#how many times can she say please? who knows
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
gyuswhore · 2 days ago
Text
Cherry Picker [1]
Tumblr media
«« "Do me a favour and forget your mouth guard next time. Let the puck punch you in the mouth if I can't." »» 
Choi Seungcheol x reader | part of the winter with you collab hosted by @camandemstudios!
Part 1: 19k | Part 2
warnings: Hockey player! Seungcheol, figure skater! reader, *deep breath* ENEMIES TO LOVERS, angst, fluff, smut [MINORS DNI], toxic friends, cheol has anger issues, kkuma appearance, @miniseokminnies makes also makes a fluffy appearance, injuries, mentions of blood, smut tags in the next part
synopsis: Cherry Picking [ice hockey]: a manoeuver in which a player, the floater, literally loafs (spends time in idleness) or casually skates behind the opposing team's unsuspecting defencemen while they are in their attacking zone. There wasn't much you counted on in life; just your skates, your drive and how it felt to win. And of course, your local ice rink, that is now being colonised by an obnoxious hockey team in all their big, loud, stinking glory. Neither does it help that one particular red donned specimen forgets to leave his cherry picking on the ice.
[a/n] (it's a long one but PLEASE read) : ITS HERE FINALLY this was an extremely bumpy ride and I wouldn't have finished it without all of my friends who quite literally kept me going. I know I made an update saying this was gonna end up being 20k max but it turns out my yap-itis is for life </33
the posting schedule for this fic is going to be a little less predictable, I will try to get part 2 out asap but I do not currently have a date for you.
big thank you to @highvern for betaing and making me feel better about this fic, @amourcheol for talking me out of meltdowns multiple times and for giving me some really good scene pointers, @ugh-yoongi for being so patient w me and explaining how ice hockey works with so much patience. ty to @the-boy-meets-evil @tusswrites @lovetaroandtaemin for also proof reading for me 🥹
HUGE thank you to everyone at @camandemstudios who agreed to be part of this collab and being part of the journey as we grow 🫶 please check out the collab masterlist linked above, there's already so many amazing fics posted ready for you to read <33
that being said, I know more about figure skating than I do about hockey, but even so there are defo some inconsistencies in terms of accuracies in this, please bear with me 🫶 remember to reblog or send me an ask telling me your thoughts, id love to hear what you guys think 🥹 masterlist
Tumblr media
“CAN I HELP YOU?”
“I’m sorry,” you gravel out. 
“Sorry isn’t gonna give back my hour and thirteen minutes.” 
The strap of your gym bag cuts into your bare shoulder where the collar had slipped, the tight threading sure to leave a scratch by the time this is bound to be done. You’d managed to avoid coach Carroll’s morning cornering for a couple months, going above and beyond by showing up to the icy rink before she could even pull up in the parking lot in her blaring red Porsche, let alone before her ten minute meditations in her cream coloured seats. 
“There was an accident on the highway. Truck tipped over.”
“It’s eight in the morning,” Carroll points.
“Illegal truck, I guess.” 
Teeth to tongue, you know you’ve done it. 
She’s in her usual tracksuit, green today, that contrasts her bright red hair in its tight curls. Her glasses are her sensible Ralph Laurens, eyes piercing through the tinted lens as she holds her chin in her hands. Silent, calculating. 
“Fine. Change.” 
Your legs want to give out before you can even get your skates on. 
There were many things Isabella Carroll was good at. The industry would have one of them be a good coach; one of the most expensive, the one that squeezed the life out of her students to inject into the golds, silvers and bronzes they would then bring her on an equally diamond encrusted platter. 
She has also mastered the art of impeccable dressing downs. 
The fact she chose to skip out on verbally humiliating you meant you’d managed to strike that cord. She might be leaving in the next 45 minutes, but she has a very particular way of stretching the minutes into years. 
Like a whipped horse, you scurry into the locker rooms, skin crawling. Your gym bag is positively launched into your designated locker, shoes kicked off as you attempt to stick your right foot into your skates, narrowly missing your heel as it grazes right past the toe pick. 
You slow down after that, not needing a scar on your heel to match the large one on the side of your calf. 
By the time you jog back out, unzipping your jacket to throw onto one of the benches, coach is on the ice, following Marina who zips around on the other end of the rink in her step routine. 
It’s difficult to not rush through your warmups when you’re already late, your splits hardly pushed out as you pray all that running around in the desolate locker rooms was enough to stretch everything out. 
There’s a crash on the illuminated ice as you slip off your skate guards, Marina already practising her Salchows. “You’re in the air for enough time, why can’t you rotate?!” 
Right blade first, you step into the cold encircling, gliding into the centre to begin making your usual rounds around the circumference.
There’s a positive screech of your name from across the ice, wind blowing in your hair as you turn to look. “Do I need to hire someone to hold up your free leg? Fix it, girl!”  
Holding your left leg more taut, you attempt to transition into a jump and spin. You fail, landing on both feet. Somehow, falling on your ass felt like a better conclusion to that arc. 
“Wonderfully executed! Let’s try both hands on the ice too next time, really complete the contemporary finish,” coach hollers out to you as she continues to follow Marina at the same time. 
Trying again, you manage to land on your outer left blade. You receive no comment. 
You try the jump again, pushing into a sit spin. 
The momentum is enough to begin the familiar slack in your scalp, your bun loosening its grip on your hair. Biting your tongue would be dangerous right now, but you would if you could, especially considering the ramifications of your hair coming undone in front of her. 
The crouch as you spin burns your thighs like you’re being branded, pulling yourself back up as you finish abruptly. Still no comment, the unintelligible string of nagging coming from the other side of the rink. 
Marina stands hands on her hips, breathing so heavily she’s nearly heaving. Her blonde hair is loosening far worse than yours, strands framing her face. Coach Carroll waves her hands and shakes her head so quickly you wonder how her glasses haven’t flown off. You didn’t get to see what cardinal sin Marina committed to warrant this reaction, but you feel better knowing she’s exhausted enough to let her insults swim past. 
Ten seconds is enough to catch your breath, moving to do something busy enough to avoid another being screamed at across the ice, again. 
By the end of the remaining forty five minutes, you realised your punishment was also punishing Marina. Coach Carroll remained tailing Marina as you attempted to do everything that would please her, far away from her. Not a direction, praise or neutral comment in sight or sound, sealed with her always expected retorts. 
She leaves without a word, leaving you scrambling to the benches for a seat. Putting your skate guards on is torture, your legs refusing to pull up to reach them. You hardly notice Marina slam down into the seat beside you to mimic you slumped down and head lolled back, eyes closed to the bright ceiling. 
“These skates are gonna kill me,” you whine once you’ve caught your breath, unlacing them to inspect the blistering damage. 
“They’re brand new, what did you expect?” she retorts, moving to sit up straighter. Of course, you were grappling at straws expecting anything akin to sympathy from Marina. 
It was your misfortune that the day you had to break in your skates was the day you’d be late, your heavily bandaged foot still aching as you sit idle. 
Your lungs are still burning when you pull yourself back up, knees buckling the absolute slightest bit as you attempt to take the first baby step back onto the ice. 
“We need to get back to it,” Marina says, and you have half a mind to bite that you were up before her. 
She’s faster at slipping off her skate guards though, and you watch her back as she glides back onto the ice. You follow suit, trailing her as you speak. 
“Hey, I’m sorry Carroll was on your ass because of me. My alarm didn’t go off this morning, I overslept.”
She turns to look at you, ghost of a smile on her face. “Time to go old school I guess, I think my brother left behind his old alarm clock from college.”
“I guess—”
“Besides, I needed that. Wouldn’t have known my Salchows were sucky otherwise.”
She doesn’t let you respond and you’re left to watch as she takes off to warm herself back up. 
Strange as it was, you’ve found her behaviour simply doesn’t affect you anymore, choosing to take her as she was. She pushed you to be better, to work harder. Even now, as your ankle burns and your hip screams, you brace yourself into another axel entry, trying your hardest to keep up with Marina. 
It’s another couple hours when Marina leaves for her second appointment with her personal trainer, leaving you alone. 
It’s less crowded now, despite the head count going from two to one, but you appreciate the alleviation as you continue to practise for the rest of the morning. The rink feels more vast and your hip has stopped its incessant aches. 
Having finished a run through of your routine without music, you move towards the sound booth to turn on the tail end of your track, skating back to the echoing rink to brace yourself for the next four agonising minutes. 
You’ve adjusted your starting position about ten times by the time the silence of the song restarting settles. And then it begins, soft piano as you push yourself off into the throngs of this hellsent routine. 
It’s muscle memory by now, but your stomach lurches before you push into a jump anyway. There isn’t much time to ponder when you’re midair, tight yet contorted, trying to land on the right side of the blade. But there’s a phantom pain in your right ankle, right when you’re at the point of your arc, and you feel the all too dreaded panic flood in. 
You land on both feet, less than ideal but with no one to watch the fail, it was better than falling on your ass. There’s been worse outcomes, so there’s little you can do but continue into the step sequence. 
Trying to shake off that bout of panic, you briefly wonder if the music suddenly had more bass than you’d last checked. Perhaps you just hadn’t been practising like you should, but you make a mental note mid-spin to listen to the track again later tonight for any tidbits you’d missed. 
Your heartbeat is trying to accommodate more air than you can let it, especially as you feel the pulse in your ears quicken as you approach your final jump sequence. The music is louder yet muffled all the same, there’s an incessant banging that you can’t figure out is from your head or a corrupted music file. But you find that sweet spot, deciphering through the ruckus in your brain, and you jump. 
It happens again, the strange ache in your ankle that should be long gone, and just like that, all that panic you shook off in the interim comes hurtling back. The world’s gone silent, blaringly so, and for some heaven known reason, you’ve closed your eyes.
You aren’t so lucky this time round, landing directly on your back with a spectacular crash, the ice cutting cold through your thermals as you slide in the direction of your epic fall. Eyelids opening, they’re met with the spotlighted ceiling, head cushioned by the hard plane of ice beneath you. 
The pain in your ankle’s escaped like a fugitive, done it’s damaged and left you crumpled on the floor. The adrenaline is rushing just enough to keep you from identifying any other awakened aches, but you have a sneaking feeling your hip is going to hate you after this. 
You’re still laying flat on the ice when you realise you're laying in mostly silence. Your music is off, and has been since you came to on the floor. The banging, you realise, wasn’t just in your head either. The unmistakable reverberation of the locker rooms is loud and assuming, noises rattling all the way out onto the echoing rink. 
It takes the strength of a village to pull yourself up, but you do it anyhow, ignoring the blatant protests of your mind and soul as you squint across the rink to the sound booth. 
As you skate towards the gate, you assume it’s Hansol trying to get your attention by disrupting you mid session, but the figure shuffling into view is telling you otherwise. 
It isn’t anyone you know, clearer as you grow closer to the gate. It’s obvious he’s the culprit that turned off your music, your laptop shut and the wire to the speakers disconnected from the port. 
You stare at it pointedly as you grapple for your skate guards. 
The man does nothing but remain with his hands in the pockets of his bright red hoodie, hovering over your laptop as he watches you struggle with your skates. SVT stitched onto the back in black. He’s as blank faced as ever, a stark contrast to your heavy breathing as you come round. 
Standing up straight, you dart between your laptop and this person, waiting for an explanation that seems to be lost in the void. You’re still heaving slightly, scowl forming on your face as this strange man offers you nothing.
“Um, did you—”
“Yeah. It’s four,” he responds, like it was supposed to explain enough. 
“And that means…?”
“We have the rink reserved.”
“But it’s Monday,” you respond. It sounds stupid, but it meant something. The rink was reserved on the weekdays for coach Carroll’s mentees, the weekends for the public. 
This man and his big brown eyes gaze directly into your soul as he responds, “And that means…?” 
You’re sweaty and tired, your feet ache with about five new blisters from the last time you checked, and you’re sure you need to get your hip checked out. Perhaps that’s why there’s this unreasonable surge of irritation that rises in the back of your head, irrational and half blinding. 
“That means—”
“Seungcheol! Get your ass in the locker room before I drag you in there myself.” The voice that rings out is heavy and has you flinching, the man’s order echoing from somewhere in the tunnel that leads to the locker rooms. 
The man you assume is named Seungcheol begins to walk away from you without a word or gesture, and you can only blink at his retreating back. 
“Hey! Do you mind not touching my stuff next time round?” you call out as a last ditch attempt to have the last word. He turns his head to you, eyebrows raised and a smirk of mild disbelief growing on his face. Nothing is said as his head turns back to the front, strutting into the tunnel.
He lets you have your last word as he walks away, your gaze the same shade of crimson as his retreating form. 
Tumblr media
“AND THEN—THESE—HUGE dudes with fucking botox or fillers in their shoulders storm out—”
Your vent is interrupted by Lorelai who’s burst out laughing mid bite of her sandwich, “What?”
“Botox!” she muffles a shriek through a full mouth.
“They were shoulder pads or something, you get it!” 
The air in the outside seating of this cafe is stellar, the perfect in between you wait for all year. The parasol above you is enough so you don’t have to squint your eyes in the late afternoon sun, the wind perfectly paced in a breeze. Your own sandwich remains untouched, the bread gone stale as you pick at the corner of the crust. 
“Apologies,” she yips. “So you're saying we’re being partially colonised by hockey players?”
“I don’t know! Was it a one time thing, a weekly thing? It can’t be a weekly thing, Monday afternoons are routine practice days.” 
“The routine you’ve been practising for the past year and a half?” 
“I can’t afford getting rusty.” 
Lorelai drops her head like she’s had enough, “Maybe these hockey jocks are a blessing.”
“What?”
“Nothing! Hey, do you want cake, they have cheesecake, I could get some!” 
“Lorry!”
“Okay,” she huffs, dropping back into her seat with blown cheeks. “I’m sorry.” 
Lorelai has a sense of humour that took you more than enough time to decipher, but that wasn’t nearly the first thing you noticed about her. She was beautiful, even more so with the sun gracing her like a loving embrace. The highlights in her otherwise dark hair make the hazel of her eyes pop like two perfectly welcoming cliffs to jump off from. She was the definition of spunk and valour, yet graceful in everything she does. Even now, as she picks up her smoked turkey on honey oat, complete with every fixing and condiment on earth, you question how she can wrench her mouth open to take a reasonable bite; but she does, not a crumb out of place. 
“I have to share a rink with dudes whose hockey sticks are gonna make craters in the ice, why are you not mourning with me?”
“Pretty sure your toe picks do the same thing.”
“Lorelai!” 
“Not the government name!” she wails as though woefully wounded. 
“You’re impossible.”
“Carroll didn’t hate me for no reason.” She smiles in her pride. 
Lorelai’s competitive skating career came to an end sometime last year before the Grand Prix, a decision she announced gracefully with the words BITE ME etched with sharpie on her brand new competition skates. It was difficult to erase the mental image of the scarlet of Carrol’s face when Lorelai marched in with her hair chopped so short it’d be impossible to pull into a bun, marked skates in hand and a mask of determined rebellion on her face. Of course, the whole ordeal could’ve been an email, but it simply wouldn’t have been Lorelai. 
“It’s not like you were trying very hard to please her,” you grumble, nibbling on a fry. 
“Why would I try pleasing that woman?”
“For one thing, your sponsors were paying a bucketload so you could have her.”
“I didn’t want Carroll as a coach. Ever. I wanted Jameson. The only reason they put me with Carroll was because they were putting you and Marina with her.” Her voice is hard, eyebrows raised the slightest bit. 
“What does Jameson offer that Carroll doesn’t?!”
“Oh! I don’t know, let’s see,” she raises her voice as her sarcasm begins to simmer with a lethal edge. “Maybe the fact that an hour training with Jameson doesn’t feel like the subjected wrath of a world war two dictator!”
“Carroll is not that bad!”
“God, you become more like Marina everyday.”
You frown, “What does that mean?”
“It means—!” Lorelai pauses to close her eyes, and you can almost hear her counting in her head. “It means nothing. Eat your sandwich before the bread starts molding.”
“Ew.”
Lorelai smirks. “Bite me.”
You attempt to channel some of that Lorelai energy when you get to the rink past noon on a weekday. You hope you’re reasonable in your hope that Hansol will be in his office as you walk towards the door. 
Three rapt knocks before you hear a muffled voice telling you to come in. The door creaks when you open it. Loudly, might you add. 
“How long is it gonna sing every time I come in here?” you grimace. 
Hansol looks at you from behind his laptop with a tight smile. “For as long as I keep forgetting to oil the hinges.”
Hansol, for as young and qualified as he is, is only the rink manager because his family owns the place. Having graduated the year before with a shiny new law degree, he opted to take a break from moving forward with his career to “slow down” as he put it. The rink was as slow as it could get for him, betting the only important thing on his laptop screen currently was solitaire. 
“Did you also forget that I have the rink during the day on weekdays? 
“Ah. You’ve encountered the hockey team.”
“Yes. They turned off my music mid routine.”
“They're only here till the renovations in their home rink are done, we’re the only other rink in town that’s closed to the public on weekdays.” 
“But they’re cutting into my practice time?” you add, brows furrowed. 
Hansol opens his mouth before closing it again, eyebrows raised. “You clock in here five days a week, ten hours a day.”
“And?”
Hansol huffs out a breath. “Listen, I know you and the other skaters like having the rink to yourselves, and I’d be happy if it was always just you guys. Trust me, these jocks are impossible to clean up after, let alone deal with. Between the launch pad calibre noise and the stupid plastic barriers I have to put up on the railings, I’d love for it to just be you guys. But the only times you officially have the rinks booked is in the mornings when you’re training with coach Carrol, the rest of the week is technically up for grabs.”
“Let me book the rest of the slots then.”
“SVT’s already booked most of the remaining hours.” Hansol’s voice is sympathetic, but his words seemed final. You aren’t sure how bad your face was contorted, because suddenly he’s adding, “But hey, you can look at the leftover hours if they work for you.”
He pulls out the roster on a tablet before handing it to you. It only takes you a minute to scroll before you realise the only viable options were past 10 PM. The rink closed at 11. 
You sigh, shoulders visibly sagging as you let out a bated breath of tension. “It’s fine.” You hand the tablet back to Hansol. “I’ll figure it out.”
Turning on your heel, you make a move to leave the premises. Hansol calls out your name. 
“I’m sorry. Really.” 
You muster a smile, one that you cannot feel the slightest bit. “It’s alright.”
“Only a few months.”
Something in your smile sours, and you nod absentmindedly. “Only a few months.” 
Tumblr media
THERE WERE OTHER WAYS the universe could have let it happen, someplace where you might have forgiven yourself. Someplace you had reason to be. 
You were accustomed to physical exertion, how could you not be when you were what you were, but hiking on an incline was never something you fancied yourself with. Gyms and coaches and paved running trails are nothing like rocky terrains and steep mountain paths with no guide but a mobile map. 
The semi finals had passed you by, handing you a gold medal along the way as you thrust yourself into bliss. It was a job well done, so much so that you allowed yourself a weekend of something other than skating rinks and training sessions. So many nights that you can hardly remember, yet flash like lightning under your eyelids. Where you sobbed into your pillow and cursed yourself for ever having the gall to take a step back, to be so arrogant and blustering to announce yourself away from the thing that should’ve mattered the most. 
It only took one tiny crater in the path to twist your ankle so hard you crumple to the ground with a scream you cannot remember. More hands than you have holding on to your searing ankle, like they were holding it together with nothing but their palms and fingers. Lorelai was talking, and talking and talking, but all you could hear was the roaring question in your mind. 
Why did you bring me here? 
Six weeks. 
You watched with your own eyes as the Grand Prix final shuttered away on a reel, like you were watching a movie from an age you could not visit. 
Six weeks. 
Marina sat beside your bed and said words you’d never forget. 
“I’m sorry, but…this is your own fault.”
Six weeks. 
Lorelai wept, and said the same words for an entirely different reason. 
“I’m sorry. This is my fault, it was my idea.” 
Six weeks. 
Carroll kept face, but you could see past the mask. A sigh that said more than any words of reassurance. Disappointed but not surprised. 
Six weeks you were bedridden with an ankle that refused to support your weight on the surface area of your bare foot, let alone on the 3/16th of an inch on a blade. 
Bedrest, meds, physical therapy, and still. The ache in your ankle follows you like a ghost haunting you of your worst mistake. 
It was your fault. You chose to put whimsy above everything you laboured for, for years and years. You chose to look past your shortcomings like they would not become your achilles heel. You chose to get on that trail. You chose to walk out on crutches.
You, who could land a jump on a fraction of an inch of steel, could now barely stand on her own two feet. 
You’d decided on that day, that you were as pathetic as they come.
Tumblr media
IT WAS THE MOST natural decision to drag Lorelai out of where she rotted in bed to come with you to the rink. 
“You want me to fight them?” She’s wearing her Winnie the Pooh fuzzy pyjama pants and a university hoodie on top, her short hair concealed in the hood she’s pulled up. “They are hockey players. We are twigs!” 
“Lorry. Have you ever thrown a punch in your life?” you ask her as you pull your hair back into a loose bind. 
“No?” 
“Then why on earth would I ask you to fight goblins triple our size?” 
Her mouth is gaping in disbelief. “Why am I here then?” 
“You,” you start, grabbing your skates and moving out of the locker rooms. “Are gonna sit pretty in that sound booth and make sure nobody touches my laptop.”
“…you realise Hansol has security cameras right?”
“Are you planning on robbing my laptop?”
“No. Although it does have nice specs.” 
You ignore her as you walk towards the benches. “That stupid hockey team needs to know I have reinforcements of my own.”
Lorelai stands there, brows furrowed and in clothes that drown her. She glances down at her outfit and then back up at you. She deadpans, “This is the most unthreatening I have ever looked.”
“Just—” You stand up too quickly and feel yourself wobble. The railing is hardly a foot away, your hand moving over to grab it. Except your palms feel nothing but the flat of something smooth and hard, fingers bumping into the feeling of something unfamiliar. 
You manage to find your balance with a yelp, immediately snapping up to see where you missed the railing. The railing was still there, perfectly within arms reach. There’s a glare in your vision, like looking through a screen. Higher and higher, you realise quickly that you’ve been looking through a clear barrier so high up you can hardly find where it ends in its erect standing. 
Lorelai speaks up first, her voice resonating loudly, “Isn’t that supposed to be on the other side of the railing. Stupid, stupid Hansol.” 
It looks like it stretches throughout the circumference of the rink, wrapping whoever’s inside in a giant plastic fish bowl. 
There’s a clench in your jaw you can’t control, something a little more than annoyance building in your senses. It should be an easy thing to ignore, especially regarding its practically invisible nature, but its presence is all you can think about, even as you step your right blade onto the ice. 
Skating towards the middle of the rink, you feel claustrophobic. 
“Woah! You look like a zoo animal,” Lorealai adds unnecessarily. 
“Just play the track,” you grumble. 
“There should be a don’t tap on the glass sign,” she says, voice muffled as yells from the benches. “You already look like a weasel, can’t have confused people in the stands.” 
“Lorry!” 
“What?” she yells, her voice muffled as she yells from the benches. 
You curse the plastic that cages you as you yell louder, “Play the track!” 
Lorelai nods and makes a noise of understanding, and you watch her as she disappears into the sound booth. 
Taking your starting position, you wait for the quiet lull of the track before the beginning of the unmistakable piano; the low tremor in the beginning existing to prepare you to jump into the routine. You stand there with your arms out like a swan, waiting for your cue that won't seem to arrive. 
You almost yell out at Lorelai again before you suddenly hear the resonating shrill of the piano notes, startling yourself out of your first push. It’s fine, you’ll recover. You’re distracted by your staggered start and it’s enough to have you miss your first jump. It’s fine. You’ll recover. 
By the time the four minutes are up, you’ve missed two of your five jumps, a spin gone wrong, and nearly crashed into the plastic barrier. Not to mention, the aches in your body are enough to seem impossible to geographically pinpoint. 
It’s pointed, the way you make a beeline for the benches, refusing to look at Lorelai. You can almost imagine her expression, the poker face she has when she’s trying to think of ways to structure her next words nicely. 
“What was that?” she deadpans, voice a little far away. Your body hurts enough to take your focus away from her. 
“I don’t know.” 
“I thought your ankle was fine now?” she asks. 
You grit your teeth. “It is.” Lies. The way it was hurting you right now was making sure to remind you of that. 
“You know, you did pick back up a lot earlier than we thought—”
“I said I’m fine, Lorry,” you snap. “Now can you please play the track again.” 
You finally look up, and she looks like she wants to say something. But you’re on the ice before she can. 
You adapt to the excess muffle of the plastic barriers, ears straining to hear the beginning of the piano before you jump into the choreography smoother than last time. This time round, it’s better. The pain in your ankle and the budding one in your hip is apparent, but it’s suddenly easier to drown it out. Focusing on the music, keeping your centre of gravity, pushing into your jumps and spins with enough vigour to hold to what you are. 
Another four minutes pass and it’s over. Immediately, you swing over to the soundbooth to find Lorelai, only to find her joined by an extra set of people.
Impossibly, your blood runs cold. 
There’s a sneaking suspicion you know who it is despite the two men having their backs turned to you, especially judging by the obnoxious red jackets they have on. SVT. You can hear Lorelai speak indecipherably, her voice stern. 
“And you are?” one of them asks. You don’t recognise him, but you do the other one. The one who turned your music off the first day him and his team stepped foot in here. 
“Lorelai!” she yells it for no reason. 
“Gilmore?” The one you recognise snorts. Seungcheol, that’s what they called him the last time you saw him in the sound booth. 
“I’m worse,” she states. 
“Lorry?” you interrupt, arms crossed and gaze directed at her. 
“Lorry?” The one you don’t recognise says. “Like a truck?” 
“You think you’re funny?” Lorelai takes a step towards him, a fair attempt to look threatening if it weren’t for her very unthreatening attire. 
“Oh look at her pyjamas! It’s Pooh bear, Cheol,” he exclaims. That seems to irritate him. 
“Can you replay the track, please, I have to smooth things over,” you intervene. In your mind, ignoring their presence in your space was the best solution, refusing to give them a way to merge into your lane. 
“Woah, we have the rink booked today,” Seungcheol stops you. “4:30.”
Snapping around to find the clock on the adjacent wall, you read the time. “4:17. You can wait.”
He raises his eyebrows. “And thirteen minutes makes what difference?”
“You said 4:30. It is not 4:30 yet.”
The other one thumps him on the back, all smiles. “We can wait, right, Cheol? Besides, we have to put our skates on.” 
His gaze is hard and doesn’t leave yours. “Fine.” 
You break away first to find Lorelai still in the same position, staring at the exchange. You ignore the two men that stand there and address her, “Play the track.”
Before the music begins, you glance back to the benches where the two men have seated themselves, apparently strapping in to watch you. You dig your nails into your palm to reign yourself back in. No point in getting upset. 
The piano begins, and you're determined to not mess up. Especially not right now. 
It goes well for all of 45 seconds, you're hitting the right beats, you feel like water. But then the first jump comes along and you see a flash of red from the stands. An irrational feeling hits you as you push into the first jump, it’s enough to make you stumble when you land. You manage to not fall, but it’s obvious you’ve messed up. 
