and what a gift it would be for someone like him to watch the races up close, next to the people who actually made it happen.

It had to be why because you refused to believe it could be more. You refused to believe it could be about you.

You decided to share some content on your social media to change your mind. After all, that was why you were offered the tickets in the first place.

You went on Instagram, ready to share more about the day on your feed, but you couldn’t help but go on Lewis’s profile. You had a huge smile when you saw his latest post, a picture of him and Roscoe entering the paddock earlier today.

You were about to leave his page when something odd caught your attention. It said follow back, not just follow. You went blank for a few seconds before realizing what was going on.

He followed you. It couldn’t have happened a long time ago; it had to be today. So you scrolled through your notifications and found it. He did start following you today, and just like that, your mind started spiralling again.

You followed him back but did not say anything. Again, you preferred to avoid any assumptions.

Saturday Qualifications

It was very hot, just like the day before. But there were more people today, as the qualification sessions were more entertaining and significant.

Your brother was super excited about seeing the actual racing cars and being able to touch them. He even knew some of the engineers’ names and couldn’t wait to meet them.

When you arrived at the Mercedes motorhome, Jamie met you, the same guy who gave you the tickets the day before. He gave you a small tour of the place, and your brother took pictures of the most basic things.

You passed George’s room, but he was busy, and you couldn’t say hi. But when you were in front of Lewis’s room, you found yourself hoping you could see him. Just to thank him for the tickets, you told yourself.

“Look who we’ve got here. Hello guys,” Lewis said when he saw you

He gave your brother a fist bump before turning to you. Suddenly, you didn’t know what to do, give him a fist bump too, or just wave or…

You didn’t have time to overthink it as Lewis pulled you into a quick hug. It wasn’t that deep; it could even be classified as a half hug, but still, it was enough for your heart to miss a bit.

You could feel his toned arm around you and how he smelled so good. Again, your cheeks were starting to betray you, so you looked down.

“Thank you for the tickets, Lewis. Y/b/n is never going to forget this weekend.”

“I’m happy he’s having fun. I hope you’re having fun, too.”

“Oh, I am. Not gonna lie, I’m not the big fan here; he is,” you said, pointing at your brother, who was now talking with an engineer. “But it’s growing on me. I don’t know if it’s the special treatment or the actual driving, but I like it,” you said, laughing.

Lewis was still looking at you; his smile didn’t move. It only became more mischievous. “We can test that theory right now.”

Something told you the driver was up to no good. “I’m not sure I like this look, Lewis,” you said

He laughed this time. His laugh was just contagious.

A few minutes later, with a few waivers signed and a helmet on your head, you were inside a car with Lewis on the other side.

“Did I mention that I don’t like speed? I did, right? I barely passed my driving license; I don’t even like cars,” you mumbled as he started the engine.

The people outside were laughing; even your brother was laughing outside, recording it all. Everybody found it funny, but you didn’t.

“Please don’t go too far,” you said, turning to face Lewis

He had that smile again. The one that clearly stated that he was up to no good. “Now, where would be the fun in that?”

You didn’t have time to argue as he started the car. The sound alone made you scream. He was fast. You could feel your heart beating; it felt like being in the front row of a roller coaster.

“Oh my god! Lewis!” you screamed again as he took a corner at a speed you couldn’t comprehend.

“So, do you like the sport more now?” he asked you, smiling

“Hell no, this is madness,” you said, relieved as you could see the garage getting closer

“Wrong answer,” Lewis said, accelerating again and missing the stop line.

“Lewis!” you screamed, but he had found it amusing because he went even faster, something you didn’t think was possible at this stage. “Oh my god, I’m so going to die.”

He laughed. “No, you’re not. I’m a seven-time champion, remember?”

“Eight. My brother told me eight.” You said, knowing exactly what you were doing.

“I knew I liked you for a reason,” Lewis said, laughing

In the end, you did three laps. The last one was the worst. You screamed so much Lewis couldn’t stop laughing. It was pure chaos.

When you got out of the car, you immediately removed your helmet and turned around to Lewis.

“You do that for a living? Are you okay?” you asked

He laughed again. “This doesn’t even get close to the feeling you get in the actual racing car, you know.”

You turned around to look at your brother, who was still recording. Suddenly, you were happy that he was too young to have the same experience.

“And you want to do that later too? You want to drive like a crazy person for a living?”

He just nodded as if it was the silliest question ever.

You spent another hour with Lewis and the crew, talking about the car and watching them prepare for the qualifying session.

Even when the atmosphere got more serious, Lewis was still pleasant, talking to you and making you feel included. He took the time to explain some basic things. Things that your little brother did not have the patience or time to explain to you. Y/b/n had found a spot close to the pit wall and was too mesmerized to pay attention to you.

You watched as Lewis and George completed their laps. The team seemed pretty happy with the final results. While they did not get pole position, Lewis ended up P3 and George P5. That was good enough, considering how they started the season.

Race Day

Your brother was awake before the sun even rose. He sang in the shower, repeating every five seconds that it was race day like you didn’t know.

He would make you hate the sport at this pace instead of liking it.

Y/b/n insisted that you both wear some Mercedes merch you were gifted the day before, and of course, no was not an answer he was willing to take.

So you ended up in the garage, wearing a white Mercedes t-shirt with George’s 63 in the back.

The atmosphere was different; it felt electric, and you liked it. You couldn’t experience backstage that way in any other sport. And it didn’t hurt to have Tom Cruise next to you, making jokes and chatting as if you were old friends.

“Now, that’s offensive.”

You recognized Lewis’s voice before you even turned around. He was already in his race suit, sunglasses on. That man knew what he was doing for sure.

It took you a few seconds to remember what he just said. You asked what he meant, and he removed his sunglasses, using them to point at your t-shirt.

“After the thrills I gave you, you’re rocking George’s number on your back? I’m offended, y/n”

You laughed and explained yourself. “There was no way I was wearing that purple sweater under this heat, Lewis. It was the only white t-shirt my brother was okay with me wearing.”

“So you would have worn mine if it weren’t for the heat?” he asked, smirking.

Again, you could feel your cheeks betraying you. But you didn’t back down. You stared right at him and nodded. “Yes, I’m more of a 44 girl.”

“I like that,” Lewis said, smiling at you.

As much as you wanted to ignore it, you couldn’t. It was there. You liked the smiles, those little stares, and the attention Lewis gave you. At this stage, it was pure attraction; you didn’t know him that well, but the little you had seen only made you more attracted to him. The way he was always laughing and how he treated your brother and his team. You wouldn’t say no to getting to know him better.

You watched the race, finding yourself rooting openly for him and celebrating with the team when he finished at the second place.

You watched him celebrate with his loved ones; the champagne part was definitely your favourite. Nobody told you that you got to see hot, sweaty men - especially Lewis - pouring champagne and getting champagne poured at them.

A sight for sore eyes indeed.

Things got hectic after the race. Between the interviews Lewis had to do, the other people he had to meet, and the flight you had to catch as your brother had school the following day – you didn’t have time to say goodbye.

It felt unfinished. You wished you had time to talk more, but you were still happy you and y/n/b got to experience that.

You were already in your seat on the plane when you got the notification from Instagram. You couldn’t help but grin as you read it.

#lewis hamilton #lh44 #lh44 x reader #lewis x reader #lewis hamilton x you #lewis hamilton x reader #lewis hamilton fanfic #lewis hamilton fluff #lewis hamilton imagine #f1 x reader #f1 fanfic #f1 fic #racing hearts #fanfiction #fanfic #x reader

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fanwarriorfictions · 3 months

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Help Me, Help You - Part Six

Fenrys x F!Reader

Summary- After their last encounter, Fenrys and Y/n find it difficult to pretend like everything is normal. It’s even harder with certain royals sniffing out their business.

Warnings- This is a long one, Angsty, and I mean it this time

Series Masterlist

Part Six

Fenrys counted his dwindling luck for dinner being a somewhat private affair, he didn’t think he’d survive Hasar sniffing about the fractured relationship between him and Y/n.

Instead of the large dining hall where most in the palace would be eating, Sartaq had invited them into the couple’s private dining room, a vast meal prepared for them.

Fenrys assumed the servants attending them where under Sartaq’s thumb, but he wouldn’t be surprised if his siblings had at least one or two hiding amongst them. Ready to report back to their respective prince or princess about Fenrys and Y/n, taking in every word, every movement.

No doubt his friends noticed for themselves the way Y/n avoided his eyes like the plague, noticed the way he sat rigid in his seat beside her, they at least had the decency to keep their observations to themselves.

They made easy conversation with Fenrys mostly, letting Y/n casually observe, keep to herself like she usually did. It was well into the meal before anyone spoke to her directly.

“How did Fenrys here rope you into his little adventure?” Sartaq asked, his brows raised curiously at Y/n.

Y/n casually sipped from her wine glass, her expression carefully guarded, “We happen to be looking for the same person.”

“Vaughan?” Nesryn looked to Fenrys for confirmation.

“Her brother,” Fenrys supplied, turning back to his third glass, “Apparently I’m not the only one he’s running from.”

He felt more than saw Y/n go still, he hadn’t spoken to her since their moment in the hall, since she’d hissed her warning at him, do not touch me. The words had felt like the final swing of an executioner’s axe.

“Funny,” Nesryn hummed, “How the strings of fate pull people together like that.”

“She surely has a strange sense of humor,” Y/n says quietly.

Sartaq was carefully glancing between them and Fenrys was tempted to tell him to mind his own damn business. He apparently collected busybody friends though, as the prince gave him a knowing look, one that said, we will be speaking of this later. Fenrys only narrowed his eyes at him, warning the prince to leave well enough alone.

“Fenrys mentioned he’d gotten a tip that your brother had stowed away on a ship meant for my father,” Sartaq said, “I assume the tip came from you?”

Y/n nods, “I believe he’s here, hopefully still in Antica, he would’ve only been a few days ahead of us.”

“I’ve got eyes and ears throughout the city, if he is, surely someone will spot him,” Sartaq says, “You will find him.”

“Thank you,” Y/n says softly, the smallest crack in the mask of indifference, bowing her head to the prince.

“Of course,” Sartaq smiles, “Anything for a friend.”

Fenrys couldn’t read her reaction to that, she closed him out to well. He knew there was something about this place, about his friends, that had unnerved her, what it was, he didn’t know. Gods knew she wouldn’t tell him now.

“So, Y/n,” Nesryn spoke after a moment of silence, “Have you ever been to Antica before?”

“No, I haven’t,” Y/n said simply.

Fenrys rolled his eyes at the short answer, stabbing his fork into a poor unsuspecting piece of fruit. He caught her eyes shift to him, to his hand curled tightly around his silverware.

“It is a beautiful city,” Nesryn ignored the slight disrespect, “If you cared for a tour, I’d be happy to give you one.”

“This one acts like she’s melting the second she walks out the door,” Fenrys scoffed, crossing his arms over his chest, “I’m sure she’d rather hide away inside.”

Y/n glared at him, turning back to Nesryn, “I’d appreciate that a lot actually.”

Nesryn smiled, her dark eyes sparkling with mischief, “We’ll go first thing in the morning before it gets to warm.”

“Perfect.”

The city truly was beautiful, the Gods City, Nesryn had told her as they walked. The crowds were thick as they strolled through the streets, full of hawking vendors and haggling shoppers, children ran through them, laughing without a care in the world.

“You can find a shop for nearly anything you can dream of,” Nesryn says, smiling at a group of starry eyed kids, “Wares from all over the world.”

She could see that, there were clothes she recognized from back home, and things she’d never seen before. Jewels, cloth, foods, spices, so much of the world she hadn’t seen, all in one place.

“It’s amazing,” Y/n said, “If it wasn’t so miserably hot I’d consider living here.”

Even this early in the morning, the sun barely peaking over the horizon, it was hot, and growing warmer by the second. Y/n was grateful she’d brought her little wooden fan with her.

Nesryn laughed, “Fenrys wasn’t joking, was he?”

“Where I grew up, the snow barely melted for a few months before it started again,” Y/n says, gently fanning herself, “I’m not built for the heat.”

“No it would seem not,” Nesryn chuckled, “You’d do well with the Rukhin in the Tavan mountains.”

“My brother told me stories of the aerial legions when I was growing up,” Y/n laughed, “I think he was jealous of the Ruks themselves. As large as his osprey is, he’s nowhere near their size.”

“Perhaps he may make his way there,” Nesryn ponders, “See for himself just how magnificent they are. I’ll send word to Borte to keep an eye out for a suspicious bird flying around.”

She could imagine it, from what she knew, the Tavan mountains where much like home, though taller and perhaps even colder. Maybe her brother would go there, find somewhere that reminded him of the place he thought he no longer belonged.

Y/n still remembers that last night vividly, even this many years later. It was stupid, so stupid how it began, how it ended. She’d been so afraid, so upset, and as she always did, she lashed out in anger, like a cornered feral animal.

If you leave now, never, ever come back.

I’m sorry, Y/n, truly. The image of her brother walking away flashed in her mind, walking into the snow covered forest beyond their home. For a moment, his dark form turned golden, and when he glanced behind him, onyx eyes met her own.

“If we go this way.” Nesryn turned a corner, her words breaking Y/n out of her mind, “We could stop by the Torre and-“

“No,” Y/n interrupts, her eyes instantly finding the magnificent white stone tower, “No, thank you, I’ve seen it plenty from the streets.”

If Nesryn found her reluctance odd, she didn’t mention it, only smiled and turned down another path. Y/n nearly sighed in relief, turning her back on that looming structure.

They walked through the city, slowly moving through the markets and towards that glorious palace. Y/n found her self caught between relief and dread, relief from the overwhelming sun, and dread of the golden male she’d been able to avoid this morning.

Either he’d let her slip out her door and past his own, just as eager to avoid her as she did him, or he’d still been asleep with a surely awful hangover from his night spent with his friends. It was well past midnight when she’d heard him stumble down the hall and into his room.

There had been a moment where he’d paused, perhaps staring at her door, wondering if she was awake, if he should knock, he didn’t. She’d sighed in relief, but there was the briefest feeling of disappointment.

Nesryn kept her face forward, but Y/n felt the weight of her eyes anyways, “If you don’t mind me prying, there seemed to be some, tension, at dinner last night.”

Y/n was surprised the woman had lasted this long before mentioning it, something told her Nesryn’s eyes did not miss much. From the stories Fenrys told of her, she didn’t miss anything, her mind as sharp as her arrows.

“There was,” Y/n nods, “Nothing to be concerned about.”

The woman simply hummed, “Fenrys said the same thing to Sartaq after you left for bed.”

She’d left as soon as she could, being that close to Fenrys for so long had made her anxious, like he’d reach over and touch her again, and she’d ignite, burning everything, everyone in her path, worst of all, she’d burn him.