Somewhere beyond the music you hear a distinct, “Solid 4!”
It distracts you again, and you miss a move. Somehow your second jump ends up worse, and you feel your bottom hit the hard ice. 
“8 point 5! Nice!”
It doesn’t take long for you to realise what they’re doing, anger crashing into you like a flash flood. Scoring your falls? You’re determined to make the next jump combination. You make it fine, but your quad Salchow turns into a triple. The oafs are too shallow to notice, so you hear no jeer. 
But you know that you messed up the only quad in your entire program. 
The last jump goes from a triple axel to a double, and you want to break something. 
The song ends, and you know you have another nine minutes left to yourself, but all you can think about is getting out of the vicinity as soon as possible. Away from all of the eyes that are trained on your hunched form. 
There’s nothing you know about Seungcheol, and yet, the thought of him even looking at you right now is unbearable. Twice you fell, countless times you failed. 
Lorelai says nothing while you pack up, and nothing as you leave the rink. 
Tumblr media
“CHOI SEUNGCHEOL, CENTER,” LORELAI reads aloud from your bed with her mouth still full of salt ‘n vinegar chips. 
“Perfect, he already thinks he’s the center of the universe,” you grumble from your position on the floor of the bedroom. Your foam roller feels like heaven under your calves, but the position is beginning to cramp. 
“Surprised you haven’t heard of him, he’s half a celebrity.” 
You turn to her, “I have two gold medals and five podiums for every major skating event.”
“Do I ask for your autograph?”
“He’s not special.”
“Hm. His skill and popularity would beg to differ.”
“Why are you so hellbent on liking him?” 
“Because he’s cute,” she grins wide. “Although the other one was cuter, very angel-like. And he liked my Pooh Bear trousers. Can’t find his name on the team roster though.”
“He was wearing the same stupid jacket—”
You’re cut off by a gasp, a loud one at that. “He coaches the babies!” 
Her face is contorted into something between an “aw” and a sob. 
Lorelai’s phone is dropped dramatically on the bed as she thrashes on your made (now unmade) bed. You swipe the phone and read. His picture is there, the name Yoon Jeonghan, Junior League Coach.
“Good for him.”
“He just got five times hotter,” she states like she’s out of breath. 
“Give it another meeting and he’ll give you five other reasons to hate him.”
“God, you’re so negative,” she huffs. 
“They’re hogging my rink!”
“It is not your rink.”
“It’s as good as!”
“Whatever.” Lorelai rolls her eyes and sets back on the bed, no doubt searching the man up by name. 
“Ow!” you yelp as you stand up from the ground, ankle twisting slightly in the process. 
Lorelai jumps. “What?”
“Nothing,” you mumble quickly, hoping she’d drop it. But she catches your lingering stare on your bad ankle. 
“It’s still hurting, isn’t it?”
“I just twisted it weird,” you defend, walking to pack up your foam rollers. 
You’re met with silence, but you know she’s thinking. Lorelai speaks, “Maybe you should skip out on the shelter today.”
You snort, “Why would I do that?”
Once, sometimes twice a week, you’d volunteer at the local pet shelter. It wasn’t hard work, mostly taking the bigger, more energetic dogs for their runs because it seemed you were the only one who could keep up with their stamina. And now Lorelai is trying to take that away from you. 
“I saw how you struggled at the rink today, there’s not a day you don’t rest. Like, actually rest.”
“That has nothing to do with me struggling!” you retort. 
“What is it then?” she asks, sitting up straighter, defiance in her gaze. “What is it that’s making you skate like you bought your first pair yesterday?”
The irritation is growing into something hotter, her defiance pushing you into a corner. 
“I know what you want to hear from me.” Your voice is shaky. “I’m not going to say it.”
“Because it’s not true? Or because you’ve been convinced it’s not?” 
You know what she’s talking about, and you know you’ve been avoiding the topic like it’s the plague. The ache in your ankle comes alive, and in that moment, you cannot tell if you’re imagining it or not. 
“Convinced by who?” you snap, shoving the box of foam rollers under your desk. 
“Does that have to come from me too?” 
“Lorry, I don’t know what you want from me!” 
“I—”
There’s a knock on your door, loud and demanding. Wrenching it open, you find Marina behind it. 
She has a frown on her face. “You’re still here? I thought you were running with the dogs today?”
“It’s none of your business if she goes or not, Marina.” Lorelai’s tongue drips with venom most commonly reserved for her most hated people. 
Marina, still in her workout clothes and duffel bag, furrows her eyebrows. “Who shoved a pole up your ass?” 
“I’m leaving in five,” you hiss, before making a motion to close the door. 
When you turn around, Lorelai is still on your bed, hands in fists like she’s holding herself back. There’s more behind her eyes than you could even consider unravelling. 
She leaves before you. 
Tumblr media
THE ENTIRE WAY TO the rink was just one constant string of prayer. 
All of them go unanswered when you walk in to find the rink full of hockey players in red and black gear. 
The only thing you can do is curse under your breath, only watching frozen in your tracks as a million players skate across the rink passing and yelling at each other. No one you recognise, their helmets and gear eluding any semblance of individuality. 
Where you stand, a little ways away from the plastic screen and the benches, a dark circular puck suddenly slams directly into the boundary at eye level. On instinct, you flinch at the loud bang, half expecting to get hit. 
When you open your eyes, somebody’s skating up to the boundary, and you lock eyes through the cage of his helmet. 
Your blood is suddenly charged with something electric, fingers curling into fists on instinct. 
Suddenly, all that rings in your ears is the distinct jeers of numbers over the muffle of plastic as you continue to fall, and fall, and fall on the cold, unforgiving ice. The amusement in your failure, the joy in your defeat. 
Spinning on your heel, you stalk to Hansol’s office. 
In your blinding anger, you take a wrong turn, looking up to realise you’ve walked into the locker rooms. You’re one step into the men's locker room when you come back to your senses, startling yourself once again as you spin back from where you came, only you’ve been caught. 
For all the luck you’ve received in this life, it seems to opt out at that exact moment as you hear the unmistakable noise of a herd of ogres walking in, the glare of red on the walls surrounding them. Frozen in your spot, you can only grip the straps of your duffel bag harder, tense up like you were preparing for impact. When they turn the corner, the brilliant idea of simply walking towards the women’s locker rooms befalls you. But it’s too late. 
Seungcheol saunters into the hallway, leading the pack. 
His helmet is in his hands instead of on his head, revealing a sopping mop of hair drenched in what you can only imagine is sweat. He’s laughing at his teammate who’s making futile attempts to escape his own helmet, not noticing you in the way. 
Until he does. His smile fades immediately, eyebrows raised as he registers you in the doorway. You feel his gaze on you for a few silent moments, his teammates shushing at the shift in the air. Seungcheol opens his mouth, and you already know all that’s going to leave it is dung. “Didn’t realise the rink had a vacancy. Do I need to show you my ID to take a shower?”
A rustle of chortles and chuckles flitter from the group. “Go ahead. I don’t need an ID to tell you need a shower.”
Somebody ooh’s, despite it not being your best work. You suppose it was your delivery that did it. Deciding to continue riding that high, you simply turn towards the women’s locker rooms, refusing to give Seungcheol the luxury of your eyes on him.
Hurtling into the women’s locker room, you throw your duffel bag somewhere you’ll regret and crumple into one of the seats. You count to ten, attempting to take the image of Seungcheol out of your brain. 
It was difficult to rile you up to this extent, a trait you needed to possess if you were to be coached by Carroll in any capacity. There was so much you heard from her mouth, swallowing it like a prescribed pill and nothing more. Take what you were given, because it was given by the best, bought for you by the best.
Yet for some reason, Seungcheol manages to irk you in ways you previously have never encountered. Irritating people come and go, but you doubt you could place him as something as simple as just irritating. His presence felt like an intrusion, his air was thick like a concentrated gas. Everything he’s said to you so far has come from nothing but disdain and condescension, his haughty personality the only takeaway when he enters a room. 
You’re still in your outdoor shoes and jacket by the time twenty minutes are over, coming to a conclusion as you get up from the empty, soulless locker room. Hansol is in his office when you make the formality knock before barging in. His head is on the desk, like he’s asleep. It takes him a second, by he lifts his forehead from the papers on the tabletop to regard you at the door. You hear him sigh. 
“The hockey team’s done. It’s two.”
“I wanna book a slot.”
“The rink’s empty you don’t—”
“Let me book the slot, Hansol.”
“For fuck’s sake, you’re turning out worse than those baboons,” he curses before setting his forehead back onto the table. “Write it on the sticky note, I’ll put it in the schedule.”
“Now. I wanna book a slot for right now,” you grit. 
Hansol whips his head up again, eyes wide like he’s holding himself back, nodding furiously as he pulls his keyboard towards himself with an unnecessarily aggressive tug. “Fine. 2:16 till closing. Enter. Print. Here.”
He hands you the printed receipt of your slot, ripping it from the printer tray as he does it. You take it from him in the same vigour, hardly a thank you as you spin on your heels and walk out the door. You stop for a minute, turning back around to yell into the office. 
“Go home if you’re just gonna nap on your desk!” 
Not waiting for a response, you stalk towards the locker rooms. Within minutes you’ve tugged on your skates, laptop and shoes in each hand as you emerge out the tunnel to the rink. 
The ice is empty, mostly. Placing your laptop in the sound booth and your shoes under the benches, you step foot on the ice. They’re there, on the other end, sitting on the cold ice with their jerseys still on, eating what looks like cups of dippin dots. 
Seungcheol and Jeonghan, you remember from Lorelai’s squealing, either don’t notice you on the ice, or simply choose not to. Because it’s easy as you skate up to them, gaining speed from across the rink, you slide to a stop, sending a perfect spray of ice from your skates, directly into their ice cream cups. 
Seungcheol’s full spoon hangs mid air, halfway to his mouth, now garnished with ice shavings. 
“Thought you’d have the respect to keep the dippin dots out of this,” Jeonghan comments, disbelief in his eyes as he looks up at you. 
“Ice is booked.” 
“What time?” Seungcheol asks. Your gaze flickers to the left side of his face, a nasty bruise blooming purple and blue that you hadn’t noticed before. 
“2:16. It’s nearly fifteen minutes past.”
“You’re only one person.” He’s significantly more annoyed than when you saw him outside the locker rooms just minutes ago. 
“And?”
“And…you have about 97% of the rink to yourself.”
You raise your brows, hands on your hips. “But I booked 100% of it. So I’m gonna need that plane of ice you’re currently sitting on.” 
“What if I don’t move?” Seungcheol presses. It’s menacing, the way he looks at you, like he’s a lion only waiting to be provoked. Maybe he’s already halfway there, because it sure looks like it. 
“We’ll find out another day,” Jeonghan sings before you can snap back, grabbing onto the collar of Seungcheol’s red and white jersey to yank him up. He continues to glare as he obliges with his friend’s tugs, nearly as angry as you are. “Let’s go, sport.”
You watch as they walk to the exit of the ice, realising they’re wearing their shoes instead of their skates. 
Jeonghan calls from the benches, right before he and Seungcheol move out of view. “Trash those for us, would you?” 
Their half eaten dippin dots cups, with the ice now melting on them remains on the floor of the rink. Once again, the unexplainable urge to kick something befalls you, hearing them laugh and talk from far away as they exit the rink behind their long gone teammates. 
You give in, swinging a leg over to kick the cups and spoons, dippin dots and plastic scattering across the ice. It’s another sprawl of mess you’ll have to clean up, but it feels good to ruin something of his, no matter how inconsequential. The empty rink encourages you, needing to scream so loud the plastic barriers crack and break. You know it’s impossible, but that doesn’t stop the urge. 
You channel it into the most aggressive warmups on ice you’ve ever done. Your spins are faster, your jumps higher. But this also means you crash heavier, fall harder. It’s then, sitting on the bench to take a break, breathing so heavy you can hardly sip your water, you find an unmistakable headline on your browser home page. 
Everything stops. 
!HOT TOPIC! 
SEAT AT RISK FOR SVT HOCKEY TEAM’S SHINING STAR? Read All About It Here! 
Tumblr media
!HOT TOPIC! 
SEAT AT RISK FOR SVT HOCKEY TEAM’S SHINING STAR? Read All About It Here! 
Choi Seungcheol’s seat for next season at risk? Insider reports that the hot headed center may be at risk of contract termination due to recent controversy. The hockey player, renowned for his aggressive playing tendencies, seems to be taking his temperament outside of the rink. Multiple games played by SVT have been subject to eventful halves and quarters, the center seen getting violent in the benches with opposing team members, and sometimes even team members of his own! While his short temper has always been a recurring subject in the news, his skills as a player have always remained top notch—we do wonder if he even has to try! The tables seem to turn a little differently this time around, because it looks that SVT higher ups have been fed up with the increasing reports of Choi’s aggressive behaviour. Insider sources report that talks of a contract termination may be coming into order. While he has proven to be an effective player on the ice, it seems as though it won’t be saving him from this particular ramification! 
Stay tuned, hockey fanatics, as we bring you more updates on Choi’s sticky situation! 
Tumblr media
BEFORE EVERYTHING, BEFORE YOUR ankle, before it began to feel like your world was crumbling at your feet, came the scar on your leg. 
In hindsight, it feels like it was the very thing that set the ball rolling, the beginning of your demise. 
Coach Carroll was only on her first handful of sessions with you, Lorelai and Marina, all of you still learning her quirks and expectations as a coach. 
It happened when you were on the sidelines, hanging over the boundary as Lorelai handed you a water bottle from the benches. Marina was practicing her routine, taking up most of the ice as Coach followed on the side. It seemed unclear, to this day, whether you’d drifted inwards on the ice as you sipped from the bottle, unaware. But when you felt the hot searing pain in your calf, there were only two people on the scene. 
Marina skated past, her free leg in the air, meeting your calf as she skated past, effectively slicing into your leg in a deep gash. Blood was wiped off the ice, your leg bandaged and wrapped. Not without Coach and her comments, of course. 
You heard her berate Marina from the other room, for moving closer to the boundary than what was required for her routine, heard the way she gave her the blame. And then she round up on you. 
“Idiot! No reason to be on the ice when you aren’t practicing, did you want it to be your ankles too?!” 
It was the first time you realised that Carroll was beyond your perception of the word demanding, her gaze remained in a high place, no regard for what it took to get there. Even if it meant destroying her skaters. 
Marina apologised. “I’m sorry. I swear I didn’t see you there, I would’ve dropped my leg—”
“It’s okay, Marina. Really,” you smiled through the still aching wound. “I know you didn’t mean it.”
She smiled a little too, “Lesson learned, I guess. Don’t loiter on the ice.” 
It was difficult to keep the smile from fading as you heard her say that.
“What shit apology is that?!” Lorelai yelled as soon as you mentioned it to her later. You cringe as you realise what slipped, and to whom it slipped to. 
“It’s the best I’m gonna get from her, Lorry. Honestly, I don’t care.”
“You’re out of service for a week till that slice heals and that’s all she has to give you?” 
Lorelai is breathing heavily, mostly because she’s been practicing her triple axels for her routine, but also because she’s extensively heated for you. You watch her from the benches. 
“Lorry,” you sigh. 
“Listen, I wanna win too but—”
“Are you trying to say she did it on purpose?” you ask. 
“No! Let me finish, woman,” she snaps. “I wanna win, you wanna win. We’re doing everything we can because we want to win—”
“So this was a subconscious attack?” you interject. 
“Fuck this, I’m leaving,” Lorelai begins to skate backwards and away, leaving you on the bench. 
“NO! Wait, okay, I’m sorry I won’t interrupt.”
“Too late.”
“Lorry! Lorelai!”
It wasn’t until you were back in your shared apartment, Marina out doing whatever while Lorelai hijacked your bed that she got to finish her sentence. She was rubbing ointment on a bruise while you changed the  bandage on your calf. 
“Her need to win is ruining her. And it’s like she’s taking us down with her. I know she doesn’t mean it like that, doesn’t want to hurt us. But she thinks this kind of hurt is good, if it’s the kind of hurt that pushes you to win.”
You cringed at the sight of the wound, still red and ugly. 
“She might not have meant to hurt your leg, but—don’t loiter on the ice? Really?”
“She only meant it as a reminder.”
“Exactly! You don’t need that reminder because I think you’ve learned better than anyone else to not stay on the rink when someone is practising. A couple weeks ago she made some stupid comment because I left the gym early. Nothing inherently rude, she’s never actually rude. But it was pointed anyway. I’ve been up since six in the morning I think I deserve slacking off a little, it was nearly midnight for fuck’s sake!” 
Cleaning the wound was taking everything you had, the need to hiss at the contact of the wet cloth was near abominable. 
“Her…her perception’s a little warped. But her heart’s in the right place!”
Lorelai had rolled her eyes, screwing the cap of her ointment tube back on with unnecessary force. “I never said it wasn’t, just—stop defending her! I’m sorry but half the reason she continues to act like this is because you listen to her.”
At that moment, you felt a little offended. Of course, Marina had her moments where she’d say something a little less than healthy, especially coming from a friend. But you’d always thought you handled it better than most. 
You met Marina when you were still only splotchy faced preteens, during a competition where she came second and you came third. She’d been skating for longer, so it was expected, but you also couldn’t conceal your surprise when you’d found the state of her later on. You were ecstatic simply because you managed to make it to the podium, but it seemed Marina’s tears held another thought process for her. 
You found her crying in the locker rooms later on, her coach who looked like she…should’ve been comforting her, but it was more like a stern talking to, to suck it up and work harder next time round. 
When you tried to help her, out came words you felt oh so strange coming from a stranger. “What do you know? You came third!”
It hurt. Possibly the first genuine stab of the feeling you’d ever felt. In the following weeks, when Marina apologised and you’d begun to build a friendship, you felt something peculiar. Practice sessions on the ice became harder, your two hour sessions were suddenly extending to four, sometimes five hours a day. All of it, your own doing. 
It was subconscious when it was happening, the silent tug of You came third! What you first considered an achievement became an intermediate step. 
If there was anywhere that you’d pinpoint the shift, from when figure skating went from fun to a responsibility, you’d pick that exact moment. When someone congratulated you later on, it wasn’t a big smile and a thank you.
“I only came third.”
Your calf healed and all that was left was a scar, but there in the discolouration of your skin, also lay a realisation. 
Tumblr media
SEUNGCHEOL HOSTS ABSOLUTELY ZERO thoughts in his mind as he shoves the collar of his hoodie over his head. Slamming the door shut on the rest of his red SVT paraphernalia, he makes quick work of his hair, shoes on and out the door within the minute. Jeonghan is still fast asleep when he leaves, mouth open and drooling onto his pillow when Seungcheol walks into his room to let him know he’s leaving. 
Jeonghan might tag along to practice for the fun of it despite leaving his competitive hockey career behind him, but his distaste for 6 AM practice remains forever unchanged. He’d see him later though, on the rink lingering once the sun is higher in the sky and Jeonghan deems it less of a sin to be awake. 
Seungcheol leaves without a response from his friend. 
By the time he gets to the rink, most of the team has already geared up. The locker room is splotched with red, moving towards the back of the room to get to his own locker. They weren’t assigned, but he liked to have his claim. He had one in the old rink, the one locker everyone knew was his. And now he has one here, despite the temporary nature of the ordeal. The rest of the boys know to steer clear, as does he for the others who have their lucky spots. 
Mingyu bumps into his shoulder when Seungcheol is looking down, immediately whipping around to bow a full ninety degrees. He’s laughing as he apologises, not really sorry, but Seungcheol is too exhausted to humour him too much. 
He’d been up playing games all night, under the covers in the dark, his phone brightness up too high and his eyes too wide open. He could feel the regret when his alarm blared while it was still dark outside, his eyelids stuck together, refusing to open. It cost him fifteen minutes of warming up, but he’d make it somehow. 
Seungcheol can hear coach Mason’s booming voice from outside, moving closer and closer to hustle the rest of the boys out onto the rink. He shoves his foot into his skates, making sure all that’s left is to lace them up. 
“Look alive, boys! I want you on the ice within the minute,” he booms into the locker room. 
Seungcheol doesn’t look up. When he gets up to leave the locker rooms, his hockey stick and helmet in hand, he’s the last straggling few to leave. Chan earns himself a hard thump on the back from Coach as he scurries out. 
There’s a hand on Seungcheol’s chest as he’s about to exit, Coach stopping him from leaving. 
He looks up, expecting a hard look from Mason, ready to hear a mildly violent threat about being late to call time again. Except Seungcheol finds him with his own gaze on the floor. 
“Rink manager said I could use his office. We should talk there.”
Seungcheol could’ve said he knows what this was going to be about. The game last weekend had less than ideal results, not because they didn’t win, but more so because of the WWE level brawl that went down in the benches during one of the intermissions. 
He tenses, but it was more like he was squaring up. His shoulders are hard, his grip on his hockey stick tighter. Of course, he wasn’t about to swing at his coach, but one could say it was simply a subconscious response. 
The entire walk to the office, Seungcheol thinks of new ways Coach could address his issue. But the gist was always simple. 
Choi, stop fucking fighting. 
He’d usually just rip Seungcheol a new one in front of the boys, berate him and verbally throttle him in the hopes that he’d keep his anger under check. But as they turn towards the door to the office, Seungcheol has to remind himself that this was a first. Being led aside, like he was being led into some formal meeting. 
A plea deal, perhaps?
Choi, what is it going to take?
The office is barren, hardly looks like it’s used with how sparse the equipment is. The amount of dark brown gives it enough warmth to not make it look like some sick form of solitary confinement. That doesn't stop Seungcheol from feeling a hint of pity for whoever has to work here. There’s no nameplate. 
Coach doesn’t take a seat, opting to lean against the table in front of him instead. His arms are folded, and he’s not looking him in the eye. A crawl of suspicion creeps up Seungcheol’s neck, as though in an attempt to ambush him. 
It’s silent in the room as he waits for Coach to speak, refusing to be the one to break it. 
When he does speak, it’s not in his usual Coach voice. Without the built in bass and tremors he was born with. 
“There’s no easy way to break this,” he starts, eyes drifting up to somewhere on the barren walls. “But I’m gonna try my darndest.”
Finally, he feels Coach’s gaze lock with Seungcheol’s expecting pair. 
“They wanna drop you.”
“What?”
Coach squeezes his eyes shut, like he’s recalibrating. “Your contract is up by the end of the season. And the tie wearers and the shoe shiners don't wanna re-sign you.”
Seungcheol’s eyebrows furrow. “What do you mean don’t wanna re-sign me, on what grounds?!”
“You’re temperament—”
“I’ve scored at least two goals for every game you’ve put me in, I’m your most consistent player!”
“They have no qualms with you when you’re on the ice.”
Seungcheol knows where this is going. He knows what knocked up alley this is turning to and he hates it. “Which is all that should matter.”
“In most cases.”
“Is this about last weekend? You didn’t hear him, he deserved more than a broken fucking nose—”
“I didn’t need to hear him, because I know. I know he’s a jackass, I know they’re all jackasses! They know that too. You need to learn to let things go, let them chirp—”
“He was coming on to my mother!” Seungcheol bellows, now properly angry. He remembers the guy’s name, Jason or something. 
“His coach came onto my entire bloodline when we were young, this is Kim’s strategy! You’re playing right into their hands like a dog! For fuck’s sake, Choi! Punching someone in the chiclets isn’t always the answer!” Coach Mason is shaking his hands in front of him like some violent prayer. 
Seungcheol drops his hockey stick and helmet, mouth open as he huffs and puffs. He wants to pace, wants to point his fingers at Coach and make a few threats of his own. 
“Just—”
Seungcheol rounds up on him. “Seungkwan punched a guy in the mouth. Wonwoo kicked one in the balls.”
“Seungcheol. This is becoming nearly. Every. Single. Game. Not the occasional tousle we can pull people out of. You can’t keep sending people to the hospital, it’s a wonder nobody's pressed charges yet!”
“So that’s it? I’m being punished because some dick runs his mouth?” 
“This is about you, Seungcheol. You need to get a fucking grip. You’ve started picking at your own teammates, shoving Mingyu around—seriously?”
Seungcheol’s mouth opens but nothing leaves it. He ends up gaping like a fish. 
For all that it was worth, for everything he’d been through, Seungcheol always assumed his seat was safe. Always assumed he’d have the position he does. Because he showed results, won them nearly every game and put up a damn good fight in the ones they didn’t. 
Seungcheol knew he was an asset, but not for one minute, stop to realise that this was all
conditional. 
For everything he did for this team, for every fiber of his being he poured into its chalice, they were spitting it all right back into his face. Chewed and warped and rid of anything worth salvaging. 
The red in his chest, back, stomach, spelling out the unmistakable letters of his team. The red in his helmet that rests beside the red in his hockey stick. 
“Listen, as much of a pain in the ass you are, you’re good fucking player. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s all that matters. But it’s not up to me, so we need to work around that. They’re worried about the repercussions of your behaviour. And you are gonna make sure you keep yourself in check.” 
Coach walks closer, finger digging into Seungcheol’s chest through his jersey. “I want no more fights, no more kicking and punching and swearing no matter how much that motherfucker deserves it, I don’t care. Do whatever it takes. God knows I’ll never forgive you if you make me agree to those prissy hands in suits.”
Coach left Seungcheol in the barren office, stepping over his stick and helmet as he exited the room, leaving him alone. His fingers flex under his gloves, like he’s trying to remind himself to stay in the moment. His exhales are stronger than his inhales, his vision blurring as the desk turns into two, and then disappears for a second. 
He can hear the distinct sound of the puck slamming into hockey sticks. Practice had started. By the time Seungcheol walks out, he’s the last person to go through the mandatory drills. 
The rink is mostly empty as the team gears up for a practice match, leaving Seungcheol enough reign to slam into every puck like he had some personal vendetta against every last one. It’s one after the other, sent directly into the open net, waiting. 
Practice goes fine, as good as it could go with the scrambled eggs that had become of Seungcheol’s mental state. He found himself whipping his head around to Jun when he fumbled an assist, face scrunched under his helmet as he prepared to send him to hell in a handbasket. 
He sees Jun physically tense up in defense, and the insult (for once) dies on Seungcheol’s tongue. 
“Just—keep up, alright,” he says instead. His tone is empty, and on a downward slope. 
If anyone finds it odd, they don’t say. 
It’s a couple more hours of passes, assists and hollers across the ice, regrouping the teams every so often to keep the rotation consistent. 
Over here, everyone is in red, everyone is on his side. The bleachers are empty, devoid of spectators to watch him lose his cool on anything. But he thinks of the way Jun recoiled, like he was preparing for the worst of his teammate’s words. He and Jun are friends. 
Somewhere amidst his thoughts, the puck flies directly into Seungcheol’s face, banging into the cage of his helmet with a noise that resonates across the rink. He’s startled enough to skate back a little, not before hearing another resounding thwack! from next to him. The puck rebounded from his helmet and hit the plastic barrier with a noise that had everyone looking over. 
Skating up to where the puck fell back onto the ice, he looks up to where it hit the barrier. 
Through the plastic he sees…you. You're staring at the same spot he is, where there’s a slight mark from the force of the rubber. 
And then your eyes drift up, locking with his own. 
Like every other person he’s around, he watches you tense up. But it’s laced with something more than just bracing for impact. 
It’s apprehension, your form turbulent and agitated. It’s all he can see when you spin on your heels and walk away in the opposite direction from him. 
The all too familiar irritation sparks in the back of Seungcheol’s mind, as it does when you’re around. All he does is slam his stick into the ice with force, pushing the puck back into the middle of the rink. 
They’re nearly done by that point, and he finds that Jeonghan has graced himself in the benches. He’s wearing his old jersey, likely because he doesn’t want Coach to notice him and accuse him of distracting his players. 
Jeonghan would’ve gotten away with it anyway. 
Seungcheol tells him to wait up, walking towards the locker room with the rest of the rest of the team to wash up. He finds some reprieve in Seungkwan’s attempts at fumbling with his helmet, letting out a laugh as he fights with it. Looking up as they take the turn towards the locker rooms as a group, he somehow finds himself in your presence, again. 
It’s the same thing, like you’ve been connected to a faulty circuit and you’re trying not to show it. You look like you want to say something but all Seungcheol can do is send a snarky remark of his own. 
Even as you walk away after the ordeal, he feels anything but settled. 
It’s like the world has it out for him, because as he opts to stalk back to where Jeonghan was, forgoing a shower, there’s only another calamity waiting for him. 
Jeonghan is in the rink, sitting on the ice with two cups of what looks like dippin dots. He looks up when he hears his treads on the ice, having taken his skates off already. Seungcheol crumples to the ground and on the ice next to his friend. 
The first words he utters are the only ones that’ve been on his mind all day. “They want to drop me.”
Jeonghan only grimaces in response, only running his hands through his hair as he sighs loudly. “I know. I heard.”
Seungcheol perks up, head lifting from the ice. “...How?”
That’s how Seungcheol has Jeonghan’s phone so close to his face he’s hardly an inch away from the screen. He reads and reads and reads. And his blood boils and boils and boils. 
!HOT TOPIC! 
SEAT AT RISK FOR SVT HOCKEY TEAM’S SHINING STAR? Read All About It Here! 
Choi Seungcheol’s seat for next season at risk? Insider reports that the hot headed centre may be at risk of contract termination due to recent controversy. The hockey player, renowned for his aggressive playing tendencies, seems to be taking his temperament outside of the rink. Multiple games played by SVT have been subject to eventful halves and quarters, the center seen getting violent in the benches with opposing team members, and sometimes even team members of his own! While his short temper has always been a recurring subject in the news, his skills as a player have always remained top notch—we do wonder if he even has to try! The tables seem to turn a little differently this time around though, because it looks that SVT higher ups have been fed up with the increasing reports of Choi’s aggressive behaviour. Insider sources report that talks of a contract termination may be coming into order. While he has proven to be an effective player on the ice, it seems as though it won’t be saving him from this particular ramification! 
Stay tuned, hockey fanatics, as we bring you more updates on Choi’s sticky situation! 
Of course, to add to the absolute media pandemonium, you had shown up on the rink itself after Seungcheol had to read through the entirety of that stupid article. Jeonghan was smart to pull him away from the situation before he wrapped both his hands around your neck in an ultimatum. 
The way you stood there, hip popped like you owned the damn place, face haughty and demanding. You stood while they sat, looking down at Seungcheol like he was some pesky ant. There was nothing he would’ve rather done in that moment than swing his leg clean across your ankles, and watch in delight as you crash onto the ice in front of him. 
“What the fuck is her problem?” he grits as soon as he’s in the locker rooms. Collecting his things to leave and take a shower at home. 
Jeonghan walks behind him, hands in his pocket in idleness as he watches his friend pack up. He’s humming a tune that’s possibly too familiar to Seungcheol. “Hm. She does seem a little wound too tight.”
“Wound too tight?! I’ve seen her thrice just today and every single time she looks like she wants to skin my fucking hide!”
Jeonghan only snorts. “Thing two isn’t any better. She’s cute though.”
Seungcheol whips around. “Who gets that territorial over a sound booth?!”
“Down, boy,” Jeonghan soothes, half in jest. “Surprised she isn’t here today either.”
“Yeah, you’d like to see her.”
“I would, actually, yes. What was her name?”
“Something to do with a train or a bus or something—”
“Lorry! Right,” Jeonghan furrows his brows. “I don’t think that’s her real name.”
Seungcheol throws his duffle bag over his shoulder as he motions he’s done. “I don’t think anyone who actually loves their child would name them after a bus.”
Jeonghan halts in his steps. “My dead dog’s name was Lorry.”
Seungcheol is extra nice for the rest of the way home. 
Tumblr media
SEUNGCHEOL CAN'T SLEEP.
His dreams are full of voices, of every single teammate he’s ever had. The junior league, his high school team, up to his college team, and finally, his team right now. 
They’re all murmuring like they were paid to do it, uttering the same things, over and over. He doesn’t belong here, they don’t want him here, he doesn’t deserve what he has. 
And with the way his heart is racing when he jolts awake, cold sweat and all, he realises he’s kicked his blanket off of him sometime during the night. He looks over to his alarm clock that glares bright in the dark of his room; 5:08 AM.
He doesn’t need to be up, but it seems his own subconscious has given him a good enough scare to make sure every last essence of sleep escapes him. He lays on his back, catching his breath like he just ran a marathon. 
Seungcheol hasn’t woken up from a nightmare like this since middle school, one that knocks the breath from his lungs and fills his head with all the horrible things in the world. With every moment that passes after that conversation with Coach Mason, his ordeal becomes increasingly real. 
In that moment, laying in his bedroom, staring blankly at the dark ceiling above, he wonders if he’s made the right choice to come this far. 
With all the confidence he’s exuded, the thought is downright terrifying. 
Seungcheol was a difficult child. Too much energy, too much to say, too much to do. His parents didn’t know the first thing about hockey, just that it involved enough hitting and running and practice to let their son let out all that pent up energy, so maybe, just maybe, he’d sit still and do his homework. While they attempted to sign him up at the local rink, he was already zooming out towards the benches to see the fabled giant block of ice his parents told him about. 
And there it was, just like in the movies, a giant expanse of ice that made him shiver even in his thick Winnie The Pooh puffer vest. There’s sounds, loud ones, of deep clacks that echo across the rink. It seems to be coming from the dozens of people skating on the rink, decked out in red gear. 
SVT, he reads on their jerseys. 
His mother chides him for straying when they finally find him near the gate, watching the team practice. The rink manager is there as well, showing his parents around. 
“The SVT’s practice here and have a junior league too, but I’m afraid it’s full. But our coach is great too, I’m sure he’ll do well.”
Seungcheol’s parents didn’t mind, but he wanted those jerseys, wanted his name in red splashed across his back as he glided across the ice. 
It didn’t take long for his coach and his parents to realise that putting him in a helmet was a good idea. He was smoking the rest of the kids from day one, his balance on the ice better than any other his age, his hold on a hockey stick like second nature, his aim as he hit his first puck, dazzling. 
As he got older, entering his preteen and teen years, he had another realisation. That he was as horrible at school as he was good at hockey. 
“Perhaps you should take a break from hockey,” his high school guidance counsellor had said. His grades were displayed in front of her like a case study, the hopeless clear in her intermittent sighs and the occasional purse of her lips. “Utilise that time to fix at least one of your grades. Pour all your eggs in one basket.”
The thought was absurd. No, he would not be dropping hockey when it was the only thing that pushed him to wake up in the morning. 
He’d felt the tremble of irritation rise in himself, sitting there in that office. It angered him, made him feel like his success was measured by a criteria not made for him. He had said nothing as he slipped out of chair and left the room. 
The day before his graduation, sweat dripping onto the ice as he sent free pucks into the net, he was missing more than he was getting in. It was making him more mad than it should, hands shaking with fury as he berated himself for not being able to succeed in something so simple.
His last puck was before him, and he swung his stick harder than ever and watched as it flew directly into the net. The sound is louder than usual, resonating across the rink. Seungcheol looked down at the detached pieces in his hand and quickly realised that he’d effectively broken his hockey stick.
It wasn’t expensive, so the quality wasn’t nearly what it should be, wasn’t nearly as durable. But this was new to him. He’d never broken a stick before. 
Anger. Perhaps that was what he'd forgone, perhaps that was what he needed. To get on his knees from his back, to get on his feet from his knees. 
When he graduated the next day, Seungcheol knew what he was going to do with his life. Finally had an answer for the infinite questions about his future. 
Hockey. Seungcheol was going to play hockey for the rest of his life. He was going to get into SVT, he was going to become the best player they’ve ever had. He was going to make more money than what he would have as a doctor or a lawyer or whatever else the entire world wanted him to do instead. 
Seungcheol was going to be on the ice wearing red if it’s the last thing he does. 
That’s what pushes him out of bed at 8:45 in the morning, his dream that was once in his hands now flitting through the gaps of his fingers. 
The anger that pushed him here, was now pushing him out. 
He packs his things and leaves the house, welcoming the cold of the outdoors. 
There’s the distinct sound of blade cutting through ice when he gets nearer to the rink itself, a shout of a shrill voice he can’t decipher. Official practice doesn’t start for another couple hours, and he doesn’t remember Coach Mason cutting the pitch in his voice for anything ever. There’s only one other person that could possibly be gracing the rink.
Seungcheol finds three people on the rink. The bright red curly mop of hair catches his eye first, her arms folded over her green puffer jacket, apprehension in her entire posture. He assumes this is your coach. 
There’s a blonde one breathing heavily as she straightens out of a spin, listening to the coach as she shakes her head violently as she speaks. 
Seungcheol finds you a little ways away from the pair, practising jumps. 
He doesn’t emerge into the benches, remaining in the shadows where he wouldn’t be so blaringly obvious. There’s no reason for him to hide, but he doesn’t think of this as hiding. 
Seungcheol watches for the next few minutes, watches you make most of your jumps, fall for some. Your coach shouts for particular names for jumps, something about axels and lutz’ that he can’t tell the difference from when put into action. At least he thinks that’s what you’re doing. 
And then he hears it as your coach moves closer to the barriers. “What’s gotten into you? Keep acting this stupid and I’ll excuse myself from the job, I have better people to coach.”
Her tone, her words, the sharp edge of her tongue, it’s all triggering a very specific part of Seunghceol’s brain. 
“Is it your ankle? Because if it is, then I’m here to tell you to get out of your own head. Your ankle is fine, you wouldn’t be able to get on the ice at all if it wasn’t.” 
There it comes. Those words aren’t directed towards Seungcheol, nor could they apply to him in any capacity. But the way this coach is speaking is making him irrationally angry. 
“Are you gonna keep pretending you have a handicap? Because if you are then I have no work here.”
“I’m sorry.” 
For whatever reason, the sound of you apologising makes the fire rage doubly. It’s enough to blur his vision, enough to make him question what on earth this coach could have on you to let her speak to you in that way. 
The choice words are already in his head as he claps back in his own head, like he was the one at the receiving end. 
He doesn’t stay, disappearing even further into the tunnel to where the locker rooms are. He doesn’t understand why he’s huffing and puffing as much as he is. All that occupies him is what possible reasons you could have to just take it lying down. 
Seungcheol’s phone vibrates in his pocket, slipping it out to realise it’s Jeonghan. 
He picks up, and barely has time to say hello before his voice perks up from the other line. “Where are you?” He sounds like he just woke up. 
“I’m at the rink.”
“Why is your angry voice on?”
“My angry voice is not—” he begins to grit, seething, but closes his eyes and takes a moment. “I’m not mad.”
“Do I need to sing?”
“No, you do not have to sing—”
“Everything is honey—”
“Jeonghan, stop!”
“—everywhere I see—”
Seungcheol hangs up before he can go on. To his utmost irritation, he feels significantly calmer. 
The rink is devoid of your red headed coach when Seungcheol makes his way there after a few minutes. The blonde one is nowhere to be seen, leaving you alone in the rink as you skated across the expanse. He only watches as you land the couple attempts at jumps, the ice breaking ground in a spray every time you put pressure on your blades. 
Seungcheol is just standing there, blank faced with an empty head. His mind was quiet for the first time since he’d woken up that morning. 
He doesn’t know what he’s doing there, standing idle as he follows your figure around the rink like a fixation point. 
The sound is more consistent, less of the loud jabs of hockey sticks meeting the ice, more constant lines of scraping as you migrate across the rink. The speakers boom no sound, but the musicality in the noise of the ice is enough to imagine a rhythm. 
No part of him desires getting on the ice to oust you out, no part of him wants to touch his hockey stick that sits in the locker room. He doesn’t need extra practice, not with hockey at least. 
And when you notice him, unmoving in the benches, he watches as something hard overcomes your expression. You skate over, and he keeps his gaze fixated on the ice.
Skating up to the gate, he sees in his peripheral vision as you slip on your skate guards, stepping out into the real world. 
“You don’t have the rink booked, I checked,” you huff, moving to find your things on the other set of benches. 
Seungcheol’s jaw tenses. “I don’t want the rink right now.”
“And yet the ghost loiters.”
“I’m here to tell you to start filling in the stupid craters your skates make in the ice. The guys keep tripping.” 
“You big hockey thugs getting defeated by a toe pick?” 
Seungcheol turns to finally look at you, and you look nothing as graceful as you did on the ice. He wants to scoff. 
You continue, “I have to deal with your stupid barriers fucking up my sound system. I think your guys can deal with a couple digs in the ice.” 
“Great, we’ll just lose a couple teeth, who really gives a fuck.” 
“If this is about giving fucks,” you get up from your water break, leaving the bench. “Do me a favour and forget your mouth guard next time. Let the puck punch you in the mouth if I can't."
Seungcheol’s entire being is ablaze. He reshuffles his footing. “What the fuck is your problem?”
“My problem?” you repeat, voice moving a pitch higher. “My fucking problem is that you and your overgrown posse of baboons drop in here out of the blue and then act like you own the damn place!”
“Right, because it’s your name on the fucking lease. Excuse us for trespassing on public property!”
You’re yelling. Seungcheol is yelling. It’s either that or the hollow of the rink is now carrying your voices farther out. 
“I’ve had enough of you acting like you don’t take up this entire fucking space!” Your arms wave wildly, gesturing to the large area of the rink. “You’re everywhere, all the fucking time, it’s sickening!”
“Everywhere, huh?” He takes a step closer to you. And then another. He revels in the sight of your face turning a splotchy red. “Thought I was only a bother on the ice? Where else have I been plaguing you in mystic hallucinations?”
Seungcheol’s eyes give away nothing but provocation. He knows he didn’t start this, but in the true essence of who he is, he would be the one to end it. 
It’s clear you’re taken aback. At this moment, he’s the closest he’s ever been to you. But it’s for nothing if it isn’t to press on you further, to tower over you and your outburst. 
“Get your head out of the gutter, you brute.”
“Then is it not me taking up all your space?” he asks. “Because there’s three feet of air between us, and yet the least in our very short time together.”
He watches as you take a small step back.
“So where else have I been any closer, so consistently, if it wasn’t part of your imagination?”
There’s a certain kind of venom in your stare, in the sneer that lifts your mouth, enough to ensure that it’d render him six feet deep. But he lives in reality, so he deems it safe to take another step closer. 
“You’re a screw up,” you almost whisper. Appalled and scandalised. 
“So I’ve been told,” Seungcheol breathed. “But something tells me we’re not so different in that department.”
“You don’t know a thing about me.”
“I know that I’m all you can think about,” he says, eyebrows raised. “That feels like a lot. You’d agree, because everywhere, all the fucking time is a lot.” 
Seungcheol has hardly finished his sentence before he feels the light breeze of you gathering your few things, shouldering him hard and walking away from him. Into the tunnel, into the locker rooms, into hell, wherever it was that you ended up by the close of the day. 
He isn’t afraid to admit that he stumbled.
Tumblr media
LORELAI HAD MADE IT quite clear that any figure skating talk was off the table, and talk surrounding Marina even more so. You tried not to point out the obvious predicament, but the fact that you lived with Marina did not affect her demand. 
Miraculously, not talking about skating or Marina was the most free you’d felt in ages. It was mildly embarrassing in the beginning, when on a run with Lorealai who was also helping out at the dog shelter, because you realised all you talked about was, maybe not Marina, but definitely a lot of skating. 
You slow down a little to give Kkuma a couple minutes to breathe, but Lorealai is still running at her pace with her significantly more energetic husky, Bennie. 
“Stay there, I’ll catch up!” she yells over her shoulder as she takes the left around the block to circle back. 
You oblige, moving to a walking pace as Lorelai appears from behind you after a couple minutes. She slows to a jog and loiters around you for a minute, you increase your speed to match hers. 
“Jeonghan…” she pauses to take a breath. But your interest is piqued, especially if she was talking about the same Jeonghan you were thinking about. “Jeonghan invited me to the game this weekend.”
Hold. 
“What?” you snap.
“Game. This weekend,” she huffs, still breathing heavily. 
“Like, a hockey game?” you ask, brows furrowed. 
“No, for disney on ice,” she announces. “They’re doing beauty and the beast, Jeonghan’s the beauty, Seungcheol is the beast. It’s a whole production, really. Real good stuff.”
You can only roll your eyes at the elaborate sarcasm. She continues, “Of course, it's a hockey game! What else do they do at that rink all day?”
“Gosh, sorry,” you frown. “Since when do you talk to Jeonghan?”
She looks over, wicked smile on her face. “Since I found him on Instagram.”
“You followed him?”
“No, why would I do that? Bumped into him at the gym a while ago, and we went out for coffee afterwards.”
Nothing of the ordeal is making sense, your brows still knit together and your mouth downturned in confusion. 
“Catch you in a minute!” she yelps as she takes off into a run again, Bennie right next to her as she circles round again. 
The few minutes that it’s just you and tiny Kkuma are flooded with questions. How did she just bump into Jeonghan? Lorelai hardly goes to the gym. Asking her to come to the hockey game? 
And then worst of all. 
Are they dating? 
By the time Lorelai is back, she’s out of breath again, and fully unequipped to answer all of the questions you shoot at her like rapid fire. 
“Why were you at the gym? He’s a junior league coach, he’s not even gonna be playing!”
“God!” she groans, heaving. “Slow…down.”
“Fine!” You stop in your tracks entirely, to which Lorelai is happy to oblige as she crouches with her hand on her knees. Bennie tugs at her leash, the big bounding ball of fluff ready to race the winds again. 
You count to ten, hands on your hips as Kkuma lets out a small, confused yip now that you’re completely idle on the track. 
“Talk.” 
With an all too dramatic flip of her short hair, she pulls herself up and into an explanation. “I couldn’t tell you because we weren’t talking when it all happened.”
It’s true, it did take a while for you to go back to normal after that run in with Marina in your bedroom. You suppose it won’t be happening again with the new no-Marina-talk rule, since she seemed to be quite the common factor in many of your rifts over the years. 
“I went to the gym to blow off some steam—don’t look like that, I’m being serious!” 
You make an attempt at fixing your face as she continues. 
“He saw me first and came up to say hi. Went our separate ways but once we finished up he asked if I wanted to grab a coffee since we were both done working out.” 
“And you said yes?”
“I said yes. Because he is cute, and I had been stalking his very public Instagram and it was just the perfect opportunity!” 
“So you’re dating?” you ask sharply. 
“I don’t know.”
“He asked you to the game?” you point out. 
“Well, yes, but he hasn’t asked me asked me.” Somewhere in her voice there’s the tiniest hint of disappointment. “Besides, he said to bring you as well.”
“Fuck no.”
“Come ooon! Jeonghan’s gonna be in the benches and I don’t know anyone else there!” she whines. 
“Hey, we should switch dogs!” you announce as you yank Bennie’s leash out of Lorelai’s hands, stuffing  Kkuma’s leash into her free hand. 
You take off into a sprint, and Bennie is happy to keep up with you as you quite literally run away from the situation. Lorelai is yelling your name, her annoyance abundant. 
Ignoring her is easy. Just the thought of walking into one of those games is enough to force a scoff, to watch your rink inhabited with like minded buffoonery as they ruin the bleachers and the ice. 
By the time you make it back, the hilarity of the situation hasn’t left you. And it seems neither has Lorelai, who remains standing with Kkuma at her feet, waiting to trap you. 
It’s the easiest thing to do, to turn right back around and circle the other way. 
“You can’t run away from me forever!” she shouts behind you as you disappear again. 
Maybe you couldn’t, but you wouldn’t go down without a fight. 
“You can’t run away from Seungcheol forever! Quit pretending like you aren’t dying to fall into those giant arms!” Lorelai has a very specific talent of injecting all the drama in the world in the tone of her voice. She’s sure to utilize that skill as she hollers after you. 
That seems to do it for you, slowing down, half ready to whip around and holler a profanity or two right back. 
You’re more triggered than usual, but mostly because all the jab does is remind you of the last time you saw him. The arrogance in his demeanor, the way he belittled you with just his eyes, the shadow of his towering frame, caging you like a lost animal. 
You hated it. Despised it. Despised him. His disgusting innuendos, the all so misleading innocence on his face as he cornered you with both his body and his words. 
Lorelai could deal you whatever card there was tied up her sleeve, but getting you anywhere near the rink for the game this weekend was going to require more than just dessert bribes and sweet talking. Dragging you by the ankles could be a possibility, but all for naught when you dig your nails in anyway. 
It was impossible. Not doable. Non-existent in the cards of your destiny. A repelling force. 
So why, would one ask, were you decked out in the most  heinous red scarf with the letters SVT stitched on like a warning, sitting in the bleachers and looking down at the same rink you practice your spins and jumps in everyday? 
Neither you or Lorelai could answer that question, both your stories as blurry as fog as to how either of you managed to get you in that fabled seat. 
You could see the exact place you and Seungcheol had your last showdown, the opposing team in black now occupying that side of the benches. The thought puts you in an impossibly sour mood. It’s not like Lorelai could say anything about it, half because she knows you’re one snide remark away from jumping into the merch table, and half because she was too busy making heart eyes at Jeonghan who’s just spotted her in her seat. 
“I’ll be back,” she informs haphazardly as she positively bounds down the steps to the end of the bleachers, where Jeonghan waits for her. The people in their seats shuffle, annoyed at the overenthusiastic fan who practically slides down in front of their legs towards the railing. But Lorelai couldn’t care less, not with what stood beyond that very railing. 
Tearing your eyes away from the lovebirds, you take in the hustle and bustle of the pregame happenings, most of the bleachers in disarray as they humour the merch stands and the food stalls. The rink smells different because of it, both the added number of food trucks and drink stands, but also with the amount of people that occupy the expanse. 
The only times you see the rink this packed is when you’re too wracked with nerves to notice anything other than your own two feet. Hands wringing and head spinning, the chaos of the world is nothing against the pandemonium in your mind. You’re usually wearing a sparkly dress that glitters even from the very last row of bleachers, hair taut and makeup caked on like a layer of icing. 
Taking your time, you let your eyes flit over all that you forgo the other times. The stands are a mix of red and black, and so are the benches and ice that are occupied by men in full hockey gear. 
You’re too high up to make out the names on the back of all those jerseys, let alone a face underneath the already concealing helmets. The problem is forgotten when you feel the weight of two hands slam against your folded arms, tugging you out of your seat like it was stolen property. 
“Jeonghan said we could sit closer to the benches downstairs!” Lorelai is frantic, like this wasn’t a matter of reserved seats but the last plane to leave hell itself. 
“Lor—” Finishing a sentence when she’s in this state is a luxury you learn quickly to live without, because all that concerns her right now is getting closer to the man that seems to have enraptured her like never before. 
It’s disgusting. But you follow her anyway, down the steps that you nearly eat shit on, gracefully of course, because what figure skater doesn’t fall with an epic crash worthy of an Expendables cameo. You stabilise yourself enough to get to the seats Lorelai is talking about, and sure enough, Jeonghan would barely have to get on his tiptoes to hoist himself into the bleachers altogether. You question the safety of the context but decide that it wasn’t your problem if someone decided to pounce on one of the players. 
Besides, you’d be lying if you said you wouldn’t revel in the absolute scene of Seungcheol getting jumped by an over-passionate fan. You’re suddenly very grateful for the front row seats. 
There’s a bucket of chicken tenders and fries in your lap out of nowhere, matching the one in Lorelai’s hands. “Also Jeonghan?” you hum as you inspect the sauce options. 
“Mhm, he’s friends with the vendor outside,” she grins. 
You narrow your eyes at the revelation, finding it utmost strange how close he seems to be with nearly everyone. “Why is he on the benches, again?” you ask. 
“Because—” she draws before you cut her off. 
“Friends with the coach?”
“How’d you know?!” she exclaims. Her attention is diverted as the speakers suddenly boom with something other than generic pop music. So is yours, when you hear a deep baritone of a commentator’s voice carries throughout the rink. 
The shuffle around you is suddenly doubling in speed, everyone getting into their seats. You look over in front of you, where the benches are in an equally panicked shuffle. You spot Jeonghan easily, mostly because he’s one of the few in the vicinity without a helmet or what looks like a giant space suit. The next thing you note is the person he’s talking to, his back turned to you, but familiar all the same. 
CHOI, 95, reads his jersey. Automatically, your jaw clenches.  “Don’t look over there!” Lorelai chides, grabbing your jaw and moving it to force you to rip your eyes away from him. 
“Lorelai, I’m not sure if you’re aware, but unlike your boy toy, he’s actually gonna be on the ice,” you verbalise through clenched teeth. 
“Don’t look at the ice,” she blurts. 
Rolling your eyes, you only listen as she realises what she’s said. “Okay, um, look at Jeon instead! Or Kim, or Boo, just. For god’s sake, there’s fifty other players on the ice, just don’t let one of them ruin your night!” 
“I’m fine,” you grumble, sinking into your seat. 
It isn’t long before your eyes trail over anyway, and Seungcheol still doesn’t have his helmet on. You can see his face now, and he looks like he’s mad at Jeonghan about something. 
Inevitably, your mind wanders to the fated article that somehow made its way into your recommended, the certainty it put in you that Seungcheol didn’t stand a chance in his team anymore. It seemed true enough, his anger, that he continues to display, seemed to be his default emotional setting. 
Your hockey knowledge was subpar at best, but one thing you did know was the aggression factor of the sport. Of all the things that could cut his career clean down the middle, this was the last of your guesses.  
Even now, as you watch him absentmindedly point and jerk like his supposed friend had managed to bring him something that was personally offensive, it’s all connecting too well. 
But when you snap into reality, you realise very quickly that he was pointing…at you. 
Seungcheol is mad that Jeonghan (effectively) brought you to the match. 
A chortle of disbelief is quick to make itself known, wanting to yell across the throng that you were every bit as upset that he was in your vicinity too. It also brings you satisfaction, a pure grain of hope, that maybe this would be enough for him to completely fuck up on the ice today. 
You say a quick amen before the baritone of the commentator makes itself known again. The echo is too much for you to decipher what’s going on, but you have your answer when you watch the reds and the blacks form what looks like a line across the width of the rink, right in the center. 