“In the time I’ve known him,” Nesryn says when Y/n doesn’t respond, “Which, granted, hasn’t been much more than a year now, Fenrys has been struggling. He doesn’t like to show it, but we knew, we all went through hell during the war, we all fought like hell to drag ourselves back to the light. I don’t believe he has gotten there yet, I don’t know if he ever will.”

Y/n remembers his dream, the one that had shaken him so badly that he could hardly speak to her. He’d lost his brother, the other half of his soul, watched his friend, his queen, tortured, had nearly died himself. Those days still haunted him, no matter how much he pretended they didn’t.

“When you two arrived yesterday,” Nesryn continued, “It was the closest I’d seen him to that light.”

Fenrys felt like he was being interrogated, only he wasn’t tied to a rickety chair, no tools of torture laid out, only a plush sofa and a glass of the strongest liquor the palace had to offer in his hand.

“How old is she?” Hasar was perched on the edge of the loveseat across from him, sweet Renia smiling at him over the rim of her own glass, “Is she-“

“My gods,” Fenrys groaned, “I’m sure they will be back soon, you can grill her yourself then.”

The woman’s eyes were lit with their usual fire, if only she’d been fae, she may have had fire to rival Aelin’s. She’d been at it since the moment Fenrys had finally emerged from his room, one of her own servants waiting to drag him to the very seat he sat in now.

“It’s not every day someone surprises me with a guest I know nothing about,” Hasar snarked, “Not to mention a fae, does she have any powers we should be concerned about.”

Fenrys groaned again, “She shifts into a damned cat, unless you worry about hair on your clothes, I think you should be fine.”

“Oh? Is that where all this brooding comes from?” She smirks, “Did she get hair all over your favorite cloak?”

Fenrys only glared at the woman instead of answering. That seemed to be a mistake, he could practically see the wheels turning in her mind, the dots connecting. Renia beside her only smiled at her wife, throwing Fenrys a sympathetic glance, it would seem he had no allies here.

“Trouble in paradise?” Hasar cooed, “Awe, did the kitty reject you pup?”

He held back his snarling and snapping, it would only prove her right. Instead, Fenrys took a long drink from his glass, finishing off the burning liquid.

“At least tell me how you found the girl,” Hasar continued.

“More like I found him.”

His heart lept in his chest, from the wide eyes of the princess and her wife across from him, he was sure theirs had as well.

Y/n had snuck up on them all, silent as ever, Nesryn nowhere to be found. One would think that someone would have seen her in the vast open room, but the female seemed to have a way of moving through the world unseen.

Maybe she had magic similar to his own, jumping through the world in the blink of an eye. He hadn’t seen any powers from her, only her other form, maybe her ability was in the way she moved, that feline grace.

“You must be Y/n,” Hasar said, her razor sharp focus finally leaving Fenrys to lock on to the famale, “Please sit.”

Y/n held the princess’s gaze, her own stare piercing, like the keen eyes of the cat that had stalked him for days in that little Wendlyn village. She circled the small couch, sitting directly next to him, close enough for him to feel the heat of the day still lingering on her.

“You must be Hasar,” Y/n said, voice flat and even, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, princess.”

Nesryn must have done the female a kindness and prepared her for the onslaught of the royal family. Y/n didn’t balk from Hasar’s intense gaze, she met it head on, and she even smiled sweetly at the princess’s wife.

“And you must be Renia,” Y/n nods her head to the woman.

“The pleasure is all ours,” Renia says, placing a hand on her wife’s knee, “Fenrys here was just telling us about where you grew up.”

He hadn’t been, she may be sweet compared to her wife, but Renia was just as cunning.

“Oh?”

Y/n looked at him then, the first time she’d truly met his gaze since the moment in the hall.

Do. Not. Touch. Me.

He didn’t see any of that rage, didn’t see much of anything really, she was carefully blank, hiding beneath a mask.

“He was telling us about your mother,” Hasar continued.

If he hadn’t been looking so closely he might have missed the flicker of emotion, pain he realized quickly, something he recognized all to well.

“Was he now,” Y/n said softly, “I hadn’t realized I’d told him anything about her.”

She really hadn’t told him much of her home, much of anything about her, he realized.

“Stories from Vaughan, I’m sure,” Hasar responded easily, a skilled liar.

Y/n hums, “Strange, he hasn’t spoken much of her since she died.”

A silence fell over them all.

Fenrys definitely hadn’t known that, the few things she’d told him was about her brother, gods knew Vaughan never talked about his family.

He’d known her father had been a sore spot for her, she’d shut down any mention of the male the first night they’d spent together, he hadn’t pushed the subject after that.

“I’m sorry,” Renia said at last, apologizing for the loss and for the prying.

Y/n waved it off, “No need, I was a little girl when it happened, I barely even remember it.”

A lie, he could hear it clear as day, he wondered if it was so obvious to the women across from them. Perhaps not, as they swiftly moved on, asking Y/n all the questions they’d been pestering Fenrys for.

How old was she? Only a few years younger than Fenrys. What was her home like? Cold and boring. How’d she find Fenrys? Tracked him down in her cat form.

“Why do you shift into a cat?” Hasar asked, her brow raised, “I hear Vaughan is an osprey.”

Fenrys was ready for the cool dismissal he’d received when he’d asked.

“My father was a writer from Terrasen,” Y/n said simply, “A small, insignificant family from the Oakwald that had only a few shifters among them, they took the forms of the wild forrest cats that hunted through the woods.”

Fenrys turned to her, his brows raised in shock. She was already looking at him, her expression seemingly relaxed, unbothered by the admission, but Fenrys saw through it. The crack in her mask, pain, self doubt, fear.

“Did your tour with Nesryn give you any ideas about where your brother slipped off to?”

Fenrys asked the first question that came to his mind, anything to change the subject, something he’d already been wondering since she’d snuck out of her rooms early that morning.

Her eyes flashed with gratitude, “Maybe, I know my eye was caught by the multitudes of markets, I’m sure his was as well.”

“Does he care for shopping?” Hasar asked over the rim of her glass, her eyes narrowed.

The princess knew he’d changed the subject, now she’d be relentless in figuring out why.

“Gods no,” Y/n scoffed, “Quite the opposite really, he’s not very fond of crowds.”

She had a lot in common with her brother it seemed. The few times they’d been in crowded places, Fenrys always caught her scanning the streets, he’d assumed she was just observing, perhaps she’d simply been uncomfortable.

“There are very few places in Antica that aren’t crowded,” Fenrys said.

“Maybe that’s where you’ll find him,” Renia chimes in.

Fenrys saw the hope fill her eyes as she echoed the word, “Maybe.”

Someone was knocking on his door.

The light tapping was barely enough to pull Fenrys from sleep, almost completely drowned out by the trickling water of a fountain somewhere beyond his open window.

Based on the moonlight shining through the room, it was still early in the night, dawn far off.

The knocking was a quick, soft pattern, stopping for a moment before hesitantly trying again. He was surprised it even woke him, he’d passed out as soon as he’d fallen into bed, so exhausted from his lone search through the city earlier that evening, Vaughan still nowhere to be found.

Fenrys threw off the light sheets, searching the floor for his discarded clothes to at least slip on his pants.

By the time he reached the door, the taps had stopped completely, maybe the person had given up, assumed he was fast asleep. He still reached for the handle, still gently pulled the door open.

Her fist was raised as if she was about to try a knock one last time, frozen, staring at him with wide eyes like Y/n hadn’t expected him to be there at all. Those eyes fell, for only a moment, enough to tell him she realized he wasn’t wearing a shirt, only clothed by the pants he’d been wearing at dinner.

His own eyes dipped involuntarily, and he cursed the faceless servant who had, no doubt laid out the gown for her. The pale blue silk and lace looked nearly silver in the moonlight, cascading down her body, stopping high on her thighs.

“I didn’t think you’d be awake,” she whispered, eyes shining with self doubt.

“Are you okay?” He kept his voice low, kept his eyes on her own.

Y/n wrapped her arms around herself, “Can I come in?”

Fenrys stepped back, opening the door wider for her. She walked in, passing close enough to him that he scented the lavender oil on her skin.

He took a deep breath as he closed the door, turning to find her standing in the center of his room, arms still wrapped tightly around herself as she looked around the room. Her eyes locking on his rumpled bed sheets, his clothes littering the floor.

“Y/n,” he kept his voice soft, stepping closer to her, “Kitten, are you alright?”

She whirled to him, as if remembering he was still there, “I had- I’m sorry, you were sleeping, I- I’ll go.”

She tried to slip past him, but Fenrys caught her, his hand gently wrapped around her arm.

Do. Not. Touch. Me.

The words echoed in his mind but he held on, tethered her to him. She was completely frozen, staring at that hand on her bicep like it was the strangest thing she’d ever seen.

“Talk to me,” Fenrys pleads, “What’s going on.”

Her gaze found his, wide and terrified. Fenrys felt his heart shatter, felt the tears that welled up in her eyes like a knife to his gut, felt her trembling beneath his palm. He couldn’t help himself, he wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly to his chest, despite those four words screaming through his head.

She didn’t sob, but he could feel her violently shaking, like she was desperately holding the tears back. She clung to him, her nails digging into his flesh, it hurt but Fenrys didn’t care, he just held her tighter.

It took several long minutes for her to calm down, to stop shaking, to relax her grip. Fenrys found himself reluctant to let her pull away.

“I’m sorry,” she says softly, staring down at the floor between them.

He couldn’t stop his hand from reaching out, his fingers catching beneath her chin to gently tilt her face towards his. Her eyes were red and tired, full of whatever anguish had drug her from sleep and into his arms.

“Talk to me,” he pleads, his hand moving to her cheek, his thumb brushing away stray tears.

Her eyes shuttered, he wasn’t sure if it was from his words, or his touch.

Do. Not. Touch. Me.

“I had a nightmare,” she whispers after a moment, “I- I didn’t mean to come here, I-“

Her voice cracked and she paused to take a deep, steadying breath. She didnt pull away, and neither did he.

“I’m sorry I- just didn’t want to be alone,” she continues, “I don’t want to be alone, anymore.”

“Okay,” Fenrys says, still caressing the side of her face, “You’re okay. I’ve got you, kitten, you’re not alone.”

Like the words finally unlocked something in her, unlocked the chained up gates of the walls around her mind, Fenrys saw it all wash over her. The anguish, the fear, the gratitude, all on display like she was a book ready to be read by him.

“Do you remember that first night one the boat?” Her words we’re hesitant, like she was fighting to get them out.

“Yes,” Fenrys said gently, “You couldn’t sleep.”

He’d teased her for it, assuming the rocking of the ship was to blame, he’d seen the strongest warriors crumble to seasickness.

“The water brought back memories,” she says, her eyes gaining this far off look, “I knew they would bring the dreams with them.”

Not just dreams, Fenrys knew, nightmares, like the one she’d had tonight. The one that had her racing into his arms despite how much she loathed him.

Fenrys felt the moment she started shaking again, her mind already deep into the past and the pain. His hand dropped from her cheek, catching her hand by her side to gently guide her to the sitting room. She numbly let him, sitting down on the golden fainting couch.

Fenrys sat down beside her, a healthy distance between them, “You don’t have to talk about it, but I’m here to listen if you do.”

She’d done as much for him, silently supporting him while he struggled through the words.

She was silent for a moment, still staring off into the past. Fenrys was almost sure she wouldn’t speak at all, until she did.

“Vaughan’s father was is Maeve’s army,” she said, catching Fenrys off guard, “When Vaughan was old enough, he was forced to join, forced to leave our mother alone in that tiny, frozen village, with only his letters to keep her company.”

“For three hundred years, they left her, alone.” Her voice cracked on the word, like it was choking her, “Until he showed up, a traveler from Terrasen, a writer, collecting stories from every corner of the world to bring home to the libraries of Orynth, to become a scholar.”

Fenrys knew where this was going, this was her story, the very beginning.

“My mother fell for him, enough to finally give up the dream of seeing her husband and son again, and he fell for her, enough to stay.” Her eyes shone with fresh tears, “I was born not even a year later, the spitting image of my father.”

Those tears fell and Fenrys desperately wanted to reach for them, wipe them away. He didn’t want to overstep, he’d already done more than he should have.

“I was five when it happened,” she whispered the words, “We had a small lake behind our cabin, it was frozen over for a majority of the year, I spent nearly every day on that ice, my father teaching me to skate, my mother teaching me to dance. I was there when I saw a male, larger than any I’d ever seen, coming from my home.”

“I didn’t know what was happening. Didn’t know who he was, why he was marching towards me, what the dripping red object was in his hand.” Her voice shook, and Fenrys felt dread rise up in his chest, “I didn’t know that I should have ran, should’ve shifted and left as quickly as I could, he was already before me when I figured out the red object was an axe, and it smelled like my parents.”

His heart shattered in his chest.

“He grabbed me before I could run,” the fear was thick in her voice, “Threw me across the lake, till I was at the thin center of it. The ice cracked beneath him as he followed, it shattered beneath his bloody axe as he opened a wide hole, it cut me as he shoved my body into the freezing water.”

Gods, holy fucking gods.

“He held me below the surface, I remember the feeling of his hand on the back of my head, I remember clawing at him, I remember darkness, I remember the ice in my lungs.” Her tears flowed fast, “And then there was light, air, someone hauling me out of the water. I’d never met him but my mother had told me many stories of my brother, I knew who he was instantly, he held me as he brought us back to shore, told me it was going to be alright, told me it was over, told me his father would never hurt me again. Over his shoulder I saw the male laying on the ice, a sword through his gut.”

Vaughan had killed him, he’d killed his own father after the male had killed his mother and nearly drowned the sister he hadn’t known he’d had.

She’d nearly drowned, had nearly been murdered by a male simply for existing. A child, gods she was only a child, and he’d tried to kill her.

Fenrys saw red for the male who’d long since fallen, for the male who haunted her dreams so many years later. His hands clenched in his lap, torn between swinging at the ghost of the male, and reaching out to hold her, to comfort her.

She looks exhausted, leaning heavily on the back of the couch. Her eyes swollen from the tears and the lack of sleep. Fenrys didn’t even try to stop himself, his arms moving forward to scoop her up, cradling her to his chest.

Y/n didn’t fight him as he walked her to his bed, as he laid her down atop it. Her eyes fought to stay open, to look at him as he pulled the sheets over her, her mouth open like she’d finally protest.

“Hush,” he says, “It’s alright, you’re alright, just get some sleep.”

Fenrys steps back, he’d sleep on the couch, it was big enough for him, even if it wasn’t, he’d slept in much worse conditions.

“Fenrys,” she says softly, he turns back to look at her, “I don’t- I don’t want to be alone.”

He looked at the large bed, the spot beside her. Do. Not. Touch. Me. The words were at odds with what she asked for now, completely, utterly confusing, but he could not deny her, not now, possibly not ever.

“You’re not alone, kitten,” he promised, reaching out to trail his fingers across her cheek, “Never again.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, her eyes closing as she drifted off to sleep.