You don’t register when the puck landed, or if it was always there, just that the loud clacks and bangs are in tandem with the cheer from the crowds. The puck is an impossible commodity to keep up with, even with just your eyes. It appears for a moment before it’s lost again, shooting around in your peripheral vision like a pesky fly you can never get a hold of. 
“What is happening?” you whisper to yourself. 
Lorelai answers anyway, snorting, “Fuck if I know.”
The numbers on the lit screens are doing nothing to help out your predicament, too much happening for you to even begin to deconstruct. You choose to lay back and enjoy your chicken tenders and fries, complimenting the sauce choices to Lorelai along the way, who continues to calibrate her attention on the man that remains in the benches. Jeonghan looks over periodically to send her a wave and a blinding smile. 
You’ve made a good enough dent in your chicken and fries bucket by the time it’s intermission, about ready for a drink by now. Lorelai makes herself useful and runs down to get you both something, mostly because Jeonghan was now more focused on the team that’s huddled around one another, another man you assume is their coach huddled right with them. 
The scores are 2-2, as provided by the person behind you who was apparently sick of your placid obliviousness. It did feel slightly awkward to be the only person not as excited to be front and center, so you remind yourself to thank him profusely. 
Your attention drifts back to the benches, inevitably as you’ve been so unfortunately placed to be able to breathe down the player’s necks. They’ve dispersed from their huddle, but are not yet on the ice. They’re sitting down, catching their breaths, drinking from water bottles. On the other side, the opposing team, a sea of black and white flooding their own end of the benches. It’s a sinking colour, not an ounce of depth in the shade. It’s taking over the benches. 
Except it’s the players that are moving, like they’re diffusing into the scarlet territory. 
You watch, as one player in black moves his mouth, speaking, upturned and eyebrows cocked. It’s clear he’s gone well past enemy lines, the front lines suddenly at attention. There’s not much you can make out, nothing much besides the very haughty expression on the player’s face. His eyes are covered by the sweaty mop on his head, but you don’t need to see them to find the malice that infiltrates his entire stance.
The scene, where both sides seem to be closing in on each other, has you automatically sitting up straighter. The air is going static, especially as you realise the player's mouth is moving faster as he jabs at — Seungcheol. 
They’re fighting, only verbally for now, but it’s undeniable the way the heat grows by the second. All you can see is the back of Seugncheol’s jersey as he begins to step back from the ordeal, like he was fighting the urge to take a step forward instead. 
Jeonghan’s hand is on Seungcheol’s elbow, and one glance at the rest of the players on this side shows every last one on edge. Their coach is nowhere to be seen. 
But he doesn’t stop talking, still standing in their territory. He yells something loud enough to hear the pitch of his voice, but not nearly enough to understand what he’s saying. 
You could see it on the player’s face. Hook, line and sinker. 
It happens so suddenly. Seungcheol surges forward like a dart, something flies out and hits the player square in the face. 
Seungcheol had spat his mouth guard into his face. 
You gasp out loud as you register what’s happening. The player removes his hand from his face, and for some reason, emerges grinning. 
Seungcheol swings first, his fist rising and coming down on his cheek with a sound you can hear. You feel nauseous. 
It’s pandemonium. You can see Jeonghan practically on top of Seungcheol, a number of other players attempting to get him off the man he continues to grab and shake up like a fugitive. The other player is throwing his own punches.
For one, horrifying moment, the force of the punch pushes Seungcheol’s face towards the stands enough to let you get an eyeful. All you see is red, beyond just his jersey. His mouth is full of blood, the front of his jersey dripped with it, his knuckles clustered with it. 
The hand clasped around your mouth is your own, eyes blown in horror. 
All around you, the world has their phones out like it was some show meant just for them, like this was exactly what they came here for. 
It’s sickening. Sickening. 
You brave another look, and they’ve been yanked off of one another. Seungcheol is being pushed down the tunnel and away from sight. Jeonghan has his hands clutched around Seungcheol like he’s nearly ready for another outbreak, his face grim. 
Your eyes keep away from Seungcheol’s face on purpose.  “Goodness, what is going on, I could barely get through the crowd,” Lorelai’s irritated voice infiltrates your ears, and you’re immediately brought back down to earth. 
Arms full of more snacks and drinks, it only takes her one look at your rattled self to know. 
“What happened?”
“I…they were…fighting. I don’t know, it just—Seungcheol was throwing punches and there was…blood, so much blood.”
She’s gotten a grip on your hand, her fingers warm under your cold, shivering ones. “Do you wanna leave?” she asks slowly. 
One look over her shoulder is enough to tell you it’d be impossible. Everyone was too excited to care to cater to two people going in the opposite direction of the action. So you tell her there was no point, and you attempt to calm your racing heart as she sits next to you. 
Snagging one of the packs from her mountain of snacks, you rip it open and let the sickly sweet smell infiltrate your nostrils. Popping one of the confections in your mouth, it’s hard to not make a face. It’s the sourest thing you could’ve picked, the tartness enough to distract you from the outside world. Eyes scrunched closed, you swallow the rush of saliva to ask Lorelai what the fuck she brought.
You chortle, and it has Lorelai looking over. “Whoops! That one’s mine.”
She snags the bag from your loosened grip, replacing it with a tamer bag of original flavoured potato chips. The chips are trying, but there’s not much you can do besides wait for the residues of the godawful candy to subside. 
The ordeal seems to have calmed you the slightest bit, finally able to turn back to the ice. The rink is back to being occupied, players from both ends pouring onto the ice. You note a minor shoulder shove at the gate, but look away like it’d stop the calamity from intensifying. 
The game ensues as normal, but you note the blatant absence of CHOI in the sea of red and white jerseys. You don’t mention it, and neither does Lorelai. 
You’re about to burst by the time the finals moments are upon the game, the overtime minutes beginning to tick as the crowd grows restless by the second. With the little you’ve managed to grasp, you’re sure that SVT is only one goal away from the overtake. It’s making you nervous, like you’re waiting for your own score to be announced after a free skate. 
The puck is a mere percentage easier to navigate after a couple hours of keeping after it; it skips between players you’re beginning to recognise from the back of their jersey. Kim, Boo, Wen, Kim, Lee. The opposing team intercepts for a moment, and you find yourself letting out an irritated shake of the shoulders. Back to Kim, Lee, Lee, and then, right into the net. 
The jittering crowd suddenly went so silent you could hear a pin drop. 
And then the world around you erupts. It’s impossible to classify the sound as cheers when racketeers off your entire being like an unearthly sound, the stands on their feet hollering and screaming and yelling at their players that are fighting to keep their new overtake in the final seconds before the game officially ends. 
And when it does, you’re sure you need to get your ears checked out. 
Looking over, you catch Lorelai’s eye, and you can’t help but laugh. A delightful laugh that releases itself in the midst of the chaos of red, scarlet and cherry. Somebody’s thrown a red blanket over you, another has begun to hand out congratulatory cherry lollipops (you pass, but Lorealai would be damned if she did), people are hugging each other so tight and you get the inkling they’ve only met each other today. 
The ice is one giant dogpile, red on red as they suffocate one another in celebration. 
Perhaps you didn’t realise how important the game actually was, or maybe every game is like this, loud, proud and exultant. You find yourself imagining how they feel. 
The lost feeling of bouquets and flowers whisked in your direction, stuffed animals and hundreds of other things that scream adoration as your performance comes to a close. It’s a physical manifestation of an adoring crowd, as though making it tangible makes it a little more real. 
The rush, you can feel it resonate off of the scarlet side of the benches, and it’s enough for you to realise that yes, this was an important match. For them anyway. 
The way out of the rink is reasonably packed, but you manage to squeeze through the doors and towards where Lorelai had parked with fewer than expected obstruction. “Thought you might wait to see Jeonghan before we leave,” you hum as you walk to the parking spot. 
“I was going to, but he’s probably dealing with what happened,” she utters slowly. A flash of red at the mention, gone as soon as it came. Lorelai adds with a little extra pep to her voice, “It’s okay! I’ll send him a text, we were planning on dinner tomorrow anyway.”
The side eye you send is met with a light shove. “This one seems serious. Dragging me here for his sake and now dinner with him?”
Lorelai was infamous for taking it excruciatingly slow, the time between the talking stage and the first date stretching for months. She claims it’s to make sure she's not roping herself into something she’d regret, which you’ll admit has seemed to work out in her favour. Her last relationship lasted years before Josh had to move away. 
Jeonghan seems to have her under some warped spell, because Lorelai was hurtling into this relationship like a too compressed cannon ball. There was nothing you knew about Jeonghan other than his friendship with Seungcheol, his position as junior league coach and his habit of loitering on the ice; which means there wasn’t much opinion to be had on the whole conquest. Regardless, you decide to caution her some other day, when she’s not glowing and over the moon like a robust teenager. 
Slipping into the passenger seat, you slump like never before, already dreaming about the bedrotting session you’re about to have; glorious enough for the books. 
“Do you wanna grab food and rot on the couch?” she asks. 
“You’re still hungry after all that?” you huff, your mouth still flavoured with artificial sweetness paired with the savoury of the chicken and fries. You pull out your phone for the first time in nearly three hours, the home screen alarming full of missed notifications. Text messages, mentions and phone calls. For whatever reason, you swipe right past and open your browser. 
“It’ll take about an hour till we’re settled, should be hungry enough by then,” she comments, a gentle growl coming from beneath you as the engine comes to life. 
Somewhere between the lines of the seatbelt sign pinging, and the radio blaring itself into the space, you’ve read a headline that’s enough to halt your world. 
“There’s this new Chinese place that opened nearby here. Or this Persian restaurant but it’s like 20 minutes in the other direction. Or do we just do soup—”
“Lorelai.”
She turns to look at you in the passenger seat, seatbelt alarm still dinging as you remain with your seatbelt off as she pulls out of the parking space, like the official soundtrack to your doom. She brakes, hard. Lorelai is always Lorry with you, her full name only ever when you’re feigning irritation. 
There’s nothing irritating about the situation, but everything is wrong with it. 
It’s like you were in the benches, taking punches while simultaneously throwing a few yourself. You’re out of breath still seated, your skin tingles like a million arachnids crawling under your skin under your layers. You’re in the eddy of a horrifying whirlpool, that’s pulling you down, down, down, down, down, down—
!HOT TOPIC!
FIGURE SKATER OR FIGURINE? NOTHING GRACEFUL ABOUT Y/N L/N’S FALL FROM THE PINNACLE OF THE SKATING WORLD. Read from the Source!
From a pocket princess, to a rising star. From a rising star to the top of the world. From the top of the world to… a bottomless hell? How did Y/N L/N end up here? 
It’s nothing new that L/N’s presence was notable during the flashy ISU Grand Prix held in Beijing last year, the podium notably shuffled as a result. The skater’s ankle injury was never awarded a career ending title, but with the way her comeback remains as foggy as it did since the initial announcement, one must begin to wonder if we’ll ever see L/N on the competitive ice again. 
Or perhaps she’s simply lost her spark? 
Trusted sources report that L/N’s sponsors are growing weary of her extended vacation, and are just about ready to pull the rug! In addition, sources also report her floundering lack of consistency in practice sessions on the ice, her condition beyond someone as onerous as even Isabella Carroll to manoeuvre into success. Talk about futile! 
Now, we’re all hoping that our glittering gold medalist is only a victim of mindless chatter, however, we must concede, neither we nor our sources are holding on to too much hope. 
Keep on the lookout for more updates from us on our fallen (?) star!
Tumblr media
[a/n]: hehehehehe remember to reblog and tell me your thoughts
677 notes · View notes
charmedimsure · 3 days ago
Note
uuuhhhhhm can i pretty pretty please with cherries on top request a Dae-ho x reader where the reader was also in the military? but its like that ep. where they revolutionized? if that makes sense? idk i think it be cool if reader eas good eith a gun
anyways HAVE A LOVELY DAY/ NIGHT love reading your stuff (i binge read it :p)
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
pairing: Kang Dae-ho x gn!reader
summary: As a former soldier, you know just what to do when all hell breaks loose.
word count: 3.7k
warnings: guns, death, blood, squid game stuff, panic attacks, ptsd
A/N: i've played so many shooting games i feel like i've been training to write this fic my entire life. i even named it after a shield from my favorite game (brownie points if you know which game). if you find any mistakes no you didn't <3 tried to make this gender neutral but if you find any slip ups lmk so i can fix it
**this can be read as romantic or platonic**
Tumblr media
You look at the woman standing between bunks with wide eyes. You weren't sure earlier when you saw her on the screen, but seeing her standing ten feet away from you, you're absolutely positive that you know who this is.
"Sergeant?"
Cho Hyun-ju turns and gasps when she sees you, a smile lighting up her face. She quickly embraces you, you happily hugging her back. You were always her favorite soldier (she never admitted it, being the sergeant of the Brigade, but you both knew she liked you best). You were one of the only people who supported her when she came out. You tried to fight against her discharge but, as a low-ranking soldier, you had no say in the matter.
"I knew it had to be you!" you say, pulling back with a smile. "When I saw someone go back into the playing field to help a guy with only ten seconds left, I just knew it was my sergeant!"
"It's good to see you," she says. "Though, I wish it was under better circumstances."
You nod solemnly. You had just watched at least a hundred people die while screaming and begging for their lives. As a former soldier, it was hard that you couldn't do anything to help the civilians. All you could do was stand there and listen to the screams and gunshots, and then the silence.
"How are you here? Are you not part of the Brigade anymore?" Hyun-ju asks.
You shake your head. "No, I actually left not long after you were discharged. It wasn't the same without you, and I just couldn't be civil with the others after how they treated you."
She nods, understanding. "Well, if I'm going to be here with anyone, I'm glad it's you. I trust you with my life, soldier."
You smile. "And I you, Sergeant."
<>
You and Hyun-ju had made it through the next two games together, along with some allies you made along the way. Together with Young-mi, Yong-sik, and Geum-ja, you had been the first team to succeed in the six-legged pentathlon.
You had also made it though Mingle with some new allies, though not all of your old allies made it. Young-mi's death was hard on your whole group, but Hyun-ju had been taking it the worst. While you had grown closer with Yong-sik and Geum-ja, she had formed a special bond with the young girl and had to watch her die right in front of her.
While you would like to take the time to mourn Young-mi, a lot has happened in the few hours since the third game ended. The vote on whether to go home or stay ended in a 50-50 tie, meaning you're going to have to redo the vote tomorrow. Then, a huge fight apparently broke out in the men's bathroom, leaving five players dead.
Both sides group together to count their numbers, and you find that there's now one more X than O. While the players around you celebrate, a feeling of dread shoots through you.
"Attention please. Lights out in 30 minutes. All players, please return to your beds and prepare for bedtime."
Shit.
Player 047 stands in front of the group. "Listen, you cannot change your minds. We have to win the second vote and get out of here tomorrow, alright?"
As the other players around you nod and move to their beds, you stay sitting, watching the O players. They're already looking at your group. Watching. Waiting. You look at Gi-hun, the previous winner, and know that he's thinking the same thing you are.
<>
"Those bastards are acting suspicious," Dae-ho says, returning to the small circle you formed on the ground. "It looks like they're up to something."
Jung-bae breathes out a laugh. "Whatever those idiots do, once we win the vote tomorrow, it'll all be over."
"You think we'll be okay?" Dae-ho asks, concerned. "They say things were really crazy in the bathroom earlier."
"We need to be ready," you say from your place between Dae-ho and Gyeong-seok. "They've been watching us since the moment they found out the prize money goes up if we kill each other."
The group around you tenses before Gi-hun speaks up as well. "Once the lights go out, people on the other side will attack us."
"Really?" Yong-sik asks from beside his mother.
Gi-hun nods. "Because if they kill us, they'll be able to win the vote and increase the prize."
"So what do we do?" Yong-sik asks.
"Let's attack them first," Young-il suggests. "They're probably thinking we'll just wait for the second vote. We can use it to our advantage. We'll attack them first once the lights go out."
"That's right," Player 047 says. "It'd be better to attack them first. We have more women and elderly on our side. If we get attacked we'll be at a disadvantage." You send him a glare that makes him freeze for a moment before continuing. "Attacking them first would give us a better chance of winning."
"I agree," Player 145 adds.
"We can't do that," Gi-hun says.
"But we have to get out of here," Young-il argues. "You said it yourself. Staying calm won't get us anywhere now."
"That doesn't mean we should kill each other," Gi-hun says. "That's exactly what they want us to do."
Jung-bae leans forward. "'They'?"
Gi-hun looks at him. "The ones who created this game." He turns to face the rest of the circle. "The ones who watch us play. If we're going to fight someone, it should be them."
It's silent before Dae-ho speaks up. "Where are they?"
Gi-hun looks to the ceiling. "Up there."
You all follow his gaze before looking around at each other.
"On the upper levels," Gi-hun says, "are the rooms they control the games from. The man in the black mask is their leader. Once we capture him, we'll be able to win."
"How are you going to fight them?" Young-il asks. "They have guns."
"We'll fight them with guns, too," Gi-hun says.
"But we don't have any," Jung-bae says.
Gi-hun turns to him. "We'll take their guns."
You and Hyun-ju look at each other. This is what you were trained for.
"From those masked men?" Gyeong-seok asks nervously.
Gi-hun nods.
"That's too dangerous," Young-il says. "Even if we manage to take a few guns, we'll still be outnumbered."
"What then?" Gi-hun argues. "Are you going to kill each other all night and hope you survive? Is that what you want, Young-il?"
Hyun-ju breaks the silence. "Do we... stand a chance?"
"We do if we catch them off guard," Gi-hun says. "Out of everyone, they're the ones who would least expect us to attack first. This is our last chance to end these games once and for all."
"How are you going to take their guns?" Young-il asks.
"Once the fight begins tonight, we'll have our chance."
<>
"Lights out in ten seconds."
"Ten,
nine,
eight,
seven,
six,
five,
four,
three,
two,
one."
The lights dim, then turn off completely, leaving only the red and blue lights from the floor.
You roll out of bed, getting under the frame. You feel someone else trying to get under your bed, and you move a bit to make room for Dae-ho. Just as you get in position, you see bodies creeping towards your side of the room, illuminated by the bright blue O on the floor.
There's a scream, and all hell breaks loose.
The lights strobe as you hear the sounds of screaming and bottles being smashed coming from all around you. Somewhere to your right, a bunk is toppled over, sending someone to the ground. Another player runs up to them, stabbing their fork into their neck.
You feel the ex-Marine next to you tense up and put a hand over his, trying to bring him some comfort, or at the very least trying to keep him from blowing your cover.
You hear the buzzer of the door and the lights come on. One of the soldiers fires into the air to stop the fighting as about twenty masked guards come into the room, all armed.
You quickly army crawl out from under the bed, Dae-ho following you as you lay down on the ground.
You hear footsteps getting closer to you, and your ear is moved as a device scans behind it.
You open your eyes, grabbing the soldier so they can't move. "Dae-ho! Now!"
The ex-Marine smashes a bottle over the head of the guard, knocking him unconscious. You take the opportunity to grab the submachine gun off of the soldier, shooting another soldier coming toward you and Dae-ho. You're so focused on the fight that you fail to notice the quivering boy holding his hands over his ears against the bunks.
Grabbing another gun, you quickly scale one of the bunks to get a better vantage of the fight.
"Sergeant!" You yell, gaining the attention of Hyun-ju. She looks to you and you toss the SMG to her. She drops her pistol and catches the weapon, turning just in time to shoot one of the pink guards coming for her.
You use your position to fire at the guards hiding behind bunks. You pull the trigger until you hear a click, cursing as the mag runs empty. You jump down from the bunk, using the butt of the gun to knock a guard out cold. You quickly take his ammo and reload your own gun, firing at a guard trying to shoot Gi-hun.
"Retreat. Retreat."
The voice over the intercom announces and the pink soldiers make their way towards the door. You're able to shoot two more, but most of the soldiers who are still alive are able to make it out of the room. The main guard with the square on his mask is too busy firing back to realize that the door has closed behind him, sealing him in the room with you just as he runs out of ammo.
"Stop! Hold fire!" Gi-hun yells.
Jung-bae and another player run over to the square guard, making sure he won't fight.
"You goddamn bastards!" you hear someone yell on the other side of the room and turn to see Player 047 aiming his gun at a bunch of O players.
"No!" Gi-hun yells, stopping the man before he can shoot. "This is not what we took these guns for. If we do this, we'll be no different from those masked men."
Player 047 lowers his gun, hanging his head and he softly cries.
Gi-hun steps to the center of the room. "Everyone! Don't be scared. Gather round, please! We're not trying to hurt you!"
You walk to stand by Hyun-ju and Gyeong-seok.
"Get the guns and ammo from the dead," she tells the both of you.
You nod, doing as your sergeant says while she takes out the cameras in the room.
<>
Placing one of the last guns on the mattress in the center of the room, you move to stand in line between Jung-bae and Dae-ho, handing the extra SMG in your hand to Dae-ho.
Gi-hun steps forward. "Everyone. We will now head up to the masked men's headquarters. We'll capture the ones who captured us, put an end to this game, and make them pay. Anyone who knows how to use a gun and wishes to join us, please step forward."
You look at the crowd in front of you, but everyone stays where they are.
"Hey," you hear a voice next to you say and turn your head to see Jung-bae stepping forward. "I know you're scared. I'm scared too. But this may be our last chance to make it out of this place alive. Fight with us so we can go home together. All together."
One of the players in the back of the crowd steps forward. "I'll fight with you."
Gi-hun waves at him to come and take a gun. Two other players come forward as well.
You watch as Yong-sik makes a move to step forward, but he catches your gaze as you shake your head at him. It's very brave of him to think about volunteering, but he hasn't even served his mandatory military service yet, and it would kill his mother if he didn't come back. You breathe a sigh of relief when Yong-sik stays where he is.
When it's clear that no one else is stepping forward, Gi-hun turns to you all. "Please check your guns and ammo."
"Let's take one radio each," Jung-bae says. "We'll use channel 7, the lucky number."
You put the strap of your gun around you, checking the mag and putting it back in place when you're satisfied with the amount of ammo that is left. You look to your right to see Dae-ho fiddling with his own gun. Just as you're about to help him, Hyun-ju steps forward.
"Attention," she says, holding up her gun. "This is the MP5, a submachine gun." She continues on the demonstrate how to load the weapon and set it to the mode you should be using. When she's done, she looks at you all. "Are we clear?"
"Yes," you answer, falling right back into the rhythm with your sergeant.
Hyun-ju nods to you, silently telling you to stay by her when you get out there.
"How do you two know each other?" Dae-ho questions, his voice a bit shaky.
You smirk, cocking the MP5. "I was in the 13th Special Missions Brigade. Hyun-ju was my sergeant."
Dae-ho stares at you, completely stunned. "You were in the Decapitation Unit?!"
You chuckle at his disbelief, nodding.
The man can't believe it. He's been bragging about being an ex-Marine while there's been two ex-Special Forces soldiers right next to him the whole time.
Gi-hun points a pistol at the square-masked guard. "Take it off."
The guard slowly removes his mask, revealing a boy no older than 25.
"Good God," Jung-bae says. "Do your parents know what you're doing here?"
The guard just stares at him.
Gi-hun cocks the pistol. "Take us to your captain."
<>
"All players, it is bedtime now. Please return to your quarters immediately. Otherwise, you will be eliminated from the game. Let me repeat..."
Gi-hun fires at the speaker, effectively shutting up the voice. Three guards are stood over you. "Get down!"
You duck behind the wall of the stairs. Feeling a hand on your shoulder, you turn to look at Hyun-ju behind you.
"Cover me!"
You nod, shooting at the guards while she sprints to the top of the stairs. From her new vantage point, she is able to take out one of the guards, causing their body to fall over the ledge and down to the floor.
When you duck down to reload, you see Dae-ho next to you. The ex-Marine is sitting in a ball, covering his ears and flinching every time a shot rings out. You look at him with concern, but your attention is stolen by Gi-hun telling everyone to hold their fire. Dae-ho gets a grip on his weapon and you all move, following Gi-hun and the un-masked guard.
As you move down an alleyway, Gi-hun stops the guard. "How much farther? Is this the right way?"
The boy points toward the end of the hall. "The entrance to the management area is around that corner. The control room is right above it."
Gi-hun pushes him. "Move it, then!"
"Wait," the guard says, reaching toward his pocket.
"What are you doing?" Gi-hun stops him.
"I need my mask to pass security," the guard explains. Gi-hun nods and the guard takes the mask out. He looks up, but before he can say anything else, a bullet goes right through his head.
You all take cover as more shots are fired at you. Something slashes onto your face, and you turn to see Player 072's lifeless body falling to the ground.
You drop the floor and crawl over to Hyun-ju, both of you taking positions in a green square area of the stairs. You nod to each other and duck out of cover, firing at the guards. You can hear the men speaking to each other at the other end of the line, but you focus on taking out as many guards as possible.
You and Hyun-ju alternate firing and taking cover, both of you shooting with deadly precision, doing your best to not waste any of the already low supply of ammo you have.
A player next to you screams and is shot. You turn, shooting at the guard approaching from your rear, taking out a few that are behind that one as well.
"Everyone! Check your magazines!" Hyun-ju calls out.
You take the mag out of the gun, seeing that you have about half of a clip left. Everyone announces that they're around the same.
"Young-il, Dae-ho, can you hear me?" The voice of Jung-bae erupts from your radio.
"Go ahead!" Young-il says.
"I think we're right below the control room." Shots can be heard in the background. "But we need backup and more ammo."
"We're running out of ammo, too!"
"There should be spare magazines in the soldiers' pockets in our quarters. Go get them!" Gi-hun yells through the radio.
"Did you hear that?" Young-il turns to the group. "They need backup! Three of us will go, and the rest will stay! Join us once you get the magazines! Who wants to go with me?"
Players 047 and ... volunteer and they run off towards the end of the hall.
"I'll go get the magazines!" Hyun-ju yells. "I'll come back as soon as I can, so just hold on until then!"
"Hyun-ju!" A voice yells. You turn to see Dae-ho raising his hand. "I'll go!" He hurries over to where you and Hyun-ju are taking cover. "I- I'm out of ammo."
"Do you know the way?" Gyeong-seok asks. Dae-ho nods.
"We destroyed the cameras on the way, follow them," Hyun-ju says.
"I'll go with him," you say. "I still have some ammo, so I'll cover him."
Hyun-ju nods. "I'll cover you. Go!"
You and Dae-ho take off down the stairs. He stops a few times, but you pull him along, keeping your eyes up to watch for the broken cameras. As you're running down the stairs, Dae-ho stops, and you turn to see him staring at a dead guard hanging over the ledge of a window.
"Dae-ho!" Jung-bae yells. "Can you hear me? Where are those magazines?"
You lift your own radio to your mouth. "We're getting them now."
"Alright! We're counting on you!"
You put your radio back in your pocket, grabbing Dae-ho's hand and pulling him along behind you.
You burst into the quarters, letting go of Dae-ho's hand as you sprint to a guard, taking the spare mags out of their pockets. You hear someone say your name and look up to see Yong-sik.
"What happened? Why are you back by yourselves?"
"We're low on ammo," you say, not looking up from the guard you're looting. "We need to get the magazines from their pockets. Help us!"