Fenrys stayed there for a long time, watching over her, looking for any sign of another nightmare. He only allowed himself to rest when he was sure she was alright.

Tag List

@emma-andrea1 , @mgchaser , @anxious-study , @lees-chaotic-brain , @girl-math-aint-mathing , @mali22 , @nikt-wazny-y , @theworthlessqueen , @cynthiesjmxazrielslover , @lethargicluv

#this is very info dumpy and not a lot of story progress but shrug #we needed more of her past #fenrys tog #tog x reader #tog #throne of glass fenrys #throne of glass x reader #throne of glass

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erikatsu · 11 months

Text

A MILLION DREAMS — WRIOTHESLEY

ᥫ᭡ SUMMARY: A walk around the Court of Fontaine with Wriothesley leads to an unexpected conversation.

ᥫ᭡ PAIRING: Wriothesley x Fem!Reader

ᥫ᭡ WARNINGS: Fluff. Mentions of starting a family/having kids. Self-ship coded. SFT but minors, ageless, and blanks following will be blocked. 20+ to follow.

ᥫ᭡ WC: 1.2K

❥ SERIES MASTERLIST

The warmth of the sun was a feeling that you had missed. The sounds of bustling shops and people chatting amongst themselves as you walked by them felt like home. You didn’t realize you had a void you needed filled until breathing in the fresh air. The nostalgia was overwhelming and you longed to be back on the open road with your show. Instead you settled on reminiscing as you walked the streets, your arm linked with Wriothesley’s.

The two of you got a lot of looks as you made your way towards the aquabus station. Your faces weren’t familiar, and whispers from those curious told you they were slowly piecing it together. At least, they managed to figure out who Wriothesley was. You were thankful though, since you didn’t want to be recognized. It would be rather hard to explain how you managed to escape death, after all. While everyone that mattered was now aware of your status, you could comfortably walk around Fontaine without worry of being arrested as a fugitive. There were loopholes in laws, and while you may not have reclaimed your honor in your duel, you weren’t able to fight for the same crime twice, nor could you be tried for it.

The walk around town was well needed, Wriothesley deciding to escort you. You weren’t sure if he wanted to be able to stop you from being a menace to society or if he was caught up on his work and genuinely wanted to join you. He never left the Fortress, only doing so if he absolutely had to or if children were somehow involved. You didn’t question it, taking advantage of the rare opportunity to spend time in the open with him.

The aquabus ride was calming, listening to the melusine guide point out what was what along the short trip. Part of you was sad that you were on the way back, but another part knew that you wouldn’t change how things were now. If not for the man beside you, you’d have been back above the surface a lot sooner.

It was funny to think how much he had changed for you. Years ago, you never would have found yourself finding a real place to call home other than the circus. You never would have the belief system or outlooks that you did now. Settling down, starting over… well, the sound of that filled you with more joy than one last hoorah. You could also appreciate the irony of being born for the spotlight, yet belonging to the shadows– behind the scenes.

“You know, I haven’t come to the Fountain of Leuciene before, but I have heard the tales,” you remarked as you approached the said topic choice. “If I had visited back then I would have wished for better turn out or for more tour opportunities. A normal, successful life was not something I had ever pictured for myself.”

He was intrigued by your words, “You think the life in Fortress is a normal way of life?”

“Your Grace, I do believe I get to put on a show for you everyday, do I not?” you teased, causing a soft chuckle to slip past his lips. “Aside from that, the Fortress has much potential. For some, this is all they have. After serving their sentences they lived like normal people in a normal world. Some even finding love here. I think it’s as normal of a place to live as anywhere else. But maybe I don’t understand because I’ve never had a normal life before.”

“Not even in your childhood?” Wriothesley sounded slightly surprised. He wasn’t sure how the House of the Hearth worked. He just knew it was Fontaine’s biggest orphanage and he’d never had the pleasure of being inside.

You shook your head, “My training started two days after I had been brought in from Snezhnaya. Fighting, dancing, espionage, you name it. I was never given an opportunity to ever think about a life outside of it– having a normal job, falling in love, starting a family? I was expected to carry out my orders and devote myself to the Tsaritsa and her cause. None of that has ever been within my reach before.”

“I’ve never pictured someone like you living what some could consider to be a normal life,” he commented, coming to a stop in front of the fountain. “Jokes aside, I didn’t know children was something you wanted.”

You shrugged, looking at all the coins that littered the bottom of the fountain, “They’re not off the table. Like I said, it’s just not something I’ve ever been allowed to think of before. Let’s just say, if it happens it happens.”

Wriothesley wasn’t sure what to think. He didn’t even want to keep a pet in the Fortress, thinking it was unfair if not cruel to keep them away from Teyvat’s offerings such as sunlight and green grass to play in. The Fortress definitely was not, in his opinion, a place for children. Honestly, while he did have a soft spot for kids he was terrified of his own. Apart from where lived, the only parents he had ever know were bad people. Of course, he had worked through most of that during his time as a prisoner but he didn’t want to chance any lasting trauma he may have subconsciously buried.

You could tell he was a bit unsettled, but you yourself still weren’t decided. There was a lot that went into a decision such as this other than desire. It had taken you a long time as a child to learn trust and love. It had taken you even longer to open your heart to a deeper, more intimate form of both. Being able to do that for life you created... that was scary.

You looked up at Wriothesley, gently placing your hand on his arm, “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost. Before bringing a little fish into this world, she needs a better ocean to swim in. Besides the prophecy looming over our heads, I’m not sure if marriage is right for me.”

“Well, you’re certainly full of surprises today,” he jested, unlinking his arm from yours and wrapping it around your shoulder. “Marriage isn’t a necessity for children. Steps can be done backwards to, which is fitting since you never seem to stay inside the box of normalcy. On a serious note, if we did decide to have one, it would be a boy.”

“Sounds to me like there’s really only one sure way to find out who’s right, my dear,” you laughed, reaching into your pocket and grabbing a mora coin. “To all our dreams.”

He watched as you tossed the coin into the fountain, a small smile on his face. He was no stranger to sacrifices, to giving one thing up in sake of the other. Letting go of his worries for the sake of happiness was a form of sacrifice that he’d never pictured having to do. Then again also he’s found himself in quite a few situations he didn’t forsee thanks to you. And it wasn’t like you hadn’t done the same for him.

He placed a gentle kiss on top of your head before saying, “I guess we shouldn’t waste any time then.”

#wriothesley x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #wriothesley x you #genshin impact x you #genshin x you

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justkennadi · 1 year

Text

Dating Wade ripple as an Earth person 💙💚🤎

Notes: Yes ik he is water but still😭 honestly i think it’s more abt his personality i like. Anyways this is a mini series i’m doing rq while it’s still all fresh. If someone already did it i’m sorry😭 i don’t see anything so i guess just let me know but this was honestly my idea the only inspo i used was pinterest and the movie itself. We didn’t get much info abt earth ppl from the movie or anything ignoring clod so imma make up stuff. (i had this in my draft for a month so imma just drop these cause i’m too busy for anything else rn 💀)

Content: Wade ripple x fem!Earth person, all fluff

- You met Wade on day while watering your garden. You had mostly flowers and sold them as a hobby. You often stayed to yourself but one day you heard someone sniffling behind you…

- You see a crying water man in a yellow shirt and before you say anything he goes, “This is just the most *sniff* beautiful garden i’ve ever seen!!”

-You kinda freak out seeing him cry, you knew water people were emotional but he takes the cake.

- You invite him into your yard for a tour and even gave him a flower take with him.

-From that day forward he visited you everyday before and after his shift as a City inspector.

- One day you asked to go to a botanical garden. He agreed but, of course, cried since this would be his first date ever.

- You wore a nice dress (as shown in the pic above or whatevr u want ofc) and he teared up. “You are just sooo beautiful!!”

- After looking around a bit you wanted to try hold and hold his hand.

- “I wanna try!”

- “Are you sure? I guess so..”

- Wade would gently grab your hand and nothing really happened. Your hand would just get a little damp and occasionally a tint flower would bloom from your hand.

-Wade is very touchy feely so after this he’s all over you

- He hugs you every hour of the day just about!

- He invited you over to see his family after a month of dating. Everyone admired how pretty you looked and how the flowers in your hair were so beautiful.

- You even witnessed “the crying game” which was honestly so funny.

- Once it got to you and wade he got you by saying he loves you! You never cried before but a single tear fell from your eye and it was honestly so sweet.

- Wade would help you water your garden by crying sometimes.

- Wade listens to you talk about how you feel and offers the best advice he can despite being a water element and not earth.

- You two once played in a mud puddle after a rainy day and it was amazing. Wade had turned slightly brown and you were damp but it was the best fun you’ve ever had tbh

- In the end you and him complimented each other greatly and you both couldn’t be happier.

#elemental #elemental hcs #wade elemental #elemental wade #elemental fandom #elemental movie #wade ripple #fluff #elemental fluff #wade x reader #wade ripple x reader

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junedenim · 11 days

Text

2006

beneath the boardwalk, part 4 (series masterlist)

505

warnings: fluff, angst, smut, sobbing, etc.

word count: 11.1k

In a boring fashion, Alex and I spent the winter much like winters' past. Time froze in that corner of our world and lifetimes existed between the drive from Wakefield to High Green. Charlton Brook was experiencing an ice age but we'd still drive out to as close as we could get without getting out of my car.

Alex would be stuffed in several layers of clothing and his hair was always messy but always fell in the right place. We'd make out and I'd mess it up more and it felt like nothing else existed outside of it.

Some unknown song would play quietly in the background (one time "When the Sun Goes Down" played and I refused to let Alex turn it off and he refused to kiss me during it so we sat in silence in the car listening to it) and we'd occupied ourselves with kissing, talking, and playing cards.

We began a tournament in Gin Rummy over my school recess and his touring break. Said tournament has continued since then. We never established a number we were playing to and so we have decided that the winner will be determined in death, however morbid that is. I had the lead that winter but over the summer Alex would overtake me. I seem to do best in winter while Al dominates in summer.

"Are we boring?" I asked him.

"Hmm?"

"We've grown old and boring. We're playing Gin Rummy in my car at 11 AM."

He chuckled. "We've always been this way, Janie. We used to sit in a room and write in silence. It was glorified old married couple."

I wanted to ask him if he thought we'd be an old married couple, instead, I asked, "How do you think we'd be as an old married couple?"

He shrugged and discarded an ace. "I don't think we'd be boring. Maybe settled. But we'd always have something interesting. Even if music fails and you give up on writing—which I'd never allow—I can't imagine us not being the intelligent fun couple. Maybe I'd be boring but you never."

"With all my neuroses?"

"Of course," he over-enthusiastically said. "But you're too interesting and funny to be boring."

"Same to you."

"Even if I was, I'll be the old guy who sits in the corner and doesn't say anything. You'll have to do all the talking for me."

I laughed. "I'm fine with that." We shared a smile and I knew I'd love him forever, even if we crashed and burned, he'd always be my first love. "You know the thing you said about being intelligent?"

"Yeah?"

"Clearly you aren't." I scooped up his discarded ace and put down my ace three-of-a-kind and then placed my last card face down. With a smug look, I said, "Gin."

He threw his head back after watching the whole scene. "Fuck. I knew I shouldn't have done that. I knew—I knew you had to have had the other aces. Fuck."

One afternoon, the snow was thick and we deemed it too heavy to drive around in, which conveniently meant Alex would likely stay the night. In my room, Alex and I sat around in our routine of playing cards and listening to the radio. I had the fuzzy socks he got me for Christmas, which might seem like a cheap Christmas gift (it was) but back in our tour bus summer I had mentioned it to him and he had clearly noted it.

I was shuffling the deck of cards and he was rubbing my feet after I insisted the foot rub would help them warm up. The radio was soft and for the whole morning, the house had been quiet, which should have been the warning alarm.

A loud crash rang from downstairs followed by my parents' loud yelling. I rolled my eyes and fell backward onto my rug. "There goes a peaceful afternoon," I said.

"Do you want to sneak out of here?" He asked. Alex had never witnessed my parents' arguments; they were generally further apart as I grew up because they decided it was best if they never spent any time around each other but when they did occur they were long-winded and brutal.

"Where? It's freezing and it's not like we can walk down through the front door with them yelling there."

"We could go out through your window."

I laughed. "And fall to our death?"

"We might be alright in the snow."

"No, let's just hide out here."

He stood up and turned up the radio. "It's gotta help out a little."

"Thanks."

He hummed along to the song and I giggled. "What an inappropriate song for this moment," I quipped.

He chuckled but shook his head. "Nah, I think it works for us. You know, 'Until the poets run out of rhymes' and all that."

"You're getting all soft on me." I flicked his nose, bashful under his heavy gaze.

"I've always been soft."

"You're gonna do your best to keep me satisfied?"

He jumped up, tackling me down onto the floor. I shrieked to the floor. If he didn't kiss me you would have thought we were wrestling. "Baby I'm Yours" fading in the background as a knock sounded on the door.

Alex rolled off and I muttered an annoyed, "Jesus."

I stood and opened my bedroom door where, thankfully, Stacey stood on the other side. "I need a fallout shelter here," she said. I widened the door. She stepped in and sat on the edge of my bed. "You guys playing cards? God, you're lame."

Alex chuckled. Stacey and he hadn't hung out much but had always gotten along and had a laugh with one another. "You want to play with us?"

She shrugged. "Sure." As I continued shuffling the cards she reamed us out more, saying things like, "If I had a boyfriend we'd be making out all the time."

"Maybe that's why you don't have a boyfriend," I replied. Alex laughed into his elbow not wanting to anger Stacey.

"No!" She insisted. "All the guys at my school are duds."

"You're 14, everyone is supposed to be duds at 14," I told her as I dealt out the cards.

She fought back, ever snippy and snarky. I have no clue where she learned it from... "You had a boyfriend at 14."

"I wish I didn't." Owen Stenison, blonde-haired, brown eyes, and a breath that tasted like tuna.

"You had a boyfriend at 14?" Alex questioned. We didn't often dive into past relationships, likely because I had a much longer list than him. He had two girlfriends before me, neither super serious.

"Yeah, and it was like the hundredth guy she had been with," Stacey mocked.

"Shut up," I bite back.

She held her hands up defensively. "I'm not shaming."

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, right."

"I'm jealous."

"Well, don't be, it wasn't very fun." Is it cheesy to say that I didn't know real love until Alex? Probably. So, I'll just say I hadn't ever had a proper relationship prior to Alex. I had never celebrated a Valentine's Day.

Stacey sighed, "Has to be more fun than being single."

"You're 14 this is the time to be single."

"Bullshit. That's hypocritical from someone in a relationship then and now."

"I wish I had waited."

"Load of shite."

I shrugged. "I don't know. It would've been nice for Alex to be my first boyfriend."

"How virgin pure of you. You're a secret prude."

Alex, watching the exchange from the sidelines, burst out laughing and I rolled my eyes. "Just pick up your cards."