You look up to the boy to see him nod and run over to a nearby guard. Geum-ja and Jun-hee come over to the help, as well.
Once you've looted all the ammo from the guards, you place them into a jacket you found on one of the dead players. You tie it up and give it to Dae-ho, thanking the others as you lead him out of the room.
Gunshots can be heard as soon as you step outside. You keep moving but when you check behind you, you see that Dae-ho has stopped where he is.
"Dae-ho, we need to go," you urge.
He looks at you silently, but the fear in his eyes sends the message. You've seen soldiers like this before you joined the Special Forces.
Dae-ho stands in his spot, paralyzed other than the shake of his body in fear.
You hear your name and Dae-ho's through the radio. "Where are you? Can you hear me?"
You watch as Dae-ho lifts his radio, staring at it as Hyun-ju's voice comes through.
"Did you find the magazines? Are you on your way?"
Dae-ho looks at you. "I'm sorry," he whispers, dropping the radio on the ground and running back into the quarters with the magazines.
"Shit," you say under your breath. You follow Dae-ho into the room, looking around to find where he went. Yong-sik points toward a bunk and you find Dae-ho curled up there, rocking back and forth. Running over to him, you take the jacket with the mags, ready to run out of there. You take a look at Dae-ho, the pure fear coursing through him as he whispers apologies over and over.
You sigh, remembering one of the lessons Hyun-ju taught you as your sergeant.
Never leave a man behind.
Taking out your radio, you bring it to your lips and press the button. "Charlie Foxtrot."
You put your radio down, knowing that Hyun-ju will know what to do. You had picked up the phrase from your U.S. counterparts, saying it to each other when something goes wrong.
Moving to sit on the bed, you take Dae-ho's hands into yours. "Dae-ho, I need you to breathe with me, alright."
He slowly looks at your face before launching himself into your arms, sobbing into your shoulder. You rub his back comfortingly, knowing you can't leave him alone like this.
After a few minutes, Hyun-ju runs into the room shouting you and Dae-ho's names. She comes running over to you, stopping when she sees Dae-ho in your arms.
"What happened?"
Dae-ho jumps a bit at the new voice, burying his face farther into your jacket.
You look up a Hyun-ju, shaking your head at her. She nods, understanding. You point at the magazines and she scoops them into her arms, ready to take them to the others when the buzzer for the door goes off and more pink guards enter the room, firing in the air and making everyone scream.
Hyun-ju reloads her SMG, ready to take on the entire group on guards by herself. You watch as Geum-ja puts a hand on her shoulder, stopping her.
"You can't die like this."
You sigh in relief as Hyun-ju puts the gun down. From your hidden area, you try to get the guns and mags away from you, making it seem as though the three of you have been here the whole time.
As the guards come further into the room, you use your body to shield Dae-ho from them as he whimpers. You make eye contact with Hyun-ju. Whatever happens next, you'll face it as a team.
~
Dae-ho tags: @whatthefuckeryfuckityfuck @ally1uvsu @thebiggestigurosimp @come-as-you-are-111 @hiphip-horray @k1michii @tpwkcaryslizb @louissst28 @sshwaa @jennwonwoo @sunnysurvives @lalalaa2210 @tayshs @sunshinethatlooksalive @plntmxrss @lxnnrobin @mariaxman @alexx-iia @batty-barty-crouchjr @kxsm3t @takuma-talkz @peacemakersbeloved @skywalker0809 @soobinbunnie5
414 notes · View notes
rafeysdeer · 1 day ago
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
dizzy (aka clumsy reader x protective jason)
civil!reader x jason todd
prompt: jason and his really clumsy girlfriend who is so used to her bruises from simply bumping around, that she forgets that it's not exactly the usual for other people to walk around with bruises. jason who isn't exactly happy to see his girlfriend hurt and makes it his new mission to take care of her.
a/n: that one i think it looks really cute, i'm also a really clumsy person, so it was pretty easy to come out with this one, him taking care of her was just so cute, i can sleep better knowing that they got eachother, anyways, english is not my first language, hope you guys enjoy it 💗
Tumblr media
Jason was used to bruises and injuries, part of the job he chose, but he didn't expect that on a cold thursday night, he would find his girlfriend with a bandaged wrist and bruises all over her body, some that even looked old. He expected even less that she would give him a bright smile and run to hug him as if everything was normal, what he didn't know was that bruises and a bandaged wrist were just everyday nonsense for the clumsy girl.
"Honey, what happened to your wrist? Did someone hurt you?" he asks, carefully picking up her injured wrist to take a look, a worried expression on his face, his brow furrowed as he studies it. "Oh, it's nothing, I just got distracted and fell on it, it's okay."
And Jason looked at her face with a huge question mark on his face. "Did you fall on your own arm?" he said looking more and more confused. "Yeah? It was no big deal, really, I've had worse. Come in, i made hot chocolate" she said with the brightest smile on her face, as if she didn't have a fractured wrist.
He followed her into the apartment, the confusion never leaving his face as he slowly closed the door and followed her into the kitchen. Before he could even reach the cozy kitchen, he heard a soft groan of pain, followed by a muttered curse.
He rushes into the kitchen, afraid that she was hurt, even more hurt. And he was right, when he came inside, he found two colorful mugs of boiling chocolate with small marshmallows on the counter, some of the very same hot chocolate spilled around, and his girlfriend, with the hand that was not bandaged, under the cold running water of the sink, with a light burn on the torso of her hand.
"Love? What happened?" he asks, getting closer to her so he can see the injury more clearly. "Nothing serious, Jay, just a lil' burn, i'll be fine, just give me a minute to clean it up." she says, smiling and looking really calm for someone who just burned her own hand.
And as she moves to grab the rag to clean everything up, she bumps into the counter, holding onto it to steady herself, and it hits him, something finally clicks. All the times he watched her get hurt, bump into something or someone, get burned, fall awkwardly, it's too many to count.
She made a joke or two about being a distracted person and clumsy, but he didn't realize how much until now.
He smiled slightly as he watched his girlfriend try to balance the two mugs, knowing how this would end terribly, taking the mugs from her hand. "Honey, go sit on the couch, I'll take these." He noticed her frown, already starting to protest. "You don't have to do this, Jay, I want to help." But he was already interrupting her. "Sweetheart, please, you're going to help me by going sit on the couch." She huffed slightly but went anyway, sitting down and waiting for him to come right behind with the mugs, he put the mugs on the coffee table and went towards the bathroom to get the burn ointment.
And from that point, it just became a routine, her clumsily hurting herself, him taking care of her right after, and at some point it was like he had a sixth sense of when she was going to get hurt, being a vigilante also helped a lot with his reflexes.
So, they were walking down the street and she tripped? His arm was around her before her body could even dream of falling. They were cooking and she was cutting something? The knife was out of her hand before she could cut herself, and he told her to do something safer, like opening the dough.
And just like that, it became something of his, caring for her and looking out for her, knowing how to take care of her when she got hurt, and knowing how to stop her from getting hurt, and for that, she was eternally grateful.
223 notes · View notes
satsugacafe · 3 days ago
Text
𝐓𝐲𝐩𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐬 | (𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 4)
Tumblr media
➳❥ 𝐑𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭: If it's not a bother for you, can you please write types of simp they are for rojuro, kenpachi, kensei, sajin and iba? Thank you ❤️❤️❤️
➳❥ 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬: Zaraki Kenpachi, Unohana Retsu, Ichimaru Gin, Muguruma Kensei, Ulquiorra Cifer
➳❥ 𝐀/𝐍: Anon, I’m so sorry that I didn’t write for most of the characters you requested. Majorly because I don’t write for them. However, I didn’t want to turn down your request and decided to answer for Zenpachi and Kensei while adding in extras. I tried my hand with Kensei for the first time even though I’m uninterested in writing for him.
𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 | 𝐍𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧
Tumblr media
Zaraki Kenpachi — Aggressively Affectionate Simp
˚₊‧꒰ა Firstly, he’s fiercely protective of you, even though he knows you have strength and skills and all that, he still keeps an eye on you during battles, ensuring no harm comes your way. And god help those who do harm you.
˚₊‧꒰ა We all know he has his roughness, but just for you, he’ll grow a little softer. Ruffling your hair, bumping your shoulders, pulling you onto his lap or letting you piggyback ride across Seireitei or wherever he goes (because he gets lost). Aware of when you’re stressed or tired and forces—scolds—you to take it ease. “You’ve been pushing yourself too hard. Take a rest, I’ll handle things here.”
˚₊‧꒰ა You’re his favourite sparring partner from now on. Whether you have the strength to go against him, he’s sparring with you. Consider it his way of indirectly training you for tough opponents because once you can handle him, you’re good to go.
˚₊‧꒰ა His hands roam and wander and they do not apologise. Walking through the barracks and suddenly feeling a slap to your ass, standing beside him or bending over and randomly feeling his hands on your hips, out of nowhere, a giant, towering six feet figure drapes over you, or a bone-crushing hug that turns you into jelly. Yup! Expect it.
˚₊‧꒰ა Your number one hype man, or maybe Yachiru fights him for that position. But he’s your hype man and makes sure that his division also hypes you up anytime you’re fighting or celebrating a victory or accomplishment.
˚₊‧꒰ა Constantly makes bets with you to see who can kill more Hollows or beat up (in his case, kill) bad guys. The winner…gets something only he could think of giving. I’ll let you all decide.
˚₊‧꒰ა “Say that again, and you’ll regret it. Do you wanna die?” Yes, he threatens everyone and anyone because they dare ill-speak about you?! Never around or not around him. Would tell you to spar with him so you can feel better. Hit him as many times as you want since he’ll tank every hit.
˚₊‧꒰ა He’s fiercely loyal, never letting anyone mutter a single word about you. Which brings about his bluntness when it comes to letting you know how he feels. “I don’t like when you’re upset. Tell me who did this?”
˚₊‧꒰ა Doesn’t like when people interrupt your time with him. “Shoo. Can’t you see we’re busy?” Which leads to his possessiveness, always making sure others know that you’re his. “They’re with me, got a problem with that?!”
Tumblr media
Unohana — Gentle-Natured Simp
˚₊‧꒰ა “Have you eaten today? You need to keep your strength up.” Yeah, for all of you who don’t like to eat (proper food), you’re gonna have her on your case when she learns you haven’t been taking care of yourself properly. (don’t think anyone wouldn’t mind though)
˚₊‧꒰ა Super supportive and always there to lend an ear anytime you need something to just listen to or give advice. Words of encouragement will be returned whether you ask for them or not, she will always boost your confidence. “You have so much potential. Never doubt yourself.”
˚₊‧꒰ა Tea dates, which probably start off with cooking dates. I can see her inviting you over to her division to spend time making your favourite meals together before moving to her quarters for a more private setting where you can enjoy your meal and some tea.
˚₊‧꒰ა I really don’t believe anyone is that foolish enough to harm you when she’s protecting you. Like everyone knows her reputation back then, and it hasn’t vanished, so you are well protected. Even if she doesn’t need to revert to that old version of her, her legendary skills in Kido are enough to keep you safe.
˚₊‧꒰ა Randomly pops up out of nowhere when you’re minding your business. All you would suddenly hear is her voice behind you, calling your name sweetly, or suddenly feel her arms sliding around your waist. It gives you quite a scare no matter how many times she reminds you that it’s all in good spirit.
˚₊‧꒰ა She had a habit of touching you as a gesture of reassurance, more for her sake than yours. A silent reminder that you’re real, you’re safe and alive, you’re still here with her. She sees you as her haven, her peace of mind and source of all things good. A light among all her transgressions in her past. Something good in her life.
˚₊‧꒰ა On that note of her being touchy, she does enjoy it when you cuddle her. Even if it’s just leaning into her side and wrapping your arms around her or sleeping beside her—she loves it. A small kiss to your forehead or head while she holds you closely and whispers, “You’re my everything,” or “You bring me much joy.”
˚₊‧꒰ა She loves to call you affectionate nicknames and terms of endearment, which makes your heart race when you look at you so sweetly and softly. “My dear,” “My heart,” “My love,” “My stars.” She’s a romantic one as well, in her own way of course. Surprising you with unexpected acts of kindness, a massage, a hot bath, or a spa day.
Tumblr media
Ichimaru Gin — Devoted Simp (obviously)
˚₊‧꒰ა He loves to keep you on your toes, making you flustered or leaving you blushing, when often teasing you in a light-hearted manner. Sometimes, he likes to appear out of nowhere, always keeping an eye on you. “Miss me? I was just around the corner. You look so cute when flustered, you know that?”
˚₊‧꒰ა Fiercely protective and will never let anyone harm you while he’s around or not around. “Touch them, and you’ll regret it.” During any situation that becomes tense, and he notices your discomfort, he’ll use his charming words to defuse the tension. “No need to worry, everything’s under control.”
˚₊‧꒰ა Has a soft spot for seeing you happy and goes out of his way to make you smile. Using the moment to call you affectionate nicknames, often in a teasing yet endearing tone. “Hey, sunshine, come here for a second,” or “Looking lovely to today, cutie.”
˚₊‧꒰ა You don’t have to worry about Gin being honest about his feelings or expressing his thoughts, even if they’re difficult to express. “I care about you more than you know. You’re my everything.”
˚₊‧꒰ა Loves when it’s just you and him together amidst the moments of chaos where he can let his hair down and be at ease. He is protective of those cherished times between you two. Doesn’t appreciate when someone encroaches or attempts to drag you off. “I love moments like this. When it’s just us. You and I.”
˚₊‧꒰ა He’s very attentive to your needs and wants while listening to your troubles or ambitions. He’ll remember that you only drink beverages of a certain colour or sit on a certain side of the room—as silly or odd as your preferences are, he respects them. As for your goals, he’s there to support you. “I believe in you, and I’m here to support you at all times.”
˚₊‧꒰ა His form of physical affection is as subtle and gentle as the wind. A gentle brush of his hand against your cheek, a kiss to the back of your hand, a gentle hug before he pulls you onto the futon to cuddle and peppers your face in soft kisses, landing the last one on your forehead.
Tumblr media
Muguruma Kensei — Tough and Dedicated Simp
˚₊‧꒰ა He naturally has a tough exterior, often giving you a hard time, but it would be clear that he cares deeply about you. His teasing would be a way of showing affection to break the ice in case you felt like he was being a bit too tough on you.
˚₊‧꒰ა Despite his gruff exterior, he’s not immune to your teasing. If you call him out on being soft for you, he’ll scowl, but the faint pink on his ears gives him away. “Tch. Soft? You’re seeing things.”
˚₊‧꒰ა He tries not to let his affection affect his leadership, but it’s clear he values your opinion above others. If someone questions it, his response is simple: “Their insight’s solid. Got a problem with that?” But if that person doesn’t know to back off, he is fiercely protective, even if there’s no real danger. If someone so much as raises their voice at you, he’s immediately in their face.
˚₊‧꒰ა He’s awkward with words when expressing how he feels, so he opts to show his care through actions—like fixing something for you or standing watch during late-night shifts. “What? You needed help, and I had time. No big deal.”
˚₊‧꒰ა Though he tries to act cool, his flustered moments give him away. If you catch him staring, he’ll clear his throat and mutter something like, “You’ve got something on your face—never mind.”
˚₊‧꒰ა Kensei always finds himself drawn to your presence, his usually stern expression softening whenever you're around. “Oi, don’t think I didn’t notice you sneaking into my thoughts again.” On rare, quiet nights, he lets himself be honest. “You make all this crap easier to deal with, y’know? Don’t go running off, yeah?”
˚₊‧꒰ა He’s surprisingly attentive, remembering small details about you that most wouldn’t. If you casually mention liking a certain snack, it’ll mysteriously appear in the barracks the next day. “Don’t overthink it, yeah? It’s not a big deal.”
Tumblr media
Ulquiorra Cifer — Stoic Simp
˚₊‧꒰ა “Why do you insist on holding my hand?” Struggles to understand physical affection and your need for it. To him, it’s confusing and foreign, though, he slowly eases into the act bit by bit.
˚₊‧꒰ა Incredibly observant and always noticing the smallest details about you and remembering them. “You prefer you tea without sugar, correct?” or “You enjoy a warm blanket during the rain.” Even when your interests might be odd to him, once he understands that it brings you comfort, he strives to achieve it.
˚₊‧꒰ა His form of affection of performed through acts of service. Perhaps something of yours finished or broke. He will repair it or retrieve a new and better version for you, in the same colour with greater efficiency, so it doesn’t crash out on you. “Your vase was broken, so I took the liberty of repairing it.”
˚₊‧꒰ა Quiet moments with you are heavily appreciated—often sitting together in comfortable silence or engaging in deep, meaningful conversations. “Your presence is…calming. I enjoy your company.”
˚₊‧꒰ა He’s so straightforward with his feelings, never beating around the bush to leave you second-guessing what he was attempting to say. “I care about you. That is the truth and should anyone harm or take you away from me, they will suffer.” Protective and honesty as well.
˚₊‧꒰ა Enjoy teaching you about the Hollow world and his experiences, finding satisfaction in sharing his knowledge with you. Sometimes he would talk about his time before becoming an Arrancar and the room might grow silent as you feel sorry for his loneliness or the fights he got involved in back then.
˚₊‧꒰ა Has a habit of silently watching over you. At first, it came off as stalkerish since he was always lurking behind you, five paces silently. It was unnerving, but you eventually grew accustomed to his silence as he followed you around for your safety since other Espada might let their superiority go to their head and attempt to harm you.
Tumblr media
©satsugacafé 2025: no permission to repost, plagiarise, copy or translate my work onto any other platform or this one.
101 notes · View notes
genderqueerdykes · 1 day ago
Note
hii this might not be the usual asks you get, and if you're uncomfortable w it then feel free to ignore but !! I was wondering if you had tips for gaining weight ?? there isn't many resources out there and, you seem like a really cool person and an okay place to safely ask. I'm really bodily skinny, like really, and I never seem to gain much weight. I might not eat the most frequently, but they're always large and filling meals but the most I ever get is a slightly fuller stomach that goes away after a bit. but I eat till I'm no longer hungry yk, I don't want to force myself to eat more. and although I have " tummy fat " like around uterus area I've come to realize that's like, just the way my body is shaped and it's not anything I can lose through workouts and shit. whereas the rest of me is thin and lanky. And I'm not necessarily wanting to change my weight exclusively for looks, though I do think it'd bring me more confidence, it's also for my health.
I know gaining weight isn't inherently unhealthy, and in my case it's going to help in more ways than one, but I also don't want to go about this wrong I suppose ?? I also have possible PoTs, and I don't know if weight gain would have any negative side effects ?? I'd like to also mention ( mentioning a lot lmao ) that both my mother and father are fat, and though my dad doesn't really care he's never lost weight, and my mum who does care ( she does all sorts. fasting, workouts, diets, etc .. ) also has a very hard time losing weight. whereas I have a hard time gaining it, so that's. yeah. :']
weight related numbers, saying js for anyone uncomfortable ↓↓ ( these are all guesstimates, my memory doesn't do well on number related things qwq )
I'm around 5'9 / 5'10 and I've been about 45kg to maybe 50 at most for years now, my mother is around 90 - 100kg+ and my dad is around the same if not a little less. I'm taller than both of them yet half their weight or less, ( my brother who is around 6'0 is also really skinny like me, but he's made up for that in muscle and eats fine he js naturally looks skinnier and isn't unhealthy for his whatever ratio, in the sense it doesn't bother him or his health !! yeah !! I don't have any better words lol. ) js mentioning this because I know family and genetics can like, change weights and how they work person to person and all .. !?
Anyways this has turned out way long but !! yeah, any advice at all would be great .. thanks in advance :D /nf
this is not something i have a lot of personal advice on BUT i would be happy to open this up to other people to try to get you more information!
i am always fully in support of people having autonomy over their weight and if someone wants to gain weight, then that's their right. doesn't matter what reason they're doing it for, not my business. if someone wants to be bigger, good, they're allowed to be. part of fat liberation is accepting and encouraging people who want to gain weight regardless of reason. i've always been fat so i have zero tips on gaining as i'm just always around 320 lbs, but folks who have experience with this please feel free to lend a hand!
83 notes · View notes
shootingstarpilot · 3 days ago
Note
i keep imagining maces pov of when qui-gon gets decked and its so funny to me. this poor man just wants to know where his kid his friends padawan is but unfortunately he only has his his stupid friend whos panicking rn, a troll, and a very concussed soldier (who recognizes him??) who is having the most eventful and stressful days of his life to get any information from. and also theres a dead sith there. rip mace windu shout-out to him for not strangling qui-gon immediately after cody and co leave
...okay, yeah, i'm running with this.
because- mace has valiantly put off punching qui-gon. he has resisted every temptation. violence is so rarely a useful tool. he has not punched qui-gon. he will not punch qui-gon.
he is a jedi.
even when qui-gon returns to the temple self-righteous and indignant and without the child under his care-
he is a jedi.
even when they get the call, and he looks at qui-gon, who looks back at him, hopeful and eager and certain that he will be the one to go, to return, to repent, and mace thinks you do not deserve this and sends him anyway-
he is a jedi.
even when the shuttle returns, dropping out of orbit and straight through mace's stomach when he makes it to the dock just in time to see the healers vanish around the corner, qui-gon standing empty-handed on the landing, staring after them, blood on his tunics and under his fingernails-
he is a jedi.
even when vokara looks them both in the eyes and says infection and trauma and intubate, even when qui-gon asks can i see him? and there's no hint of a we, even during those three awful days of fever where mace finds himself hovering outside the halls with ever more minor errands, feeling obi-wan fade and flicker in the force and occasionally hearing the screams of please and no-! and names he does not know-
even then.
he is a jedi.
three days after obi-wan is pulled from the bacta tank:
another errand. theoretically. for the life of him mace cannot remember what he came here to deliver. but then the door to obi-wan's room opens, and vokara steps out, still speaking, her voice warm, some recounting of one of qui-gon's many misadventures that landed him in her care, and then she turns and sees him and before the door shuts behind her-
"master mace?"
the voice is thin and thready and mace closes his eyes.
"all right?" he whispers to vokara.
she raises an eyebrow. "he's asking for you."
(mace will find out later that this is the first time since his return that obi-wan has dared to asked for anything.)
he steps up to the threshold.
"obi-wan," he says. "may i come in?"
at the nod, mace steps forward and lets the door slide shut behind him. he settles into the chair left faithfully at the side of the bed.
obi-wan looks- unwell.
this is not, perhaps, the most novel observation. but it is one thing to know where and how he'd spent his last year. it is another matter entirely to see the proof of it, even beyond the cavernous wound he'd come home with-
in his size and stature, much smaller than that of a healthy child of his age. in the thinness of his face, the look of hunted hunger. in the scarring on the knuckles of his hands, clenching spasmodically in the layered blankets.
in the way he watches mace.
"obi-wan," mace repeats, and with the sound of his name comes an easing of the weight on his shoulders, each syllable fading into a sigh of relief, and he hadn't known what to say even as he'd stepped into the room- there is so much that needs saying, so many words he cannot find-
he smiles, instead, and rests his hands on his knees. "i have missed you very much."
when obi-wan reaches for him, mace is ready.
he ends up settled on the edge of the bed, one hand around obi-wan's shoulder as the boy curls into his side. he tugs gently at the tangled knot of pain still clouding obi-wan's thoughts, feeding the threads into the force, and feels him relax, bit by bit.
he's not asleep. his grip on mace's robe is too tight. his breathing too fast.
'how are you feeling?" mace asks quietly.
"okay."
the response is immediate, easy, and entirely untruthful.
"do you- need to go?"
mace catches qui-gon's approach. feels him pause.
feels him retreat.
"no," he says. "not at all."
he is a jedi.
there is so much to grieve, in the next few weeks. so much. obi-wan swings between different types of silence- sullen, frightened, exhausted, dissociating. tattered and bleeding in the force. he kicks and punches and bites and sometimes does not leave his room for days on end. he scratches at his skin until he bleeds, picks at his meals with a dull disengagement, sleeps sporadically, if at all-
it is very difficult, sometimes, to not be angry at qui-gon.
but the first time he visits their apartment, obi-wan recoils hard and fast at the first leak of such sentiments from behind his shielding, and mace decides that they have had their full of violence.
he is a jedi.
and besides-
qui-gon talks to him. talks to others, too, who talk between themselves, for no one is willing to let them handle this alone. mace sits and listens and sees the bruises bloom on qui-gon's arms and legs from small hands beating back imagined enemies, and knows anger is not what's needed here.
it persists, yes, but it does not rule.
he is a jedi.
and then-
and then.
(the force is full of screaming.)
the temple lets them through and the gardens are burning and there is a corpse on the floor and obi-wan is-
gone, qui-gon says.
i don't know where. he's gone.
and for a moment mace can hardly breathe under the weight of the fear and the fury and the you have a habit of losing him, don't you?, and he catches the thought and breathes it out, recognizing its roots, its unfairness, drawing his focus to the sith, listening with one ear to qui-gon's recounting even as he presses a hand to the rift, searching for some leeway and finding none, feeling the pressure build behind his eyes, swiping impatiently at the blood drying under his nose-
then something hums.
the soldiers are immensely professional. clear-cut and firm and shielded in the force, understandably reticent with information. but the most disconcerting thing by far...
they look to him.
all of them.
there's a familiarity there.
he's safe with us, the commander says, and looks at him.
safe-with-us, echos the force. safe-with-lightning-safe-with-fighting-safe-with-dying-safe-with-surviving-safe-with-us.
what else can he do but accept it?
he is a jedi.
and then qui-gon-
qui-gon-
well.
he is a jedi.
so he crouches next to him, rests a hand on his shoulder, and when qui-gon turns a shell-shocked gaze on him, says quietly- "come on. let me see."
he is a jedi.
he does not punch qui-gon.
but he is not entirely immune to schadenfreude.
73 notes · View notes
drvscarlett · 1 day ago
Text
About You Pt 20
Sebastian Vettel x Webber!Reader
Summary: Everyone knows about the history of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber. But there's a well kept story within the paddock about Sebastian Vettel and another Webber. This is that story.
A/N: the long wait is finally over. i apologize for the delays because life is so weird and a lot of stuffs happened. hope you all enjoy and let me hear your thoughts.
About You Series
Tumblr media
2019, Albert Park Circuit
Tumblr media
F1Gossips Daniel uploaded a set of photos in his photography IG account but then he deleted it and then reposted the same set of photos again after a while. However eagle eyed fans caught how Danny deleted a certain picture. Who is she?
User1 new wag???
User28 wasn't danny dating someone else?? User41 is every girl being posted a WAG right away? Can't they be simply friends??
User2 damnnnnn she looks fine
User3 ohmygod does anyone not remember who that woman is????
User7 I thought I was just dreaming when I saw the most iconic WEBBER.
User9 im sorry im confused. Im new to f1, can someone explain to me who is this girl? User12 basically this is Y/N Webber. The Y/N Webber who was present during the iconic Multi21. Used to be linked to Jenson Button and was his PR during his McLaren days. User16 I always shipped her with Sebastian since it was always Sebastian who seem to care for her during the Multi21 shenanigans
User19 hello how come im just learning this now? where has she been the past few years???