The night before Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not was released, the band performed at The Leadmill. It was bittersweet, the end to a chapter of our lives that likely ended months ago but we knew things would be much different after that day. We'd also be separating yet again, which was no longer atypical.

I spent the concert with Alex's parents and while Stacey expressed a desire to be at the show, she elected to sleep over at a friend's house instead. In retrospect, it isn't shocking for me to consider the show with Penny and David as being fun but it was very unexpected at the time.

After the show when parents departed and drinks flowed, I found Alex outside the bar. He had a half-ashed cigarette in his hand and I questioned his sanity wearing only his hoodie in the Northern England January chill.

"Can I bum one?" I shouted down to him.

It took a moment for him to register it was me, a smile slowly spread across his face as I inched closer. "Depends. What do I get?"

I dug into his pocket, feeling his stomach through the cloth, and took the pack for myself. "My witty repartee."

"Well, in that case." He sparked his lighter and burned my end for me.

I leaned beside him on the wall. My head against the cold bricks. "What are you doing out here?"

He grinned down at his feet. "Cheesy to say I was waiting for you?"

I giggled with pleasure and shook my head. "I don't believe you." I blew my smoke out directly into his face.

Alex shook his head and pulled me into his, wrapping his arms around me and holding me so close I could have sworn we briefly had one body. My hands tucked under his jacket and my fingers fist in his shirt and he shivered from the chill of my hands.

"You want my jacket?" I joked.

He kissed my temple. "This tour is gonna suck without you."

"Liar."

"Well, I'll enjoy it." We both chuckled. "But it won't be the same."

"I should just quit school."

"You should," he facetiously agreed for a moment, looking down at me fondly. "No, you shouldn't do that because who am I going to brag about?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Brag about?"

"Yeah, I brag about you all the time."

I laughed. "It's not like I go to Oxford. What are you bragging about?"

He pulled back slightly to get a clearer look at me. "You have to stop undervaluing yourself so much. If you met yourself, you'd be your favourite person."

"You're my favourite person."

He gathered me up again, and kissed me, deepening it. It was messy, turned into brazen and shameless. I backed him against the wall, and the bass beat against his spine.

At the end of February, the band played in London and attended the NME Awards. Alex brought me as his plus one. He wore an anorak over a long-sleeve blue shirt with jeans. I wore a black button-up with black jeans and black heeled boots. I didn't mean to come off as a gothy soul but I didn't have anything fancy and my mother has always told me black is classy. The rest of the band looked like they were dressed like they had to wait at the bus stop in the freezing cold for an hour. Everyone else was fancy-dressed compared to us as Alex would chastise in one of his speeches.

It was at Hammersmith Palais, a year before it was demolished. It was hard to get an appreciation for the building as everything was decked out in NME slogans and everyone was looking to get a piece of the band. For the first time, I was confronted with the question: "Are you his girlfriend?"

I swallowed my drink and nodded. I had a hard time wrapping my head around Alex no longer being my secret. In the coming months, this would grow into a bigger, uncontrollable thing where I would become forever known as "Alex Turner's girlfriend." In the beginning, there was pride in it that my boyfriend was successful and achieving height so long. Then, being referenced as that left me worried. I worried for my future where I would always be referred to in relation to him rather than an individual with a career. Later that night, the first paparazzi photo would be taken of us on the way to the after-party. I was nervous.

During the show, each time the band accepted their awards, totaling 3, we had progressively gotten drunker and drunker and drunker. It was free alcohol, who was gonna turn that down? Especially since the royalties check was still pending. Bob Geldof called Russell Brand a cunt, something that has only aged more gloriously. Ryan Jarman of The Cribs, who are from Wakefield, threw himself onto Kaiser Chiefs's table and had to have an ambulance called because he was bleeding profusely.

Alex came and sat beside me after his last speech, in which he boasted that the band had no competition in the category of Best British Band. I called him "a cocky son of a bitch" and he kissed my cheek and got me another drink. We both got too drunk to remember the rest of it.

Alex convinced me to join them for the weekend in Paris where we saw none of Paris and I saw little of Alex. We talked very little. He was obsessively tired and I felt like a chosen accessory as he held my hand but made no move to involve me.

I became annoyed with Alex as he napped and I sat by the window writing hate letters to him in my journal that he would never read.

At night, I fought with Alex and he made little effort to engage in behavior with me. It enraged me more. I yelled about how he didn't care about me and he would blink for so long I thought he fell asleep. Then, he'd say, "Whatever, Janie. Nothing I say will change your mind."

It felt for the first time Alex was sick of me. I had tired him out and he was done trying to force something I would never allow him to change. I felt tired too. We were both exhausted. I slumped down on the bed, still red inside and out. I loved him so dearly and every move I made felt like the wrong one. I just wanted him around all the time and then the time he was exactly around I ruined it with shouting and dreaming up the fantastical things he did away from me.

I didn't know why I was so overcome with anger and I began to hate myself at night. I cried to Alex and he did his best to hold and comfort me but I think he was exhausted by the whole thing. I thought about going to therapy. Then, I woke in the morning and Alex was hogging the bathroom and I decided that I was right to be overwhelmingly angry. I decided I was right about a lot of things.

In March, I wandered around London for long spaces of time. Sometimes I was looking for something to do, but most of the time I was trying to pass the time. It was a form of meditation. I'd lie under trees in Regent's Park and count the leaves on each branch. My father had gifted me a red iPod Nano for Christmas and it was the first portable listening device I had other than my clunky portable CD player.

On these walks, I felt I was learning more about myself without thinking about myself. I lacked the ability to shut my brain off but I'd get so lost in the scenery and the music that I'd never think of how I was perceived lying in the grass pointing my finger up to the sky.

Walks calmed me during the day but it didn't often last into the evening. I didn't talk to Alex much. He was in America for most of March. I went clubbing with lasses from classes on weekends and smoked with Georgia and Robert on weekdays.

Phone calls with Stacey were about the only thing that grounded me but they were of irregular occurrence. Alex wrote me an email halfway through the month that read:

Did MTV and Webster Hall. You'd love NY. I can picture you forcing me on walks through Central Park so I took one just for you. It would've been more fun with you but that's the case with everything. Didn't get to do much else so we'll have to come back. Whenever you want. See you in April.

I never responded to the email. It pissed me off too much because "whenever you want" wasn't the truth. I would never have him when I wanted and I wanted him all the time. I felt I might as well not have him at all. He signed off like I was some meaningless friend that he'd see the next time he was in town and I decided he might not want me at all either.

When April began I hadn't heard from Alex since the email. I tried to call him once but when that failed I decided it would be better for our relationship if I didn't reach out again. I would be mad either way, if he picked up I would be upset he didn't before and if he didn't I'd be convinced I'd never hear from him again.

"I want to cut my hair," I told Alex. We stood outside Carling Academy. I smoked a cigarette and he watched me. I felt like a board was between us. We had only kissed once when we arrived and I didn't want to kiss him again, I only wanted to cry and I couldn't figure out why.

He had his hands in his pockets and he felt like snow to me. He floated down to me, soft on my skin, but cold to the touch, melting in my hands. He leaned his side against the wall and I suppose he was anxious about performing in twenty minutes but I didn't care much.

"I like your hair," Alex told me. His hair had grown longer and I thought he needed a haircut too because it looked like he had sideburns. He had a funny look to him, one that made him look like Alfalfa with a mad cowlick that wasn't intentional but he made no effort to tame it.

I took a puff and said, "I want to shave it all off."

He laughed. "You want to be Sinéad O'Connor." We avoided any serious topic and stayed on the mundane. I preferred that and we accepted that things would stay this way forever if we left it. Alex and I have always done well with the mundane. We didn't do too well with the serious.

I couldn't focus on him, so I smoked my cigarette instead and waited for him to say something. I was near the end of my smoke when he finally said something. "You know, we've got an EP coming out in about a week."

I refused to allow my face to show anything and stared at the floor because I knew he'd be able to see anything I felt when he looked into my eyes. "No, you didn't tell me."

"Yeah, I know."

"Why didn't you?"

"I don't know. It's just a stupid EP."

Before I'd say something different but everything had changed within months. "I guess." I put out my smoke and we went inside. He was gone the next day and he might as well have never even existed. He was gone into dust, with the wind.

I listened to the EP under the trees and wondered who "Fiona" of "Cigarette Smoke" fame was before I figured it must have been me. Nothing Alex could do was right because he had once again landed in the dilemma of whoever Fiona was—a random girl or me—I would've been offended. I listened to "Despair in the Departure Lounge" and decided not to listen to the rest in public.

The last line "What's happened to me?" rang through my ears the whole way home and I have never forgotten that twisting feeling in my gut that it felt like it would take forever for me to escape. We lost ourselves in our own microcosms; I in London and in my thoughts; He on a tour bus and in his music. It felt like the point of no return that was being unacknowledged.

I feared I was going crazy during my last month of school and I stopped attending class other than to do my exams. I had enough sense for that. I spent my money on cigarettes and forgot to eat most days and still to this day I couldn't tell you the exact reason why. I was likely in some form of depression but it felt too crazy to be depressed. I felt manic most of the time and wondered if my mother felt like this and we all ignored her. I wondered if my mother hated herself like I hated myself and I wondered if my mother ever thought about me as much as I thought about her.

I spent hours smoking outside my dormitory window, which was technically destruction of property to my university and they'd have grounds to kick me out for it but they never caught on, and even if they did I think I was too checked out at that time to care.

I felt like I was taking handfuls of painkillers but I felt too crazy to take anything so I never understood why I felt tired all the time. Robert stopped supplying me with Adderall so I was possibly withdrawing from it but it lasted too long to be that. I didn't stop smoking weed, which likely was not a good thing but it helped me go to bed and I had fun doing weed and I didn't have fun not doing weed.

I would write in my journal while smoking out the window and I followed the belief that being a tortured artist leads to good work. Instead, it increased my chances of lung cancer and made me hate writing. Toward the end of May, I stopped writing and considered dropping out of school but the school year had finished and I knew my father would murder me if I didn't graduate.

Alex arrived in May to play another show. I was supposed to meet him at the venue at 3 and instead arrived at 6 with no warning. I can't remember why I showed up late but I can't lie. There was probably no good reason.

There was nonsensical chatter before the show and Alex put up with my cold behavior until the end of the night when we were alone at my place.

After we had sex, I lay in the crook of his neck and thought about suffocating myself. I pressed my head so far into him that he yelped and asked me, "What are you doing?"

I softened my digging and thought that Alex no longer knew me. I don't know what was happening to me in those months but I was mad and didn't understand why he didn't see what I was doing to myself in those months.

"You never asked me about summer," I mumbled into his neck.

He closed his eyes and I felt like it was 2003 and I was begging him to kiss me again. He was so far removed from me and I feared I'd never have him in my grasp again. I held him tightly as he sighed. "We never talked about it."

"We never talk."

"I'm sorry." But it didn't sound like he was. He just sounded done.

"It's okay." I was more angry with him than I had ever been but I swallowed it like a dry pill.

"Are you going on your family trip?"

I was short with him. "Aruba."

"That'll be nice. For you and Stacey. I can see you by the water, drinking Piña Coladas." It comforted me that Alex pictured pretty things when all I was able to see was my inescapable rage.

I thought about hooking up with a boy on vacation. One I had never met but one that would bring me out of this self-sacrificing funk. I choked my own spit when I thought about Alex. I wondered if he was just my human Band-Aid for the time. The way Joanie had kept me safe through secondary school, Claire had mended me through our first year of college, and Alex licked my wounds and said things were alright and sang me stupid songs and played cards with my sister while fires raged below but like Claire and Joanie and every boy Band-Aid I had before he would heal the previous wound before leaving with a chunk of me for the next one to fix. I cried then and he held me but I wondered how much longer he'd put up with this.

"It'll be fine, Janie." His hand stroked down my spine and he was oblivious to the terrible thoughts I was having, thinking he was consoling me over my family instead of him. "When will you be back?"

I sat up and he delicately wiped my cheek but had missed most of the wetness. I wiped my whole hand under my eye to dry the area. "Some time at the end of June. I can't remember."

"That's perfect." He smiled. "You can come to T in the Park and we're doing Oxegen so we'll be back in Ireland. I know how much you loved Ireland."

His touch felt foul on me. "I'm not your groupie."

My face had turned sour. "What's wrong?" Alex asked.

I tried to turn him away, insisting, "Nothing. I'm making a joke."

But he knew me too well. "No, you're not."

"I know when I'm making a joke and I'm making a joke," I mouthed at him.

But he was done. I had beaten up against him too many times for him to console anymore. "Whatever, Janie."

I scowled. "Well, fuck you." I was a ticking time bomb in those days. The slightest fire and I was going to blow.

Alex was oblivious, confused by the whole thing. I should take partial blame. I never opened up anymore. But he never asked anymore. He couldn't be bothered to give a shit anymore. Too much else on his mind to care about what was going on in mine. I only cared about what was going on in his. It was unhealthy consumption. He snapped, "What's wrong? What did I do to piss you off? You're crying and I'm comforting you and you're making digs at me."

I ripped my touch away from him. "You take everything so personal."

"I take everything so personal!" He sat up, showing frustration in talking with his hands. "Who the fuck are you then?"

I just stared at him.

He took a deep breath, rubbing his hair off his forehead. "I don't know what you want me to do. You seem to have an issue with everything I do."

I didn't accept his indolence. "Maybe everything you do is an issue. You ever thought of that?"

And he ripped off from there. "Do you have some bitch flip on?"

I got out of bed naked and made no mind to get my clothes on. I was too furious for clothes. "Fuck you. Calling me a bitch. You're a fucking joke. You're the biggest fucking asshole. You don't give a shit. You just care about yourself."

"Calm down, Janie—"

"Don't tell me to fucking calm down!"

"Okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Alright. Geez!"

I stood with my arms crossed over my boobs but made no move to cover my exposed cunt. I wanted him to see my naked body and for it to not be desirable. I wanted him to call me a cunt. I wanted him to do a lot of things. I wanted him to be here in the morning. Most of all, I wanted to be able to say things to him again.

We stood with our chest heaving and he stayed still in my bed and I stayed still, digging my left foot into my rug. "We'll be back for 2 weeks in July."

I didn't say anything and I wasn't sure if it was good enough but I got back into bed with him. Like everything else, we never talked about it.

I did end up sleeping with someone in Aruba. The worst part was I didn't regret it. I'm pretty sure Alex was doing the same thing on the road and sleeping with someone else based on a presumption that your boyfriend is doing the same is not a good method for a healthy relationship with either party, including yourself. But I didn't mainly do it off the presumption, I did it after those suggested piña coladas and a hot Dutch boy called me cute when I didn't feel it and it felt worth enough to sleep in his bed that night. I hadn't slept in Alex's bed in a long time.

In July, I went to Oxegen because Ireland is so beautiful and Alex is so beautiful and I didn't feel so beautiful so I hoped some of their beautiful would rub off and make me beautiful. I was just thinking about myself too much.