User7 well User19 she dropped out of the face of the earth after being involved in a car accident and then shortly after jules' death. Mark mentioned her in Aussie Grit about how she is taking time away from the media to recover. Maybe that's why Danny deleted it.
User45 if Danny removed this then maybe you should not be posting it esp when Mark specifically said that his sister is recovering!!!
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
F1Fan now that were talking about miss Webber again then let me bring back these old photos that Sebastian used to post on his blogs.
User1 SEB POSTED THIS????
F1Fan yeah, the old blogspot is deleted now sadly. User2 petition for seb to bring back his old blog or maybe make his own instagram!!
User3 didn't Y/N date Jenson?? what a homie hopper
F1Fan Jenson and Y/N went on one date then decided they were better off as friends so please refrain talking shit about her User7 go tell her F1Fan
User8 but just imagine how messy F1 was when Seb and Mark had that famous Multi21 moment then they panned to Y/N saying that she's the sister of Mark and bff of Seb
User11 i miss those days so much User15 this all seems so unreal but I went back to search the race and its very much real
User44 andddd remember when sebastian used to throw her so many birthday parties or those eyes on her during the podium. He was in love with her!
F1Fan I know. I just know that Seb truly loves her. User22 the couple we failed to protect!!!
2019, Bahrain International Circuit
Mark Webber had just arrived in his hotel room and he immediately headed straight to bed. With the heat in Bahrain, he was so happy that he was just interviewing people rather than driving the cars himself. He was almost dozing to sleep when the buzz of his phone jolted him awake.
The face of Y/N hugging him flashed in front of him. Somehow his weariness faded a little bit as he slides towards the green button.
"You look tired" Y/N greeted. Her face filled with a lot of concern.
"I do, thanks for pointing the obvious"
"Get some water, I saw how the drivers have been complaining how hot it has been" Y/N lectured.
It earns a chuckle from the sleepy Mark. No matter how much Y/N has said that she is done with the sports, Mark would always catch her tuning in on race weekends.
"You know people have been talking about you at the paddock" Mark couldn't help but open up the conversation.
"I'm really gonna kill Danny when he comes back" she groaned in response.
The instagram post has definitely generated a buzz within the community even if Danny was able to delete it right away. Mark has been scouring social media with the tags about Y/N and he could tell that everyone misses her around even if it has been years already.
"What are you so afraid of Y/N?" Mark wondered.
The direct question caught Y/N off-guard. The shift in her face immediately shows discomfort and a hint of fear. Mark knew well not to press her buttons but he wanted to understand what's holding her back.
"You told me you were scared before that people will look at you in pity because you are unable to walk but you have been walking for a couple of years now" Mark explained "I just want to understand what are you so afraid of that you are hiding from the world?"
A sigh escapes from her lips before she replies.
"The whole pity thing was true. Its the reason why I walked out" she seems to hesitate with her answer "But now I am afraid that people will hate me for walking away and leaving everyone behind"
"You didn't run away, you needed time"Mark's rationality immediately answered.
"I pushed people away and I hurt them Mark"
Mark could never forget the night that he picked her up from that restaurant in Brazil. Y/N never disclosed the content of the whole conversation but he could infer that both parties were hurt by the exchange of words that night.
"He misses you a lot" he worded it out more clearly.
"Mark, I don't know" she admits "I'm scared"
The older Webber have to run a hand across his hair. If the Mark from 10 years ago heard that he is bridging his sister and his rival together then he would have been punched himself already. This dance has been going on a long time, the distance and time should have healed all those wounds left behind in Brazil.
"Listen, he loves you."Mark assured "He loves you and he still chooses you. I don't think you have been listening to me talk about how much this guy has asked me for updates about you or how much he misses you. I'm sure that he will be more than glad than upset to see you again"
For a moment, the conversation went quiet. He couldn't figure out what she was thinking but when she finally looked back there was something in her eyes. A glimmer of hope and maybe a possible return, Mark felt like he knocked some senses with his speech.
"You really think he will still accept me again?"
Mark nodded his head in agreement.
"You two have suffered long enough with all these pining so do me a favor and just make out or something"
"Mark!" her face was red in embarrassment.
Laughter was soon heard from the other line, something very rare since her recovery. Or maybe Mark is just used to having her smile all the time before the tragedies occurred so he cherished these kind of moments a lot.
Mark vowed years ago to help his sister recover and if he has to settle with an old rival as a brother-in-law then so be it. Anything, just to see that old smiley Y/N again.
2019, Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya
Tumblr media
F1Updates Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc is spotted dining in a restaurant with F2 Prema Racing driver Mick Schumacher post-race.
User1 those are my husbandssss!!!
User2 mick in his f1 debut soon??? please let this be real
User3 Oh I want to be in the same restaurant and know what they are talking aboutt
User5 i didnt know mick and charles know each other
User7 they seem pretty close tbh! User10 the grid is basically a small circle so its not surprising to know that mick and charles know each other.
User19 saw them there! they went to this private meeting room place and i think they are celebrating someone's birthday.
User27 omg invasion of privacy??? User19 girl i just saw them carry gifts and overheard them sing happy birthday. tbh i avoided to ask for photos with them because the whole thing seems to be personal and they were trying to be inconspiciuous. User30 who are they celebrating hmm
The candles on the cake shines brightly in front of Y/N. Charles and Mick did quite a remarkable surprise in organizing this birthday ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix. They booked the private room, generated a menu, made the cake (which surprisingly looks good), and gathered the people dearest to Y/N.
She smiles looking at the people around her. It was quite weird that she is now in her early 30s and still spending her birthdays with the people who have been with her during her 20s. Although, the lingering thought at the back of her head is that she knew not everyone she wanted to be here today is present.
With a sigh, she blows the candles out.
“We have to cut the cake and everyone could taste how much of a great baker I am” Charles proudly declares.
“It’s us” Mick interjected.
“Potatoh potato, eh same thing”
The cake has been handed around and the small group enjoyed a little bit of cake time with each other. For this dinner, the talks about race strategy is off the table and they were all catching up with everyone's life.
"So what are your plans?" Jenson wondered "Not everyday you turn 30"
She smiles knowing that this question will be asked.
"I'm going to face some of my fears" Y/N answered.
It immediately perked up the attention of the F1 drivers present at the dinner. They knew that there was just one big fear that Y/N wouldn't want to face for years. Their eyes seem to double as if in great disbelief if they heard the whole thing correctly.
"I'm going back to the paddock" Y/N confirms.
"NO WAY!" "When did this happen?" "I CANT BELIEVE THIS?"
The flurry of responses was expected. It was definitely a surprise even for Mark, who seems to have no clue about this comeback.
"Who are you working for?" Mark wondered.
"I'm not yet going back to Formula 1 though" she clarifies "I accepted a role in Formula 3 as a PR for next year"
"BUT STILL FOR WHO?" Mick asked.
"Piastri"
"So that's why Oscar was asking about you"Mark clapped his hands in the new revelation "I guess were both handling him now ey?"
"An Aussie union team" she agrees.
Everyone is buzzing with excitement and already voicing out how they are looking forward for next year. Although, the elephant in the room, is not yet being discussed, everyone has the same thing running in their head.
'What will happen once Sebastian finds this out that she is back?'
Under the table, Mick and Charles shakes hands with a hundred euro in between them. A silent bet with Mick betting on Sebastian to make a move while Charles votes on Y/N making the first move.
2019, Marina Bay Street Circuit
Margarette was five years old and she told countless times to her Papa that she can take good care of herself. It was not her first time to attend a Grand Prix so one could say that her confidence is off the roof. But now that she is lost in the sea of people in orange, green, and pink--little Margarette is close to tears.
She didn't even know how it happened. One second she was patiently waiting for her Papa to finish signing a fan's cap then she saw Uncle Nando pass and waved at him then her Papa is no where to be seen.
Although the plastic card that hangs around the neck guarantees her access to everywhere in the paddock, she still feel very anxious to be apart from her Papa. It didn't help that the cameras are flashing everywhere and the mechanics are rushing from one place to another.
"Xcuze me!" Margarette tried to stop one of the staffs again but they passed by her again.
The tears were coming out because of her frustration and anxiety when all of a sudden a gentle tap on her shoulder made her turn.
"Hey sweetie, you seem lost" the woman knelt down so she was at her eye-level "what are you doing here?"
With that, Margarette finally broke in tears and hugged the mystery woman. It felt so relieving to see someone that finally noticed her dilemma.
"Oh don't cry, there there" the woman comforted.
Margarette held her tightly, afraid that she will be lost without any companion again. The woman ushered them to the sides so they won't be bothered by any of the rushing crowds.
"I lost Papa, I had to find him pwease" Margarette managed to say despite her crying.
"I will help you find your Papa, your name is..." the woman flipped her the pass to reveal her name and her expression morphed into a shock.
"Margarette Vettel, your papa is Seb?"
The little girl nods her head. It was a common reaction especially since she knew that her Papa won 4 of the championships before. She assumes that the woman is another fan who knows her Papa.
"I'll make a few calls and get someone to get you back to Ferrari's garage, okay?" the woman assures as she pulls out her phone to dial someone.
Margarette knew that it was not okay to trust strangers. Her Papa warned her before about the dangers of telling strangers her name or being too comfortable with one. However, something about this woman is very familiar to her. She racks her mind while wiping her tears away. Maybe she seen her in some of the race TV before.
The woman eventually brings in Charles, her Papa's teammate, and she immediately leaped to hug him.
"There you are cheri, your Papa is so worried about you" Charles exclaimed.
"Papa where is Papa?"
"Your papa is in a meeting so I had to run for him" Charles answered and then directed to the woman "You sure, you don't want to take the credits of handing Margarette to Seb?"
"Not yet Charles" the woman replies "Go and get her back, Sebastian must be worried"
Charles held Margarette's hand and they were heading out back to the Ferrari garage when Margarette turned. Her father always tell that it was rude not to thank people for their kindness no matter how little or big the act was.
"Thank you Miss!" she waves brightly.
The woman smiles back at her and Margarette couldn't help but think that she was very pretty. She would definitely think her Papa would think the same way if he sees her. Margarette makes a mental note of her face so she will point her out to her Papa next time.
2019, Suzuka Circuit
There was a slight drizzle as Y/N walks the track, the sky was in a dreary tone of grey as if it was mourning. The bouquet she was carrying seems to get a little bit heavier with every step she takes. Even after all these years, it still feels unreal for her.
"Hey Jules" Y/N placed the flowers at the asphalt.
Today marks five years since that accident that took Jules away. She remembered how it felt sitting at the garage thinking that it was just a normal accident until she was informed that he wasn't moving. She remembered how she tried to sleep and think of it all as a bad dream but then she wakes up and everything is still happening.
"We miss you already" Y/N couldn't help her tears "I have so much to talk to you about and there is so much that you have missed"
She takes a sit at the track. It was her habit every year to come to Suzuka in October just to sit and talk about what is happening with life. Maybe in her mind, she was just back in the cafes of Monaco conversing with Jules and he never left.
Recounting all the happy memories from the months that have passed from Charles' first win in Spa and Monza to the latest gossips that Jenson passed to her.
"And you must be proud of me, I'm coming back to the track again"Y/N announced "Figured its about time for me to face the music and say hello to an old friend again"
Friend would be the least thing that she could have described Sebastian, he was definitely more than that.
"Sebastian seems to be just at arms length every time but it seems like the universe is not letting us meet. I don't know if that is some divine intervention that's telling me that I'm not supposed to meet him again or maybe I'm overcomplicating things..."
She smiles sadly at the flowers in front of her.
"You would have known what to tell me"
At the parking lot, just outside of the Suzuka track, Sebastian has just parked his car. He glanced at the sleeping Margarette at the back of the car and he gently shakes her awake.
"We here?" she groggily wonders.
"Yes, we are" Sebastian grins "It's time for you to meet someone very special"
Sebastian picks up the arrangement of white tulips while holding Margarette's hand with his other free hand. They are walking towards the entrance of the Suzuka circuit when he noticed a familiar face that seems to be waiting on someone.
"Uncle Mark!" Margarette waved at the Australian driver.
Mark seems to look at them as if they have grown two heads. He seems so shocked to see them standing there.
"What are you doing here?" Mark asked right away "Race isn't supposed to start until a few days later"
"Its Jules and I want Margarette to meet Uncle Jules" Sebastian coolly replies.
Despite the cool weather, Mark seems to be sweating as if under pressure. Sebastian have picked up these little habits from Mark after being his teammate for a while. He seems to be hiding something.
"Uncle Jules too Uncle Mark?" Margarette piped in.
"Yes but Seb we have to talk.."
Sebastian suddenly had the gears in his head turning upon realizing why Mark was here outside guarding. His heartbeat goes faster and it was like there was something within his reach.
"She's there, isn't she?"
One look and that's all it takes, Sebastian felt like his world was going too fast but at the same time it stands still. He felt like he wanted to just drop everything and find her.
"Go, I'll take care of Margarette" Mark encouraged and Sebastian didn't need to be told any further.
He runs down the circuit that he knows very well but this time not in his car but with his own feet. However, his speed seems a little too similar with the car with the way he is running. His cheeks are wet from the raindrops or maybe it was some tears running down his eyes.
It didn't take a long while before she comes to view. She was sitting down with an array of flowers, she seems solemn and talking to the ground. Her hair was more wavy and lighter than he used to remember but she was there. It was still her, after all these years.
"Y/N?"
62 notes · View notes
thomaslittlegirl · 2 days ago
Note
Hi love!
you could write something about Tommy where they are a bit possessive of the reader but a non-toxic sweet possessive type that is all the time saying 'my wife' every time he says her name he makes sure to say that she is his wife🥹 If you could put a little bit of jealousy where maybe someone sees her too much and he makes sure to move his hand down a little further than her back so they know she's definitely his wife🙂‍↕️
And the reader is SO proud to be his wife! She even leaves him a kiss on the tip of his nose and he turns red and tight because well it's Tommy '😤'
Sorry I have cramps these days and I just want something sweet🥺🥺♥️♥️Please take it only if you are comfortable, I send you love!🫂
ps. I love your work, you are amazing at this!🫶🏻
i hope your cramps go away! also hope you like this. sending you love back 🫶🏻🩷
his wife. thomas shelby
warnings; jealous thomas, michael wants u lol
⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡
everyone who knew you, knew that you were thomas's wife, because that's how he introduced you: "y/n, my wife."
on your finger lays a beautiful golden ring, a promise that you would soon become his property forever… it's not like you weren't already; you belong to shelby from the moment he laid his eyes on you and worked hard to conquer you. the ring was simply a promise to make it official.
you two were engaged, but he already presented you to everyone as his beautiful wife.
sometimes you even thought you might forget your own name since everyone called you "shelby's girl."
the gypsy was proud that everyone knew their place well. no man who wanted to keep his eyes spent more than five seconds looking at you, not if they truly valued their lives.
there were many bad men outside, many dangerous people who would not hesitate to hurt you to get to him... that's why he was always watching you, keeping you close where his eyes could see you.
everyone knew their places, except for someone: his damn cousin.
michael was centimeters from your body, making some jokes that he couldn't hear due to the distance in which he was from the two of you, but jokes that made you laugh out loud.
his hand clenched tightly around his glass of whiskey, watching the exchange of laughter between the two of you.
no one at the party had noticed his anger, except arthur. his brother looked at him seriously, giving him a nod, showing him that he also understood what was happening.
he thought it was enough.
thomas slammed the glass hard on the table and seriously addressed you, the music ringing in his ears with annoyance.
as soon as he reached you, his hand went to your hip. "doll." he said, squeezing the skin that your dress hid. "michael." he greeted his cousin too.
"cousin." gray greeted, making a grimace with his mouth that imitated a smile.
"is something wrong, love?" your sweet and naive voice reaches his ears and made his serious gaze finally detach from his relative and address you.
"no. just wanted to be close to my wife." he responded, smiling at you for a second before turning completely serious again and looking back at michael.
the youngest noticed how thomas's hand on your hip went down to your ass and stayed there, holding his palm firmly against you.
"you should go, michael." shelby spoke again. "gina was looking for you." his eyes and hard expression told gray everything he needed to understand, and the boy looked into his eyes for a moment before nodding.
"see you, mrs shelby." he murmured in a tone of voice that you couldn't understand but thomas did. he fucking did understand.
when you were both finally alone, you turned to look at thomas with a smile, totally naive and oblivious to everything that was happening.
his blue eyes looked at you fondly, with desire. you couldn't help but leave a small kiss on his nose, watching him smirk.
"my wife." your fiancé uttered, giving you a squeeze. "i can't wait for everyone to leave so i can have my doll all to myself."
87 notes · View notes
scoonsalicious · 2 days ago
Text
Tumblr media
3/Unsized, Pt. 1
Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Pocket!Reader
Summary: Family is complicated. Family is messy. Family is what you make it.
Warnings: (For this part only; see Story Masterlist for general Warnings) Language, poorly translated Russian AND Italian (we're branching out!), Reak Talk, fluff, jealous!Bucky, mention of sexual situations.
Word Count: 3.6k
Previously On...: When it comes to a future with Bucky, you're still harboring some insecurities and one big secret.
A/N: This chapter had to be broken into two parts, as I let it get away from me. I wrote all you see before you without even gettitng to the point of what I wanted this chapter to be about, lol, so more to come!
Banner by my beloved @mrsbuckybarnes1917; poor recolor by me.
If you ever feel so inclined to support my work, hop on over to buy me a coffee; it's much appreciated! <3
NOTE! The tag list is a fickle bitch, so I'm not really going to be dealing with it anymore. If you want to be notified when new story parts drop, please follow @scoonsaliciousupdates
Thank you to all those who have been reading; if you like what you've read, likes, comments, and reblogs give me life, and I truly appreciate them, and you!
Tumblr media
You strolled leisurely through the streets of Brooklyn, Bucky’s vibranium arm draped lovingly over your shoulder, his fingers entwined with yours. The morning had been spent running wedding errands—officially as Pepper’s Maid of Honor, but in truth, you were Tony’s errand-running bitch more often than not.
Not that you minded in the least. You’d do anything for Tony Stark (though you’d rather have your arm re-broken than admit it out loud). Spending the day outside in the sunshine with your boyfriend, dropping off the florist deposits, final invitation proofs, and sketches for the life-size chocolate Iron Man Tony had insisted on to the chocolatier, wasn’t a bad trade-off.
“I think the only reason Pepper agreed to that monstrosity in the first place,” Bucky said, licking his fingers clean of the last of the candy samples the chocolatier had sent out the door with you, “is so that she can ceremoniously chop its head off.”
You laughed in agreement. “He better be grateful that thing’s not anatomically correct, then.” You flashed Bucky a mischievous smile. “Who knows what might happen if she gets carried away? Lord knows he’s pissed her off enough times.”
“Don’t go gettin’ any ideas now, doll,” Bucky teased, pulling you closer planting a kiss on the side of your head. “I’ll have to start worryin’ about you choppin’ parts off a chocolate Bucky at our wedding.”
You pulled away, mock disbelief on your face. “Oh, our wedding, huh? Pretty presumptuous for a guy who’s never even properly proposed.”
Bucky grumbled good naturedly, sliding his arm from your shoulder to your waste. “How many times does a guy have to tell his girl he wants to marry her before she takes him seriously?” he asked, tickling your side through the thin fabric of your lavender sundress. 
Squealing, you tried to wriggle free, but he caught you, nuzzling into your neck. “He’s only gotta ask her once” you teased, wrapping your arms around his neck, “if he does it right to begin with.”
“Oh, I’ll do it right,” he promised, his lips brushing yours. “And trust me, doll, when the question comes, you’ll know it’s the real deal.”
You raised a playful brow, glancing pointedly at the empty ring finger on your left hand.. “You keep saying that, and yet…”
Bucky grabbed your hand and quickly pulled it to his mouth, nipping on the inside of your wrist. “Like I said, doll, you gotta trust me.”
The words hit you harder than you expected. Trust him. Once, you thought you’d be able to trust him again, but now…
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” you asked, studying his face. 
Bucky’s smirk softened. “Like a heart attack, sweets.” He hesitated, concern flickering in his eyes. “You still doubt me?” 
“No.” Your voice was quiet, but certain. You jostled into him as someone brushed by, and he steadied you with a hand on your waist. Guiding him off to the side, you leaned against the building, away from the bustling sidewalk.
“No, baby, of course not. I just…” You blew out a puff of air as you took his hands in yours. “Wow. It’s just… Talking about it in the hypothetical’s been one thing, but knowing you’re actually making plans? That’s something else.”
He frowned as he gently extricated his hand from yours and reached up to brush a strand of hair from your face. “Is that a bad thing, doll?”
“It’s a great thing,” you clarified in a breathy whisper, leaning into his touch. “It’s the best thing, I promise. I just… I just don’t want to fuck it up. I’m so scared I’m gonna fuck it up.”
“Doll,” Bucky let out a relieved chuckle as he pulled you into him, wrapping his body so perfectly around yours, as though it had been made to fit. “Don’t you think I’ve already fucked up enough for the both of us? I think we’ve already more than met our fuck-up relationship quota.”
“Stop,” you pleaded, laughing into the hard plains of his chest. “I’m trying to be serious and vulnerable and shit.” 
Bucky’s hands ran comfortingly up and down your spine. “So am I,” he said, his tone warm. “I didn’t deserve a second chance from you, after everything that happened, but you gave me one. I wanna spend the rest of my life making sure you never regret that decision.”
You slipped your hands around his waist under the buttery leather of his jacket and squeezed gently. “I love you,” you told him. “I love you so much, and when you do ask me to marry you, I’m gonna say yes.”
Bucky let out a relieved exhale. “You mean that, doll?” he asked, his voice so soft you almost didn’t hear him. “You’ll marry me? For real?”
“Absolutely,” you leaned back so you could look up at his face. The smile he wore was absolutely breathtaking in its joy. You didn’t think you’d ever seen him look as unabashedly happy as he did in this moment. “Or, at least, I will when you actually propose to me,” you clarified, giving him a mischievous smirk. 
“Oh, shut up,” he said with a groan, leaning down to take your lips in his. The kiss flowed over and through you, warming you from the inside out, until your entire body was tingling with the heat of it, but before you could allow yourself to get caught up in it, a sobering thought came over.
“Oh my god, have you talked to Tony yet?” you asked, gripping the lapels of his jacket. While Tony and Bucky had been playing nice over the last year, you weren’t sure how he would react if he thought the two of you were actually going to get married.
Bucky grinned knowingly. “I didn’t realize you were such an old fashioned girl,” he teased. “Should I negotiate the terms of your dowry while I’m at it? Get us a couple of fat cows and a goat to start our life together?”
You gnawed on your bottom lip in a failing attempt to stave off your grin. “Surely you can convince him to throw in at least one pig with that,” you countered. “I know for a fact you can be very persuasive when you want to be.” You playfully nipped at the juncture of his jaw and his neck.
Bucky slipped his hands between your sundress and the denim jacket you wore, sliding his fingers along the line where the fabric met the skin of your back. “I doubt he’s as susceptible to my powers of persuasion as you are, doll,” he teased.
“Probably not,” you conceded, but your voice turned a bit more serious as you continued to speak: “but he’s the closest thing to actual family I’ve got,” you told him, a whisper of sadness on the edge of your voice. “I’m not saying I want you to, like, ask his permission or anything, because, you know… ew, but I really would like him to be onboard. To be happy for us.”
“Aside from Pepper, there’s no one on this planet more important to Tony than you,” Bucky said reassuringly. “If you’re happy, he’ll be happy. That’s all there is to it.”
“If you’re happy, I’m happy,” you told him, pulling him toward you until there was no space left between you. 
He pressed a kiss to the top of your head. “Then we don’t have anything to worry about,” he said, grinning. “Because I am happy. And I promise, I’ll make sure Tony’s happy, too.”
“Thank you,” you murmured into his chest. You’d had hopes, once, that Bucky and Tony might have been able to forge some kind of relationship– if not one born from any kind of affection, then from at least a mutual love of and respect for you, but that hope had been dashed after you’d gotten shot. 
“I’ll tolerate him for your sake, Kiddo,” he’d said to you when you’d told him you’d decided to work on rebuilding your relationship with Bucky. “But I’m not going to be able to just up and forgive him.”
“You managed to forgive him for your parents, though,” you’d said to him tentatively. “And he wasn’t even the one who pulled the trigger on me.”
Tony’d swallowed his gaze somewhere far away. “Yeah,” he’d said “but he wasn’t in his right mind back then. And they weren’t you.” 
“Not that I wouldn’t mind standing here holding you all day, doll,” Bucky said, taking you from your thoughts after a long moment, “but we’ve got to get to the jeweler’s before they close.”
You stepped back and looked up at him, a wave of panic coming over you that you were sure was noticeable on your face. “I thought you said you were making plans! Not that you had plans! Least of all jewelry store plans!”
“Calm down, sweetheart,” Bucky said, kissing the top of your head with a laugh. “Did you forget that last stop we have to make for Stark?” 
You exhaled, embarrassed at your mini-freakout. In all the talk of a future with Bucky, you’d forgotten the purpose of your current task for Tony– to have his mother’s wedding band set resized for Pepper. The ring was meant to be a surprise, and since you and Pepper wore the same size, you were the perfect stand-in for this little bit of subterfuge. 
“I very much did,” you admitted with a sheepish smile. “What can I say, Barnes? You’ve got me all twitterpated.” 
Bucky pursed his lips, taking your hand and leading you down the sidewalk again. “Doll,” he purred, “you know what you do to me when you use ‘40s slang. We’re in public, for cryin’ out loud.”
“Тебе нравится больше, когда я говорю с тобой на русском?” you asked him, your voice dripping into something sultry. Do you like it better than when I speak Russian to you?
Bucky shook his head, pouting slightly. “Нет, никогда.” No, never.
Arriving at the jeweler’s a few minutes early, you were greeted by a man behind the counter who invited you to browse while the jeweler finished things up on a piece he was currently working on in the back. The place was a hidden gem–an artisan’s studio/showroom run by the grandson designer of Tony’s mother’s ring. From the outside, it was unassuming, but inside, it showcased some of the most exquisite (and undoubtedly expensive) pieces you’d ever seen.
You hummed appreciatively as you traced your fingers over the glass of the display case, admiring the intricate filigree and glittering gemstones. Of course, nothing had a price tag. You’d been in Tony’s orbit long enough to know that if you had to ask, you couldn’t afford it.
“See anything you like?” Bucky’s voice was warm as he rested his chin on your shoulder and wrapped his arms around your waist. “Just, you know, in case I ever wanted to get you a Labor Day present or something.”
You turned to give him a skeptical look. “A Labor Day present?”
“Or something,” he repeated, nudging your cheek with his nose.
You snorted out a laugh that felt entirely out of place among such elegance. “Classy,” he teased, swaying you slightly in his arms.
“Everything’s beautiful,” you admitted with a wistful sigh, “but nothing here feels like me, you know?” Bucky hummed, his chin still on your shoulder. The sound vibrated pleasantly through you. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I get that. You play in Tony’s world, but you don’t live in it.”