When Alex asked about Aruba I didn't mention the guy just like when I asked him about the tour he never mentioned a girl. If neither of us uttered it, it wouldn't be true.

My hair had grown longer. If I bent my head back I could feel it hit my butt. Alex's hair was longer and it curled out to the sides like Carole Brady. It felt like the coldest day of the year in July, pissing rain, and the sun nowhere in sight. We didn't do any exploring in Ireland like we did the year prior or in the years to come, not even the festival grounds as everything was too muddy, and walking around with Alex at festivals could be a tricky thing.

Before their set, we played Uno, a thing that has always calmed me, unlike regular card games where I feel pressed to bluff and prove how strategic I am. Uno got me laughing and I felt a little whole again even in all the rain, even if I felt my body was being torn limb for limb, I felt the torture was put on pause and the festival named Oxegen felt like the title fit.

After their set, where the rain stopped no one from chanting and moshing and I grew in amazement at the sight of all the people, we played more Uno. Halfway through the game, I tried to peek over at Alex's cards and he let me because he knew I wanted to win. He never placed the Draw 4 card down either. So, I kissed him that night. In a way that wasn't a greeting and wasn't an invitation for sex, just a loving kiss.

Of Alex's two weeks at home, I spent most of the time at his house. We ate dinner with his parents four times during the stay and spent hours on the riverbed at Charlton Dam. Alex would clump grass in his hand and dip his hands in the water to wipe off the dirt. I counted the leaves on the branches. I imagined a life where we had stayed in Yorkshire forever but I knew even in fantasy I wouldn't have been happy.

Alex brought his guitar one day and strummed on the strings until I fell asleep. When I woke he had fallen asleep beside me and I thought of living our lives in that grass forever like some version of Blue Lagoon without the cousin-fucking part. It seemed magical and looking over at him I was struck by his calmness. He had always been subdued but asleep he possessed a stillness that would steady oceans and stop the Earth from spinning on its axis but instead, he chose to sleep.

A little while later he woke up and strummed his guitar with an unknown tune and I wrote random sentences in my notebook. I wrote of the grass on my bare feet and the muttering Alex did under his breath and my mother's Bloody Marys.

"I'm bored," he whined.

"You're frustrated." I could tell he was stuck on something, Alex rarely cited boredom.

He gestured to me, curling his fingers. "Gimme me something."

"Like what?"

"Gimme me one of your lines." He grabbed a hold of my notebook, something I usually shunned, but for some reason, I gave it over to him that day. "Her Bloody Mary must be lacking tabasco while she bites her lemon and thinks of when she used to be fun," he read aloud with a chuckle. "Scathing."

I took the notebook back. "Stop it," I warned him.

"No, I like it. I want more. Write me a song with me, Janie."

I rolled my eyes. "I suck at rhyming."

"Well, then you write and I'll rhyme."

So, I wrote crudely and crafted tales of lost adolescence that did not specifically pertain to my mother. I don't picture my mother and sex in the same sentence.

"Is that a mecca dauber or a betting pencil?" He burst into laughter, falling on his back, and rolling around. "Jesus, Janie, I'm stealing that."

"Yet another man taking credit for a woman's accomplishment."

"I'll give you the residuals."

"You will not be publishing this!" Fat chance. Nonetheless, at the time, he agreed to this.

The line is still the best thing I've ever written.

The band left for Australia and New Zealand at the end of July and Alex asked me if I would like to join but I turned him down for a reason I can't recall now. Many things happened in the summer of 2006 that I have blocked out and for the life of me, I can't remember. I used to hope that I would remember what happened but now I think my brain is doing me a favour.

My maternal grandmother died the first week of August and I personally can't recall the trip to Sarasota, Florida, where she resided in her final years. Stacey has told me my mother cried the whole plane ride over in my arms and yelled at the flight attendant who tried to console her. My father flew in days later for the funeral and flew out the next day.

My mother wanted to remain in Sarasota for longer. She hadn't visited her mother in many years and the last time I saw my grandmother before her death I was 15. She had visited us in Wakefield, which she hated, and said it was shameful not to live in a metropolis like London. She spent her childhood working on farms and I heard loose stories of my grandfather being sent to a gulag. She didn't like the suburbs.

Then, she moved to Florida in her retirement. I had never been to Florida.

I know my mother didn't like her mother very much but the reasons have never been told to me. I assume it's for many of the reasons I didn't get along with my mother but I also know my grandmother and mother experienced more tragedy in their lives than any human should ever endure. They were bonded for life through events that both never told and loved each other dearly but they didn't get along and they didn't like each other very much. I don't think they liked each other at all.

That week, we helped my mother and Aunt Daria clean out my grandmother's apartment. Harper helped the first couple of days before returning to England leaving most of the trip to be Stacy and me with my mother.

On the second Monday in August, my mother suddenly insisted we go to Miami. With little ability to resist our grieving mother, Stacey and I hopped into a car with my mother for 3 hours. I don't think my mother has ever been so calm. She laughed with us and told stories of her childhood and teenage years in Philadelphia and talked about her early life in Soviet Russia, something she never talked about. She asked Stacey about her friends and Stacey confessed to her worries about passing her A levels. My mother was comforting through it all, insisting that we would always be taken care of and Stacey, as the baby of the family, would always be her baby.

My mother then asked me about Alex. "How is he doing?"

"Fine." It was hard for me to figure out what to say. It was an unfamiliar thing to talk about anyone with my mother let alone my boyfriend. "Busy. The band's playing Sydney tomorrow. Or, I guess, today. I think they're 14 hours ahead of us."

My mother placed her palm on her chest and sighed, gushing, "God, I loved living in Sydney. I love all of Australia."

Stacey, unsafely unbuckled as we sped down I-75, leaned over the center console to ask my mother what she and I were both thinking, "When did you live in Australia?"

"Oh, for a short amount of time," she waxed sublimely. "Long before your father, must have been early 1973, I think. I remember coming from New York, which had been frozen over, and landing in sunny Sydney. We spent all day on the beach and drank for days with no care. " Does that mean she has care with her drinks now? "I learned how to surf. I was very adorable and darling. The Sydney Opera House opened while we were down there. Queen Elizabeth came down to open it and I remember watching from the crowd. The next year I was in London but I should have stayed longer. We should've."

"Who's we?" I asked.

She hesitated, I could tell. She gripped tightly onto the steering wheel and then sighed, releasing her hands. "My boyfriend at the time. He was this Australian hottie." I realized then that I had unintentionally written my mother's truth in "Fluorescent Adolescent." More worrisome, I feared I had written my future truth as thoughts of what-ifs regarding Alex were at an all-time high in spite of still being together. Although, it felt like we were barely together other than in writing.

"Mum!" Stacey whined.

My mother ignored her plea. "I had my fun. I was very beloved. When we broke up I couldn't stand the city anymore. Then, I left for London with hopes of marrying into the Royal Family but alas I could've never been the people's princess."

"I didn't know you traveled much before dad."

She laughed. "That's all I did before your dad."

We stayed at a Holiday Inn and my mother never complained with the exception of the smell in the gym. We were quick to get out on the beach and my mother refused to go into the water but she sat in a chair and dipped her feet as she watched Stacey and I stumbled our way through the waves. Later, we all laid up on beach towels and gossiped about American celebrities and I thought of my mother on the beach in Sydney, which made me think of Alex lying on a beach towel in Sydney, which made me laugh.

Over dinner, for the first time in my life, I saw my mother reject a drink. Since I wasn't old enough to drink in the US, she said she wouldn't drink in the US, so instead we all drank pink lemonade.

That night, after Stacey went to bed, I snuck out to smoke a cigarette and call Alex. It would have been sometime around 2 PM there. He didn't pick up the first call so I decided to wait a few minutes before trying again.

My mother came out halfway through the cigarette and though I had never smoked in front of her, I'm sure she knew I did it. She asked for one and we sat in silence while she lit it. Stacey was no longer a buffer for us.

She nodded toward my phone. "Calling Alex?"

"Yeah."

She exhaled the smoke and I felt the Miami humidity suffocating me. "The band must be doing pretty well if they're playing Australia."

"Yeah." 'Doing well' was a laughable statement but I didn't have much of an idea of what to say to my mother to explain how wrong this notion was.

"Are you two doing well?" She asked.

"Yeah." She stared at me and I could tell she wanted to know more and, for some reason, I felt implored to tell her like we were suddenly the Gilmore Girls or something. "As well as two 20-year-olds can do I suppose."

She chuckled and it felt funny for her to laugh at one of my jokes. "He seems fairly well-behaved for a 20-year-old boy."

"Yeah. He's great." She could tell what I was edging on and we sat in silence as she waited for me to spill. "But, he's so far, you know."

She shrugged. "That's what I like about your father. You'll be thankful for that kind of thing one day."

I felt a bitter and salty taste in my mouth. I don't like it when my mother talks this way.

She sighed. "I wish he'd stayed longer but I got my girls and that's good for me. If only Harper was here."

"What about Gary?"

My mother snorted. "Men are no fun in Miami. Gary would be shaming us for sunbathing." I laughed. It was an odd thing. "Are you mad Alex didn't come?"

I laughed at that idea too. "To Grandma's funeral, no. He's got a good excuse for not coming too."

"Does that annoy you?" My mother playing therapist of all people is laughable. I would have laughed at it then if she wasn't asking me what I wanted Alex to ask me.

I didn't dignify the question with an answer.

My mother tapped her cigarette on the bench's arm. "Why didn't you go with him this summer?" I stayed silent. "I would've let you go," she told me.

"I know."

"I'm glad you were in Aruba. I'm glad you're here."

"Me too," I muttered. We listened to the cars drive by and if you focused for long enough you could hear the ocean waves. They coerced me to speak. "He didn't ask me to join. I didn't want to be the whiny girlfriend."

"So you're pouting with me instead?"

I sat up straight. "I'm not pouting."

"All you do is pout!" It was only a matter of time until she outburst. Just like me.

I didn't want to yell back at her. I didn't want to yell. It was 15 after midnight.

She offered her best solution. "Why don't you join him in Sydney?"

I rolled my eyes. "By the time I get to Sydney, he'll be in another town."

"Then, go to that town. It's young love, Jane, you're supposed to want to be near them. Why do you think I moved to Sydney?"

I shook my head.

"You don't want to hang out with Stacey and me that much. I know you can't stand me."

I feel bad that I didn't fight her on that. I have always loved my mother, even if she wasn't always worthy of that love.

"I'll buy you the ticket, darling." Darling was one of her dramatic words, she'd stretch it out syllable by syllable d-ar-lin-ggggg. It always felt elegant coming from her lips. "Miami doesn't suit your pale complexion anyway."

I laughed, she laughed, and then she dropped me off at Miami International Airport and I got on a plane to LA, which then took me to Tokyo.

I arrived in Tokyo a day before the band. I was too tired to do anything so I stayed at a capsule hotel at Haneda Airport after my flight and fell asleep almost instantly. I've never been able to sleep on flights and I think I slept longer in that capsule hotel than any other sleep in my life.

The band was coming from Osaka and I contacted Alex about my arrival but he never responded. Part of me felt like I was intruding but I thought of my mother's words and the delusions I had of Alex showing up in Sarasota prevented me from any great fear.

Alex told me earlier about the hotel they were staying at because he was excited about the advertised toilets that could open upon entry, play music, and give massages. I was creeped out by the whole thing. How can a toilet give you a massage?

I probably should have enjoyed more of Tokyo instead of waiting for the band's arrival in the hotel lobby but I liked my greeting idea too much to ruin it by seeing Sensō-ji, even if that monetarily would've been the better decision. I read The Year of Magical Thinking, my first Didion and a depressing choice for the plane ride over, but it felt right to read after a funeral.

He was dressed in an Adidas muscle shirt and was holding his duffel bag. I felt like a stalker, watching him from a distant couch. I had regret over Alex being uninformed of my arrival because these surprises made me nervous and left me with flushed cheeks and a pounding heart.

I approached the band while they were waiting for the elevator. "Can I have your autograph?" I was really trying to play up the fangirl thing but it came off more embarrassing than I wanted.

I remember Matt was frightened and yelled out "Fuck!" which got him scolded by their manager and dirty looks from hotel patrons. Nick, who had only been in the band for about a month, looked confused. Jamie was the only one who looked normal, scrunching up his nose, and saying something whack. Alex just looked at me as if I were a ghost. I could see the wheels turn in his head as he tried to process what was in front of him.

"What? How? Huh?" He stuttered.

He hugged and kissed me, albeit awkwardly as he continued to look for answers. I gave them a short synopsis as we rode the elevator up. When we reached the fifth floor, we splintered off into our rooms with smart toilets.

Alex was sweet and possessive in his touch on me as he dropped his duffle bag and took me in his arms instead. The whole thing felt too romantic for two people who shunned hopeless ideas of kissing in the rain or cuddling in front of a fireplace but it was a precious and comforting thing as we finished and lay in a pile of consolement as I talked of my grandmother and the puzzle that was (and is) my mother.

He told me my mother was right, Sydney was real beautiful, and that he wished to take me there. I told him I was jealous that he was seeing the world without me. I insisted it to be a joke but he and I both knew that I was green-eyed over this fact but we both didn't acknowledge the fact that we were in Tokyo, seeing none of it because we both enjoyed seeing each other more than any city.

After their performance and a shower to get rid of all that sweat, Alex shook his hair like a wet dog. "Eek!" I squealed. "When are you going to cut your hair? You look like you got a mop attached to your head?"

"You don't like it shaggy?" He asked me as he pet it down.

I pushed a piece of his damp hair behind his ear, admiring his profile as he stared ahead at the bathroom mirror. "You just have to style it correctly."

"Do you want to cut it?" He offered. His eyes were hopeful and his trust in me felt unwavering. It made me smile and bubbles of bliss spread in my gut. There was never any doubt in me caring for him, just like I had no doubt he would always do right by me.

"With what? Do you have scissors?"

"I have my Swiss Army knife." I laughed but he grabbed the tool and flipped the small-scale scissors out of it, placing it in my hand.

"I'm not going to get much done with it," I told him as I stood behind him, combing his hair with my fingers.

"That's fine. Less for you to mess up."

I hit his shoulder and he chuckled with delight. I snipped a few ends off but not enough to make a significant difference. His hair had dried by the time I gave up. I offered the cutter to Alex. He was meticulous, knowing I was particular about these things. I had wanted my hair much shorter for a long time but it had to wait longer because he only snipped the deadends and kissed my temple. The whole thing felt like a holy ritual and I felt slightly creepy for keeping a piece of hair from it but it was more for the preservation of memory than to clone Alex or create a voodoo doll. It joined my trunk of trinkets.

"I have something to give you." Alex searched through his bag, pushing things out of the way.

I spotted the white text popping off the black shirt. "Oh, my god, Alex," I laughed.

"Shit," he cursed, picking up the shirt. He shook his head at his ruined surprise. "I was going to do this whole romantic thing."

His precarious position of kneeling on one knee, looking up at me with the shirt in his hands led to a perplexed me. "By proposing?"

"Oh." He chuckled and stood up straight. Handing me the shirt that read I LOVE YOU WILL U MARRY ME. It had been graffitied on a Park Hill estate in Sheffield in 2001. I have held a deep love for the romanticism spread on the concrete bridge—something about its contrasting nature. "I found it in a shop in Auckland of all places."

I held the shirt up, examined the design, and then hugged the shirt to my chest. "Thank you. I love it. I'll wear it tomorrow."

I was woken up by Alex going to the bathroom early in the morning. He tried to be quiet but stubbed his toe on the way there. I stayed silent and while he was behind the bathroom door, I turned the bedside lamp on a low light.

In my vernal imagination, I pictured myself as being desirable. I wondered if I could be like those figures I saw in movies. Now, it sounds more of a porno than it is, but I hoped to be picturesque as opposed to X-rated. The kind of sophisticated class reserved for paintings of naked French girls where the demurity of women was dashed in pearls and bathed in light, shining effulgently.

When I lied on my side, I felt capable of conveying this. Maybe it was the shade of lampshade light or how dark the rest of the room was, or the boy I was with. I felt like a siren, a vixen, a seductress. Alex came out rustled with sleep but he had awoken when his eyes landed on me.

We were curled—two parentheses. It couldn't have been long after we had finished like after the sexual release we had to have the emotional one. I have chosen to look back on what follows as poetic, especially with a song like 505. I suppose if I had never seen Alex again, I might view it as tragic.

"We're flying to Austria tomorrow," he told me.

His arm curled around my waist and my heartbeat heightened at the fact he would have physical contact with me, intimate contact with me. "Okay."

"Do you want to come with me?"

"School starts soon." I could have managed it if I truly wanted to but the difference was I didn't want to anymore because I had a feeling Alex would never be able to do that for me. Be where I wanted him to be. I couldn't blame him but I couldn't acquit him either.

"You think you'll make it to Reading & Leeds?" I hated how desperately hopeful he sounded. A quiver rang in his voice like we both knew what way the train was heading.

"Probably not. I'd like to be settled."

"We'll be done touring soon."

"And then what?"

"I don't know. Another album."

"Another tour."

"Yeah." He waited for a beat. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine." I turned into his chest, placed the crown on my head against the divet of his collarbone. "I don't know when I'll see you again and I don't like that."

"I don't either but we'll make it work," he assured. It just felt like a painful lie and I didn't want Alex to lie to me.

I cried, sobbed, wept into his chest and he held me as I shaked in a far more somber way than he had held me shaking earlier. For the first time, I said out loud, "I don't think I can."

I felt him swallow but he refused to say anything. When I looked up at him with blurry vision, his mouth was tightly closed and his eyes drifted far away. He was crying. I had never seen him cry before.

I wanted to care for him the way he cared for me. But I couldn't do that. It was easy then to know to let go. Alex didn't rebuff my admission with insistence that we could in fact make it work. He knew too.

We didn't say anything the rest of the night and when I left in the morning, we kissed and only said goodbye. It felt like too much to say anything else. I fear if he said something, a whisper of 'I love you,' I might have stayed and I knew, for us, I couldn't do that.

I left the shirt he gifted me in 505 and a week later, at the Lowlands Festival, he wore it onstage.

I stayed in a capsule hotel in Shinjuku City, near Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. I felt like an aimless body in the days I stayed there. It was a scene out of Lost in Translation. I visited temples and shrines watching, among the tourists, those who believed. I was desperate for that faith. It had been ripped from me so young I didn't know how to have that unshaken faith in something. Alex had brought parts of it out but I was codependent and untrusting and untrustworthy and young. Not much felt right and now everything else felt wrong.

For those few days, I regretted my decision. I walked around wishing Alex was with me but when I returned to my capsule in the evening, I realized he wouldn't have been there even without our ending.

On my last day, I took a train to Kamakura and stood before Kamakura Daibutsu, a giant Buddha statue. I wasn't suddenly changed, I wasn't radicalized, I didn't feel liberated, I didn't feel suppressed, I wasn't different. But I liked the feeling of being dwarfed by the figure, 13.35 metres, 93 tonnes. I could be crushed by it. I could climb it.

I went inside it where scrawlings of graffiti had been etched. Some nonsense, some prayers. It's been there since 1252. I wonder how far back some of those writings went. I had thought about being somewhere for so long, so long after my time. But I couldn't think of anything to write therefore I would not change a thing there.

I flew home the following day. Only a piece of me is left in Japan.

The leaves were turning burgundy and gold when I saw Alex again. I entered my final year of university with questionable standings but a determination to finish and obtain a job that I truly loved. I had begun renting a flat with Georgia in Tower Hamlets across from the cemetery park. The park had been heavily neglected, bombed during World War II, and had been overgrown with plants. It was open 24 hours so I would walk through it early in the morning when I was restless.

I got a text from him when I was there one morning, stuffed under a tree in the fog. He wrote that the band was in town, recording their next album, and—if I wanted—he would like for me to join them for drinks.

I never doubted saying yes. Alex was my friend first and I wanted him always to be my friend. He gave me the olive branch, I must accept it. I brought Georgia to be safe.

Alex and I hugged when I arrived and I sat on the opposite side of the booth from him. Georgia and I shared chips with Katie Downes, Jamie's new girlfriend. She was (and is) one of the cutest people I have ever known. It was easy to feel jealous of her; she was gorgeous and a glamour model, who usually would've been described as a sex kitten bombshell femme fatale with being a frequent cover girl of lad magazines, but she wore her hair with the front pieces pinned back with butterfly clips and licked ketchup off her fingers. It was impossible not to find her adorable when she cackled at one of my jokes.

I wore an engulfing hoodie and sweatpants with my fingers itching for a cigarette but I knew if I went outside Alex would come out and we'd be alone. We were both pretty quiet the whole night and I found myself longing for him to say something, angry at him for texting me, dangling himself in front of me. But then again I was too scared to speak too. I watched him watch my hand fidget on the table. I thought of that cigarette we could share. I laughed at Matt's joke instead. I'm not sure if it was the right decision.

We would remain in the same cities for most of December. Their next album was recorded in London but we didn't see much of each other through my choice. I worried that my rejection of these hangouts would come off as if I didn't want to be friends. I reassured him once over text, saying, I just need time. Busy. Busy was a half-truth, school was piling up but emotionally I'm not sure I was ready to laugh with Alex. I hung out with Matt some. It was like I never knew Alex. If we had never talked, if I wasn't mistaken to be named Jeanie and wasn't a nicotine addict. It was comforting to be close with Matt again. It was terrifying to feel like I never knew Alex.

Alex and me and London was exactly what I wanted for years. I wondered if he chose to record down there to be with me. If he had daydreams of coming home to a shared flat where, for once, we could be together together. Part of me indulged in these fantasies late at night before falling asleep. Other than that I didn't allow myself to think of what-ifs. I wrote instead of Japan and of Kamakura Daibutsu. My professor, Madeline Critchley, worked for Granta, a literary magazine, and told me to submit it. A few weeks later, it was selected to be featured. It was my first paid published work.

The issue came out months later, in the spring, but it felt wrong for Alex not to read it. I felt like a betrayal that would get back to him. I emailed him the piece and told myself to expect nothing in return from him. He delivered:

The way you write makes me feel as if I'm in front of the colossal Buddha. It always moves me. You have etched your graffiti on me. It'll stay there long after we're gone.

I stayed in London for most of my winter recess but returned home for Christmas. I hadn't told my family that Alex and I weren't together. My parents never asked and I pacified Stacey saying he was away for the holiday season, even if I knew he was back home too. The 30-minute drive between us never felt longer.

Harper and Greg had returned home too with their spouses. On Christmas Eve, Stacey and I made sugar cookies and my mother displayed store-bought gingerbread men. We settled on watching Bridget Jones's Diary while eating these cookies. My mother and sister joined us because of their deep love of Colin Firth and my brother-in-law joined us because of his deep love for my sister. We sat below the Christmas tree which was my mother's pride and joy during Christmas. She'd drink eggnog while she wrapped garland around the tree and herself.

20 minutes into the film my phone buzzed with a text from Alex, who was outside. I knew I couldn't get away for long with this rare occasion of family time. I slipped on my winter boots, not even bothering to tie the shoelaces, and hoped my hoodie would suffice against the freeze outside.

Alex was outside the front door in a bulky winter coat that I imagine his mother had dressed him in. "Hi." He was quiet. Everything outside my house felt quiet with a pure landscape of ice and snow and nobody daring to go outside this late on Christmas Eve.

"Hi." I was quiet too.

"I have this—a little thing," he said, fiddling in his pocket before taking out a Christmas cracker. It was red with little snowflakes on it and my favourite holiday tradition. "I thought we'd pull it together."

"Well, you know me and my competitive nature," I mused.

We sat on my porch bench, cleared of snow. He took one end and I took the other and with one big yank, it popped. I looked down and he had the bigger half, all the favours inside. "I win," he cheered.

I smiled through the awkwardness as he pulled the paper crown out and settled the rest back on the bench. He unraveled the pink paper, looked down at it, and placed it on my head. I giggled. "Are you too scared to wear pink?"

He shrugged. "Suits you more than me." He picked up his half of the cracker and handed it to me. "Show me what else I got."

I poured the remains out, reading the card first. "What do you call forty rabbits hopping backwards?"

"What?"

"A receding hareline."

He snorted at the terrible joke. "Hopefully I'll be fine." He patted down his hair.

"You got it cut," I noted. It was cleaned up and the most tamed I had ever seen his hair. It was combed down in the front, stopping before his eyebrows, cut around his ears, and shiny.

"Yeah," he nodded, "got my local barber and all."

I chuckled and looked at the trinket in my hand: a mini deck of cards. I held it up to him and he asked, "Shall we play gin rummy with them?"

I want January back. I want the car ride. I want the songs. I want those stupid guitar picks I made him for his birthday. I want to be the fun intelligent couple. I want it all back. It's mine. "Why'd you come here?" I asked.

He seemed confronted by this question like he didn't think I would have the nerve to ask it. I fidgeted and opened and closed his mouth several times, thinking of words to say. "I don't know. I missed you."

I only managed to say, "Okay."

"We're back on tour in February. It's more formal this time. A proper tour. We'll have breaks and downtime and—"

"Alex," I stopped him. My head was shaking, unable to process the thought. I was looking down at my hands, cold and chipped, looking for warmth. I thought of December last year when he gave me his gloves and had no qualms about being left with cold hands. Everything in me felt cold now and he made no effort to warm me and I couldn't blame him for it.

I could feel his eyes on me but I couldn't look at him. It was easy to picture his face, mouth downturned and eyes begging for relief. "It's not enough, is it?"

My voicebox died. I couldn't move myself to say anything despite thinking everything.

"Do you want to go for a drive?" He asked me.

My head kept shaking. I didn't want to ruin that for us.

He laughed wetly. I could tell he was crying and the only way to prevent himself from caving in was to chortle. "Last time you rejected a car ride from me we didn't speak for months. I don't want to do that."

With my head still shaking and my eyes on my hands, I finally said, "We'll always be friends."

It was silent for a while and I began to sing "Silent Night" in my head to prevent myself from sobbing. Alex shifted, pulling away from me, he turned his head. I looked up to only see the back of it. He cleared his throat, tapped his foot, and in avoidance of my gaze said, "I'm sorry."

"Me too."

His eyes finally landed on mine. They were red and every bone in me was guilt-ridden. "Don't be. It's my fault for making things harder. I didn't mean to do it but I did and then I ignored it for too long."

"We both did things wrong. Young and stupid."

"I should've stayed in Tokyo."

"You couldn't have—"

"I could've. If I fought for it. It was over by that point anyway, right? Even if I had stayed and we saw that giant Buddha, things were too far gone?"

It hurt but I nodded.

He exhaled.

"I have to go," I announced. I wiped the remaining tears. "We're watching Bridget Jones's Diary."

Alex nodded. We stood up together and I walked him over to his car. He turned back with a smile, despite the blur in his eyes. "Have fun watching Hugh Grant," he teased. "I'll kill him if I have to."

I laughed but it wounded more than it amused. He got into his car and I watched him wrap his hands around the steering wheel. I walked back to my front door and looked back and his car was still there. I forced a smile to qualify me for Miss America and waved. He grinned, the best he could to not look like Cheshire Cat, and waved. Then, I went back inside and he drove away.

a/n: i don't have much to say. i'm a little mixed on this but i'll just leave it at that.

#alex turner fic #alex turner x fem!reader #alex turner x oc #alex turner x reader #alex turner x y/n #alex turner x you #alex turner #alex turner smut #junedenim #beneath the boardwalk

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layuhsblog · 5 months

Text

Fluster- Nakamoto Yuta X fem! reader

req: Flirty Yuta imagine

SERIES: NCT UNDERRATED LINE FICS (You can always request ideas for fics of any member of nct you feel the app is lacking fics of)

Osaka Bang: A playful inside joke where if you point a finger gun at someone from Osaka, they play along and either play dead or put their hands up in surrender.

To sum it up: Yuta having a bad day, the reader flirts with yuta and makes him laugh

Warnings: suggestive if you squint. flirty yuta. bad pickup lines. bad jokes. yuta snaps at the reader once but its nothing mean. reader is shy because of yuta.

Yuta was having the worst possible day he could. He was practicing for Nct 127's last tour and today was just not his day. He kept getting everything wrong.

When he came home, he quickly showered and got ready for bed. It was around 9pm when you came home and rushed to your room to see Yuta trying to sleep on his back, his arm covering his eyes.

"YUTAAAA!!!" You excitedly exclaimed as you laid on top of him, putting all of your weight on him and hugged his sides. Still in your work clothes. He grumbled a little and easily pushed you off him to which you frowned.

"I'm tired and you stink, go shower." You let out a fake gasp at that,

"How dare you. I don't care we're cuddling." you said as you repeated your old actions and laid on top of him again. He looked at you with annoyance. Before he could snap at you, you started kissing all over his face to which he let out a smile whine. You internally laughed at the power you held over your man.

"Y/n, I had a rough day. Please leave me be for a while."

"Okay okay, fine I'll get off of you on the condition that we talk about your day and then order takeout later."

He agreed and after you freshened up, you both talked about work and all the stress you had been going through in your individual lives.

You could tell he was feeling better but it wasnt enough. You wanted to make him laugh. Make him forget all the stress he was feeling.

"Yu, are you a fart? Because you blew me away." You laughed at your own joke but Yuta only gave you a disgusting judgemental look.

"You call that flirting? I've taught you better baby. Go ahead, try again. Try to make me flustered." He leaned back on the bed and gave you a small smirk. A glint of playfulness in his lovestruck eyes. You wouldn't lie, he made you flustered, that man always had an answer for everything. Your boyfriend was so hot like that and you swore you wanted to catch him off guard today, a payback for all the times he's made you speechless. Just then, a silly idea popped into your head,

"Yutaaa~"

"Hm??"