“Exactly.” You turned to face him, smiling at how easily he understood you. “It’s like, I’m always gonna see myself as that girl from the trailer park in Ohio. Jewelry, fancy cars, designer clothes… it was all so far out of reach, I never even dreamed of it. It’s not what I grew up wishing for.”
Bucky’s face softened in understanding. Growing up during the Depression, he knew what it was like to see even the basics as unattainable luxuries. “What did you wish for, doll?” His voice was quiet, almost reverent.
You chuckled, though it came out a bit hollow. “Well, aside from the obvious…” Bucky nodded, understanding what you didn’t say–that you wished you hadn’t been trapped and trafficked. “I wanted things like getting a real education; not having to teach myself with whatever books I could get at the library. Being allowed to go to school. Having friends. God, I wanted friends so badly. Getting out and never having to worry about looking over my shoulder again.” 
You exhaled, steadying yourself. “When you’re just trying to survive,” you said, “shit like this doesn’t matter. It’s just stuff.”
Bucky pressed a soft kiss to the top of your forehead, grounding you. “If you had to have one piece of jewelry,” he said, a teasing edge creeping into his voice, “let’s say, a ring, just as a random, hypothetical example with no bearing in actual reality, whatsoever, what would you want it to look like?”
You smiled, happily leaning into the game. “Well, speaking strictly hypothetically,” you said tapping your chin in thought, “I think I’d want something vintage. Antique. Maybe Art Deco.”
Bucky raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Why not?” You shrugged, reaching up to tweak his nose. “I happen to have a soft spot for old, worn down things.” 
“I’ll show you old and worn down,” Bucky said, his voice dropping dangerously low. Your heartbeat sped up as you stood on your toes, reaching for him with your lips. 
Before you could connect in what you just knew would be a fiery kiss, Bucky’s phone rang. 
“Fuck,” he murmured, pressing his forehead to yours. “Lemme let it go to voicemail.”
You licked your lips, gently pushing him back. “Answer it,” you told him. “Could be ‘Very Important World Saving Business’. Besides…” You leaned in conspiratorally. “If we got started, we both know it’d only be a matter of minutes before you had me bent over one of these display cases, fucking me raw on top of all these diamonds.”
Bucky swallowed hard, the tips of his ears turning a delightful shade of red. “And now I have to take this outside,” he muttered, retreating with his phone in hand, “because I definitely can’t look at you and talk to someone at the same time with that image in my head.”
You grinned, waving cheerfully as he stepped out the door, his phone already to his ear. Was it mean to tease him so badly? Yes. Did you enjoy the fuck out of seeing him get all worked up? Also, yes.
No sooner had he left than a voice from behind the counter called out to you. “You are the Stark appointment?”
Turning, you found yourself face-to-face with an impossibly handsome olive-skinned man emerging from the back room. Italian, if you had to hazard a guess. He had a messy head of black curls that seemed to keep falling into a pair of hazel eyes with thick, dark lashes that gave him an effortlessly suave air, accentuated by a slightly aquiline nose that looked like it might have been broken once before; and his lips were sensuously full, with a pronounced cupid’s bow that would meet even Hawkeye’s exacting standards. 
You admired him the way you would admire a slice of Tiramisu– it looked positively delicious, and perhaps you would be tempted to take a bite… if you hadn’t already been utterly satiated by the most decadent, rich layered dark chocolate mousse you’d ever hope to have in your entire life. Thank you, but you couldn’t possibly; you had already overindulged.
“Hi, yes.” You extended your hand. “I’m Pocket.” You retrieved the box with Tony’s mother’s ring from your bag. He’d offered to send you with a full security detail but, you figured, if the Winter Soldier couldn’t protect the ring from would-be thieves, nothing could, especially when it was being transported by something he found infinitely more valuable. “I’m here to have this resized.” 
The man ignored the box and took your hand instead. “Marco Palombini,” he offered, his accent rich and lyrical.
“Italiano?” you asked excitedly. It wasn’t very often you had the opportunity to practice this particular language skill set of yours. 
Marco’s eyes lit up. “Sì! La mia famiglia è di Sabina, appena fuori Roma. E la tu?” Yes! My family’s from Sabina, just outside of Rome. Yours?
“Oh, no,” you replied with a laugh. “Sono americana.” I’m American.
“Davvero?” He looked skeptical. Really? “Allora ci sarai stata parecchio, no?” You must have spent a lot of time there, then, yeah?
You shook your head; it was one place your business responsibilities had yet to bring you. “No, non ci sono mai stata. Però ho sempre voluto andarci, soprattutto a Roma.” No, never. But I’ve always wanted to, especially Rome.
Marco’s gaze softened. “Beh, sono sicuro che Tony Stark non negherebbe alla sua fidanzata bella una luna di miele nella Città Eterna.” Well, I’m sure Tony Stark wouldn’t deny his beautiful fiancée a honeymoon in the Eternal City.
“Dio, no!” you snorted. God, no! “Non sono la fidanzata di Tony. Sono qui solo perché io e lei abbiamo la stessa misura di mani.” I’m not Tony’s fiance. I’m just here because she and I have the same sized hands. You opened the box with Tony’s mother’s ring and slid it across the glass countertop, suppressing a laugh at the absurdity of being mistaken for Tony’s betrothed. The thought was hilariously, ludicrously gross.
Marco’s expression lightened considerably as he tilted his head, a sly smile forming. “Beh, non è una fortuna, allora?” he asked, taking your hand and tracing the lines of your palm with his fingers. Well, isn’t that lucky, then?
Before you could politely extract your hand, a familiar, steadying presence loomed behind you. “Everything good, sweets?” Bucky’s voice held a subtle edge, a clear sign of his displeasure at the sight of Marco’s hand lingering on yours.
“Hey, baby,” you said, fighting the smile that threatened to break through at his obvious jealousy. Sliding your free hand around Bucky’s waist, you rested your head against his side, silently reinforcing that you were unmistakingly his. “Mr. Palombini was just about to measure my finger for the resizing.” You flashed Marco a friendly smile and nodded for him to continue.
Marco’s expression faltered briefly at Bucky’s towering presence, but he recovered quickly, resuming his professional demeanor. He retrieved a set of finger-sizing gauges, slipped one onto your finger, and adjusted it a few times to ensure a perfect fit before jotting down notes in his ledger.
“Should take about ten days,” he said briskly. Moving to the register, he typed up a form, signed it, and handed it to you along with a pen. “Sign here and bring your copy when you pick up the ring.”
“Anyone who has the receipt can come pick up the ring, right?” Bucky asked, his tone pointed as he leaned slightly closer to the counter. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be her?”
You pinched his side lightly, though it was a challenge to find anything but solid muscle. “Behave,” you murmured under your breath.
Marco didn’t flinch, handing you the signed receipt with a calm, professional smile that bordered on smug. “No,” he said, his gaze flicking briefly to Bucky. “We will only release the ring to the person who signed the receipt. Company policy.”
Bucky raised an eyebrow as you tucked the receipt into your wallet. “So, you mean to tell me,” he began, “that if Tony Stark himself showed up with his receipt, you wouldn’t give him his own ring back?”
Marco leaned casually against the counter, arms crossed. “We will only release the ring to the person who signed the receipt,” he repeated, his smirk faint but unmistakable.
You rolled your eyes, deciding you’d had enough machismo for one afternoon. “Great,” you said, taking Bucky’s hand in yours. “Let us know when it’s ready, and we’ll be back to pick it up.”
As Bucky held the shop door open for you, Marco’s voice rang out behind you. “Bella donna!” he called, a mischievous lilt in his tone. You glanced over your shoulder to see him wink. “Quando torni, magari potrei interessarti a un tour privato di Roma!” When you come back, maybe I can interest you in a private tour of Rome!
Shaking your head with a mix of exasperation and amusement, you stepped outside, Bucky right behind you.
“What did he say to you?” Bucky asked, his tone deceptively calm.
“Oh, nothing much,” you replied lightly. “Just invited me to run away to Rome with him.”
Bucky frowned as he took your hand in his. “Not funny, doll.”
“I’m totally serious,” you told him. Bucky stopped abruptly in his tracks, pulling you to a halt. “Hey–” you began.” 
“That son of a bitch!” Bucky growled, turning slightly as though he were about to march back inside. “I’m going to–”
“You’re not going to do anything,” you said, gently  tugging on his hand to redirect him forward. “He was being a shameless flirt. He’s Italian. It’s practically in his DNA.” Your attempt at humor didn’t seem to land, judging by the dark look on Bucky’s face. “The only thing that matters,” you added more seriously,  “is that I’m not into it. I’m into you.”
Bucky sighed and ran a hand haphazardly through his hair. “I know, sweets,” he said. “I’m just not…”
“Not used to being the jealous one for a change?” you teased, swinging his hand in yours as you walked. “Trust me, I know, it’s no fun, which is why I’m being nice and not letting you stew in it.”
Bucky huffed, but the corner of his mouth twitched upward. “Well, thanks for that, I guess.”
You grinned, leaning into him as you walked. “You’re welcome, Barnes. Besides, you’re prettier to look at than he is, anyway.”
The small, satisfied smile on Bucky’s face as he pulled you closer was all the reassurance you needed.
<- Previous / Next ->
54 notes · View notes
gallavichsreddie1128 · 3 days ago
Text
Why? (Dean Winchester)
Tumblr media
Description: Y/N has a big secret that she’s kept but now it’s revealed and Dean doesn’t understand why
Word Count: 1,598
13 years. That’s how long it’s been since Y/N joined the brothers and the angel on their journey. She was 22 at the time. Young and oblivious to the true power that the universe held. Sam was like her best friend. He was always nice and welcoming and kept her grounded. Dean on the other hand was not nice to her at all. He hated the fact that she was with them and even though she was a good help he never said thanks. Sam and Cas did but that wasn’t enough.
As sick and twisted as it was, she was in love with Dean. She truly had no good reason for it. He hated her and definitely did not share the same feelings. She kept these feelings hidden away. Away from Sam and Cas, knowing that they would never understand. She would never admit this to anyone, especially Dean. But 13 years on the road with them she came to the realization and fear that she wouldn’t have to. A mind reader. What kind of sick joke was this?
The mind reader stood in the room with them as they all prepared to kill it in some way. It laughed or he laughed and walked towards them, Y/N took a huge step back but he kept stepping towards her. “Get away from her!” Sam yelled but he ignored him. “W-What d-do you want?” Y/N asked, shaking. She was scared for her life and not because this thing could see her darkest secrets, it might kill her. His hand reached up and cupped her cheek. She was in disgust but too scared to show it. He closed his eyes for a moment, reading into her mind before opening them again. “You’ve kept that for so many years.” He said with pity. Her eyes widened as she realized what he might be talking about. “Kept what?” Cas asked. She shook with fear now for two things.
The mind reader could tell that she didn’t want the secret out. He stepped away from her and her body relaxed. “Just a little crush or should I say a big one? In love with the enemy.” The mind reader looked at Dean who wasn’t catching on. “Who cares who she’s in love with? What’s this got to do with why you’re here?” Dean asked. At the same time Cas asked, “The enemy?” Sam stayed silent. “I’m not here for anything but some fun.” The Mind Reader laughed but the others didn’t. It wasn’t funny. “Please.” Y/N whispered. He could kidnap her or torture her but she begged silently that he wouldn’t reveal the secret that she kept in her heart all these years.
“We aren’t children, we don't want your fun.” Dean growled. The mind reader shook his head and gave her a pity look. “Not everyone is smart about loving someone. We don’t all make the right choice.” She looked away from him as she kept telling herself that maybe the mind reader wouldn’t reveal it. “I’m sorry did you not hear me?” Dean asked and stepped forward. The Mind Reader looked at him and smirked, “I think it’s you who didn’t hear me.” Y/N wanted to cry.
She wanted the ground to swallow her whole. She couldn’t believe the big secret she kept was about to be revealed. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Dean was confused and maybe it was best he stayed that way. The Mind Reader smirked at him and looked at Y/N who was red in the face. “You can hate someone while they love you.” Sam looked at Y/N who was looking anywhere but them. Sam was the first to catch on in this sick joke. “Dean, don’t play coy. You know what I’m talking about.” Dean looked over at his brother who was staring at Y/N.
Y/N was red in the face and that’s when he realized. “Ding Ding Ding.” He looked back at the mind reader. “She’s in love with you but you can’t stand the thought of her or is that just what you tell yourself?” Dean wasn’t having any of this. “You’re going to tell us what you want or we will kill you.” Dean said to him. “I already told you.” Y/N looked at the mind reader with so much anger. She walked up to him and stabbed him with the knife but not in a place that could kill him. “My arm you bitch.” He growled but Dean finished the job. Without looking in his direction she walked away and out of the room. 
It was days later that anything would come about what was revealed. Sam nor Cas said anything about it. Dean sat in thought about it just like Y/N. She was in love with him? He couldn’t understand why. He was an asshole to her and always has been so why would she love him? He walked out of his room to see her in the kitchen making food. She looked tired, hell they all did. Sleep never came to them when needed. Sam was still in his room and Cas was somewhere else. Dean stood as he watched her make eggs.
She wasn’t aware that he was there watching her. She moved the eggs to a plate and grabbed the toast from the toaster. She took the plate to the kitchen table and began eating. She looked at Dean but said nothing. Dean walked into the kitchen and sighed. They had to talk about it, eventually. “So the mind reader just told us one of your darkest secrets and you aren’t going to say anything about it?” She almost choked on her food. “What’s to say Dean?” She asked without turning to look at him.
“A lot actually. I have been nothing but an asshole to you and yet you love me?” She nodded her head. What poor excuse could she make? “I can’t make sense of that at all.” Nor could she. “I mean years, you’ve felt this way for years?” She stood up and turned to him. “I’m aware it’s ridiculous Dean. I don’t need you to point it out.” She yelled. She just wanted to eat her food in peace. “There’s no excuse or anything that I can make for it.” She finishes. She grabs her plate to take it to her room. “Wait.” Dean says and she turns to him. “I’m sorry about the past 13 years. You don’t deserve that and I certainly don’t deserve your love.” She nodded her head and walked to her room to finish eating. 
The house was silent for a while. No new cases or anything like that. Y/N tried to avoid Dean the best that she could but knew that she couldn’t do it forever. They established what had happened and it’s done. Dean felt completely different about it. He never realized it but he wasn’t the nicest person to her and the fact that she was in love with him made him realize how truly horrible he had been to her.
Her room was next to his and never once did he think that anytime he could hear her cry it was about him. How awful he was and yet she loved him. Sam always got on his case about treating her differently but he could tell that not even Sam knew this. Dean heard noise in the kitchen and thought it was Sam. Sam who just went to bed was not the one in the kitchen, it was Y/N. She grabbed a bag of cheetos and sat at the table on her phone.
She looked up as she saw Dean. She looked back down at her phone, making him sigh. “I’m not done with this situation.” He said and sat across from her. “Yeah well I am.” She said. “Y/N please just give me something. Why are you in love with me?” She sighed and looked at him, “Dean, why do you care so much?” She asked. “You hate me, remember?” She asked. “I don’t hate you. Before you stabbed the mind reader he was gonna say that I feel the same way.” She laughed and stood up.
“Yeah right Dean. You don’t treat someone like shit if you love them.” She yelled. He stood up, “If you think I treat you like shit why do you love me?” He yelled. “Because Dean I know that you aren’t that way to everyone just the people you don’t like. You’re a caring man and you would die for Sam or Cas. Anyone that you care about.” “That includes you.” She laughed again.
“Right, Dean. Sure whatever.” She said. He walked over to her, “That wasn’t a joke.” She looked up at him, “It was to me.” She said softly. Just like the mind reader he put his hand on her cheek. Though this time she wasn’t disgusted. “I do care about you and I do love you.” He whispered and she closed her eyes. She wanted to believe that.
“And I’ll spend the rest of my life getting you to see that.” She looked up at him and his eyes spoke the truth. There wasn’t an ounce of hate in them. His eyes searched hers before he did something he never saw himself doing. He leaned in and kissed her. She kissed back surprisingly fast. The kiss was short but sweet. Dean pulled away and placed his forehead on hers. “I will spend my whole life making it up to you.” For the first time in a week she smiled, a genuine happy smile.
41 notes · View notes
i-creatied-au · 2 days ago
Text
Harmless joke
Summary: Rook is teaching Manfred how to show middle finger. And then she is facing consequences.
"Okay, Manfred... Now, raise this finger... Yes, good!"
Rook smiled softly and patted skeleton on the sculp, when he repeated movement of the hand after her. She tried not to laugh out loud, but mischievous sparkles was playing in her eyes, when quinari thought how many chaos her little joke will creat in the Lighthouse. Oh, maybe even in Grand Necropolis?
Esha looked at Manfred, who was observing his raised middle finger, with a smirk.
"Alright, Manfred, and remember - we show this finger only to people we love or like, okay?"
Skeleton stood there for a few moments before looked at her and hissed in approval. Esha's smirk grew.
"Great! Go now, say hi to someone."
He hissed enthusiastically and hurried out of the dining hall, showing middle finger to Davrin and Lucanis on his way out. Rook watched him with a smirk, pretty pleased with herself, until she heard a sigh from the couch.
"So, what flowers do you want on your grave?" Lucanis asked, raising his eyebrow.
"You think there'll be something to bury?" Davrin, sitting near him, chuckled and shook his head. "Nah, Emmrich won't leave even a pinch of dust from Rook after he'll find out"
"You're both too pessimistic," Rook rolled her eyes and folded her arms, "It's a silly joke, Emmrich maybe will be shocked but won't kill me..."
"Is that was jokes from the Fade or Fred just showed me a middle finger while running past me?" Neve asked with puzzled look, walking into dining hall. Davrin laughed loudly and even Lucanis couldn't help but chuckled quietly, hiding it behind the cup.
"Yeah, I taught him that," Rook said with a smirk, and got a surprised look from Neve.
"Taught him? Oh, Maker, you're dead"
"We told her"
"Why is everyone thinking I'll die?" Esha huffed. "It's Emmrich we're talking about. Not some monster-"
"ESHA ORANA MERCAR!" a loud shouting outside could be heard clearly in the dining hall. Quinari twitched from surprise and from anger she heard in Emmrich's voice. She went pale, feeling how sudden panic started to raise in her.
"Orana?" Neve asked with raised eyebrow and growing smirk. "How does he knows your full name?"
"No time to answer!" Rook shouted, running up on the stairs to the small balcony and getting out from there. As soon as she run out, dining hall's doors opened and Emmrich walked in, looking angry and like he was one step from throwing someone into the Fade. He looked at other companions.
"Where?" he only asked with a tense voice. All three pointed at the open door to the balcony. They loved Rook, but not enough to stood between her and angry parent. Emmrich nodded in appreciation and walked out from the doors, what he entered, to catch quinari on her way. Trio listened in silence to the sounds outside the dining hall. There were fast steps, then sound of a spell, sounds of someone falling and cursing in qunlat. Then there was short "Emmrich, I can explain-", sounds of spell and scream "NO, NO, PUT ME DOWN!"
Trio exchanged looks with each other.
"Well... I liked spending time with Rook", Davrin sighed, leaning back on the couch.
"She was so young..." Neve sighed dramatically, sitting down.
"I think I'll buy some forget-me-not on their grave", Lucanis hummed, sipping his coffee.
----
"EEEMMRICH! PLEEEASE! EEEMM-"
Emmrich didn't react on screams under the roof, continuing his spell, what hold Rook above the ground and spin her in circle motion. Necromancer looked up with stern expression, full of determination to teach young quinari a lesson. Esha wasn't so calm, being spinned around like a children's toy. She screamed and begged to let her down, her voice trembled from fast movement.
"EMM, I'M SORRYYY! PLEEEASE! I THINK III THROW UP!"
Older man sighed heavily and lowered her down after last sentence. Firstly, because he wanted to teach her a lesson, not to torture her. Secondly, he didn't want some of her lunch ended up on his books.
Esha sat down on the floor, panting and trying to calm down her heartbeat. She raised a finger to say something, but put it down, after she couldn't find a breath to say a word.
"Just... Give me a second," she sighed out, and Emmrich huffed.
"Oh, please, take all time you need," he said with a sarcasm. "Maybe after your little break you will tell me why Manfred is very enthusiastically showing me middle fingers"
Rook chuckled quietly, but put smile away after meeting man's angry look.
"Actually, I told him, what we're showing it to the people we like. So it's actually a good to know he likes you, right?" she gave him an awkward smile, but Emmrich kept a stern look.
"You think you're so funny, aren't you?"
"I thought so... But now I can see my mistake and I promise it won't happen again" she looked at him with puppy eyes. "I'm sorry, Emmrich. It was a harmless joke, really!"
Emmrich let out a long tired sigh. He nodded, accepting the apology.
"Very well... I'll forgive you on two conditions," he helped her got up. Esha lighten up from his words and nodded actively.
"Yes, of course, what is it?"
"First - you'll explain Manfred what it's inappropriate gesture and what he should never use it "
"Okay, fair enough... And second?"
"You'll take my turns on washing dishes for the next two weeks"
"What?! Two weeks?"
"I can always make it three"
"... okay, okay," she grumbled quietly, but didn't argue further. "Though, this joke wasn't so bad. No harm done!"
"Oh hey, Manfred!" they heard Bellara's voice from the corridor and looked there. "I was... Wow! That's a little mean, don't you think?"
"Okay, I get it," Rook started walking under Emmrich's stern gaze. "I'll go talk to Manfred before he gets sad, thinking he did something wrong"
34 notes · View notes
numberonetacostan · 18 hours ago
Text
PACO SWAP AU
Here is the somewhat awaited long post for the Paco Swap AU! I’ve taken pieces from the other posts made about it for this, so you don’t need to read the other posts about it to understand anything!!! I know quite a few of you like this au, so please enjoy the full post about it!!! :D
SO! As the name says, Pickle and Taco swap roles here. Taco’s season 1 persona is her real personality, and Pickle is using her. Initially he’s using her popularity with the viewers to make himself look better, and get himself further in the competition by proxy of being her best friend and primary caretaker, but he doesn’t break his act upon getting voted out/losing, like Taco does in the season finale. Other than that, season 1 is roughly the same besides the end result. He sticks to the role of being her also-dumb-but-mildly-smarter best friend, at least for longer. She wins the season, it doesn’t particularly matter what changes but we’ll just say Bow doesn’t attack her this time, she gets to the finish line first, hooray for Taco!! She uses her money on a lemon orchard, and then somewhere for them all to live with the others’ urging. Taco’s name is on the deed and documentation, because it was her money that bought it, but everyone pitches in to run this hotel. It’s better for OJ and his relationship with Paper, without all the stress of running the hotel on his own and the ego boost he gets from that and winning in the first place. Taco would choose a lot of the decor though!! Not all of it, since someone would step in to make sure not every single thing in the building is lemon-yellow, but there’s still a strong lemon theme, yeah? 
Since Taco is Baby and doesn’t know how to manage money at all, and because as is stated by Bomb in season 1 she currently only speaks French and a few English words here and there, her best friend Pickle is the one who manages her finances. And… well he sure does manage them alright, but not for Taco. He buys a video game here and there. And then maybe some new headphones, a console, a PC, etc. And since he has so many games and consoles to play with, he doesn’t really have time to be hanging out with and watching Taco. And the other contestants start to notice this, seeing Taco by herself more often, more and more packages coming for Pickle, and even Taco sitting outside his closed door waiting for him like a dejected puppy. They try to be more gentle about it at first telling him not to buy too much with her money and to go hang out with her, but they'd get more firm, especially when Taco starts getting rather upset that he's more or less ignoring her now that she's served her purpose to him. 
They end up taking away his access to her money, and he lashes out at them like Taco does in the s1 finale, and then disappears off into the woods like Taco did as well. He’s pretty furious about not getting to use the money he’s worked so hard to earn, taking care of Taco day after day. He’d insult her here too, and even though she doesn’t understand much, I think she’s been called “annoying” enough to understand what it means, and for her best and only close friend to call her that? Sweet little Taco would be heartbroken actually. She doesn't understand what happened enough to understand that it isn't her fault, but she does understand how angry Pickle was and how scornfully he was talking to and about her!!!!! She understands that he hates her but not why, and that it wasn't anything she did. I can imagine her trying to make him feel better when he's lashing out at everyone, trying to give him a lemon or a nuzzle (armless hug; either she really doesn't have arms or truly just doesn't use them often) and him pushing her away and hard enough to make her fall over, which ends up being the last straw for him getting kicked out. 
Augh, and she'd be sobbing too, because her best friend Pickle was so so mad and now he's gone and she doesn't know what she did. I think it would be interesting for Knife to take on a parallel role here to the one he did for Pickle too. When Pickle is gone, he ends up taking over as Taco's caretaker/best friend. Knife the protector, yeah? Genuine or not, Pickle did look after her to keep her from unknowingly getting into trouble, and she still needs someone looking after her. I mean, I think the entire cast would be pitching in more to make sure she's okay after what happened, but I see characters like Knife, OJ, Paper (as the other two menu squad members), and the lot really making sure to take care of her. Knife wouldn’t be as openly affectionate with her as Pickle was, at least at first, but I think she’d wear him down eventually, enough to accept all the affection she gives him and give her head pats. For the whole cast, I think they'd actually start liking Taco more after this reveal? Mostly because they all feel quite badly for her, and all pitch in to take care of her, and then get to know her more!! She pretty exclusively stuck by Pickle's side during season 1, yeah? So spending more time around her may subject them all to the glory of her silly whimsy. They'd bond with her more due to Pickle's betrayal, yeah? I think the others would also put more effort into helping her learn English when they're all taking care of her after Pickle leaves. They don't know her nonverbal cues as well as Pickle did, and as well I'd imagine him not wanting her to learn English if he can manage it. The more she understands the harder it is for him to keep using her, yeah? So they start using little vocab flashcards and simpler language that will be easier for her to pick up on, and she starts understanding more!! She still isn’t a big talker, but when she does decide to say something it’s much more comprehensible!!! Good for her!!!
Onto season 2!!! Taco is not really involved in season 2, beyond episode 7. She doesn’t make it into the season 2 cast, but as a result of the lawsuit the others help her file against Mephone, she does get to host episode 7!!! She would sing the elimination time theme <3. I think she would eliminate Knife. Not because she wants him to lose but because she misses having him in the hotel. He would be all >:| but walk over to her and let her nuzzle him excitedly, since he’d plan to make sure the proper elimination is done when Mephone4 gets back. Taco being Taco, instead of having everyone clean the hotel, she’d make her get her lemons from her orchard!!! No coin flip either. It’s basically the same challenge as s1 ep2, honestly. What can I say? She loves her some lemons!!! I think this would be when her and Mic meet as well. Mic is currently being bothered by Cheesy or being scolded by her team, so I think Taco’s silly, loud fun would be a welcome presence for her, as well as her pretty unconditional affection if you’re someone she likes. S1 Taco would be among the few contestants that don't mind at all when Mic shouts to her heart's content, yeah!! Since Taco shouts all the time too!!! Mic might get a sort of shovel talk from Knife after what happened with Pickle, yeah? Mic would not like that someone was so mean to Taco and put even more effort into being her friend!!! I don’t ship them in this au, but I do think they should be best buddies!!! Loud girl solidarity!!!