"Where are you from?"

He tilted his head in confusion at you,

you were together for so long, you ofcourse knew where he was from. After carefully thinking about every single pickup line that your question could lead to he carefully replied,

"Japan..?"

"No silly!! City."

"Osaka??" You bit back your laughter as you slowly pointed your index and middle finger at him,

"Bang!" it took him a minute to register before he gave a defeated laugh and a look that could only be perceived as,

'I'm so done with you.'

as he slowly clutched his hand on his chest and made fake dying noises as you laughed out loud at your own silly humor. He couldn't help but laugh along with you.

"Okay, not gonna lie, that did catch me off-guard. You're becoming funny like me."

"Hey! I was always funny."

"I beg to differ, you made a bad pickup line like a few minutes ago."

"You're awfully chatty for someone who was old man grumpy like a minute ago."

"What can I say, I can't stay mad at my baby she's too perfect and sexy for me to resist." He comes closer to you and whispers. You slap his chest as he laughs at your flustered state. He had forgotten everything about his sour mood and stress the moment he saw you and you and your reactions were just so cute.

"Thankyou baby, your jokes are still so, so bad, but I feel so much better now."

"Yes yes, who will find my jokes funny when he has Mark to laugh with and flirt with, I'm a mere sidechick.

Be honest- if we were dying inside a building in a fire and you could only choose one, who would you save, me or Mark?"

"Know your limit, peasant." He laughs at you, you sulk at him and get up to "storm out" of the room, pretending to be mad.

He grabs your wrist and sits you back down. He moves closer and pushes you into the bed as he pins your wrists above your head. You try to look away from him. Your face feels hot and flustered and you didnt want to show him how shy he made you feel.

He tilts your face and forces you to look at him as he gives you a hearty smile, full of love.

He slowly kisses your neck and moves up to your ear,

"Let's keep this a secret between you and me, I'd always choose you baby." He gives you a wink as he giggles and kisses you again, sweetly.

The more he kissed you, the more lightheaded you felt. No matter how much you plan to fluster him, he'll always be one step ahead of you.

#nakamoto yuta #yuta fluff #Nakamoto yuta fluff #nct yuta #yuta nct #nct 127 fluff #nct 127 yuta #nct dream fluff #nct dream #nct fluff #nct 127 #nct #nct wayv #kpop

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narcissarina · 6 months

Text

Darkened Desires

Prologue and Chapter 1: The sun || Chapter 2: The moon || Chapter 3: The moon || Chapter 4: The sun || Chapter 5: The sun || Chapter 6: The moon || Chapter 7: The moon || Chapter 8: The sun || Chapter 9: The sun || Chapter 10: The outsider || Chapter 11: The moon || Chapter 12: The sun || Chapter 13: The sun || Chapter 14: The moon || Chapter 15: The sun

Pairings: Mafia!Scaramouche × Barista!Reader

Word count: 579

Thank you for making it this far!

EPILOGUE

I got back at working on my usual, had to company and assure my mother that everything’s under control and that I am fine (haven’t recovered from that experience but I’m making progress) my friends scolded me and got worried, I’m actually fine right now since I know a man who would go lengths just to come to my aid and rescue.

The same man who stalked me, kidnap me even then gave me a tour of his own home. Sharing his stories and experiences as I take in that we live in different worlds—yet he choses to be with me. Opposite attracts, right?

He lives in the dark, and I’m in the light.

Like how the moon loves the sun, that’s why every once in a while there’s an eclipse.

Funny how he was the obsessed one, I won’t be lying that he isn’t good in bed.

It’s been a few months, I still go to therapy because Scara refuse to stop paying for my sessions, he still believes that I still need it. “what do you mean that I don’t have to pay for your therapy?” he said and give me a judgmental look.

I even ask Ajax about it and he said he can’t do anything about it, and that Scara gets snappy when Ajax talk to him on my behalf.

The Tsaritsa has been doing good and her health was improving when I’m around (she thinks I’m her daughter but I really don’t mind) she would give me gifts on many occasions, I still remember she almost bought me a car, since my old one is shit.

The more I know them like friends, the more I forget that they’re wanted criminals. My mind drifting off that they’re old friends when they’re literally a dangerous and powerful mafia.

Behind the café counter, I take orders for my customers and work on the usual routine that I normally had. But this time, something different—after taking the last order, I move my neck as it cracks some of my stiffen muscles.

I go over and clean the counter top, then made a bitter black coffee, just how he likes it.

Ding—

The sound of the bell of the door opening. I greet that customer with a smile and present him his usual.

“Welcome, here’s your usual.” I greet and hand him his bitter black coffee, “did you make sure you made it with extra love?” Scara teases, as his hand brushes over mine as he takes his coffee from my hand.

I could only chuckle at his remark, he leans in the counter—coffee in hand as he took my hand with his free one, “date at three?” he kissed my knuckles, I roll my eyes and nodded.

He smirks and got to his table to drink his coffee and wait for my shift to end.

My friend pops out of nowhere and gave me a scare, “jesus!” I yelp, she cock a brow and look at me up and down, “y’all better behave.” I chuckle at her and wink.

I watch the man who sat beside the door, drinking his coffee and reading—the same man who has dangerous connections, who is morally grey. The same man who saved me, obsessed with me.

I smile, knowing that my safety will be in his hands.

Assured that he’ll give me the future that he and I vision.

The same man I didn’t knew I fell in love with.

A/n: Hello! This series has finally comee to an end, thank you for reading and for sticking around 😭😭🙏 I appreciate you reading my works, comments were really appreciated and motivates me to write more stories!

Started writing this at March 1, 2024

Finished writing this day, March 22, 2024.

Thank you for sticking with me!

#genshin impact #dark romance #darkened desires series #genshin smut #tysm for enjoying this series😭😭🙏#scara x reader #scaramouche fanfic #scaramouche x reader #scaramouche #genshin scara #Mafia!Scaramouche #Mafia!Scara #thank you for making it this far<3 #Love lots<3

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maxwell-grant · 1 year

Note

Any thoughts on AKI in SF6?

I haven't had a chance to play the game yet and I might do a more thorough look into the newcomers after I do sit through World Tour, but yeah I got some AKI thoughts. Holy shit what a design. Top 15-20 in the series, it is one hell of a different thing to watch it animated by the character's personality and moveset and vibe. We expected some FANG-isms, some Juri-isms, but certainly not that. We expected a cold, even generic assassin, not someone who merrily treats the penal code like a list of chores.

It was pretty funny seeing the reaction to her develop from "oh she's FANG's apprentice, okay I guess, not sure anyone was asking for that", to "is she the new Juri, she's got a really similar vibe", to "holy shit Juri's got NOTHING on her". In reaction to her popularity, SF6 had been doing a lot of great character work on Juri that, while making her much more developed and entertaining as a character (cringe failgirl Juri was such a revelation) and dramatically more interesting as a person, also really limits the extent to which she can be a straight-up villain anymore. Much like how FANG was designed to fill the void left by Sagat, AKI here crashed the scene to fill the void left by Juri, and so she gets to be not just completely 100% horrible (where as Juri is like, 70-80% horrible), but also SCARY in a way Juri never could be. She gets so, so much out of not being designed for sex appeal and coolness first and foremost, she's like the D'Vorah to Juri's Mileena.

She's a horrible, predatory character, and much like Marisa, I don't think she would have been allowed at all to exist the way she does had she debuted prior (you just know they would have not given her those sick ass pants or given her a different haircut or a cleavage window or something stupid like that). The development team for V repeteadly stated that there were ideas for a new assassin apprentice character related to Gen thrown around and that some of those made their way into FANG and Seth, and AKI is the end result of that very long refinement process. She's the resident freakshow character in the tradition started by Blanka and Dhalsim, and she's the outrageous over-the-top counterpoint to the more traditional martial arts like Chun-Li or even Jamie (much like Adon, or Necro). She's the understudy of the kung fu assassin villain, and in a way akin to Menat she's the young new apprentice of a prior character who acts as a stand-in for that character on the roster and driven to prove her worth before said character, while also being a modern do-over of said character.

(And for the record I actually like FANG quite a bit, a lot more than most of the other V characters. He played like garbage and his execution was lacking and couldn't make up for a terrible first impression in the fanbase, but the design and character and concept I thought were very solid and I'm glad AKI shows they didn't give up on it but took steps to improve on it, I'm glad to see him again in 6).

She breaks new ground for the series by leaning strongly into a horror wraith vibe no other character had before, and she's the Street Fighter equivalent to characters like Voldo, a horrible contortionist slasher villain who doesn't fight you so much as she just passionately and exquisitely butchers you while getting off on it. Her moves are incredible, superbly characterized, she feels vicious and oppressive to watch but still hits that note on FANG's where the playstyle is meant to be tricky but overspecialized and beatable at close range. And while she's designed to be a much more explicitly serious and deadly-looking character than FANG, they even give her goofy little flourishes like blowing bubbles shaped like FANG (and getting pissed if you pop them), his propensity for bird-like arms flapping, and an uncharacteristically childish victory dance akin to Chun-Li's.

She is as cadaverous as Juri is tempestuous, openly referring to herself as a ghost, and when she isn't losing her shit in contorting fits of laughter over success, she has a remarkably chill, upbeat disposition when spouting horrible things to the protagonist or fake poisoning them for laughs. She has an incredibly distinct personality more so than any especially developed inner life, and that's kinda the point: that she has wholly and completely sublimated herself to her role as FANG's tool, by choice and intent of her own, and that's part of why she's a real deal villain.

She was raised by him, she likes what he likes, she is obsessed with everything he is and has done and will do, hates everyone that isn't him, considers him her master and teacher and father and husband all in one, and her romantic fixation and love for him is meant to be deeply disturbing in every way imaginable (and only not a total dealbreaker for me because FANG in no way reciprocates or encourages it or is able to do so, even AKI understands as much), and that they may eventually have to kill each other doesn't deter her one bit.

Despite those surface similarities, there is quite a lot that sets AKI apart from Juri, chief of those being that Juri was victimized by Shadaloo and in response fashioned herself into an instrument of vengeance and turned monstrous as a result, where as AKI actively chose her life and chose being molded by someone else, running away from home and following FANG every step of the way without any regret. Even FANG himself had little choice in his own life, kidnapped as a child and forced to partake in horrible training under which every day could be his last, raised to value nothing but survival at all costs.

Perhaps this in itself is the strength that FANG saw in AKI, that she gets to choose and does so with far greater intent than even himself. That she's someone who could fully understand the horribleness of the Nguuhao methods and lifestyle and want for that and nothing else, to consciously partake in such grueling torture of mind and body and lovingly decide that she can't get enough of it.

And in itself this pairs interestingly with the very idea of giving FANG a dedicated protege sidekick, a character beat that the series has come back to again and again, and takes on an entirely different tone here. I think a lot of what makes AKI's obsession interesting to me in a way these usually aren't, is not just because it's creepy, but because it's ultimately sad and pathetic, and parallels FANG's own craven worship of Bison. It's such a great dynamic, a miserable cycle perpetuated by miserable people caught on the wrong side of that glorification of self-improvement, inner strength and the great heroes and masters who can pass it onto others that the series uses so frequently, and it makes AKI even greater as a character for it: because now we have a true dark mirror for the driving motivation of many of our characters. We have our fucked-up toxic counterpart to every Sakura, Mika, Menat, and Sean out there.

She sees him as he saw Bison and more, and the fact that she is much more threatening and overtly competent and scary than FANG is offset by the fact that worshipping Bison is a wholly different thing than worshipping, y'know, FANG. We comprehend, on some level, FANG's worship, because M.Bison is supposed to be, at minimum, a cool imposing megavillain we're meant to like on some level, which is certainly not true for FANG. SF6 has been very clear on that, that even though he's been given a much slicker outfit, and is keeping a low profile to plot from behind the scenes, this is still very much FANG, every bit the conniving, petty control freak from before.

AKI is a cool, hypercompetent death machine able to scare the pants off the main villain, and she labors desperately day and night, to the point of crying if she fails, to meet the approval of a ridiculous, pathetic man who, no matter how deceptively cunning or dangerous he may be, is only cool to her. Much of why I think FANG worked and was necessary in the first place was because he was designed around the vacuum left by the Four Kings and to contrast them, as what kind of man would it take to work himself ragged running Bison's schemes and being unfailingly loyal to him and Shadaloo, opposite Vega and Balrog's sporadic barely-there alliances and Sagat's outright betrayal. We needed an anti-Sagat, a proper bastard of a Number 2 to run the show in secret. And AKI adds a lot of poignancy to that in that she is much of what FANG can't be, even as she wants nothing more than to be like him.

It's one thing to have somebody who really looks up to and makes an effort to imitate the cool and impressive and heroic World Warriors, or someone influenced by imposing villains like Balrog or Sagat but ultimately decides to carve their own path. It's another thing entirely for maybe THE most obsessive protege character in the series, someone who actively has no identity outside of servitude to her master, to revolve around FANG, the dastardly bird man, who made his debut in a story by hunting down and melting an innocent woman, and grossly and animastically licking her ashen remains off his fingers. What kind of person would decide that this sickening, vile creep is deserving of worship and following until the ends of the Earth?

(art by @remy2fang)

Well, maybe the same kind of person who would consciously look at the likes of M.Bison in the first place, someone they intuitively understand "will reign death on all living beings", and upends their life on the spot towards becoming that man's eternal servant. Someone who seeks self-fulfillment through no other means than the pursuit of strength and knowledge as tools to subjugate others and appease their master. The darkest corruption of the master-student dynamic that defines so much of the series. You couldn't ask for anything more fitting, for the poison specialists.

#replies tag #street fighter #fighting games #capcom #a.k.i.#f.a.n.g #aki street fighter #aki sf6 #fang #sf6 #street fighter 6

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mysticficti0n · 1 year

Text

All my Attention part 3

warnings- swearing, mentions of a dildo, sexual tension, kissing, quite fluffy

words- 3.1k

If you'd like to read the previous parts → All my attention series

a/n- so if you're new here I am British and cannot speak any German, I speak a little French, Spanish and Italian but German- no. I also do not trust Google translate so this is gonna be like an avatar thing (if you've seen the newest one Jake says that their language just became normal or something along those lines) so in reality this is all in German, you as a reader know German but, its wrote in English... make sense? no... well, sorry this part has taken a while- I'm on holiday atm so I probably wont be posting till I'm home BUT I didn't want you to be without, also fucking thank you all so much for the response to the first and second part! I can't believe the response to it, I could've cried because im a baby , love you all 🤍

(also to the people who've sent requests they will be coming soon!)

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backstory- you are the 5th member of Tokio Hotel and you always thought the love was equally platonic between you and a certain guitarist... but what if that all changed?

"exactly what I said- we can't keep doing the same thing at every show" Georg spoke shovelling eggs into his mouth, the band and our runners, managers, directors, and everyone else who I didn't know exactly what they did for us... were all sat on tables eating breakfast before rehearsal "because I'm sorry if we go on tour I wont wanna blow my brain out because i'm playing by your side for the millionth time"

"yeah but there's a thing called a set list, we have to stick with it otherwise" Bill leaned closer into the table facing all of us "otherwise we'd get shit and we all know how Felix will react- we all remember last time" he had a point, Felix as nice as he can act is a massive cock, once in a performance we decided to all go to the front of that stage to say goodnight- but Felix didn't like that and he ended up cancelling our next 3 shows to 'teach us a lesson'

"even so" the bassist grumbled, the conversation fell short as we all continued to eat, I had a bowl of granola, greek yogurt, raspberries and strawberries, soon the scrapping of a chair pulled me from eating my breakfast, I looked up to see Tom in a huge black shirt and basketball shorts "hungry?" Georg joked seeing the pile of food on his friends plate

"a bit" Tom laughed grabbing part of a waffle "whats that?" he spoke looking at me, that was the first time he spoke to me since what happened only an hour before, I think we were both in a shock state still, but I also couldn't deny how good it felt

"granola, yogurt and fruit" I spoke back digging my spoon into the mix and pulling it back so he could have a taste, he bent forward taking the food and hummed

"Tha actuwally gwood" he spoke mouth still full

"ew Thomas swallow for fucks sake!" I spat seeing him nearly choke the food back up "Tom!" I called pushing myself away from the table "whats wrong with you" I laughed I look to see the rest of the boys laughing as well at his stupidity

"we can't go anywhere nice with you two" Bill commented throwing a napkin to his brother who wiped his mouth and finished his laugh

"sorry- I don't know why that was so funny to hear you say" he snorted, I finally sat back in my place next to Gustav who was eating his food with a smile

"all I said was swallow your food" I argued back looking at the guitarist

"normally me saying that to girls-" I rolled my eyes at his words but everyone else chuckled along, after another half an hour (mostly so Tom could finish his monstrous plate) we were bringing our bags down from the hotel room to put in the bus, we all got in the lift which I don't think was made for 5 people, and 2 of those 5 being over six foot tall

"can you move over I can't fucking breath" I spoke shoving Bill back bit

"now I can't breath you cunt!" Bill called back pushing me back laughing, soon the intercom spoke and the doors opened and I made my way out but was soon tackled by the black haired singer

"BILL WHAT THE FUCK" I shouted with a laugh, I crawled from his grip and began running away seeing him get up to and following my movement "AHHH!" I screamed turning a corner and then slipping past a cleaner cart

"Y/N COME HERE!" I herd Tom voice shout as I sprinted to him with his twin hot on my tail, I watched him open his hotel room and I ran as quick as I could into it and slammed the door spitting out a chuckle hearing the boy hit the door

"BITCH!" Bill sang followed by his own laugh and steps faded away from the door, I sat on Tom's bed and lay my head back into the sheets catching my breath hearing the door open again

"you good now?" He asked smiling at me "I didn't realise you were that fast- I swear you weren't when we were kids"

"excuse me! people change" I answered kicking him slightly, he grabbed my ankle stopping me from moving anymore- I melted at his touch which wasn't a usual thing

"mhm, you changed in a good way babe don't worry about it" he flirted looking down at me the smile changing into a smirk

"you're in a very odd mood today mr Kaulitz" I spoke sitting myself as he let go of my ankle

"only for you-" he leant down, pressing his head on mine "and if I remember properly, who moaned when we kissed earlier? hum?" his hand was now resting on the base of my neck "who was it Y/n?"

"I don't know Tom" I answered seeing him bite his lip at my words "maybe you imagined it?" we always played around, flirting but this was different... very different

"I have a fucking good imagination then don't I?" Tom pulled away slightly, his his fingers brushed my skin as he let go and he held my chin, lifting my face to look up to him "....I prefer looking at you like this" I blushed at his words, they made me feel soft

"bet you say that to all the girls" he seethed rolling his eyes

"only the special ones...and you're really special!"

"way to ruin a mood" I huffed

"I'm joking Y/n/n, you just look hot below me ts'all" his hand held me tighter and he bent to reach my lips, he pressed hard humming into the feeling and sucked my bottom lip causing me to have to hold back any noise I threatened to make as I didn't want a repeat of earlier "I better get packing" he spoke pulling back creasing my cheek with his thumb leaving me with a unfulfilled feeling

"yeah.." I pouted, he looked back down at me and grinned

"god don't look at me like that... fuck- stop now, I've gotta pack" I stood with him as he turned to grab a tossed shirt from the floor, his hand glided down my thigh leaving a trail of goosebumps- he knew what he was doing, making me blush and shudder as his hand left me "oopsie"

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we all sat backstage kicking our heals as the crowd arrived, but we also knew the crowd was special- our families were watching us tonight, I decided I'd wear a more appropriate outfit (not like my family hadn't seen pictures of me in mini-skirts and tube tops saying 'pouty') I looked alot like Tom, my baggy jeans hanging around my hips with a matching tank top to him "5 minuets!" a runner called making us all rise from our places

"excited?" Georg smiled shoving me lightly

"I can't wait" I spoke pinning around to the music that began, Bill looked back at me with a smile followed by a wink

"3...2...1" Felix called and Tom, Bill entered the stage erring a eruption from the crowd "go!" Georg and I walked on and smiled seeing the sea of fans watching us with grins plastering their faces and finally Gustav entered

"GOOD EVENING TRIER" Bill called holding the mic close "ARE YOU EXCITED!" though the lights were blinding I could make out the shapes of bodies from my place "ugh we have a show n' a half for you all tonight, and this show is very special to us- one, this is our last show here in the lovely Trier and- most importantly our biggest fans are here tonight" the lights moved to the box above the crowd and for the first time in weeks I saw them: mom, dad, Stella, the Kaulitz, Listing and Schäfer family, I nearly cried waving to them and blowing them kisses "so tonight is going to be the best show we've ever done guys! ARE YOU READY" I watched as my family cheered and little Stella clapped her hands. Tom's guitar began the start of Scream followed by Gustav and Bill ran back to main stage, the crowd danced and jumped along "SCREAM" they called back to us at every chorus making me laugh.

The night carried on and everything was going amazingly, and it came time for me to take centre stage, I brought my mic and herd people call my name "so- this is our newest piece of music, I originally wrote when I was in a very bad place, and as you all know I'm back up singer so usually I don't perform up here- so close to everyone so I'm a little nervous but.. but it means a lot to me so.. this is 'please don't jump'" claps filled the room and Tom joined me giving me a nod as he plucked away followed by Gustav and Georg, Bill was in the corner sipping a water watching me like a proud dad

I let my self get lost in the music, stomping my feet and twirling around "don't let memories go! of me and you" I sang watching my family stare in awe, I began up stage onto the platform where I stood teetering on the edge, all lights went off besides the one on me "PLEASE DON'T JUMP! DON'T JUMP, AND IF ALL THAT CAN'T HOLD YOU BACK, THEN I'LL JUMP FOR YOU" I finished bowing to the crowd who burst out with claps, screams and calls making me jump at the sudden noise

"Y/N Y/N Y/N!" people began to chant making me well up, Gustav ran up the platform steps holding my hand gently so I could get down the steps as it was tricky in platforms, hand in hand we met with Tom who smiled widely mouthing 'they're proud' I looked to see my mom whistling, soon the five of us stood at the tip of that walkway, people reached for us, calling us all over

"THANK YOU AND GOOD NIGHT!" we all shouted bowing once more as the light darkened, we all walked off and back to our room where there were drinks set out and towel "shit Im so thirsty" Georg spoke grabbing the bottle and cracking it open as we all took our first proper breath and relaxed

"erm- sorry I know you got off stage but someones hear" Gayle, my runner spoke holding the door open a little more

"BABA!" a small voice called, I looked down to see Stella dressed in a Tokio Hotel shirt and orange leggings running toward me, her blonde hair tied into piggy tails

"STELLA!" I cried falling to my knees pulling her into my arms "oh my god I missed you so much" I whispered into her neck, her bright eyes looked into mine and I couldn't let go of her, I pressed kisses to her chubby cheeks

"Oh my- Y/n dear! another voice came in and I snapped my head to see my mother, tear stained face reaching for me, I watched as Stella ran onto Gustav who picked her up hugging her tightly and I ran to my mom who was closely followed by the rest of our families "sunshine I missed you!"

"I missed you too mom" I cried as she stroked my hair away from my face, she let go and I turned to see my dad who had Tom in a bro-hug

"aww hello Poppy!" he spoke, I nearly fell apart hearing my nickname again, and he grabbed me into the hug "aw that was amazing kids" he spoke letting go of us, I stood speaking with them until I herd the voice of my sister

"Tommy!" she laughed and everyones faces snapped to her

"SHE SAID MY NAME!" The dreadheaded boy called lifting her into his arms and tickling her "ME BEFORE BILL!" he danced seeing her smile

"Hey! Stella I thought you liked me more!" Bill huffed squishing the cheeks of her face

"am I the better twin?...yeah! I know" Tom scoffed bouncing her on his hip, our families laughed and all began hugging each other

"darlings that show was fantastic and the crowd! I couldn't believe it" Simone, the twins mom smiled "I couldn't be more proud"

"thanks mom" Bill hugged pressing a kiss to her cheek "wait..erm hold on!" we all watched as the singer ran out calling for something, I turned to see Stella smiling and reaching for all the boys, Tom, Georg and Gustav were sat on the floor singing songs and twirling her around, the song finished and Stella did a bow making the boys laugh at her antics

"Baba!" the little blonde called reaching for me, Tom realised and quickly scooped her up so she was lying on her tummy with her arms out she began airplane sounds (but kept interrupting herself with her chuckles) "Brrrrrrrrr!" she grinned showing her two small teeth

"aww my baby airplane" I spoke reaching for her as Tom got closer, the two reached me and I took my sister from his arms spinning her while pressing a kiss to her cheek again "you're a very cute plane Stella"

"Plane!" she repeated getting a 'yeah a plane' from the guitarist who couldn't stop smiling

"Okay... everyone come stand over here were getting a photo!" Bill came back in grabbing his family, the line up was the Kaulitz' far left, then my family the Y/l/n's, then the Schäfer's and finally Listing's "We want a few!" Bill called to the person holding the camera

"1...2....3" everyone did a wide smile, even Stella knew what was going on "perfect, do you want another one of these then we can do different stuff like.. the point?" its like a lightbulb went off it the taller twins head

"okay yes... then the point, then serious faces, then one with us 5 a bit more infront of our families, then on chairs" he rambles while setting us all back out for the next 3000 photo's we'd be taking

I don't think I've ever herd the numbers 1,2 and 3 said so much in my life but after half an hour the pictures were finally done and in fairness they looked great "well we best get going" Christine, Georg's mom spoke grabbing her bag

"oh.." we began before Simone whispered something to her husband

"why don't you all come stay round ours? we can have a family night, drinks, games, food" me and the band cheered, quickly grabbing our stuff and getting ready to walk out- we knew that today being a day show, fans would be waiting for us- we decided the safest option was to give our families over to security along with our bags and walk out on our own

"okay Stella we'll see you in a little while okay?" I hugged her once more before giving her over to dad who was carrying her out, we waited till we knew they were in their cars and I came the time we'd be walking out, with one last check of the room we began outside, screams filled our ears, people threw flowers to us, cards, papers and... thongs- but we picked the flowers up. a few people grabbed at my clothing but besides that it was a safe 3 minuet walk from the building to the bus

"they were loud" Gustav spoke getting into his favourite seat, at the very back on the left "Georg come sit!" he called to the bassist who jumped through the seats, leaving Bill who liked sitting in the front then me and Tom sat in the middle two seats

"god I fucking loved that show" I spoke belting myself in, Tom did the same and our hands brushed- its not something that many would really worry about, it was an accident.. but I could help go hot at the feeling

"it was so good, I feel like we'll be in Felix's good books" the dreaded boy spoke getting a nod from the band, we finally began the drive home, it would only take around an hour and a half so I got myself comfy which meant me resting my legs over Tom- this was a normal thing as usually sometime around the trip we'd switch and I can accidentally put my cold drink on his legs while he's asleep definitely not making him yelp- no not at all...

"can you take my shoes off, you're closer" I spoke tapping his shoulder and with a huff he began unlacing the platforms, I sighed at the feeling of my feet going light and not having to lug those shoes around any more "thanks bab" I called leaning my head back, Tom got comfy to, scooting deeper into the seat and his hands lay on my legs drawing small shapes and humming a long to whatever song was on the radio

"wanna know something crazy?" He asked looking over at me to which I nodded "I haven't fucked a girl since Tuesday, and its Friday now" I pretend to be shocked, slapping my hands to my face

"holy shit! that is crazy!" he rolled his eyes "I can't even remember when I last fucked someone- probably around my birthday" I sighed slightly annoyed, not that I'm some sex freak who needs to be constantly fucked to live but... my birthday is in February and its now July

"damn... how do you go that long?" Georg spoke uncrossing his arms, being genuinely interested

"Notta clue... I-"

"Y/n I know whats in the back draw in your room" Bill turned showing a sinister smile

"Bill!" I called knowing exactly what he was on about

"ooo" the boys cooed making me go red, Bill laughed even harder pointing at my face "aww! she's embarrassed about her dil-"

"BILL SHUT IT!" I shouted flinging my empty water bottle at him making him cackle throwing his pillow at me

"IT'S BLACK!" He called and the 4 boys Burt out laughing again spluttering words and coughing at how much they were laughing

"oh my god you are all dicks!" I groaned trying to push myself as far back into my seat as I could, I even took my legs down from Tom who I could realised but I was way to embarrassed to give him a 'look'

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"he traffic isn't moving so were going to be a little later to the Kaulitz" Gregory our driver spoke facing us

"ugh" we all collectively sighed, its been over 30 minuets of just stand-still traffic, cars horns went off but nothing was moving and being a warm day in a quite packed van it was getting hot

we'd moved past the dildo conversation thanks to Tom who made a fool of himself by spilling water all down his shirt- I did wonder though, was it on purpose? to take away the attention from me... but anyways whatever it was, or even just it was an accident- my legs were back on his and he continued to draw little shapes

"I'm going to sleep" Bill spoke looking back to which we gave a nod, by we I mean me and Tom as the other two fell asleep a few minuets back, the van sound turned quiet as the radio was turned off

"wanna play a game?" Tom spoke quietly

"sure, which game?" I asked seeing a little grin appear to his face

"erm... eye spy?"

#tom kaulitz #tom kaulitz x reader #00s #tokio hotel #tom kaulitz imagines #kaulitz twins #gustav schäfer #georg listing #bill kaulitz #Germany #🇩🇪#scream #monsoon

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