As for Pickle, he’d probably try working behind the scenes like Taco, though not with the same success that she does. He doesn’t have her intellect, even in this au, so he can’t come up with the same plans that she can. He’d pick someone that could get further in the game based on likeability rather than strategy like Taco in season 1, and someone that would be willing to work with him, since he can’t offer the same advantage that Taco can. He can’t scheme well, nor did he make it to the finals like she did. I’d say Lightbulb could be a possibility, her being very well-liked and having been Taco’s second choice, yeah? She’s friendly to canon Taco so I think she’d be relatively friendly with Pickle too, with the same hopes of him getting better. Mic would probably be voted out earlier without Taco’s help, so there’s that too. Knife would probably play the same role here, finding out that LB and Pickle were working together, as much as Pickle could manage. He is manipulative in this au, don’t get me wrong, he’s just not that smart. He’d still reach for the portal, though she wouldn’t see it since she got sucked in, so she doesn’t ask him about it. No eye injury for him! He already had one in s1 anyways. As for why LB would cut things off? I think Pickle would sabotage the rocket, like Mic does in canon, but he does it after telling LB he was going to- to which she gives an adamant no. Testy is her friend, and Fan just got kidnapped! It’s serious o’clock!! But he still does it, the rocket nearly fails, and LB cuts things off with him. She’s not gonna work with him if he’s gonna hurt her friends, and Pickle is left once again without a silly, happy companion.
Onto season 3!! S2 is on hiatus now!!! I already answered an ask that goes over everything involving her in season 3 lol, so I’ll just gently place that here. 
I suppose most of her swapping is done with Pickle, in regards to the betrayer/betrayee dynamic, but since the winner would swap she is indeed taking OJ's place in season 3!!! And yes, she would not care about being "dethroned." Frankly, she'd find Silver to be rather funny and probably burst out laughing during his speech. I think she'd more or less understand what he was trying to do, but think it was funny that he was taking things so seriously and that he'd seen her as some sort of obstacle to overcome. She just likes having fun with her friends!!! Winning doesn't matter to her. She'd just give a happy little "bye-bye!!" and be sent off to Indefinite Island. Though, at least for Painty, this would cause more scorn towards Silver. It's one thing for him to make that speech at OJ, a pretty mature guy, but to do it at Taco? A little Taco who already had one pulled over on her by who she'd thought was her best friend? Painty would not be cool with that. I think she'd be on Indefinite Island for a bit, primarily because it wouldn't be safe for Taco to try and get back to her hotel on her own. I'd imagine she stays until Painty gets out and they go back to the hotel together. Lifering and eventually Tea Kettle when she gets there would be the ones watching over her while she's on Indefinite Island. Like you said, Mic probably would get out sooner without having Taco to help her, which might be for the better with how much better she can grow her confidence without being in the competition.
As for the finale, I think she'd initially want to vote for Silver, actually? Because she still thinks he's funny. But after he punches Candle's flame out, she doesn't like him much anymore, he's more scary than funny now, and she would vote for Balloon. I don't think she'd talk much to Cabby, since Cabby doesn't get to Indefinite Island too long before the rejoin challenge and she's not as patient with the others until later on. She'd definitely be frightened by the unvitational committee, she'd understand what's going on more than she did in season 1, yeah? TK and Lifering, having had taken care of her, would definitely be watching out for her, as well as Painty and even Nickel, though in his own way. He doesn't like Taco that much anyways, but he might casually position himself between her and the unvitationals, yeah?
To add on to the season 3 finale, I think Taco and Cabby would interact a bit at the end!! Cabby is the first winner since Taco, after all. I think Taco would poke her arm out of the top of her shell (I love it when she does this IT'S SO CUTE) and offer Cabby a victory lemon!!!! With a little "We're winners!", yeah? Keep in mind that, in this au, Taco really did only speak French and some other random words in the beginning, but her English has been improving!! Mostly in comprehension, since she doesn't talk much in general, but by the latter end of this au she can definitely speak more!! Pickle's betrayal did set her progress back, though. She didn't feel like talking for a while after he left.
Truth or Flare would be similar, Pickle probably couldn’t even try reprogramming Mepad like in canon, so he’d just be spying and take the chance to jump into the challenge when he hears what it is. He might hold Mephone or Mepad at like… rock point? Threaten to throw a rock at them, which is a genuine danger to their lives, I suppose. I’m doing my best here guys it’s not my fault he’s a much less threatening antagonist than Taco. Well I guess it is a little but it’s more in character for him!! Regardless, he doesn’t fall apart but instead retreats into the woods when he finds out someone else is coming, and Mepad goes after him of his own volition. It’s Mepad, he sees someone who needs help, he’s gonna help them. (RIP king you would have loved my shiny buneary). 
Finale!!!! Okay, not too much changes!! But we’ll start with the Pickle & Taco apology scene and go from there. He comes in and knocks on her door, and she’s so very happy to see him!!! Surprised, but happy!! Before she can start giving him affection though, he gives her his apology. He doesn’t know how much of it she understands, since she learned a lot of English in his absence, but he gives a solid, sincere apology. Which Taco is very happy to hear!! She wasn’t really mad at him in the first place, she just missed him a whole lot and was very sad. But now he’s back!!! She squeals and “sour creams” and nuzzles him!!! She even tells him it’s okay and that she’s not mad, though not in so many words. Though unfortunately for Pickle, Mic hears Taco getting all excited, and comes to check on her, catching them together. Mic isn’t happy and starts berating him for showing up around here, as I think she’d be prone to do with him having hurt her buddy Taco is deeply, as Taco tries to get her to stop. That gets cut off, though, because their yelling attracts MephoneX, and Pickle is yet again the first to fall. This gets the attention of more of the cast, especially as it starts to go after Taco and chases her into the lobby area, X-ing her like he does OJ in canon. The finale starts playing out relatively normally after that. 
I think Mic would help her through the red line game and hold her hand (if she could convince Taco to bring it out of her shell), like in canon, and Taco might even help her too! With how she stops in the finale because of the images of her being ignored no matter how loud she screams, yeah? But there's a little Taco who likes to yell with her pulling on her hand, and they run across the line.
But after they all get back she wouldn't understand why Mepad isn't powering on. She didn't spend much time with him, since she didn't compete in season 2 nor kidnap him in this au, but she'd know it isn't normal. They probably would have to keep her away from the body, because she'd keep trying to get his attention and get him to turn on like normal, especially since Pickle would be quite upset about his death like Taco is in canon. 
She would understand that Mephone made them when someone tells her directly, but I don’t think it would really phase her, honestly? She doesn't care, their priority should be getting her lemon orchard back. Everyone else is being so very careful, but it's business as usual for Taco, yeah? She'd probably get another babysitter or two with how fragile her shell is. She might playfully spit a lemon at someone, and end up with Knife carefully but very firmly telling her she can't spit lemons at people anymore and has to be very careful not to hurt herself or anyone else. Getting scolded might make her sad since she doesn't totally get the stakes of it all, but after a few days of hiding from him behind Microphone she'd be okay again. 
She and Pickle would hang out again!!!! But on a tentative basis with everyone else. Taco would definitely be annoyed that the others weren't letting her and Pickle hang out one-on-one. They used to do it all the time, and now Pickle is nice again, so there's no more problem!!! She might try to be cheeky and sneak away to go hang out with him, but he'd probably let one of the others know where she is and that they're together anyways. She wouldn't like it, and it might make her think he still doesn't want to spend time with her, but he'd still be on thin ice with everyone else, yeah? So he wouldn't want to be sneaking around them and losing even more of their trust. I think eventually they’d be let alone again, and Pickle would take even better care of her than before, even if he isn’t her main caretaker after coming back. He’d slowly get off thin ice with everyone else, though there may be some (Knife) who are extra protective of Taco and keep an eye on him. But overall it’s a happy ending for Pickle and Taco!!!! :D
I think that’s everything for this au!!!!  \(^▽^)/ I hope you’ve enjoyed, and if I forgot to include anything please let me know!! If there are any questions, please feel free to send in an ask!!!
18 notes · View notes
ladylaratybur · 2 days ago
Text
AoT Analysis: Why I like the Tyburs as characters
Tumblr media
A question I get a lot is why I like the Tyburs so much, especially when Willy was "evil" and Lara had so little screen time. I made a thread on Twitter about why I like them, but not everyone who asked me this has it, so I thought I'd post here too : )
DISCLAIMER 1: Please forgive any weirdness; since this is copied from Twitter there might be errors or wacky formatting. Later I'll probably go over it and polish it up.
DISCLAIMER 2: This is my opinion. If you don't like the characters, you have every right. Just don't hate on folks who don't share your opinions ^_^
Aside from being really well written and interesting to analyze (so many people misinterpret Willy as being evil but he's actually a foil to Eren), I find their vibe and aura extremely powerful and interesting for not being there for very long. I think Willy's dilemma is fascinating to analyze; he's there for only a couple episodes yet is extremely important, and so morally grey that his position and decision is interesting to ponder. Willy is extremely well fleshed out for such a short appearance.
As for Lara, she's my prime example of how amazing a character creator Isayama is. She was there for 3 episodes and had 2 lines, yet her aura and presence were super powerful. Her expressions say so much, and was memorable as a character despite very minimal attention. There is also a lot to her if you read between the lines. Presumably she was raised as a noble child, yet probably fairly sheltered due to her family, and likely at a young age had to give up everything to be the Warhammer heir. She was entirely devoted to her mission, accepting her duty though it meant devoting herself to a life of service and secrecy. She had to endure everything alone, from the change in her life to all the memories and secrets of the Warhammer. Through it all she remained loyal and devoted, with probably only her brother to help her. She is silently strong and silently suffering all for what she thinks of as the highest good. Like her brother she was willing to sacrifice her life for this good (though we don't know how much she knew).
Something else I love about the Tyburs is how devoted to family they are; Willy with his kids, Lara smiling and giving her nieces and nephews treats, and how Lara was clearly grieving (yet strong!) when her brother got chomped.
Part of what's so fascinating about Lara is how mysterious she is and getting to read between the lines. We can clean information about her through his Eren changed after eating her as well as through Willy's character and motivations, but we don't ACTUALLY know anything. She could have been secretly in control of ALL of Marley, or she could have been a timid, manipulated, brainwashed child like the warriors. We don't know but there's reason for both. All we know is Eren seemed darker, silent, resentful after inheriting her titan. She also seemed like she could've been a support for Willy too, based on her reassuring him even after his death, even though she was younger. I choose to think she urged him to take action after the Tybur family's long years as idle rich who let their own race suffer endlessly.
True she could ask be extremely evil and conniving ... And some people who misinterpret the Tyburs believe they're like H17ler or worse some antisemit1c stereotype ... But that's, in my opinion, far from the truth. (Also Willy seems heavily NORSE inspired)
I also think people dislike Willy and Lara because there WAS some mishandling in their writing. While the mystery IS part of what's alluring about them, Eren won in a way he shouldn't have. It felt like plot armor. Lara made a big impression and then died. It felt sloppy.
Aside from that I love Willy and Lara because I really do like their character designs x) I think both of them are beautiful (though again, that's far from the only reason I like them) ... Also Lara is fun AF to cosplay and if I was a man I would cosplay Willy for sure. I also like the very WW1 vibe of the Tyburs and their aesthetic (I need to write an essay someday on why AoT is primarily inspired by ww1 and English history rather than ww2).
Thank y'all for reading and I hope you enjoyed!! <3
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
(also for a literature class on classical rhetoric, I did a deep dive into Willy's speech and motivations as an essay for my final. I'm still waiting to get it back. I would like to possibly transcribe it into a post since I didn't really address Willy's motives much here. It's very similar to this one except it's about Willy more than Lara.)
15 notes · View notes
helenofsparta2 · 15 hours ago
Text
Okay, first of all, this is nothing personal, just a difference in opinion, but because Percy Jackson is currently my hyper fixation, I can't help but try to set a few things right when i encounter posts like this.
This is going to be a longer post, and I’m probably going to repeat myself a lot from some of my earlier ones, but I really don’t care.
 I am so sick and tired of people in this fandom misrepresenting or misremembering the relationship Nico and Percy actually had in PJO.  Because if you actually read the books, it’s so obvious, that Percy always did everything in his power to protect Nico, and that he was the person who cared for him the most out of everyone else.
First to tackle the points mentioned above:  
“I just knew that Percy Jackson was the one who was freaked out by him when he learned he was the son of Hades”
Percy did not get freaked out, simply because Nico being the son of Hades creeped him out. He got freaked out, because Nico being the son of Hades meant that he could possibly be the hero of the prophecy. Because he feared what the gods and Kronos might do to him, once they found out:
We have to tell Chiron," Annabeth said, out of breath. "No," I said. She and Grover both stared at me. "Um," Grover said nervously, "what do you mean… no? I was still trying to figure out why I'd said that, but the words spilled out of me. "We can't let anyone know. I don't think anyone realizes that Nico is a—" "A son of Hades," Annabeth said. "Percy, do you have any idea how serious this is? (...) I don't think Nico understands who he is. But we can't go telling anyone. Not even Chiron. If the Olympians find out—"(The Titan’s curse, chapter 20)
“who got annoyed internally when young Nico asked too many questions”
Are we really blaming Percy now because he felt annoyed by a ten-year-old asking him a bunch of questions? A feeling, he only had internally, and never acted upon?  
Even, if we ignore how ridiculous that would be, it’s important to remember, that Percy only started to get annoyed when Nico asked him why Annabeth didn’t know better than to fall of a cliff. His best friend who had just gotten kidnapped by the titan army. Before that he was genuinely nice to Nico. He complimented his mythomagic card collection, showed him his sword and answered all his other questions, despite the fact that he was emotionally devestated worried sick about Annabeth, and blamed himself for her fate.
"Big collection," I said. Nico grinned. "I've got almost all of them, plus their holographic cards! Well, except for a few really rare ones." "You've been playing this game a long time?" "Just this year (…) "Hey, can I see that sword you were using?" I showed him Riptide, and explained how it turned from a pen into a sword just by uncapping it. "Cool! Does it ever run out of ink?" "Um, well, I don't actually write with it." "Are you really the son of Poseidon?" "Well, yeah." "Can you surf really well, then?" I looked at Grover, who was trying hard not to laugh. "Jeez, Nico," I said. "I've never really tried." (Titan’s curse, chapter 3)
“who broke his promise to keep his sister safe”
I think I’m going to have to repeat this sentence for the rest of my life:
Percy never promised Nico that he would keep Bianca 100% safe.
He explicitly warned Nico that every quest is dangerous, and that no one could guarantee anyone’s survival. He only promised to do his best. Which he did.
(He shoulders sagged. He shifted from foot to foot. "Maybe you're right. But, but you can go for me." "Say what?" "You can turn invisible. You can go!" "The Hunters don't like boys," I reminded him. "If they find out—" "Don't let them find out. Follow them invisibly. Keep an eye on my sister! You have to. Please?" "Nico—" "You're planning to go anyway, aren't you?" I wanted to say no. But he looked me in the eyes, and I somehow couldn't lie to him. "Yeah," I said. "I have to find Annabeth. I have to help, even if they don't want me to." "I won't tell on you," he said. "But you have to promise to keep my sister safe." "I… that's a big thing to promise, Nico, on a trip like this. Besides, she's got Zoe, Grover, and Thalia—" "Promise," he insisted. "I'll do my best. I promise that." (Titan’s curse, chapter 8)
“Percy Jackson was horrible to Nico”
To tackle this relatively broad subject, here’s a list of all the things Percy did for Nico in PJO:  
He was the only one to remind Bianca to think about Nico before joining the hunters.   
(Anger flashed in Zoe's eyes. "That is not thy concern, boy. The point is Bianca may join if she wishes. It is her choice." "Bianca, this is crazy," I said. "What about your brother? Nico can't be a Hunter."( Titan’s Curse, chapter 3)
He made sure, Nico didn’t risk his life by following Bianca on her quest
 ("And now you're thinking about following them on the quest," I guessed. "How did you know that?" "Because if it was my sister, I'd probably be thinking the same thing. But you can't." He looked defiant. "Because I'm too young?" "Because they won't let you. They'll catch you and send you back here. And… yeah, because you're too young. You remember the manticore? There will be lots more like that. More dangerous. Some of the heroes will die." He shoulders sagged. He shifted from foot to foot. "Maybe you're right. (Titan’s curse, chapter 8))
He wanted to risk his own life, so Nico could escape from the skeletons
(I drew my sword and Nico gasped. I whirled and found myself facing four skeleton warriors. They grinned fleshless grins and advanced with swords drawn. I wasn't sure how they'd made it inside the camp, but it didn't matter. I'd never get help in time. "You're trying to kill me!" Nico screamed. "You brought these… these things?" "No! I mean, yes, they followed me, but no! Nico, run. They can't be destroyed." "I don't trust you!" The first skeleton charged. I knocked aside its blade, but the other three kept coming. I sliced one in half, but immediately it began to knit back together. I knocked another's head off but it just kept fighting. "Run, Nico!" I yelled. (Titan’s Curse, Chapter 20)
He searched the woods in the dark for hours after Nico disappeared
 (Annabeth and Grover helped me search the woods for hours, but there was no sign of Nico di Angelo.(Titan’s Curse, Chapter 20))
He made Annabeth and Grover swear to hide Nico’s identity, so the gods wouldn’t kill him
(I don't think Nico understands who he is. But we can't go telling anyone. Not even Chiron. If the Olympians find out—" "It might start them fighting among each other again," Annabeth said. "That's the last thing we need." Grover looked worried. "But you can't hide things from the gods. Not forever." (Titan’s Curse, Chapter 20))
He decided to shoulder the prophecy, solely because he wanted to prevent Nico from going through any more suffering
 ("I don't need forever," I said. "Just two years. Until I'm sixteen." Annabeth paled. "But, Percy, this means the prophecy might not be about you. It might be about Nico. We have to—" "No," I said. "I choose the prophecy. It will be about me." "Why are you saying that?" she cried. "You want to be responsible for the whole world?" It was the last thing I wanted, but I didn't say that. I knew I had to step up and claim it. "I can't let Nico be in any more danger," I said. "I owe that much to his sister. I… let them both down. I'm not going to let that poor kid suffer any more." "The poor kid who hates you and wants to see you dead," Grover reminded me. "Maybe we can find him," I said. "We can convince him it's okay, hide him someplace safe." Annabeth shivered. "If Luke gets hold of him—" "Luke won't," I said. "I'll make sure he's got other things to worry about. Namely, me." (Titan’s Curse, Chapter 20)
He searched for Nico between Titan’s curse and Battle of the labyrinth
 (“So the Nico boy is gone now?” “I—I guess. I tried to search for him this spring. So did Annabeth. But we didn’t have any luck. This is secret, Tyson. Okay? If anyone found out he was a son of Hades, he would be in danger. You can’t even tell Chiron.” (Battle of the Labyrinth, chapter 2))
He risked his, Grover’s, Annabeth’s and Tyson’s life on Geryon’s farm, for the chance to save Nico
(“Either way, you get my friends,” I said. “But, if I succeed, you’ve got to let all of us go, including Nico.” (Battle of the Labyrinth, Chapter 8))
He always offered Nico a place to stay, whenever he got the opportunity
 (“We missed you at dinner,” I said. “You could’ve sat with me.” “No.” “Nico, you can’t miss every meal. If you don’t want to stay with Hermes, maybe they can make an exception and put you in the big house. They’ve got plenty of room.” I’m not staying, Percy.” “But…you can’t just leave. It’s too dangerous out there for a lone half-blood. You need to train.” (Battle of the Labyrinth, Chapter 19)
He invited him to join him on his birthday
 (“Is that… is that blue birthday cake?” He sounded hungry, maybe a little wistful. I wondered if the poor kid had ever had a birthday party, or if he’d ever been invited to one. “Come inside for cake and ice cream,” I said. “It sounds like we’ve got a lot to talk about.” (Battle of the Labyrinth, Chapter 20)
He reminded him that it’s okay to still be a kid  
(“By the way…” I fished something out of my pocket. “Tyson found this while we were cleaning the cabin. Thought you might want it.” I held out a lead figurine of Hades—the little Mythomagic statue Nico had abandoned when he fled camp last winter. Nico hesitated. “I don’t play that game anymore. It’s for kids.” “It’s got four thousand attack power,” I coaxed. “Five thousand,” Nico corrected. “But only if your opponent attacks first.” I smiled. “Maybe it’s okay to still be a kid once in a while.” I tossed him the statue,( Battle of the Labyrinth, Chapter 19)
He always offered him his help
 (“Are you sure you want to stay here?” I asked. “Persephone will make your life miserable.” “I have to,” he insisted. “I have to get close to my dad. He needs a better adviser.” I couldn’t argue with that. “Well, if you need anything-“ “I’ll call,” he promised. (The Sword of Hades, in The Demigod Files, p 133)
He helped him to get the sword of hades back, because he understood his wish to impress his father
(I glanced at Thalia. She didn’t seem too enthusiastic about the whole track-a-thief-with-a-flower-thing. Then I looked at Nico. Unfortunately, I recognized the expression on his face. I knew what it was like wanting to make your dad proud, even if your dad was hard to love. In this case, really hard to love. Nico was going to do this, with or without us. And I couldn’t let him go alone. (The Sword of Hades, in The Demigod Files, page 99)
He acknowledged everything Nico has done in the last Olympian and is one of the main reasons why Hades received a cabin at camp
( “But your children should not be left out. They should have a cabin at camp. Nico has proven that.” (The Last Olympian, Chapter 20)
The only time, Percy hurt Nico in any way was the whole scene in the underworld at the beginning of the last Olympian, but I already tackled that whole scene here:
I would agree that their relationship very much deteriorated in Hoo, mostly because Rick wrote especially Percy pretty OOC, but even in that series, I would never describe Percy’s treatment of Nico as horrible.  
Nico and Percy are together with Hazel my favourite Riordan verse characters, and I really hate how many people pretend like Percy was this horrible person, who always treated Nico shitty, or that they don’t genuinely care for each other. This misconception might be,(together with the “dumb-Percy-stereotype) the take I hate the most in this fandom, and really hurts both of their characters.
Since I struggle with understanding the difference between romantic and platonic attraction, I just need to make it clear that Nico di Angelo makes sense to me despite all of that. As a kid in elementary school who was bullied, who had no friends except my parents, I found comfort in books. People in books don't judge. They don't feel as scary or as imposing as people in real life. And Nico di Angelo was a character who made me feel less alone. Nobody liked him either. He also had no friends. Everyone thought he was weird. And that validation… that validation made him a childhood favourite. I couldn't have explained it as well back then, but I always knew I loved him.
Since I was a kid who never, ever felt romance, the Cupid stuff always went over my head. Maybe now that i'm approaching 20, i'll understand it more. But even if I don't, I get why Nico likes the dead more than the living. It's the same reason Leo likes machines more than real people. Real people are confusing, unpredictable, difficult to work with. Real people are also cruel, judgemental and unkind. But machines and ghosts…machines are predictable. They work in a way you can understand. And ghosts have suffered pain. They can at least understand isolation and loneliness.
And I don't think I ever did understand why Nico had a crush on Percy, because I was a kid for whom romance was just a thing in books and movies (never a real thing to be felt). I just knew that Percy Jackson was the one who was freaked out by him when he learned he was a son of hades, who got annoyed internally when young nico asked too many questions, who broke his promise to keep his sister safe. Percy Jackson was horrible to Nico, and it is not talked about enough. I don't care that they made peace (at least not when I wrote this in a passionate frenzy)!
I want some recognition of how everyone Nico liked hurt him! His sister abandoned him for the hunters! Percy promised to keep her safe, but failed! Everyone at Camp Half-Blood shunned Nico for being a child of hades! Every time we see Nico in these books, people are discussing how freaked out he makes them. Every. Single. Time. Every Time! This kid is the universe's punching bag, and he deserves countless apologies from everyone!
32 notes · View notes
emptytcwn · 1 year ago
Text
♡ answered prompts ( still accepting ) ↝ @devlishghosts sent ;
❛  beg me for it and i might let you come  ❜. for ; angela.
Tumblr media
angela stared at him in disbelief for a moment, wondering if she'd heard him correctly. he wanted her to beg for it? she'd never done that before. then again, she hadn't exactly been with many people, and none of them had the commanding sort of presence or personality that jordan did. all she knew, was that she was determined to do a good job, because she wanted to be able to cum. she couldn't imagine not getting her release after working hard for it. a needy whine escaped her as hands grasped at homme's shoulders, eyes boring into his. "p-please," she started. "please let me cum. i ... i've been such a good girl for you. i need this. please."
3 notes · View notes
thebirdandhersong · 3 months ago
Text
Lol
#theres nothing quite like your mother saying Well maybe you shouldve been more careful because now your boss might think youve been flirting#with this male coworker (whom i like splendidly as a friend) and now maybe she thinks youre not trustworthy#and maybe she regrets hiring you because you said you feel like youre making a lot of mistakes this week and she might assume thats because#your head is filled with this boy.#so dont make her regret hiring you.#MA'AM I TOLD YOU I WAS ALREADY ANXIOUS BECAUSE I MADE SO MANY MISTAKES TODAY WHY ARE YOU MAKING ME ASHAMED#OF SOMETHING THAT I HONESTLY HAD NO CLUE I OUGHT TO BE ANXIOUS ABOUT AT MY FIRST NEW JOB AFTER IVE GRADUATED????#anyway going to bed i cant take this anymore LOL she said it so lightly and im like. well i never even considered#being afraid of making my boss regret hiring me somehow because of some kind of behaviour that i had no idea was sending some kind of signal#anywaysssss 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭#and then she was like why are you crying?? 💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀#not to be like this is partly why i didnt want to move home but confound it all why are things like this#can i not simply confide in my mother my anxieties and worriws#worries#and not also have to worry about her potentially being like Well have you considered you ARE right and it IS your fault?#idk man something something firstborn child eldest daughter can i have some room to breathe. please#also not to whine but Not my father walking in on me eating dinner at 10pm because i was holed up#in my room in a semi depressive state after so many gong shows in a work day and straight up having no appetite#but deciding my body needs the food anyway its better late than never.....walking in and then saying#you know if you eat this late you'll gain weight. SIR??????????????????#sorry to complain and rant again i simply cannot in this house and whats more am doing my best to honour my parents#but why is it so hard out here and how can they say stuff like that with a smile!!!!!!!#also i DO have an inner critic who is always like Its your fault you are the worst you should be ashamed always........why do my parents#not understand after knowing me for so long and watching me grow up#that i can make myself so ashamed of the smallest thing so easily and that what they say drives me to shame almost as easily?#ANYWAY LOL WHAT A DAY#you guys!!! i am working so hard i promise i PROMISE I am!!! it is my first full time job ever and i am working so so hard#i am doing my absolute best and no one sees it and that is FINE i just wish my parents would see that i AM trying!!#i come back home so dead every single day because i put in 120%! this is literally my first job after graduation#and my parents KNOW this has been the most exhausting taxing and soul crushing year ive had in my very short life so far
21 notes · View notes